Chapter 5: Three Keys

The chapel went very quiet.

"The booking office," Jameson said. "What's the booking office?"

"Who's that?" Ollie said. "Fee, who's there?"

"Jameson."

There was a long silence on the line.

"Oh," Ollie said. "Hey, man. Long time no meet."

Jameson looked at the phone.

"The office," he said again. "Who had access to it?"

"I'd have to think," Ollie said. "It's been four years. Let me drive. I think better in the truck."

Jameson's pager went off on his belt.

He read it, and his face went back to work.

"A trauma's coming in from the interstate," he said. "A seven-year-old."

"Go," I said.

He stood up.

At the door he stopped with his hand on the frame.

"I'll be back," he said.

"Benji doesn't need you to be back."

"I know he doesn't," he said, and left.

Ollie said, "Well, he's tall."

"Shut up and drive."

He got to Charleston at ten past eight that night, eight hours on the road with one stop for gas.

I heard him before I saw him.

He was big enough that nurses stepped out of his way without being asked.

He had a ginger beard, a flannel shirt, two coffees in a cardboard tray, and a stuffed stegosaurus the size of a golden retriever.

"Uncle Ollie!"

Benji tried to sit up and yelped.

"Whoa, whoa, buddy. Stay flat." Ollie set the coffees down on the windowsill and loomed over the bed. "I heard you had a banana removed."

"A little banana."

"Is it true they put a camera in your belly button?"

"Actually, yes," Benji said, deeply proud. "And two other holes. Mommy says they're my zipper."

"Can I see the zipper?"

Benji lifted his whale gown to show three small bandages.

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