Seven Minutes to Noon

keys and was opening the front door. But Alice couldn’t move. She stood on Simon’s stoop, staring at the lopsided note scrawled on the wet glass, and pried her hands beneath her soaked shirt to massage the tight skin of her belly.

PART FOUR

Chapter 34
    Within minutes a squad car arrived, followed by a battered silver van from the Criminalistics lab. Forensics technicians scrambled over the window, isolating it, analyzing elements invisible to Alice’s eye. All she could see was STOP OR THEY’RE NEXT.
    She huddled on the couch, petrified and shivering under a red fleece blanket, caressing what she could reach of her twins. She had always felt her unborn babies were safe inside her body, safer than they would ever be once they were born. It was when her children left her — disappeared into their school every morning, or worse, went on a field trip to places Alice didn’t know — that she most suffered their vulnerability. It was when they were without her, not within her, that they had always seemed unsafe. She ran her hands along her skin, still tacky from the rain, and silently promised the twins her protection. But watching the technicians crawl over the front of Simon’s building, she knew it was a promise she might not be able to keep.
    With shaking hands, she reached into her wet purse for her cell phone. She would call Mike, summon him home. Once Nell and Peter made it back to the house, Alice would have all she needed. She would talk to Mike about leaving. Insist on it. Whatever was happening now was too confusing and too dangerous. And she, huge with her twin sons, was a sitting duck.
    It took a few rings for Mike to answer. Before sheeven spoke, she heard the tension in his voice. “I’m stuck in traffic in the Bronx. We had this delivery in Westchester. I should have had Diego do it but I wanted him to get some stuff done at the shop.”
    She told him about Julius, the crying baby, the note on Simon’s window.
    He began to blow the pickup’s horn, over and over. Each wail drove Alice’s anxiety deeper.
    “Mike, stop it! That won’t get you home any faster.”
    “But I need to get to you!” A long, final wail of the horn. “I can’t be stuck here like this!” She heard a rustling and the slam of a car door. “Screw it. I’m taking the subway.”
    “You can’t just leave the pickup, Mike!”
    “Let them tow it. I’ll pay the fine.”
    “I’m not alone, Mike. The police are here, a whole bunch of them, and Dana—”
    “Where are the kids?”
    “With Sylvie. She’s bringing them home.”
    His breathing was labored and she could see him, walking quickly, cell phone pressed to his ear, hair electric, somewhere in the Bronx. She had never been to the Bronx, she realized, and didn’t know how it looked. Thus her mind conjured looming concrete canyons, the street an urban valley through which Mike strode alone.
    “Mike, honey, get back in the pickup.”
    He sighed and the motion around him seemed to quiet.
    “Rushing back won’t change anything,” Alice said. “Dana has things under control.”
    “You’re probably right.”
    “I love you.” She heard another slam of a car door. “Are you in the pickup now?”
    “Yes.”
    “Is traffic moving?”
    “No, but I guess it will.”
    “Call me if you’re worried, Mike. I’ll be right here.”
    They ended the call and Alice held her phone in her hand. She surprised herself by feeling less frantic now;having called Mike for support, then being called upon for encouragement, she had actually calmed herself. Yes, the police were there, handling the situation. Trying to determine what the situation was. Alice pulled the blanket over her lap and watched the impressive sight of Dana running the investigation in Frannie’s absence.
    A lab technician sprayed something on the windows to evaporate the water, then painstakingly examined every inch of glass. A photographer took pictures of each stage of the process and every aspect of the building’s exterior. He even photographed the inside of the windows. “Just in case,” he casually told Alice, who hovered in the living room, waiting.
    In case of what? Her momentary calm began to dissipate as quickly as it had gathered.
    When would Frannie arrive?
    Nell and Peter — where were they?
    Standing in the middle of the living room, Dana surveyed the work. Finally, when she wasn’t answering a question or issuing an order, Alice spoke to her.
    “Obviously Julius did