Life Support (37 page)

Seconds later, so did Toby.

The Saab headed west, winding its way into the tonier sections of Wellesley. It wasn't Jane at the wheel, but a man, she could see his head silhouetted against the glare of oncoming headlights. Completely focused on her quarry, Toby caught only glimpses of the neighborhood, iron gates and tall hedges and lights shining from many-windowed houses.

The Saab picked up speed, the tail lights receding into the night.

A truck pulled onto the road from a cross street and slipped between Toby and the Saab.

In frustration, Toby blew her horn.

The truck slowed down and veered right. She shot past it, finally pulling in front of it.

The road ahead was empty.

Cursing, she scanned the darkness for a glimpse of taillights. She spotted them fading off to the right. The Saab had turned onto a private drive and was weaving through a dense stand of trees.

She slammed on the brakes and swerved onto the same road. Heart pounding, she braked to a stop and gave herself time to steady her nerves and allow her pulse to slow down. The Saab's taillights vanished beyond the trees, but she was no longer worried about losing it, this road seemed to be the only way on and off the property.

A mailbox was mounted at the entrance, the red flag up. She stepped out of the car and looked inside the box. There were two envelopes inside, utility payments. The name Trammell was on the return address.

She got back in her car and took a deep breath. With the headlights off, guided only by her parking lights, she drove slowly down the road.

It wound through the trees in a gentle downhill grade. She rode the brakes all the way, letting the car glide at a crawl along sharp curves that were barely visible in the dim glow of the parking lights. The road seemed endless as it wound past thickets of evergreens. She could not see what lay at the end of the road, all she could make out was intermittent twinkles of light through the branches. Moving deeper into the lair of the enemy, she thought. Yet she didn't turn back, she was forced onward by all the pain and rage of these past few weeks. Robbie's death. Soon Ellen's, as well. Get a life, Wallenberg had sneered at her.

This is my life now. All that's left of it The road widened to a driveway. She pulled off to the side, her tires skidding across pine needles, and turned off the engine.

A mansion loomed ahead in the darkness. The upstairs windows were lit, and a woman's silhouette glided past one of them, then back again in agitated pacing. Toby recognized the profile.

Jane. Did she live here?

Toby gazed up at the massive roofline, which blotted out her view of half the stars in the sky. She could make out four chimneys, as well as the gleam of third-story windows. Was Jane a guest here? Or merely an employee?

A light-haired man appeared in the upstairs window�the driver of Jane's Saab. They spoke to each other. He glanced at his watch, then made a how-should-l-know? gesture with his arms. Now Jane seemed even more agitated, perhaps angry. She crossed the room and picked up a telephone.

Toby fished a penlight out of her medical bag and stepped out of her car.

The Saab was parked near the front porch. She wanted to find out who owned it, who Jane was working for. She crossed to the Saab and shone her penlight through the car window. The interior was clean, not even a stray scrap of paper in sight. She tried the passenger door and found it unlocked. In the glove compartment were the car's registration papers, made out to a Richard Trammell. She popped open the trunk lock and circled around to the rear of the car. Leaning forward, she played her penlight on the trunk's interior.

From behind her came the snap of twigs, the rustle of something moving through the underbrush. A low, threatening growl.

Toby whirled and saw the gleam of teeth as the Doberman sprang.

The force of its attack went her sprawling. Instinctively she brought up her hands to protect her throat. The dog's jaws clamped down on her forearm, its teeth sinking straight to the bone. She screamed, flailing at him, but the Doberman would not release her. It began to whip its head back and forth, teeth ripping at flesh. Blinded by pain, she gripped the dog by the throat with her free hand and tried to choke it into releasing her, but its teeth seemed permanently embedded in her arm. Only when she clawed at its eyes did the dog give a yelp and release her.

She rolled free and scrambled back to her feet, blood streaming down her arm, and ran toward her car.

Again the Doberman lunged.

It slammed into her back, knocking her to her knees. This time its jaws caught only her shirt, teeth shredding fabric. She flung off the animal and heard it collide with the Saab. Too soon the Doberman was back on its feet and coiling for the third attack.

A man shouted, "Down!"

Toby staggered to her feet but never made it to the safety of her car.

This time it was a pair of human hands that captured her and slammed her facedown against the hood of the Saab.

The Doberman was barking wildly, demanding to be allowed to make its kill.

Toby twisted and tried to squirm free. The last thing she saw was the flashlight beam, tracing an arc through the night. The blow caught her in the temple, flinging her sideways. She felt herself falling, tumbling into blackness.

Cold. It was very cold.

As though surfacing through icy waters, she drifted back toward consciousness. At first she couldn't feel her limbs, she had no sense of where they were, or even if they were still attached to her body.

A door thudded shut, releasing a strangely metallic series of echoes.

The sound seemed to ring like a bell in Toby's head. She groaned and rolled onto her side. The floor felt like ice. Curling into a ball, she lay shivering as she struggled to think, to make her limbs respond. Her arm was hurting now, the pain gnawing its way through her numbness. She opened her eyes and winced as light pierced her retinas.

There was blood on her shirt. The sight of it shocked her fully awake.

She focused on her shredded sleeve, soaked red.

The Doberman.

As the memory of those jaws flooded back, so did the pain, returning with such intensity she felt herself slipping back toward unconsciousness. She fought to stay awake. Rocking onto her back, she collided with a table leg. Something fell loose and swung above her head. She looked up and saw a naked arm hanging over the edge of the table, its fingers dangling just above her face.

Gasping, she rolled away and scrambled to her knees. The light headedness lasted only a few seconds, then cleared as the image came shockingly into focus.

There was a body on the table, covered by a plastic drape. Only the arm was visible, the skin a bluish white under the fluorescent lights.

Toby rose to her feet. She was still dizzy and had to reach out to a countertop to steady herself. She refocused on the body and saw there was another table in the room, with another plastic-draped form. A blast of refrigerated air rumbled from a vent. Slowly she took stock of her surroundings�the windowless walls, the heavy steel door�and she realized where she was. The foul odor alone should have told her.

It was a cold room, for the storage of corpses.

Focusing again on the dangling arm, she approached the table and pulled aside the drape.

The man was elderly, his dark brown hair showing silver roots. A bad dye job. His eyelids were open, revealing glazed blue eyes. She peeled back the rest of the drape and saw that the nude body was unmarred by any obvious injuries. The only bruises were on his arm, and she recognized them as the aftermath of IVs. Tucked between his ankles was a manila folder with a name written on the cover, James R. Bigelow. She opened it and saw it was a medical record of the man's last week of life.

The first entry was dated November 1.

Subject observed to be dumsy during breakfast�poured milk on plate instead of cup�responded with look of confusion when asked if he needed help. Patient escorted to clinic for further eval.

On exam, mild tremors. Positive cerebellar.findings. No other localizing sign& Permanent transfer sequence initiated.

The note was unsigned.

She struggled to understand what she was reading, but her headache made every word a challenge. What did that last entry mean? Permanent transfer sequence?

She flipped forward, through the next few entries, to November 3.

Patient unable to walk without assistance. EEG results nonspecific.

Tremors worse, cerebellar signs more pronounced. CT scan shows pituitary enlargement, no acute changes.

November 4, Disoriented times two. Episode of startle myodonus. Cerebellar function continues to deteriorate. All labs remain normal.

Then, the final entry, on November 7.

Patient in four-point restraints. Inconffnent bowel and bladder.

Twenty-four-hour IVfluids and sedation. Terminal stages. Autopsy

to follow.

She lay the chart down on the man's bare thighs. For a moment she gazed at the body with strangely clinical detachment, noting the silver hairs on the chest, the wrinkles on the abdomen, the limp penis in its nest of wiry hair. Had he known the risks? she wondered. Had it occurred to him that trying to live forever would exact its costs?

The old are feeding on the young.

She swayed against the table, vision blurring from the pain throbbing in her head. It took her a moment to refocus her eyes. When she did, her gaze shffled to the other corpse.

She left the first table and went to stand beside the second body, still concealed beneath its drape. She drew away the shroud. Though she'd steeled herself, she was not prepared for the horror of what lay on that table.

The man's corpse had been flayed open, the rib cage and abdomen cleanly sliced down the center and spread apart, revealing a jumble of internal organs. Whoever had autopsied the corpse had removed the organs, then replaced them again with no concern for proper anatomy.

She backed away as nausea assailed her. The odor of this corpse told her it had been dead longer than the first one.

She forced herself to step back toward it, to look at the plastic ID wristband. The name Phillip Dorr had been written in black marker. She saw no medical record, no documentation of the man's illness.

She forced herself to look at the face. It was another elderly man, eyebrows streaked with gray, the face strangely collapsed like a rubber mask. She noticed only than that the scalp had been slit behind the ear.

The flap had sagged, exposing a pearly arc of skull. Gently she tugged on the hair, gingerly peeling the scalp forward.

The top of the cranium fell off and clattered onto the floor.

She gave a cry and jerked away.

The skull gaped open like an empty bowl. There was nothing inside, the brain had been removed.

I l S he'll be here," said Dvorak, watching Alpren tap a pencil on the desk.

"Just be patient."

Detective Alpren looked at his watch. "It's been two hours. I think you screwed up, Doc. You shouldn't have told her."

"And you shouldn't jump to conclusions. This arrest warrant is premature. You haven't finished the preliminary investigation."

"Yeah, I'm supposed to waste my time searching for the real Jane Nolan?

I'd rather arrest the real Dr. Harper. If we can even find her now."

"Give her a chance to walk in here on her own. Maybe she's waiting for her attorney. Maybe she went home to square things away."

"She didn't go home. We sent a cruiser there half an hour ago. I think Dr. Harper's put pedal to the metal and skipped town. Right now she's probably a hundred miles away, thinking about ditching the car."

Dvorak stared at the clock on the wall. He could not picture I Toby Harper as a fugitive, she didn't seem like a woman who'd run, but someone who'd turn and fight back. Now he had to question his instincts, had to rethink everything he knew, or thought he knew about her.

Clearly Alpren took some measure of satisfaction from all this. Dvorak the M.D. had screwed up, this time the cop had proved a better judge of character. Dvorak sat in silence, anger balling up in his stomach, anger at Alpren for his smugness, at Toby for betraying his trust.

Alpren answered a ringing telephone. When he put it down again, he had a glitter in his eyes, hard and self-satisfied. "They found her Mercedes."

"Where?"

"Logan Airport. She left it parked in the passenger loading zone.

Guess she was in a hurry to catch a plane." He stood up. "No reason to hang around any longer, Doc. She's not coming in."

Dvorak drove home with his radio turned off, the silence only fueling his agitation. She ran, he thought, and there was only one explanation for it, a guilty conscience, and the certainty of punishment. Yet certain details continued to trouble him. He played out the sequence of actions that a fleeing Toby would have taken. She'd driven to Logan, where she'd abandoned her car in the loading zone, hurried into the terminal, and boarded a plane, destination unknown.

But this was not logical. Leaving a car in the loading zone was simply flagging attention to it. Anyone attempting a discreet escape would have parked their car in one of the crowded satellite lots, where it might go unnoticed for days.

So she didn't board a plane. Alpren might think she was that stupid, but Dvorak knew better. The detective was wasting his time, checking the flights out of Logan.

She must be fleeing some other way.

When Dvorak walked in his front door, he headed straight for the telephone. He was angry now, stung by Toby's betrayal, and by his own stupidity. He picked up the receiver to call Alpren, then put it down again when he noticed his answering machine was blinking. He hit Play.

The electronic voice gave the message time as five forty-five. Toby's voice came on, "I'm in the Springer medical library, extension two five seven. There's something here on Medline you have to see. Please, please call me back right . . ."

The last time they'd spoken was around seven-thirty, so this phone message had preceded their final conversation. He remembered she'd been trying to tell him something, that he'd cut her off before she could explain what she'd found.