Third Degree

Chapter 10

“I have to tell you something, Vi,” Nell whispered. “I don’t want to, but I think you need to know. You deserve to know.”

She and Vida were sitting in the reception area of the office, and Nell had rolled her chair over next to her sister’s, away from the big patient window. JaNel, the lab tech, had passed by in the hall a couple of times, so Nell kept her voice low.

“Well, don’t take all day,” Vida said. “There’s work to do. I’m listening.”

Nell felt her lower lip quivering.

“Go on, baby girl. Whatever it is, I can take it.”

I hope so, Nell thought. I dearly hope so. “I think Kyle is cheating on you, Vi.”

Vida stared back in silence. “With who?”

“I don’t know.”

“What did you see? Or hear?”

“I heard him talking on his cell phone.”

Vida glanced over her shoulder at the hall door, then leaned closer. “When was this?”

“Day before yesterday. Back in the surgery room.”

“Go on.”

“Well, the conversation was pretty intimate. He had that tone, you know?”

“Lovey-dovey?”

“Mm-hm. It seemed obvious that he’s involved with whoever it was. And I-”

“Listen, honey,” Vida cut in. “I don’t doubt you. I’m sure Kyle’s poking God knows who all, and I wish he wasn’t. But let me tell you something you’re gonna learn one way or the other someday. They all do it. Every damn one of ’em. That’s the way men are. They live for tail, and they’re gonna chase it whether they’re married or single or whatever. It’s a natural law, like freakin’ gravity. Like the sun rising in the east. Soon as they get their ashes hauled, they’re trying to figure out how to get away from whoever did the haulin’. Unless they need you for something else. And that’s why I’m not worried.”

Nell sat quietly, working through her sister’s logic. She’d known Vida was hard, but she hadn’t thought her sister would be willing to put up with infidelity to keep a man at her side. Most of all, she hoped Vida was wrong about men-at least a few of them. She considered keeping back the rest of what she’d heard, but if she did, she’d regret it later. She could see Vida standing outside her apartment one night waiting for Dr. Auster’s Jaguar to swing by and pick her up, like a black carriage come to sweep her off to a castle. But that Jaguar would never arrive. It would be long gone, to pick up some princess who fit more smoothly into the castles of the rich and conscienceless.

“Let me finish, Vi,” she said, louder than she’d intended. “Please.”

Vida laid a comforting hand on her knee. “Go on, baby.”

“It wasn’t just sex talk, okay? He apologized to the person, and then he said he had to keep putting up with-with somebody-for a while longer, before he could leave and be with whoever was on the phone.”

Something changed in Vida’s face. She had the look of someone walking along a path as night fell, one moment sure she knew the way home, the next knowing she was lost. “Keep going,” she said in a flat voice that told Nell her walls had gone up.

“Dr. Auster said, ‘I hate servicing that little…’ ”

“That little what?” asked Vida, her eyes as dead as marbles. “You can say it.”

“ ‘That little redneck,’ ” Nell whispered, and Vida flinched. “Then he said, ‘But she scares me.’ Next was something else I couldn’t hear, but then he said, “ ‘But by then it’ll be too late for her to retaliate.’ Or something like that.”

Vida’s face had lost its color. “And you think he was talking about me?”

Nell couldn’t bring herself to drive the last nail home. She shrugged. “I can’t say for sure.”

“I will castrate his sorry ass,” Vida hissed. “That no-count son of a bitch. After all I’ve-oh, never mind. Serves me right for believing a man about anything.”

“Was I wrong to tell you?” Nell asked anxiously.

“You had to tell me, baby. Blood’s thicker’n water. Thicker than anything. It’s sure thicker than what comes out of a man. Christ almighty.”

Nell watched her sister adjusting to this new reality. Vida usually projected an air of coarse vitality, but at this moment she looked like a road-weary woman from a Depression-era photograph. Nell had tried-subtly-to suggest a few things to soften her older sister’s appearance. Skin lotion, for one thing, which Nell applied religiously every night before bed, and all during the day on her face. Decades of smoking had turned Vida’s face into a hard carapace with a yellowish tint, and her hair, once a lustrous brown, had become dry and frizzy and always stank of cigarettes. When she went out at night, she dressed one notch up from white trash: halter tops and blue eye shadow worn like some sort of mask-not to mention the line of mascara under her lower eyelid, circa 1985. Vida’s great claim to fame was winning a televised wet T-shirt contest in Destin-she’d beaten 150 other competitors-but two children and ten thousand cheeseburgers had deflated her prized assets and hidden her waist in a roll of hard fat. It was testament to her black sense of humor and lively personality that Dr. Auster-who had his pick of twentysomething nurses-had looked past her obvious flaws.

“What are you going to do?” Nell asked softly.

A hard glint appeared in Vida’s eyes. “Don’t you worry about that. I can take care of myself. Always could, you know that.”

Nell was afraid to be honest about her other fears, but she knew she had to speak up if she was to help in any way. “I’m worried about Dr. Shields, Vi.”

Vida looked long and hard at her. “He’s a lot better man than Kyle, isn’t he?”

Nell nodded soberly.

“You’ve got a thing for him, don’t you?”

She closed her eyes and nodded again.

“Jesus, girl. Have you done the dirty with him?”

Nell shook her head vehemently.

“You swear?”

“I swear. He’s never touched me.”

“Do you talk to him? Secretly, I mean? On the phone? E-mail, like that?”

“Nothing, Vi, I swear to God. He’s not like that.”

Vida chuckled softly. “They’re all like that, once the right woman comes along. But I know what you mean.”

“I’m just afraid he’ll go to jail.”

Vida buried her face in her hands and rubbed it harder than Nell would have dared. Then she looked up and said, “I’ll be honest with you, sweetie. Until five minutes ago, that was the plan. Him or us, you know?”

Nell waited without breathing.

“But now…maybe it’s him or Kyle, you know?”

A glimmer of hope. “What do you mean?”

“I’m not sure yet, baby. I need to think.”

Nell was shivering. Vida took her hand and said, “How about this? Whatever happens today, I’ll make Kyle go over to Warren’s house and take out the stuff he put there.”

“You promise?”

“I promise.”

“Today?”

Vida patted Nell’s knee. “Today.”

“But what if Dr. Shields is home? Or his wife?”

“Oh, Kyle’s slick enough to get it out even if they’re there. Some things he is good at, I’ll give him that. He’s a born con man.”

“But where is the stuff? What is it? I don’t even know that.”

The hardness returned to Vida’s face. “You don’t need to know. But I’ll tell you where it is. It’s in that room they have under the stairs. Did you know about that?”

Nell shook her head.

“It’s like in that Jodie Foster movie, only not so fancy. Where you go if there’s a tornado, or somebody breaks in. It’s a rich people’s thing.”

Nell said, “I remember Mama used to throw us in the closet when a tornado came.”

“That was me. Mama was too drunk to worry about any tornado.”

Shame and love reddened Nell’s face.

“Don’t think about it,” Vida said. “Anyway, Kyle went over to Dr. Shields’s house last Saturday night when they were all gone to the movies. He put the stuff behind some canned goods or something. But you just stop worrying. I’m going to take care of Kyle and make sure your boyfriend is safe, too. As safe as he can be in the middle of this mess, anyway. Safe as you and me.”

Nell forced herself to smile. This was the best she could hope for.

Vida leaned forward and hugged her tight, the smell of Marlboro Ultralights wafting from her hair. “You’re such a pretty girl,” Vida cooed with maternal pride. “Everything’s gonna turn out perfect for you. It has to.” She pulled back far enough to wink at Nell. “One of us deserves a happy ending.”

Nell felt like crying, but she held it in.

Vida stood and walked to the patient window, her hands accepting a form from a patient, but her mind already plotting her next move. Nell didn’t envy Dr. Auster’s next meeting with her sister. Vida was hell on wheels when she was angry-scarier than most men.

Nell rolled her chair back to her computer, but the longer she stared at the screen, the less relieved she felt. Things were moving too fast, and yet not fast enough. What if the cops did something today? What if they searched Dr. Shields’s house before Dr. Auster went over and removed the planted evidence? Could she afford to wait for that? Could she even trust Dr. Auster to do what he was supposed to do, even if he promised Vida that he would? The answer to that question was an unequivocal no. Nell couldn’t leave Warren Shields’s future in the hands of his sleazy partner. She would have to take responsibility herself. After a quick glance at Vida, she opened her Hotmail account and began to type.

Two thousand feet above the city, Danny told his flying student to bank the Cessna northward and head away from the Mississippi River. They’d been in the air forty minutes, mostly on the south side of town, but Danny wanted to know if both cars were still parked at the Shields house. Laurel had not replied to his last text message, and he was worried that he’d made a mistake by sending it.

A bad mistake.

“You want me to go all the way to Fort Adams?” asked Marilyn Stone, a local attorney who’d dreamed for years of learning to fly.

“No, let’s do our usual run out here. When you get to Avalon, execute an S-turn over Belle Chene Plantation, then head back to the barn.”

Marilyn nodded, her eyes on the GPS unit mounted on the instrument panel. “Why Avalon all the time? You buying a lot there or something?”

“You never know,” Danny said with a forced laugh.

He looked down at the loess hills below and tried to settle his nerves. Athens Point was a beautiful place, and the verdant forests below reminded him why he’d chosen to return after his military career. Unlike so many places that he had lived, this city had a long and colorful history. Athens Point had been founded in 1753 by a classically educated Frenchman venturing downriver through the Natchez Territory. The land was inhabited by the Choctaw Indians, but they lasted only seventy years before vanishing into Oklahoma or worse places. Removal was accomplished the way Hemingway’s Bill Gorton went bankrupt, slowly and then all at once. After the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek, all that remained of the Choctaw in that corner of Mississippi was a few names, like the one taken by the county, Lusahatcha (“Black Water”), which today seemed a misnomer since the great river stretching away behind the Cessna looked reddish brown under the sun. But the Mississippi River had many faces, and Danny had seen them all while growing up beside it.

Unlike Natchez, thirty miles to the north, Athens Point had resisted the Yankee invasion during the Civil War. The town sent three companies to fight under Lee in Virginia, and those who remained behind held out until July 11, 1863, being forced to surrender after the fall of Vicksburg. While the Father of Waters thereafter flowed “unvexed to the sea,” as President Lincoln put it, the inland areas of southwest Mississippi remained vexed indeed. Gangs of Confederate deserters roamed the land, and marauding Union cavalry units under Colonel Embury Osband pillaged what remained of the state’s resources.

For a hundred years afterward, the town’s hero was Jean Larrieu, a diminutive but feisty planter who shot six cavalrymen from the windows of Belle Chene plantation before being cut down on his porch by a saber during a parley. A Union private had struck his wife, and Larrieu refused to let the insult pass. His statue still stood atop a column in the town square. Even today, antebellum city buildings bore the scars of the shelling that resulted from the town’s firing on Admiral Porter’s passing ironclads in 1863. A historical marker commemorated the seventeen citizens who perished in the fires that day, while beside it a second marker memorialized six African Americans who died in Lusahatcha County during the struggle for civil rights.

The prejudice so prevalent in Danny’s childhood had diminished to a mild undercurrent between the races, but even today black and white remained largely divided in the physical sense. Black families tended to congregate in the city proper or to the south, while affluent whites and a few wealthy blacks built shining new subdivisions in the forests along Highway 24 to the north. Avalon was the newest and most exclusive of these, patterned after subdivisions of the same name in Gulfport and Natchez. Apparently the developer intended to replicate his utopian concept across the state. Danny could just make out the serpentine bends of Larrieu’s Creek, which marked one boundary of Avalon.

There, he said silently.

Avalon had been tastefully carved out of forestland that had been locked up in the trust of an old Athens Point family for a hundred years. A massive wrought-iron gate greeted prospective buyers as they turned off Highway 24 onto Cornwall, a broad street that wound its way eastward through the upscale development. Only fifteen houses had been built so far, with a handful of others under construction. The smallest lots available were 6.5 acres. The Shields house was easy to spot from the air, because its acreage was bordered by a bend of Larrieu’s Creek.

“I’ve been thinking,” Marilyn said, “I might want to try for an instrument rating after I get my VFR license.”

Danny chuckled. “You’re always pushing, aren’t you?”

She grinned. “I’m a trial lawyer. I guess it’s in my blood.”

He knew she expected him to keep up the banter, but his mind was on the land below. He could see the Shields house coming up on his left. “Drop down to five hundred feet. I think I see a herd of deer.”

Marilyn responded smoothly, and the Cessna quickly descended.

“Good. Stay well clear of those houses.” Danny would have liked to let Laurel hear the plane, but if there was any chance that Warren suspected Danny was her lover, then drawing attention to the Cessna would be insane. Warren had flown this plane so often that he would recognize it at a glance. And since Laurel-or Warren, for that matter-had not responded to the two text messages he had sent her, he had to play things very cool. “Somebody complained to me at the hardware store the other day,” Danny added. “Asked if we’re planning to bomb the neighborhood.”

Marilyn laughed and slid the plane a quarter mile to the east.

Danny got a perfect view of Laurel’s Acura parked behind her husband’s Volvo. The sight tied a knot in his stomach. What the hell was going on down there? Maybe they’re getting it on, he thought, surprised that he almost wanted this to be true. Because any alternative was bound to be worse.

“See any bucks?” Marilyn asked.

“What?”

“The deer. See any bucks?”

“Nah. Nothing but does, and they skipped into the trees.”

“Should I start my turn?”

“Yeah. Go ahead.” Danny closed his eyes and tried to think logically, but his nerves kept getting in the way. Or was it his emotions?

“An S-turn over Belle Chene?” Marilyn asked.

“Let’s skip that,” said Danny, glancing at his watch. “Let’s take her back to the airport. I’ve got something I can’t be late for.”

“Suits me,” Marilyn said, watching him from the corner of her eye. “I’ve got a deposition this afternoon. Big case coming up.”

“I pity the lawyer you’re up against.”

She laughed. “You don’t know whether I’m a good lawyer or not.”

He clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth. “Oh, yes, I do.

“How?”

He tapped the bridge of his nose. “I’m a good judge of character.”

Marilyn elbowed him in the side, and he saw some color come into her cheeks. “I’ll bet you are,” she said, looking as if she wanted to say more.

Danny resisted the urge to look back toward Avalon as she made a controlled 180-degree turn.

“Are you all right?” she asked in a concerned voice.

“Sure, I’m fine.”

“You look worried to me. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you worry before.”

This is why you’re a good lawyer, Danny thought. “Little bit of a headache, that’s all.”

“If you say so. But if you need any help…don’t hesitate to call me.”

He tried to laugh this off, but the more he thought about the situation, the more worried he became. The Cessna headed southwest toward the Mississippi River, where it curved between Angola Prison and DeSalle Island. “Marilyn, do you know anything about family law?”

She sighed. “I thought it was something like that. Yes, I know a lot. I used to handle nothing but divorces, until I got enough oil-business work to keep me going.”

Danny rubbed his forehead for a while. He’d talked to a couple of lawyers already, but neither had seemed to grasp the special nature of Michael’s educational problems. Praying that Marilyn was different, he said, “I need to ask you about a custody issue.”

She looked him in the eye and nodded, more serious then he’d ever seen her.

“It’s complicated,” he said.

She smiled encouragingly. “That’s why you need a professional. Fire away, Major.”

Laurel was nearly mad with fright. The Merlin’s Magic program had been hammering steadily at her Hotmail account for the best part of an hour, and sooner or later, the mindless digital battering ram would break through. It was fast and efficient, a brute-force strategy that guaranteed success, given sufficient time. Laurel didn’t know enough about probability theory to guess how long it might take for the program to hit on her password-surely longer than the fifteen or twenty minutes until Grant and Beth got home-but what was to stop Warren from keeping her and the children prisoner all night? He could run Merlin’s Magic until the contents of her secret files finally poured into his lap, even if it took until morning.

Shortly after Warren installed the program, Laurel had heard what she thought was the faint sound of an airplane engine far to the east. She was unable to get up and look, however, because Warren had retaped her ankles and calves, probably so he could focus on the password program without worrying about her. She was almost afraid to hope that the sound had come from Danny’s plane. And yet she did. Who else could help her? The fact that she had not answered his last two text messages might have worried him enough to overfly the house. But what more could he do?

You have to help yourself, said a voice in her head. Don’t wait to be saved. So she hadn’t. After a few minutes’ thought, she had hit on one possible method of escaping the duct tape. When Warren wasn’t looking, she had reversed her engagement ring-a radiant-cut twocarat diamond that he had bought three years ago to replace the sliver of a stone that had graced the ring when he proposed-and tested its ability to saw through duct tape. Where the tape was stretched tight, the raised edges of the diamond worked reasonably well. The problem was Warren, who had a clear line of sight to her. After complaining that the wet duct tape was itching badly, which was true, she began scratching often. Whenever Warren seemed entranced by the computer screen, she would saw at the vertical rip she’d made in the tape binding her lower legs. She worried that the diamond might pop out of its setting if she sawed too hard-white gold was a soft metal-but she was bracing the stone with her thumb as she cut, and besides, she saw no alternative.

A few minutes ago Warren had typed on the Sony’s keyboard for nearly a minute. At first this frightened her, but when she realized he had not broken into her account, she decided he must be writing or answering an e-mail. She’d used this time to work harder at the duct tape. Yet even if she managed to free her legs, her wrists would remain bound. It would be difficult, if not impossible, to retrieve the vase and hit Warren over the head with it if her hands were bound together. And even if she succeeded at that, there remained the problems of trying to get her keys, reach her car, and drive away. Warren wasn’t going to lie peacefully on the floor while she did all that.

She was pretending to scratch her ankles when he got up from the ottoman and stared at her like a man trying to hypnotize someone.

“Why did you run to the safe room?” he asked.

“Because I thought I would be safe there. Duh.”

“Is that the only reason?”

“What other reason could there be?”

He pointed his right forefinger at her, then wagged it right and left like some cranky middle-school teacher. “Let’s find out.” He shoved the gun into his waistband, then walked out of the great room and into the kitchen.

Laurel bent nearly double on the couch and sawed frantically at the tape. A few seconds later Warren walked out of the kitchen with a knife and came straight to the sofa. Kneeling beside her, he cut through the tape around her calves, then the strips binding her ankles. She was terrified that he would notice her saw marks, but he was in too much of a hurry. He pulled her to her feet and marched her toward the foyer.

“Who are you talking to online?” she asked.

“Why do you think I’m talking to someone?”

“You’ve been typing and reading something. I figured it was e-mail. Or IMs. And you said before that someone told you to search for the letter. They just told you to look in the safe room, didn’t they?”

“Aren’t you the little detective.”

“I told you there was something else in the house. Somebody’s screwing with your head, Warren. Big-time.”

“We’ll see when we find out what it is, won’t we?”

I was right! Laurel thought anxiously. What the hell are we about to find? Just don’t let it be something I can’t explain-

He opened the closet that concealed the steel door of the safe room and told Laurel to turn her back to the door. After she did, he punched his new code into the child-protection key pad, which opened the steel door unless the master lock had been set from the inside. As Warren stepped into the metal room, a spark of excitement flashed through her. If she could get inside the safe room and somehow shove him out, then she could slam the door and lock it. With him outside, the kids would still be in danger, but there was a secure phone in the safe room, and she could use it to call Diane Rivers and stop her from bringing the kids home.

Laurel took a furtive step backward, instinctively realizing that this was the way to get into the safe room. Warren would be nervous that she was trying to break for the front door. As if on cue, he said, “That’s far enough. You come stand here, in the doorway.”

She shuffled forward like a reluctant prisoner. The air in the safe room was musty and stank of mildew. Warren began removing the canned goods stored on the shelves, grabbing shrink-wrapped packs of Bush’s baked beans and stacking them on the floor. Next came the bottled water. Laurel was ready to risk her life to get Warren out of there, but he outweighed her by sixty pounds, minimum. And that sixty pounds was almost all muscle. To complicate matters, her wrists were still taped together, and Warren was almost flush against the shelves on the back wall. How could she get behind him and shove him out the door?

She found her chance less than a foot away.

Where the reinforced wall met the steel door, a sharp piece of sheet metal protruded a half inch into the open doorway at shoulder level. It looked a lot like an old-fashioned razor blade, and she wasted no time testing it. As Warren cursed and dropped a six-pack of Dasani onto the pile behind him, she raised her arms and dragged the duct tape along the protruding metal. Warren paused at the ripping sound-which sounded like Velcro being unhooked-but by the time he turned, Laurel was holding her wrists together again.

He knelt before the deep shelves, then grunted in surprise.

Laurel picked up a heavy can of beans and drew it back as if to hurl it at his head. It seemed safer than moving close enough to hit him, but if she missed, he might shoot her out of simple reflex. Warren groaned in frustration. He was trying to pull something off the back of the bottom shelf. A white cardboard box. A banker’s box.

She sprang forward and drove the can down toward the base of his skull, aiming for the brain stem. With her children in danger, there was no point in half measures. Warren must have heard her approach, because he turned his head back and upward just as the can reached the end of its arc. Instead of knocking him into a vegetative coma, the flat of the can crashed into his neck and jaw.

He fell against the shelves, his eyes blank.

Laurel raised the can to deliver another blow, but Warren toppled sideways, out of reach. She darted forward, meaning to grab the gun from his waistband, but the light of awareness flashed in his eyes. She froze, aware that she had moved within his grasp, then whirled and lunged for the door.

The gun thundered like a cannon in the tiny room.

“DON’T TAKE ANOTHER STEP!” Warren screamed.

Laurel was too close to freedom to obey. She kept moving, and the pistol exploded again. A hole appeared in the foyer wall ahead of her. This image somehow penetrated the rush of panic driving her forward. She turned and saw Warren crawling through the door of the safe room with the pistol in his hand. She darted to her right, which carried her out of his line of sight and to the front door.

The door was bolted shut, but the key was in the lock. She was turning the key when a car horn sounded outside. Two quick blasts that told her Diane Rivers had just pulled to the end of the sidewalk with the kids. As the bolt clicked open, a shadow fell across the door. Laurel put her hand on the knob.

“Open that door, and I’ll kill you,” Warren said. “I’ll kill you with Grant and Beth watching.”

She gripped the brass knob with all her strength, willing herself to open the door. No way will he shoot me in front of them, she told herself. He’d spend the rest of his life in prison, and not one person would ever visit him. Not even his mother-

“And then I’ll shoot myself,” Warren said quietly.

Laurel froze, a thousand images from news stories she’d seen over the years playing in her mind. Murder-suicide! Distraught Dad barricades home and executes family! Stabs wife, strangles kids in their beds! Father crashes plane into mother-in-law’s house with children aboard! She let her hand fall from the knob.

Warren seized her by the neck and dragged her away from the door.