Walk-in

by T. L. Hart

  I’ve lost my best friend and I’ve lost my mind.

  That’s the only explanation that comes close to making sense. I’m in shock from the pain and I’ve gone totally crazy. The wiring in my brain has short-circuited, and this is what the world looks like when you finally slip over the edge. Otherwise, Dr. Veronica Carey, the person to whom I’ve trusted my sanity just told my husband to finish the job and kill Jo and me.

  “Kill them now, Gregory. We don’t have much time.”

  She certainly sounded real. The gun looked genuine. It was the words she was saying that threw me off.

  “The lake patrol will be by before too long. You’ve got to finish this and get out of here.”

  He was more confused than I was.

  “What are you doing here?” His eyes ricocheted from her to us to the gun and back to her. “You aren’t supposed to be here. Why do you have a gun?”

  All the while he was questioning her, he kept the bat at the ready. He was still bouncing on his toes and licking his lips. Not stable. They wouldn’t recognize this version of Gregory Strickland at the country club.

  “Dr. Carey? Why are you here?” I echoed Gregory’s confusion.

  I knew I was truly in shock because the pain was only a nuisance when it should have been an unbearable screaming agony. That was the good news. The bad news was that I would probably pass out soon, leaving Jo to face these two lunatics on her own. She was in a near state of catatonia; the only sign of movement was the occasional spastic digging of her fingers into the arm on my uninjured side.

  “Dr. Carey, what are you…you and Gregory…how is this possible?” I asked. “You’re my doctor, my friend. Why?”

  “Therapy isn’t in session now, and you lost the right to be called my friend a long time ago,” she snapped. “So shut up.”

  She turned her attention back to Gregory. Her voice was warm and encouraging, but her gun was pointed in his direction and never wavered.

  “Gregory. If you want the plan to work, you have to kill them.”

  “I can’t do it,” he whimpered. “It was horrible. You can’t imagine the sound it made. I’m going to be sick.” He was shaking, losing the psychotic edge he’d pumped himself into. A witness made it even harder to keep it up—performance anxiety to the ultimate degree. “You do it. You have a gun. Shoot them.”

  “I can’t shoot them. It has to be done with the bat. Because of Max. Don’t blow your alibi.” She was crisp and patient as if explaining the game plan to a six-year-old. “You’ve come too far to stop. Look at her. Look at your cheating wife and her girlfriend.” She spat the word.

  “She’s going to divorce you and send you to prison. You won’t get a penny.” The bat twitched infinitesimally, encouraging her to go on. “She’s not going to forgive this. It’s too late to go back now. She’ll send you to death row.”

  “I won’t Gregory,” I said, mentally crossing my fingers. “All I want is for us all to get out of here alive. I’ll give you the money. We’ll get you some help.”

  “Shut up, Cotton.” Dr. Carey’s calm therapy session voice was laced with acid. “You aren’t in charge here. I am.” Again, her attention and the gun turned back toward Gregory. “Come on. You can do it. Aim for her head. Hit hard. She won’t even feel it.” Her finger tightened slightly on the trigger. “Do it.”

  I can blame the pain for my stupidity—that and the unbelievable pants-wetting terror—but I was beginning to realize Gregory wasn’t in charge of this scenario. He never had been.

  He was a coward and a murderer, but I’d lay a wager that he outsourced the actual nasty parts. I’d lived with him long enough to know he’d never get his hands dirty. His lawn was mowed by three guys with no green cards who worked out of the back of an old pickup truck. His house was cleaned by the wife of one of the lawn crew. Heaven knew who picked up the garbage, but it for sure wasn’t the stockbroker with the weekly manicure. He just gave the work orders and handed out the pay envelopes.

  “You aren’t a monster, Gregory.” Debatable, but I’m not one of those stupid victims who bravely insist on honesty when a bald-faced lie would suit the best. “I bet you a million dollars this wasn’t your plan. This is her idea, isn’t it?”

  “Shut your mouth, Cotton.” Dr. Carey briefly turned the gun in my direction. I could feel Jo’s fingers tighten convulsively on my arm. “This isn’t college and all your half-baked ideas aren’t going to work here. There isn’t anyone here who’ll listen to you. I’m the one running things now.”

  “Why are you calling her Cotton?” Gregory let the bat rest on his shoulder. “In charge of what things?”

  The gun swung back in his direction.

  “I’ll explain later.” She was sweating now herself, nerves melting her famous ice-queen exterior. “Stop listening to her. She’s known for manipulating people. She’ll use you for what she needs and move on without a backward glance.”

  “Cotton,” Jo whispered. “What the heck is she talking about?”

  “Ssh, baby. I have an idea.”

  Our only hope was to play them against each other and hope to stall until help came. I knew both of the sharks circling us. I had an advantage of having lived with the bozo with the bat. And I was as trained to cater to the crazy man as she was. We both had fancy degrees from SMU; mine just didn’t have my new name on it. I might not be able to write a big psycho thriller and get my picture in People, but—

  As soon as the thought crossed my mind, it knocked a gaping hole in the barricades of my memory. This is it! This is what she was afraid I’d remember. This is what she had schemed and done murder to prevent. I just remembered it too late.

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  I looked at Dr. Carey and then at my maniac of a husband.

  “Oh, Veronica and I have known each other a long time,” I said softly, noticing her mouth tighten and the defiant lift of her chin. “She was my mentor back in college. Until she claimed I used her ideas for my thesis. What a shame no one believed you, Ronnie.”

  “Too long a story,” she said. “I don’t think you have long enough to live for us to have a class reunion, Cotton.”

  “We wrote a book together back then, unless one of us has forgotten. You recall that, Veronica? The one the reviewers are calling ‘a sure-fire hit of urban terror.’”

  “Not how I remember it.” Cool and collected. “And since you won’t be around long enough to miss the royalties I decided that we should go with my name on the cover.”

  “You were lucky they didn’t boot you out for rewriting my paper and swearing it was your own work. It was messy, wasn’t it?”

  “You don’t have time to live in the past, Cotton.”

  “You’re the one living in the past. Scared it will come back to destroy you and the safe little world you live in.” A jolt of pain shot like electricity down my arm. “How could I have forgotten you? It must have freaked you out to have me show up during that hypnosis session with poor little Jennifer. Then, all these months—seeing me, being afraid every day that I’d remember and blow your house down.”

  “Hard to make threats when you’re on your way back to whatever unholy place I brought you out of.” She was arrogant and unrepentant. The gun made it work for her. “I should have had you locked up right then, when your brain was mush. No one would ever have believed you.”

  “Now you get smart,” Gregory said to her. “That’s what I came to you for in the first place. You were well paid to have her committed. Now all of this—” He swung the bat loosely with one hand, encompassing the whole group of us. “For what? You two are talking in riddles.”

  “Veronica knows what the answer to the riddle is,” I said, biting at the inside of my jaw to change the focus of the pain. “Whose reputation and career would be ruined if the world knew she stole a dead woman’s work and passed off as her own? Any guesses?”

  “No one cares what a dead woman has to say—either time she’s dead.” She glanced at her wristwatch, then s
aid impatiently, “Time to take our secret to your grave, Cotton. With any luck, it will be permanent this time.”

  “No one cares about your little secret but you, Veronica. No one ever did.” I looked at Jo. “She’d rather kill us than have the world know she’s a cheat. Her whole career has been built on deception and lies.”

  I could tell by the way her eyes narrowed and iced over that I had gone too far. Maybe the pain was making me stupid. What did I hope to gain by antagonizing her? The police weren’t going to arrive in time. I knew Veronica wouldn’t be bargained with, but I had to try.

  “You can have the book. Call it your own. I don’t need the money and I can’t take the credit in my own name. You know that.”

  “Too late to try your tricks on me,” she said with a rueful grin. “I took classes in hostage negotiations when you were still in braces. Try Gregory. He’s more vulnerable.”

  Sounded like a plan to me.

  “Gregory, when did you come up with the plan to kill me?” He looked to Dr. Carey for an answer, strengthening my suspicion. “Let me guess. Not long after my hypnosis sessions started. Is that right, Gregory?”

  “I’m warning you, Jennifer,” she hissed. “Keep your mouth shut.”

  “I know you wanted to lock me up in some fancy hospital and have total control of my money. That’s why you hired the good doctor here, wasn’t it?”

  “That’s enough chitchat,” Veronica interrupted me. “If you don’t shut up, I will shoot you, just for fun,” she warned. “So help me.”

  “I don’t think so.” The room was beginning to spin, counterclockwise to be specific about it, and my shoulder was starting to throb like blue hell. “I think you’re going to shoot Gregory. That’s been your plan all along.”

  “That’s a lie. She’s always been a liar. Please get this over. Knock the bitch’s head off.”

  “I can’t do it.” Gregory let the bat slip from his hands to land with a sort of impotent thud on the floor. “I’m getting out while I still have a chance to get away. If you want her dead, you’ll have to do it. I can’t.”

  Gregory was getting paler by the second; he looked as if he couldn’t decide whether to throw up or run for the hills. The fog outside was scratching at the window behind him and Dr. Carey, swirling and banging silently against the panes.

  “Pick up the damn bat right now.” It was an order, but he was too far gone to listen. He turned and faced her, shaking his head in defeat. “Listen, you ass, I’m not going to go to jail for you. Either pick it up or I will kill you and do it myself.”

  “That’s how it was supposed to turn out anyway, wasn’t it?” I managed to keep my teeth from chattering with the increasing pain. “You said I needed to get away for a few days. You let me borrow your place. How kind you are.” I grimaced. “Get Greg to kill us. Let him think he can blame it on Max since everyone thinks he’s done this before.”

  She was smiling as if proud her student had figured things out so well. “Then you come in, just too late to save us, and spare the State of Texas a trial by plugging the killer in the act. That’d get your name in the papers, wouldn’t it? Just in time for the release of your brilliant new book.”

  “Gregory, pick up the damn bat.” Her voice was urgent and cold. “I’m not asking you again.” She pivoted and motioned toward the bat with the business end of the gun. “Now.”

  “I can’t do it.” He sounded regretful, but instead of doing as she demanded, he backed up against the window and held his hands out, palms up. “It’s your game. Do what you have to do.”

  “I always do.”

  I saw the hole in his chest at the same second I heard the gun fire. Once. Twice. Two star-shaped blotches of red, bright even against his dark sweat suit. The window behind him shattered and he fell, a perfect, silent backward dive out into the waiting fog.

  Jo let out a scream to wake the dead, whom I figured we were about to join, and burst into tears. Maybe she’d scare us up a welcoming committee.

  “I should have taken the gun class with you and Aggie,” she sobbed. “I could have shot him and it would have been over.”

  “It’s all right, honey,” I soothed, fighting back an inappropriate urge to laugh. Must be the shock kicking in. I leaned against her body, wanting to go out as close to her as I could be. “It’s all right.”

  Veronica Carey carefully clicked the safety on her gun and slid it in her pocket before reaching down and picking up Gregory’s bloody, discarded bat.

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  Veronica Carey didn’t look like the Angel of Death as she stood over our fallen bodies, but the bat she held would do as much damage as a flaming sword. Even knowing from experience that being dead was sometimes not quite as final as we’d been led to believe, I wasn’t ready to go back, but the fog was curling in through the broken window and whispering to me.

  Jo was hovering beside me, trembling but not crying. My girl to the end. I looked at her and decided if we were going out, it wouldn’t be like this, cowering like animals, cringing and waiting to be slaughtered. If Veronica’s plan was going to succeed, she was going to pay for our blood, drop for drop.

  “You haven’t got the guts to do this, bitch,” I said through teeth clenched against the pain. “We aren’t going to go without a fight.”

  Without another word, I pushed Jo hard, sending her sprawling three feet away from me. She was a quick study, scrambling to her feet, poised to move, waiting for an opportunity.

  “One of us is going to get away.” I nearly blacked out at the streak of fire in my shoulder. “You can’t get us both at the same time with that bat.”

  Veronica Carey wasn’t one to panic, I’ll give her that. She looked at both of us, assessed her chances and changed her plan on the fly. She let the bat drop and retrieved her pistol in a motion so fluid it seemed practiced.

  “True.” She took aim at Jo. “And I guess I’ll start with her.”

  “No!” I screamed it, knowing I couldn’t reach her in time. “Run, Jo! Get help!”

  She was moving before the words were out of my mouth, racing down the staircase as Dr. Carey fired. Once. Twice. As soon as she knew she had missed her chance with Jo, she turned the gun back in my direction and smiled. Not the most friendly smile, but a good effort considering her situation.

  “We’ve ended up partners after all. Two bullets left. One for you. One for me.” Her hand wasn’t shaking at all. “Bye Cotton. See you in hell.”

  I tried to stand, but my shattered body had no more reserves. I closed my eyes and waited for the inevitable. I was glad Jo was safe. That was my last thought before I began to fade into oblivion, literally unable to lift a hand to save myself.

  But the universe is a mysterious place and sometimes the cavalry does arrive. Just like in the movies, when all was lost, the doors burst open and heroes arrived just in the nick of time. I had a vague recollection of noise and sirens and Sean Himself making a flying tackle on Dr. Carey before she could fire.

  There were policemen and I thought for a flash I saw Aggie’s ghost. I think I fainted then, but I was laughing because I didn’t know ghosts could curse with such enviable alliteration.

  “One of you backwoods bozos get that batshit bonkers bitch out of here before I bash her brains out.”

  As it turns out, I wasn’t dreaming—at least most of the time. I neared the edge but I didn’t go across the big gulf. However, the next few hours were a blur of reality and something else—sort of like I’d imagine a bad acid trip to be. I remember thinking that Dr. Carey didn’t look good in handcuffs, although it seemed as if she should have.

  Himself pried Jo off me and handed her off to Aggie, who had a trail of dried blood crusting down the side of her head from her braids to the side of her neck. She seemed to be feeling better than I was at the moment, so I drifted off, letting the pain carry me to unconsciousness. Awareness came and went, fluctuating with the tide of agony.

  Sean Greenly carried me down the sta
irs, whispering reassurances to me. I tried to talk to him, but all I remember are bits and pieces.

  “…got the word of your car being run off the road…men following Strickland lost him…found his car at two-bit motel…found Max Sealy’s body…SUV missing…”

  I didn’t really care. I wanted the pain to stop. Himself assured me everything would be all right. Not to worry; he’d take care of everything. I had no doubt about that.

  I remember Jo crying and Aggie soothing. I remember more police arriving and all the flashing lights filling the night. I remember the ambulance arriving. Himself promised Aggie and Jo would be in the car with him right behind us.

  I recall a lot of pain—a crushed clavicle creates a level of pain that rips reality into confetti and leaves dim and ragged edges because of shock. In fact, the shock was buffering the pain, slowing it to a dull ache for minutes before slamming back like it just happened.

  My clearest recollection was before the ambulance arrived—looking out the broken window as Himself lifted me into his arms and seeing Gregory lying dead and twisted on the ground below. The thick white mist swirled around him like a living thing and I thought for a second that I heard a voice saying thank you and something about promises kept, but I wouldn’t have sworn on it in a court of law. Best to keep it to myself.

  The police were asking questions of all of us, but it was beyond me to be able to answer. Sean handed the lead officer a card and spoke to him for a minute. No one asked me another thing.

  Jo, on the other hand, was spilling her guts to anyone who would listen. The fact that she was still wearing a tiny tank top and a pair of pink flannel shorts might have increased the size and attentiveness of her audience. Even in the middle of a crisis, Jo had managed to find her shoes—fluffy hot pink mules, no less. I know policemen and paramedics are a helpful bunch, but still. I smiled until the pain goaded me to groan pitifully again.

  On the way to the hospital, I bounced in and out of a red-edged agony. Every time I shut my eyes the fog rolled in around me. I liked it. It was full of buzzing and comfort. Much better than the IV needle, which stung as they put it in my arm. Much better than the pain that yanked me awake every time we hit a bump in the road. I was surprised how fast they seemed to be driving in the pea soup outside, but then I would pass out and forget my worries until the next wave of pain woke me again.