Critical Judgment (1996)

by Michael Palmer

  His icy smile unwavering, Alvarez slid several paces to his left. He was now no more than ten feet from the side door--about the same distance he was from Josh and from Abby.

  "Wyler, you don't look well," he said.

  "Don't ... move."

  The words were barely audible.

  Abby could see the pain and confusion in Josh's eyes, and she had no doubt that Alvarez could see it, too. If Alvarez dived for the door, he was almost certain to make it before Josh reacted. Instead, he stood his ground. His expression was bemused, his eyes were riveted on Josh.

  "Josh, give me the gun," Abby said, taking a tentative step toward him.

  There was no response.

  "Josh?" she said again.

  The barrel of the gun sank toward the floor. She realized that Josh was virtually unconscious on his feet. Alvarez tested the situation with a slight move toward the door. Then another. At that moment a dreadful gurgling rose from Josh's throat. His head snapped back and his body stiffened. Then he lurched to his left and fell, his back arched and his limbs pumping in a violent seizure. The weapon spun out of his hand and under the truck. Alvarez had a much better angle on the stall than did Abby. He dived headfirst toward the pickup and was scrambling over Josh when Abby whirled and sprinted for the spot against the front wall where she had propped the rifle.

  She grabbed it just as Alvarez shoved Josh clear of the truck. He was on his belly, reaching for the gun, when she dropped to the floor about twenty feet away and leveled the rifle.

  "Stop, Lew! Right there!"

  She punctuated the command with a shot that splintered the floor beneath the truck, just a foot or so away from his face. Then she quickly bolted another round into the chamber. Slowly, he wriggled out backward from under the truck. She could see that he held the gun. Behind him, Josh had stopped seizing and was now lying motionless.

  "Throw it away, Lew," she barked. "Now!"

  He slithered around to face her. The gun was still in his hand, but turned almost under him so that it would be impossible to ready it and shoot before she fired. He tested her with a tiny movement.

  "Okay, that's enough," she said.

  He adjusted his arm another few inches.

  "I said enough!" she snapped. "You say you know me so well. What does your wonderful insight say I'm going to do if you don't throw that gun away right now?"

  He made a show of sizing her up.

  "It says you won't fire," he said finally.

  "Good. I'm glad that's how you feel. You haven't been wrong about me yet, so why don't you go ahead? My intuition tells me you're too much of an egomaniac to want to chance having the world endure without you forever. Let's see who's right."

  Fifteen endless seconds passed. Then, finally, with a flick of his wrist, Dr. Luis Maria Galatin sent the weapon spinning across the coarse wooden floor.

  "Stay on your belly," Abby barked, advancing to him, her rifle leveled at the base of his skull.

  "How are you going to tie me up without setting that gun down?"

  "Put your hands behind you, Lew. Now!"

  "If I don't?"

  "If you don't, I'm going to shoot you. Maybe in your leg, maybe in your groin. Do you believe that? ... Do you?"

  Slowly, Alvarez brought his hands behind his back. Abby dropped the loop of clothesline over his wrists and pulled the knot tight. Next, she wound the rope several times around his ankles, and then looped it around his neck. Only then, keeping constant tension on the rope, did she risk cradling the rifle as she reached for the duct tape.

  It took more than twenty careful minutes, all of the clothesline, and most of the roll of duct tape before Abby felt certain she had bound Alvarez securely. He was on his belly, hands lashed behind him, ankles secured. It was only then that she felt able to tend to Josh.

  He was in the condition Abby had observed hundreds of times after patients' seizures--conscious, but dazed, moaning softly with each breath. In the course of his fit, he had bitten his tongue and the inside of his lip. Now a trickle of blood had darkened the corner of his mouth. Abby gave passing thought to leaving him there and calling for an ambulance when--if--she got free of the valley. But she sensed she would never make it out of the area without his knowledge of the back roads through the hills.

  She checked his pulses, which were strong, and his pupils, which were somewhat less pinpoint than they had been. The seizure was probably an effect of the cadmium, although it could have been alcohol. Either way, the narcotic painkillers may have kept it from being worse. The expertise to perform chelation therapy, and indeed, the chelating medication itself, was at St. John's, not here in Patience. But the drive to the city could prove disastrous for him. Even so, Abby knew they had to take the chance. She propped him up with an arm around his shoulder. His head lolled at first. But after a short time he began to regain some control.

  "Josh, can you hear me?" A faint nod. "You had a seizure, probably from the poison in your body. We need to get out of here and down to St. John's. Do you understand?" Another nod.

  Abby helped him to his feet. Then she belted him into the passenger seat of the truck. She found the key on a ring in Lew's pocket. Next she pulled on the clothesline, stretching his arms backward until he had to stand up. Then she ordered him to the back of the truck. He refused to move. Abby retrieved Josh's gun and held it against one of his thumbs.

  "I have no patience for this," she said. "As far as I'm concerned, it's high time you were the one doing the suffering. Once I shoot this thumb off, I guarantee you, as only a doctor can, that it's not going to grow back. What does your precious sixth sense about me have to say about my willingness to do that?"

  Without a word Lew hopped to the cargo bay and awkwardly rolled onto it. Abby searched the barn and found another length of rope. Then she wrapped him snugly and completely in the vinyl tarp and lashed him securely in place.

  "Don't do this to me, Abby," he said. "I'll never survive in here like this. I'll suffocate."

  "We'll see," Abby replied, securing the rear gate and taking her place behind the wheel. "We'll see."

  The engine kicked over on the first try. With Lew's meticulous attention to the details of his life, she had never doubted that it would.

  "Josh, I need to get out of the valley without going on any of the state roads. Can you do that?"

  "Yes.... My head is ... killing me."

  He took the vial of pills from his pocket but was unable to open it. Abby helped him shake out two. He swallowed them without water.

  "Which way?" she asked.

  "South and west ... toward the house."

  The road to which Josh directed her was steep and rutted. By the time she was a mile into it, he was semiconscious again, with a rag doll's control of his body. Again and again jolts sent his head snapping against the window. As much as she could, she drove holding on to the neck of his sweatshirt. Once she stopped to check on the bundle in the cargo bay. Lew was furious, but uninjured.

  There were no forks or turns off the dirt road, so there was no reason to try to rouse Josh. For forty-five minutes Abby drove through the rain-soaked forest. Suddenly, after a steep, mercilessly jouncing downhill stretch, she saw headlights flash past ahead. She slowed and crept forward, cutting the lights. Finally she reached the margin of the woods. Josh had done it. The highway was the two-lane state road through the mountains that she had taken to San Francisco, and then later to Feather Ridge.

  "Josh, we made it!" she said excitedly.

  He did not respond. His breathing was sonorous, unnatural.

  "Josh?"

  Abby shook him, but he did not respond. She turned his face toward her. The muscles in his face were twitching. Another seizure--this one more focal than the last.

  "Damn," she said softly.

  To the right, with luck, she still faced more than a four-hour drive to the city. To the left, half an hour back, was Patience--a viper-filled pit for her, without a single ally she could count on. She bit at h
er lower lip and looked again at Josh. Then she took a single deep breath, flipped on the headlights, and swung a right onto the road, headed south. Ten miles, twenty, fifty. Josh had long ago stopped seizing, but he remained in a coma. She was about five miles from the cutoff to the town of Feather Falls, and beyond that, Feather Ridge. Ezra Black had his own helicopter. With it Josh could be on the roof at St. John's in forty-five minutes or so. At the very least it was worth a call.

  Abby was looking down at the floor for the cellular phone when the cab was lit up by a flashing blue-white strobe. Her heart froze. The cruiser was a few car lengths behind her, inching closer as the officer inside waited for her to pull over. The town was just ahead. Being stopped now might well mean being brought back to whatever unthinkable fate awaited her in Patience. It certainly meant delay and trouble for Josh. And with no arrest warrants out for Lew Alvarez, it was quite possible Galatin would be able to talk the police into setting him free and even into adding kidnapping to the charges against her. She was seven miles or so from Feather Ridge--no more.

  "Hang on, baby," she said, though Josh was far beyond hearing her.

  She rammed down on the accelerator and felt the truck surge forward with surprising power. Instantly, the siren from the cruiser pierced the night. Abby kept her foot tight to the floor. The cruiser tried to pull beside her, but the narrow road made it easy to keep it at bay. Luckily, at this hour there was little traffic. She flew over a small hill, bottoming out the chassis as she hit. Ahead, she could see Main Street. She was doing over eighty now. Wind was tearing through the open window, whipping her hair against her face and into her eyes. Josh was slumped over almost double, jostling violently from side to side. The cruiser pulled alongside her once more. Again she fought it off.

  Then, up ahead, she spotted a second cruiser, parked across the middle of the road, strobes flashing. There was room for the truck to the right of it, but only if the pickup was tougher than a pedestrian bench and a stop sign. Eighty-five. Eighty-eight. Abby saw the officer standing by the cruiser realize that she wasn't slowing down, and dive off to the left. At the last moment she swung the pickup onto the sidewalk. Her head snapped forward as the steel plow frame took out the wooden bench. But the stop sign sheared off with just a minor jolt.

  Seconds later she was beyond the town, flying up and down the roller-coaster hills toward Feather Ridge. Behind her the two cruisers were gaining. But now, she knew, they would not be driving with such a sense of urgency. She was trapped. Not a mile ahead was the massive gate to Feather Ridge. What they had no way of knowing, though, was that she had absolutely no intention of stopping.

  Apparently, the police had been able to call ahead to the guardhouse. As Abby approached it, a dark sedan snapped its lights on, and a security man appeared at the roadside, gun in hand. Abby got her bearings, aimed for the center of the gate, gripped the wheel tightly, and ducked below the level of the dash. A bullet cracked through her window and thudded into the roof of the cab. Then a second shot must have hit the left front tire. It exploded with a bass-drum sound, tearing the wheel from her hands at precisely the moment the pickup slammed into the gate. Abby's forehead smacked against the steering wheel, dazing her and sending blood cascading down into her eyes. But the pickup barreled on through the gate, careening to the left into the orchard.

  Abby kept her foot to the floor as she battled to regain control of the wheel. The truck flattened several young trees, then lurched to the right and back onto the pavement. The smell of burning rubber filled the cab. It took all her strength, pulling the wheel to the right, to keep the pickup on the road. Blood from her forehead had her nearly blind. The cruisers and the third car were pulling alongside again. But ahead of her now, sprawled across the side of the mountain, was the estate.

  The battered truck careened down the last hill. Abby could see perhaps half a dozen guards running to take up positions in front of the house. With a final, unspoken prayer, she slammed on the brakes. There was a deafening screech as the pickup skidded sideways, spun completely around, tipped way up onto two wheels, then dropped back heavily onto four. The doors were snatched open. Rough hands pulled her and Josh out and threw them to the ground. Instantly, a dozen or more men, guns drawn, were around her. Half a dozen powerful flashlights shone on her face. One of the men kicked her onto her back with his boot, then roughly pulled her to a sitting position by the front of her sweatshirt.

  Abby blinked, trying to focus on him, but could hardly see anything through the blood. Suddenly the guard let her go and stepped away. She wiped her eyes with her sleeve. Through the glare of the lights a man approached and handed her a handkerchief. She tied it around her head, putting pressure on the gash, which she now could appreciate was not that big. Then she peered up at him.

  "You must have wanted very badly to see me," Ezra Black said.

  Abby waved off help, stood by herself, and rushed around to where Josh lay. He was unconscious but crying out softly. His vital signs seemed strong, and there were no other indications that he had been injured in their ordeal.

  She retrieved the plastic bag from the truck and motioned Black away from his men. Back at the pickup, she could see some of the guards untying the tarp. After the violent pounding Galatin must have taken during the harrowing chase, it was quite possible that there would be a corpse wrapped inside. But after a few seconds she heard him moaning.

  "That man on the ground needs to get to St. John's in San Francisco," she said. "Could your helicopter take him?"

  "What's the matter with him?"

  "He's been poisoned with cadmium. Just like your son was. He'll die soon without help."

  She reached into the plastic bag and brought out the box of cadmium and the article about the Colstar explosion. Black studied them. It was clear from his expression that the name Luis Maria Galatin was one he knew.

  "Galatin is responsible for this?"

  "He is."

  "And where is he now?"

  "There."

  Abby motioned toward the truck, where Galatin was sitting, crying out about a pain in his arm.

  "And is that all you want from me? A ride to San Francisco?"

  "No. I want that lab beneath Colstar closed down for good."

  Black eyed her for several seconds.

  "Can I count on your total discretion if I guarantee that?"

  "You have my word."

  Abby unfolded the list of cadmium victims.

  "This man, Josh Wyler, is the one on the ground. The next one, Willie Cardoza, is the one who ran down Peggy Wheaton. There's Ethan's name, right there. Galatin was working in the Patience Regional Hospital ER under the name Alvarez. These people all worked for Colstar. He gave the cadmium to all these people when he sewed up their cuts. He had no idea that given intravenously, the metal would become concentrated in a place in the brain where it would cause the sort of insanity that killed your son. He didn't care. He only wanted to get Colstar closed down."

  "I see.... So, is this a trade?"

  Abby glanced over at the truck.

  "I want the best lawyers money can buy for Willie Cardoza and Josh. And I want something done about Quinn."

  Black looked at her admiringly.

  "You're tough," he said.

  "I wasn't before this all happened."

  "For what it's worth, I will promise you that Quinn is finished in Patience. I also have heard that they will not be able to save his leg."

  "I'm not sorry. I want Kelly Franklin to get the very best medical care and rehabilitation. And if she doesn't make it, I'd like to contact you about having Colstar take care of her two daughters."

  "Is that it?"

  "Yes."

  "You sure, now?"

  Abby thought for a moment.

  "I'm sure."

  "Thank goodness.... Hey, Nick," he called out to one of the group of men. "Get ready to fly. This lady and her friend need to get to a hospital in San Francisco."

  Abby motioned toward the truc
k with her head.

  "What about him?"

  "I don't recall that my sharing that information was part of our deal."

  Abby hesitated, then said, "It wasn't."

  "For what it's worth, I have no intention of killing Galatin, although at some point he may wish that I had. I have some good friends and business associates in the Paraguayan government. I know for a fact that they'll be most grateful for this ... this scum's return home. Most grateful."

  Abby held the billionaire's gaze for a time; then she nodded that their business was completed. She turned away and followed the men who were carrying Josh to the helipad. Minutes later they were airborne. Abby sat at one end of a plush, sofalike seat at the rear of the elegant aircraft. Josh was stretched out next to her, his head resting on her lap. He had regained consciousness only briefly, but long enough to manage something of a smile.

  The chopper banked a graceful arc over Ezra Black's estate and then headed southwest. Abby gazed out the window past the battered, exhausted reflection that looked vaguely like herself. She reached up and flicked off the cabin lights. Far to the north, almost lost in the pitch-black landscape and sky, she could just barely make out a smudge of red.

  EPILOGUE

  Three thousand miles away, just to the east of the Tennessee/North Carolina border, Lally Dorsett lay supine on the stretcher, watching the ceiling fluorescents flash past. Forty-five years she had lived in the town of Gilbert, nestled in the Blue Ridge Mountains, and she had not been sick a day. Now, because of a little dizziness, she was in the damn hospital. Hell, she thought, for most of those four and a half decades, Gilbert didn't even have a hospital. Now, suddenly, it seemed as if there were doctors coming out of the woodwork.

  There was a time, not so long ago, when she would have simply written off her dizziness and waited it out. It would have gotten better, too. Problems like that always did. But now, because her children insisted, and because the hospital was there, here she was getting wheeled down for a test her doctor couldn't even explain to her. An MRI, he said. Well, this was the last time she was going to submit to any test without a fight. Her kids meant well, but they just didn't understand that there was a direct correlation between the number of doctors in a town and the number of sick people.