Jack swung his feet down. He hiked up his jeans. Getting a little ripe there, buddy boy. His pants felt stiff enough to stand on their own. Maybe it was time to get a motel room, shower, change.
Of course, if he did that, if he left the hospital, he’d have no way to watch her, to know what she was doing. She might even walk out this evening when her forty-eight hours were up. Voluntary commitment. They couldn’t keep her if she didn’t want to stay.
He had no intention of letting her sashay right out of Mt. Mercy without him.
Jack’s thoughts motivated him to leave the chapel. He took the back stairs which had the carpeting stripped off them now, showing the cement surface, rough with old carpet and tile glue, black with dust. He caught the elevator door just as it was closing and stepped in to the empty conveyance. He punched in the floor number and waited for it to jolt into movement.
He stepped out and took a cautious look around the Intensive Care section. The old black fellow who’d been sharing Walt Smith’s room had been moved clear across the unit. With the move had gone the security guard. The ailing councilman now took up a large theater-sized room, filled with machinery other than hospital equipment. Faxes. A computer station. An extra phone line.
Jack wiped the back of his mouth. Shit. Even when the old guy was sick, dying, they couldn’t leave him alone. They just kept shoving business in his face. Business, business, business. He put a thumb through a belt loop and casually sauntered over to the room of the man he’d tried to beat to a pulp.
He looked at a sheet of paper taped to the door. It noted that the patient had wakened during the night.
“No shit,” Jack murmured. He put his fingers on the handle and eased himself inside.
Walton Smith’s eyes looked baggy and bruised, but they flew up when Jack kneed the end of the hospital bed, rocking it sharply.
He grinned. “Hi, Dad.”
Susan Craig looked critically at her face in the mirror. The last night had smeared purple shadows under her eyes, deepened the tiny lines at the corners. Her icy fury at Dudley’s mistake had thinned her upper lip to mere existence. She outlined it carefully with a lip pencil, then took her brush and filled it in, making it fuller, softer, than it really was. She added a light cover-up under the eyes and reapplied her foundation.
She turned her face from side to side, examining the results. Her silver-blonde hair shimmered about her face, a face which did not show the ravages of its forty-some years. Still young. The best of genetics and the best of care. She was still beautiful, sexual, fertile. She would have the child she wanted, and the husband, and the success. A warm genuine smile answered her for the briefest of moments.
She passed the bank of television sets, leaving them on for Dudley to turn off when he woke. She’d kept him up late, debriefing him, making sure she understood the tragedy which had taken Donnie from her plans. Then she had punished Dudley, medicating him with new imprints, hoping to keep him in line. He was the only one of her subjects still active. For now, he was the only hope for her to keep her project viable.
The drive to work occupied her mind only briefly.
A new receptionist greeted her at the ward, a pleasant-looking older woman, silver-blue hair coiffed into gentle waves, a dewlap of a second chin ruining her neckline. Her pin proclaimed her to be Donna and a “Silver Striper.” She wore glasses on a cord about her neck and quickly slipped them on to read Susan’s name tag.
“Oh, Dr. Craig! Good morning. I’m so pleased to meet you. I’ve never worked up here before, but I’ve heard a lot of good things about you.”
Susan had no time for small talk. She shifted her briefcase impatiently, murmuring, “Thank you. How’s everything this morning?” It was late enough so it scarcely qualified as morning.
“Just wonderful. The nurses said to tell you that Brandon is blinking his eyes and showing some stimulus response. Oh! I have a message for you. It’s from the speech department. The therapist called and said she’s terribly backed up all day today and wondered if you’d mind doing another session with Mr. Walker?”
Opportunity had come quicker than she’d anticipated. She took the phone slip from the receptionist. “Of course not. Would you call them back and tell them it’s fine—just what the doctor ordered?”
Donna, the Silver Striper, giggled. Craig hesitated, then added, “I know Carter Wyndall is on the authorized list of visitors, but if he comes in today, I’d like to know. He’s a reporter and I’m not so certain my patient is going to have the privacy she needs.”
“Oh, certainly.” Donna jotted down the instruction. “Anything else?”
“Just enjoy yourself covering the desk. Have a nice day.” Susan left her behind as the buzzer freed the second set of doors.
Working with Ibie Walker again gave her options she needed time to consider. She had checked with her office already. Hotchkiss had not yet called. He could have gone ahead with the suicide Dudley had aborted. Or he could be waiting stubbornly, like the anal retentive ass he was. Or he could be on the precipice, just waiting for another push like Ibie Walker’s death.
As for Carter Wyndall, she would have to deal with him expeditiously. Graciela’s tragic murder had already made the morning news, but to her surprise, it had not been linked with any of Dudley’s previous kills. Either the police did not know they had a serial killer or they had put out a news blackout. A blackout did not mean Carter was unaware of Dudley’s presence. Eventually, his obsession with Bauer would be rekindled and could lead to her. She had to wrap up her dealings now and prepare to move on. She almost had enough data to license her therapy software programs through CyberImago that would give her funding to live anywhere she pleased. Someplace where she wouldn’t be second-guessed or questioned.
Miller was not in the lab on Wednesdays. She put her briefcase down and put on a fresh lab coat, then repositioned her name tag. Her intercom light went on.
“This is the nurses’ station. Ibie Walker is on his way over.”
“Good.” She liked promptness. She could deal with him and move on.
She stopped at the isolation room where Brandon had been moved and shut the door quietly behind her as she entered, so as not to attract attention.
He lay so still that she considered removing his restraints, his spare form hidden under ghostly white sheets and a paper-thin thermal blanket. Blue veins ran through his eyelids tremoring with the dream movement of the eyes they curtained. His chest rose and fell with shallow breaths. He looked like an alabaster carving of a child, pure and untouched, innocent and full of latent potential, as every child is a seed unplanted, a bud unfurled.
He was not much younger than her own child would have been, if she had kept him. But she had had her residency in medical school to consider and although she was often mistaken then for an undergrad, she was within a few months of finishing when she had joined the project involving Georg Bauer. The pregnancy had been unplanned, unexpected, but not unwanted.
Until her supervisor had discovered it. Dr. Morrissey had been none too pleased with her assignment to the Bauer survey anyway, stating that it was madness and folly to have a female anywhere near the killer, but when she had begun to struggle with morning sickness that lasted day and night, the good doctor decided he had real reason to put her off the project. Susan had struggled with Morrissey from the first day, finding the doctor unfamiliar with the computer technology they were using to map Bauer’s personality, unfamiliar and hostile. Oddly enough, the subject himself had never been anything but courteous and soft-spoken around her.
He had power, reined in. She recognized that in him, though he was relegated to a subservient position, and he seemed to know she recognized it. That power ran through him like a raw sexual core, masked but omnipresent.
Morrissey, for all his years of experience and learning, seemed oblivious. He ran mazes and designed new ones for Bauer, noting the results, and the killer would sit quietly on a stool in his prison oranges, hands and feet lig
htly shackled, and his flat hazel eyes would meet hers across the room, shining with humor.
He was a lock to which Morrissey could discover no key.
The doctor decided to vent his frustrations on her. As her pregnancy became more difficult, and his ineptitude with the study more apparent, Morrissey finally gave her an ultimatum. Have an abortion or resign from the project.
Resigning would not only take her back months in finishing her program, it would mean that she would have to give up the work she’d done on Bauer, all the computer studies and stored information. She would have to deliver them to Morrissey’s hands and see them destroyed, lost, invalidated.
She’d done what she had to and accepted Morrissey’s ultimatum.
And found an ally in Bauer, who seemed to understand instinctively what she’d gone through and what she struggled with. They formed a bond.
The more she studied him, the more complex a Georgian knot his mind proposed. Violence and power and sex were braided and tied together in layers that would take years to chart, years to unravel. He reminded her sometimes of a caged animal, a light deep in the back of his eyes warning that whenever that lock was left unturned, the bars ineffective, the door unlatched, all hell would break loose.
The more unfathomable Bauer became to Morrissey’s methods, the unhappier the doctor was about Susan’s continued presence on the project. And the more incompetent Morrissey became, the closer Bauer came to being delivered back to Death Row. A failure in the project would result in Georg Bauer’s execution. The FBI was not happy with Bauer’s cooperation as he began to drag his feet in the interviews, sensing that only his knowledge now kept him out of the execution chamber.
Susan was let go, being flatly told by Morrissey that the project was being wrapped up. He would handle the final four weeks of interviews on his own. Her sacrifice, her love, her understanding, all for naught.
Except that Bauer understood, and they spoke softly to one another as she prepared to leave, and he told her what he wanted her to do. Not that week or even the next, but soon, before the FBI took him back. He would avenge her abortion and humiliation by Morrissey. He knew what she wanted of him. He told her what he wanted of her.
So she did it. She made a copy of the key for the shackles and left it for him several weeks later in the lab.
She was never a suspect in the breakout. Even the FBI interviews had been shallow, cursory. Only John Nelson had even bothered to take notes. Her involvement in the project had ended.
She finished her residency and waited.
He would come back to her. He had promised. Only, like the beast he was, he needed to be sated. He needed to run free before coming back.
She understood that. A year passed. Then two. Three.
And then, one day, coming home late from the hospital where she’d begun her professional career, she found him waiting.
He was much more dangerous than he had been in the lab.
So was she. Her training, her knowledge, her work had become weapons. If he had come seeking her out, hoping to find yet another victim, he did not. She looked Georg Bauer in the eyes and never looked away.
He let her live. She let him live. Until the realization that he had begun a downward spiral of self-destruction which would ultimately drag her under as well. She’d taken steps then.
Susan Craig put a hand to her face. Her fingers were chill, the tears brimming in the corners of her eyes warm. She carefully patted them away, watching Brandon sleep.
She hoped the medication hadn’t damaged him too much. It was a pity she was going to have to leave him behind.
* * *
Susan opened her briefcase at her desk. Three-and-a-half-inch diskettes gleamed back at her from their various pockets. She considered her choices, then made a selection. Ibie Walker’s demise ought to be short and sweet.
She plucked out a second program, made up especially for McKenzie Smith, and slipped that into her trouser pocket. Then she locked the briefcase, sliding it under her desk. She had come too far, done too much, to change her mind now.
Ibie Walker was wheeled in, minus his IV and monitors, and aides. His granddaughter followed a few moments later, after a loud aside to the nurse in the hallway outside. Her color was high when she came in, taking up a position by her grandfather’s wheelchair.
“I thought the speech therapist would be here today.”
“They called and asked if I could spend an additional day acquainting Mr. Walker with the soundboard equipment. My schedule was free, so I agreed.” Susan put her hand on the back of Ibie’s. “How are you today, Mr. Walker?”
He rolled an eye at her unhappily. She smiled. “Making progress, I see. You’ve left most of your equipment behind.”
A pager went off. Both women checked their beltlines. The handsome young African-American said, “It’s mine.” She checked the message, then leaned over her grandfather. “Pops, it’s the office. I’ve got to go call. You’ll be all right here. I’ll be back for you.”
She turned briskly and was gone before Ibie could respond. He managed to lift a hand after her, beseechingly, but only Susan Craig was there to see it.
He turned his gaze back to her and they stared at one another. “Don’t trust me, Mr. Walker?” She shook her head. “I’m sorry. Well, let’s just get through this session as quickly as possible, and see what happens.”
She whirled the wheelchair about and pushed it into place at a computer station The elderly man reached for the headset, placed it to his cheek and the soundboard began to cry. “Nuh. Nuh. Nuh.”
Susan looked up with delight. “Why, Ibie. That’s very good. ‘No.’ Now what is it you don’t want?”
His hand was shaking. His eyes teared from the effort of holding the handset. The soundboard stopped making recognizable tones and retreated into melodic garbage. Susan reached out and gently took the headset from her patient.
“I think we’ll practice with this later. I’ve got something special for you.”
With quick, skillful movements, she strapped the VR helmet on and slipped his hands into the gloves. Then she took the software disk out of her trouser pocket and slipped it into the computer’s drive. She patted Walker on his shoulder. “This shouldn’t take long.”
She stepped back to watch.
After a few moments, his body began to twitch and shake, doing a Saint Vitus’ dance. He moaned softly, helplessly. Spittle dripped out of a jaw dropped slackly. His gloved hands shook wildly upon his lap. His feet kicked out and drummed upon the wheelchair supports. His movements became more and more grotesque and violent as if he sat in an electric chair, current pouring into him.
Susan licked her lips.
Ibie Walker fought, oh, she could see him fighting the “reality” which gripped him. She could see him in hand-to-hand combat with the unthinkable. His narrow chest heaved with the effort, breaths coming faster and faster, gasping—
And then it all stopped.
Susan waited for a long count, then stepped forward to the slumped figure in the wheelchair. She had all the time in the world. Moving slowly, deliberately, she took off the helmet and saw his face, eyes rolled back in their sockets, mahogany skin gone ash-gray. She put her fingers to his throat, searching for a pulse.
“Dr. Craig, I’ve just got to know about Brand—” McKenzie stopped in the lab doorway. “Dr. Craig!”
Susan reacted instinctively. She took Ibie’s still form out of the wheelchair and laid it on the floor, ordering, “Don’t just stand there. Get on the intercom. Call a Code Blue. He’s gone into cardiac arrest.” She balled up a fist and thumped him heavily on the chest and began to administer CPR.
McKenzie lunged for the nearest phone. From the corner of her eye, she saw Craig reach up to the computer, eject the software from the drive, and slip it into her pocket, even as she pumped the dying man’s chest and counted.
Mac could hear the defib cart being rolled down the corridor toward the lab even before she got off the co
m line. Mac stepped back, staring at the doctor bending over the elderly councilman, watching her pump and breathe, as the cardiac team raced toward them.
As they came in, Craig got up off her knees and stepped back, giving them room to work. She looked across the lab at Mac.
If looks could kill, Mac would be lying on the floor next to Ibrahim Walker.
Chapter 30
The proud young woman who was both Ibie’s granddaughter and his aide paused by the lab door. The turban scarf which bound her ebony hair and matched her tailor-made skirt had started to come undone as she bent over her grandfather’s still form just before the nurses prepared to wheel Walker back to his cubicle in ICU. She reached up now as she faced Susan Craig and McKenzie, unwrapping it, letting down her fall of stylish hair. She tossed it back to keep it from her face, twisting the scarf about one hand.
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