Mistress of Justice (44 page)

He pulled out a book and began reading.

Taylor’s chicken soup came and as she was sprinkling Tabasco on it the man next to her took a sip of coffee. When he replaced the cup his elbow knocked his book to the floor. It dropped at her feet.

“Oh, sorry,” he said, blushing.

“No problem,” she said and bent down to retrieve the book. When she handed it to him he smiled his thanks and said, “I like this place. You come here a lot?” A trace of some accent from one of the outer boroughs.

“Some.”

“With your boyfriend?” he asked, smiling, ruefully.

She nodded, and let the small lie do double duty: let him know she wasn’t interested and save his ego from a flat-out rejection.

“Ah, well,” he sighed and returned to his book.

When she left he was working on a double cheeseburger. He waved to her and called, “Merry Christmas.”

“You too,” she said.

Back at home, she pulled the phone book out from under her bed and looked up toy stores.

Well, let’s start at the beginning.

As she stood to get the phone she realized she felt achy, as if a cold were coming on. Her head was hurting a bit too. She went into the bathroom to get some aspirin, swallowed them down and returned to the bedroom to start calling the stores in search of Reece’s Christmas present.

Feeling tired …

She reclined on the bed and picked up the cordless phone.

She’d dialed the first digit when she gasped and sat up fast. A churning pain struck somewhere deep within her abdomen. Her face burst out in sweat.

“Oh, man,” she whispered. Not the flu, not now.…

Recalling that she often got sick around Christmas when she was young. A therapist she’d seen for a while had wondered if it wasn’t her dread of a holiday presided over by a domineering father.

“Oh …” She moaned again, pressing the skin above the pang hard with both her hands. It ceased for a moment then exploded in another eruption of agony.

Taylor stood up, adding nausea to the sensation. The room began to spin and she tried to control her fall to the parquet floor. Her head hit the dressing table and she blacked out.

When she opened her eyes she saw claws.

The Jabberwock’s claws, disemboweling her, tearing her stomach, throat, the back of her mouth, shredding her flesh …

She squinted. No, no, they were just the claws on the legs of her bed. She—

The pain stunned her again and she moaned, a low, animal sound.

Sweat filled her eyes and ran down her nose. She wrapped her arms around herself and drew her legs up, trying to stop the pain. Every muscle hard as rubber, she tried to will the pain away but this had no effect. Then the nausea overwhelmed her and Taylor crawled to the toilet, opened the seat and held herself up on one arm while she vomited and retched for what seemed like hours.

Her hands shook, her skin was inflamed. She stared at the tiny hexagonal tiles in front of her until she fainted again. Consciousness returned and she struggled for the phone. But her muscles gave out and she dropped again to the floor. From a distant dimension she heard a thunk—the sound of her head hitting the tiles.

She understood now that she’d been poisoned.… The man at the restaurant. The workman in the coveralls and baseball cap.
He
was the one who’d stolen the note, the one who’d run them off the road, the one who’d killed Wendall Clayton.

That was why he’d seemed familiar—because she must’ve seen him in the firm or following her and Reece earlier. Maybe he’d overheard her conversation with John Silbert Hemming. Maybe he’d put a tap on
her
phone at the office or even in her apartment.

She—

Then the poison began to churn again and she started to retch in earnest, unable to breathe, trying to scream for help, slamming her hand on the dresser so that somebody might hear and come to her aid. Perfume bottles fell, makeup, an Alice in Wonderland snowball crashed to the floor and broke, the water and sparkles spattering her.

She began to pummel the floor—until she realized she had no feeling in her hand; it was completely numb. Taylor Lockwood began to cry.

She crawled to the phone, dialed 911.

“Police and fire emergency.”

She couldn’t speak. Her tongue had turned to wood.
The air was becoming thinner and thinner, sucked from the room.

The voice said, “Is anyone there? Hello? Hello? …”

Taylor’s hands stopped working. She dropped the phone. She closed her eyes.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

“What happened?” Carrie Mason asked.

The doctor was a woman in her mid-thirties. She had straight blond hair and wore no makeup except for bright blue eye shadow. The medico’s badge said Dr. V. Sarravich.

The woman said, “Botulism.”

“Botulism? Food poisoning?”

“I’m afraid she ate some severely tainted food.”

“Is she going to be okay?”

“Botulism’s much more serious than other types of food poisoning. She’s unconscious, in shock. Severely dehydrated. The prognosis isn’t good. We should get in touch with her family, if she has any. She lived alone and apparently the police couldn’t find her address book or any next-of-kin information. We found your name and number on a card in her purse.”

“I don’t know where her parents live. I’ll give you the name of someone who can get in touch with them. Can I see her?”

“She’s in the Critical Care Unit. You can’t visit now,” Dr.
Sarravich said. Medical people were all so serious, the girl thought.

Carrie asked, “Is it really bad?”

She hesitated—a concession to delicacy—and said, “I’m afraid it may be fatal and even if it isn’t there could be some permanent damage.”

“What kind of damage?”

“Neuromuscular.”

“To her hands?” Carrie asked.

“Possibly.”

“But she’s a musician,” the paralegal said, alarmed. “A pianist.”

“It’s too early to tell anything at this point.” A pen and paper appeared, and the doctor asked, “Now, whom should I contact?”

Carrie wrote a name and phone number. The doctor looked at the pad. “Donald Burdick. Who is he?”

“The head of the firm she works at. He can tell you everything you want to know.”

Taylor’s eyes opened slowly. Her skin stung from the sandblasting of fever. Her vision was blurred. Her head was in a vise of fiery pressure. Her legs and arms were useless, like blocks of wood grafted to her torso. The nausea and cramps were still rampaging through her abdomen and her throat was dry as paper.

There was a young woman in a pale blue uniform making the bed next to hers.

Taylor had never been in such pain. Every breath brought pain. Every twitch was a throb of pain. She assumed that the nerves in her hands and legs had short-circuited—she couldn’t move her limbs.

Taylor whispered.

No reaction from the young woman.

She screamed.

The attendant cocked her head.

She screamed again.

No reaction. Taylor closed her eyes and rested after the agonizing effort.

Several minutes later the bed was made. As the attendant walked toward the door, she glanced at Taylor.

Taylor screamed, “Poison!”

The aide leaned down. “Did you say something, honey?” Taylor smelled fruity gum on her breath and felt like gagging.

“Poison,” she managed to say. “I was poisoned.”

“Yes, food poisoning,” the girl said and started to leave.

Taylor screamed, “I want Mitchell!”

The girl held up the watch on her pudgy wrist. “It’s not midnight. It’s about six.”

“I want Mitchell. Please …”

Taylor tried fiercely to hold on to consciousness but it spilled away like a handful of sugar. She had an impression of struggling to leap out of bed and calling Mitchell in Boston but then she realized that her legs and arms had started to spasm. Then a nurse was standing over her, staring in alarm and reaching for the call button, pushing it fiercely over and over.

And then the room went black.

At 7:30
P.M
. the telephone in Donald Burdick’s co-op rang.

He was in the living room. He heard Vera answer it then mentally followed her footsteps as they completed a circuit that ended in the arched entrance near him. Her calm face appeared.

“Phone, Don,” Vera said. “It’s the doctor.”

The
Wall Street Journal
crumpled in his hand. He rose and together they walked to the den.

“Yes?” he asked.

“Mr. Burdick?” a woman’s matter-of-fact voice asked. “This is Dr. Vivian Sarravich again. From Manhattan General Hospital? I’m calling about Ms. Lockwood.”

“Yes?”

“I’m afraid I have bad news, sir. Miss Taylor has gone into a coma. Our neurologist’s opinion is that she won’t be coming out of it in the near future … if at all. And if she does she’s certain to have permanent brain and neuromuscular damage.”

Burdick shook his head to Vera. He held the phone out a ways so that she too could hear. “It’s that bad?”

“This is the most severe case of botulism I’ve ever seen. The infection was much greater than usual. She’s had two respiratory failures. We had to put her on a ventilator. And a feeding tube, of course.”

“Her family?”

“We’ve told them. Her parents on on their way here.”

“Yes, well, thank you, Doctor. You’ll keep me posted?”

“Of course. I am sorry. We did everything we could.”

“I’m sure you did.”

Burdick hung up and said to his wife, “She probably won’t make it.”

Vera gave a neutral nod and then glanced at the maid who’d silently appeared beside them. “They’re here, Mrs. Burdick.”

“Show them into the den, ’Nita.”