by Lisa Gardner
“Yeah, my mom baked cookies. Chocolate chip. Oatmeal. Sugar cookies with green frosting for St. Patrick's Day. God, I haven't thought of that in a while.” He rubbed his forehead. “Uh, she read us stories too. And made us clean our rooms. She even laughed at my father's stories from work. And she was very pretty,” he said. “I remember thinking as a little kid that I'd gotten the prettiest mom on the block.”
“She sounds wonderful.”
“Yeah,” he whispered softly. “She was. I remember . . . I remember her and Dad coming home from the hospital, sitting us down. I remember they were holding hands and my dad was crying. I'd never seen him cry before. Then they said ‘Cancer.' Just ‘cancer,' as if that explained everything.”
“I can't imagine explaining that to a child.”
“Neither could they, I guess. Dad told us Mom would need more help around the place, so Steven and I cleaned it up pronto that first afternoon. We actually tried to clean the bathrooms for the first time as a surprise. For the record, hand soap doesn't clean stainless steel very well. Then you should've seen us with the vacuum cleaner. Oh, boy.”
“Made a mess?”
“Sucked up half the drapes. Who would've thought?”
Melanie smiled. “It was sweet, though, both of you trying.”
“Yeah. Mom went to chemo, we stripped the kitchen floors. Radiation treatment started, we did the windows. She relapsed, we shampooed the rugs. People in the neighborhood were always dropping by with casseroles, pot roasts, you know, because surely with the little wife feeling ‘blue,' the husband and sons would starve. They'd comment on how great the house looked, how great Steven and I looked. What brave little troopers we must be.
“My mom went back to the hospital. We stripped beds and soaped down furniture and beat out drapes and polished silver and she came home. She came home and lay down in our perfectly spotless living room and died. Because that's what cancer does. It kills you even when you have perfect little boys and a perfect loving husband doing everything they know how to do to keep you alive.”
“I'm sorry,” she whispered.
He shrugged awkwardly. His voice had broken more bitterly than he'd intended. He couldn't find a good flippant retort to break the mood. He never thought about this stuff. He just didn't. Now he felt overexposed.
He untangled Melanie from his lap, climbed off the chair, and put some space between them. He could tell she was a little hurt, but he couldn't find it in himself to go back.
“It's . . . uh . . . it's not easy to talk about it,” he said.
“I know.”
“I just, um, need some space.”
“David, I know.”
“Jesus Christ, how much bad luck can one fucking family have!”
Melanie didn't say anything this time, and he exhaled in one angry rush. Time to get a grip, Riggs. Time to pull it together. He settled his hands on his hips and looked around.
“It's getting late, Melanie. What do you say?”
“Yeah, I guess it is time for bed.” She suddenly flushed. “I mean to sleep. In our own rooms. In our own beds.”
“You take the loft. I should be close to the door.”
“You really will be gone all day?”
“I have to go to this meeting. My boss is a little excited about me firing my gun. In contrast to what you might think, it doesn't happen every day, particularly when you work fraud.”
“You did well,” she said, looking impressed. “Got me out. Wounded the guy.”
David grimaced. “After all the times I've fired at paper, I should've put it where it counted.”
“He was a human being, David. Not paper.”
“Well, we'll see if we both still think that when he comes around again. I'll try not to be in the office too long. Why don't you sleep in, order up a big breakfast. Take a day to relax and catch your breath again.”
“Maybe,” she said at last. Then, “I should call my mother.”
“No—”
“Yes. I can't just stay out all night without even a phone call. You have no idea how much she worries.”
David gave her a look. “Don't tell her what's really going on. Until we know who is involved and why, it's too dangerous. Got it?”
“I'll say I'm spending the night at a friend's.”
“Don't go into details. Details will only get you into trouble.”
“So says the master,” Melanie muttered. She turned toward the stairs. The minute she saw shadows gathering upstairs, her shoulders sagged.
“Why don't I leave the lights on?” he said.
“It's okay. I'm a grown woman. I know better than to be afraid of the dark.”
“Yeah, but I'm an FBI agent, and frankly, we're all a bunch of wusses. There isn't an agent alive who doesn't sleep with the light on. I swear.”
She smiled. It was filled with just enough gratitude to tighten his chest.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
Melanie climbed upstairs. David watched her, feeling the cold water trickle down his back as the cauliflower melted in his jeans.
He turned on his computer. Fetched the fax sent by Chenney earlier in the evening. Started poring over a twenty-five-year-old case file, courtesy of the Houston police.
His back throbbed, his eyes blurred with exhaustion. He made some instant coffee and kept going.
“I'm gonna get you,” he muttered. “Whoever you are, after what you did to little Meagan, I'm gonna get you good.”
SEVENTEEN
P ATRICIA WAS ASLEEP when the phone rang. In her dreams she was Miss Texas again, walking the runway with her Vaseline smile and beaded gown. Look at me, look at me, look at me.
And they did. The men roared their approval. The women cried to see such beauty. She had captured the hearts of her home state. She had made her father proud, and as they placed the diamond tiara on her head, she wished it would last forever.
Fairy tales should never end.
She walked backstage and Jamie O'Donnell wrapped his arms around her.
“Beautiful lass, beautiful lass.”
She giggled and kissed him passionately.
She looked beyond his shoulders and saw her daughter's headless body.
“Bad Mommy, bad Mommy, BAD MOMMY!”
Patricia jolted awake with a scream.
Blackness, thick blackness. The phone rang for the second time, and she fumbled for it. She could read the clock now. Just after midnight. Harper was still not home.
She put the phone to her ear.
“Mom?”
Patricia was so disoriented, she almost screamed again.
“It's Melanie,” the voice continued, and Patricia, rattled beyond words, just nodded. Then she gripped the phone tighter and commanded herself to pull it together for her second daughter. “Yes, Melanie love? Where are you calling from? It's after midnight—are you all right?”
There was a pause, too long a pause. Patricia felt the first whisper of unease. “Honey, is everything all right?”
Did you find a note too? Did someone slip into your locked car? Threaten you, snatch you, kill you? Oh, God, please, baby, please, baby, tell me you're all right. I swear I never meant—
“I've just had a long day,” Melanie said. “I met up with a friend. We went to a few bars. I'm going to stay here for the night.”
Patricia frowned. Her daughter never did things like meet an anonymous friend for drinks and then spend the night.
“Are you sure you're all right? I can come get you. It's no bother. Really.”
“I'm fine.”
“Are you having another migraine? Your father and I have been worried about you.”
“You have?” She sounded genuinely surprised.
“Of course. Melanie, I don't know what's going on. You're calling me in the middle of the night, and you don't sound like yourself. Please, sweetheart, if you need to talk, if you've done something and now you need a shoulder to cry on . . .”
Her voice ending pleadingly,
maybe desperately. Suddenly she had that same tightness in her chest she'd gotten the day she'd come home to police cars surrounding her house and a man she'd never met before calmly telling her they were doing everything they could to find her daughter.
“Melanie?” she whispered.
“Do you remember the first day you came to the hospice?” her daughter asked suddenly. “Do you remember the first time you saw me?”
“Of course I do. Why—”
“When I looked at you, Mom, I remember thinking you were so beautiful, so lovely. I desperately wanted to be your little girl. I don't even know why. I just did. What did you think when you looked at me?”
“I . . . I remember being very impressed, Melanie. You were such a small child, abandoned, no name, no memories. You should've been terrified, but you weren't. You smiled bravely. You told little jokes and made other people laugh. You looked . . . you looked strong, Melanie. You looked like everything I had always wanted to be.”
“But why adopt me? Had you and Dad spoken about adopting a child before?”
“Well, no . . .”
“Then why change?” Melanie's voice had gained urgency. “Why suddenly adopt a nine-year-old girl?”
“I don't know! It was like you said, I suppose. The minute I saw you, I wanted you too.”
“Why, Mom? Why?”
“I don't know!”
“Yes, you do, dammit! I want to hear it! Why me?”
“It doesn't matter—”
“Yes, it does! You know it does. Tell me. Tell me right now. Why did you adopt me?”
“Because you looked like Meagan! All right? Are you happy? Because when I saw you I thought of Meagan, and then I had to have you. I just had to have you—” Patricia broke off. She realized what she had said. The silence on the other end confirmed it. Oh God, what had she done?
“Meagan,” her daughter said quietly. “You looked at me and you saw Meagan.”
“No, I didn't mean that! Melanie, please, you confused me, you badgered me.”
She didn't seem to have heard her. “I got a family because I looked like a murdered little girl. The house, your love . . . All along you just wanted Meagan back.”
“No!” Patricia cried. “No, that's not what I meant—”
“Yes, it is, Mom. Finally we are getting to the truth. Why is it so hard in our family to get to the truth?”
“Melanie love, listen to me. I am human. In the beginning . . . in the beginning maybe I was confused. Maybe I did see what I wanted to see. I know you are not Meagan. Remember when I dressed you up in those lacy dresses and did your hair? Remember what that did to you? And I saw it, Melanie. I realized how much I was hurting you. And I let it go. I realized I wasn't looking for Meagan after all. She was gone, but through God's good graces, I had gotten another little girl, a different little girl, Melanie Stokes, who likes used clothes and garage sale furniture. And I discovered I genuinely loved Melanie Stokes. You healed me, honey. You are the best thing that ever happened to me, and I swear to you, Melanie, your life has not been a lie. I love you. I do.”
There was no answer. Just more chilling silence that signaled her daughter's doubt, her daughter's hurt.
Patricia closed her eyes. A tear trickled down her cheek. She didn't wipe it away.
“Melanie?” she whispered.
“Did you really love Meagan?”
“Oh, heavens, child. More than my own life.”
More silence. “I . . . I have to go now.”
“Melanie, I love you too.”
“Good night, Mom.”
“Melanie—”
“Good night.”
The phone clicked. Patricia was alone in the darkness.
She thought of those warm, sunny days in Texas with the first daughter she had loved so much. She thought of the note in her car. She thought of her son, no longer speaking to his father. She thought of Jamie O'Donnell and all the sins that never could be undone.
She whispered, “No more, Lord. This family has paid enough.”
DR. WILLIAM SHEFFIELD slept on the empty hospital bed the way he'd learned when he was an intern. Then the hand on his watch hit three A.M., and the tiny bell began to chime.
He sat up smoothly, going from deep slumber to instant wakefulness the way only a doctor can. He felt a faint hammering in the back of his skull. The whiskey, of course.
He'd brought a pint into the hospital with him earlier, finding a back room and spending hours bolstering his courage, fingering the gun he now wore beneath his white lab coat. He wasn't thinking of what he'd found in his house last night—piles of healthy pink organs and a shiny red apple on his bed, and on his bathroom mirror the words you get what you deserve scrawled in blood. The whiskey warmth had carried him to his special place, where he was the golden boy, the perfect anesthesiologist, the man who always won at the roulette table with his lucky number eight.
“Just a few more,” Harper had repeated earlier in the day.
It's too risky, William had insisted.
Nonsense, Harper had said briskly, but William could tell he was scared too. The last few days, calm, controlled Harper Stokes hadn't seemed so calm or controlled. William had even caught him glancing over his shoulder from time to time, as if he expected to find something bad behind him.
“Three more, tops,” Harper had finally said. “You can handle it, William. Your credit card debts will be clear and you can start over, clean slate. Still making over half a million as an anesthesiologist. As long as you don't resume gambling, you should be able to live a very good life, without anyone being hurt or anyone being the wiser. That's what you've always wanted, isn't it?”
That was what William had always wanted. The fancy house, the fancy car, the fancy clothes. Every symbol of success dripping from his wrist, his feet, his body. So William had agreed. He'd had his whiskey, and an hour earlier he'd walked into the ICU, and in plain sight of God and everyone, he'd injected a vial of propranolol into the candidate.
Now he dug into the pocket of his lab jacket and fingered the second needle.
He stepped out into the hall.
At three in the morning the hospital had adopted a quiet, somber state. Lights were dimmed for patients. The nurses talked softer. Machines pulsed rhythmically. There was no one in the halls as William slipped into the ICU.
The candidate had been admitted that morning. That's how William categorized them in his mind: Candidates.
Tonight's candidate was a sixty-five-year-old male. Healthy. Active. History of heart disease in the family—he'd watched his father drop dead of a heart attack at fifty—so at the first signs of chest pains, the man had dialed 911 and hopped a ride to the ER.
He'd gone through the whole medical process, including a fluoroscopy, which had revealed he didn't have any blocked arteries. Now he was drugged in the ICU to keep himself from pulling out the catheter. His heart monitor looked good. They still weren't detecting any dangerous cardiac enzymes, and most likely he'd be released in the morning, none the worse for the wear.
Except an hour ago Dr. William Sheffield had injected him with the beta blocker propranolol, causing temporary heart failure that had been reversed only by the nurse administering .5 milligrams of atropine. That had been round one. Now it was time for round two, and the overworked nurse was once again out of the room, checking on someone else.
It was the fault of budget cuts, William thought dully. The fault of stupid nurses who didn't protect their charges from people like him. The fault of paranoid candidates who thought they could still eat pepperoni pizzas and garlic bread without repercussions.
The fault of everyone else but him. He was just a lonely, abandoned kid trying to make his way in the world. The rest of them should know better.
William grabbed the T-injection port on the IV and stuck in the second needle.
The candidate's heart rate plunged to below thirty beats per minute and the heart monitor screeched red alert.
William high
tailed it for the door. He was just about to pass through, when he spotted the nurse racing down the hall, a second just coming around the corner behind her.
Shit, they would see him. How to explain leaving the room? What to do?
Hide. William dropped to the floor and rolled beneath a pile of soiled sheets just as one of the nurses rushed into the room.
“Come on, Harry, come on,” the nurse was saying. “Don't you do this to me again.”
The second nurse arrived on the scene. “I got a pulse.”
“He's still breathing, what's the blood pressure?”
The rasping sound of the blood pressure cuff. The nurse cursed at the reading while the blood monitor alarm still screeched because Harry's heart refused to speed up.
“We need atropine,” the first nurse declared. “Second time tonight. Come on, Harry, what are you trying to do to us? We like you here, I swear it.”
She rushed out, then returned moments later. William heard her tap the needle to remove air pockets.
The atropine, he guessed. Please, please, don't let her drop the needle and bend down to pick it up.
“Come on, come on, come on,” the first nurse muttered. Abruptly the beeping stopped. The atropine had successfully stimulated the heart rate back to normal.
“Well, he's stable for now,” the first nurse said with a sigh.
“Have you called Dr. Carson-Miller?”
“Not yet, but I'll give her a buzz now. This is Harry's second attack in just three hours. That's not good.”
“Anything you need me to do?”
“No, I'm all set. Thanks, Sally.”
“Anytime. M&M's at four, right?”
“Wouldn't miss it for the world.”
Sally exited. The first nurse picked up the phone and called the on-duty cardiologist.
Once again everything proceeded as planned.
Harper had explained it to him two years ago. “What is the weakness of a hospital? The fact that it's all routine. Each crisis has a process. Everything we do is planned and predictable. In the end, medicine is much more cookie-cutter than doctors care to admit, and we can exploit that.”