Mortal Remains

Chapter 19

Mark woke and felt for Lucy in the darkness. His hand patted nothing but a wrinkled sheet.

He sat up. “Lucy?”

The house was silent.

What the hell?

He threw on his robe and ran downstairs. “Lucy-” Through the front door window he saw that her car was gone. So was the warm clothing she’d laid out earlier on the coatrack, and where he’d hung two caving headlamps there remained only one.

His insides turned to ice. In less than a minute he dressed and headed out the door. The headlamp, he remembered, and grabbed it. He also took his bat, just in case. His watch read 4:36.

Sure enough, all the tools were gone from his Jeep.

He turned the ignition, hit the wiper switch for front and rear to clear away the snow, and accelerated down his driveway. Christ it felt slippery. He braked for the turn onto the road, but too late. He started to skid across it, right into a two-foot bank the graders had left from previous plowings. “Shit, shit, shit!” he muttered as he jockeyed the vehicle back and forth, delicately working the accelerator so as not to spin his wheels.

She’s probably perfectly okay, he had to keep telling himself.

By the time he got free, the dash clock read 4:42.

He forced himself to drive more slowly, peering through the dazzling swirls of flakes highlighted in his low beams. What time she’d gone out there, he’d no idea, but already the storm had filled in her tire tracks.

After five minutes of crawling along, he turned on the radio to keep from screaming in frustration at the slow pace. Normally he would there by now.

“I’m gonna be all right…” Jennifer Lopez sang.

He had less than two miles to go when he spotted the glow from the high beams of an oncoming car.

Lucy careened once off the stone sides before the anchor crashed through a thin layer of ice and pulled her into the frigid darkness.

The descent accelerated. Water streamed up her nostrils and through the back of her throat. She started to choke and heard bubbles pouring out her nose but couldn’t see them, couldn’t see anything now. The pressure on her head and ears squeezed in until she thought the end would come when her brain burst. Even greater weight crushed her chest and expelled more bubbles, those in a deafening gargle from where the tape tore free of her mouth. Searing pain burned through her limbs and her mind issued frantic alerts that they were in flames; that lactic acid bathed the tissues inside and out, that she had the metabolic consequence of no oxygen – the sorts of clinical snippets she might have used to save another, but not herself.

Yet her superb condition prolonged her dying. Her heart, trained to endure on near anoxic blood, continued to beat, her brain to think.

And down she went.

Finally, the inky darkness from without seemed to spill into her mind, and she knew her ordeal would soon end. She felt her entire body stiffen against its restraints and begin to undulate in the jackknife movements of a tonic-clonic seizure, the last bequest from a nervous system gone mad for want of air.

No white light awaited her. No final flash of memories comforted her. Rather the hurt subsided, and she seemed to take leave of her body. But instead of rising peacefully upward, she stayed suspended in the water looking down at herself, watching her remains continue to jerk through the dark in a desperate, never-ending dance.

The white glare hung just over the horizon, the way extraterrestrial events are portrayed in movies, then became very ordinary as the headlamps crested a low hill, and the dark shape of the vehicle drove slowly toward Mark at a cautious speed equal to his own.

Let it be her.

He hadn’t met any other vehicle on the road.

Sure enough, as they closed the gap between them, he made out the familiar shape of her station wagon.

Thank God, he thought, relief flooding through him.

He flicked his high beams at her.

And saw two men driving.

“What the hell!” he yelled.

He must have taken them by surprise as well; the night immediately lit up with the red illumination of brake lights, and the station wagon skidded out of control.

Caught in the glare of his lights, they both gaped at him, their features coarse, white, and garish as they glided closer.

He saw the man on the passenger side reach down and come up with a gun.

Mark floored the accelerator. The much-heavier Jeep rocketed forward and smashed into them head-on. For the second time in a week he was surrounded by the impact of crumpling fenders and exploding air bags, but this time he was ready. Gripping the steering wheel, he’d pushed himself well back in his seat and barely felt the blow against his chest. Better still, his windshield stayed intact.

He held his foot on the accelerator. His tires whined, the Jeep shook, but shuddered ahead, pushing the lighter car before it. Not that its two occupants were about to cause him much trouble. They must have been the kind not to wear seat belts. Both looked to be slumped on the dash, asleep on big white pillows. One had blood pouring out his nose.

Mark kept the pedal to the floor, aimed for the ditch, and, continuing to shove Lucy’s car until its rear end lifted up over a snowbank, stranded it so nothing short of a tow truck would set it free. Throwing the Jeep into reverse, he shot back to the right side of the highway. Despite the body damage, it still drove fine. Sick with fright over what they’d done to Lucy, he slammed the gearshift into drive, ready to speed away and find her at the home. But wait. She might be in the back of the car tied up on the floor. Or they could have already taken her somewhere else.

Shit!

Grabbing his bat, he jumped out of the cab, ran to the driver’s side of the car. A quick glance in the back, and he knew they didn’t have Lucy with them. He wrenched open the door. Neither man moved, but both were still breathing. The gun he’d seen before lay on the floor between them. He didn’t know what type, but its stubby silencer on the end of the barrel made it look like something James Bond would carry.

He reached across the knees of the one closest to him and grabbed it. Then he went through their pockets. No more weapons, but the roll of duct tape he found would be useful. And in the second man’s pockets he’d found what he wanted most of all – a cell phone from the bad guys. It at least wouldn’t have a tap on it.

In the minutes it took to bind their hands and feet, the driver started to moan and come around. The passenger hadn’t budged, his respirations growing increasingly gurgly, and from the lie of his head, the neck looked a little twisted.

Mark grabbed the driver by the collar of his ski suit, pinched him hard on the earlobe to speed his ascent from the depths, and yelled, “What have you done to Lucy?”

The guy opened an eyelid. “Go see for yourself, asshole.”

Mark balled his fists and yanked the creep forward, as close to killing someone as he’d ever been. But Lucy mattered more. He threw the scum back, picked up the cell phone, and roused a very sleepy Dan Evans. “Don’t ask questions. Bring the cavalry-”

“Mark?”

“I’m east of the entrance to the home for unwed mothers. You’ll find two of Braden’s killers bound and gagged in Lucy’s car. One’s alive, the other – handle his neck with care if you ever want to question him.”

“Wha’-”

“Hurry! They’ve done something to Lucy.” He hesitated. Should he assume the worst? Better safe than sorry. “Get an air ambulance to the grounds of the building, pronto!”

“My God! Right!” He finally sounded fully awake.

Two minutes later Mark pulled his battered Jeep up in front of the gate, slipped the gun into his pocket, and yanked the headlamp over his ski hat. Quietly, he climbed the gate and started to run, entering the darkness of the forest. He didn’t turn on his light in case he’d give himself away. His insides seized with dread at what he’d find up ahead. Glancing at the luminous dial of his watch, he read 5:01.

New York City Hospital

Earl awoke with a jump, and immediately realized he’d dozed off. “Damn Demerol,” he muttered, glancing at his watch. Christ, he’d been asleep well over three hours.

Had someone slipped in here during that time?

He quickly eyed his IV bottle and did the calculation to estimate the amount that should remain. The fluid was at the line marked 250 ccs. Exactly where it should be. But anybody could have injected a needleful of God knows what into him or the bag. Yet he felt the same as before.

His stomach sent a shard of pain from his belly button through to his spine. No change there. Wait a minute. His arms and legs weren’t quite so listless. The potassium was kicking in.

He glanced over at his monitor.

The extra beats were less frequent.

If he’d been given something, it hadn’t hit him yet.

To keep his mind off doomsday scenarios, he fetched his diagram from where it had slid off the bed and got back to work. Just before he’d conked out, he’d started adding to his list of existing suspects all the people, especially doctors, who either had offered him food or drink between Saturday and Tuesday or come near enough in the hospital to have tampered with his IV, or both. Though he’d accepted the possibility of accomplices being involved, he still didn’t buy the idea of his having been contaminated at the funeral or in the cafeteria by rogue waiters or kitchen staff. Too messy.

That meant he started with Lena Downie. She’d brought tea to him a few times on Monday. The woman had no medical knowledge other than what she read in charts, and talked way too much ever to be chosen as an accomplice. Nevertheless, he wrote down her name at the side of the page.

Next there was Tanya, who’d made him coffee Tuesday morning. Of course he’d since put his life in her hands, but he put her down as well.

There were only two doctors he could specifically pinpoint. Again he felt there wasn’t much point, but wrote Melanie Collins and Tommy Leannis.

Except he’d already pegged his drink with Tommy as taking place after he’d been infected.

He added Samantha McShane to the list because of the coffee she’d served him when he’d been at her apartment on Wednesday morning. But that, too, had been outside the time frame for the organism to incubate. Besides, he’d already dismissed her as lacking the skills to be The Ghost on her own.

Which left Melanie and her martinis.

Great. He’d landed his own physician.

He pulled the covers around him, finding the air in the room clammy. Whether he was getting a fever, or the heating normally reached its nadir at this hour, he didn’t know. It was the quietest he’d ever heard the building, the usual rush of air through the ventilation system having been shut down. Out in the hallway a distant click echoed as if someone had closed a mausoleum door, and the squeak of rubber soles rushed by his room, then silence returned except for his own breathing and the occasional snarl of his intestines.

He doodled on his sheet of paper, making certain he hadn’t forgotten somebody who’d slipped him a nibble of food or sip of a drink. He couldn’t come up with a single other person. Only Melanie fit all the criteria.

“Yeah, right,” he muttered, his sarcasm venting the frustration of having drawn such a blank. She probably infected him with that blue lady she served at her penthouse. Fixed his IV herself, too, so she could add the bicarb. And the bloods, what better way to falsify his results than draw them herself, then substitute them with someone else’s.

He liked indulging in irony. It was often the most direct way to show up the absurdity of a bullshit idea and dispense with it – a valuable exercise in a busy ER where fuzzy thinking could be deadly.

Except this idea didn’t succumb. Instead of wilting under ridicule, it stayed in his head, nagging at him.

“Don’t be absurd,” he said out loud, trying to clear his mind and think straight, figuring the combination of pain, weakness, and Demerol were taking their toll.

Yet the notion stuck. Like a bad tune caught in a loop of memory, it kept going round and round. Because none of the other players he’d listed had the means and opportunity to do what had been done to him.

His little ditty didn’t ring so ironic all of a sudden.

No, he told himself. To think Melanie could be The Ghost was nuts. Insane. Had to be. For starters, what about motive? Why would she try to kill him? His investigation into Kelly’s murder didn’t have anything to do with her.

Besides, the reason she had means and opportunity wasn’t of her doing. She’d served him drinks on Tuesday because he’d wanted to see her then. She had access to his IV and took his bloods because he’d insisted in ER that she take care of him. To make anything more of it was plain paranoid.

Unless she’d used the situations he’d given her to her own advantage, suggested a perverse voice from the insolent part of his mind that had first played devil’s advocate by questioning the tooth fairy, the Easter bunny, and Santa Claus when he was aged five. It had been getting him to the bottom of things ever since, and he ignored it at his peril.

Melanie had offered him that blue drink, topping his glass off from a separate pitcher, then washed her hands as thoroughly as if she were preparing for surgery. She’d arrived in his hospital room, carrying his IV bag that she’d already prepared elsewhere, despite everything she’d needed, including potassium vials, being in the medication bins at his beside. She took his bloods, slipping the full tubes into her lab coat pocket without labeling them first. All little details, none of which proved anything, but every one of them giving his suspicions free rein.

He sat huddled in the bedclothes, stunned by all the unthinkable things that swept so easily to mind, now that his normal checks against imagining the worst about her were breached.

What about motive – a motive that would make her commit murder to stop his investigation?

It couldn’t be because she herself had killed Kelly.

That idea was lunacy. She’d had no reason to murder her. Of course there’d been jealousy on Melanie’s part, Kelly being such a star. But surely that wouldn’t have been enough to commit murder over. Besides, around the time Kelly was killed, Melanie had already begun to blossom as a doctor. It must have been months earlier when she aced the Bessie McDonald case that started to build up her confidence. So people were well into making a fuss over her and her own work by that summer. He vividly recalled how she’d basked in all the attention. At times she carried it too far, the way she evidently craved and reveled in adulation. Judging from her grandstanding with the residents these last few days, he could see that nothing had changed on that front. But back then, as far as he could remember, after achieving her own moments in the spotlight, she threw off the old resentments about Kelly. If anything, he remembered Kelly growing cool to Melanie. She also seemed to find Melanie’s newfound enjoyment of being in the center of things during teaching rounds a bit off-putting. But he’d never heard words about it between the two women.

Yet a vague pattern, a sense of déjà vu, a feeling of being on the verge of grasping an elusive link-it-all-together piece swirled as illusively as smoke through his thoughts.

He stared at the shadows cast by his night-light. They filled the end wall like ink blots, his own shape at their center, but failed to offer the revelations he sought.

He closed his eyes.

Images of Melanie at the foot of his bed putting on her show melded with memories of her strutting her stuff at teaching rounds twenty-seven years ago. They lasted but a second, only to be displaced by scenes of the intrusive Samantha McShane playing out one of her signature it’s-all-about-me performances.

“Oh, my God,” he whispered.

A dreadful sense of isolation enveloped him and filled his ears with a hollow ringing.

5:02 A.M.

Hampton Junction

Even in the shelter of the trees the snow fell so heavily it practically caused a whiteout, but Mark raced through it, slipping as he went, the previously made depressions in the trail already beginning to fill in. He ignored the noise of his boots crunching on the snow, thinking only of reaching Lucy. His breathing quickened more from fear than exertion, and he sucked in cold flakes with each gasp. They choked him, then burned at the back of his throat. Rounding the bend, he peered ahead to the swirling luminous opening that led to the clearing and poured on the speed.

His eyes accommodated to the darker forest, and he emerged to find the night cast in more visible shades of gray and silver. Immediately he saw two figures huddled side by side near the front of the building. They were peering down at something. His heart leapt.

“What’d you forget?” one of them called. Whether they glanced his way, he couldn’t tell. It was too dark to see their faces or clothing.

Which meant they couldn’t see his. But they’d obviously heard him coming. His making no attempt to hide his arrival must have inadvertently tricked them into assuming one of their buddies had returned. It gave him an edge. All this he realized in an instant. And his plan to exploit that edge came just as fast.

Bluff and get closer.

He gave a wave, as if signaling them to keep quiet, and started forward, his head down the way a man might walk in order to watch his footing. He had no strategy of attack other than cross the hundred yards and see what they were looking at, then trust to instinct and reflex. He tried to remember how his height measured against the two he’d left in the car. The driver at least had appeared to be tall, but there’d be no mistaking that Elvis suit of his. As soon as Mark got close enough to see details of their outfits, he’d have to make his move.

The pair kept their attention on whatever lay at their feet.

He quickened his pace, pulling the gun from his pocket.

He hated firearms of any sort, but as coroner he’d seen his share – enough varieties of weapons to find the safety on the one in his pocket. Feeling for it with his index finger, he clicked it off.

He’d closed the distance to about eighty yards when he made out a black shape at their feet. It appeared round and far too flat to be a body.

At sixty he could see it was an opening in the ground.

The well.

His stomach clamped down so tightly he almost threw up.

He broke into a run, watching their backs.

At forty he stopped and took aim. “Freeze,” he shrieked, all his rage at what they might have done to Lucy funneled into his voice.

The two men spun around.

“What the fu-”

“Shit!”

The one on the left grabbed for the inside of his jacket.

Mark shot him first, aiming for his legs.

The man screamed, grabbed his crotch, and doubled over. His partner immediately took off toward the building, dodging and weaving.

Sprinting forward, Mark fired on the run, still aiming low. Each shot sounded no louder than opening the twist top on a beer bottle, but the pistol gave a heavy kick. He missed every time. “Stop!” he yelled and drew a bead on his quarry’s back. Before he could pull the trigger, his target darted around the corner and out of sight.

The man on the ground continued to howl as he writhed in a ball. “You fuck! You goddamned fucking bastard!” The snow under him rapidly turned dark.

Mark knew he wouldn’t be causing trouble anytime soon, if ever. As for helping him – not even an issue until he had Lucy safe. He nevertheless paused to retrieve what the guy had been reaching for and dropped – a gun identical to the first – then raced by him. “Lucy!” he cried, sliding to a stop at the edge of the opening. Bits of snow dropped off into nothing as he teetered over the hole, and his stomach heaved to his throat. He snapped on his headlamp. Water gleamed back at him from forty feet below, the surface as shiny and black as oil. A white rope trailed into it from a large coil that lay half-buried in slush. He grabbed it up and started to reel it in, his worst fears lurching out of control.

But it came too freely. There mustn’t be anything on the other end. How could he get to her? Or maybe she wasn’t even in there-

It snapped taut, and he could barely haul it up any farther.

“Oh, God no.” He choked back a sob, tightened his grip, and strained to pull as hard as he could. But his hold kept slipping on an icy film that had coated the water-soaked nylon. He looped the rope around his hands, only to have it bite into his skin and cut off the circulation. Yet he raised the load, hand over hand, the effort making his head spin. Every few seconds he glanced over to the building for any sign of the man who had run off. He kept tabs on the whereabouts of the bleeder by his shrieks, though they were growing weaker.

His forearms vibrated as he taxed the limits of their strength, and he whispered, “Lucy!” over and over, as if calling her name could coax her to him, until the trembling stopped and he managed to pull some more.

Her body broke the surface with an echoing splash and the clink of chains. He didn’t dare get close enough to the edge to see her for fear of losing his footing and sliding in himself. He tugged all the harder, but managed only another four or five feet before the weight overpowered him. “Lucy!” he sobbed, irrational with fright, knowing she’d never answer. The noise of water streaming back into the well sounded like a dozen running faucets.

Without buoyancy to help him, he could barely hold her. His finger joints locked with the cold; his arms shook from the extreme effort. The rope started to slip from his grasp.

“No!” he screamed, twisting it yet another time around his arms. Even his feet slid as he tried to get traction to support the weight.

He quickly looked around for something to anchor her to. One of the medium-sized trees stood about twenty feet away. Feeding the rope through his palms, he managed to make his way over to the trunk and, using it like a winch, circled it three times, then tied off on it without letting her drop any lower.

In seconds he was back at the well, peering over the edge with his light. His knees buckled at the sight. She hung by her heels below him, her arms bound, her head trailing lifelessly a foot above the water, her hair pooled on the surface like black seaweed.

With no thought but to reach her, he straddled the rope with his back to the well, grabbed it with both hands, and let himself over the edge. He intended to rappel down the stone lining, but with the ice he slid most of the way, scraping the walls, abrading his palms, then ricocheting off her legs before plunging into the frigid water. He bellowed at the shock of the cold, but the water closed over him, swallowing the sound.

He had the presence of mind to clamp a hand over his headlamp so it wouldn’t come off, and quickly fought his way back to the surface. The beam never so much as flickered. Immediately he saw her face above him, upside down, covered in a silver glaze. He reached up to it, and at his touch thin flakes of ice fell off her like scales. Underneath, her skin taut with the gray-white pallor of a corpse, her eyes looked made of glass and stared off to one side, lifeless as they glistened through the remaining film of frost.

His sobs, unstoppable now, broke from deep within him, like retching, and racked him from head to toe. “Oh, God, please no” he cried, his mind hurtling between praying for a miracle and knowing she was dead.

With one hand he grabbed on to the chain that dangled from her heels into the water. At its lower end, a few feet under the surface, he felt the anchor they’d used as a weight and knelt on its flanges, bringing his head level to hers. With his free arm he clutched her to him. The meaty horror of what he held blasted all rational thought out of his brain, and his thinking collapsed in on itself like an imploding star. Yet a fragment of him still rebelled, refused against all logic to accept the clammy reality in his arms. He summoned enough of his training to slip his fingertips along the side of her neck and push them into skin that had the consistency of cold Plasticine. The vessels within lay lifeless as he counted off the seconds. Just hours earlier he’d felt them pump with excitement as he’d explored every dimple and depression of her with his mouth.

He slammed his fist into the middle of her chest three times, then palpated over the carotid again. Sometimes the impact of a “chest thump” could restart a fibrillating heart.

He knew it to be a useless gesture, but had to try. The desperate ploy extended hope by a few more seconds and kept him in a universe where she might be alive just a little longer.

He’d reached twelve when he felt a solitary impulse.

Could his mind have imagined the absent beat? Perhaps it had been a twitch or throb of an artery in his own finger.

He swallowed his cries, stilled his breathing, and waited, once again counting seconds, the spaces between each number stretching to an eternity.

Another beat.

He waited for a third.

Again a sluggish rise pushed up against his fingers.

Instantly he had his lips on hers. They felt like wet clay, but he molded his to form a seal, and blew. The resistance of her lungs made air squeak out the side of his mouth, but he saw her chest rise. As he continued to give her breaths, he mentally ticked off everything he could remember about hypothermia.

People had survived up to an hour submerged in ice water. He’d no idea how long she’d been under.

That she’d recovered a pulse at all was better than a full-out cardiac arrest. The slow rate might even be protective, reducing her heart’s oxygen requirements. And cold could lower the metabolism of her other vital organs so that they might survive the subsequent reduction in blood flow. As for her lungs, her airway ought to have protected them from filling with water, seizing shut at the first influx of liquid, the same reflex that kept fluid out of the lungs in the womb.

His mind raced, dredging up every hopeful scrap he could summon, then clung to the science of it. His teeth chattered, and he shook with such force that all his muscles, including those in his vocal cords, snapped into spasm. Each time he exhaled into her lungs, a plaintive, tremulous moan issued from his throat, the mournful sound filling her chest, then echoing toward the pale, barely visible opening above their heads. He listened for the staccato noise of helicopter blades or the wail of police sirens over his own pathetic keening, but to no avail.

Yet he continued to deliver air to her, puff after puff, settling into the rhythm despite being half-submerged and clinging to the chains with one hand, supporting her head with the other, all the while precariously perched on the anchor.

He paused between breaths to quickly shine his beam of light into her pupils. From the middle of her deathlike stare came a slow sluggish constriction. Yes! She still had life in her brain.

He even went so far as to lay out a treatment plan for when the air ambulance arrived: Intubate and ventilate her. Slowly warm her body core with heated oxygen and warm IVs. Raise her temperature no more than two degrees Fahrenheit an hour as per protocol. Visualizing this ritual made it seem closer at hand. And at the hospital, if need be, they could even put her on a heart-lung machine to warm her blood directly.

I can bring her back, he told himself. She can survive this.

Such were the mental games he played to keep despair at bay and blot out his more objective clinical voice that told him nothing would work.

And I’ll protect her from overeager residents, he continued in the same vein, filling his mind with anything to avoid thinking she was finished.

Keep them from loading her up with adrenaline and atropine, that’ll be the trick – He stopped in midthought.

The water crept up his chest, and the top of her head edged closer to the surface.

They were sinking.

Their weight was stretching the nylon rope.

His panic surged.

Within seconds he felt the icy water at his neck and watched it inch past her hairline toward her eyes.

He got off his knees and crouched on the flanges, then pulled her to him, trying to bend her at the waist so her back was on his lap and she’d be faceup. That way he could keep her head above water and still give her mouth-to-mouth ventilation. He moved her into position, but her entire body, already stiff with cold, wouldn’t flex properly. When he bent down to deliver another lungful of air, the waterline lapped over her face.

Where was Dan?

What if the pilots couldn’t fly because of the storm, or took too long, or couldn’t find this godforsaken place?

Rapidly losing strength, his teeth chattered so fiercely now that they clicked against hers. He tried to recall what his textbooks said about survival times in frigid water as far as staying conscious, but his memory no longer functioned that well, a sign that his body heat was quickly dropping.

Choking, he pulled her higher onto his thighs.

Again he scanned the pale circle and strained to hear the sounds of rotors or approaching sirens.

Nothing – only smaller circles of snow reeling and floating in total silence.

Come soon, he prayed, and filled her lungs yet again.

The ghostly opening peered down on them, offering no more hope than a malevolent, empty eye.

5:15 A.M.

New York City Hospital

Earl had to escape. The one person he couldn’t defend himself against was Melanie Collins.

He tried to call Janet. If anything happened to him, he wanted someone to know the truth. But he found his phone line dead.

He immediately summoned his nurse.

“Dr. Collins’s latest orders are for complete rest,” Mrs. White, his cherry-cheeked angel informed him, delivering the news with an emphatic stare over the top of her tiny square-rimmed spectacles. “She phoned at midnight to check how you were doing. When she learned you’d been making late-night calls and complaining about palpitations, she read the riot act. No ingoing or outgoing communications, period.”

“Now wait a minute-”

“Told us she’d put you out and intubate you if she had to, just so you’d get some rest.”

“No way!”

“Talk it over with her. She’ll be here at seven for morning rounds – you can set your clock by her.”

She turned to leave.

And if he told this red-cheeked minder that Melanie Collins might be trying to kill him?

What makes you think a crazy thing like that? she would ask.

Because Melanie Collins may have killed Kelly McShane.

And why would she have done such a thing?

Because as Melanie basked in the adulation she garnered for nailing hard-to-diagnose illnesses, Kelly must have sensed the same all-about-me afterglow she’d seen her mother exude when people gushed over her for taking care of Kelly’s mysterious diseases.

“So?”

So Kelly realized Melanie made patients sick for the purpose of playing the hero later.

At which point Mrs. White would report he’d gone paranoid, giving Melanie the perfect opportunity to shoot him full of major tranquilizers and summon six big orderlies to tie him down if he protested.

Better he just walk out the door, then sort out the details once he got beyond her power.

He sat on the side of the bed and gingerly tested his legs.

They wobbled as he stood, but held him.

He took a few trial steps, and they nearly buckled.

No matter.

He turned off the alarms on the monitor, shut it down, and disconnected himself. How long would it take the night nurses to see his screen on their central console had gone blank? A while, he hoped.

Next he ripped out the needles in his arm, the IV bag being almost empty. Hoping he’d received enough potassium to at least stabilize his heart, he pressed on the puncture site with his thumb to staunch the flow of blood and hesitantly walked over to the bureau where they’d put his clothes. He started to dress, first pulling on his socks.

“Going somewhere, Dr. Garnet?” said a man’s voice at the door, and Charles Braden III stepped into his room.

Primed on adrenaline, pain, and no sleep, Earl reacted like a cornered animal. “What the hell are you doing here?” he demanded. He backed up to the bed and slid his hand under the covers, his fingers closing around the fistful of syringes he’d planted, needle first, into the mattress. His revelation about Melanie might change some of his ideas about how the Bradens fitted in the picture, but not enough that he suddenly felt safe around them.

Charles started toward him.

“I’d stay where you are!” Earl said.

The man stopped in midstride. “Why, I just intended to sit down-”

“Tell me what you want.”

In the dim light, the steel-brush silver of Charles’s hair made him seem more formidable, as if he were bristling with quills. “All right, but perhaps you better sit down. What I’m going to say will come as a bit of a shock, and you don’t look so good.”

Earl stayed leaning against the bed, his hand still clutched around his makeshift weapon. “I’m fine where I am.”

Braden shrugged, and sank his hands deep into the pockets of the white coat he wore over his suit as if he were still a practicing doctor. “I’m here to inform you that late yesterday afternoon Dr. Tommy Leannis approached my son with the news that you were the man who went off with Kelly in a taxi the night before her disappearance. Is this true?”

Earl felt the blood drain from his head.

He’d end up being handed to the cops for Kelly’s murder after all – by Charles and Chaz Braden, goddamn it. Exotic theories about Melanie Collins wouldn’t protect him now, especially since he had no proof other than a used IV bag with bicarb in it and a bunch of false-normal potassium readings. The rest was all just speculation.

Instinctively he tried to bluff. “What are you talking about-”

“Don’t play with me. I’ve already heard your denials. Leannis gave my son a tape of a conversation in which you went on at length about it not being true.”

Earl swallowed, his mouth going drier by the second, his heart giving the inside of his ribs another going over. Like a man just shot who tries to fathom the damage, he cast about in his mind for what he’d said to that weasel Leannis, dreading he may have let something slip that would incriminate himself.

“Sure you don’t want to sit down?” Braden said. “You’re starting to look worse than when I came in.”

“No, I’m fine, except I can’t seriously believe you’d take what Leannis said-”

“I also heard the same allegation from the biggest gossip in the hospital, Lena Downie in medical records.”

Earl’s face grew warm. If that woman was blabbing about it, he’d be the talk of NYCH in no time. Whether the police believed the story or not, his credibility, especially now when he needed it most, would be toast. “Oh, my God.”

“What’s even more interesting is who told her.”

Earl felt another surge of pain shoot through his gut. He fought to stay on his feet, a prickle of cold sweat sticking his hospital gown to his skin. “Told her?”

“Yeah. Turns out it’s the same person who gave the notion to Tommy Leannis.”

“But you said Melanie Collins did that.”

“Right. She picked him because, as everyone in the hospital knows, Leannis is a brown-nosing fool. He’d try anything to curry favor with our family in the hope our influence might throw some fresh meat to that cut-and-tuck business he has the nerve to call the practice of medicine. She probably figured he’d come running to us in some sleazy manner with the news, and he didn’t disappoint. Telling Lena Downie as well would be Melanie’s way of assuring a more general distribution.”

“You mean-”

“Melanie Collins is setting you up to take the blame for Kelly’s murder. Not that I figure she intends to let you live long enough to go to trial. Smear you by innuendo as the killer, I suspect, is her plan, then you conveniently die of some apparent complication from your infection, and the case is closed. Nobody’s going to look too closely at loose ends when the prime suspect is dead, especially in a twenty-seven-year-old murder.”

Earl wasn’t sure he’d heard correctly.

“Setting me up? You mean you don’t believe I did it. And you know what she’s doing to me?”

“How she specifically intends to make you die, no. But I’ve been through enough of her charts in the last few days to get a pretty good idea of her repertoire. She’s a regular alchemist when it comes to fiddling with drugs and eliciting their side effects, altering sugars, playing with acid-base balance, shifting potassium and sodium levels up and down like elevators-”

“Wait a minute. You make it sound like there’s been a lot more cases than the two Kelly discovered.”

“The woman’s been setting up her ‘triumphs’ for a couple of decades. Glory-kills, I suppose you could call the ones who didn’t make it. Deaths didn’t really matter to her, as long as she got kudos for nailing the diagnosis.”

“My God. But how did you get onto her?”

“I started with the same two charts you did, and saw the same patterns. I also had access to her student evaluations. I remembered she had been something less than a star during her rotation in obstetrics. My staff nicknamed her ‘Fumbles’ they were so afraid she’d drop a baby. I also looked up the other departmental assessments of her. Borderline. So how does someone so mediocre get so good? I asked myself.”

Earl listened with a mixture of relief and wariness. “And what about the rest of the story?” he asked. Braden seemed about to clear him, but would he help Kelly’s lover, or make him pay?

“Obviously, Kelly came to the same conclusions about the digoxin cases that you and I did.” Braden said with no hesitation. “She confronted Melanie, and Melanie killed her to avoid getting caught.” He continued to stand there, his hands in his pockets, white coat immaculate, looking like he’d stepped out of a fashion magazine, at five-thirty in the morning. Something didn’t add up. “Why did you tell me this now?”

Braden looked at him as if he were crazy. “Because my son and I only just now finished going through Melanie’s files. We’ve been at it since yesterday morning, and wanted to make sure we were right before saying anything. I came right up because I figured your life might be in danger. And so did you, from the looks of it when I got here. Weren’t you about to escape her clutches?”

Sounded reasonable. And he should be grateful to the man. Why didn’t he feel that way? Instead, he had the inkling he was being manipulated. “What do we do now?” he asked, playing along while trying to sort out his doubts.

“First thing this morning I’ll call the CEO of the hospital and the president of the medical school. This is going to be a tabloid special, and they’ll want to get all their legal ducks in a row. Then we’ll call the police, and they’ll arrest Collins. I want it over with fast, before anything else tragic happens. I tried to warn Mark Roper the other night that I was onto something and requested that he slow down to give me a couple of days. But he’s such a hothead, just like his father. Insisted on plowing full speed ahead with his investigation.”

The more the man talked, the more Earl grew wary. Charles Braden still had a lot of questions to answer about his role in other matters, from the demise of Cam Roper, whom Braden had just called a real hothead, to a recent gas explosion. And he appeared to be in an unseemly hurry to rein in Mark. In fact, Earl just realized an obvious hole in Braden’s story.

“Tell me, Charles, how did you know which charts I first looked at in this case?”

Braden studied him a few seconds, his blue stare now cold as a polar sea. “Why, Lena Downie must have told me. You know what a chatterbox she is.”

Really? Earl thought. That would be easy enough to check out. “Why I asked is that Mark Roper said someone sneaked into his house and went through his father’s file on Kelly. The M and M reports on those two patients that started this whole paper chase were in there. Would you know anything about that break-in?”

Braden didn’t bat an eye. “You, know, Earl, after what I’ve just done for you, I don’t necessarily want a show of gratitude, but I would expect you to have the common courtesy not to make gratuitous insinuations about the whole Kelly affair, especially after all the harm you did to my son’s-”

“She told me it was Chaz who wrecked any feelings she had for him.”

Braden said nothing this time, but his body seemed to tense beneath the gleaming white coat.

In the menace of that silence, Earl teetered between opposing instincts.

One urged him to probe further. Demand what kind of game Charles had been playing at the birthing center. Shake him up with the fact that Mark Roper had some interesting questions regarding statistics for the place. Confront him about the death of Victor Feldt and what it had to do with Nucleus Laboratories, executive health plans, or genetic screenings on siblings with a family history of cancer – anything to provoke an angry outburst and a revealing slip.

But self-preservation made Earl cautious. Whatever Charles had been up to, trying to spook him with bravado could be very dangerous. Better to outmaneuver him. “Sorry, Charles, I didn’t mean to insinuate you had anything to do with the break-in at Mark’s, and I’m most grateful for the warning about Melanie, believe me. As for my hurtful comment regarding Chaz and Kelly, it was inexcusable. Please, accept my apology, and put it down to the morphine talking.”

Braden continued to watch him.

Earl felt the man see right through his wooden attempt to make peace. “Look, I spoke out of line,” he added. “Let me make it up to you by helping out with Melanie’s capture. After all, that’s the important thing, right? I’ll get back into bed, so when she makes her morning rounds nothing will tip her off that we’re onto her. You start rousting the administration. With me corroborating what you and Chaz are saying, they’ll be more ready to believe us.” His real plan? Pretend to cooperate, then, once Braden left, skedaddle the hell out of the hospital to the nearest police station. Now that he had Melanie pegged, let the cops figure out the rest.

The rigidity under the lab coat lessened. Still, Braden seemed to be in the limbo of deciding something. “You’re right about going back to bed and Melanie finding you there,” he finally said, turning and walking toward the door. “But we both know you don’t intend to hang around, and I can’t allow that. Better we sedate you.” He stuck his head into the hallway and yelled, “Nurse!”

Earl broke into a cold sweat. “Wait a minute! What if Melanie does something to me while I’m under? You yourself said it would take a few hours to convince the police…”

Braden looked at him, his eyes almost sorrowful.

My God. He’s going to let her kill me! Earl’s mouth went dry “I’ll tell the nurses what you’re doing.” His voice sounded like a croak. “You won’t get away with it.”

Braden glanced back out in the hallway, apparently unconcerned.

“I’ll say that you’re under investigation for murder,” Earl added, judging his chances of knocking him over and making a run for it.

Braden shook his head as if enduring a great weariness. “You must be mad, the morphine no doubt.”

“What about Mark Roper? He already thinks you smothered deformed infants and buried their bodies on the grounds of your home for unwed mothers.” Earl raised his voice to make sure any approaching nurses would hear the accusations. Whether they believed him or not, he hoped to at least make them pause before carrying out the man’s orders. But his own skepticism about Braden being capable of infanticide had vanished. “He’s going to the police about it this morning. When he finds out you visited me, he’ll suspect you arranged my death.”

Braden stared at him in amazement. “The grounds? Oh, my God, Dr. Garnet. Even if I were the monster you’re suggesting, I wouldn’t be fool enough to leave human remains on the grounds of an abandoned building.”

Braden ought to be sweating bricks by now if he’d done any part of what Mark had accused him of, Earl thought. Instead he remained calm, practically purring. Could he have already moved the bodies? Son of a bitch! Or he’d never buried anything there at all. Of course. He’d be too smart to leave that kind of evidence behind.

Mark’s account of what happened with Braden in the library flashed to mind, and a sickening realization swept through Earl. Mark had been on the losing end of a game he probably didn’t even realize Braden had been playing. Because not only would Charles have been too smart to leave bones lying about where they could be found, he wouldn’t have said the suggestive things that he had about smotherings if he’d truly wanted to avoid such atrocious allegations. Instead, it almost seemed he’d invited them. Why?

“Nurse!” Braden bellowed a second time. “Nurse, come quickly.”

“Now hold on-”

“Nurse!”

Earl heard the sound of running feet in the hallway.

Mrs. White bolted through the door, her cheeks aflame.

“I’m afraid Dr. Garnet’s having a psychotic episode, probably from the drugs-”

“What are you doing out of bed-” she said, striding toward him. “And what happened to your IV?”

“Nurse, I’m fine-”

“I blame myself, Nurse,” Braden continued, his voice serene with the quiet authority of one used to being in charge. “I barged in here on a grievous family matter between Dr. Garnet and my son – well, let’s just say I was upset.”

“He came here to set me up-”

“This is what I mean about paranoia. We had words, but then Dr. Garnet began to spout the most bizarre accusations, about me murdering babies, and burying their bodies-”

“He’s lying! The man is under suspicion for murder. Coroner Mark Roper will verify everything I said-” Earl stopped, realizing too late he’d whipped his hand out from under the covers and was brandishing the glinting points of a half dozen needles in their faces.

Mrs. White screamed.

“My God!” Braden said, recoiling in horror.

Another nurse appeared at the door. One glance and she bellowed, “Orderlies! We’ve got a code forty-four!”

From his residency days, Earl recognized the call. Within sixty seconds a herd of young men wearing white would stampede into the room with enough Haldol and tie-downs to immobilize an elephant.

“Put down the needles, sir!” the nurse at the doorway said.

Braden and Mrs. White backed away from him.

At the very least he had to get to a phone and call Janet.

“Back off,” he screamed at the one blocking the way out.

She stood her ground. “Don’t do this, sir.”

“All I want to do is call my wife. No need for drugs. No tie-downs. Just let me call my home.”

“Absolutely, sir. You can make the call as soon as you put down the needles.”

He knew the tone and the routine. He’d used it himself many times. When a patient threatens staff, promise him anything, then hit him with everything, all in the name of preventing anyone from getting hurt. There’d be no stopping what he’d set in motion. And no calls.

“I’m getting to a phone,” he said, advancing toward her. “I won’t hurt you.”

She retreated a few steps, the look of terror in her young eyes horrible to see.

He lunged by her and raced down the hall toward a stand of public phone booths.

His legs nearly went from under him.

“Stop!” he heard Braden yell.

Still brandishing his needles, he ran up, grabbed the nearest receiver, and punched in 0 plus his number.

Immediately he was surrounded by a growing group of orderlies, the two nurses from his room, and Braden. They all shouted instructions at him and each other.

“Put down the needles.”

“Watch it.”

“Who the hell’s he calling?”

The phone chirped through the long-distance dialing and rang Janet’s cellular.

The semicircle closed in.

He made wide sweeping arcs with his weapon, and they shrank away from him. He was bluffing of course, and ready to drop them the instant anyone rushed him, but they didn’t know that.

The yelling continued.

“We got to jump him.”

“You jump him. Those needles could be contaminated.”

“Why not wait and see who he’s calling?”

“I advise you to get him now!” Braden thundered.

The second ring sounded.

Be at home, Janet, and not off in the delivery room.

More orderlies arrived, tie-down straps in hand.

A third nurse appeared with a large syringe.

A shock of red hair made its way through the crowd.

The next ring broke off with a click.

She’d answered. “Janet, help me. Melanie Collins is trying to kill me, and Charles Braden-”

“The person you are calling is not available…”

No!

Over that he heard, “You have a collect call from…”

“Janet! Help-”

“I’m sorry, but your collect call has not been accepted…”

At that second some hero in the crowd dived at his legs. As he tumbled to the ground he dropped his handful of syringes to one side, careful not to jab anyone, and went limp.

His intention was lost on the swarm that grabbed him. They hoisted him on a gurney, held him in place, and tied him down.

The nurse with the syringe approached. The rest hung back, like onlookers at an accident.

Earl seized on an idea. “You can’t give me that,” he said to the one with the needle.

“And why not?” She lifted a flap of his gown and anointed his butt with an alcohol swab.

“Because I’ve a critically low potassium.”

“What!” She pulled up just before the tip of the needle hit skin.

He was thinking clearly now. “Low potassium and major tranquilizers don’t mix,” he told her. “Causes cardiac conduction problems, as if I didn’t already have enough of those already. Ask any doctor.” He hadn’t made it up. And in the time it took her to sort it out, he might convince the other nurses not to give him anything.

“He’s right, ma’am,” said a male voice from somewhere behind her.

Earl recognized Dr. Roy’s voice.

Mrs. White appeared at the side of her colleague who had the needle and showed her Earl’s chart. “Better listen. There was some kind of screwup with his potassium last night. The lab called about it.”

The one with the needle looked disappointed. “Oh, man, I hate it when we have doctors as patients…”

As they second-guessed themselves, a new volley of painful spasms erupted in his stomach. Gritting his teeth, he nevertheless pressed his case. “Nurse, Mrs. White, I don’t need sedation at all-”

“Will someone medicate this man, or should I do it myself?” Charles Braden interrupted. He stepped up to Mrs. White and took the chart from her. “Here, he’s got a standing order for morphine. Give him that.”

Oh, God, not again. I’ll be a sitting duck for Melanie.

As Charles walked away, Mrs. White readily trotted off to the medication cupboard.

“Please! Call my wife! Dr. Janet Graceton. She’s in the case room at St. Paul’s Hospital in Buffalo.”

No one paid him the slightest attention.

The crowd started to thin out. He saw Dr. Roy’s bushy red hair disappearing down the hall. He had another idea. “Dr. Roy. Call Tanya Wozcek. Tell her what’s happened. Then do the DONT.”

The people who had started to wheel the stretcher back to his room looked at him as if he were crazy.

“Who’s Tanya Wozcek?” he heard someone whisper.

“I think she’s a nurse up on geriatric?”

“Sounds like that’s where this guy is headed.”

Twenty minutes later he felt his brain had been packed in a SlushPuppie.

He also didn’t seem to care.