by Dinah McCall
“No…not the book,” he moaned, and got down on his knees.
You don’t do anything without me. I’m the one who’s in charge.
“You bastard. You stinking, rotten bastard,” Phillip shrieked, and began hitting himself in the head. “I warned you to leave me alone.”
Lucy’s heart skipped a beat as she pulled into the driveway. Phillip was home. Leaving the sacks of groceries on the back seat of the car, she dashed into the house. Even before she reached the foot of the stairs, she could hear Phillip’s screams echoing throughout the house. As she took the first step, a part of her mind was relieved by the fact that it was the cleaning lady’s day off. She didn’t want her to see this happening. Moments later, she reached the head of the stairs and starting running down the hall, only to hear shattering glass, followed by a wild, primordial shriek that made her stumble.
Clasping a hand to her breast, she stifled the urge to turn and run the other way. This was her son. He needed her, no matter what. Yet the sight that greeted her almost stopped her heart.
“No! Oh no, Phillip! What on earth have you done?”
He turned on her, his chest heaving, his clothes hanging in shreds.
“I’ve got to stop him before it’s too late.”
He pushed past her and ran into the hall.
“Stop who?” she cried, as she followed the path of his anger. She couldn’t catch up. He was already down the stairs and bolting into the dining room.
“Phillip! Stop this instant and talk to me!”
He didn’t respond. Terrified, she took the stairs two at a time and would have fallen had she not been clutching the balustrade with both hands. By the time she got to the dining room, the contents of the sideboard drawer were scattered on the floor.
“Phillip, darling, what on earth have you—”
He was holding a knife.
Oh God. Oh no. I need Emile here. This has gone all wrong.
Then she reminded herself that Emile wasn’t here. He was never here when she needed him. So she took a deep breath and held out her hand.
“Darling, hand Mother the knife. It’s very sharp, and you don’t want to get hurt.”
Phillip started to laugh. “But that’s where you’re wrong,” he said, and pushed the point of the knife at his throat. “I want this over. It has to end now.”
He pushed the knife deep enough into his flesh that a drop of blood suddenly slid down the surface of the blade.
“No!” Lucy screamed, and dropped down on her knees. “Please, Phillip, darling. Whatever is wrong, we can fix it. Just tell me now and I’ll make it all better. I swear.”
Tears rolled, washing parallel paths through the filth on his face.
“You can’t fix this, Mother. But I can. It’s been coming to me for weeks now. Each morning when I wake up, there’s a certainty in my mind that was never there before.”
She gasped. The tape. These last few weeks he’d been listening to Emile’s tape.
“But it was supposed to help you,” she whispered.
“What? What the hell are you talking about?” Phillip raged. “No! Don’t tell me! Whatever it is, I don’t need to know. I am the one in control.”
Don’t do it!
The panic in the voice was nothing short of an adrenaline rush.
“Now you beg!” Phillip shrieked, and began waving the knife around in the air.
Lucy shrank backward into the corner, certain she was going to die.
“I love you, son. Please stop. Please, before it’s too late,” she begged.
Listen to her, you idiot. She loves you. Do you want to make your mother cry?
“Not really,” Phillip said, and then giggled. “But she won’t be crying half as loud as you.”
He thrust the knife into his throat, instantly piercing the jugular vein. A pumping spray of blood began dotting the sideboard, the table, the floor, even spattering on Lucy’s face. Phillip’s smile faded almost as quickly as the life in his eyes. He went down on his knees and then fell forward, driving the knife all the way through to the other side of his neck.
Lucy touched the dampness on her face, her eyes wide with shock. When she saw the fresh blood on her fingertips, she began screaming in long, gasping sobs. The woman next door heard the shrieks, became concerned and called the police. By nightfall, Lucy Karnoff’s world was in shambles. Too hysterical to make any sense, she’d been hospitalized and sedated while the authorities tried desperately to locate the man of the house.
In Santa Fe, Emile was basking in the glory of yet another victory. Being the guest of honor at the New Mexico State Medical Convention was like something out of a dream. His appointment book was filling by the hour as he promised himself to one facility after another. He’d already set aside the problems he’d sensed brewing at home. It was a case of sacrificing the few for the good of the many, and there were so many people he needed to teach in order for his lifesaving technique to continue. It was his legacy to the world.
16
Ginny was poised at the edge of the diving board, waiting for Sully to swim out of range before she dived in. But he stopped about halfway out and turned, treading water and motioning for her to come in.
“Get back!” she yelled. “You’re too close.”
“No, I’m not.”
Webster Chee was leaning against the side of the house. The gun and shoulder holster he was wearing stood out in stark contrast to his white short-sleeved shirt. Kevin Holloway was coming out of the house carrying two cans of Coke. He was wearing shorts and an unbuttoned cotton shirt, but Ginny knew he also had a gun beneath his shirt. Ginny supposed Franklin Chee was asleep. She was getting used to being the object of so much attention, but the guards seemed an incongruous accessory to the holiday atmosphere around the pool.
“Come on, Ginny. Don’t chicken out on me now,” Sully jeered.
“I don’t chicken,” she said, and then took a deep breath, but instead of diving neatly, she bounced as high as she could and then cannon-balled right where Sully was waiting. She saw the startled look on his face just before she went under and knew that she’d scored a big hit. Seconds later, she felt hands at her back. Sully was pulling her up. She surfaced laughing.
“So you thought that was funny, did you?”
The growl in his voice was fake, and she laughed again as she wrapped her arms around his neck and let him carry them both to solid ground.
Kevin Holloway handed her a towel as Sully set her on the side of the pool.
“She got you good, Sully.”
He grinned wryly. Holloway was the youngest man there and was, he suspected, more than slightly infatuated with Ginny’s charms. But that was as far as it went. Holloway was a by-the-book man, just like his two partners.
“Yeah, she did that,” Sully said, and hefted himself out of the pool. “If you guys want to swim a bit to cool off, I’d be glad to stand watch for you.”
“Thanks, but no. Orders are orders. Besides, I took a quick dip last night before I went to bed,” Kevin said, then looked at Webster. “I’m going to check the perimeter.”
Webster nodded, then took a slow sip of his Coke while Ginny slid into the lounge chair, lay back and closed her eyes.
Sully was drying his hair when his cell phone rang. Ginny pulled a towel over her face to shield it from the sun as he reached across her stomach to the table where it was lying.
“Sullivan.”
“It’s me,” Dan said. “I’ve got news, and it isn’t good.”
Sully stilled. Suddenly the fun of the day seemed silly, as if they’d forgotten why they were there.
“What’s wrong?”
“We found Fontaine.”
“And?”
“And he’s dead.”
“Shit.”
“That’s not all.”
Sully’s chin jutted as he unconsciously braced himself for a blow.
“He hasn’t been dead all that long,” Dan said. “It seems he went for a m
orning walk a week or so ago, just like he’s done for the past twenty years, only this time he fell off a pier. And get this, the pier has a five-foot-high railing around it.”
“Not the best diving board in the world,” Sully muttered. “I don’t suppose there were any witnesses?”
“Hell no, and funny you should mention diving,” Dan said. “People said the old man had never learned to swim.”
The hairs rose on the backs of Sully’s arms.
“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Sully asked.
“Yes, only we checked his house. Everything was in perfect order. The phone was on the hook, and there were witnesses who saw him on the way to the pier. He stopped and talked to them, just as he did every morning, so he wasn’t in any kind of a trance. If he died because of those women, then he had a little help.”
“Have you located any of the other teachers?”
“All but two. One’s deceased, and the other has Alzheimer’s. The ones we’ve talked to remember a guy who came once a week for the hour in which the class was held, but no one remembers his name or what he looked like. They said he always left when the class was over.”
“Great. That’s just great,” Sully said, and started pacing.
Ginny took the towel off her face and sat up.
“What? What is it?”
Sully was too deep into the conversation he was having to answer.
“Isn’t there anyone else? Like a janitor…or some of the cooks from the lunchroom? It can’t end here, damn it! Someone has to remember something!”
Dan sighed. “We’re working on it, Sully. If you’ll check the book, you’ll see that there weren’t any pictures of the staff. We’re re-interviewing a couple of the teachers today who might be able to help us with some names in that direction, but it’s a long shot. According to their stories, most of those people were close to retirement age then, and it’s been twenty years. The chances of them still being alive are not on our side. When I know something, you’ll know something, okay?”
“It has to be okay, doesn’t it?” Sully said, and disconnected.
Ginny stood. She could tell by the set of Sully’s shoulders that she needed to be standing when he told her the news.
“It isn’t good, is it?” she asked.
He shook his head. “No, baby, it’s not.”
“They couldn’t find Mr. Fontaine?”
“He was dead.”
“Oh, that’s too bad,” she said. “Well, he must have been pretty old. I guess it was to be expected.”
“That’s not what I mean,” Sully said. “They fished him out of the ocean about a week and a half ago. Seems he forgot he couldn’t swim and took a dive over a five-foot railing on the pier.”
Ginny clapped a hand over her mouth to keep from screaming.
The world was coming undone. When Sully took her in his arms, she began to cry.
“He’s killing everyone, isn’t he? He’ll find me, Sully, and when he does, I’ll be helpless.”
“I won’t let that happen,” he said. “Remember what I promised?”
She shuddered.
“Look at me, Ginny.”
A wave of calm swept through her body. Those were the same words he’d used the night they’d first made love. Look at me, Ginny. And she’d looked and seen the eyes of love.
“I see you,” she said.
“What did I promise you?”
“That you wouldn’t let me die.”
“That’s right, and don’t you forget it.”
“Okay.”
He rubbed his hands up and down the sides of her arms and then kissed her gently.
“Honey, you’ve had too much sun. Why don’t we call it quits for now and come back out after sundown?”
She nodded, picked up her towel and walked into the house.
The moment she was out of sight, Sully headed for Webster. The men needed to know what had happened and to be on the alert. There was no way of knowing how long they could keep her location a secret.
The evening meal had been a sober affair. Ginny had picked at her food, and every bite Sully put in his mouth burned his gut. Idle chitchat seemed superfluous, but discussing the issue at hand was too painful.
Finally Ginny carried her plate to the sink and scraped the contents down the garbage disposal.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “It was good, but I just wasn’t hungry.”
“It’s all right, honey. We’ve had some hard news today. It was a setback, but it’s not the end of the world. Why don’t you watch a little TV? Find something good, and I’ll come watch it with you as soon as I clean off the table.”
“No. I’ll help you. When it’s done, we’ll both go watch some TV.”
“It’s a deal.”
He emptied his plate down the garbage disposal, while Ginny cleaned off the table. Then he loaded the dishwasher as Ginny put some of their clothes into the washing machine. It was a very domestic moment for a woman on the run for her life.
A short while later they were side by side on the sofa. Ginny was skimming through a magazine she’d already read two times while Sully channel surfed the TV.
“What time is it?” he asked. “I left my watch on the bedroom dresser.”
She leaned forward to read the dial on the clock across the room.
“It’s about ten o’clock. Let’s watch the news, okay? I’ve been so focused on what’s happening to me I have no idea what’s been going on in the world.”
Sully aimed the remote. The screen blipped, and then the familiar logo of a national syndicated network appeared.
“Just in time,” he said.
Ginny tossed the magazine aside and then pulled her feet up off the floor to sit cross-legged on the sofa. Sully grinned to himself, marveling at how someone as tall and lithe as Ginny could wind herself up into such a small ball.
“And now for the national news. Recently crowned Nobel-Prize-winning doctor Emile Karnoff is in Santa Fe this week, speaking at a state medical conference. His revolutionary technique of using hypnosis as a healing tool is being shared with his younger colleagues, much to the dismay of some die-hard practitioners. Dr. Karnoff recently returned from Ireland, where he was instrumental in reversing the terminal prognosis of a young mother dying of cancer.”
As they flashed a picture of Emile Karnoff coming out of a hotel, waving at the cameras and then getting into a cab, something went off in Ginny’s mind. She leaned forward, her elbows on her knees, her chin resting in the palms of her hands.
Sully noticed her interest, and it occurred to him what Ginny’s life had been like before all this happened.
“You know, we’ve never talked about your career. I’ll bet you’ve met some really interesting people over the years. Who was your favorite person to interview?”
“Sully, I—”
The story shifted from the archived film clip to a sound bite of Karnoff’s address to the medical community.
“Turn it up!” Ginny said.
The tone of her voice was a little startling, but Sully reached for the remote without comment. As he aimed it toward the screen, the deep, resonant voice of Emile Karnoff filled the room.
“…lifelong pursuit of the human spirit as well as the mind. As you know, we use but a tiny portion of the marvelous brain that God has given us. It only made sense to me that we were capable of so much—”
“I know him. I know him.”
Sully looked at her, and as he did, a shiver ran up his spine. Not only was the childish singsong manner in which Ginny had spoken almost creepy, but she was sitting with her eyes closed, listening to the man talk.
Oh hell. “Ginny?”
“Do you hear the power?”
He stared at her, his mind turning in a dozen directions at once.
“What do you mean?”
“In his voice. Do you hear it? I know him.”
“Well, sure you know him. He’s been on television quite a bit in the last few months. It
isn’t every day that an American wins a Nobel Prize.”
She was rocking back and forth now, her eyes still closed, and there was an almost imperceptible tremor in her hands.
“I know him.”
Panic struck. Sully bolted up from the sofa and ran into the kitchen, where he’d left the walkie-talkie. As he pressed the button to talk, a short burst of static erupted from the mike; a warning for someone to listen.
“Franklin! This is Sully. I need you in here now.”
By the time he got back into the living room, Franklin Chee was coming in the front door, his weapon drawn.
Sully shook his head and motioned toward Ginny. Franklin replaced his weapon as he moved to Ginny’s side. She was rocking to and fro in a childlike repetitive motion, her eyes closed, her hands folded in her lap.
“When did this happen?” Chee asked.
“Just now.”
“Do you know what triggered it?”
Sully pointed to the screen. The last images of Emile Karnoff were fading as the newscaster moved on to other stories.
“Who was he?” Franklin asked.
“Emile Karnoff, the doctor who—”
“Won the Nobel Prize for using hypnosis to cure disease,” Franklin said, finishing Sully’s sentence for him.
They looked at each other and then again at Ginny.
Franklin laid his hand on Ginny’s knee.
“Ginny?”
“Yes, teacher?”
At the sound of her own voice, she jerked and then opened her eyes.
“Franklin. For a moment, I thought you were someone else.”
“Christ almighty,” Sully murmured, as the implications of what she’d said began to sink in. All this time they’d been looking for an educator. But what if…?
“Ginny, where did you go just now?” Franklin asked.
Ginny swayed where she sat and then looked at Sully for guidance, her eyes a bit dazed and unfocused.
“Did we go somewhere?”
Sully groaned. “Damn it, Franklin, tell me I’m wrong in thinking what I’m thinking.”
Franklin shrugged. “I can’t do that. I don’t know what you saw or why Ginny slipped away, but I know where you’re going with it. Are you going to call Dan or shall I?”