Black Widow (31 page)

Janine’s grasp was weak. She tugged, and her fingers slipped. The dogs were getting closer. “Come on, Janine,” she said, frantic. “You can do this.”

“I can’t. I’m too weak.”

“
You will do this! Do you hear me? I will not allow your father to find you in little pieces! Do you understand me, Janine DiSalvo?
”

The girl opened her eyes. They were glassy, feverish. And angry. She grabbed the branch, and Kathryn guided her up into the tree. “Higher!” she ordered. She caught the branch and swung herself up, pushing Janine higher, and then the dogs burst through the trees and threw themselves at the trunk in a wild frenzy, leaping and snapping, inches away from her feet.

She hovered there with Nick’s daughter cradled in her arms, trying not to cry, trying not to wonder whether he was dead or alive. Beneath her, the dogs barked and howled, and then she heard a huge splash, and at the water’s edge, like a savior come to her rescue, stood a wet and glistening Elvis. He shook the water from his coat and, fangs bared, dove into the fray. He singled out the lead dog, snapping and biting at his heels. While the others continued to bay, the two dogs rolled like a dervish, biting and growling and snapping at each other.

And then she saw the lights through the trees. Twin flashlight beams, scanning, seeking. She held Janine tighter, her heart thudding in her chest. If it was Henley, she wouldn’t give in. She wouldn’t break. She would fight him to the death to save Nick’s daughter.

And then she heard it, faint but distinct, the sweetest sound she’d ever heard. Nick’s voice. “Kathryn?” he shouted. “Where are you?”

She let out a sob, wet her lips, and took a deep breath. Putting all her strength into her voice, she shouted, “Nick!”

Beneath her, the dogs continued to fight. “Kathryn?” he shouted again, closer this time.

“Over here! Hurry!”

Nick splashed through the water toward her, with Bucky Stimpson directly behind him. Bucky raised his rifle and fired once into the air, and the dogs separated, scattering in five different directions. “Kathryn,” Nick said. “Oh, Christ, Kat, I thought you were both dead.”

“We have to get her to a hospital,” she said. “Snakebite. It’s already been a couple of hours. We don’t have much time.”

“Oh, Jesus. Hand her down. Help me, Bucky.”

In her arms, the young girl groaned. “Janine?” she said. “Wake up, honey. Daddy’s here.”

Weakly, Janine said, “I told you he’d come.”

She delivered Nick’s daughter into his arms, and then she slid down out of the tree. Bucky caught her before she could fall. “Where’s Henley?” she said.

“He’s dead,” Nick said curtly.

She closed her eyes to ward off a wave of dizziness. “You killed him?” she said.

“I did, ma’am,” Bucky said respectfully. “I didn’t have a choice. He was about to shoot my boss.”

“And it’s a damn good thing for me that you’re a crack shot,” Nick said. “That bullet missed me by half an inch. Where the hell are we?”

Bucky looked around. “We’re about a hundred yards from Old Raleigh Road,” he said. “Come on, let’s go. Earl should be waitin’ there.”

She could no longer feel her legs. Numbly, like a wooden soldier, she followed Nick’s long-legged stride. They emerged from the swamp like creatures from some B movie, Nick cradling his limp daughter in his arms, Bucky supporting Kathryn, Elvis tagging alongside, those big yellow eyes fraught with concern.

In the distance, headlights came around a curve. The car moved down the road toward them, and Nick stepped out into the road and stood there, holding his daughter. The headlights outlined his shuddering form. The car slowed, and its dark shape turned into a police cruiser. “Thank God,” Kathryn said softly.

Nick swung open the passenger door. “I’ll radio for somebody to pick you up,” he told Earl curtly. “I’m taking your car.” He turned to Kathryn. “Get in,” he said. “Can you hold her on your lap?”

She nodded slowly, the movement making her dizzy. When she sat down, Nick finally got a good look at her. “Holy mother of Moses,” he said. “What happened to you?”

“Never mind. I’ll tell you later.”

She cradled the limp girl in her arms, and Nick slammed the door shut. “I’ll call you,” he told Bucky as he raced around the front of the car and climbed into the driver’s seat. He hit the siren and the lights, and punched down hard on the accelerator. “Fayetteville,” he said. “We’ll go to Fayetteville. It’s the nearest hospital.”

The drive took them a half-hour, doing ninety over back roads. In her arms, Janine moved restlessly, every so often moaning softly. Kathryn brushed the damp hair back from the girl’s forehead. “Her fever’s going up,” she said. “We have to hurry, Nick.”

He glanced once at his daughter, then at the speedometer, and stepped it up to ninety-five. They hit the Fayetteville city limits doing a hundred and ten. She’d never in her life been in a vehicle moving at that speed. Yet she was as calm as if they’d been sipping lemonade at a church picnic. Nick was driving, and she had complete faith in him. He would take care of them. He wouldn’t let anything happen to them.

“I was so furious,” she told him, “when that snake bit her. I just saw red. It’s amazing what you can do when you’re angry.”

He slowed to seventy as he neared the hospital. “What did you do?” he said.

“I picked up a big stick,” she said, “and I beat the son of a bitch to death.”

At the hospital, he brought the car to a shuddering halt. Opened his door and came around to hers. “You okay?” he said, prodding at her temple with gentle fingers.

“I’m okay. Get her inside, DiSalvo. Don’t worry about me.”

“Get that head looked at,” he ordered. He took Janine from her arms, gave Kathryn a last look, and stalked through the emergency entrance. She climbed out of the car and followed at a slower pace. The world was tilting, darkening, and when she walked up to the nurse’s desk, the attendant stared at her.

“Good evening,” she said. “My name is Kathryn McAllister.”

And she passed out cold on the floor.

Chapter Nineteen

When she came to, she was in a hospital bed, and sunlight streamed through the window. Her headache had died down to a dull roar, and somebody had stripped off her ruined clothes and bathed her. Her arms were peppered with infected insect bites that itched like a son of a bitch. While she lay there studying them in puzzlement, a white-frocked young doctor came in. “Well,” he said jovially, “it’s about time you decided to rejoin us. How are you feeling?”

“I’m starving,” she said. “How long have I been here?”

He checked the bump on her head, looked into her eyes, prodded at the glands beneath her jaw. “Two days,” he said.

“Two days?”

“That was quite a bump on the head. Nasty concussion.” He held up two fingers in front of her face. “How many?” he said.

“Who do you think you are, Shecky Greene?”

“Ah, yes, I was warned about your infamous mouth. How many fingers, Kathryn?”

“Two. Where’s Janine?”

“Janine who?”

“Janine DiSalvo. We came in here together. Where the hell is she?”

“Oh,” he said. “The girl.”

“Well?”

“She’s in ICU,” he said, “but—”

“Oh, Christ.” She sat up and the room tilted. “Holy shit,” she said.

He caught her before she could fall ass over teakettle out of the bed and onto the floor. “It’s going to take a few days,” he warned.

“I have to go check on Janine.”

“You’re not up to walking yet.”

“In a pig’s eye,” she said, and proved it by sliding off the edge of the bed and standing on her feet. “Now,” she said, “unless you plan on everybody in the hospital getting a good close-up look at my backside, you’d best find me a robe.”

He found her a robe, and she shuffled off barefoot down the hall to the nurse’s station. There was a pretty young Asian nurse sitting at the desk, writing something on a chart. She looked up and her eyes widened. “Yes?” she said.

“How do I get to the ICU?”

“Why do you ask?” the nurse said cautiously.

“I have a friend in there. Listen, you can tell me, or I can ask somebody else. It’s up to you.”

They eyed each other while the nurse debated. “Down the hall,” she finally said, pointing her pen. “Take the elevator to the third floor. Hang a right out of the elevator, take your first left, and you can’t miss it.”

She ignored the people in the elevator who stared at her bare feet and her funky mode of dress. When the doors opened on the third floor, she squeezed through people. “Excuse me,” she said, elbowing her way through. “Excuse me.”

The ICU nurse looked up at her through square granny style glasses. “Yes?” she said. “May I help you?”

“I’m looking for Janine DiSalvo. The young girl who was brought in here a couple of nights ago with snakebite.”

The nurse looked her up and down, and pursed her lips. “Are you a relative?” she said.

“I’m a friend of the family.”

“I’m sorry,” the nurse said, and returned her eyes to her paperwork. “Nobody’s allowed in except immediate family.”

Kathryn leaned over her desk, and the nurse looked back up, startled. “Look,” she said, “we came into this hospital together, and you will damn well tell me what her condition is, or I’ll be speaking with your supervisor. And if that doesn’t do the trick, I’ll work my way right on up the line until I get what I want.”

Seconds ticked by while they faced off. “She’s in critical condition,” the nurse said. “For a while there, it was touch and go. But today, she’s showin’ signs of improvement. Her folks have been with her night and day. Her poor momma was a wreck when she got here.”

It hadn’t occurred to her until this moment that Nick’s ex-wife would be here. But of course she would. Under the circumstances, any mother would have flown immediately to her daughter’s side. “Can I look in?” Kathryn said. “Just take a peek through the glass?”

The nurse pointed to the door. “One peek,” she said sternly, “and then back to your room.”

Kathryn moved toward the window, propelled by equal parts concern for Janine and curiosity about Lenore. She peered through the window. Janine lay pale and silent in the bed, tubes protruding from every possible orifice. Near the window, standing in a pool of sunlight, Nick was talking with a lovely dark-haired woman. Janine had inherited her mother’s facial features, her bone structure. Nick’s ex-wife was pretty enough to be a model. She had been crying, and Nick wiped a tear from her face. He closed his eyes, and they embraced with a ferocity that was both poignant and heartbreaking.

Kathryn looked again at the girl in the bed, then at the parents who so obviously loved her. And each other, if their behavior was any indicator. She squared her shoulders. This was, after all, the way it should be. Nick and Lenore had created this perfect child together, and at this critical moment in her life, she needed both her parents, together, as a family. As one who had grown up without the full complement of parents, Kathryn knew how important it was to a teenage girl to have all the right people in all the right places. It was the natural order of things, and nobody, least of all Kathryn McAllister, had the right to interfere with that.

Besides, it wasn’t as though she and Nick had made any kind of commitment. He’d never even told her he loved her. And she’d been too hell-bent on finding Michael’s killer to see beyond the end of her own nose. It wasn’t his fault if she’d discouraged him from thinking about a future that included her. It wasn’t his fault if she’d been fool enough to fall in love with a man who probably considered their relationship to be nothing more significant than a few nights of great sex.

The fault was all hers.

So she would do the gracious thing and walk away. Even if it ripped the heart out of her chest.

Kathryn turned away from the window. The nurse was watching her oddly. “Shall I leave a message?” the woman said.

“No,” she said. “No message.”

She went back to her room and called Raelynn. “I need something to wear,” she said. “Can I impose on you one more time?”

“Sugar, I have already been shopping. I would have loaned you somethin’ of mine, but, well
_—
we aren’t exactly of a size, if you get my drift.”

She hung up the phone and walked to the nurse’s station and badgered the young Asian nurse until the poor woman finally gave in and called the doctor to come in and sign her release papers.

Raelynn picked her up at eleven o’clock, and loaned her the Mustang. “One scratch,” her friend said, “and I’ll have you back in Carolina Women’s.”

“Idle threats,” she said, then drove away and left Raelynn standing on the sidewalk in a powder-blue suit, grinning and shaking her head.

Her afternoon was fruitful. She sold the Toyota to Dwight Harvey’s boy for a hundred dollars, then swung by Gabe Holden’s office to discuss Michael’s life insurance policy. “Shep Henley admitted to me and to two police officers that he killed Michael,” she said. “That should be proof enough for even your tight-assed insurance adjuster that I’m entitled to collect on his life insurance.”

Gabe wiggled and squirmed and wiped his beet-red brow with a snowy white handkerchief, but finally agreed that since her conviction had been overturned and the real killer located, she was, indeed, entitled to Michael’s insurance. “You have to realize,” he said, “that these things take time, Miz McAllister. You’ll have to give me a few days to process the claim. Explain things to the comp’ny.”

“Fine,” she said. “I’ll be back on Monday afternoon to pick up the check.”

She left him sputtering as she drove back to Raelynn’s place and sat down with the Boston
Globe
that she’d picked up in Fayetteville this morning. She spent an hour perusing the want ads, circling anything that looked promising. And then she started making phone calls.

A half-hour later, she had three job interviews scheduled for the end of next week, and flight reservations for Tuesday morning. Elvis probably wouldn’t appreciate flying in the cargo hold, but there was no way she was leaving him behind, even if it meant she had to drive him to Boston.

Her Aunt Elena cried when she heard Kathryn’s voice on the phone. “Oh, baby,” she said through tears, “I’ve prayed for this moment.”

“So have I, Auntie. Listen, will you open up the house for me? Get it aired out?”

It would seem so strange without him there, the man who’d tried so hard to give her a normal childhood after the death of her mother. But it was all she had left of him, the small wooden frame house in Somerville where she’d grown up. And her memories of living there were good. Pop might be gone, but he would live on in her memories. And maybe, some day, in her children. It was a fitting legacy for the man with the twinkling blue eyes, that she should come back to live in the house that Frank Sipowicz had worked so hard to turn into a home.

Raelynn was shocked to hear she was leaving. “But, sugar,” she said, clearly bewildered, “I thought you and that spectacular Chief DiSalvo were an item. What happened?”

“His wife is what happened. He’s still in love with her.”

“Ex-wife,” Raelynn said, and raised a brow. “And you’re not even goin’ to fight for him?”

“I’ve been fighting for four years,” she said. “I don’t want to fight anymore. I don’t have to fight any more. I’m going home, and Elvis and I are going to live like normal people. Do you have any idea how long it’s been since I lived like normal people?”

Raelynn eyed the dog with distaste. “I hate to break it to you, sugar, but Elvis isn’t people.”

Kathryn fed him half a doughnut. He caught it in midair, and swallowed it whole. “He is to me,” she said.

“Personally,” Raelynn said, “I think that bump on your head must have been bigger than they thought. You leave DiSalvo behind, and take that damn ugly dog with you. There’s something wrong with this picture, darlin’.”

“Thank you for the unsolicited advice. Now you can butt out.”

Monday afternoon, she picked up the insurance check, and strode directly across the street to the First National Bank of Elba to deposit it. “Good afternoon,” she said, stepping up to the teller’s window. “I’d like to open an account. Here’s my first deposit.”

The teller looked at the check, and her mouth fell open. When she recovered, she quickly pulled out the necessary paperwork, and Kathryn left the bank twenty minutes later with two thousand dollars in cash and the other $148,000 in savings.

There was one last thing she had to do. She drove to Mount Hope Cemetery, to the McAllister plot, to say goodbye to Michael. His parents had buried him in a style befitting a McAllister, beneath a polished marble monument that rose to the sky in an elegant sweep that would have pleased the architect in him. Etched into the stone were the words
Beloved Son
.

“Well,” she told him, “it’s over. I promised you I’d find justice, and I kept my promise. I hope you’re at peace. Now we can both go on with a clear conscience and the knowledge that we did the best we could.”

She’d loved him so much that the absence of that love surprised her. The Kathryn who’d been so in love with Michael McAllister had been a girl. This Kathryn was a woman, seasoned and hardened and ripened into something that didn’t even vaguely resemble Kathryn the girl. “I’m sorry,” she said, “about the way it turned out. But maybe it wouldn’t have lasted anyway.” Certainly not here in Elba, where their every move had been scrutinized and turned into gossip and public information. She wasn’t sorry to be leaving.

Behind her, footsteps crunched in the gravel. She swung around and looked steadily at the man who stood at the foot of Michael’s grave. “Hello, Judge,” she said.

“Kathryn,” he said. “I heard you were leavin’ town.”

“Word does travel fast around here, doesn’t it?”

A faint breeze blew a lock of his blond hair into his face. “It seems,” he said, “that Neely and I owe you an apology.”

“It’s a little late for that, Kevin. About four years too late.”

“You have to understand, Kathryn, he was our son. We loved him.”

“And my husband. I loved him, too.”

“Where are you goin’ to?”

“Home,” she said. “Boston. Where I belong.”

“And I imagine,” he said, “that you won’t be comin’ back.”

“Michael told me once,” she said, “that there were two kinds of people in this town. Those who run things the way they’ve been run since the beginning of time, and those who let themselves be run. We were different, he said. Mavericks. We wouldn’t let that happen to us. Well, he was right. He escaped from this town the only way he could. Now, it’s my turn to escape. And you’re right. I won’t be back.”

He held out his hand. “Good luck, Kathryn. I hope you find your peace.”

She looked at the outstretched hand for a long time. “I’ve already found it,” she said. “Goodbye, Kevin.”

And she turned and walked away.

Raleigh-Durham International Airport was busy on a Tuesday morning, mobbed with business travelers, denizens of the academic and research worlds, and the occasional tourist, all of them rushing to get to their destinations. “Sugar,” Raelynn said, “I am gonna miss you so much.”