The Final Victim (50 page)

    Tyler averts his gaze. "That's because she didn't know."

    "Do you mean," the detective says, "that this Dr. Von Cave wasn't part of the cover-up?"

    "No. She was just Gilbert's attempt to save his daughter-in-law's life."
And ease
his own
guilty conscience.
"Dr. Von Cave long ago isolated the cause of this disease to a few possible environmental factors. One of them is the exposure to a toxic chemical that happens to have been a by-product of Remington Paper. It was dumped on-site for years."

    "Was that legal?"

    Tyler lowers his head but only briefly. "No. But I wasn't aware of that when it was happening. Nobody was. Gilbert only involved me later-when things got complicated."

    "Complicated how?"

    Tyler draws a deep breath. "Like I said, nobody, not even Dr. Von Cave, ever realized there
was a cluster of cases on
Achoco
Island-not even the patients
themselves. Their local physician diagnosed them with various terminal diseases, and sent them home to the. They did, and quickly."

    "Are you telling me that they all used the same doctor? And that he was a part of a conspiracy to conceal the health risks?"

    "Yes, and so was I." Tyler's voice is level. "But it was Gilbert who engineered the whole thing. He was desperate to cover it up. He would have been ruined if it had ever gotten out."

    Mimi looks as though her head is spinning. So, apparently, is Detective Jones's, because she shakes her cornrows, clattering the wooden beads. "Back up. How on earth did Gilbert ensure that every one of those patients saw the same physician?"

    A brisk knock on the door startles all three of them.

    A sergeant pokes his head in. "Mrs. Johnston? Detective Dorado needs to see you right away."

    Mimi leaps to her feet, murmurs an apology to Tyler and Jones, and is quickly escorted from the room.

    Tyler looks at Detective Jones, who is still waiting for a reply to her question about Silas Neville.

    'Just how many doctors do you think there were back then on
Achoco
Island, Detective?
One.
And how many employers?"
Again Tyler answers his own question. "Aside from the fishing industry and a couple of restaurants and stores, Remington Paper was it. Gilbert provided an employee health plan. Mandatory free physicals twice a year eventually became a part of it."

    "I think I understand how the doctor fits into Gilbert's cover-up," Detective Jones tells him, "but where do you come in?"

    Tyler swallows hard. "Gilbert discreetly arranged to pay for everything for those patients right-up front: medical care, funeral expenses,
ongoing
benefits for their families. He did it under the guise of philanthropy."

    Tyler shakes his head, remembering the gratitude of those poor people. They were profoundly touched that their benefactor didn't even want his generosity publicly acknowledged. Indeed, so humble, so honorable was Gilbert Remington that he forbade them to reveal his financial support.

    "Mr. Hawthorne…"

    "Yes, I'm sorry, I'll continue." He clears his throat. "Each patient and their family or guardian had to sign a legal contract stipulating certain conditions."

    "You drew up and executed those contracts." 'That's right." Tyler heaves a sigh, relieved that after all these years, the whole shameful business is out in the open.

    "Why, Mr. Hawthorne? Why would an otherwise respectable lawyer and doctor stoop to this level?"

    He looks Jones in the eye, wondering if she can possibly understand about the Telfair Trio, or being
raised
with so much that you always want more.

    No, she can't.

    
Because I don't understand, myself
.

    
In the end, all there is, all I can do, is
accept
the blame
.

  
 
"Because Gilbert was our friend," he says simply, with a shrug.

    This is it
, Charlotte comprehends as she is ruthlessly wrenched from the concrete refuge, a helpless pawn in a raging battle at sea.
It's over
.

    Her flailing limbs are powerless; her furious, terrified scream snuffed by the tempest's mighty roar.

    She is engulfed…

    And then, miraculously, she is not.

    It is an excruciating landing, her body catapulted onto a rocky bed of shoreline.

    She can feel jagged edges slicing into her tender skin, leaving her raw and bleeding, drenched in saltwater that mercilessly
stings
her fresh wounds.

    For a moment, she's certain she's going to die, so brutal is the agony.

    But the moment passes, and she's alive.

    Alive, and heaving herself onto the battered, wobbly legs that will carry her straight to
Oakgate
, and her daughter.

    "Did you get in touch with the police on the island?" Mimi asks Dorado, finding him waiting for her in the office where she left him earlier.

    He answers without looking up from his computer screen, still rapidly tapping the keyboard. "I did, but I had a hell of a time getting them to agree to go check things out at
Oakgate
. They've got their hands full with this storm and it won't be easy for them to get up there.

    They said a tree fell across the road just north of the causeway. It cut off the only route that leads up there."

    "Can't they go on foot or by boat or something?"

    "They'll get there just as soon as they can, however they can."

    He looks up at her at last. "I need you to look at something, Mrs. Johnston. I don't think you noticed it the first time. Neither did
I
."

    "What is it?"

    He gestures for her to come around behind his desk.

    She leans over his shoulder to see the computer screen and finds the New Orleans newspaper write-up she'd read earlier.

    Once again, the unfamiliar faces of the doomed father and daughter smile at her, and she suppresses a shudder.

    'They look so happy," she tells Dorado, shaking her head. "What am I supposed to be seeing in the picture?"

    "You're supposed to be reading the article. Here."

    He jabs an index finger at a paragraph of text.

    She reads it aloud.

    "Arriving at the scene of the accident, where a steady stream of Aimee Maitland's friends have been leaving flowers, notes, and candles, her mother, Karen, broke down in tears. 'She was my baby-my only child. She and Royce were everything to me.' The anguished mother-“

  
 
Mimi breaks off and looks up at the detective as it dawns on her.

    He nods.
"Her only child."
He grabs the mouse and scrolls down the page. "Here, look at the obituaries. See here? It says Royce Maitland is survived by his wife, his mother, two aunts, and several cousins.
Period."

    "But…" Shaking her head, Mimi asks, "What about his son? Theo? Ten years ago, Theo was still alive."

    "Not according to this."

    "I don't…" She trails off, trying to wrap her brain around the impossible until Dorado states it for her.

    "Mrs. Johnston, Theo Maitland never existed at all."

    The fist-sized cobblestones of the boat ramp leading away from the water make it impossible for Charlotte to run. Even in sneakers, she has to pick her way slowly over the rough surface, lest she twist an ankle.

    
Can you imagine having to run for your life on this surface?

    Was it only weeks ago that she asked that seemingly absurd question of her husband, on their way out to dinner in Savannah?

    His answer, so reassuring then, now fills her veins with an icy current.

    Why would you be running for your life?

    Why, Royce? Why am I running for my life-and running from you?

    Dragging his throbbing leg behind him, Royce limps over to the closet door.

    He jerks
Lianna's
clothing back and forth, hangers clattering and rasping along the metal pole, half-expecting to find her concealed among the garments.

    But the closet is as empty as the space beneath the bed, and behind the bathroom door, and alongside the dresser and armoire. He even wedged himself painfully into the fireplace and looked up, thinking she might somehow have stuffed herself into the chimney.

    No
Lianna
.

    All right, so where can she be?

    She was in this room, and she didn't leave through the door. He pushed it in; it was latched from the inside.

    She couldn't have gone through the windows, either. All of them are closed and latched from the inside.

    That leaves only two explanations: either
Lianna
is a little witch, and she used her magical powers to vanish into thin air, or there's another way in and out of this room.

    
She can be a little witch,
Royce thinks, his jaw set as he surveys the layout of the room,
but I sure as hell don't believe in magic.

    He smirks, remembering that he said just the opposite to his wife, back when they first met. She just about swooned over the corny line, and he made sure to kiss her good and hard after he said it.

    Yes, if ever a woman was ripe to fall in love, it was Charlotte Remington…

    And that was precisely what he was banking on the day he first met her, as if by chance, at the one place where she was willing to open up and show her vulnerability: the bereaved parents group.

    Of course, before he could join, he had to become a bereaved parent…

    A simple enough task, if you really put your mind to it.

    As he likes to tell Odette,
No children or animals were harmed in creating this scam
.

    But he doesn't expect that to hold true for much longer.

    "
Lianna
!" he bellows, running his hands over the molding around the closet door.
"
Lianna
!"

    An eternity seems to have passed from the time Charlotte dragged herself to her feet and the moment she arrives at the stone entrance to
Oakgate
.

    The gates are closed; she can't open them without her electronic remote.

    She runs alongside the old stone wall until she reaches a spot low enough to easily scramble over. On the other side, she darts across the stretch of well-tended lawn dotted with old trees and blooming shrubs.

    The summer lush and verdant landscape is littered with downed tree limbs and clumps of wind-tossed Spanish moss, the ground spongy and flooded beneath her feet. Several times Charlotte skids in the muddy grass, but manages to keep her balance somehow; manages to propel herself toward the house.

    At last it looms ahead, framed by swaying oak branches against a turbulent black sky; its windows darkened and tightly closed against the gale.

    Charlotte stops short as she reaches the top of the drive, where a massive oak has fallen beside a car: Nydia's car.

    Her heart takes a death plunge as she spots a pair of feet protruding from the mountain of boughs.

    
Dear God in heaven…

    The tree took a human casualty on its way down.

    For a moment, Charlotte can only stare. Then she rushes forward, propelled by sheer dread; knowing she is bound to discover that the feet belong to one of a handful of
Oakgate
residents. Charlotte prays fervently that the victim is still alive-and that it isn't the child she loves more than anything on this earth.

    No.

    It isn't
Lianna
.

    Numb with shock and revulsion, Charlotte moves closer, whimpering, her feet becoming entangled in the
vinelike
branches that snake at her ankles.

    Charlotte gazes into the eyes of
Grandaddy's
housekeeper, frozen within a grotesque mask of terror as Nydia stares at the last thing she ever saw on this earth.

    She must have seen the tree coming at her.

    Her skull is split, a gaping wound bisecting her forehead from the bridge of her nose straight up through her blood and brain and rain matted hair.

    "Drop the gun, Jeanne." Aimee's voice is no longer as deadly calm as it was the first time she said it. Frozen on the stairway, her hand still clutching the rail, she doesn't dare to take a step forward, or back.

    
She's afraid.

    She thinks I'm going to kill her.

    I think I'm going to as well.

    'Jeanne, this is ridiculous. Drop the gun."

    Jeanne shakes her head, clutching her mother's pearl-handled revolver in both hands, aiming directly at the woman on the stairs.
The woman who murdered poor Nydia and dragged her body out into the storm.