by Robin Cook
“Mr. Bingham,” Judge Davidson called out. “I notice the defendant is not presently at the defendant’s table.”
“My assistant, Mr. Cavendish, tells me he requested to use the men’s room,” Randolph said, partially rising out of his chair.
“I see,” Judge Davidson responded.
The jury was then led into the courtroom, and they filed into the jury box.
“What’s going on?” Alexis questioned. “Did you find something criminal?”
“I found more than I bargained for,” Jack confessed.
“Perhaps someone should let Dr. Bowman know we are back in session,” Judge Davidson said. “It is important for him to witness these proceedings.”
Jack gave Alexis’s hand another squeeze before getting to his feet. “I’ll get Dr. Bowman,” he said. As he moved back down the aisle, he motioned to Randolph’s assistant, who’d gotten up, presumably to get Craig, that he would fetch the defendant.
Jack pushed out through the door to the hall. There were the usual clumps of people engaging in hushed conversations sprinkled around the hallway and the elevator lobby. Jack made a beeline for the men’s room. He glanced at his watch. It was a quarter past ten. He yanked open the door and entered. A man of Asian ancestry was washing his hands at the sink. The area around the urinals was empty. Jack continued to the stalls and bent down at the waist to look under the walls. Only the last stall was occupied. Jack walked down to the door and debated whether to wait or call out. As late as it was, he decided to call out.
“Craig?” Jack questioned.
The toilet flushed, and a moment later the locking mechanism of the door clicked. The door opened inwardly, and a young Hispanic man emerged. He gave Jack a quizzical look before brushing past on his way to the sink. Surprised at not having had to face Craig after building up his courage to do so, Jack bent over again to make sure all the stalls were empty, and they were. Except for the two men at the sink, there was no one else in the bathroom. Craig was nowhere to be seen. Intuitively, Jack knew he was gone.
24
BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS
Friday, June 9, 2006
10:25 a.m.
After returning to the courtroom, where Craig had failed to reappear, Jack had taken Alexis aside. As quickly and humanely as possible, he had related everything that had happened since he’d spoken with her the night before. She had listened with initial disbelief and consternation until she learned the extent of the proof of Craig’s apparent guilt. At that point, she’d allowed her professional persona to take over, enabling her to analyze the situation clinically. In that frame of mind, she, not Jack, had been the one to bring up the time issue and that Jack had to make tracks if he hoped to get to the church on time. With a promise to call that afternoon, Jack had grabbed his carry-on and dashed for the elevators.
Running headlong, Jack traversed the courtyard in front of the courthouse and descended the two short flights of steps to the street. To his relief, the battered Accent was where he’d left it, although a parking ticket was stuck beneath the windshield wiper. The first order of business was to get the paper bag containing the gun from the trunk. Anticipating needing to return the firearm on his way to the airport, Jack had gotten the directions to police headquarters that morning from Latasha.
The police station was right around the corner from where Jack was parked, although it required him to do a U-turn over a median. Jack looked in his rearview mirror for pursuing squad cars after pulling off the stunt. Jack had learned from sore experience that when you missed your turn while driving in Boston, it was frequently impossible to loop back.
The stop at the police station was accomplished expeditiously. The bag had Liam Flanagan’s name on it, and the duty officer was willing to accept it with no comment whatsoever. Glad that chore was out of the way, Jack ran out to the car, which was double-parked with the engine running.
The signage to the airport was superior to the signage in the rest of the city, and Jack soon found himself in a tunnel. Thankfully, the distance from downtown Boston to the airport was short, and Jack got there surprisingly quickly. Following the signs for the rent-a-car company, he drove onto the Hertz lot a few minutes later.
Jack pulled into one of the car-return lanes. There were some instructions of what to do when dropping off a vehicle, but Jack just ignored them as he ignored the agents who were roaming around assisting customers. The last thing Jack wanted to do was get into an extended discussion about the damaged vehicle. He was confident he’d hear from Hertz. He grabbed his carry-on and ran for the bus to the terminal.
When he boarded the bus, he thought it was about to leave, but instead it sat there with its motor idling and no driver. Jack nervously eyed the time. It was a little after eleven. He knew he had to catch the eleven thirty Delta shuttle or all was lost.
Finally, the driver appeared. He cracked a few jokes as he asked which terminals people wanted. Jack was happy to learn that Delta was the first stop.
The next aggravation was getting a ticket. Luckily, the shuttle had its own section. After that came the security line, but even that was not too problematic. It was eleven twenty when Jack shoved his feet back into his shoes and sprinted down the concourse toward the shuttle gate.
Jack was not the last person on board, but it was close. The plane’s door was closed behind the individual who’d boarded right after him. Jack took the first seat available to facilitate deplaning in New York. Unfortunately, it was a middle seat between a scruffy student with an iPod so loud Jack could hear every note and a pin-striped businessman with a laptop and a BlackBerry. The businessman treated Jack to a disapproving glare when Jack indicated he wanted to occupy the middle seat. It required the businessman to move his carry-on from where he’d stowed it and to pick up his jacket and briefcase, which he’d placed on the seat.
Once seated with his carry-on at his feet, Jack put his head back against the headrest and closed his eyes. Despite his bone-weary exhaustion, there was no chance he could fall asleep, and not just because of his neighbor’s iPod. He kept replaying the too short and unsatisfactory conversation he’d had with Alexis, and the belated realization that he’d not apologized for being the one who had uncovered Craig’s perfidy, not only to the profession but also to his family. Even the rationalization that Alexis and the children might be better off knowing the truth did not make Jack feel any better. The chances of the family hanging together in the face of what was coming were unfortunately slim, and that thought underlined for Jack how deceptive appearances could be. From the outside, the Bowmans seemingly had it all: professional parents, beautiful children, and a storybook house. Yet on the inside there was a kind of cancer undermining it all.
“May I have your attention please,” a voice cracked over the plane’s intercom. “This is the captain speaking. We’ve just been informed from ground control that we have a gate hold situation. There’s a thunderstorm passing through the New York area. We are hoping this will not be long, and we will keep you informed.”
“Shit!” Jack exclaimed to himself. He gripped his forehead with his right hand, using the balls of his fingers to massage his temples. The anxiety and lack of sleep were conspiring to give him a headache. As a realist, he began to contemplate what would happen if he did not make the wedding. Laurie had given him more than a hint. She’d said she’d never forgive him, and he believed her. Laurie was frugal with promises, and when she made one, she kept it. Knowing that again begged the question in Jack’s mind whether he’d stayed in Boston as long as he had more from an unconscious wish to avoid getting married than to solve the Patience Stanhope mystery. Jack took a deep breath. He didn’t believe that was true, nor did he want it to be true, but he didn’t know for sure. What he did know was that he wanted to get to the church on time.
Then, as if in response to his thoughts, the intercom came back to life. “This is the captain again. Ground control has reversed themselves. We are ready to push back. We should have you
at the gate in New York on schedule.”
The next thing Jack knew was that he was jarred awake by the plane’s wheels touching down at LaGuardia Airport. To his utter surprise, he had fallen asleep despite his anxiety, and to his embarrassment, he had drooled a little. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, scraping against the stubble on his chin in the process. With the same hand, he felt the rest of his face. He was in need of a shave and even worse for a shower, but a glance at his watch suggested that neither was possible. It was twenty-five after twelve.
Shaking himself like a dog to get his circulation going, Jack ran his hands through his hair. This activity evoked a questioning expression from the businessman, who was plainly leaning into the aisle away from Jack. Jack wondered if that was ostensibly additional evidence of his need for a shower. Although he’d donned Tyvek protective coveralls, Jack was aware he’d not showered since he’d done an autopsy on an eight-month-old corpse.
Jack suddenly realized that he’d been tapping his foot at a frenzied frequency. Even when he put his hand on his knee, it was hard to keep his leg still. Jack could not remember ever being quite so agitated. What made it difficult was having to sit still. He would have preferred to be out on the tarmac, running alongside the plane.
It seemed to take forever for the plane to taxi to the terminal and then agonizingly slowly ease into the gate. When the chime sounded, Jack was up out of his seat. Pushing past the businessman, who was getting a bag from the overhead bin, garnered Jack yet another disapproving scowl. Jack couldn’t have cared less. Excusing himself, he managed to worm up to the front of the plane. When the door finally opened after what seemed like an interminable wait, he was the third one off.
Jack ran up the jetway, pushing past the two people who’d deplaned before him. Once in the terminal, he ran toward baggage claim and out onto the street, which was steaming from a recent downpour. By being the first passenger from the Boston–New York shuttle, he’d hoped the taxi line would be nonexistent. Unfortunately, that was not the case. The Washington, D.C.–New York shuttle had landed ten minutes earlier, and a portion of its passengers were waiting for cabs.
Unabashed at his assertiveness, he cut to the front of the line. “I’m a medical doctor, and I’m in an emergency,” Jack called out, rationalizing that both were true, just not related. The people in the line wordlessly regarded him with a touch of irritation, but no one offered any challenge. Jack jumped into the first cab.
The driver was from India or Pakistan, Jack couldn’t tell which, and was on his cell phone. Jack barked out his address on 106th Street, and the taxi accelerated away from the curb.
Jack checked his watch. It was now eighteen minutes before one o’clock, meaning he had only forty-eight minutes before he was due at Riverside Church. He sat back and tried vainly to relax, but it was impossible. To make things worse, they hit every traffic light just getting out of the airport. Jack looked at his watch again. It seemed to him unfair that the second hand was sweeping around the dial more quickly than usual. It was already a quarter before the hour.
Jack began to question nervously if he should go directly to the church and forgo the pit stop at home. The benefit would be he’d be on time; the disadvantage was that he was dressed a step below casual and needed a shave and a shower.
When the taxi driver was finally finished with his cell phone call and before he made another, Jack leaned forward. “I don’t know whether it would make much difference, but I’m in a hurry,” he said. Then he added, “If you would be willing to wait at the address I gave you, there would be an extra twenty-dollar tip.”
“I’ll wait if you’d like,” the driver said agreeably, with the typical charming Indian subcontinent accent.
Jack sat back and reattached his seat belt. It was now ten minutes before one.
The next bottleneck was the toll on the Triborough Bridge. Apparently, someone without a fast lane pass was in the fast lane and couldn’t back up because of the line of cars behind him. After a horrendous cacophony of car horns and shouted expletives, the problem was sorted out, but not before another five minutes was lost. By the time Jack reached the island of Manhattan, it was one o’clock.
The only benefit from Jack’s mounting anxiety was that it effectively stopped his obsessing about Alexis and Craig and the disaster that was about to begin. A malpractice trial was bad; a murder trial was god-awful. It was going to put the entire family in an unrelenting, many-year-long torment with little possibility of a happy outcome.
To the driver’s credit, he managed to get across town rapidly by knowing a relatively quiet street through Harlem. When he pulled up in front of Jack’s building, it was quarter after one. Jack had the taxi door open before the vehicle came to a complete stop.
Jack ran up the front steps and dashed through the front door, surprising some workmen. With the building under total renovation, the dust was an unmitigated disaster. As Jack ran down the hall to the apartment he and Laurie were temporarily occupying during the construction, billows of it rose from the debris-strewn floor.
Jack keyed open his apartment door and was about to enter when the construction supervisor caught sight of him from several floors above and yelled that he needed to talk about a plumbing problem. Jack yelled back that he couldn’t at the moment. Once inside, Jack tossed his carry-on onto the couch and began stripping off his clothes. He left a trail of apparel en route to the bathroom.
First he took a glimpse of himself in the mirror and winced. Heavy stubble blackened his cheeks and chin like smudges of soot, and his eyes were red-rimmed and sunken. After a quick, internal debate of a shave or a shower, since he hardly had time for both, he decided on the shower. Leaning into the tub, he turned on both faucets full-blast. Unfortunately, only a few drips emerged: The plumbing problem was obviously global to the building.
Jack turned off the faucets and, after splashing himself liberally with cologne, ran out of the bathroom and into the bedroom. He pulled on underwear, then put on his formal shirt. Next came the tuxedo pants and jacket. He grabbed the studs and cuff links and jammed them into his pants pocket. The black pre-tied bow tie went into the other pocket. After jamming his feet into formal shoes, his wallet into his back pants pocket, and his cell phone into his jacket pocket, he ran back out into the hall.
Slowing enough to keep the dust to a minimum, he was again spotted by the construction supervisor, who again yelled that it was critical for them to talk. Jack didn’t even bother to answer. Outside, the taxi was still waiting. Jack crossed the street and jumped in.
“Riverside Church!” Jack yelled.
“Do you know what cross street?” the driver asked, looking at Jack in the rearview mirror.
“One hundred twenty-second,” Jack clipped. He began struggling with his studs, dropping one on the seat, where it quickly disappeared into a black hole between the seat and the seat back. Jack tried to get his hand into the crack but couldn’t and quickly gave up. Instead, he used the studs he had, leaving the lowest buttonhole empty.
“Are you getting married?” the driver asked, continuing to glimpse at Jack in the mirror.
“I hope so,” Jack said. He then turned to the cuff-link challenge. He tried to recall the last time he had donned a tux, as he finished with the first cuff link and began on the second. He couldn’t remember, although it had to have been back in his previous life, when he was an ophthalmologist. After the cuff links, Jack bent down and tied his shoes and dusted himself. The final job was buttoning the top button of his shirt and hooking the bow tie behind his neck.
“You look fine,” the driver said with a broad smile.
“I’ll bet,” Jack said with his usual sarcasm. He leaned forward and extracted his wallet. Looking at the taxi meter, he got out enough twenty-dollar bills to cover it, plus two extra. He dumped the money into the front seat through the Plexiglas partition as the driver turned onto Riverside Drive.
Ahead, the Riverside Church’s sand-colored belfry
came into view. It towered over its neighboring structures and stood out with its Gothic architecture. In front of the church were several black limousines. Except for the drivers, who were out of their vehicles leaning against the sides, there were no people. Jack looked at his watch. It was one thirty-three. He was three minutes late.
Jack again had the taxi door open before the car was completely stopped. He yelled a thank-you to the driver over his shoulder as he leaped out into the street. Buttoning his jacket, he took the church’s front steps two at a time. Ahead in the open doorway, Laurie suddenly appeared like a mirage. She was gowned magnificently in a white wedding dress. From behind her issued forth powerful organ music.
Jack stopped to take in the scene. He had to admit she looked more lovely than ever, truly radiant. The only slight detraction was her hands, which were balled into fists and planted defiantly on her hips. There was also her father, Dr. Montgomery, who looked regal but not amused.
“Jack!” Laurie intoned in a voice hovering between anger and relief. “You are late!”
“Hey,” Jack called back spreading his hands. “At least I’m here.”
Laurie broke into a smile in spite of herself. “Get yourself into the church,” she ordered playfully.
Jack climbed the rest of the way up the stairs. Laurie reached out with her hand, and Jack took it. She then leaned close and looked at him appraisingly with a touch of concern.
“God, you look awful.”
“You shouldn’t flatter me so,” Jack said with feigned bashfulness.
“You haven’t even shaved.”
“There are worse secrets,” he confessed, hoping she couldn’t tell he’d not showered for more than thirty hours.
“I don’t know what I’m getting myself into,” Laurie said with her smile returning. “My mother’s friends are going to be appalled.”