Otto, Richard, Jessie, and Jessie’s boyfriend, Artie, were having dinner together at Arneson’s, their favorite restaurant, a Midland landmark for the last twenty-seven years.
“You worked with Pennell,” Otto said to Jessie. “What was he like?”
“I didn’t actually work with him. His lab was on a different floor from mine and he kept pretty much to himself. I don’t think he had any friends there. I don’t even know what his job was.”
“I heard he tested products under development to see if they were toxic,” Otto said.
“How?”
“He put them in dishes where these cells were growing . . .”
“Who told you that?”
“Zane Bruxton. Why? Is that wrong?”
“He ought to know. But Pennell didn’t have any lab help. Maintaining cells in culture is very labor intensive. He must have been working his tail off.”
“I believe he was there most nights.”
“I’m not surprised.”
“What gets me,” Otto said, “is that we rock along for years around here with nothing much happening out of the ordinary, then boom, we get Chester Sorenson, then the Johannsons, and now Pennell.”
“What did you ever conclude about Sorenson?” Artie asked, picking up on the opportunity to probe Otto yet again about what had become one of Artie’s favorite subjects. “You think it was a suicide?”
Being by nature a garrulous man, one of Otto’s greatest faults was talking too much about investigations in progress. Usually, since the crime itself was relatively inconsequential, this rarely did significant harm. Lately, though, at the urging of his wife after the Sorenson death, he’d been trying to be more careful about this. Certainly, he didn’t want to say publicly that the forensic office in Madison had reported that Sorenson’s lungs contained tap water, not water from the pond where he’d been found. So, in addition to its petty thieves, squabbling couples, and a few other folks who wandered a little off the path from time to time, the county harbored a killer. And it didn’t take much imagination to wonder whether Henry Pennell’s disappearance had anything to do with the Sorenson case. From Artie’s question, it was obvious that if Richard had told Jessie about the forensic findings, she hadn’t mentioned it to Artie.
“That one’s still a puzzle,” Otto said, not actually lying to Artie. He turned to Richard. “Speaking of puzzles, do you have any idea what killed the Johannsons?”
“Thought I might have found a possibility in their home last week . . . some brown powder in gelatin capsules, but it turned out to be St. John’s Wort and quite pure at that.”
“St. John’s what?” Otto asked.
“Wort. It’s an herbal supplement that’s supposed to modulate . . .” Remembering who he was talking to, Richard defined modulate. “. . . even out a person’s moods.”
“Does it work?”
“Some of my patients think so.”
Otto took a hefty drink from his water glass and replied, “Maybe I’ll get some for Frannie.”
“Whatever killed them might not even be in their home,” Richard said.
Otto dabbed at a water stain on his shirt. “Because Skye’s brother is okay?”
“Yeah. It’s a long shot, but tomorrow the state health department is putting out some culture plates in the house to see what grows on them.”
“Like germs?”
“Fungus or molds.”
At that point, Otto’s radio crackled to life . . . something about an auto accident. He listened hard then pushed his chair back. “I better go see what happened. Enjoyed it.”
As Otto made his way to the door, Jessie looked at Richard. “Could be there’s a visit to the hospital ER in your near future.”
Sixteen minutes later, as they lingered over coffee, Richard’s pager went off.
TONIGHT, THE ER doc was Neal Amis.
“What have we got, Neal?” Richard asked.
“Female Caucasian with a significant cranial contusion and assorted minor bumps and scrapes suffered in an auto accident. She’s a little disoriented and has some anterograde amnesia. Thought you better take a look. We did a CT series after I paged you. They’re over here.”
Richard followed Amis to the light screen. “Who is she?”
“Name’s Holly Fisher. She’s from Memphis.”
“She tell you that?”
“Her name, but she had trouble with her address. I got that from her driver’s license when we looked for her insurance carrier.” He flicked on the lights behind the CT scans, illuminating the ghostly images of Holly’s brain.
Richard studied the scans briefly, then turned to Amis. “Where is she?”
Amis took Richard to examining room one, where Holly was already hooked up to a cardiac monitor and a pulse oximeter. Richard nodded to the nurse in attendance, then looked at Holly. “Hello, I’m Doctor Heflin. What’s your name?”
“Holly Fisher,” she said slowly. “They said I was in an accident, but I don’t remember it.”
“You’ve got quite a bump on your head, so it might be a little while before it comes back to you.”
Richard took the opthalmoscope off its wall holder. “Now Holly, I’d just like to take a look in your eyes.” Finding everything normal there, Richard conducted a short physical exam that likewise revealed nothing alarming.
“I’ve got a terrible headache,” Holly said. “Could I have something for it?”
“Get her a thousand megs of Tylenol, would you please,” Richard said to the nurse. While she went for the pills, Richard turned back to Holly. “Where do you live?”
This time she remembered. Even though Amis already knew her address from her driver’s license, if Holly had been more alert, she probably would have been reluctant to personally give that information to a stranger in a town where someone had just tried to kill her. As it was, she answered openly.
“What day is it?” Richard asked.
Holly thought a moment, then said, “Wednesday.”
“What month?”
“October.”
“Do you know where you are?”
“A hospital?”
“What city?”
This one stumped her.
Richard held further questions while Holly took the pills he’d ordered. Then he continued. “Who’s the president?”
“Of what?” Holly asked.
Richard smiled. “Of this country.”
She answered correctly.
“How did your accident occur?”
Holly’s brow furrowed as she tried to remember. “I don’t know. I was just driving along . . . There were some lights behind me coming up fast, then . . . for some reason I’m getting the image of snow. It hasn’t snowed, has it?”
“Too early in the season.”
“I don’t know where that came from. Anyway, the next thing I remember is being brought in here.”
Richard looked at Amis. “Was she conscious in the ambulance?”
“The entire time, they said.”
This added retrograde amnesia to her symptoms.
“Why can’t I remember what happened?”
“It’s nothing to be concerned about. Your nervous system is dealing with the shock of you being knocked around. After it’s settled down, you’ll likely remember everything.”
Though she hadn’t been able to tell him what town she was in, Richard asked the next question anyway. “Is there anyone nearby we should call and tell about your accident?”
“I can’t think of anybody.”
Holly’s CT scan hadn’t shown any evidence her brain had been seriously injured, but it was possible there was damage that would show up later. “Holly, I think you’re going to be perfectly fine, but to be safe, we need to kee
p you here overnight for observation.”
While she was uncertain about some things, the Green and White Motel was firmly embedded in her memory. With that alternative waiting for her, she didn’t have much incentive to argue. Besides, she was too sore and tired to get up. “Whatever you think is best.”
“I want to get some fluids into you, so we’ll need to start an IV line. It’s just a minor inconvenience.”
Suddenly sleepy, Holly nodded.
Richard wrote orders for the nurse to give Holly a simple neurological exam every few hours and to administer a five percent dextrose half-normal saline solution at 100 cc an hour through her IV. He finished by writing NPO (nothing by mouth) on her chart, then went back to Holly’s side. “You get a good night’s sleep and I’ll see you in the morning.”
Within minutes after her IV had been rigged, Holly fell asleep. She was awakened thirty minutes later by the nurse. “Sorry to bother you, but there’s someone here who’d like to speak to you.”
The nurse stepped aside and was replaced by a large man in some kind of uniform.
“Miss, I’m Otto Christianson, the chief law enforcement officer in this area. Could we talk for a minute?”
“What about?”
Otto had already learned from Neal Amis that there was no evidence Holly had been drinking. “Could you tell me what happened to cause your car to go off the road and roll over?”
“I’m afraid I don’t remember.”
“Would it help if I told you there were tire marks to indicate another vehicle hit you? Most likely a truck of some sort.”
With just that little hint, the ugly details of what happened to Holly began to emerge from her blurred memory. “It was a truck, with a big blade on it . . . like a snowplow.”
“Did you get a look at the driver?”
“It happened too fast. All I saw was that blade coming at me.”
“Were you wearing your seat belt?”
“I couldn’t. It was broken.”
Drawing on his discovery of the Avis tag on the key ring and the rental agreement in the glove compartment, Otto remarked, “You should have asked for a different car.”
“It was working when I rented it.”
“Really . . .” Otto grew quiet as his mind examined this shiny new fact from all angles. With a poorly formed possibility looking for fertile ground in Otto’s arid mind, he asked, “Where were you going when this happened?”
“Back to my room at the Green and White Motel.”
“And where had you been?”
“A tavern called the Lucy II.”
Failing to ask the better question—Where were you before the tavern?—Otto took a slight detour. “I understand you live in Memphis. What brings you to Wisconsin?”
Holly was still far from herself and had not yet realized there was a connection between her investigation and the attempt on her life. But she did remember how the Dallas police had wasted the information she and Susan had given them. Believing that the cops in a much smaller town would be even less competent, she decided to keep the real reason for her visit to herself. “Vacation,” she said.
Even to Otto, that sounded odd. “Not really much to see around here,” he said. Then, instead of waiting to see what this would elicit, he added, “Unless you were intending to see the corn maze over in Janesville.”
“As a matter of fact, that’s exactly why I’m here,” Holly said.
“Heard about it all the way down to Memphis, did you?”
“On the radio, I think it was.”
“Everybody around here thought it was a crazy idea when the folks who made it were first talking about it. But it’s been a real popular attraction. Got to hand it to that Hughes family. Do you know them?”
“No. Now if you don’t mind, I’d like to rest.”
“Oh, sure. I understand.” He reached into his pocket and took out a folded document. “You might need this. It’s the rental agreement for your car. I got it out of the glove compartment. I’ll just put it right here.” He set it on the nightstand. “If I can do anything for you when you get out of here, let me know.”
At the door, Otto paused and turned. “Should you want to visit your car for any reason, it’ll be at the Meinholz salvage yard. Don’t think we’ll ever see it on the road again.”
As Otto stepped into the hall, he was pretty much convinced Holly had been the victim of a drunk driver. It was peculiar though how that seat belt broke just before she needed it. Must be one unlucky woman.
Otto’s last comment raised an issue Holly hadn’t considered. Her car was wrecked. And she hadn’t taken out the insurance the company offered. Would her regular car insurance cover it? She vaguely remembered reading somewhere that the credit card she’d used would cover any liability for damages to a rental car. So maybe that was going to be okay. But now she was stuck without transportation.
She brooded over her plight for several minutes, most of that time spent wishing Grant Ingram hadn’t turned out to be such a phony, and the rest longing to be home in her own bed. Eventually, even though Otto had reminded her that her situation was worse then she’d realized, she once more fell asleep.
At two fifty-two a.m., with Holly still sleeping, a figure dressed in scrubs and wearing a surgical mask, a syringe in one hand, came into her room. Though it was important that he move quickly, he had to wait until his eyes adapted to the dim light. Soon, when he could see well enough to proceed, he slipped like a spirit across the room to Holly’s side, not enjoying the prospect of killing again, but pleased to be on the verge of closing out this assignment.
He raised the syringe and bent down so he could locate the injection port on her IV.
Then, the unthinkable happened.
15
HOLLY WAS LYING on her back, turned slightly toward the IV so that she saw him as soon as her eyes opened.
Gown . . . surgical mask . . .
Why a mask?
There was no reason for a mask.
“Who are you?” she asked.
Reflexively, he looked at her and she saw in his posture and eyes that he was frightened. And this made her scream.
With no other choice left to him, the man bolted from the room, ran to the custodial entrance, and fled into the night.
Responding to Holly’s scream, but too late to see the intruder, the floor nurse ran to Holly’s room.
Aware now that her accident had been arranged and that the man in her room had been a follow-up, Holly tore herself free from her IV and all the wires attached to her and leapt from the bed. Forcing her stiff muscles to cooperate, she ran to the room’s small closet, hoping to find her clothes.
“What’s happened?” the nurse said from the doorway. “What are you doing?”
“Leaving,” Holly said, throwing open the closet door.
It was empty.
“Where are my clothes?”
“Please get back in bed. I can’t let you leave without discharge orders.”
“To hell with that. I want my clothes.”
“I could lose my job,” the nurse whined. “Is that what you want? Let me call Doctor Heflin.”
“I don’t want you to call anyone. Just get my clothes.”
The nurse crossed the room and reached out for Holly, but she retreated. “Stay away from me.”
“Be sensible. It’s three in the morning. You don’t have a car and there’s no taxi service after midnight. Let me call Doctor Heflin.”
Aware that she was now in a battle for her life, Holly’s mind threw off the constraints the trauma of the wreck had imposed on it. Set free, it raced.
The nurse had a point. If she just took off into the night on foot, she’d be an easy target. But was it safe to stay here? Who could she trust? She thought about a
sking the nurse to call Christianson, the cop, but maybe he was in on it too . . . wanting to know why she’d come here so he could report back on what she knew. What about Heflin? Could she trust him? If he was involved, wouldn’t he have given her some kind of sleeping pill so there was no chance she’d wake up and see what they were trying to do?
Desperately needing a branch to cling to, she tentatively accepted that position. “All right, call Heflin.”
Not sure at all that she had chosen the right course, Holly returned to her bed, where she sat bolt upright until Heflin arrived eighteen minutes later, with the nurse behind him. He was wearing slacks and a wrinkled white shirt, and his long hair looked as though it had been hastily combed. He also needed a shave.
“Holly, what’s wrong? Why do you want to leave?”
Now that he was here, Holly had to decide what to tell him. “I’ll only talk to you,” she said.
Heflin politely asked the nurse to leave. When she was gone, he came to the bed and reached out to touch Holly. Without thinking, she flinched.
“What’s happened, Holly? Why are you so upset?”
Still concerned that she wasn’t making the right choices, Holly sat mutely.
“I can’t help you if I don’t know what you need,” Heflin said, his warm fingers resting gently on her hand.
Then, feeling so utterly vulnerable, she had to take the chance, she said, “Someone came into this room while I was asleep and tried to put something in my IV.”
“The nurse, you mean?”
“A man dressed in scrubs and wearing a surgical mask.”
Heflin drew his hand away. “I can’t imagine who that could have been. Are you sure it wasn’t a dream?”
“When I screamed, he ran.”
“I don’t know what to say.”
Holly hesitated. Unsure of how far to go with her story and knowing that her next statement, how she believed the intruder had intended to kill her, would open the door to an avalanche of questions, she tried to enlist Heflin’s cooperation in advance. “Before I say more. You have to promise me you won’t tell the police what I’m going to tell you.”
Heflin’s face showed the conflict this created in him. “I can’t promise that without knowing what I’m agreeing to conceal.”
The Lethal Helix Page 12