“Is it finished?” Pardo asked.
“I went to the beach house. The neighbor girl surprised me while I was inside. Caretaker’s daughter, I think.”
“And?” he demanded.
“Girl started to scream. I had to shoot her. I ran into her father in the yard and shot him, too. They’re just campesinos.”
“I don’t care about goddamn campesinos. What about the Americans?”
“The caretaker’s wife escaped. Maybe his son, too, but I think I hit him. I had to hide from the police in the Corcovado last night.”
“But what about the Americans?” Pardo snapped.
“Didn’t see the Land Rover. So I checked the hotels around town and in Golfito, even back toward Drake and Agujitas. Nothing.”
Pardo gripped the phone with mounting rage. Wesley and Becca had killed David. He needed his revenge.
“They’re flying out tomorrow,” James said. “I’ll just wait at the airport and take care of them when they go in.”
“So what if they change their flight? Maybe they’ll leave today.”
“Thought of that already,” James said, “but there are only two flights a day from Puerto Jiménez to San Jose. It’ll be easy enough to catch them.”
“Whatever it takes, hijo.” Pardo forced himself to regain his composure. “Soon we’ll have our land back. You know what that means, don’t you?”
“I do.”
“Good, then do it. Do it for your mother. For your grandparents. Do it for David. Whatever happens, you need to take revenge.”
Chapter Twenty-Two:
Riverwood had never looked shabbier than when Becca pulled into the parking lot in her Cherokee. She noted the dark streaks down the brick, the institutional doors, and the rusting drain pipes. The snow was higher than when they’d left, but already it was rotten, darkened by road salt and gravel and melted off the roof into discolored icicles that made the entryway look like a mouthful of coffee-stained teeth. She’d been to Costa Rica and she might as well have traveled to the moon.
Scrub tops in varying states of cleanliness littered the back of her car and she grabbed one for herself and for Wes. They pulled them on as they left the car and walked up the wheelchair ramp to the front door. It occurred to her as she stepped through the front door that she wasn’t sure if she still had a job. She’d heard no official word about the state certification, but didn’t need it. Becca had survived a few near misses; this had been worse. And on her watch. The first necks snugged into the guillotine in any revolution were the lackeys of the previous regime. They’d need to sacrifice someone. Maybe it was her.
“Thank god you’re back,” Saul said, answering that question. He was rushing out of the admin wing. It was ten o’clock at night. She’d never seen him working so late. “I thought you were getting back yesterday.”
“Tomorrow, actually. I’m not back from vacation until tomorrow. It’s the day after that, when I was coming back to work.” She found herself vaguely disappointed to discover he hadn’t fired her.
“Really? I could have sworn…never mind. Cami is on shift and she says she’s down an HT. Someone else didn’t show up for work.” He looked at Wes, eyes drifting to his scrub top. “Hello, are you a temp or a regular HT?”
“An HT. I work with Team Smile.” Wes sounded surprised by the question.
“Wes has been here two years,” Becca lied. “You made him employee of the month, remember?” She gave a side look to Wes, who raised his eyebrows.
Saul blinked and she could see him mentally take a step back. “Oh, sorry, Wes. Of course. I didn’t recognize you. That was good work you did. Very good. Team Smile.”
And she worked for the guy. How much did he make a year? She knew where he lived and saw what he drove. Had to be at least a hundred grand. Probably more like a hundred-fifty.
“Well, if we’re short-staffed, I’d better go straighten things out.”
“Great. I emailed you the list of noted deficiencies from the inspection.”
“I take it we didn’t pass.”
Saul blinked at her. “You mean, you didn’t know?”
Didn’t know and didn’t care. She was shocked to admit it, even if just to herself. Certification measured exactly nothing about the quality of the facility or the staff. She didn’t have to look at the paperwork to know why they’d failed. State had come the day of that snowstorm and she’d spent the morning putting down minor insurrections by the residents who’d been thrown off their schedule. If a snowstorm can make the difference between passing certification and not, then what good was certification?
“Sorry, I was out of the country.”
“Well, still,” Saul said in a shocked voice. “I thought you would have called or something.” He seemed to gain control of his incredulity. “In any event, I’ll need a report on how you’ll manage each bulleted item by, say, tomorrow.”
“Sure thing,” she said brightly, even as she wanted to poke him in the eye. She led Wes through the doors and into the lounge.
“I can’t believe he doesn’t remember me,” Wes said. They crossed the dining room and entered the resident wings. “I talked to him for several minutes when I brought my résumé. And my professor even talked to him on the phone.”
“Remember what I said about ‘graduated advancement?’ Saul Cage is what happens when residents graduate from the group home. They become administrators.”
He laughed. “And that list of deficiencies. That sounds fun.”
“It’ll be full of stuff like this,” Becca said. “Noted: Dale continues to flee the building at every opportunity. Cause: Dissatisfaction with level of achievement due to understimulating environment at Riverwood Care Center. Resolved: Provide Dale with a regimen of physical and mental exercises, coupled with increasingly vigorous application of life skills. Responsibility: Rebecca Gull.”
“I hope that’s an exaggeration.”
“Sadly, no.”
The smell of cleaners and soiled laundry filled the air. It pushed aside the memory of flowers and ocean breezes. Welcome home.
Gail Petrov and Anne Wistrom nodded at Becca and Wes from behind the glass at the nurse station. Wistrom took off her coat and gloves and reached for a stack of charts, while Gail shut down windows on the computer. Shift change.
Becca and Wes pushed into the bedroom of Team Smile. It was early yet, and both Jan Trotter and Chad Lett were still awake. Becca flipped on the light near Chad’s bed and held out her hand to Wes. “Let me see those pictures.”
Wes carried a folder of pictures. He’d gone to an internet kiosk during their layover in Atlanta, where he’d downloaded and printed pictures found online. Davis Carter had been a prominent businessman involved in philanthropy and there were many, even though several years had passed since the accident.
“I’m just not sure,” Wes said. “He’s changed so much. Lost tons of weight, for one thing. Why is his eye twitching like that? Looks red, too.”
“He had an eye infection. Doesn’t look too bad now.” Nevertheless, it twitched in a way that didn’t look comfortable. Must hurt like hell.
She looked at the pictures. Here was one with the governor of Vermont, and another breaking ground on a bridge in New Hampshire. Their resolution was mediocre. “If we’re right, then it has to be Chad. There’s Jan and three men. These other two are too young.” She shook her head, imagining what it would be like to end up like this. “Poor guy,” she added. “At least he doesn’t know what happened to him. He’s more or less brain dead.”
“Sure,” Wes said, “but you can see the way his muscles seize up and the way his face grimaces that he can still feel pain.”
In fact, she turned her attention from his twitching eye as she spotted a tremor working its way through his leg. She reached down and massaged at the quivering knot until it went away.
“I’ve got an idea,” Wes said. “Help me roll him over.”
They rolled Chad onto his side. Wes sifted through the man�
�s hair, matted into the world’s worst case of bed head. Becca picked up the lamp and held it close.
“Yep, it’s him,” Wes said. He grabbed the lamp with one hand and took her hand with the other. “Feel this.”
There was a definite lump where the skull met the spine. Scar tissue. Looking close, she could see it among the hairs, a puckering of the skin. It was there that a spear had penetrated the man’s skull. Must have penetrated fairly deeply, in fact, to leave Davis Carter’s brains scrambled. It was a miracle of modern medicine that he was alive at all.
“Damn it,” Wes said. He stepped back a pace and ran his hands through his hair. “I’d hoped that, I don’t know. That we were wrong somehow. That we’d find him somewhere else. Alive. Not like this.”
“I’m so sorry, Mr. Carter,” she said to the man in the bed. “There’s nothing we can do for you now but we can get you out of this place and take you somewhere where people still know you.”
“And punish the people responsible,” Wes added. “Whatever, we’re getting him out of here. Take him to Charlotte. And this time, when I call the police, I’ll have evidence on hand.”
“I’ll back you up. You know it.”
“But how do we get him out?”
“Here’s what we’re going to do,” Becca told him. “We’re going to load him into his wheelchair and wrap him in a blanket. Then we’re just going to wheel him to my car. Gail should be gone. Hopefully, Anne’s got her face buried in those charts. If anyone sees us, there’s no excuse that will sound reasonable. So we’ll just go. What are they going to do, call the police? By then we’ll have him in the car and at your aunt’s house.”
“I can see it now,” Wes said, as if he’d only been half listening. He was staring at his uncle’s face. “It’s the nose and the eyes. Like my Mom’s and Uncle Bill’s. Look, I’ve got the Carter nose, too.”
Becca looked, but still couldn’t be sure of the resemblance. But she’d felt the scar and that was enough.
“They’re so ruthless,” he said. “My Uncle Bill, then my mom, turning on their brother. What kind of person would do that to their own brother?”
“They must care about that company.”
“My uncle does, that’s for sure. He’s like my grandpa, not that I remember him much. But I heard stories. The thing is, I don’t get why my mom would go along. Bill and my grandpa shut her out. She was mad at Bill, not Davis.”
Becca lowered the bar on the bed. “I’d love to catch up on your family history, but can we do it later? Right now let’s get him the hell out of here.”
“You know, about that eye,” Wes started. “It’s almost like…”
He suddenly straightened, staggered back a step and crashed into the end table. He grabbed the lamp just as it was about to fall to the floor. “It can’t be. No.” His hands trembled as they put the lamp in place. “Oh my God.”
“What?” she asked, alarmed. She stepped back from the bed. “For god’s sake, what is it?”
“Look at his eye. Look!”
“I don’t see anything.”
“Look at how it’s twitching. Count it.”
Becca turned. She watched, uncomprehending at first. Three fast blinks. Three long blinks. Three fast blinks. Dot-dot-dot. Dash. Dash. Dash. Dot-dot-dot.
“Oh, my god.”
Davis Carter’s left eye was blinking S.O.S.
# Ellen Pilson parked in front of the Waterbury Village police station. She had phoned ahead to be sure that Lieutenant Stiles was on duty. The man had called her a few days earlier and they’d spoken for a few minutes about Wes.
Stiles was looking for Rosa Solorio. According to Stiles, Wes had reported Rosa missing and the police had started to wonder if something hadn’t, in fact, happened to the Costa Rican girl.
He’d asked a series of questions. Has Wes been under stress? Acting funny in any way? Did he know Rosa Solorio before he started working at Riverwood?
And, most alarmingly, “Do you or your son have any connection to Costa Rica?”
Not time, she told herself. Not yet.
And so she’d dissembled. No, she didn’t know anything. She’d never heard of the girl. Wes was worried about his brother, Eric, that’s all. Maybe someone said something to him about Rosa and he’d gone to the police because he was trying to be helpful. That’s the kind of boy he was. But anyway, he’d gone back to Massachusetts. So whatever was going on, Wes couldn’t be involved, right?
Ellen stepped out of her car and shut the door. She wore heels and a pantsuit. Tonight was not the night to look like a nurse, just off shift. Tonight she had to look like the daughter of industrialist Elwin Carter. She needed Stiles to think of her thusly, because very soon it would be her word against Bill Carter, the president and principle shareholder of Northrock, and against Dr. Alan Pardo.
That ass, Dr. Pardo. He’d never adjusted to his diminished status in the United States. A doctor, yes, but without connections, a foreigner, with only his two sons as allies. Somehow he thought he could play the Carter family into regaining his land, wealth, and status in El Salvador. He’d coaxed her with money to get her to blackmail Bill.
But Ellen had blackmailed her brother perfectly well on her own. And what Pardo didn’t know was that she’d found her own financial independence. She’d clawed it from the Carter fortune with such tenacity that she could almost feel it under her fingernails.
And money, much as she’d needed it desperately for so many years, was not her primary motivation. No, something deeper motivated her. Something more compelling, yet demanding patience. Endless, watchful patience. If she’d learned anything from her father it was how to work quietly but surely toward a long-term goal.
Ellen stepped from the chill air and into the warmth of the police station. She stepped to the window to check in with the dispatcher, who spoke into a telephone headset for a moment before disconnecting and turning to address the visitor.
“May I help you?”
“Lieutenant Stiles, please.”
“On behalf of whom, please?”
“Ellen Pilson. He called me the other day with some questions about an investigation. I have some information that he might find useful.”
The woman called the officer and Stiles appeared a few minutes later. He was a thick man with a strong jaw and a moustache, wearing a uniform. Stiles wore a neutral look as he appraised her. “Mrs. Pilson. Come back, please.” He led her to his desk and offered her a seat.
“I hope you don’t have any pressing business tonight,” Ellen said. She slid across a manila envelope she’d carried tucked under her arm.
Stiles eyed the envelope, but did not pick it up. “Not at the moment. Why?”
“Because I’m here to report a murder.”
Chapter Twenty-three:
Dr. Pardo sat in his car outside Riverwood. The parking lot was dark and still. It was cold and the snow that fell was light and dry and left a glittering, paper-thin layer across the cars. Saul Cage’s Lexus was not there. Pardo studied the other cars, and fixed on the forest green Jeep Cherokee. It was the same one that David had followed to Bolton Valley ski resort and tried to run off the road. Rebecca Gull’s car.
So Wes and Becca had returned. They’d slipped past James in Puerto Jiménez and somehow taken a flight to the United States without being detected. Fine. These two had killed his son and he would take pleasure in returning the favor. But first things, first.
His hand went to the pocket of his lab coat. He brought out the bottle of digoxin and pulled off the plastic safety wrapper, then unscrewed the lid. He dipped his little finger into the bottle and brought the drop of green, syrupy liquid to his lips. Sweet, cloyingly so. And minty. No wonder the literature insisted on the importance of training parents to keep the medicine away from older children. One could gulp an overdose in two seconds.
Pardo replaced the lid. He would go in, feed Davis Carter the digoxin, then come back and wait for Wes and Becca. He’d take the gun in his glove c
ompartment and force them to drive to a remote spot where he’d take care of them.
Pardo put on his doctor’s face. It was confident, authoritative. He would wear it into the building, act like he knew exactly what he was doing, and move aside anyone who stood in his way.
It was that air of confidence that had made Rosa Solorio trust him. Pardo had picked her up at JFK airport in New York City. She’d never been outside Costa Rica and had been overwhelmed by the city, its skyscrapers, and its crowds.
It had been Pardo who had gone to the Solorios to arrange the deal for Bill Carter. Rosa had been skeptical, but like her father and brother had been convinced that the spearing was an accident. What was a little lie to keep a good family out of trouble? Rosa’s father and brother had pushed her to take this opportunity. What could a girl like her accomplish on the Osa Peninsula? In the States, in el Norte, she could become a doctor, like Pardo.
In New York, she had fallen under Pardo’s control. He had wowed her with the city, fed her good food and too much wine, and then seduced her in her hotel room.
#
Wes gripped the nightstand with one hand and the edge of the bed with the other. His uncle had been sending an S.O.S. The first time his mind had caught the pattern, it was almost like seeing something out of the corner of his eye. But it had focused his attention like a shock of electricity. And then, yes! He was sure.
Becca stood with her hand over her mouth. Horror written across her face.
He could only stare as his mind raced. Five years in this place. Treated like a vegetable. Like a stroke victim who cannot talk, only paralyzed much, much deeper. He could not control his mouth, his limbs, his muscles in any way except for that twitching eye.
Only nobody noticed that eye, did they?
“Rosa,” Becca said, dropping her hand. “Had to be Rosa.” Becca was breathing fast and talking faster. “That was the bargain the Solorios made, to send Rosa up here to get an education. Only Bill and your mother gave her a job working at Riverwood and forgot about her. Thing is, she worked with Team Smile more than anyone else in this place. She must have seen that twitching eye. Made contact with Chad Lett.”
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