Total Silence

by T. J. MacGregor

  The place was spacious, three thousand square feet of wood and glass, with tremendous picture windows that faced the river. Fortunately, the windows were covered by custom-made plantation shutters that would give her plenty of privacy. The living room looked as though it had been imported from some Latin American country—Mexican tile floors, Hispanic art on the brightly colored walls, and furnishings from Panama. She suspected that the plantation shutters also had come from Panama, Keith’s favorite home away from home. The house was cold, so she turned on the heat to warm up the rooms until she could gather wood for the potbellied stove in the kitchen.

  She fastened the chain on the front door and went into the hallway off the kitchen to unlock the door to the basement, where Mira would be staying. When she’d come up here to drop off the trailer, she also had prepared the basement. She had brought in bedroom furniture, installed blinds on the four small windows, and tinted the shatterproof glass. She had put in a small fridge, hooked up the sink so it now had hot and cold running water, and had removed everything that could possibly be used as a weapon. She had scrubbed down the adjoining bathroom and put fresh towels in the linen closet. Aromatic bars of soap scented the air with a touch of mint. It wasn’t the Waldorf, but it would be comfortable enough for a few days. And when Keith returned, he would find his basement vastly improved.

  The immediate problem, though, was that she needed a sterile area for the surgery. The best she could do was Keith’s massage table, which she brought out from under the stairs, where the washer and dryer were. She set it up to the left of the bed, so that it would be close to the sink, and wiped it down with Lysol spray. She didn’t have a surgical gown, but she had a clean white smock that would serve the same purpose, surgical bootees and gloves still sealed up in plastic. She would shower in the bathroom and put on the bootees and the smock in there. Although she didn’t have an IV pole or any kind of IV drip, she had surgical instruments and plenty of drugs and bandages with her. She would have to use the floor lamp and Keith’s desk lamp for light. None of this was ideal, but it would have to do.

  Once the basement was set up the way she wanted it, Allie hustled back upstairs. She pushed the cooler over to the fridge, then made several trips back and forth from the Rover to the house, unloading everything except Mira. She piled her belongings and Mira’s duffel bag at the foot of the stairs, removed her own shoes, but not her socks, and finally returned to the Rover to get Mira.

  Mile lifted the rear door of the Rover and her breath ‘L hitched in her chest. “Shit,” she hissed. The bandage wrapped around Mira’s thigh had soaked through with blood, her breath rattled as she breathed, and when Allie lifted her off the blanket, she could feel the raging heat of fever through her clothes. Massive infection, she thought.

  She ran into the house with Mira in her arms and raced down the basement stairs. I waited too long should’ve done it hours ago, shitdamnfuck.

  Mira groaned and twisted her head. Allie started down the steep basement steps, moving carefully so that she didn’t trip. Fifteen steps. The third and eighth steps from the top creaked. The basement was thirty feet and eight inches long and twenty-two feet and three inches wide, but that didn’t count the space under the stairs, where the utility room was. Each of the four windows measured one and a half feet wide by two and a half feet long. The glass in the windows was a foot thick and shatterproof. The bathroom was nine feet long and six feet wide. The flooring was decorative concrete and the walls down here were concrete and four feet thick. The basement was soundproof and virtually impenetrable. There was one way in and out, up the stairs and through the door at the top.

  She knew everything there was to know about the basement and the house and even the property. She knew the quickest route into the nearest town, Prescott, four miles away, and had made it her business to know who lived in the houses closest to Keith’s. She knew how long it would take to drive to her final destination, as long as the weather was good, and she even had an alternate route in the event that she needed it. She’d done her homework.

  For a year now, gathering this kind of information and feeding it into The Plan had been her second job. In the event that Plan A looked as though it were doomed to failure, she had Plan B to fall back on. Granted, it wasn’t as fully developed and detailed as the primary plan, but the main points were fleshed out and, if she had to, she could implement it quickly.

  From the very beginning, Allie had understood that not everything would unfold according to the way she’d envisioned it; being an ER doc had taught her that. But she hadn’t counted on Murphy’s Law kicking in quite this early in the chain of events. It was like preparing for an appendectomy only to find when you got in there that the patient’s body was riddled with cancer.

  Still, this entire venture required her to be flexible, to change directions on a moment’s notice, to make snap decisions, something she’d always done well in her professional life, but had avoided doing in her personal life. When you worked in ER fifty or sixty hours a week, she thought, then in your free time you craved solitude, peace, stability, and, most of all, predictability.

  At the foot of the stairs, she worked the sock off her left foot with the toes of her right foot, then vice versa. She padded barefoot across the floor and set Mira on the massage table, now covered with a sheet and a large sterile pad. She scrubbed her hands at the small aluminum sink, then gave Mira a shot of Midazolam, just enough to knock her out completely for about thirty minutes.

  For an anesthesia, she planned to use Ketalar, the marketing name for ketamine, a disassociative anesthetic used on both animals and humans. As a painkiller, it was a popular choice in dentistry and for pediatric burn patients. Its disassociative properties also made it popular on the street as a recreational drug and some users whom she’d treated in ER reported out-of-body and near-death experiences that they believed to be of a spiritual nature.

  She cut off the left leg of Mira’s jeans, just as she had done earlier with the right leg, then unzipped them and slipped them off. She deposited them in the trash can. So much blood. Hurry, she thought, and went into the bathroom.

  The hot water was very hot and Allie stood under the scalding needles with her eyes shut. The heat relaxed her muscles and drove out her fatigue. She had taken a couple of amphetamine tablets shortly after her run-in with the state trooper and could still feel the edginess in her blood. She could live with it. In a sense, the last twenty-four hours had been like medical school—sleep was a luxury and your body learned to function on catnaps, an hour here, fifteen minutes there. Your brain and nervous system existed in a heightened, edgy, and myopic state of awareness.

  She could do this.

  She had to do this.

  Mira would die only when she determined it was time. On January first. No sooner, no later.

  She didn’t use a towel to dry off. She ran her hands over her skin to get off the excess water, then sat on the edge of the tub and slipped on the white smock, the bootees. Only then did she let her feet touch the floor. At the sink she scrubbed up again, snapped on latex gloves. Then she returned to the main room.

  No, the area wasn’t sterile. Yes, bacteria were everywhere. But it was the best she could do under these circumstances. And Christ, truth be told, it was probably cleaner down here than any hospital.

  She tried not to dwell on bacteria. She opened her med kit, filled a sterile glass jar with alcohol, and dropped each instrument into the jar. She took out a digital thermometer and touched it to the inside of Mira’s ear. Her temperature was 103.8.

  Fuck.

  She prepared an injection of Ketalar and another of a penicillin derivative. She worried about using the Ketalar on a woman who was allegedly psychic. Despite her extensive research, she hadn’t been able to find any information on whether the physiology of psychics differed from that of normal people. About the only thing she’d discovered was that many of them seemed to be overweight and had health problems; Mira definitely wasn’t over
weight and from what Allie had been able to determine, she didn’t have any chronic health problems.

  She wasn’t convinced the woman was psychic; she’d sure as hell missed the boat on her own situation. But given the newspaper accounts she had read, the stories she had heard from Mira’s clients in Lauderdale, and the police records she’d gotten about the investigation that had brought her and Sheppard together, she had to at least consider the possibility.

  The only inkling she’d gotten that Mira might be psychic had happened in the cabin in Asheville, when Mira had said, You’re a doctor. But it was possible she’d figured that out based on the questions Allie had been asking her. Even so, she worried about the effects of the ketamine, that she was hours too late on this surgery, that the infection had gotten hold despite the antibiotics, that the rattle she’d heard in Mira’s breathing spelled pneumonia. She worried that in addition to the bullet wound, she would need to deal with pneumonia and other infections, that Mira’s entire system was collapsing.

  She unwound the bandage from Mira’s thigh and laid bare the bullet wound.

  She wasn’t sure when she became aware of the pounding upstairs or how long it had been going on. But she knew she had to investigate what the hell it was because it sounded as though it had a human source—someone slamming a fist against the front door.

  Allie stripped off her gloves, tossed them in the trash, and raced into the bathroom. She grabbed a terrycloth robe off a hook on the door and flew up the stairs, taking them two at a time. Before she reached the front door, she realized two things: she still wore surgery bootees on her feet and light crept in through the slats in the plantation blinds.

  She stripped off the bootees and stabbed her fingers through her hair, messing it up worse than it already was messed. She tied the robe at her waist, took a couple of deep breaths, and opened the door with the chain still on. A tall, muscular guy stood on the porch, hands jammed in the pockets of his parka, his cheeks ruddy from the cold.

  “What is it?” she snapped.

  “Sorry to bother you, ma’am. Is Keith Cunningham home?”

  She was so tired that it took her a moment to remember that years ago her brother had changed his last name from Curry to Cunningham. “No. I’m his sister. Who’re you?”

  “Nick Whitford. I...”

  She didn’t hear the rest of what he said. Her tired brain flipped through its meticulous filing cabinets of information and came up with a very brief bio: Keith’s neighbor, the guy who watched his house while he was gone. Shit. “Oh. Right. Keith’s neighbor. Hold on.” She shut the door, smoothed her hands over the robe, removed the chain, and opened the door again.

  “I’m really sorry to bother you.” He sounded sincerely apologetic. “But when I unlocked the door and found the chain on, I got a little worried because Keith isn’t due back for a few months.”

  Be nice, be charming. You don’t need trouble from this guy. She stepped onto the porch and shut the door behind her. “I’m Allie Hart, Mr. Whitford.”

  She extended her hand and he took it. She liked the texture, the heat that radiated from the skin, the perfect strength of his grip. In fact, she liked everything about Whitford’s appearance. He stood six feet or a bit over, weighed about 180, she guessed, and had hair the color of walnuts, with a neatly trimmed beard beginning to gray. He held on to her hand a little longer than necessary and she realized that the chemistry she’d felt was apparently mutual. She usually had a visceral effect on men; they either detested her on sight or were completely taken in by her looks.

  “Sorry I was so rude,” she said, folding her arms, hugging them to her chest. “I thought you were selling something.”

  He laughed; Allie liked the way it lit up his eyes.

  “I drove most of the night through that storm. I thought Keith was going to be here.” Careful, don’t say too much. “I should’ve known better. His schedule is never predictable.”

  “My understanding is that he wouldn’t be back until the ice on the river is thawed. That usually happens in late March or early April.”

  “That sounds like Keith. I haven’t spoken to him since Thanksgiving. I think he was around Virgin Gorda then.”

  “He checked in with me a couple days before Christmas. From Balboa, Panama.”

  She nodded. “That sounds about right. The Balboa Yacht Club. That’s one of his favorite spots. I’ll give him a call and have him call you, Mr. Whitford.” She smiled again. “Just so you know I’m his sister and not some squatter.”

  Whitford’s smile dispelled the gloomy morning light.

  “He never mentioned having a sister, but you look like him—not the hair, but in the eyes and mouth.”

  Well, she didn’t like that he saw similarities in their appearances, but what the hell. They were related, after all.

  “Basically, I just make sure the house is sound, that the driveway is plowed, that the pipes don’t freeze, that kind of thing. I’ve been plowing driveways, if you’d like me to do yours.”

  “That’d be great, thanks.”

  “And I left some wood for the stove at the side of the house. How long are you going to be around?”

  “A couple of days. I’m just on my way home.”

  “Then I’ll keep plowing and dropping wood by. You want me to keep picking up Keith’s mail?”

  “It’s probably best that way.”

  “So where’s home?”

  She detested questions like this. “Macon,” she lied. “Pretty place.”

  You can go now. She began to feel a discomfiting pressure behind her eyes and a weight against her spine: Mira and her unfinished business inside the house. But she didn’t want to be too abrupt and arouse his suspicion. “Is that your dog?” she asked, pointing down near the river.

  He glanced back. “Yes.”

  “Rottweiler?”

  “Rottweiler and shepherd mix.”

  “It’s gorgeous.” Gorgeous, except that Allie detested dogs.

  “Bristol,” he called, and whistled.

  The dog, 130 or 140 pounds of solid muscle, trotted toward Whitford, tail wagging. But as he neared them, Bristol dropped to his haunches, bared his teeth, and emitted a menacing growl. “Hey,” Whitford snapped. “No.”

  The dog looked up at Whitford, tail wagging again, but eyed Allie with considerable wariness. Bristol knows. He knows I’ve got a secret stashed in the basement.

  “Sorry. He usually doesn’t act that way.” He looked down at the dog. “Go to the car. Go on.” Bristol wandered off, tail between his legs. “I don’t know what’s gotten into him.”

  It was what parents usually said when their toddlers ran wild through restaurants, airports, hospital corridors. She smiled politely, another moment of silence passed, then he said: “I bet you’re cold. I’ll get going on your driveway. Have a good day. If you need anything, my number’s on the fridge.”

  “Thanks.”

  She opened the door and slipped quickly back into the house. She leaned into the door, fists balled against her chest, blood pounding in her ears. Mr. Nosy Neighbor, she thought. Good-looking, but a potential problem. He seemed to be the type who would drop by daily, asking if she needed anything or just to chat and pass the time. A lonely, nosy neighbor, the worst kind.

  But he sure was nice to look at.

  Nope. Not this trip. He’s not in the pattern.

  Allie put the chain back on the door and hurried back into the basement. She had finished stitching up the wound and had given Mira another injection of antibiotics. Now she put a dressing on her thigh and wrapped it. She made up the bed with clean sheets and a heavy blanket, and secured the restraints on either side of the bed. She didn’t want Mira to try to walk when she came to and the restraints seemed to be the best alternative. She lowered the massage table until it was even with the bed, put on the brakes, and slid Mira onto the bed. Her patient murmured, groaned, and Allie put the restraints around her wrists and ankles.

  By the time she c
leaned up her instruments and mopped the floor, she was so beat she could barely see straight. She still had to put away the food that was in the cooler and eventually would have to go into Prescott for groceries. But for now, she was finished down here. She took one last glance around the basement, turned off all the lights except for a couple of night-lights, then stumbled upstairs and locked the basement door.

  As she emptied the cooler, she heard the drone of the plow outside. But the noise seemed distant, unconnected to her and her immediate affairs. As long as she didn’t give Mr. Nosy Neighbor any reason to be suspicious of her, she would be able to stay here until Mira had healed enough to travel. She had planned on staying here, anyway, she reminded herself, so in that sense the overall Plan hadn’t changed. Only details had been shifted around.

  As soon as her head hit the pillow, she fell into a sleep like death.

  Chapter 6

  Balboa, Panama

  Keith Curry lay sprawled on the bunk in the cabin, his head throbbing to the steady, irritating beat of Latino music that poured out of his cell phone. The phone was on the bedside stand and he knew that if he rolled over to reach for it, the massive quantities of tequila and beer that he’d consumed last night would roll through his stomach and surge into his esophagus and he would puke. He kept hoping that whoever it was would give up and call back later. Or would give up and never call back.

  The ringing finally stopped, but its phantom echo pounded inside Curry’s skull. The cabin’s AC clicked on and the blissfully cool air washed over his body, soothing his hangover. He wondered if he dared move enough to dig the bottle of aspirin out of the bedside drawer. Even if he mustered the courage to move, though, he would have to swallow the aspirin and he didn’t think he could swallow anything right now. He had some papaya enzymes in that drawer and maybe if he chewed a couple of them and then went back to sleep for a while he would wake up nearly as good as new.