CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Bonnie Brooks's father worked in the circulation department of the Chicago Tribune, and her mother was a buyer for Sears. They had an apartment in the city and a summer cabin on the boundary waters in Minnesota. Bonnie, an only child, had mixed memories of family vacations. Her father was an unadventurous fellow for whom the northern wilderness held no allure. Because he couldn't swim and was allergic to deerflies, he avoided the lakes. Instead he stayed in the cabin and assembled model airplanes; classic German Fokkers were his passion. The tedious hobby was made more so by her father's chronic ham-fistedness, which turned the simplest glue job into high drama. Bonnie and her mother stayed out of the way, to avoid being blamed for disturbing his concentration.

While her father toiled over the model planes, Bonnie's mother paddled her across the wooded lakes in an old birch canoe. Bonnie remembered those happy mornings-trailing her fingertips in the chilly water, feeling the sunlight warm the back of her neck. Her mother was not the stealthiest of paddlers, but they saw their share of wildlife-deer, squirrels, beavers, the occasional moose. Bonnie recalled asking, more than once, why her folks had bought the cabin if her father was so averse to the outdoors. Her mother always explained: "It was either here or Wisconsin."

Bonnie Brooks attended Northwestern University and, to her father's puzzlement, majored in journalism. Soon she embarked on her first serious romance, with a divorced adjunct professor who claimed to have won prizes for his reportage of the Vietnam War. The absence of plaques in the professor's office Bonnie naively attributed to modesty. For Christmas she decided to surprise him with a framed, laminated copy of his front-page scoop about the mining of Haiphong harbor. Yet when Bonnie searched the college's microfilm of the San Francisco Chronicle, for whom her lover had supposedly worked, she found not a single bylined story bearing his name. Demonstrating the blood instincts of a seasoned reporter, she contacted the newspaper's personnel department and (using harmless subterfuge) was able to determine that the closest her heroic seducer had ever come to Southeast Asia was the copy desk of the Chronicle's Seattle bureau.

Bonnie Brooks acted decisively. First she dumped the jerk, then she got him fired from the university. Subsequent boyfriends were more loyal and forthcoming, but what they lacked in dishonesty they made up for with indolence. Bonnie's mother grew tired of cooking them meals and deflecting their halfhearted offers to help dry the dishes. She couldn't wait for her daughter to graduate from school and find herself a grown-up man.

Good or bad, jobs in journalism were hard to come by. Like many of her classmates, Bonnie Brooks wound up writing publicity blurbs and press releases. She went to work first for the City of Chicago Parks Department and then for a baby-food company that was eventually purchased by Crespo Mills Internationale. There Bonnie was promoted to the job of assistant corporate publicist. The title was attached to a salary that ten tough years in most city newsrooms wouldn't have earned. As for the writing, it was as elementary as it was unsatisfying. In addition to pabulums and breakfast cereals, Crespo Mills manufactured whipped condiment spreads, peanut butter, granola bars, cookies, crackers, trail mix, flavored popcorn, bread sticks and three styles of croutons. In no time, Bonnie Brooks ran out of appetizing adjectives. Attempts at lyrical originality were discouraged by her Crespo supervisors; during one especially dreary streak, she was required to use the word "tasty" in fourteen consecutive press releases. When Max Lamb asked her to marry him and move to New York, Bonnie didn't hesitate to quit her job.

Max could take only a few days off from work, so they decided to take their honeymoon at Disney World– a corny choice, but Bonnie figured anything was better than Niagara Falls. She knew that a waterfall, no matter how grandiose, wouldn't hold Max's interest. Neither, it turned out, did Mickey Mouse. Two days at the Magic Kingdom and Max was as antsy as a cat burglar.

Then the hurricane blew in, and he just had to go see....

Bonnie had wanted to stay in Orlando, stay cuddled under the scratchy motel sheets and make love while the rain drummed on the windows. Why wasn't that enough for him?

She'd almost asked that very question as they sat in the dark on Augustine's patio after the adventure in Stiltsville. And later, on the way to the airport. And again, standing at the Delta gate, when he'd hugged her in a loose and distracted way, his hair and shirt reeking of cigarets.

But Bonnie hadn't asked. The moment wasn't right; he was a man with a purpose. A grown-up man, just like her mother wanted her to find. Except her mother thought Max was an asshole. Her father, well, he thought Max Lamb was a fine young fella. He thought all Bonnie's boyfriends had been fine young fellas.

She wondered what her father would think of her now, on the way to a hospital, scrunched in the front seat of a pickup truck between a one-eyed, toad-smoking kidnapper and a plane-crash survivor who juggled skulls.

Brenda Rourke's head was fractured in three places, and one of her cheeks needed reconstruction. She was bleeding under the right temporal bone, but doctors had managed to stanch it. A plastic surgeon had repaired a U-shaped gash on her forehead, stitching the loose flap above the hairline.

Bonnie Lamb had never seen such terrible wounds. Even the governor seemed shaken. Augustine fastened his eyes on his shoetops-the sounds and smells of the hospital were too familiar. He felt parched.

Jim Tile held both of Brenda's hands in one of his own. Her eyes were open but unfocused; she had no sense of anyone besides Jim at her bedside. She was trying to talk through the drugs and the pain; he leaned closer to listen.

After a while he straightened, announcing in a low, angry voice, "The bastard stole her ring. Her mother's wedding ring."

Skink slipped from the room so quietly that Bonnie and Augustine didn't notice immediately. There was no trace of him outside the door, but a rush of blue and white uniforms attracted them to the end of the hall. The governor was in the nursery, strolling among the newborns. He carried an infant in the crook of each arm. The babies slept soundly, and he studied them with profound sadness. To Bonnie Lamb he appeared harmless, despite the rebellious beard and the grubby combat pants and the army boots. A trio of husky orderlies conferred at a water fountain; apparently a negotiation had already been attempted, with poor results. Calmly Jim Tile entered the nursery and returned the infants to their glass cribs.

Nobody intervened when the trooper led Skink out of the hospital, because it looked like a routine arrest; another loony street case hauled to the stockade: Jim Tile, his arm around the madman, walking him briskly down the maze of pale-green corridors; the two of them talking intently; Bonnie and Augustine dodging wheel-chairs and gurneys and trying to keep up.

When they reached the parking lot, Jim Tile said he had to go to work. "The President's coming, and guess who gets to clear traffic."