Mortal Remains (18 page)

He glanced once more along the ridge.

It was fully bathed in moonlight now.

There, against the sky, appeared the shape of a man climbing into view, a rifle on his back. An instant later he knelt and probed the ground around his feet with a penlight.

That same evening, Monday, November 19, 6:00 P.M.

New York City Hospital

E
arl huddled against the wind at the Thirty-third Street entrance, cupping the mouthpiece of his cellular with his hand. Horizontal needles of rain stung against his skin. Everyone else rushing by seemed to have an umbrella. He eyed a kid who had been selling them out of a garbage bag and signaled him to bring one over, all the while continuing his conversation with Janet. “I came up empty. The only significant thing is that Cam Roper, Mark’s father, might have looked at those same charts just after Kelly went missing. Except he probably didn’t find anything either, or he would have done something about it. I can’t reach Mark to tell him. His phone doesn’t seem to be working.”

“It’s still pretty bizarre, those records attracting his interest,” Janet said.

“If I’m right about Kelly trying to find evidence of malpractice to use as leverage against Chaz, then maybe Cam Roper had followed up on those suspicions, or at least started to before he passed away.” He fished five bucks out of his pocket, and gave it to the pint-sized merchant, who cut the gloom with a grin as bright as polished ivory. Popping open what looked as flimsy as a bat wing and was undoubtedly stolen goods, Earl instantly felt better, but had to speak up as the rain drummed on the black material, creating the din of a thousand impatient fingers. “Cam could have thought she’d confronted Chaz with some grievous error he’d made that would ruin his career, and he’d killed her for it. Except Roper Senior likely came to the same conclusion as the M and M reports. ‘Unexpected but unavoidable digoxin toxicity with no obvious cause.’ ”

Janet said nothing.

In the roar of the storm he thought the connection was gone. “Janet?”

“I’m here.”

“So what’s got your tongue.”

“I hesitate to say it, but there’s another possible scenario.”

A wave of static interrupted them. “Go on,” he said, when it cleared.

“Somebody could have tried to murder those patients by secretly injecting extra doses of the drug.”

“That’s pretty far-fetched.”

“But not impossible. It’s occurred in hospitals before.”

“But no one ever raised the possibility of foul play here. Certainly it was never mentioned in the charts.”

“That doesn’t necessarily mean it didn’t happen.”

He exhaled the way only a former smoker can – long, slow, and from the bottom of his lungs. “Being unable to talk with either of them means I may never know.”

“What about family?”

“I talked with the woman’s son this afternoon, but he never brought up anything of that sort. I can call him back and ask him outright if she ever mentioned having any enemies or suspicions of someone trying to harm her, but I think he would have mentioned it if she had. As for the man who died, he’d no next of kin, so there isn’t a hope of finding out more there.”

She fell silent again.

“It isn’t entirely a dead end,” he continued. “I’ve arranged to meet with the floor staff involved in her care. Maybe they can tell me if she ever mentioned anyone who might hurt her. And it turns out Melanie Collins continued to see the woman as a patient from time to time over the years, so maybe she’ll be able to fill me in on something I’m missing.” He’d already left several messages on her service, asking her to call, but she hadn’t gotten back to him yet.

This time Janet let out a sigh, minor-league compared to his own. “Good luck, love. Oh, by the way, I looked up divorce law on the Internet, and as far as I can see, she’d have gone offshore.”

Once Janet got an idea, she was relentless. “That may be, but the police found no record of any plane or boat tickets in her name.”

“That doesn’t mean she didn’t intend to go there. Maybe her killer stopped her before she could make the move. All I know is, find a woman’s divorce lawyer, and you find someone who knows a lot about the woman.”

Mark huddled in the bushes, trying to blend with the scrubby growth.

The man on the ridge looked up from his study of the ground and seemed to stare right at him. Then he looked in the other direction, and finally rose to his feet. If he’d seen Mark or the hunter below, he showed no sign, turning away and peering into the night.

The hunter must have been outside his line of sight, Mark thought. Otherwise, if they were together, why hadn’t he called to him? Even if they weren’t, he would still have reacted, possibly even mistaken him for Mark and taken a shot at him.

Instead the man walked off in the opposite direction, playing his light over the snow on either side of the spiny path.

Mark exhaled in momentary relief.

Looking down he saw that the hunter hadn’t budged, his dark form still visible, his breath coming out in well-spaced puffs. By counting the interval, Mark estimated that whoever he was, he’d controlled his respirations down to ten a minute, which took rock-solid nerve.

As Mark watched, the man slowly leveled the gun barrel as if he were about to shoot something farther down the slope. Again he seemed to be listening.

Mark heard nothing but the rush of the wind.

From within the darkness of the woods leapt a great amorphous shadow in what initially appeared to be a singular movement. Immediately it flew into pieces, the parts darting through the trees at the forest edge, each zigzagging around the trunks like formless gray spirits.

Three shots rang out, but, like smoke, the creatures had vanished.

Except for one.

Its antlered head twisted round, and it spiraled to its knees, staggered up on its legs, then pitched forward again. It writhed in the snow, kicking and thrashing its neck side to side as if to shake off what had felled it. Black stains pooled on the snow, and the writhing eventually slowed. It raised its head once more, as if straining to see the moon through the treetops, its mouth open and gasping. Then it collapsed, its mighty struggle giving over to lesser quiverings.

The hunter walked over and put a final bullet into the buck’s head.

Mark spun around in time to see the first man standing stock-still in the distance, staring toward the sound of the shot. He then scurried over the edge of the ridge and ran back down the way he’d come.

7:00 P.M.

Mark hated all-terrain vehicles. Gas-powered models were carbon-monoxide-spewing noise polluters. Battery-operated versions, though quieter, tipped, killed, and paralyzed just as many victims as their noisier cousins. But among hunters, especially the middle-of-the-night kind, they were the transportation of choice this time of year, before the snow got too deep.

Perched on the back of a red, four-wheel-drive minitractor, he said nothing of this to his grizzled driver as they bounced over the nonwooded sections of the valley. Rather he expressed profound gratitude for the ride home, especially given that the old guy had had to make a choice whether to haul Mark or the deer out first.

Mark had won, and got a shot of the man’s whiskey to boot.

He occasionally had to grab his host’s shoulders to keep from falling off. Under a blue-checked hunting jacket he felt muscles hard as tangled ropes despite a face etched with so many wrinkles they were like rings of a tree and gave an age near eighty. That made him from an era in which men took down deer to put food on the family table, not for sport.

When they pulled up to the back fence of Mark’s property, his driver didn’t give a name, and Mark didn’t ask. But the handshake between them felt firm, also from another time, when it would have been only natural for a man to help a stranger.

Mark watched him ride off to fetch his kill. The wind had chased away the storm, and the moon was at its zenith now, its light filling the countryside like clear blue water. Soon his rescuer was but a soundless dot churning a path back up the far slope.

Marked climbed the rickety log fence and headed over the field toward his house. The snow was barely six inches deep, and he had no trouble walking. All he could think off was a hot shower, clean clothes, and something to eat. Then he’d call Dan, and have him get his ass over to Chaz Braden’s place to ask some pointed questions-

His thoughts came to an abrupt halt.

The lights were on in his house.

And against the upstairs curtains he saw the shadow of someone walking about, moving from room to room.

Too incredulous to move, his brain clicked into action.

Braden!

That ambush and chase had been nothing more than a diversion, intended to keep him out of the way so the son of a bitch could search his house again.

“Well no goddamn way,” he muttered, sprinting for the back door.

He reached it in less than a minute, and, finding his key, let himself in as noiselessly as he could.

Sure enough, he could hear the floorboards above his head creaking as the intruder continued to walk back and forth.

He crept out of the kitchen, through the hallway to the stairs, pausing to pick up the baseball bat he’d put back in the front closet. He glanced outside, and to his amazement, saw a dark station wagon parked in his driveway.
Bloody nerve,
he thought, and, holding his weapon at the ready, crept up the steps.

The creaking seemed to be coming from behind the closed door to his guest bedroom.

Get ready to be welcomed, visitor, he said to himself, reaching the landing and weighing the heft of his weapon. He wanted it to be Chaz. Wanted to terrify the creep, confront him about the shooting, about Kelly, make him blurt out a confession or two.

He crossed the final few feet and, holding the bat in his right hand, slowly turned the brass knob with his left. He took a few slow breaths, preparing himself for battle.

“Freeze, you asshole!” he roared, flinging the door open and leaping into the room, the bat cocked over his shoulder.

A young woman with long black hair whom he’d never seen before clutched a bathrobe around her and let out a bloodcurdling yell the whole county would hear.

Before he could react, she pivoted on one leg and came at his head with a karate kick.

His skull hurt.

And his neck.

“I’m lucky I didn’t kill him,” a woman said.

“I’d say he’s the lucky one,” a man who sounded familiar replied. “Where’d you learn to kick like that?”

“At a karate school in Paris.”

He must have fallen asleep on his couch with no pillow – that would explain the pain – and left the TV on.

“Could you have fractured one of his vertebrae?” the man asked.

He knew that voice. Must be an actor he’d seen before.

“Not without breaking my foot. It feels fine.”

The woman’s voice he didn’t recognize at all.

“Well, I’m glad of that, for both of you.”

Wait a minute. That wasn’t an actor. It was Dan. What would he be doing on a television show?

Before he could open his eyes, someone pried his right lid up, beamed a white light directly into his pupil, and peered at him through the opposite side of an ophthalmoscope. “Stop it.” He moaned, and tried to move away from the glare, still feeling he had a hot coal buried in there. But a burning sheet of pain snapped up the back of his head and stopped him.

Then he remembered what had happened.

“Something has abraded your cornea, Dr. Roper,” the woman said from somewhere beyond the glare, “and I don’t think it was my toenails – wait a minute. Sheriff Evans, can you hand me my medical bag?” She removed the ophthalmoscope, leaving him momentarily blinded, but he could hear her rummaging around for something.

“What the hell’s going on?” he mumbled, unable to make his mouth move properly.

“Hold my light, please, Sheriff,” she ordered, and brought a tiny pair of forceps into view.

“Now wait a second-”

“Don’t move, Doctor.”

Before he could reply the white glare of the scope floodlit his eyeball again, and her fingers pulled the lids even farther apart.

He winced at a slight stinging sensation, then it was over.

“There,” she said, suddenly releasing her grip and allowing him to retreat back into darkness.

The hot coal sensation had vanished. He still felt a slight burning, but found it tolerable.

She studied the tip of the tiny forceps in her hand. “You had a piece of glass stuck superficially in the conjunctival membrane. Luckily it wasn’t embedded in the cornea and came out easy enough. Here, press gently with this,” and she placed a gauze pad over the eye.

“Who are you?”

“Lucy O’Connor. I’m so sorry, but when you leapt into the room like that, I acted on reflex.”

He tried to get up, but another spasm shot up from between his shoulders to the top of his scalp and changed his mind. As he flopped back down, the hard surface made him realize that he was still on the floor. “Lucy who?” he asked between gritted teeth as his neck muscles uncoiled.

“Lucy O’Connor, your family medicine resident for the next three months. I wrote you that I’d be arriving a day early.”

“Oh, my God. That’s this week?”

She ripped strips of tape off a roll and began to apply them across the gauze to hold it in place. “Of course I don’t know if you’ll still have me. I really am sorry, but you looked like a wild man, all dirty and wielding a baseball bat. Frankly, I thought you were going to kill me.”

Mark forced his good eye open and encountered the same tumbling black hair and white complexion he’d first seen on entering the room. “Weren’t you supposed to be someone named Paul?”

A frown overshadowed the deep brown eyes hovering inches from his own. “He and I switched at the last minute,” she said. “You didn’t know?”

He shook his head. Bad move. New spasms raced each other to the base of his skull. Wincing, he added, “And I thought he, I mean you, weren’t due until next Tuesday.”

“You’re sure you didn’t get a notice? The hospital moved everything up so I’d be back by mid-February to cover the floors when a lot of residents take a winter vacation.” As she talked, her hands continued to work with the tape. “The program director told me he wrote you about the changes weeks ago.”