She hardly sleeps in this place. There’s too much going on. Too many sounds. Patients – prisoners – like her – coughing, vomiting, moaning. Nurses moving back and forth. Police guards running checks on the inmates. No privacy. Too much time for panic to slither into one’s brain and get a grip.
Thinking helps. Planning.
That’s another thing Holly has remembered, lying here.
She is nothing without a plan.
She has known for almost forty-eight hours now that her paralysis – the awful, terrifying, imprisoning deadness – was not going to be with her for much longer. The awakening began with some vague, prickling sensations in her toes; then later, over the course of several hours, she started feeling life – something like insects, at first, crawling, stinging a little, but growing warmer and more tangible as time passed – creeping slowly back into her legs and lower back.
She almost gave herself away when a doctor came and ran a pin test on the soles of her feet earlier today. Lord, it was so hard not to shout with triumph and almost impossible not to wriggle at the very least, but she did manage to control her reactions. Holly has always had magnificent self-control when required. The doctor watched her face as he tickled her feet, looked right into her eyes, almost as if he were challenging her, but she maintained the expression she thought she had probably displayed since they’d first brought her here. Terror, defiance and depression, all rolled into one. She knew she had him fooled. The same man had told her, before a previous examination, that with this kind of spinal contusion a full recovery was not too much to hope for, and it was quite possible that she would regain some, if not all, sensation and mobility in time.
‘Nothing,’ she told him, flatly, after the test.
And the doctor nodded, patted her hand and went away.
‘No change?’ Richard asked when he and Eleanor first arrived, soon after.
Holly saw the hope in their eyes, and considered, for just an instant, giving them some good news. But then she decided against. Time enough for good news later. In the meantime, while she’s contemplating her new plan, she intends to go on acting. She’s been a damned fine actress for most of her life, after all. Time now to give one of her very best performances.
Oscar time.
Chapter One Hundred-six
I brought Nina home two days ago.
William, the most all-round relieved father in the United States, has gone back to Arizona to start making arrangements to bring Phoebe back from the Waterson Clinic. Ethan and Kate wanted to stay, but I have to confess I want my wife and daughter to myself for a while.
Normality. At least until we find out if I’m going to be facing trial or not. Chris Field’s opinion is that the DA’s office will know they’re likely to be hard-pressed to persuade a jury of my peers to send me to jail for shoving a monster: the monster who’d slain a harmless nanny, stabbed my wife, kidnapped and threatened my baby and gravely wounded my sister-in-law into the bargain. Even if I did shove her clean out of a third-floor window.
Personally, I think Field is a little disappointed.
Nina says I’ve never been fair on him.
I did a lot of shopping while Nina was still in the hospital and Kate and Ethan were still here to keep an eye on Zoë and the house. Ordinary stuff. Groceries packed full of goodies. An early Christmas tree. Gifts for everyone. Toys for the baby. We’re planning a major family holiday at our place this year.
I bought fresh canvases and paints and brushes and charcoal and sketchpads and turpentine and linseed oil and palette knives, and I bought all kinds of cleaning stuff, too. I was having trouble forgetting that, if that room next door filled with my belongings was anything to judge by, Holly must have been roaming around inside our house for the past month or two. That presumably (if we could presume anything much in these bizarre circumstances) Teresa had gotten to know Holly – or Barbara Rowe – rather better than she’d indicated to Nina; that maybe she had invited Holly in on more than one occasion. Poor Teresa. Anyway, I was determined to scrub the house – our house – from roof to crawlspace before Nina got home. To expunge Holly.
Richard Bourne came to visit Nina one afternoon last week. He didn’t say much. There wasn’t much he could say, poor man. Nina and I both feel for him.
Eleanor did not come.
Big surprise.
I’ve almost stopped wishing that Holly had died.
Capelli tells me that she’s still in a locked ward at People’s Hospital, still paralysed and facing enough charges to keep her locked up, either in jail or in some institution for the criminally insane, for the rest of her natural life.
It would probably have been better for her if she had died.
If I ever start feeling pity for her, remind me, please.
Just remind me.
Chapter One Hundred-seven
Holly is going for another MRI scan. It was scheduled for this afternoon, but the department was backed up with too many patients waiting, and so the orderlies who brought her down were asked to take her back to the arrest ward until further notice.
They’ve come back for her now, at a little after nine PM – later than usual for tests or treatments. Two young men – one black, bespectacled and round-faced, the other white with a sallow, freckled complexion – with gurney and grins at the ready. Holly has observed other patients from her ward being taken out for tests or examinations; has noted, when the patient is considered dangerous, an almost tangible rise of tension, like a small vapour cloud hovering over the group as they go on their way. No one has been exactly mollycoddling her here (she is, after all, a murderous, kidnapping psycho), but neither have they treated her with quite that level of distrust, partly perhaps because they think she’s already paying a price for what she’s done. Mostly, of course, because they consider her more or less harmless, being dead from the waist down.
Leaving Ward 11B for any reason has felt refreshing to Holly every time they’ve taken her for X-rays or CT scans or for her first MRI. They might be medical endurance tests to other people; to Holly they’ve been like trips to the beach, mini-escapes from jail.
As she and the two orderlies start out on this particular journey to the MRI department, Holly feels no differently about it than she has about any of the others. It has nothing to do with her new plan. Not when they leave the ward, not when they wheel her into the big elevator and start down. Not when they emerge into the corridor and trundle her gurney towards the unit.
Not when they push her through the doors into the MRI room itself. Not even when she sees how quiet it is.
Not until she sees the operator.
She is white, with dark hair and a slim build. Not unlike Holly’s. She’s wearing a white coat with ID tag – her name is Dr K.D. Vivian – and glasses and white hospital shoes. There is no one else around. No one at all. Earlier in the day, when they were sent away, the department was a mob scene.
Holly looks at K.D. Vivian, then turns her head and looks around the room. And knows what she is going to do.
If the orderlies leave them alone.
They transfer her, gently and carefully, to the table which will, in a while, slide her inside the MRI tube.
‘Okay, guys,’ the doctor says. ‘We’ll be about forty-five minutes.’
Silently, Holly blesses her.
‘We’re supposed to wait, Doc,’ the black orderly says.
Fuck him.
‘We can manage just fine without you, Lewis,’ the doctor says.
Amen.
‘I promise not to take a powder.’ Holly speaks softly. Vulnerable.
The freckled orderly grins down at her.
K.D. Vivian is checking over some papers. ‘Don’t you like coffee breaks?’ she asks lightly. ‘Come on, guys, you know I hate people standing over me while I work.’
The black orderly shrugs. ‘Okay, doc. Forty-five, you said?’
‘Give or take,’ the doctor answers.
The men leave the room.
<
br /> ‘That’s got rid of them,’ Dr Vivian says crisply.
Hallelujah.
The other woman busies herself, asking Holly questions as she works. Her manner is pleasant but efficient. Impersonal. Holly answers each question appropriately, but she is only half listening. Her mind is already rising off the table, calculating her next move. She knows she’s only going to get one chance. She has a tremendous urge to move her legs, to make quite certain they won’t let her down when the moment comes, but there’s no way she can risk it. And she has been flexing her feet, toes, knees and muscles under the bedcovers for most of the past few nights. She knows they work.
They’re going to have to.
‘Now you’ve had one of these before, so you know the score.’
‘Yes, ma’am.’
Holly has never said that in her life before, but it just seemed the right thing to say.
‘Any problems? No claustrophobia?’
‘Not really.’
‘Good.’
‘I think it might have bothered me in the past,’ Holly says, ‘but not now.’ She pauses. ‘Every minute of every day seems claustrophobic to me now.’
‘You’ll make it,’ the doctor says.
A scrap of sympathy but not much. Holly thinks, in fairness to K.D. Vivian, that she probably treats all her patients the same way, even those not charged with homicide.
Everything is about set.
‘Remember, Charlotte’ –
(Charlotte, not Taylor, which is what most people have called her since she became a prisoner)– ‘the most important thing is for you to keep perfectly still. Okay?’
‘Okay.’
‘Other than that, there’s nothing to it. All right?’
‘Yes, ma’am.’
Holly’s eyes are checking around the room, her ears listening for the slightest indication that anyone else is coming.
Nothing. No one.
‘If you have any kind of a problem – if you feel like you want to move, try and focus on something else, something you enjoy doing.’
‘Skiing,’ Holly says.
‘You like skiing?’
‘I love it. Used to love it.’
Holly has never skied in her life.
‘That’s good,’ the doctor says. ‘You just picture yourself skiing on some snowy mountain and we’ll be finished in no time.’
She moves away for several moments, checking equipment.
‘We’re all set,’ she says, finally. ‘Any questions?’
‘No,’ Holly says.
‘Okay. I’m going to move you into the bore now.’
The doctor moves away out of the room, into the area from which she will view the images. Holly lies very still. Her blood feels as if it’s rushing too fast through her veins. She feels immeasurably excited.
She waits another half second.
With a small jolt and a whirring sound, the table begins to move.
‘Wait,’ she says.
The movement stops.
‘Problem, Charlotte?’ Dr Vivian asks from the other side of the window.
‘I’m not comfortable. Something’s digging into me.’
‘Really?’ The doctor comes back into the room. ‘Where?’
‘Under my back.’ Holly gestures with her right arm.
Dr Vivian frowns. ‘Shouldn’t be anything there.’
‘I’m sorry to be a nuisance.’ Apologetic.
‘Don’t worry about it.’ She’s on her way around the table to take a look. ‘Might as well start out comfortable.’
‘That’s what I figured.’
Get ready.
The doctor bends over, runs a hand under Holly’s back.
‘Can’t feel anything. Can you show me?’
I sure can.
‘It’s a bit higher,’ Holly says. ‘I’m really sorry.’
‘That’s okay. Let’s take a better look.’
She moves up further along the table and bends over again.
With all the speed and force she can muster, Holly head-butts her, whacking hard into K.D. Vivian’s forehead and nose. The doctor stumbles backwards, hits a trolley and falls, eyes rolling, nose bleeding profusely.
Holly gets off the table. Her legs feel weak, but they’re working.
The woman is stunned, maybe unconscious, maybe not, but Holly only knows that she needs her dead to the world for the longest possible time. There isn’t too much to choose from, but Holly selected her weapon several minutes ago, while poor bleeding doc there was still running her prelaunch checks: a heavy-looking sticky-tape dispenser on the desk against the far wall beneath a window.
Holly walks across, checks through the window, draws the blind so that no one will be able to see in if they enter the room on the other side of the glass, and picks up the black dispenser – it’s heavy, weighted with sand by the sound of it as she turns it in her hand. She stands very still for another moment. Still nothing. No one. Her luck is holding. She comes back across, crouches down and turns the doctor over.
She groans and stirs a little.
Holly hits her on the soft part of the back of her head with the dispenser. K.D. Vivian stops moving. Holly checks the hard black plastic part of the tape dispenser, the part that struck the woman’s head. There’s no blood.
She hits her again.
Now there is blood.
Now she can be pretty sure that Doc Vivian isn’t going to move for a good long while. If ever.
She glances over at the door and sees that there’s a lock with a key. She goes across and turns the key. Her legs still feel damned weak, but they’re holding up well enough.
Holly gets to work stripping the clothes off the woman on the floor. It isn’t easy undressing a deeply unconscious, maybe dead person, but at least she isn’t going to have to go as far as the bra and panties stage. All she wants is the skirt, sweater, white coat and hospital shoes, and her glasses – provided they aren’t so strong a prescription that Holly can’t see through them. She puts them on, experimentally. A little blurry, but good enough. She continues with her task.
The sweater is snug, the skirt loose and longer than Holly would have chosen, but the white coat covers pretty much everything, and the shoes, thank God, are almost exactly her size. Holly would suffer the pantyhose if she thought she had to, but there’s no real need, so instead she rolls them up, opens the other woman’s mouth and stuffs them in. Just in case K.D. turns Lazarus and starts yelling.
There’s a mirror over the hand basin on the wall opposite the window. Holly takes a look. Her hair’s a mess, and there are three spots of blood near the collar of the coat that she didn’t notice before she put it on. She checks over the room again. An old-fashioned typewriter stands on the desk beside the computer, a small bottle of white-out to its right. Holly grabs the bottle, shakes it and paints over the blood.
Good enough.
All too aware that the clock is ticking, that the two orderlies are due back in twenty to thirty minutes and may (if Lewis-the-conscience has anything to do with it) arrive early, Holly finds the doctor’s purse and inside it a small hairbrush. Less than ninety seconds later, she’s ready to face the world as just one more white coat.
Now for her patient.
The toughest part is getting her up on the table, but at least she’s had practice with Vasquez; and when you’ve found the right way to pack a fully-dressed woman into a chest freezer, hauling a body in a hospital gown up off the floor onto a flat surface is a mere bagatelle.
Not so much a bagatelle, more like a fucking full-size pinball machine.
Still, she does it.
And still no one comes.
The phone on the desk starts ringing as Holly is straightening the doctor’s bare legs and checking to make sure there’s nothing she’s forgotten.
She freezes for a long moment. The ringing stops.
Okay.
MRI time.
She goes behind the window, finds the switch and watches the table
glide into what the woman called the bore. Now there are only two ways to see who’s lying inside the imager. Through the hole at the end (and though Holly has always been quite proud of her feet, she supposes that to the average eye, one set of a woman’s soles and toes looks much the same as another) and via the scanning screen.
‘Remember, Charlotte,’ K.D. Vivian said to her, ‘the most important thing is for you to keep perfectly still.’
This is one patient who sure as hell isn’t going to move.
Holly hasn’t been woman-handling her for the last several minutes without knowing that, even if she did not manage to finish Nina Miller, she now has two homicides to her name.
Her father’s face flies briefly into her mind, and she banishes it.
She considers, just as fleetingly, removing the tights from the doc’s mouth, but knows that she can’t spare the time.
‘The dead don’t die,’ D.H. Lawrence once wrote in a letter. ‘They look on and help.’
This dead woman started out the evening trying to help her. At least she’s carrying on in the same spirit.
A grim and tasteless parody of a commonly-used proverb slips past Holly’s brain as she takes the doctor’s purse, leaves the MRI room, locks the door behind her and drops the key into the pocket of her white coat.
In for a corpse, in for a fucking morgue.
A good enough epitaph for a fledgling serial killer.
Chapter One Hundred-eight
When the call came, just after ten-forty that night, the Miller family were all in bed. Nina had been tiring earlier than usual since getting home from the hospital; and whereas in the past, if his wife had been ready to hit the hay before him, Nick might have considered putting in an hour’s work in his studio, these days there was no place he’d rather be at almost any hour than snuggled up under the covers with Nina.
He was lying on his back in a semi-doze, thinking about the painting he’d begun work on yesterday (of Nina and Zoë playing on the living room floor), and Nina’s head was resting, heavy but welcome, on the soft spot between his left shoulder and his chest, when the phone rang.
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