Stone Angel

by Carol O’Connell

  He slowed down and pointed out the sheriff’s car parked near the entrance. “We could come back later.”

  “No, I need this stuff now. Don’t worry about it, Charles. They won’t ask questions. You told Riker you wanted to visit Alma, didn’t you?”

  “But what about you?”

  He didn’t hold out much hope for this disguise of hers. She would have seemed less out of place on horseback in another century. The long black duster was wide in the shoulders and covered most of her body, stopping short of the riding boots and a bit of the blue jeans. The black hat was also an antique, short in the crown but wide enough in the brim to resemble a cowboy hat. Beneath the hat a black scarf covered every strand of her hair. The incongruous aviator sunglasses made her look even more dangerous. He thought the costume was actually more revealing of her character than disguising of person.

  “Seriously, Mallory? You don’t think Jessop and Riker will notice you the second you walk in the door?” Could a bright red fire engine be less conspicuous in the hospital lobby?

  “I’m going in through a basement window.”

  Oh, of course. He had forgotten who he was dealing with. Any fool could go in by the front door. He pulled into the visitors’ parking lot and rolled along the side of the building. “Just stop me when you see a window you like.”

  “It’s the last one at the rear.” Mallory consulted his wristwatch. It was safely past the hour when the clerk went off shift. “Augusta says this woman always complains about the view from the back end of the parking lot. Pull up here. And park the car close by.” She handed him a piece of paper. “And get this prescription filled at the pharmacy. It’s for Augusta.”

  He stared down at the paper in his hand. “This has my name on it as the prescribing physician.”

  “Well, you’re a doctor.”

  “I’m a Ph.D. not a medical doctor.”

  “You are now. I gave you a New Orleans physician’s number. You’ll be on the pharmacy computer. Don’t worry about it.”

  She crept out of the car, and he gave her cover while she opened the basement window. He had expected her to whip out an elaborate tool kit with delicate lockpicks. Instead, she opted for expediency and used a rock.

  Riker changed his mind about going outside for a smoke. Charles Butler had just entered the lobby, bearing a huge bouquet of brilliant flowers. Though he usually attracted some attention for his size and height, he walked through the crowded area without turning a head. In the aftermath of a highway accident, people in hospital garb were moving with urgent purpose. The civilians were haranguing the personnel at the front desk, and others sat, worried and waiting, filling all the chairs and couches scattered about the lobby. All around the giant in blue jeans, people were preoccupied with matters of life and death.

  Only Riker noticed Charles approaching the pharmacy window and handing a piece of paper over the counter. The gray-haired pharmacist looked at the paper, nodded and held up five fingers, to say this transaction wouldn’t take much time.

  Charles had only walked a few steps away from the counter, when he was roughly shouldered by a speeding nurse, who bounced off of him. Riker could read the body language of Charles rushing to apologize for what she had done to him. The nurse gently touched one of the exotic blooms in Charles’s bouquet and nodded. Now she pointed down the hall where Charles would find Alma Furgueson’s room and her visitor, the sheriff.

  Riker had begged off that interview. He hadn’t wanted to see the sheriff’s interrogation style applied to the woman who had crawled from the cemetery on her hands and knees.

  He felt around in his pockets for cigarettes and matches as he walked outside. Charles’s Mercedes was nowhere in sight. He strolled around the side of the building and spotted the silver car at the back of the lot, though there were a dozen spaces close to the front door.

  Now that was interesting.

  He walked toward the car, but stopped when he came to the window with the broken pane of glass. It put him off for a moment because this was not her style. Well, maybe the brat had been in a hurry.

  He turned to the metal doors under the sign for the service entrance. They should open onto a freight elevator. He tried door pulls – locked tight and no signs of a pick. She had definitely gone through the window. She probably wanted to avoid meeting staff in the basement halls.

  He tested the door of Charles’s car. Not locked. Good. He had never hot-wired a Mercedes before, but it shouldn’t be much of a challenge.

  Riker forgot the urge for a cigarette and returned to the hospital lobby. A young woman was entering the door next to the pharmacy window. A few minutes later, the old man with the glasses was heading down the hall marked by a sign for the cafeteria.

  Riker walked up to the window, gave the young woman Charles Butler’s name and asked her when the prescription would be ready.

  “Oh, you’re in luck. He finished that one before he went to lunch.” She slid the bag over the counter. “That’ll be thirty dollars and twenty-five cents, Dr. Butler.”

  Riker paid her and opened the bag. Doctor Butler? He read the labels for drugs which were all too familiar. One he recognized as an anti-inflammatory. The second bottle was antibiotics. And the Percodan would kill the pain.

  He strolled over to the basement door as an orderly parked a wheelchair by the wall a few steps away. And now the rest of the plan fell into place as the orderly disappeared into the men’s room.

  Riker opened the basement door and surveyed the deserted stairwell. He rolled the wheelchair through the doorway and down the stairs. The lower floor was a labyrinth with no helpful signs, and no elevator in sight. He knew he was facing east as he rolled the chair down a corridor which turned a corner and sent him south. He reoriented himself with every turn, hunting for the room to match the window with the broken glass. This section of the basement was pin-drop quiet, deserted in the lunch hour.

  He settled on a door at the end of a long hall. On his way toward it, he passed the freight elevator which would open onto the service entrance in the parking lot. This was just too good to be true, and he flirted with the idea that God was on his side in this plan to batter a woman, to knock her senseless and carry her away.

  He parked the wheelchair in front of the door at the end of the hall. Hunkering down, he used both hands to block the overhead bulb from the wide crack at the threshold. No light shone through from the room beyond. He pulled out a handkerchief and unscrewed the bare bulb over the door so the light from the hallway wouldn’t give him away in silhouette. Beneath the doorknob was a standard lock, nothing formidable. He applied all his strength to a twist of the knob to force the flimsy lock. The door opened quietly.

  The long room was almost black. There was hardly any light from the rectangle of the broken window in the far wall. While his eyes adjusted, he was guided by the small penlight in Mallory’s hand.

  She was completely absorbed in the contents of an open file drawer. He made out the dim shape of a desk lamp to her right. One of his hands went out to the lamp switch, and with the other, he grabbed Mallory by the shoulder and spun her around. And then there was light, but he was more startled than she was.

  “Well, if it isn’t Jesse James,” he said, staring at the wide-brim hat shading her eyes. Her coat was laid open and now he could see the gun belt. “You got your geography mixed up, kid. This is the Deep South, not the Old West.”

  Her face turned up and now he met her eyes. She was blinking in the light and wincing with real pain, her fingers working frantically to pry his hand from her shoulder. As his hand dropped away, the pain in her face lessened. He pulled the coat back and felt the bulk of the bandage beneath her blouse.

  “Ah, Mallory, you took a bullet, didn’t you?”

  She shook him off, saying nothing, only showing him she was not all that happy to see him again. He held up the pharmacy bag. “Dr. Butler’s prescriptions? I thought this crap looked familiar. Now what’s going on, kid?”

>   She took the pharmacy bag from his hand and checked the contents, as though she thought he might have stolen something. He knew she was stalling for time, hunting for a good lie.

  “I’m looking for missing lab work my mother ordered on a patient. Any blood work would have been done here.”

  That could be true. Mallory sometimes told the truth just to confuse him. Sheets of blue papers protruded from the oversized pockets of her long black coat. “What’ve you got?”

  She ignored the question as she slid open another file drawer and continued her pilfering. It was awkward work, for she would not turn her back on him, and thumbed the files from the side of the open drawer. Now that she was on her guard, he had no hope of taking her by surprise, and he couldn’t rush her with the file drawer blocking him. “How’ve you been, Riker? You look like hell.”

  “So? I saw the mug shot of you in the gingham jailhouse uniform. Now that was terminally cute.”

  No reaction; she was deaf and blind to him.

  Well, it took better bait than that to get a rise out of Mallory. “The FBI found your footprints in a classified system, kid. That’s a federal rap, real jail time.” Now he had her.

  She smashed the pharmacy bag into her coat pocket. “I did not leave tracks in that computer. Those bastards have been trying to nail me for years.” She slammed the file drawer. “But they can’t prove illegal access – no way. If they can’t prove it, I didn’t do it.”

  “Oh, yeah?” He pointed to her left shoulder where the wound was. “That was pretty careless, wasn’t it? But we’ll let the bullet hole slide, okay? The sheriff used your pocket watch to backtrack Markowitz. That was another screwup, kid, not ditching the watch with the rest of your ID. And then I saw the broken window – not your usual neat style. Was it your idea to park Charles’s car close enough to flag it for me? Oh, yeah, I can believe you got sloppy. I think the FBI does have something on you, maybe enough to prosecute.”

  That put a small dent in her facade. The smallest doubt was all he needed to work with. “The feds send their compliments, and they want whatever you got on the New Church. You don’t give them what they want – they flood this burg with agents, and your own little scheme goes up in smoke.”

  “They’re running a bluff. They don’t have enough probable cause to flood a Dayborn phone booth with agents.”

  He leaned one arm on the file cabinet, testing the waters. She didn’t move away from him. “Mallory, they did me a favor. They held back your prints and they’re not looking to prosecute the computer break-in. Now I owe them one. You know this game.”

  “You can tell them the New Church isn’t planning to overthrow the government. There are no assault weapons, no explosives, nothing bigger than a squirrel rifle. So they really have no excuse to blow up the town.”

  “I need a little more than that.”

  “The feds have a twenty-year-old file on the New Church. It may have dawned on them that it’s all bullshit.” She spoke to the open drawer as she pulled back file holders, stopping now and then to take one out for a closer look. “They had a profile on Babe Laurie as a brilliant and dangerous cult leader. Maybe they just found out he was the town idiot. If they did, they read it in his obituary. You wouldn’t believe how much the FBI paid for bogus information. I’m sure they tried to get better data from Internal Revenue, but IRS would never let them near an ongoing investigation.”

  He knew Mallory couldn’t string that many words together without telling at least one lie. So there was no IRS investigation.

  And now she was putting some distance between them, drifting away from the file cabinet.

  “Okay, kid, tell me what IRS has.” Yeah, tell me a story.

  “I can’t do that without admitting I was in another classified computer. Like you said, Riker – that’s a federal rap. Real jail time.”

  “So? I’m gonna rat on you?” The distance between them was growing in tiny increments. He took one step toward her, and she brushed aside the long black duster to settle one hand on her right hip, exposing the gun. He recognized this as Mallory’s idea of being subtle.

  You wouldn’t shoot me, would you, kid? Aloud, he said, “Give me something I can take back to the feds.”

  “It’s a tax fraud scam. Babe Laurie’s brother is liquidating New Church assets into a financial holding pen. It’s all set up to feed into a foreign account.”

  “So we’re talking big-time embezzlement?”

  “It gets better. Malcolm is planning to skip out on the family. He just did a deal on all the lower bayou property. Sold it out from underneath his own relatives. They’ll be homeless and on the dole at the end of the month.”

  “So that’s why you had to come back now. You didn’t want the locals to scatter till you nailed everyone in that mob.”

  And now – time out for a little heartache.

  She was coldly regarding him as a stranger, armed and dangerous. Was she seeing the same thing in his own eyes? Of course she was.

  “So you figure Babe Laurie was in on the scam?”

  “No,” she said. “Babe was a fool. Malcolm would’ve been crazy to tell him anything.”

  “Suppose Babe found out about it? Good reason for Malcolm to do away with his little brother.” Tell me someone else could have done this murder. I’ll believe in you – even if I don’t believe you.

  “Malcolm didn’t do it,” she said. “He wouldn’t do anything to call attention to himself right now. Neither will IRS. But when he tries to leave the country, they’ll arrest him for tax fraud, embezzlement and flight to avoid prosecution. If the feds spook Malcolm and mess up that operation, IRS will turn them into roadkill.”

  He moved toward her, and that was a mistake. She backed up and planted her feet wide to make a stand. He didn’t believe she would draw the gun on him just yet; he’d done nothing to provoke that.

  “Mallory, it’s not like I think you’d leave me hanging out in the breeze with the feds, but is any of this IRS crap true?”

  Was she smiling? He could barely make out her face, though her lower body remained in the dim circle of light from the small desk lamp.

  “IRS does have an open file on the New Church,” she said. “And they are running audits.”

  Her head turned to the door. He stepped to one side and neatly blocked that exit. And now he realized she had just confirmed the impending betrayal.

  It was a strain to keep his voice casual. “So IRS is suspicious. So what? They suspect everybody. But they’re not really planning an arrest, are they?”

  “After you report back, the FBI will ask IRS about the investigation ” Her voice was machinelike, no trace of stress. “IRS will say they’re not running one – force of habit. But IRS keeps tabs on every organization so the feds will figure that’s a lie, and then they’ll believe an arrest is in the works. Ten minutes after the feds clear the room, IRS will start a criminal investigation. They’ll bank an arrest warrant on Malcolm against the audit findings.” She was retreating into deeper shadows. “So the truth is just a little bit out of order, okay?”

  He moved on her before he could lose the light on her gun belt.

  “That’s close enough, Riker.”

  At no time in his life was he more aware of the heavy weight in his shoulder holster. The lamp was behind him now, and he was only a dark shape to her. His hand moved slowly inside his coat, reaching for the gun. If he could only show her the gun, Mallory might not draw on him. She might bow to the laws of ballistics which dictate that a drawn gun is faster.

  If she drew first, he was a dead man. Sentiment would not get between Mallory and what she wanted most – payback for a murdered mother.

  “Mallory, the sheriff’s got his motive. He knows Babe Laurie was in that mob. He can build a case against you.”

  Her hand was rising, stopping short of the revolver on her belt, hesitating in the air – waiting.

  He was touching his gun now. He eased it out of the holster, working slow, no sud
den movements to make her draw. She was so much younger, years faster; he would have to cheat to beat her, and he was counting on the dark to give him an edge. The only light shone on her. “I know what you’re planning. All those people. You can’t do it, Mallory.”

  “We’re done, Riker.” Her gun hand flashed out.

  “Kathy!” he yelled in a pure reflex, forgetting he held a weapon, trying to get to the child he knew, before this strange woman could kill him.

  The basement was plunged into blackness. Mallory’s hand had found the fuse box. She had only killed the light. Seconds later, Riker was alone in the room.

  Charles’s thoughts were with the old king of the world when he looked down at his bouquet, another apology of flowers. When he entered Alma Furgueson’s hospital room, the sheriff was gone and another visitor was sitting by her bed. The large proprietress of Jane’s Cafe was mashing delicate wildflowers between her thick fingers as she arranged them in the water glass on the bedside table.

  “Hello, again,” said Jane. It was the warm welcome of an old friend, though they had never even spoken to one another. “I heard you were back in town. So you come to visit with Alma. Well, isn’t that nice.” She bent down to the woman on the bed and reiterated this, as if Alma had no eyes and they were not trained on the enormous man looming over her.

  “Say hello to your visitor, Alma.” Jane took the flowers from his hand and began to arrange this larger bouquet in the water pitcher, brutally snapping the long elegant stalks to better fit the short length of glass, bruising every petal as she forced them into the narrow container. The overflow of water spilled out on the table, smearing the ink on Alma’s only get-well card, which was signed by Jane.

  “I’m so sorry about all this, Miss Furgueson.” He pulled up a chair and sat on the other side of her bed. “I know it had something to do with the angel in the – ”

  “Oh, no it didn’t,” said Jane, answering for Alma. “She does this at least once a year. She’s pixilated, you know. Now you just call her Alma – everyone does.”