Chapter 21: The Pallet

I stood in the warm dark with a carton in each hand.

The milk boy's formula.

A toddler's, for a disease that turned meat into poison in her brain.

And a baby's.

Four months old, with the same broken factory Emerson had, but worse, because she'd been born with it.

She had enough at home for one more day.

"Doc."

Fergus was in the doorway in a T-shirt and bare feet, his hair flat on one side.

He looked at the fridge.

He looked at the plug on the floor.

He went very quiet.

"Who did this?"

"I don't know."

"I know," he said. "So do you."

"We can't prove it."

"I don't need to prove it." He crouched and picked up the plug and turned it in his scarred fingers. "What do you need? Tell me the list."

I told him.

Three formulas. Special order. The medical supplier opened at nine and had already told me once, in May, that rush orders took four business days.

It was Friday.

The baby had until Saturday night.

Fergus took his phone out.

"Okay," he said. "Go sit down. You're shaking."

I didn't sit down.

I called the supplier's emergency line and got a recording.

When I came out of the back room twenty minutes later, the diner lights were on full and the grill was hot.

The two cops from the counter were on the sidewalk writing a report.

The produce men had arrived with a sheet of plywood and a drill.

My landlady was sweeping glass in her housecoat.

"Who called all of you?" I said.

"He did," said one of the cops, nodding at Fergus. "Before five. Said bring coffee money and your cousins."

By six the three nurses from the pie table came in off their night shift.

They'd gone to the University clinic pharmacy and talked their way into the sample cupboard.

They set two cans of the toddler's formula on my counter.

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