Worse, I realized, with a sinking feeling in my stomach, Labeck’s Last Marine Standing act was using up every last ounce of his strength. He’d lost buckets of blood, he was hobbling, and he was operating on a thin reservoir of guts and grit. He was macho to the core, but no way was he going to haul that wrecked Arctic Cat off the tree roots.
Gozzy took a step forward. He was smirking.
“Get on the ground,” Labeck ordered. He racked the shotgun.
“Huh?” Gozzy cupped a hand to his ear and took another step.
Labeck slapped the shotgun’s trigger. Another deafening boom. When I dared look, Gozzy was sitting cross-legged in the snow, hands clasped over his head, looking terrified. One of the flaps of his sheep’s-ear cap had been blown clean off. Apparently, in addition to all his other talents, Labeck was a marksman.
“Can you hear me now?” he said.
Gozzy nodded vigorously. The smirk was gone.
Can you hear me now? I remembered the TV commercial from a few years ago, the one with the geek wandering around the country talking into his cellphone. “My cell,” I whispered to Labeck. “I forgot—it dropped out of my purse when we were running.”
He looked at me, grinned. “What are you waiting for—go get it.”
He grabbed my arm before I could take off. “Wait. Kennison is out there somewhere. Be careful, keep low. If you spot him, forget the phone, get back here as fast as you can.”
“Right.”
He didn’t release my arm. He turned back to Gozzy. “Take off your boots.”
“Wha duh fuh, man?”
“Want me to shoot them off?”
Gozzy pulled off his boots, and even in the pine-scented air of the great outdoors, the foot fumes carried like plague spores; a smell like rotting limburger cheese filled the air.
“Socks.”
A knife fell out of Gozzy’s sock. It had a wicked-looking six-inch blade.
“You know what to do with it,” Labeck said coldly, raising the shotgun.
Sullenly Gozzy tossed the knife toward us. I snatched it up, because if Ben bent over for it, I was afraid he’d pass out. I washed the Gozzy germs off in the snow, then took off running, retracing the path we’d taken through the woods, getting scratched by the blackberry brambles but barely noticing, punching my way through until I was in the willow and alder thicket on the other side.
There was my lipstick! There was a five-dollar bill fluttering from a low-lying branch, my spare pair of pantyhose dangling from another. How had we managed to run so far in such a short time? Backtracking the trail of junk, I moved steadily downhill.
Eye liner, grocery coupons, flip-flops, sun visor, checkbook, bug spray, ketchup packets—
There it was! My little GoMo, lying at the base of a sumac bush. I snatched it up, brushed it off, and beseeched the god of batteries—a small white bunny banging a drum—for it to be powered up.
“Please work,” I prayed.
It would be dead; it hadn’t been charged in ages; we were too far out in the sticks for reception.
I pressed the power button, held my breath. The jaunty GoMo anthem announced that I had service. Two bars’ worth. My fingers shook as I jabbed in the emergency number. The dispatcher came on instantly, a pleasant, businesslike woman who said she knew who Labeck and I were because we’d been reported missing and a search had been underway for us since daybreak. She told me to stay on the line, that our location could be traced through the phone’s signals, and that a search-and-rescue helicopter was only a few miles away and would head toward us as soon as my phone signal was triangulated and confirmed.
“We’ll need medical assistance,” I said. “We have some injured people.”
That was when I heard the voice behind me.
“Mazie.”
Jared Kennison’s voice.
Chapter Thirty-seven
Waterboarding is immoral, but Chinese water torture is simple, cheap, and gets fast results.*
—Maguire’s Maxims
*although it does leave you thirsty again an hour later
I whipped around, knife thrust out—which was idiotic, since a knife would be useless against a rifle—and then I saw him.
Jared Kennnison was wedged at the bottom of a steep drop-off, dangling upside down from his demolished snowmobile. The tracks and the smashed underbrush told the story: he must have been speeding as he crested a small rise, failing to notice that the ground overhung a gully. Braking at the last moment, he’d been thrown into a violent skid that sent him plunging down into the ravine. He’d landed badly, one leg jammed into the machine’s track, while his torso had been crunched into the crotch of a tree, his arms awkwardly pinned. The machine had landed rear end first, crashing through the icy surface of the stream that ran along the bottom of the ravine. The only thing preventing the snowmobile from sinking all the way into the water was a tree branch that had snagged one of the skis.
Trying to free himself, Kennison was thrashing like a speared fish, cursing and flailing his free leg around, forced to crane his neck at an awkward angle to keep his head out of the water gushing up through the splintered ice. The more he struggled, the faster the snowmobile sank into the creek. At this rate, he was going to drown in about five minutes.
“Mazie,” he called again, his voice hoarse. “I need help.”
I approached cautiously, thinking it might be a trick, but no—Dr. Dreamboat was really up the metaphorical creek without a paddle.
“Hoist with thy own petard,” I said.
He wasn’t in any condition to appreciate the Hamlet quote. “Hurry up,” he said, his voice high-pitched and panicky. “Get Labeck over here. Get this thing off me.”
“What happened?”
“The ground dropped off. I wasn’t expecting it.”
“Tsk-tsk. How careless of you.”
“I was shot, damn it! I’m bleeding. You shot me!”
“Yup. That happens sometimes when you go around trying to kill people.”
He had a tiny hole like a pimple crater in one of his magnificent cheekbones. His expensive ripstop nylon snowpants hadn’t been shotgunproof; they were shredded, and blood was seeping out of scores of tiny holes.
“Mazie, come on, help me out here—this was all a huge mistake from the start.” He attempted a smile, though it made a frowny mouth on his upside-down face. “You know I didn’t intend any harm to you—is that a phone you’ve got there? Hurry up! Call for help, get a rescue team out here—what are you waiting for?”
“You want a rescue team? Hmm, let me think about it.” My brain was working furiously. The emergency operator was still on the line, trying to get a fix on our position. Things were happening; rescuers were on their way. Now might be my one and only chance to get the truth out of Jared Kennison.
I clicked on the phone’s video feature. The Walgreen’s clerk had been right; you really never knew when you might need to make a video. Already talking confidently about rescue teams, Kennison probably figured that once he was back to civilization, he could lawyer up and explain everything away. This was all a huge mistake, indeed. That would be his story and he’d have lots of time to cover up the incriminating evidence.
“Mazie?” he said plaintively. “Come on! I could die here. This water is freezing, I’m getting hypothermic—”
I gave him a big, fake smile. “Tell you what, Jared. Each time you answer a question, I’ll award you one digit of the emergency number. Want to try for that first nine?”
“Are you crazy? Do it now! I’m—” His neck muscles suddenly gave out and his head dipped down into the creek as far as his eyebrows. He jerked back up, flailing around with his free leg, managing only to wedge himself in further.
“Tell me how you killed Rhonda Cromwell.”
“You’re a nasty little bitch, you know that?” he snarled. “Under that cute, sweet surface, you’re really vicious.”
“You haven’t seen vicious yet, Jared.” Setting the phone carefully on a
mossy log, making sure the lens was pointed the right way, I worked myself down the slope toward the creek until I was a foot or two above Kennison. I examined the tree branch trapping the machine’s ski. It looked pretty flimsy. “Hmm,” I mused aloud. “Wonder what would happen if this thing broke?”
“Mazie …” His voice rose to a higher pitch.
I took off my gloves. I gripped Gozzy’s knife, set the blade against the branch and started sawing. Jared’s whole body began to rock, dipping lower, toward the water.
“What are you doing?” he screeched. “Stop it!”
I kept sawing. This was kind of fun. Maybe I could take up wood carving as a hobby.
“Rhonda was a piece of garbage!” Kennison sputtered. “She was a blackmailer, a pig, no better than a murderer herself. She deserved to die.”
I stopped sawing, wiped my brow with my sleeve. “You meant to kill Rhonda the night of the party. That’s why you were dressed in dark clothes, so you could skulk through the neighborhood.”
“For God’s sake, use your phone!”
“Didn’t an-swer the question,” I singsonged, and went back to sawing, enjoying the green, sappy smell rising from the wood. “How did you kill Rhonda?”
He maintained a stubborn silence for another thirty seconds or so, then spoke in a sudden rush. “I had a key to her house. I stole it the night of the party. I let myself in, waited until she came in after Labeck dropped her off. Then I—I wrapped the shoestring around her neck and squeezed. I wanted her to know how it felt to be squeezed.”
“Not bad,” I said, “You earned yourself a nine.”
This was taking too long. If Labeck went into shock from blood loss, Gozzy might jump him, wrestle away the shotgun, and kill him. What I needed right now was a sixty-second admission of guilt like the express confessions Father O’Brien used to run on Saturday nights back in Quail Hollow.
“Rhonda was blackmailing you?” I asked. “Why? Twenty words or less.”
“She saw me operate on the Lennox girl. A simple chin incision. I—my scalpel slipped, cut into her aorta. It was an accident. The wretched little cow was thrashing around—Petrov hadn’t given her enough gas.”
I started sawing again. The knife was sharp; it bit easily into the soft wood. The branch creaked loudly, and Kennison’s whole body descended an inch farther into the water. He screamed.
“The girl died,” he gabbled. “Asphyxiated on her own blood. I hadn’t followed procedures; there was no nurse present, and I was hungover. If anyone had found out I’d have been ruined, sued, maybe gone to jail—”
“You earned yourself another digit. Okay, Tippi’s body.”
“Medical-equipment box—” His head splashed down into the water. With an effort he pulled himself up again, sputtering. This must be doing wonders for his abs. Maybe Pilates could add a new water pull-up regime to their core-strengthening program: crunch or die. “Petrov put on the girl’s things, pretended to be her. I drove the body to a gravel pit in the country, buried it.”
“Rhonda saw everything?”
“Prep room behind the surgery. Buttocks lift. Saw through crack in blinds—Jesus, I’m drowning!” His face was rigid with fear and panic.
“Why didn’t Petrov turn you in?”
“Oxy.”
“What?”
“OxyContin. He’s addicted—I supply him.”
“Why’d you send him for Rhonda’s hard drive?”
Kennison was thrashing around with his free leg, which only rocked the snowmobile and made it settle lower in the water. Suddenly his whole head sank under the surface. I scrambled down the bank into the water and jerked his head up. It took him a long time to get his breath back.
“The hard drive,” I reminded him.
“Thought … Rhonda put stuff about Tippi … in file,” he gasped. “Couldn’t … take … chance … on police finding …”
I’d been so absorbed, I’d barely heard a distant buzz, but now it grew to a whapwhapwhap sound, and a helicopter burst into sight above the treetops. Had they seen us? I could run out into the clearing and wave my arms, but in the time it took to do that, Kennison might drown.
Poetic justice, I thought, but I didn’t give in to my baser instincts. I kept holding Kennison’s head up, even though the snowmobile was rapidly sinking and I had to wade into waist-deep water so frigid it sucked my breath away.
The helicopter descended lower, the noise of the rotors growing louder as the pilot searched for a place to land. I wanted to clap my hands over my ears, but didn’t dare move my hands. As we waited to be rescued, Dr. Jared Kennison, filled with gratitude that I was saving his life, profusely thanked me.
Just kidding. He swore and cursed and called me a lot of filthy names. “I should have finished you off Tuesday night,” he snarled.
“When I came to your clinic?”
“You trusted me, didn’t you?” The blue eyes flashed maliciously. “You thought I wanted to seduce you. And you would have let me.”
“Don’t flatter yourself.”
“I had a needle, a syringe loaded with a nerve paralytic. If that goddamned cop hadn’t shown up, you’d be a rotting carcass at the bottom of a swamp right now, and I’d be going to Thanksgiving dinner with my fiancée.”
“You mean Granny Clampett?” I laughed. It was hard to feel hatred toward Kennison at the moment, because the chopper had landed in a clearing and two large, competent-looking rangers were jogging toward us.
“If it’s any comfort,” I said, trying to keep my teeth from chattering, “they might allow conjugal visits in your prison cell.”
Chapter Thirty-eight
If the man you love has to go to the hospital, make sure all his nurses are male.
—Maguire’s Maxims
A nurse had the nerve to tell me I had to leave. Leave Bonaparte Labeck alone with a bevy of soap-smelling, pulse-taking, pretty young things? Not by the grimy hairs of my chinny-chin-chin!
The nurses were all over him, fussing with blood pressure and thermometers and dressings, and he was enjoying it, the creep! He’d at least been spared the excruciating embarrassment of being discovered with sanitary pads strapped to his legs. The pads must have slid off during the chase in the woods.
Ben’s doctor said that he’d been extremely lucky; the bullet had ripped through flesh, not bone or tendons. Still, he’d been a quart or two low on blood, and had spent an hour in the emergency room having O positive dripped into his veins.
The search-and-rescue helicopter team had merely been the first wave in an onslaught. The county sheriff’s department, state forest rangers, and the fire rescue squad had followed shortly thereafter, and soon after that, hordes of reporters and television news crews had descended on the woods. They gained access to the site via a fire lane not five hundred feet from the spot where Labeck and I had set up our snowmobile ambush. If we’d been able to go on a minute or two longer, we’d have stumbled across the road ourselves. Kennison, Gozzy, and Petrov were whisked away in ambulances under heavy police guard, while Ben and I got to ride to the hospital in the helicopter.
After Labeck was patched up in the emergency room, he’d been moved to this hospital room, where we were both offered the institutional version of Thanksgiving dinner. We fell on the turkey, mashed potatoes, and pumpkin pie like starving feral hogs.
Afterward the Brookwood PD got their crack at us. Vince Trumbull and Officer Olafson hulked around Labeck’s bed, throwing questions at him and acting as though they didn’t believe a word he said. Josie Wheeler was there, too, in her official role of department secretary, sitting in a chair to one side, quietly taking notes and acting as though she’d never seen either Ben or me before.
Finally, thanks to Jared Kennison’s recorded confession, Vince Trumbull, looking as though he were being forced to undergo a root canal without anesthetic, told Labeck that—barring any other evidence that might turn up—he was no longer a suspect in Rhonda Cromwell’s murder.
When
they’d gone, Ben lay back against the pillows, pretty much wiped out.
“Mazie?” he whispered. “Do me a favor?”
“Yes, baby?” I bent over his bed. Did he want a kiss, a cuddle, a back rub? I gazed into his eyes, droopy-lidded and pouchy with fatigue, waiting for him to express his desire. “What would you like?” I crooned.
“Would you see if you can find the Cowboys game?”
I picked up the remote. I would have told Labeck where he could stuff that remote if he hadn’t looked so completely pathetic, because hospital gowns have a way of making even six-foot-two-inch specimens of manhood appear ridiculous. I clicked on the TV. Dallas hadn’t even kicked off before Ben fell into a deep, exhausted sleep.
I watched the game with half my mind, mulling over the events of the past two days. I’d nearly lost Ben, I had lost Pig, and I’d been forced against all my deepest principles to shoot another human being.
On the positive side, I’d managed to avoid Thanksgiving dinner with my family yet again and got to ride in a helicopter.
A piece of paper at the foot of Labeck’s bed caught my attention. It was a sheet ripped off the legal pad Josie Wheeler had been using to take notes.
4th Floor, Room 10A, it read.
Confident that Ben was in good hands, though I would have preferred that those hands belong to eighty-year-old nurses who had false teeth and wore support stockings, I quietly slipped out of the room and went up to the fourth floor.
Which turned out to be the maternity ward. The newborns’ nursery was 10A. Josie was standing at the window in front of the display rows of brand-new babies.
“I’m just crazy about newborns,” Josie said, turning and smiling as I approached. “My cousin Becky just had a baby—that’s him in the blue cap on the far right.”
“Cute,” I said, because it’s what you’ve got to say. Nobody wants to hear that their precious offspring looks like a boiled turnip.
“Sorry for all this clandestine shit,” Josie said. “But if I’m going to keep on being Bonaparte’s mole, I can’t let anyone see us together, and there are cops all over this hospital today. How’s he doing?”
Crazy for You: Life and Love on the Lam (A Loveswept Contemporary Romance) Page 25