Peter Clement - Mortal Remains

If he turned, they’d be looking right at each other. Mark quietly curled into a ball and crept back against the bushes, burying his head in his arms to mask the white traces of his own breath in the frost. With his good eye he squinted along the ridge to see if the man he’d thought was on his heels had arrived.

No one.

Was the man not thirty feet from him the gunman?

No, Mark finally decided. From all the years he’d hiked and played around these hills he knew for certain there was no shortcut.

So who was this guy?

Just another hunter out poaching who had nothing to do with his pursuer?

Or is it me he’s listening for?

His shivering grew worse. His fingers ached. His eye throbbed.

He glanced once more along the ridge.

It was fully bathed in moonlight now.

There, against the sky, appeared the shape of a man climbing into view, a rifle on his back. An instant later he knelt and probed the ground around his feet with a penlight.

That same evening, Monday, November 19, 6:00 P.M.

New York City Hospital

Earl huddled against the wind at the Thirty-third Street entrance, cupping the mouthpiece of his cellular with his hand. Horizontal needles of rain stung against his skin. Everyone else rushing by seemed to have an umbrella. He eyed a kid who had been selling them out of a garbage bag and signaled him to bring one over, all the while continuing his conversation with Janet. “I came up empty. The only significant thing is that Cam Roper, Mark’s father, might have looked at those same charts just after Kelly went missing. Except he probably didn’t find anything either, or he would have done something about it. I can’t reach Mark to tell him. His phone doesn’t seem to be working.”

“It’s still pretty bizarre, those records attracting his interest,” Janet said.

“If I’m right about Kelly trying to find evidence of malpractice to use as leverage against Chaz, then maybe Cam Roper had followed up on those suspicions, or at least started to before he passed away.” He fished five bucks out of his pocket, and gave it to the pint-sized merchant, who cut the gloom with a grin as bright as polished ivory. Popping open what looked as flimsy as a bat wing and was undoubtedly stolen goods, Earl instantly felt better, but had to speak up as the rain drummed on the black material, creating the din of a thousand impatient fingers. “Cam could have thought she’d confronted Chaz with some grievous error he’d made that would ruin his career, and he’d killed her for it. Except Roper Senior likely came to the same conclusion as the M and M reports. ‘Unexpected but unavoidable digoxin toxicity with no obvious cause.’ ”

Janet said nothing.

In the roar of the storm he thought the connection was gone. “Janet?”

“I’m here.”

“So what’s got your tongue.”

“I hesitate to say it, but there’s another possible scenario.”

A wave of static interrupted them. “Go on,” he said, when it cleared.

“Somebody could have tried to murder those patients by secretly injecting extra doses of the drug.”

“That’s pretty far-fetched.”

“But not impossible. It’s occurred in hospitals before.”

“But no one ever raised the possibility of foul play here. Certainly it was never mentioned in the charts.”

“That doesn’t necessarily mean it didn’t happen.”

He exhaled the way only a former smoker can – long, slow, and from the bottom of his lungs. “Being unable to talk with either of them means I may never know.”

“What about family?”

“I talked with the woman’s son this afternoon, but he never brought up anything of that sort. I can call him back and ask him outright if she ever mentioned having any enemies or suspicions of someone trying to harm her, but I think he would have mentioned it if she had. As for the man who died, he’d no next of kin, so there isn’t a hope of finding out more there.”

She fell silent again.

“It isn’t entirely a dead end,” he continued. “I’ve arranged to meet with the floor staff involved in her care. Maybe they can tell me if she ever mentioned anyone who might hurt her. And it turns out Melanie Collins continued to see the woman as a patient from time to time over the years, so maybe she’ll be able to fill me in on something I’m missing.” He’d already left several messages on her service, asking her to call, but she hadn’t gotten back to him yet.

This time Janet let out a sigh, minor-league compared to his own. “Good luck, love. Oh, by the way, I looked up divorce law on the Internet, and as far as I can see, she’d have gone offshore.”

Once Janet got an idea, she was relentless. “That may be, but the police found no record of any plane or boat tickets in her name.”

“That doesn’t mean she didn’t intend to go there. Maybe her killer stopped her before she could make the move. All I know is, find a woman’s divorce lawyer, and you find someone who knows a lot about the woman.”

Mark huddled in the bushes, trying to blend with the scrubby growth.

The man on the ridge looked up from his study of the ground and seemed to stare right at him. Then he looked in the other direction, and finally rose to his feet. If he’d seen Mark or the hunter below, he showed no sign, turning away and peering into the night.

The hunter must have been outside his line of sight, Mark thought. Otherwise, if they were together, why hadn’t he called to him? Even if they weren’t, he would still have reacted, possibly even mistaken him for Mark and taken a shot at him.

Instead the man walked off in the opposite direction, playing his light over the snow on either side of the spiny path.

Mark exhaled in momentary relief.

Looking down he saw that the hunter hadn’t budged, his dark form still visible, his breath coming out in well-spaced puffs. By counting the interval, Mark estimated that whoever he was, he’d controlled his respirations down to ten a minute, which took rock-solid nerve.

As Mark watched, the man slowly leveled the gun barrel as if he were about to shoot something farther down the slope. Again he seemed to be listening.

Mark heard nothing but the rush of the wind.

From within the darkness of the woods leapt a great amorphous shadow in what initially appeared to be a singular movement. Immediately it flew into pieces, the parts darting through the trees at the forest edge, each zigzagging around the trunks like formless gray spirits.

Three shots rang out, but, like smoke, the creatures had vanished.

Except for one.

Its antlered head twisted round, and it spiraled to its knees, staggered up on its legs, then pitched forward again. It writhed in the snow, kicking and thrashing its neck side to side as if to shake off what had felled it. Black stains pooled on the snow, and the writhing eventually slowed. It raised its head once more, as if straining to see the moon through the treetops, its mouth open and gasping. Then it collapsed, its mighty struggle giving over to lesser quiverings.

The hunter walked over and put a final bullet into the buck’s head.

Mark spun around in time to see the first man standing stock-still in the distance, staring toward the sound of the shot. He then scurried over the edge of the ridge and ran back down the way he’d come.

7:00 P.M.

Mark hated all-terrain vehicles. Gas-powered models were carbon-monoxide-spewing noise polluters. Battery-operated versions, though quieter, tipped, killed, and paralyzed just as many victims as their noisier cousins. But among hunters, especially the middle-of-the-night kind, they were the transportation of choice this time of year, before the snow got too deep.