Bedford turned to Jack.
“What do you think?” he asked.
“I think it’s possible, Chief.”
“Highly unlikely, I’d say.”
“I don’t think so. Any woman resourceful enough to have gotten the drop on Hinkle,” Jack said, pointing toward the house, “would consider using the boat.”
“Then why haven’t we heard anything from her? She’s had plenty of time to get to a phone.”
“Unless she had engine trouble,” Jack said.
“It’s pretty farfetched, Jack.”
“Chief, the wind’s out of the southwest. If she lost the engine, she ‘d drift toward the north end of the lake, and she wouldn’t be dressed for this kind of weather.”
“Do you realize what it will take to search that lake tonight?”
“All I know is that she might not survive a night out there.”
“Jack’s right,” Tim blurted. “I know you guys have a search-and-rescue boat. What are we waiting for?”
Bedford glared at him.
“What are we waiting for, he asks. All we’ve got to go on is an empty boathouse and a frigging piece of rope.” He hesitated and looked at Jack. “But what the hell—we’ll make it a combined land and sea effort.”
* * *
The rain had turned to snow. Wearing a yellow slicker given him by one of the officers, a ski hat pulled down over his ears, Jack took up station at the prow, and for the past several hours, he’d been swinging the searchlight in wide arcs as they surged through the rough water. His back and legs ached from bracing himself.
The plan had been simple. They would make one swing north up the center of the lake using GPS to guide them, then travel south down along the eastern shore, then back up the western side. Thanks to the chief’s entreaties—and once Bedford made a decision, he didn’t stint—three other boats would join in the search at some point, but that might not be for some hours.
It was now eleven-thirty. They’d already reached the northern end, where the lights of a hamlet called Amaretto flickered through the snow, and were on the way back south, following the shoreline about two hundred yards out. Though the wind seemed to be dying, the surface swell remained rough, and the snow fell thicker as the temperature dropped. The light made a swirling cone of flakes that at times made Jack feel as if they were moving sideways, or tilting, or even revolving.
Tim sat close, holding onto the gunnel and, at least for a while, had kept up a stream of small talk. However, he’d been quiet for some time. Jack looked over and saw that his friend’s eyes were closed.
“Hey, Tim. Wake up. You don’t want to fall overboard.”
Turning back to the mesmerizing light, he thought he saw he saw something, a shape that shouldn’t have been there. The next instant, it was gone. He played the light and caught another glimpse.
“Slow down!” he yelled to the officer piloting the search boat, aiming the light.
Tim fell forward into Jack as the engine cut back. Whatever was there seemed to have disappeared. Jack swung the beam farther, roaming it back and forth.
Something was out there.
A moment later, he clearly saw the outlines of a small open craft. They were heading straight toward it.
“There it is,” he yelled to the pilot.
Gears clunking, the search boat went into reverse, and the sudden deceleration nearly tumbled him into the water. He lost control of the light for a moment, the beam careening up into the falling flakes. He fumbled it back, his fingers almost useless from the cold.
They glided slowly toward it, and the light glinted off a wooden hull, then a windshield, then the outboard motor. There was no cover over the craft—no shelter of any kind.
“I’ll take the light,” Tim yelled, clapping him on the back. “You go aboard.”
The officer stepped forward carrying a rope.
“Good eye,” he said. “I’ll tie it up.”
Jack yelled her name. No answer. Leaning far over the gunnel, he grabbed the smaller boat’s side rail. There was no sign of her, just a snow-covered mound between the seats. Leaping in, he brushed the snow away. It was a plastic tarp. He lifted it.
She was curled on her side underneath, her face pale and her eyes closed. He couldn’t see if she were still breathing. The light glinted off handcuffs.
“Zellie, wake up. Wake up.”
No response. Yanking off his gloves, he felt for a pulse at her neck. As cold as his own fingers were, he was frightened by how frigid her skin felt.
Her eyes opened. He leaned close. Her lips moved, but he couldn’t hear the words. He nodded anyway, and smiled.
“I wanted to show you the lake on a nicer day.”
She said something else, and he put his face closer.
“I ran out of gas.”
He kissed her and carefully picked her up. With the help of Tim and the officer, he lifted her over to safety.
LVII
Straight Shooter
Two weeks later.
The wintry days of late October gave way to a more seasonal November of clearer weather, and the snow soon melted. The trustees of New Canterbury University, led by Abe Delancy, gave Nelson Debussy a vote of confidence, since Bryson Witner had deceived every last one of them.
One of Debussy’s first actions afterward was to reinstall Jack as the ED director. Jack accepted on the condition that his plan to modernize the department and start a training program be accepted, which the board agreed to. He also requested two weeks vacation to spend time with Zellie as she recuperated.
* * *
The days grew shorter as the winter solstice approached, and the nights colder. Thanksgiving was around the corner.
Zellie and Jack were taking a walk, as they had nearly every morning, hiking a trail that wove through the forest below his house to a hemlock grove at the edge of a little bluff where a brook made a waterfall. This morning, Jack had brewed a thermos of her favorite tea, and they planned to enjoy it in the grove.
Zellie had spent three days in the hospital recuperating from hypothermia and was still not back to full strength. She also suffered from nightmares but was sleeping a little better every night. Jack set her up an office in his study, and she wrote early in the morning and in the afternoons, sketching out scenes for the novel she had been working on the morning Jack drove to Boston. It would be autobiographical, about her childhood, and so far it felt good and real.
She also knew that someday she’d write about what she’d just been through, but not for a while. She told Jack the only thing that would ultimately bring her peace would be the finding of Witner’s body.
Meanwhile, she treasured her time with Jack. Even Muriel, who had been up to visit twice, gave him a stamp of approval, not that Zellie needed anyone else’s opinion. At Christmastime, if Jack could get a few days away, they were thinking about flying to Florida to see her sister Amy. They visited the Bonadonnas and had dinner twice with Dr. Gavin, whose recovery was complete and who had agreed to serve as the interim dean.
But these walks were the best, and this morning they had stopped to kiss more often than yesterday. Finally, though, they were inside the hemlock grove, and Zellie sat on a log where she could look over the little bluff onto the trees below.
“I wonder where Arbus is,” she said. “It doesn’t feel right not to have him tagging along.”
“Maybe he’s found a girlfriend,” Jack suggested.
He poured her a cup of tea from the thermos then one for himself and sat next to her. She wrapped her hands around the cup and brought it to her lips. After being in the freezer, then all those hours on the boat, she did not take warmth for granted.
She looked up at Jack and noticed he was staring in the direction they had just hiked. There was a look of concern on his face. He must have heard something she couldn’t.
“What is it?”
“Someone’s coming down the trail.”
“Arbus?”
“I thi
nk it’s a person. Could be Tony, but he’s usually quieter.”
A chill climbed her spine as she saw a flash of orange though the hemlocks.
“It’s only old Will Carter,” Jack said. “Probably out for a little turkey hunting.”
Zellie saw him then. He was carrying a shotgun and was dressed in Carhartt coveralls and an orange vest, and he had an old-fashioned red-and-black checkered hunting cap on his head, the brim pulled low.
But something didn’t feel right. She looked at Jack and noticed his brow was furrowed.
Suddenly, he grabbed her hand and pulled her up, but the man had already raised the shotgun and leveled it at them.
“Don’t move.”
Jack stepped in front of her.
“Ah, yes, the urge to protect the beloved,” Witner sneered. “I expected to see something like that. Predictable. So, how do you like my transformation to farmer? You’ve passed me on the road several times. It’s a shame for you, Ms. Andersen, that your friend Forester isn’t more observant.
“I, on the other hand, have been very observant. I’ve been studying you from next door for three days. And here you are—right on schedule.”
He was fifteen feet away from them. Taking off his hat, he tossed it onto the deep carpet of hemlock needles.
“So, you made it out of the river,” Jack said.
“Stalling, are you, Forester? No, I was never in the river.”
“Where are the Carters?”
“The same place your dog is.” Witner clicked off the safety. “Here’s a true-or-false question for you. If you place a body inside a manure pile, within a few months there’s nothing left, not even the bones. Give up? True. A fact of nature.”
His mind recoiling in horror, Jack realized there was only one thing to do. He could give Zellie a backwards shove toward the bluff and rush Witner at the same time. This might give her a fighting chance to tumble down there and run away. It was only twenty feet. There were no other options.
“I know it sounds trite, Witner, but you need some help.”
Witner laughed. “Very good. But better sick than dead. You’re a doctor, you should know that. The fact is, I have too much work left to do. I just wanted you both to know you didn’t stop me.”
He lowered his eye to sight down the barrel. Jack tensed to lunge and push Zellie away.
It was as if someone drew a line that penetrated Witner’s neck and came out the back. The shotgun wobbled and began to droop, and Witner lifted his head, looking puzzled. Jack felt Zellie shudder behind him but was too startled to move.
Witner coughed, and blood trickled from the corner of his mouth. The second arrow hit him in the upper left chest, just in front of his arm. Unlike the first shaft, this one did not pass through. Eight inches of it with a fletching of dark brown feathers protruded from his chest.
He looked down, and more blood drizzled from his mouth. Then he seemed to gather strength. From the arrow’s angle, he now knew the direction of his attacker. Swiveling to his left, he raised the gun.
The third arrow bored deep just above the pubic bone. He winced and stumbled backwards. Landing hard on his back, the shotgun discharged with an earsplitting roar, sending buckshot up into the hemlock boughs.
The weapon clattered onto the ground and Witner gasped, reached for the arrow sunk in his pelvis, face twisted, blinking more and more slowly as fine hemlock needles rained down.
Epilogue
Water Of Life
Two years later
The tiny island lay nearly a mile off the coast of Georgia, a windswept strip of white sand with a ridge running down the middle containing a forest of hardy scrub oaks and the ruins of a colonial fort. There wasn’t much else to it except several weather-beaten guesthouses and a boat landing on the landward side.
On the deeply shaded porch of one of the houses, Jack Forester sat reading the chapter Zellie had been working on that morning. He’d just returned from a swim, and his muscles felt pleasantly tired. It was going to be a wonderful book. Better than Boardwalk, in his opinion.
Next to him, Zellie lay on a lounge chair, sound asleep. She’d been sleeping a lot in the afternoons lately.
He gazed around. The barrier island had a Caribbean feel with its green water and white sand. Back home in New Canterbury, there was snow on the ground, and lots of it. They’d be back there soon enough, but in the meantime, he was happy to be away. He had plenty of help at the medical center now, and the first class of emergency medicine residents was more than halfway through their beginning year.
Far down the beach, a man and a dog approached. The dog darted into the surf, chasing breakers. By the looks of what Tony had slung over his shoulder, they’d be eating fresh fish for dinner again.
When they had gone to the Carter farm after Tony saved them from Witner, they’d found, to their great relief, Arbus and the Carters locked in the basement of the goat barn, left there to die of cold and starvation. Without Fred Hinkle to do the dirty work, Witner, it appeared, preferred to kill from a distance—except for his plan to dispatch Zellie and Jack that day in the hemlocks. He had come after them with the shotgun driven by rage and revenge for the way they’d spoiled his plans.
He hadn’t counted on Tony Forester’s hunting skills.
All that was past now. Zellie’s nightmares had stopped. Jack reached out and rested his hand on the swell of her belly, and felt the life within as the wind stirred the palm fronds and a smile came unbidden to his face.
The End
Notes and Acknowledgements
FINAL MERCY is copyrighted © 2013 by Frank J. Edwards
**
Final Mercy is dedicated to my wife, Mary Ann.
***
I would like to give special thanks to Sharon Pyke and Paul Desormeax, for their invaluable help in reviewing the manuscript, and to Liz Burton, for her editorial expertise and for believing in this book in the first place.
***
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons or events is purely coincidental.
All rights reserved. Except for use in review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means now known or hereafter invented, is prohibited without the written permission of the author or publisher.
***
Second Edition Published 2013 by Pascal Editions
Layout and Cover Design by Pascal Editions
www.PascalEditions.com
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Born in Rochester, New York, Frank J. Edwards entered the Army in 1968 and served a tour in Vietnam as a helicopter pilot. He received a BA with honors in English from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, then attended medical school at the University of Rochester, graduating with an M.D .in 1979. In 1989 he earned an MFA in writing from Warren Wilson College in Swannanoa, N.C.
After practicing for a decade in North Carolina, he returned to the Rochester area and became a faculty member in the Department of Emergency Medicine at the University of Rochester Medical Center in the 1990′s, spending part of that time as the Department Chairman. His novel Final Mercy draws from his personal experiences in the ED (though none of the people he’s worked with at various hospitals have, to his knowledge, ever tried to murder him.)
In addition, in 1994 he started the first creative writing workshop for medical students at the U of R through the university’s Division of Medical Humanities, and continues to teach in the program.
Most recently Dr. Edwards left academic medicine to start a regional emergency medicine group and remains in active practice.
He is the author of several books, which are available on Amazon.com, including the medical thriller Final Mercy; a collection of poetry and short stories called It’ll Ease The Pain; and two nonfiction medical books: Medical Malpractice; and The M&M Files: Morbidity and Morali
ty Rounds in Emergency Medicines.
He and wife Mary Ann, an emergency nurse, live near Lake Ontario, where he plays not-ready-for-prime-time jazz guitar when taking a break from work, and is actively polishing his soon-to-come second Jack Forester novel, Bedside.
JACK IS BACK!
If you’ve enjoyed reading about Jack and Zellie Forester in Final Mercy, good news: Frank J. Edwards will shortly be completing his new novel, Bedside, featuring Jack, Zellie, and several other characters from the cast of Final Mercy.
You can learn more about the new book and Frank J. Edwards’ other works by visiting Frank at his web site at www.frankjedwards.com where excerpts from his current and other and upcoming works are available, and where you can share your comments and give your feedback to Frank directly
You can also find new material by Frank by reading his blog at www.frankjedwards.com/blog/. following Frank on Twitter at www.twitter.com/frankjedwards/, or visiting his LinkedIn page at www.linkedin.com/in/frankjedwards/.
If you’d like to be notified when the new Jack Forester novel Bedside becomes available, please leave your email at www.frankjedwards.com and you’ll be notified the moment it’s ready.
And if you’ve enjoyed reading Final Mercy, please let others know by taking just a moment to write a brief Amazon review at www.amazon.com/dp/1936144204/.
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