Creature

Chapter Seventeen

It had been a quiet morning in the county hospital, and when Susan Aldrich glanced up at the clock suspended on the wall above her desk behind the admissions counter, she was surprised to see that it was only nine-thirty. That was the problem on the quiet days, she reflected-time seemed to crawl. She glanced out at the waiting room, then smiled almost ruefully when she saw that it had already been cleaned up. Nor could she fill a few minutes by setting up a fresh pot of coffee, either, for she had seen Maria Ramirez heading for the kitchen only a few moments ago.

Maria had become a fixture in the little hospital, and as the endless days of sitting next to the bed close by her son had turned into weeks, Maria had slowly begun developing a routine of her own. It had started with the simple housekeeping of Ricardo's room, but slowly she had expanded her domain, never asking if anything needed to be done, but simply watching the duty nurse and the orderlies as they went about their chores, then quietly relieving them of some of their tasks. At first Susan had tried to assure Maria that she needn't bother with the work she had cut out for herself, but she had only smiled at the nurse.

"You do so much for my son," she had replied. "And if I can't help him, at least I can help the people who can." So Susan, like Karen Akers and the other members of the staff, had left Maria alone to fill her time as she saw fit. By now, much of the routine work of the day shift-and the evening shift, too-was being expertly done by the slim and graceful woman whose dark eyes never seemed to miss anything.

Susan had come to realize that, in a way, Maria was helping her son as well, for all the staff had taken to dropping into Ricardo's room several times a day, sometimes simply standing next to his bed for a moment, at other times taking a few minutes to talk to him, even though all of them were privately certain that he was oblivious to their presence. Mickey Esposito-the day orderly, many of whose duties had quietly been usurped by Maria-had fallen into the habit of bringing a book to work and spending several hours quietly reading aloud to the inert form held motionless in the Stryker frame. The first time MacMacCallum had stopped in while Mickey was reading to Rick, the orderly had looked up guiltily and closed the book, but Mac had told him to go on. "None of us knows what's going on in his mind," he'd assured Mickey. "We don't think he can hear us, but we don't know. And if he can, he must be eternally grateful for what you're doing."

Ricardo's room had become the focal point of the hospital. The small staff no longer gathered around the Formica table in the kitchen on their breaks, but gathered at Ricardo's bedside instead. Now, with a few extra minutes on her hands, Susan automatically wandered down the hall to look in on the boy. Her eyes, as always, quickly scanned the monitors over his bed, and she frowned. His heartbeat, always so perfectly regular, was fluctuating madly, and his eyes, which had remained closed and still since the moment he'd been brought into the hospital, were moving spasmodically behind his closed lids.

Even as she stared unbelievingly at the screen, an alarm bell sounded outside the room, alerting the tiny hospital to a Code Blue. Within a few secondsMacCallum appeared, followed by two orderlies and Maria Ramirez.

"What is it?" Maria asked, her voice fearful, her eyes locked on the still form of her son. Then his eyes moved again, and Maria gasped. "He's waking up!"

She pushed close to the bed and leaned down just asMacCallum turned to Susan Aldrich and began snapping out orders for emergency equipment to be brought in. Maria looked up, the eagerness that had filled her eyes a moment ago now replaced with fear. "What is it?" she asked. "Is something wrong?"

MacCallum'slips tightened. "He's going into cardiac arrest," he said.

Maria's eyes widened and her face went ashen. Then she looked down at Rick again, and as she watched, his eyes suddenly blinked open and his mouth began to work. A sound-faint and rasping-rattled in his throat. Maria leaned closer, her hand closing on her son's. "I'm here, Ricardo. It's going to be all right."

Ricardo blinked then, and once more his lips moved. Maria pressed her ear close. Even as an orderly hurried into the room with a cart bearing the equipment to apply electro-shock to Ricardo's heart, she thought she heard her son breathe a single word.

"Good-bye…"

For a split-second Maria wasn't certain she'd heard the word at all, but then, asMacCallum moved her aside so he could rip the gown from Ricardo's chest and press the electrodes against the boy's skin, she made up her mind.

"No!" she said sharply, her voice echoing oddly in the small room.

Everyone around the bed stopped what they were doing and stared at Maria.

"But he's going to-"MacCallum began. He stopped as Maria nodded.

"He's going to die," she said softly. "I know it. He knows it. We must let him go."

Susan Aldrich gasped, andMacCallum himself flinched at Maria's words. He glanced at the monitors once more. Ricardo's blood pressure was dropping rapidly and his heartbeat was coming only spasmodically now. "Are you sure?" he asked.

Maria hesitated only the barest fraction of a second. Her eyes were flooded with tears, but she nodded. "I'm sure. We must let him go. He has said good-bye to me, and so I must say good-bye to him." Then, as the others watched in silence, she leaned down and gently kissed Ricardo's lips.

Susan Aldrich took one of the boy's hands in her own, and Mickey Esposito took the other. MacMacCallum reached down to lay his hand on the boy's forehead. Though all of them knew that Ricardo was totally incapable of any kind of speech, none of them was willing to take Maria's single consolation away from her. A moment later Ricardo Ramirez's eyes opened once more and appeared to come into brief focus.

What might have been only a spasmodic twitching-but could also have been the barest trace of a smile-worked at the corners of his mouth.

Then his eyes closed once more. The line on the heart monitor went flat. And a single steady note-almost like a dirge-began to sound.

Ricardo Ramirez was dead.

Half an hour later MacMacCallum sat in his office, numbly staring at the completed death certificate. Like the rest of the staff at County Hospital, he had been taken completely by surprise by the boy's sudden death. Like the others, Mac had also taken to dropping by Rick's room several times each day-not because there was anything specific that needed to be done for the boy, but simply because even in his comatose condition, there was something about the boy that reached out to him. He, too, had come to regard Rick as more than simply a patient. Quite simply, even though he and Rick had never exchanged so much as a single word, MacMacCallum had come to regard him as a friend.

Now his friend was dead, and Maria Ramirez, whomMacCallum also had come to think of as a friend, was sitting in the waiting room, only her eyes betraying the depth of her grief, trying to come to terms with the loss of the single thing in her life she had truly loved and believed in. Finally, his features setting harshly,MacCallum reached for the phone and called Phil Collins at Silverdale High School, then waited impatiently, drumming his fingers on his desktop while the coach was summoned from the playing field.

"It's Dr.MacCallum," Mac said when Collins came on the line. "I know you don't really care, but Ricardo Ramirez died half an hour ago."

"Christ," Collins swore, butMacCallum was certain the only emotion in the coach's voice was worry, not regret. "What's going to happen now?"

"I don't know,"MacCallum replied. "But I can tell you that I'm very well aware of what you and Ames andTarrenTech have lined up for Maria, and I don't think it's enough." His voice hardened. "I've had it with you and your football team, Collins. We had a broken leg in here last weekend, and a ruptured spleen day before yesterday." He hesitated, briefly wondering whether or not he would be able to back up his next words, then plunged on. "I'm going to suggest to Maria that she institute a wrongful death suit against you, the school, JeffLaConner, his parents, Marty Ames, and Rocky Mountain High. I don't know what you're all up to, but it's got to stop right now."

"Now wait a minute," Collins began, butMacCallum cut him off.

"No, Collins," the doctor breathed, and gently replaced the phone in its cradle. He didn't know what, if anything, he'd accomplished, didn't even really believe a wrongful death suit would get anywhere. But at least he felt better.

In his own office, Phil Collins stared at the dead phone in his hand for a moment, then rattled the button on the cradle until a dial tone buzzed. He punched the digits for Marty Ames's private number, then waited, drumming his fingers impatiently in unconscious duplication of MacMacCallum a few minutes earlier. When Ames came onto the line, Collins repeatedMacCallum's words almost verbatim.

Two minutes after that, Ames was repeating them to Jerry Harris.

"All right," Harris replied tiredly. He thought a moment, then spoke again. "We'll have to clean up theLaConner situation right now. Can you make whatever preparations we might need?"

"Of course," Ames replied.

Before he called ChuckLaConner into his office, Jerry Harris made arrangements for one of theTarrenTech corporate helicopters to prepare to make a flight to Grand Junction, where a Learjet would be waiting.

CharlotteLaConner felt an empty hollowness in her stomach. She couldn't have heard Chuck right-it had to be a mistake. Perhaps, after all,shewas beginning to imagine things, as he'd been insisting since that terrible moment at the Tanners' the other day-she could no longer quite remember which day it was-when Chuck had as much as told Blake and Sharon that she was losing her mind. Maybe she was even imagining that he'd come home from work in the middle of the morning today. Maybe he wasn't really here at all.

She shook her head dazedly. "Pack a bag?" she asked. "Now?"

Chuck nodded. "That's right," he said. "I'm leaving."

"But, I don't understand."

"I'm being transferred, honey, remember?" Chuck said. "I'm going to Boston."

Charlotte's hands fluttered in a helpless gesture. "But I thought-I thought we were waiting for Jeff…"

"I can't, Charlotte," Chuck replied. "I have to go now. Today. There's a chopper waiting for me."

Charlotte sighed with relief. Then it was all right. He was leaving, but she didn't have to. She could stay here and wait until Jeff got better. "M-Maybe I'll go to Boulder," she said. "I could be closer to Jeff then." The fingers of her right hand were working at her left now, the nails-ragged and unkempt from the totally unconscious habit she'd developed over the past few days of biting at them as she sat staring vacantly at nothing-digging into her skin, leaving angry red marks.

But Chuck shook his head. "I'm sorry, Charlotte," he said softly. He couldn't look at her now, couldn't bring himself to watch the pain in her face as he told her what was about to happen to her. "You're going to have to go into the hospital for a while. I've discussed it with Jerry and Marty Ames, and we all agree that you need a good rest. A period of time to adjust to what's happened and get over these paranoid ideas."

Charlotte recoiled from the words as if she'd been struck. "No," she whimpered. "You can't do that to me! I'm your wife, Chuck-"

"Honey, be reasonable," Chuck pleaded, but Charlotte was no longer listening to him. She ducked around him, rushing out of the room and stumbling up the stairs to the second floor, where she ran into the master bedroom, locking the door behind her.

She was in a state of panic now. They were going to take her away and lock her up, just like they'd taken Jeff away. But why? What had she done? All she'd wanted to do was see her son, talk to him, tell him she loved him.

But they wouldn't let her!

Why?

She knew now. It was suddenly clear to her; she should have realized it long ago! They were lying to her, had been lying to her right from the start. Jeff wasn't in a private hospital at all, not in Boulder or anywhere else. They had him locked up somewhere, where neither she nor anyone else could see him. He wasn't sick! He was being held prisoner somewhere!

Help! She had to get help before it was too late. She scrabbled around in the top drawer of her nightstand, where she was certain she'd hidden the scrap of paper on which she'd scribbled Sharon Tanner's phone number. She found it at last, then fumbled with the phone as her trembling fingers refused to obey her churning mind.

It was at that moment, while she frantically tried to dial the number, that she might have looked up and glanced out the window; might have seen the ambulance approaching the house and turning into the driveway. But she didn't look, didn't see, didn't have time to flee from the house.

Her fingers finally found the right buttons, and she waited in panic as the phone at the other end rang four times, then five, then six. What if Sharon wasn't home? What would she-

Then, to her relief, she heard a breathless voice at the other end.

"Sharon?" she said. "Sharon, you have to help me. They're going to send me away. They've done something terrible with Jeff, and they don't want me to find-"

"Charlotte?" Sharon Tanner's voice broke in. "Charlotte, what's wrong? You're not making any sense."

Charlotte forced herself to stop talking and willed her body to stop trembling. She focused her mind, drew a deep breath, and was about to begin again when she heard a banging at the bedroom door. "Charlotte?" It was Chuck's voice. "Charlotte, you have to let me in." Then she heard Chuck speaking to someone else, and her carefully constructed calm shattered like a house of cards.

"Oh, God," she whimpered. "Sharon, they're here! They've come for me, Sharon! What will I do?"

There was a crash, and the bedroom door burst open. Chuck, followed by two attendants, burst into the room, stared bleakly at her for a moment, and while she stood speechlessly watching him, came over, took the phone from her hand and replaced the receiver.

"It's going to be all right, darling," he told her, putting his arms around her and holding her gently as he nodded to the two other men. As one of them disappeared from the room, the other came forward and slipped a needle into her shoulder.

Too stunned by what was happening even to protest, Charlotte began sobbing silently as the drug took quick effect. A moment later the second attendant reappeared with a collapsible gurney.

Charlotte was already unconscious when they lifted her onto the stretcher.

Sharon gazed dumbly at the phone that had gone dead in her hand, as if she didn't quite understand what had happened. But a moment later she made up her mind, riffled through the pages of the thin Silverdale phone book until she found theLaConners ' address, then hunched into her jacket as she ran out of the house, cursing softly under her breath over the fact that she and Blake had decided against replacing the worn-out Subaru he'd used for commuting in San Marcos. Right now, the last thing she needed was a leisurely walk. By the time she reached the corner, she was already half trotting, the memory of the crash she'd heard over the phone still ringing in her ears. And Charlotte had sounded so frightened, so utterly terrified.

She broke into a jog, moving through the sharp mountain air completely oblivious to the biting cold. She paused at the corner of Colorado Street, and was about to cross it when an ambulance, its lights flashing but its siren silent, sped through the intersection. It turned left and disappeared around a bend. She swore again, suspecting that Charlotte was in the vehicle, knowing that if she'd had a car, she would have followed it. But there was nothing she could do now, and catching her breath, she trotted across the street then on toward Pueblo Avenue and theLaConners ' house.

From the outside it looked no different from the other houses on the block. Set well back from the sidewalk, it was almost an exact copy of the Tanners' own house. Yet there was something about the house-a sense of something wrong- that made Sharon uneasy. She glanced at the car in the driveway, then hurried up the front steps and pressed the door bell. There was no answer. After a moment Sharon pressed the bell again, then tried the door and found it unlocked. Her heart quickening, she pushed the door open and leaned inside.

"Charlotte?" she called out tentatively. "Charlotte, it's Sharon Tanner. Are you here?"

There was still no answer. Sharon stepped over the threshold, pushing the door closed behind her. She heard a movement upstairs, and a moment later ChuckLaConner appeared at the top of the steep flight of stairs, a suitcase in his hand. He paused, startled to see her.

"Sharon," he said. Then his eyes clouded. "That was you Charlotte was talking to on the phone, wasn't it?"

Sharon nodded. "What's happened to her?" she asked. "Is she all right?" Her eyes shifted to the suitcase.

Chuck held it up as if offering it as proof of something. "I'm afraid I'm in a hurry," he said, starting down the stairs.

"Where is she, Chuck?" Sharon asked. "What's going on?"

Chuck said nothing for a moment; then his shoulders slumped and he lowered himself wearily to sit on the stairs, still halfway up. "I guess there's no point in not telling you," he said at last, his voice hollow. "I-Well, I've had to have Charlotte institutionalized."

The sharp intake of Sharon's breath made a gasping sound, but Chuck shrugged helplessly. "There was nothing more I could do," he said. "You saw how she was on Saturday, and since then it only got worse. This morning she seemed a little better, so I went to work. And then an hour ago she called me. She was making all kinds of wild accusations, claiming the telephone was tapped and there were people watching the house." He shook his head sadly. "It didn't make any sense, of course, and finally I called a friend down in Canon City."

Sharon frowned. "Canon City?"

"It's over on the other side of the mountains, near Pueblo." His eyes met Sharon's. "There's a state mental hospital there," he said. "My friend is on the staff."

"I see," Sharon breathed, licking her lips.

"Anyway," Chuck went on, "he told me I'd better have Charlotte sent over there. So I called an ambulance, then came home." His lips tightened. He glanced at his watch, then stood up. "Come on up," he said. "You won't believe it."

Silently, Sharon followed Chuck to the master suite. The door, hanging crookedly from a single hinge, was pushed back against the wall, and the room itself was in chaos.

Chuck's clothes were strewn all over the floor, and even the drawers had been pulled from the dresser by the wall. "She had the door locked," he explained. "She told me she was throwing me out, that I was part of some plot she'd dreamed up. She wasn't anything like rational, and finally, well…" Again, he shrugged then glanced at his watch. "Look, I've got to go. I've got some of Charlotte's things here, and I have to take them over to Canon City."

"I see," Sharon whispered. She gazed around the ruined room once more, then followed Chuck back down the stairs and out of the house. "It-It must have been terrible for you," she said at last as Chuck tossed the suitcase into the backseat of theLaConners ' Buick.

"It hasn't been easy," Chuck agreed as he slid in behind the wheel. His eyes met Sharon's gaze, and he hastily looked away. "But it's been a lot worse for her," he said. "I-I guess I just don't know what we're going to do now."

"If there's anything I can do," Sharon began, but Chuck waved her words away.

"I wish there were," he said sadly. "But I'm afraid there isn't. Not right now, anyway."

He started the car, then offered Sharon a lift, but she refused, and a moment later he drove away.

Sharon stood on the sidewalk, watching the Buick until it disappeared, then turned to look at the house once again.

In her memory she heard once more the disjointed telephone call in which Charlotte had pleaded for her help, and once more saw the look that had been in Charlotte's eyes on Saturday, just before Chuck had led her out of the Tanners' home.

Don't believe him, that look hadsaid.Pleasedon't believe him!

Then she pictured the chaos of the master bedroom. Though Chuck's clothes had been scattered everywhere, she hadn't seen so much as a trace of Charlotte's own clothing.

Charlotte's closet hadn't even been opened.

And yet Chuck had said he was packing Charlotte's things to take them to the hospital.

"Don't worry," Sharon said now, speaking out loud even though there was no one to hear her. "I don't believe him. I don't believe a single word he said!"