Fall From Grace: The Dance Thriller, Part 2

I Fought This Long And This Hard

Silver Springs, Maryland
Monday, December 1, 1997
(2:00 am)
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Lindsey had been in the back of a police car just once in his life.

He was sixteen, and he'd listened to his brother Greg's stupid suggestion that they sneak into the schoolyard nearby after dark. A patrol car had brought them home, and Ruth had grounded them for two weeks. His first night out after his grounding had lifted was a Wednesday night when he'd been told he could go out with his friends to the Young Life gathering, and he'd left the house at seven o'clock, guitar case in hand, and gotten into his friend's car and was swarmed with guys all asking him how it felt to be in a police car. People at Young Life who'd heard the story were still asking him questions about it when he'd sat down in the corner and pulled out his guitar and asked a few people near him what they wanted him to play. A guy he'd never seen before told him to play "California Dreaming" by The Mamas And The Papas.

He sat with his hands in his lap in the police car, looking out the window at the snow. Stevie hated snow, he thought. She was a beach girl, a desert girl, a boat girl. She liked Hawaii, she liked the Nicks property in Paradise Valley, Arizona, she liked the Santa Monica Pier...especially at night. He recalled her fear of avalanche during their stay in Aspen, and forced from his mind what a jerk he had been when the tour with the Everly Brothers had fallen through.

I'm coming, Stephanie. I'm coming to get you and I will never be that guy again.

It had been pretty easy for the Landover police to track the rented Toyota Camry to Silver Springs. There was an ambulance two cars ahead, then another police car, then the one he sat it, Christine beside him and holding his hand.

When we find her, he thought, we are naming our baby girl Robin Christine. It's not a joke anymore.

"We've tracked the car to a Best Western about two more miles down the road," the officer in the passenger's seat told him. "We'll be there in about fifteen minutes, Mr. Buckingham. When we arrive, I'm going to have to ask you to let our men handle it. You'll have to stand back."

Lindsey almost smiled at the officer's words, thinking, "He asked me for my love and that was all."

He couldn't get to the Best Western to hold Stevie in his arms again fast enough.

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Stevie had no idea how long she'd been lying on the bed alone. She'd considered putting the TV on for the company, but she was frozen in fear and couldn't look for the remote. She'd thought of screaming for help, but the parking lot looked deserted and she hadn't heard a peep from anyone else who might have been staying at the motel. She could see the clock radio and was using it to time her contractions, and they were ten minutes apart now.

She closed her eyes and tried to breathe, tried to think of a positive image. She thought of the nursery at home in California that was unfinished, and how she was going to recreate it bigger and better in the new house when she and Lindsey moved out of the condo. She thought of the pink wallpaper boarder with the little pink bows on it she'd picked out with Lori in July, the little pink pajamas with the lavender butterflies on them that Sharon had bought for the baby in New York last week. She thought of Lindsey holding their baby girl, handing her over with delicate hands and saying, "Somebody wants Mommy to feed them, angel." She thought of him holding her in bed last night at the hotel, his hand over hers on her belly under the covers, saying, "How lucky am I? Now I have TWO sweet girls!" And he'd kissed her and told her to go to sleep, they had a big day tomorrow.

Slowly, she became aware of red lights flashing in the parking lot. She forced herself to sit up, and it took every ounce of strength she had to hobble over to the windows. She felt tears spring to her eyes at the sight of an ambulance coming to a sudden stop near the entrance, followed by two police cars. Uniformed officers began to mill about in the snow, which was coming down even heavier in the late-night hour, and a sob escaped her when she saw a blonde woman climbing out of the second police car, holding her coat closed against the cold and holding hands with a man whose dark hair was getting peppered with snowflakes and looked up at the building. Sirens were going off every which way, the entire snow-covered parking lot was glowing red, and Lindsey was standing beside Christine in the snow.

She sobbed openly with relief as she sank to the floor, another contraction on its way.

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"If she's in there, we'll find her, Mr. Buckingham."

The officer that spoke to Lindsey couldn't have been more friendly and understanding, but Lindsey had to resist the urge to shove him out of the way and run up into the building and hunt for Stevie himself. He could see the policemen flooding the office of the Best Western next to the small attached restaurant that was closed for the night with all but one light from behind the bar dimmed. He could see the paramedics preparing a gurney and oxygen and other things he couldn't identify for any number of scenarios. Christine hadn't let go of his hand, and he knew she could feel it was shaking.

"Look," Christine said, her gloved finger pointing at a team of three officers who were waving him over to the motel entrance in the red glow of the lights. "They know something...go!"

Lindsey looked at Christine with terror in his eyes. "Chris...if she's in there...Jesus Christ, anything could be happening in there, and..."

"Go," she said. "Go get her, L.B. This is it. You are literally her Silver Springs now." She smiled at him, and he managed a small smile in return. "You can't make this shit up!"

Lindsey nodded and ran over to where the three officers were trying to flag him down. He could hear voices from the radios saying things like "suspect not on the premises" and "pregnant Caucasian female," and he understood what he was about to discover inside. He followed a swarm of officers through a hallway past the registration desk where two very frightened Asian desk clerks, one middle-aged man and one younger female, were explaining in rapid-fire detail everything they had seen that night to am officer who was copiously taken notes in a black leather pad. The door to the room was opened by someone with a key card, and Lindsey was among the people who ran into the room and found Stevie on the floor near the window, rocking back and forth in pain, holding onto her baby for dear life. She looked up at the commotion in the room and the first thing she saw were a pair of blue eyes, the same ones she had looked into in a motel room twenty-seven years earlier and found nothing but warmth, love, and her entire future. She burst into tears.

"Lindsey..." She sobbed his name as he pushed past several officers and knelt down beside her on the floor, immediately pulling her into his arms.

"You're okay, angel, you're okay now," he said, crying himself. "We're getting you out of here now, okay? It's all over, baby." He held her as tightly as he could. It didn't take him long to realize that something was wrong, that she was in pain.

"It's not over..." she sobbed into his chest. "She's still out there...she's crazy, Lindsey, my God...and the baby..." She looked up at him. "I'm in pain...like for awhile now...and my water broke and she disappeared and..."

Stevie did not get to finish her sentence. She blinked and she was being loaded onto a gurney, radio voices all around talking about labor and delivery, a premature baby, a suspect on the loose, and the nearest emergency room from the Best Western in Silver Springs. Lindsey was holding her hand as they loaded her into the back of an ambulance in the snow, and neither of them had stopped crying. 

"You're having our baby girl in Silver Springs, angel," he said, smiling at her through tears. "No matter what happened here tonight...I mean, come on..."

Stevie smiled, clutching his hand, taking advantage of a pain-free moment to look up at him and try to lighten the mood as she said, "You'll never get away from the sound of the woman that loves you."

"And I'll never even try to, Stephanie," he said as the paramedics closed the back doors of the ambulance and sped off into the snow.

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