True Evil

CHAPTER 15

Chris had been working nonstop for hours. The last face he expected to see when he walked into his private office for a break was his wife's. Thora was sitting behind his desk, typing on the keypad of her Treo. She wore blue silk pants and a white silk top so fine that he could see through it. At the rustle of his white coat, she looked up and gave him a brilliant smile.

"Hey," he said. "What are you doing here?"

She started to answer, but then her eyes clouded. "Chris? Are you all right?"

"Sure. Why?"

"You look green, baby. What's the matter?"

He closed the door behind him. "I just diagnosed a fifty-five-year-old woman with advanced carcinoma of the lung. She was a friend of my mother's when we lived in Natchez."

Thora pulled off the pale blue scarf she was wearing in her hair and laid it on the desk. "I'm sorry. I know that kind of thing tears you up."

"I'm really glad to see you. I'm just surprised."

"Well, I happened to be driving past on the highway, so I turned in here to see your face and get a kiss." She got up and came around the desk, stood on tiptoe, and kissed him on the cheek. "Sit down."

He did. Thora moved behind him and began rubbing his shoulders. The soft scent of perfume reached him, and soon he was back in his studio, in the moments before she made love to him last night.

"Feel good?"

"This job really sucks sometimes."

"That's because you let it in. Doctors like my father shut it all out. They come in for the cutting, then take their check and move on."

Shane Lansing rose into Chris's mind: Lansing shared that trait with Lars Rayner.

"Relax," Thora said softly. "Just for a minute."

"I'm trying."

She kneaded the base of his neck, trying to ease his tension. He tried to go with it, but mostly to please her. A massage wasn't going to resolve any of his current problems.

"Oh, I ate lunch with Laura Canning at Planet Thailand," Thora said. "She told me the Alluvian had a cancellation this morning. They gave us reservations for the next three nights. The only catch is that we have to stay together-as in the same room together."

Chris leaned back and looked up at her inverted face. "You mean you're driving up there today?"

"No, no, tomorrow night. We won't leave until tomorrow morning."

He leaned forward again, absorbing this in silence.

"Don't worry, I'll still take Ben to school, and Mrs. Johnson can take him to Cameron's birthday party, if you can't get away."

Chris had completely forgotten the birthday party: a bowling party, like so many held by Ben's classmates.

Thora came around the chair and sat on the desk. His mood had deflated her excitement, but she looked more concerned than irritated.

"You're pretty quiet," she said, her eyes intense.

He wished he could do something about his mood, but after Alex Morse's accusations and a morning of dealing with terminal illness, it was tough to get excited about vacation plans. As he looked at Thora propped on the desk, something struck him with odd force. He'd actually noticed it last night, but his starved libido had relegated it to minor importance.

"How much weight have you lost?" he asked, staring at her concave belly beneath the silk top.

Thora looked flustered. "What?"

"Seriously. You look too thin."

A little laugh. "That's what running does to you."

"I know. And it can be unhealthy. Are you still menstruating normally?"

"I had a period two weeks ago."

Chris tried to remember any signs that this was true. "I want you to go in the hall and let Holly weigh you."

Thora reached down and squeezed his thigh. "You're being silly, Chris."

"No, I'm being serious. Come on," he said, standing, "I'll weigh you myself. I want to draw some blood, too."

"Blood?" Thora looked stunned. "No way."

"Look, you hardly ever come to the office. When was the last time you had a complete physical?"

She thought about it. "I can't remember. But Mike Kaufman checked me out during my last gyno visit."

"That was more of a focused exam. I'm worried about your general health. Plus, you weren't running nearly as much when Mike looked at you. That could be interfering with your ability to conceive."

Thora looked sober but said nothing.

"What are you worried about?" he asked with genuine concern.

"Nothing. I just don't like needles. You know that."

"That's no reason to put it off. Come on." He took her by the arm and walked her out to Holly's nurse's station. Leaving her sandals on, Thora stepped up onto the medical scale. Chris shook his head and told her to take the sandals off. After she did, he worked the black iron balances until the bar settled into a level position.

"A hundred and eleven pounds," he said. "How much did you weigh when we got married?"

Thora shrugged. "I don't remember."

"I do. A hundred and twenty-six."

"I never weighed that in my life."

Chris chuckled. She was definitely lying about that, but there was nothing sinister in it. "You're five feet six, Thora. You don't need to lose fifteen pounds when your starting point is one twenty-six."

She sighed and stepped off the scale.

Chris knew he'd never get her down the hall to the lab, so he sat her down and fastened a blood-pressure cuff around her upper arm. After he'd pumped it up, he dug into Holly's bottom drawer and took out one of the syringes she used for injections.

"Hey!" Thora cried. "What do you think you're doing with that?"

"Just sit back and be calm. I'm very good with a needle."

"He is," said Holly from behind him. "He could find a vein on an overweight elephant."

"I'm not sure that's relevant here," Thora said. "What gauge needle is that?"

"A twenty-one," said Chris.

She grimaced. "Can't I have a twenty-three?"

"Stop being a baby. Most people get twenty-ones, you know."

"I'm not most people." She pulled her arm away at first, but after a few evasions she sat back and let him draw ten ccs of dark venous blood into the barrel of the syringe. If they were in the lab, he would have filled several tubes, but this was better than nothing. "God," Thora said, clenching her inner elbow to facilitate clotting. "I come in for a kiss and I get violated instead. No wonder I don't come here very much."

Chris laughed, but he was thinking that something he'd always suspected about Thora's attitude toward his office was true: it reminded her of her father in some way, and she didn't want to be around it. "I thought you liked me violating you," he said.

"Not today." She got up and walked back toward his office.

When Chris got there, she had put her scarf back on and was slipping her Treo into her purse. "I've got a lot to do to get ready for my trip," she said, coming to the door.

"Will you be home when I pick up Ben?" he asked. "We've got baseball practice today."

"Practice?" Thora's eyes narrowed. "Ben has a game tonight, Chris. You're playing last year's championship team."

"Jesus, you're right."

Thora laughed with real pleasure. "I can't believe you forgot and I remembered. The world must be rotating backwards today."

"After the morning I've had, it wouldn't surprise me. I hope the rest of the day is better."

She shook her head as though puzzled. "It's afternoon already, Chris."

He looked at his watch. She was right. "God. I'll bet the staff is ready to kick my ass."

"Have you eaten anything?"

"Not since this morning."

Thora walked into the corridor and looked back at him. "You need to shut this place down and run over to the hospital cafeteria."

"I think I will. Do you want to come?"

"No, I'm full of sushi."

"Somehow I doubt that. You probably took two or three bites, total."

She pushed him playfully, then called good-bye to Holly, who was down by the door to X-ray. "I'll see you at the house, okay?" Thora leaned close to him. "Maybe after Ben's game we can do a replay of last night."

He was about to answer when he felt her hand close around his testicles. She looked meaningfully at him and squeezed.

"Maybe so," he said, turning red.

Thora laughed softly, then turned and walked toward the private exit, her silk pants swishing gracefully around her ankles. After she'd gone, Chris walked down the hall and handed the full syringe to Holly.

"I want you to inject this into a red-top Vacutainer and spin it down."

"Okay. What tests do you want done?"

"A CBC and a standard Chem-20. But don't throw any serum away. I may do some more tests, depending on what I find."

"Okay." Holly walked quickly toward the lab.

As Chris turned, he saw Jane, his receptionist, leaning through the window that opened onto the hall. "Are you okay, boss?" she asked.

"Yeah, why?"

"You don't seem like yourself today."

"I'm good to go."

Jane snorted. "Then maybe you should. It's time to tie on the feed bag, darlin'."

"Past time," said his lab tech from behind him. "Even Dr. Cage left out of here forty-five minutes ago."

Chris shook his head. If Tom was gone to lunch, he had definitely stayed too late.

"You've still got one patient," Holly reminded him, coming back up the hall. "Room four, Mr. Patel. Sounds like a hot gallbladder."

Chris walked back to his office and closed the door. He needed to examine Patel, but right now he couldn't summon the concentration. He walked around his desk and sat in his chair again. Without quite knowing why, he opened his drawer. As he did, he realized that he was checking to see if Thora had been through his things.

Why should I worry about that? he wondered.

Then he saw the answer. Lying on top of a prescription pad was the silver Motorola clamshell phone that Alex Morse had given him on the Trace that morning. If Thora had opened this drawer, she would have seen it instantly. Maybe she did, he thought. No…if she'd seen a new cell phone, she would have asked me about it.

As Chris turned the Motorola in his hand, he saw that its blue LCD window said 1 MISSED CALL. The phone's ringer was set to SILENT. He flipped open the phone and checked the time of the call. One minute ago. Strangely flustered, he speed-dialed the only number programmed into the memory. After only half a ring, a woman said, "It's Alex. Can you talk?"

"Yes."

"I'm right outside your office. Thora just left."

He felt a wave of disorientation. "Why are you here?"

"I followed your wife here."

"Crap, Alex. What are you doing?"

"Trying to save your life."

"Jesus. I told you-"

"I have something to show you, Chris. Something unequivocal."

Dread settled in his chest. "What is it?"

"I'll tell you when I see you."

"Goddamn it. You said Thora's gone?"

"Yes."

"Just come into my office then."

A hesitation. "That would be a mistake."

"You can use my private entrance."

"No. You come to me."

"I still have patients! I can't leave now. Besides, where would we go?"

"There's some kind of park at the end of this boulevard."

"That's not a park, it's a historical site. The Grand Village of the Natchez Indians."

"Fine, whatever. It's deserted, and it's only a quarter mile away."

"Agent Morse, I-"

"Is Thora leaving town today, Chris?"

"Tomorrow morning."

A quick expulsion of breath. "This won't take ten minutes. You owe it to yourself. To Ben, too."

Irrational anger flooded through him. He considered asking Morse to wait ten minutes and then slip into his office, but sometimes one or two staff members stayed through lunch and ate Lean Cuisines in the lounge. He couldn't be sure that wouldn't happen today. "I'll meet you there in five minutes."

"I'll be waiting on the big hill in the middle," Morse said.

The big hill? "That's a ceremonial mound, not a hill. An Indian mound."

"Great. Please hurry."

Fifteen minutes later, Chris was trotting under a thick stand of oak trees, heading for a vividly lit stretch of grass almost half a mile long. He jogged past a replica of an Indian hut and broke out into the sunlight. In the distance stood two steeply sloped mounds separated by eighty meters. The nearer was a ceremonial mound where the chief of the Natchez, the Great Sun, had once presided over the rituals of this unique tribe. Farther on stood the Temple mound. Both had been built by the sun-worshipping natives that settled this land a thousand years before the white man came. Like many old cities, Natchez had been founded upon murder, in this case the massacre of the Natchez Indians by French troops from New Orleans, in retaliation for a rebellion in the previous year-1729.

Chris shielded his eyes with the flat of his hand and studied the crest of the nearer mound. A small silhouette appeared against the sky. He wasn't sure that the shadow figure was Alex Morse, but he walked in that direction anyway. He scanned the village grounds as he walked, sighting half a dozen tourists near the Temple mound, all moving in groups of two.

He breathed harder as he climbed the mound, but it was nothing compared to Emerald Mound north of the city. There the Natchez had constructed an earthen analog of the Mayan structures in the Yucatán, though anthropologists believed that no direct connection existed.

"It's been twenty minutes," said the silhouette above him.

When Chris reached the crest, he recognized Morse. She had exchanged her wet biking garb for khakis and a pale yellow top. He saw no sign of her gun. Maybe it was in the brown handbag that lay at her feet.

"What do you have to show me?"

"We're pretty exposed here," Morse said. "Can we move somewhere else?"

"Jesus. I guess so. St. Catherine's Creek runs through this site. There's a path under those trees over there that leads down to it."

"Fine."

She started in that direction without waiting for him. Chris shook his head in frustration, then followed.

Along the path, the trees changed from oak to elm and then to cottonwood. Thick stands of bamboo appeared on either side, and then they were walking on damp beige sand. The humid air smelled of dead fish. Only two years ago, Chris recalled, one of the most beautiful young girls in the city had been killed along this creek-not far away from here, in fact. Tom Cage's son had defended the prime suspect in the case-a Natchez internist, of all people-and only by exonerating the suspected physician had Penn Cage escaped the ill feeling that had attached to his client during the investigation. But escape he did, for less than two months later Penn had been voted into the mayor's office during a special election.

"How far away is this creek?" Morse asked, breathing hard and sweating harder.

"Fifty more yards."

"Should we just stop here?"

"No. We're in mosquito heaven."

The trees gave way to an empty sandbar, beyond which lay a wide, placid creek. The calm water was misleading. During thunderstorms, Chris had seen the creek reach a depth of twenty feet as it swept through town carrying massive tree trunks along like matchsticks. It had been that way on the day that poor girl was murdered-

"That's far enough," said Morse, stopping in the middle of the sand. "Put your game face on, Doctor."

Chris clenched his fists at his sides.

She opened her purse and handed him a sheet of printer paper still damp with ink. It was a photograph of Thora standing face-to-face with Shane Lansing. Behind them was a seamless sheet of black granite that Chris recognized as the face of the fireplace in the great room of their new house in Avalon. Thora's face was highly animated-seemingly by anger, but he couldn't be sure-and she was gesturing with both hands. Lansing was listening with a submissive expression Chris had never seen on his face before. It was difficult to read what was being discussed, but the two of them were standing very close together-definitely in each other's space, though not quite at an intimate distance.

"Where did you get this?" Chris asked.

"You know where."

"I mean how did you get it? And when?"

"I took that picture forty-five minutes ago. I printed it in my car on a portable Canon."

Chris felt unsteady on his feet. Thora was wearing the same silk top and blue scarf she had worn to his office only minutes ago, and she had said nothing about talking to Shane Lansing. "You sneaked into the house with them?"

"I shot it through a window. I was tired of you telling me I'm full of shit. That I have no proof of anything."

Chris looked downstream at a fifty-foot bluff covered with thick, green kudzu. "What do you think this picture proves?"

"That your wife is doing something besides giving Dr. Lansing the threepenny tour of your house. This is their third meeting this week."

"Did you hear what they said?"

"I couldn't get close enough without her seeing me."

Chris walked over to a large driftwood log and sat down heavily.

"Dr. Shepard?"

He didn't reply. He was thinking of last night, when he and Thora had made love on the couch in his studio. Of Thora's efforts to get pregnant…her surprise plans for his studio…"I know this looks bad," he said in a monotone, holding up the picture. "But it doesn't prove they're having an affair. Maybe Lansing is having problems at home. Maybe he's confiding in Thora about something."

Morse opened her mouth in astonishment. "You're acting like a wife, Chris. A long-suffering wife defending her cheating husband to her family and friends."

"Goddamn it," he said in a low voice, "you don't know Thora."

"Maybe you don't either."

He looked up. "You're saying she got it on with Shane Lansing, then drove straight to my office to give me a kiss?"

"You've got to wake up, Chris! Adulterers lie like that all the time. My fiancé left my best friend's bed, then came straight to my apartment and had sex with me. He never even showered. But maybe that's just my life. Did Thora tell you she came to your office to give you a kiss?"

Chris looked away and dropped the photo on the sand. "What else did she do today?"

"The usual. She ran, she showered, she swam at the country club. Then she drove to Mainstream Fitness for her weight lifting. She showered again there, then started walking to Planet Thailand."

He nodded distantly.

"At the last minute, her cell phone rang. She took the call, then suddenly turned around and went back to her car. That's when she drove out to Avalon."

Chris looked up sharply. "Thora didn't eat at Planet Thailand?"

"No. What did she tell you?"

I ate with Laura Canning at Planet Thailand today… No, I'm full of sushi…

"Chris?"

He couldn't look at Morse. An equivocal photo was one thing, an outright lie was another.

"She lied to you, didn't she?" Morse said. "If you still have any doubts, check her cell phone bill. You can do it online. There'll be a call from Lansing at twelve twenty-eight p.m. today. You have the picture that proves she met him immediately afterward, and you know she lied to you about where she was during lunch. Once you put those things together-"

"I get it, okay!" Chris snapped, turning away. "Just give me a minute here!"

Alex walked down to the water's edge, leaving Dr. Shepard to absorb the new reality at his own pace. It was the lie that did it, she thought with satisfaction. She could have talked until she went hoarse and Shepard might have remained in denial. He was even prepared to make excuses explaining the photograph. But now that didn't matter. Thora had damned herself with a single lie.

It hadn't even been a necessary lie, Alex reflected. But that was human nature, as her father had explained many times. When people got into the habit of lying, they came to depend on it as a means of sliding easily through life. Thora probably hadn't even considered the risk of that little fib. After all, she had planned to eat lunch at the Thai restaurant. And Chris would never check on something so small…

Alex looked down into the creek in search of fish, but all she saw was a cloud of tadpoles. The creek and the woods made her think of Jamie, and how her father had taught the boy to fish in the various waterways around Jackson. Bill Fennell had been glad for those fishing trips, she remembered, and now she knew why. Getting Jamie out of his hair had made it that much easier for Bill to meet his mistress for a quick screw. It left only Grace to get rid of, and Grace stayed so busy that she was easy to evade-especially after their mother's diagnosis.

Oh, God, Alex thought, I need to check in with the nurses.

She turned back to Chris, ready to call out, That picture's not going to change, no matter how long you look at it-but in the event she said nothing.

Chris Shepard was gone.