If I Should Die (18 page)

They’d eaten well that night at a place called Sundowner’s, dining on yellowtail stuffed with crabmeat and drinking Chardonnay, and then they’d wandered through town again,
more leisurely now, people-watching and listening to the gaggle of the tourists’ languages, before returning to their hotel and lazing about for a while on the terrace with a nightcap,
enjoying the peaceful, evocative sounds and smells of the ocean.

“This is heaven,” Lally said, quietly.

“I can’t believe we’re really here,” Hugo agreed.

“It’s so warm, and so – ” Lally fumbled gently for the word.

“Soft,” Hugo finished.

“Yeah,” Lally murmured. “Soft is right.”

“Lally?”

“Mm?”

“Are you sure you want to go camping?”

She smiled. “I want to do everything. I want to lie under the stars and swim with dolphins and watch otters and turtles – and I don’t care if I don’t get to see
alligators, but I do want to see eagles, and I want to fish for those crabs you can throw back in the water – you know, the ones who grow back their claws?”

“Stone crabs,” Hugo said.

“So clever of them.”

It was a balmy night, with a sweetly cooling breeze coming off Florida Bay. Lally stretched out her long legs in their white cotton jeans, and rested her drink on her lap, and closed her eyes
for a few minutes and Hugo, studying her, thought, as he almost always did, how incredibly beautiful she was, and how little she realized it, and how much he loved her, and how much it still hurt
to know that her love for him was such a lesser creature than his own.

They slept soundly and started out easy on Wednesday morning, with breakfast in the hotel garden and then a ride in a glass-bottomed boat over at the John Pennekamp Coral Reef
State Park. A little later, Lally persuaded Hugo to try his hand at snorkelling, floating on the surface in the shallow, spectacularly brilliant areas, and after a while it was hard to persuade him
out of the water, and the famous laid-back atmosphere of the Keys that they’d heard about was already having its effect, and time had begun to lose its meaning. And by three o’clock,
back on the highway heading south past Tavernier towards Islamorada after their first tastes of conch chowder and Key lime pie, they were both singing old Dylan songs and gazing to left and right
at the stunning greens and blues of the ocean and Gulf with wide eyes and mostly wordless pleasure.

They would camp that night near the Atlantic, shaded by tall Australian pine trees, and Lally would see gumbo-limbos, and Jamaican dogwoods, and mangrove swamps, and she would lie beneath the
stars and be more grateful than she had ever been for her life. And already memories of sickness and doctors and hospitals, and thoughts about troubled families and alcoholic mothers and unhappy
little girls, and men with dark blue eyes, seemed light years away in another, alien world.

Joe’s day had begun badly, and grown steadily worse.

He’d been relieved to hear Lally’s message in the early hours of Tuesday morning, but by the time he’d gotten around to calling her back later that day, her own machine had
been switched on, and he supposed she and Hugo had left for their vacation. For a while, he’d put her firmly out of his mind, but then that odd, gnawing sense of discomfort about her had
returned, and the knowledge that there was no sound reason for it and nothing he could do about it, hadn’t helped at all.

Today had begun with a face-to-face confrontation with Marie Howe Ferguson’s grieving husband, Sean, and Dr John Morrissey, her close friend, cardiologist and partner. Given the
commander’s blessing to do and say anything within reason that would hold the two men in check at least a while longer, Joe had met with them shortly after eight in the drawing room of the
Fergusons’ town house on North Lincoln Square. It was a room that had made even Al Hagen’s apartment look almost cheap. Fine art, antiques, Georgian silver, a glistening piano topped
with a mass of framed photographs, a handsome fireplace with logs blazing, every last detail exquisitely understated. It was old money, and none of it anything much to do with Sean Ferguson, who
looked as if he might have been more at ease in a converted loft but who also, it was plain to see, had adored his wife passionately, and was ready to go into battle with everyone from Lieutenant
Joseph Duval through the President of Hagen Industries up to the Director of the FBI, if necessary.

“My wife is still in the morgue, Lieutenant,” Ferguson had told Joe, his dark wounded eyes full of fiery anguish. “I want to bury her, but they put me off and off. I know what
I saw, and I know what killed her, and now I want to know how and why and
who
– ”

“Mr Ferguson – ”

“And we’ve both had a bellyful of reassuring noises, Lieutenant,” Ferguson rode over Joe’s words, “and the reason you’re here is because we want to know
everything, and we want to know it right now.”

“And we’d be sitting with the Superintendent himself,” John Morrissey, a distinguished, silver-haired man had said, very quietly, “if Chief Hankin hadn’t sworn that
you know more about the investigation than anyone else in the country.”

“And if we don’t get chapter and verse now, this morning,” Ferguson had added, “we’re going to go public, whatever the consequences.”

Joe had watched them, and listened carefully, and looked at the photographs of the late Marie Ferguson, a pretty lady with honey-coloured hair and green eyes and an expression that reminded him
of Jess, and he’d gone with his instincts and told them every single thing he could. And although it was a still-miserable tale of fruitless searching and sniffing around, Morrissey and
Ferguson had seemed to accept his honesty and integrity, and that though things had started too damned slowly, all that could be done was now being done; and the practical physician in Morrissey
couldn’t help but agree with the consensus that mass explanation, without more information, was still a nightmare scenario.

At eleven o’clock, Joe had attended his second and infinitely more gruelling meeting of the day, held in the far less congenial surroundings of a conference room at City
Hall. Also present had been Chief Hankin, Commander Jackson, and the Regional Director of the FBI along with two special agents, the Director of News Affairs for the Chicago Police Department, the
Commissioners of Public Safety from Chicago, Boston and San Francisco, the press secretaries from the mayors’ offices of each of those cities, and an emissary from the Surgeon General of the
United States Government. The agenda was a pooling of information and an analysis of the current situation; the formulation of a joint decision with regard to the level of confidentiality that
could reasonably be demanded from chiefs of surgery around the country once contingency plans and lists of patients at risk were shared with them; and finally, their approach to the media.

Jackson had presented his report on the investigation to date, and no criticism of Joe’s heading of the pacemaker task force had been voiced during the meeting, though Joe felt that the
coolness of the eyes surveying him had spoken volumes. Time, it was generally accepted, was running out. With so many people in three states in possession of a dangerously minimal amount of
information – if all hell was not to break loose some time during the next few days – it was agreed that meetings would have to be held with all the news agencies and broadcasting
companies without further delay to try to agree a temporary news blackout.

It was after two in the afternoon when Joe returned to Hagen Pacing and found Cohen waiting for him in the lobby, his face wrinkled with anxiety.

“It’s okay,” Joe reassured him. “They didn’t fire me yet.”

“I need a minute, Joe.”

“Sure.” Relief at having escaped the heavy artillery had buoyed him up a little. “What’s up?”

“In private.”

Joe glanced at him quizzically. “What’s happened?”

“There’s something you have to see.”

“What is it?”

“In the office.”

Since the expansion of the task force, another desk and two more filing cabinets had been squeezed into their allotted office. A heap of computer printouts lay on the desk closest to the window.
No one else was in the room.

“I was looking over the patients’ names,” Cohen said. He sounded nervous. “Maybe it’s because of my own pacemaker, but I really feel for all those people – I
mean, thank God they don’t know yet, but – ” He stopped.

“And?” Joe was being patient. “Sol, what’s wrong with you?”

“One of the names.”

“Someone you know?” Concern began to rise. “Who is it?”

“I think you should take a look.”

Joe picked up the concertina of computer sheets.

“And I think you should sit down.”

Joe remained standing. He saw the pencil mark Cohen had made to the left of the name, and the blood drained out of his face.

Hélène Duval, Lenox Road, W. Stockbridge, Mass.

He sat down, trembling.

“It can’t be. It’s a mistake.”

“I don’t think so.” Cohen’s face was wreathed in sympathy. “Joe, I’m sorry. I kept looking, and I couldn’t seem to take it in.”

Joe still stared at the computer sheets. “I don’t understand. Why didn’t she tell me?”

“Didn’t you even know she was sick?”

Joe shook his head, too dazed to speak.

“You told me you talked to her the other day,” Cohen said, gently. “You said she was taking a vacation.”

“We didn’t speak. She left a message.” Joe’s voice was hardly more than a whisper. “I’ve been thinking about her so much, worrying – I didn’t know
why, it made no sense – but things were so crazy here, and then when I heard her voice, she sounded so normal.” He shook his head again. “So
well
.”

Cohen pulled up one of the other chairs, a typist’s upright, on rollers. He sat astride it, facing the back. “We have to find her, Joe. Where did she go?”

“I don’t know.” The daze began to dissipate. Panic swelled in its place. “Sol, I don’t know, she didn’t tell me.”

“So we’ll call her friend Hugo.”

“They went together.”

“Who else would know?” Joe didn’t answer. “Who else, Joe?”

“Toni Petrillo, her neighbour.”

“Good. You have his number?”

“Her number. No, I don’t.”

“No problem.” Cohen picked up the phone. “I’ll get it.”

Joe stared at the computer printout. He remembered wondering, when he’d heard Lally’s voice on Tuesday, where they’d gone. Skiing, he’d guessed. An image had flashed
across his mind then, of Lally the last time he’d seen her on the slopes at Bousquet, wearing a crimson one-piece suit, long dark hair flying, waving a ski pole at him and laughing. The image
had made him smile. Lally almost always did.

But she couldn’t have gone skiing, Joe knew that now, because she’d been sick, real sick, and the vacation must have been arranged as convalescence. Something had been wrong with
Lally’s heart – with his own sister’s
heart
– and he hadn’t even known. It was typical of her, not wanting to worry him, knowing he had Jess’s pregnancy
to concern him, but goddamnit, he had a right to worry about his own sister, didn’t he? And now she was out there, somewhere, and she had this thing in her chest –

“Joe.”

Joe blinked. Cohen had put down the phone.

“No answer from Toni Petrillo, but I just realized we’re going about this the wrong way. There’s no reason to assume Lally’s pacemaker was even made by Hagen – this
is just a list of everyone in the country who’s had an implant in the last six months. We need to talk to her doctor.”

“Charlie Sheldon.” The first surge of panic had receded, and Joe felt numb. “He’s been our doctor for ever.”

“Number.” Cohen nudged him gently. “Joe, give me his number.”

“He’s the only Dr Sheldon in Stockbridge.”

Charlie Sheldon was out, too. An hour passed, and Toni Petrillo continued not to answer her phone, and the doctor’s answering service thought that maybe his beeper wasn’t working or
was out of range, because he usually called in right away when they tried him. Joe knew they’d reach him before much longer, and failing that, he knew that the local police would go get him.
And somehow, just a little later on, they’d find out where Lally and Hugo had gone, too, and by then they’d probably have learned that Lally’s pacemaker wasn’t a Hagen at
all, and none of it would matter any more.

But in the meantime, somewhere, in the snow or in the sun, by the ocean or deep in the heart of the countryside – maybe even in a major city – maybe even thirty or forty thousand
feet up in the sky – Lally was sitting, or walking, or swimming, or eating, or maybe dancing, without the slightest suspicion that the alien thing in her chest – the tiny object plugged
into her heart that was meant to be keeping her alive – might instead be a killer.

The commander had been understanding. For the commander.

“Take the next few hours, Duval.”

“I might need a little longer than that, sir.”

“You want me to take you off the case?”

“No.”

“Then take the next few hours.”

Joe was almost out of his skin. The numbness had long since evaporated, and all his nerve ends seemed to be on fire. He had managed to avoid yelling at too many people in his efforts to track
Lally down, aware that offended New Englanders could become frigidly uncooperative. When he’d finally gotten hold of Doc Sheldon early Thursday evening, he’d been so shocked by what Joe
had told him that for a moment Joe had been afraid he might have a heart attack himself, but then the doctor had dragged himself into action, promising to get hold of Lucas Ash, the cardiologist,
right away.

It had been ten o’clock before Joe had heard from him again.

“I’m sorry, Joe,” Sheldon said.

Joe’s stomach took a dive. “It’s a Hagen.”

“No, not that – I meant I’m sorry I have no news for you. Dr Ash is out of state, and can’t be reached.”