"No. Mom did. On the phone." Ruthie frowned. "She said Doctor. She didn't say a name. I don't think it was Dr. Feldman, he doesn't do nights."
Denny believed her, and in believing her he saw that it did not matter whether he believed her or not. That was the beauty of it, if it worked. That was what the girl had built. He did not have to take her word for anything.
"Okay," he said. "Then that's my question. I want to ask your mom who the doctor was that called it in. And I'll send it. Not you. Is that all right?"
Something went across her face that he would remember for a long time. It was not relief. It was more like the look of somebody who has been carrying a heavy box up a long flight of stairs and has just felt someone else take the other end.
"Yes," she said. "Keep it short. Like, three words. Long words are hard, and she's tired."
"WHO DR," he said. "That short enough?"
"Yes. Put the question mark. That's the long one at the bottom." She stepped in close to him and tilted the card in his hand toward the light from the pharmacy window so he could read it. "First you get her attention. You do it like this." She took the flashlight from him and pointed it up at the window across the street, the lens a small bright eye, and pressed the rubber button on the end in a quick string of flashes, on-off-on-off-on-off, fast as she could make them, and then stopped.
Across the street, in the lit window, a small hard point of white light flared once, steady, and went out.
"She sees us," Ruthie said, and handed him back the flashlight.
Denny had not been nervous in front of anybody in a long time. He had testified in front of juries and a state senate committee. He was nervous now. He held the card in his left hand and the flashlight in his right and found W on the card. Dot dash dash. He pressed the button. The light jumped out of the lens and splashed on the wet street. He let go. He pressed again and held it, counting in his head, one-two-three, and let go, and pressed and held again.
"Dashes are three times as long as dots," Ruthie said at his elbow. "And you wait a dot's worth between the parts, and three dots' worth between letters. And seven between words. But she'll understand if you're slow. Everybody's slow."
H was four dots. O was three dashes. He paused, seven slow beats, then D, dash dot dot. R, dot dash dot. Then the question mark, which was six things long and which he got wrong the first time and had to start over, dot dot dash dash dot dot, and when he finished his thumb ached and he realized he had been holding his breath.