Whistleblower and Never Say Die

by Tess Gerritsen

  They laughed again, but this time the sound wasn’t as lighthearted. So many years had passed since their college days together, the days when they had known, had never doubted, that Prince Charmings abounded in the world.

  Cathy drained her glass of brandy and set it down. “What a lousy friend I am. Keeping a pregnant lady up all night! What time is it, anyway?”

  “Only two-thirty in the morning.”

  “Oh, Sarah! Go to bed!” Cathy went to the sink and began wetting a handful of paper towels.

  “And what are you going to do?” Sarah asked.

  “I just want to clean up the car. I didn’t get all the blood off the seat.”

  “I already did it.”

  “What? When?”

  “While you were taking a bath.”

  “Sarah, you idiot.”

  “Hey, I didn’t have a miscarriage or anything. Oh, I almost forgot.” Sarah pointed to a tiny film canister on the counter. “I found that on the floor of your car.”

  Cathy shook her head and sighed. “It’s Hickey’s.”

  “Hickey! Now there’s a waste of a man.”

  “He’s also a good friend of mine.”

  “That’s all Hickey will ever be to a woman. A friend. So what’s on the roll of film? Naked women, as usual?”

  “I don’t even want to know. When I dropped him off at the airport, he handed me a half-dozen rolls and told me he’d pick them up when he got back. Guess he didn’t want to lug ’em all the way to Nairobi.”

  “Is that where he went? Nairobi?”

  “He’s shooting ‘gorgeous ladies of Africa’ or something.” Cathy slipped the film canister into her bathrobe pocket. “This must’ve dropped out of the glove compartment. Gee. I hope it’s not pornographic.”

  “Knowing Hickey, it probably is.”

  They both laughed at the irony of it all. Hickman Von Trapp, whose only job it was to photograph naked females in erotic poses, had absolutely no interest in the opposite sex, with the possible exception of his mother.

  “A guy like Hickey only goes to prove my point,” Sarah said over her shoulder as she headed up the hall to bed.

  “What point is that?”

  “There really are no good men left in the world!”

  It was the light that dragged Victor up from the depths of unconsciousness, a light brighter than a dozen suns, beating against his closed eyelids. He didn’t want to wake up; he knew, in some dim, scarcely functioning part of his brain, that if he continued to struggle against this blessed oblivion he would feel pain and nausea and something else, something much, much worse: terror. Of what, he couldn’t remember. Of death? No, no, this was death, or as close as one could come to it, and it was warm and black and comfortable. But he had something important to do, something that he couldn’t allow himself to forget. He tried to think, but all he could remember was a hand, gentle but somehow strong, brushing his forehead, and a voice, reaching to him softly in the darkness.

  My name is Catherine….

  As her touch, her voice, flooded his memory, so too did the fear. Not for himself (he was dead, wasn’t he?) but for her. Strong, gentle Catherine. He’d seen her face only briefly, could scarcely remember it, but somehow he knew she was beautiful, the way a blind man knows, without benefit of vision, that a rainbow or the sky or his own dear child’s face is beautiful. And now he was afraid for her.

  Where are you? he wanted to cry out.

  “He’s coming around,” said a female voice (not Catherine’s, it was too hard, too crisp) followed by a confusing rush of other voices.

  “Watch that IV!”

  “Mr. Holland, hold still. Everything’s going to be all right—”

  “I said, watch the IV!”

  “Hand me that second unit of blood—”

  “Don’t move, Mr. Holland—”

  Where are you, Catherine? The shout exploded in his head. Fighting the temptation to sink back into unconsciousness, he struggled to lift his eyelids. At first, there was only a blur of light and color, so harsh he felt it stab through his sockets straight to his brain. Gradually the blur took the shape of faces, strangers in blue, frowning down at him. He tried to focus but the effort made his stomach rebel.

  “Mr. Holland, take it easy,” said a quietly gruff voice. “You’re in the hospital—the recovery room. They’ve just operated on your shoulder. You just rest and go back to sleep….”

  No. No, I can’t, he tried to say.

  “Five milligrams of morphine going in,” someone said, and Victor felt a warm flush creep up his arm and spread across his chest.

  “That should help,” he heard. “Now, sleep. Everything went just fine….”

  You don’t understand, he wanted to scream. I have to warn her—It was the last conscious thought he had before the lights once again were swallowed by the gentle darkness.

  Alone in her husbandless bed, Sarah lay smiling. No, laughing! Her whole body seemed filled with laughter tonight. She wanted to sing, to dance. To stand at the open window and shout out her joy! It was all hormonal, she’d been told, this chemical pandemonium of pregnancy, dragging her body on a roller coaster of emotions. She knew she should rest, she should work toward serenity, but tonight she wasn’t tired at all. Poor exhausted Cathy had dragged herself up the attic steps to bed. But here was Sarah, still wide awake.

  She closed her eyes and focused her thoughts on the child resting in her belly. How are you, my love? Are you asleep? Or are you listening, hearing my thoughts even now?

  The baby wiggled in her belly, then fell silent. It was a reply, secret words shared only between them. Sarah was almost glad there was no husband to distract her from this silent conversation, to lie here in jealousy, an outsider. There was only mother and child, the ancient bond, the mystical link.

  Poor Cathy, she thought, riding those roller coaster emotions from joy to sadness for her friend. She knew Cathy yearned just as deeply for a child, but eventually time would snatch the chance away from her. Cathy was too much of a romantic to realize that the man, the circumstances, might never be right. Hadn’t it taken Cathy ten long years to finally acknowledge that her marriage was a miserable failure? Not that Cathy hadn’t tried to make it work. She had tried to the point of developing a monumental blind spot to Jack’s faults, primarily his selfishness. It was surprising how a woman so bright, so intuitive, could have let things drag on as long as she did. But that was Cathy. Even at thirty-seven she was open and trusting and loyal to the point of idiocy.

  The clatter of gravel outside on the driveway pricked Sarah’s awareness. Lying perfectly still, she listened and for a moment heard only the familiar creak of the trees, the rustle of branches against the shake roof. Then—there it was again. Stones skittering across the road, and then the faint squeal of metal. Those raccoons again. If she didn’t shoo them off now, they’d litter garbage all over the driveway.

  Sighing, she sat up and hunted in the darkness for her slippers. Shuffling quietly out of her bedroom, she navigated instinctively down the hallway and into the kitchen. Her eyes found the night too comfortable; she didn’t want to assault them with light. Instead of flipping on the carport switch, she grabbed the flashlight from its usual spot on the kitchen shelf and unlocked the door.

  Outside, moonlight glowed dimly through the clouds. She pointed the flashlight at the trash cans, but her beam caught no raccoon eyes, no telltale scattering of garbage, only the dull reflection of stainless steel. Puzzled, she crossed the carport and paused next to the Datsun that Cathy had parked in the driveway.

  That was when she noticed the light glowing faintly inside the car. Glancing through the window, she saw that the glove compartment was open. Her first thought was that it had somehow fallen open by itself or that she or Cathy had forgotten to close it. Then she spotted the road maps strewn haphazardly across the front seat.

  With fear suddenly hissing in her ear, she backed away, but terror made her legs slow and stiff. Only then did she sens
e that someone was nearby, waiting in the darkness; she could feel his presence, like a chill wind in the night.

  She wheeled around for the house. As she turned, the beam of her flashlight swung around in a wild arc, only to freeze on the face of a man. The eyes that stared down at her were as slick and as black as pebbles. She scarcely focused on the rest of his face: the hawk nose, the thin, bloodless lips. It was only the eyes she saw. They were the eyes of a man without a soul.

  “Hello, Catherine,” he whispered, and she heard, in his voice, the greeting of death.

  Please, she wanted to cry out as she felt him wrench her hair backward, exposing her neck. Let me live!

  But no sound escaped. The words, like his blade, were buried in her throat.

  Cathy woke up to the quarreling of blue jays outside her window, a sound that brought a smile to her lips for it struck her as somehow whimsical, this flap and flutter of wings across the panes, this maniacal crackling of feathered enemies. So unlike the morning roar of buses and cars she was accustomed to. The blue jays’ quarrel moved to the rooftop, and she heard their claws scratching across the shakes in a dance of combat. She trailed their progress across the ceiling, up one side of the roof and down the other. Then, tired of the battle, she focused on the window.

  Morning sunlight cascaded in, bathing the attic room in a soft haze. Such a perfect room for a nursery! She could see all the changes Sarah had already made here—the Jack-and-Jill curtains, the watercolor animal portraits. The very prospect of a baby sleeping in this room filled her with such joy that she sat up, grinning, and hugged the covers to her knees. Then she glanced at her watch on the nightstand and saw it was already nine-thirty—half the morning gone!

  Reluctantly, she left the warmth of her bed and poked around in her suitcase for a sweater and jeans. She dressed to the thrashing of blue jays in the branches, the battle having moved from the roof to the treetops. From the window, she watched them dart from twig to twig until one finally hoisted up the feathered version of a white flag and took off, defeated. The victor, his authority no longer in question, gave one last screech and settled back to preen his feathers.

  Only then did Cathy notice the silence of the house, a stillness that magnified her every heartbeat, her every breath.

  Leaving the room, she descended the attic steps and confronted the empty living room. Ashes from last night’s fire mounded the grate. A silver garland drooped from the Christmas tree. A cardboard angel with glittery wings winked on the mantelpiece. She followed the hallway to Sarah’s room and frowned at the rumpled bed, the coverlet flung aside. “Sarah?”

  Her voice was swallowed up in the stillness. How could a cottage seem so immense? She wandered back through the living room and into the kitchen. Last night’s teacups still sat in the sink. On the windowsill, an asparagus fern trembled, stirred by a breeze through the open door.

  Cathy stepped out into the carport where Sarah’s old Dodge was parked. “Sarah?” she called.

  Something skittered across the roof. Startled, Cathy looked up and suddenly laughed as she heard the blue jay chattering in the tree above—a victory speech, no doubt. Even the animal kingdom had its conceits.

  She started to head back into the house when her gaze swept past a stain on the gravel near the car’s rear tire. For a few seconds she stared at the blot of rust-brown, unable to comprehend its meaning. Slowly, she moved alongside the car, her gaze tracing the stain backward along its meandering course.

  As she rounded the rear of the car, the driveway came into full view. The dried rivulet of brown became a crimson lake in which a single swimmer lay open-eyed and still.

  The blue jay’s chatter abruptly ceased as another sound rose up and filled the trees. It was Cathy, screaming.

  “Hey, mister. Hey, mister.”

  Victor tried to brush off the sound but it kept buzzing in his ear, like a fly that can’t be shooed away.

  “Hey, mister. You awake?”

  Victor opened his eyes and focused painfully on a wry little face stubbled with gray whiskers. The apparition grinned, and darkness gaped where teeth should have been. Victor stared into that foul black hole of a mouth and thought: I’ve died and gone to hell.

  “Hey, mister, you got a cigarette?”

  Victor shook his head and barely managed to whisper: “I don’t think so.”

  “Well, you got a dollar I could borrow?”

  “Go away,” groaned Victor, shutting his eyes against the daylight. He tried to think, tried to remember where he was, but his head ached and the little man’s voice kept distracting him.

  “Can’t get no cigarettes in this place. Like a jail in here. Don’t know why I don’t just get up and walk out. But y’know, streets are cold this time of year. Been rainin’ all night long. Least in here it’s warm….”

  Raining all night long…Suddenly Victor remembered. The rain. Running and running through the rain.

  Victor’s eyes shot open. “Where am I?”

  “Three East. Land o’ the bitches.”

  He struggled to sit up and almost gasped from the pain. Dizzily, he focused on the metal pole with its bag of fluid dripping slowly into the plastic intravenous tube, then stared at the bandages on his left shoulder. Through the window, he saw that the day was already drenched in sunshine. “What time is it?”

  “Dunno. Nine o’clock, I guess. You missed breakfast.”

  “I’ve got to get out of here.” Victor swung his legs out of bed and discovered that, except for a flimsy hospital gown, he was stark naked. “Where’s my clothes? My wallet?”

  The old man shrugged. “Nurse’d know. Ask her.”

  Victor found the call button buried among the bedsheets. He stabbed it a few times, then turned his attention to peeling off the tape affixing the IV tube to his arm.

  The door hissed open and a woman’s voice barked, “Mr. Holland! What do you think you’re doing?”

  “I’m getting out of here, that’s what I’m doing,” said Victor as he stripped off the last piece of tape. Before he could pull the IV out, the nurse rushed across the room as fast as her stout legs could carry her and slapped a piece of gauze over the catheter.

  “Don’t blame me, Miss Redfern!” screeched the little man.

  “Lenny, go back to your own bed this instant! And as for you, Mr. Holland,” she said, turning her steel-blue eyes on Victor, “you’ve lost too much blood.” Trapping his arm against her massive biceps, she began to retape the catheter firmly in place.

  “Just get me my clothes.”

  “Don’t argue, Mr. Holland. You have to stay.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you’ve got an IV, that’s why!” she snapped, as if the plastic tube itself was some sort of irreversible condition.

  “I want my clothes.”

  “I’d have to check with the ER. Nothing of yours came up to the floor.”

  “Then call the ER, damn you!” At Miss Redfern’s disapproving scowl, he added with strained politeness, “If you don’t mind.”

  It was another half hour before a woman showed up from the business office to explain what had happened to Victor’s belongings.

  “I’m afraid we—well, we seem to have…lost your clothes, Mr. Holland,” she said, fidgeting under his astonished gaze.

  “What do you mean, lost?”

  “They were—” she cleared her throat “—er, stolen. From the emergency room. Believe me, this has never happened before. We’re really very sorry about this, Mr. Holland, and I’m sure we’ll be able to arrange a purchase of replacement clothing….”

  She was too busy trying to make excuses to notice that Victor’s face had frozen in alarm. That his mind was racing as he tried to remember, through the blur of last night’s events, just what had happened to the film canister. He knew he’d had it in his pocket during the endless drive to the hospital. He remembered clutching it there, remembered flailing senselessly at the woman when she’d tried to pull his hand from his pocket. Af
ter that, nothing was clear, nothing was certain. Have I lost it? he thought. Have I lost my only evidence?

  “…While the money’s missing, your credit cards seem to be all there, so I guess that’s something to be thankful for.”

  He looked at her blankly. “What?”

  “Your valuables, Mr. Holland.” She pointed to the wallet and watch she’d just placed on the bedside table. “The security guard found them in the trash bin outside the hospital. Looks like the thief only wanted your cash.”

  “And my clothes. Right.”

  The instant the woman left, Victor pressed the button for Miss Redfern. She walked in carrying a breakfast tray. “Eat, Mr. Holland,” she said. “Maybe your behavior’s all due to hypoglycemia.”

  “A woman brought me to the ER,” he said. “Her first name was Catherine. I have to get hold of her.”

  “Oh, look! Eggs and Rice Krispies! Here’s your fork—”

  “Miss Redfern, will you forget the damned Rice Krispies!”

  Miss Redfern slapped down the cereal box. “There is no need for profanity!”

  “I have to find that woman!”

  Without a word, Miss Redfern spun around and marched out of the room. A few minutes later she returned and brusquely handed him a slip of paper. On it was written the name Catherine Weaver followed by a local address.

  “You’d better eat fast,” she said. “There’s a policeman coming over to talk to you.”

  “Fine,” he grunted, stuffing a forkful of cold, rubbery egg in his mouth.

  “And some man from the FBI called. He’s on his way, too.”

  Victor’s head jerked up in alarm. “The FBI? What was his name?”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake, how should I know? Something Polish, I think.”

  Staring at her, Victor slowly put down his fork. “Polowski,” he said softly.

  “That sounds like it. Polowski.” She turned and headed out of the room. “The FBI indeed,” she muttered. “Wonder what he did to get their attention….”

  Before the door had even swung shut behind her, Victor was out of bed and tearing at his IV. He scarcely felt the sting of the tape wrenching the hair off his arm; he had to concentrate on getting the hell out of this hospital before Polowski showed up. He was certain the FBI agent had set him up for that ambush last night, and he wasn’t about to wait around for another attack.