Michael Palmer - Extreme Measures

The woman hesitated.

"Please, it's very important," Eric urged. "Listen, you've seen me working here alone dozens of nights.

You know Dave and I are friends."

Reluctantly, she pulled her keys from her purse and opened the door.

"I shouldn't be doing this- " she said.

"Thank you, Jess. You won't regret it."

As she was turning the key, the phone inside began ringing. Eric raced inside, slamming his thigh against the corner of a lab bench as he rounded it to the inner office. He snatched up the receiver.

"Hello?"

"Yes, I'm trying to reach Dr. Dave Subarsky."

Eric felt his pulse leap.

"Laura?"

"Eric, yes, it's me! Oh, God, I've been worried about you."

"You've been worried-I thought you were dead."

"I almost was. Eric, it's Captain Wheeler, the policeman I told you about. He's behind everything."

"I know. I know. Laura, Wheeler shot himself here in the hospital.

He's dead. You don't have anything to worry about anymore.

Where are you?"

"I'm at a house in East Boston. Eric, I found Scott. He…

Wheeler killed him."

"Jesus. Oh, Laura, I'm so sorry. Listen, just tell me where you are.

I'll come and get you. You can tell me all about everything then."

"I'm at this couple's place not far from the docks.

They picked me up by the road. I spent some time in the water, and I was chilled to the bone, but I'm okay now.

"Tell me the address," he said, feeling through the top desk drawer until he found a pen. "I'll be right over."

"You don't have to. I spoke with your friend Dave an hour or so ago. I thought he would be here by now.

I was just calling to make sure he had left."

"well, he's not here."

"That's strange. Maybe the traffic was-Wait a minute. The doorbell just rang. He might be here now… Yes, yes, it's him.

Eric, listen, I know where that tape is. Scott remembered before he died be right down, Mrs. Pbletti. just tell him to wait a minute. You still there?"

"Oh, I'm here. I'm here. I can't believe you're all right."

"I'm fine. Eric, get this. The tape is in an old tractor trailer right in the lot where we parked that day we went to the docks. We were right next to it!"

"Amazing."

"We're going to stop by and get it on the way back to Boston, Where will you be?"

"I don't know… How about Bernard's apartment?"

"Perfect I'll see you there in an hour or less. And Eric?"

"Yes."

"Eric, I love you."

"I love you, too, kiddo."

Eric hung up and leaned back in his chair, his fists clenched, his arms stretched upward. The nightmare was over.

A few moments of quiet and absolute exultation, and then he pushed back from the desk and stood up.

Below him, in the partially open desk drawer, something caught his eye-Wmething that he must have pulled forward in his search for a pen.

He picked it up and halted it in his hand for a moment, his mind I unwilling to accept what it was and what it meant.

But he knew.

What seemed a lifetime ago, he had stood beside the occupational therapist as she demonstrated an electrolarynx for him.

His heart pounding, Eric pulled on the other desk drawers. Both were locked. Using a letter opener, he forced the first of them open and spilled its contents onto the desk. Tucked among the computer printouts and lab reports was a five-by-seven color photo, clearly taken in a tropical setting. Dave Subarsky, wearing a baggy surfer's bathing suit, stood leaning against a palm tree. Nearly dwarfed inside his arm, her perfect body glistening in the sun, was Rebecca Darden.

Barely able to breathe, Eric forced open the bottom drawer and withdrew something enclosed in a brown paper bag. His hands were shaking as he set the bag on the desk and ripped it open. Lying there, glowering eerily up at him in the dim light of the desk lamp, was the death's-head mask.

With a cry of pain, Eric snatched up a phone book. Paolini?

Paretti? What in the hell did she say their name was? Did she even say the name of their street?

He spent half a minute staring at the columns of names before shoving the book aside. Then he grabbed the hideous mask and bolted from the lab.

Eric's cab ride through the heavy evening traffic was an agonizing exercise in frustration, beginning with a tie-up on the Mystic River Bridge that stretched back almost to the hospital. To make a bad situation even worse, within minutes of his leaving White Memorial, a furious wind-driven thunderstorm erupted, sending torrents of water cascading down the access ramp and instantly flooding the roadway beneath overpasses.

Strobes of lightning flashed through the taxi as the cabbie pawed at the thickening film of condensation on the windshield.

After three fruitless attempts at convincing the man that this was an emergency worth taking risks for, Eric forced himself back into his seat, fidgeting constantly as he stared out through the pounding rain.

If, as he suspected, Subarsky and Lester Wheeler had coordinated their efforts, Laura was in a situation as potentially lethal as his had- been. Except for the question of why, the final pieces of the Caduceus nightmare had fallen into place. And now, through the twenty-twenty vision of hindsight, Eric cursed himself for not seeing his friend's involvement sooner.

The biochemist's insistence on accompanying him to the Gates of Heaven, his appearance in the hospital library at just the right moment, his knowledge that Eric would be at the county, and finally, his convenient disappearance just before Norma Cullinet's death-the signposts were all there, clear as fucking day.

It had undoubtedly been Dave's idea to try to enlist him as Craig Worrell's replacement in Caduceus, and Dave's finger that had been on his pulse ever since.

Why hadn't he seen it? Why hadn't he at least considered the possibility?

The cabbie inched along the bridge and then stopped, unable even to change lanes. Eric gauged the distance across to East Boston and knew they had no chance. It was perhaps half a mile to the exit, and another half a mile to the docks. Leaving the death'shead mask on the seat, he shoved a ten-dollar big into the Plexiglas scoop, raced from the cab, and dodged between cars to the narrow sidewalk.

Before he had sprinted even a dozen yards he was soaked to the skin.

Rain lashed at him as he bounded up the steep grade toward the crest of the bridge. Far below, the harbor and city flashed like white gold beneath sharp volleys of lightning. By the time he reached the downward slope of the span, he had slowed to an awkward trot, pulling in the moist, exhaust-filled air with desperate gulps. A stitch of pain became a knife, cutting into the side of his chest.

Every stride seemed the last he could take, every breath a hand twisting the blade. still he ran, down the narrow exit ramp and over the McArdle Bridge across the Chelsea River.

Finally, as he stumbled onto Meridian Street on the East Boston side, he had to stop. Propped against a telephone pole, he gasped for breath, begging the pain in his side to abate. The parking lot was just a few hundred yards away. If Laura and Subarsky were there, he had to be ready. Gradually, the stiff ache in his chest subsided. His breathing grew steadier. He pushed himself away from the pole and walked quickly along the dark side of the street. Cars and trucks sped past, showering him with street water.

As he neared the lot he began casting about for something he could use as a weapon. Subarsky was inches taller than he was, and perhaps seventy-five pounds heavier. Eric's main advantage in any match with the man would be surprise-that and the mounting rage he was feeling for all he and Laura and so many others had been put through. The best his brief search could produce was an empty whiskey bottle.