by Greg Iles
“Dr. Shepard?” called a female voice. Holly, his nurse.
By the time he got back to his desk, the screen had mercifully gone black. “What is it?” he called, knowing his face was probably red with anger.
“Are you all right?”
“Yeah, come in.”
He got up and stepped back into his bathroom, where he wet a towel and wiped his face. “I’m just feeling a little tired.”
“I don’t blame you. All that baseball at night. I’m worn slap out myself.”
When Chris looked back, Holly was sitting in front of his computer, fanning herself with a magazine. If she clicked his mouse, the balcony video would start to roll. He moved behind her and squeezed her shoulders, which surprised her, but which also got her out of the chair more quickly. His only thought was getting back into that chair to extinguish the possibility of the nightmare being displayed again.
“I’ve been looking for those results on Mrs. Young,” Holly said. “Have you seen them?”
“No.”
She studied him without speaking. Then, hesitantly, she said, “Nancy finished with Mr. Martin’s X-rays. He’s been waiting in room three for a good while.”
“I’m coming!” Chris snapped.
Holly’s mouth dropped open. She turned and left without a word.
Some morbid part of him wanted to reopen the video file, but he resisted the urge. His mind was filled with images dating to the day he had first noticed Thora Rayner on a ward in St. Catherine’s Hospital. The video now residing on his hard drive seemed incomprehensible in light of all they had done since that day. How could the woman who had so devotedly cared for her dying husband so casually betray a man who loved her as Chris did? How could she throw away a father who had bonded so deeply with her son? It was beyond him. The denial that had slowly been crumbling since Alex Morse’s arrival finally lay in ruins at his feet. Yet anger had not replaced it. He had moved directly into grief, an unbearably heavy pall that brought with it paralyzing numbness.
His cell phone was ringing again. Alex, of course. He picked up the phone but did not answer, a juvenile response. He couldn’t afford paralysis. Any moment now Holly would knock at the door again. Patients waiting. He also had Ben up front, playing computer games but wanting more than anything to go home with his dad. His dad? Chris thought. I’m not his dad. Not really. He’s not flesh of my flesh. I’ve legally adopted him, but what would happen in a divorce? I know what Ben would want, as crazy as that seems. Even Thora has attributed his newfound happiness and improved grades to having me in his life. But what would a judge say?
The cell stopped ringing. As though moving underwater, Chris opened the clamshell phone and pressed the button that would connect him to Alex. She answered on the first ring.
“Are you all right?” she asked. “I know seeing that that was rough.”
“Yep.”
“I’m so sorry, Chris.”
“Are you?”
“Of course. All I care about in this is you and Ben.”
“That’s not true. You want to nail Andrew Rusk.”
This gave her pause. “Well, yes, but not out of some cheap sense of vengeance. It’s for Grace, and for you, and for all the other people whose lives have been destroyed.”
Chris said nothing. He waited for a fresh sales pitch, but none came. Alex waited in silence as well. He was about to speak when she said, “Whatever you do, please don’t tell Thora what you know.”
“Stop worrying. We already talked about that.”
“But it’s different now. Isn’t it? Listen to me, Chris. I’m assuming you want to be the one Ben lives with when this is all over?”
He remained silent.
“I’m not just an FBI agent, you know. I’m also a lawyer. And the best way to ensure that you get custody of Ben is to make sure Thora is punished for attempted murder.”
Anger flooded through him. “I’m supposed to help Ben by putting his mother in jail?”
“In a word? Yes.”
“That’s great, Alex.”
“There’s something else. Something that’s scaring me.”
“What is it?”
“You and Ben both have headaches, right?”
“Yes.”
“Uncle Will has one, too. A bad one.”
Chris thought about this.
“He’s had it since this morning,” Alex continued. “He took some aspirin, but it won’t go away.”
A strange buzzing started in Chris’s head.
“Did you hear me?”
“I heard you.”
“What do you think?”
“I don’t like it.”
“It seemed like too much coincidence to me, too. But I don’t see what could have happened. I mean, Will was guarding you all night, right?”
“He was passed out in my easy chair all night.”
“What?”
“He drank three beers and went out like a light.”
“Shit.”
A sudden image of Alex’s room at the Days Inn flashed into Chris’s mind: the wounded coral snake writhing in the bathroom, the dead cat lying on the floor. “Alex, is there anything I need to know that you haven’t told me?”
Another pause.
“Goddamn it, what are you holding back?”
“Nothing. I just—”
“Tell me!”
“I spoke to Will again, right before I called you. His detective found out how Lansing has been getting here and back. There’s a small charter service out at the local airport. Crop dusters mostly, but the local farmers use it to fly to Houston and Memphis, stuff like that. Lansing called from Natchez a few days ago and arranged to get round-trip flights from the Natchez airport to Greenwood and back. He flies in there after dark and flies out about dawn. He’s been commuting to—”
“Screw Thora’s brains out.”
“Pretty much, yeah.”
“Is her girlfriend even up there? Laura Canning?”
“Yes. She’s covering for Thora.”
Chris slammed his hand down on his desk. Anger was finally coming to the surface. “Goddamn it!”
“Chris, wait. Hold on a sec.”
“What?”
“Will’s calling me back. It must be important.”
She clicked him into hold mode. The wait seemed to stretch forever. “Chris?” she said, after another click.
“Yeah.”
“There’s more, and it’s bad.”
Some deep part of him tensed against the unknown. “Tell me.”
“Will has been checking into Shane Lansing’s business affairs. You know Lansing has his hand in a lot of stuff, right?”
“Yeah. Truck stops with gambling, restaurants, nursing homes, all kinds of shit.”
“Well, it seems he’s also part owner of a radiation oncology clinic in Meridian, Mississippi. The Humanity Cancer Care Center.”
Chris felt as though his core temperature had dropped ten degrees. “Are you kidding?”
“No. Will just found this out.”
“But that means Lansing has access to—”
“I know. Cesium pellets, liquid iodine, radiation-treatment machinery—everything.”
“But…you told me these crimes go back like five years. Right?”
“Yes.”
“Then how could Lansing be a part of it? I mean, if Thora just went to see Andrew Rusk a couple of weeks ago, how could Rusk possibly have found Lansing and hired him to kill me in that time? The time frame doesn’t make sense.”
“Thora’s an atypical client for Rusk,” said Alex. “There’ve only been two other female clients that I know about—”
“Wait,” Chris cut in. “Red Simmons.”
“Exactly. Thora may have used Andrew Rusk three years ago, to have Red Simmons killed. If so, she first contacted Rusk at least three years ago, and possibly as long as seven. She could have even met Shane Lansing through Rusk.”
“But Red didn’t die of cancer.”
“Neither did my sister.”
Chris’s thoughts were tumbling over themselves, but beneath the rational level of his mind something else was happening. Fear and anger were melding into a kind of dark desperation whose only outlet could be action. “What time did you say this friend of yours would be in Jackson?”
“As soon as he can get there,” said Alex, relief suffusing her voice. “If you leave within the hour, you’ll probably get there the same time Kaiser does.”
“Good.”
“You’re coming?”
“Oh, yeah.”
“Thank you, Chris.”
“Don’t thank me. This is survival now.”
Alex started to say something, but he hung up and put the phone in his desk drawer. After closing his e-mail account, he walked down to Tom’s end of the clinic. Tom’s chief nurse, Melba Price, was standing outside the door to Exam Room 7. Melba was quick to read nonverbal clues in patients and colleagues alike. This skill had made her Tom’s right hand for more than twenty years.
“I need to see him, Melba,” Chris said. “As soon as possible.”
“He’s just finishing up.” She gave Chris a sidelong glance. “I heard about you and Dr. Lansing.”
Chris grimaced.
“None of my business,” Melba went on, “but a lot of people’s been wanting to do what you did for a long time.”
Tom Cage’s good-humored baritone reverberated through the heavy wooden door. Chris heard the squeak of a chair, a booming farewell, and then Tom stepped into the hall, surprise on his face. “Hey, slugger,” he said. “What’s up?”
“I need to talk to you.”
“Let’s go in my office.”
Chris shook his head. “Do you have an exam room open?”
Tom looked at Melba.
“Number five,” she said.
Chris led the way. After Tom closed the door, he looked at his young partner with paternal concern. “What’s going on, Chris? I didn’t mean to tease you about Lansing. He’s just such an unmitigated prick.”
Chris looked back at his mentor, realizing perhaps for the first time how much older Tom Cage really was. Tom had started practicing medicine in 1958. He’d grown up in an era when antibiotics did not exist, yet he’d lived to practice in the era of the PET scan and gene therapy.
“I need you to do me a favor, Tom. No questions asked.”
The older man nodded soberly. “Name it.”
“I want you to examine me. My whole body.”
“What am I looking for? Are you having symptoms?”
Tom was thinking what Chris would be thinking in the same situation. Most doctors at some time in their life suspect that they’re dying of a terminal illness. They know too much, see too much, and even the slightest symptom can bring on fears of fatal disease.
“I’ve got a severe headache,” Chris said, “but that’s not really the problem. I have reason to suspect…something. I want you to go over every inch of my body with a light. Even a magnifying glass, if you need it.”
“What am I looking for?”
“Anything abnormal. A needle mark, a bruise, a lesion, a small incision. I want you to start inside my mouth.”
Tom stared at him for a long time. Chris could almost see the questions turning inside his mind. But in the end Tom only said, “You’d better strip and get on the table.”
While Chris removed his clothes, Tom donned a leather headpiece with a light mounted on it. Chris climbed onto the examining table and lay on his back.
“My eyes aren’t what they used to be,” said Tom. “But I found a melanoma yesterday, so tiny you wouldn’t believe it. Start in your mouth, you say?”
Chris opened wide.
Tom took a tongue depressor from a jar and used it to expose Chris’s gums and mucosa. Then he took a small mirror from a drawer and, cursing quietly, began to check Chris’s mouth.
“Goddamn it,” Tom muttered. “This is like spelunking.”
Chris made a guttural sound of acknowledgment.
“Looks clear to me.” Tom withdrew the tongue depressor. “Remember to floss after every meal.”
Chris was in no mood for levity, but Tom gave him a wry look anyway.
“Okay, what now?”
“Look under my hair,” Chris said, flashing back to Gregory Peck in The Omen.
As Tom carefully worked his way across Chris’s scalp, he said, “I don’t see anything but incipient male-pattern baldness.”
“Good. Now my skin. Every inch of it.”
Tom started at Chris’s neck and moved down his trunk. “I’m glad you’re not a hairy bastard,” he said, moving the light across Chris’s sternum. “Okay…getting to the family jewels now.”
“Every crack and crevice.” Chris felt Tom’s gloved hands lift his testicles, then check his penis. “The hole, too.”
“Jesus.”
Tom checked him there, then moved back to his shoulders. He checked both underarms, then the extremities.
“Between my toes, too.”
“This reminds me of my internship,” Tom said. “I worked several months in the Orleans Parish Prison. The cops used to have me check between suspects’ toes for needle marks.”
“Same deal,” Chris said, turning onto his stomach.
“Let’s get the worst over first,” Tom said, and Chris felt cold hands pulling his cheeks apart. He expected Tom to release them immediately, but he didn’t.
“What do you see?”
“I’m not sure,” Tom murmured. “Looks like maybe an injection site.”
Chris’s breath died in his throat. “Are you serious?”
“Afraid so. Looks like somebody stuck in a needle and you tried to jerk away. Like a scared toddler, you know? There’s definite bruising.”
“Outside the anus or in?”
“Right at the opening. This is weird, Chris. Are you going to tell me what’s going on?”
Chris got off the table and pulled on his pants. “We need to check Ben, too.”
Tom’s eyes went wide. “What?”
“I’m dead serious. He’s in the front office now. Ben has the same headache I do. I’ll tell him we’re checking for pinworms.”
Tom stared at Chris as though worried he might be drunk.
“I’m not crazy, Tom. I wish I was. Will you stay in here with me while I check Ben?”
I’m sure as hell not leaving you alone with him, said Tom’s eyes.
Chris skidded into the driveway at the Elgin house, his heart pounding with anger and fear. On the passenger seat beside him was a wooden case he’d borrowed from the radiologist at St. Catherine’s Hospital. The image of Ben lying on his back on the exam table haunted him even more than the video of Thora on the hotel balcony. What are you looking for? Ben had asked. Chris had lied, and Tom had lied to cover for him. But there was no banishing the look of disapproval on the older physician’s face. Tom Cage suspected something seriously irregular, and in the same situation Chris probably would have, too. He would have to rely on the goodwill he had built up over nine months of practicing with Tom to carry the day.
After checking Ben for marks and not finding them, Chris had put the boy back in his receptionist’s care and shut himself in his office. He had no idea what might have been injected into him, but the thing that kept coming back to him was Alex’s revelation that Shane Lansing had access to radioactive materials. Added to this was Pete Connolly’s assertion that radiation would be the easiest method of intentionally causing cancer in a human being. Given those two facts, what did the needle mark near his rectum mean? Had a radioactive liquid been injected into him? Or could pellets small enough to pass through a needle have been shot into his bloodstream? He tried to recall what Connolly had said about irradiated thallium being used to assassinate someone, but it was difficult to concentrate with fear ballooning in his chest.
Forcing himself under control, Chris walked down the hall to the X-ray room and asked Nancy Somers, their tech, to sh
oot an X-ray of his midsection. Nancy looked nonplussed by this request, but she wasn’t about to refuse her employer. Chris grabbed a paper gown, stripped beside the big machine, then donned the oversize napkin and climbed onto the cold table. Nancy adjusted the voltage, then shot the picture. Two minutes later, Chris was jamming the X-ray into the clip of the light-box in the viewing room.
“What are you looking for?” Tom asked from behind him.
“Overexposure.”
Chris could hardly speak as he scanned the X-ray. He was terrified of seeing black spots caused by radioactive emissions overexposing the film. Yet though he squinted at every inch of the film, he saw nothing abnormal.
“Looks fine to me,” Tom said. “Does this have to do with the needle mark?”
Chris nodded. Then he felt Tom’s hand on his shoulder.
“What’s going on, son? Talk to me.”
There was no hiding it anymore. Chris turned to his partner and said, “Somebody’s trying to kill me, Tom.”
After a shocked silence, Tom said, “Who?”
“Thora.”
The older man’s eyes narrowed. “Can you substantiate that?”