Peter Clement - Mortal Remains

“Results can be wrong,” she said, her somber expression still disquieting. She reached for the tray of blood-taking equipment that Melanie had left by his bedside. “Let me check them again. I’ll submit the sample under my name, in case someone’s been tampering with your readings.”

She was as paranoid as he needed to be.

Still not entirely certain he trusted her, he gingerly held out his arm. Because he’d seized on a strategy that could bring everything to a head. Let whoever it was make a move. Odds were his would-be assassin had some mortal complication from his toxic E. coli infection planned for him. That meant sooner or later they’d come face-to-face. So get the showdown over with. The trick? To be ready.

Suspect everyone.

Stay alert.

And keep tucked into his bedclothes a handful of syringes. They had three-inch needles that he’d already stolen off the tray of blood-taking equipment. Weak as he was, he could drive them into an eye of the attacker.

Even Tanya’s.

She slid the gleaming tip of her needle into his vein, and he poised himself to spring at the first sign of her doing anything bizarre.

But the woman expertly finished the task, pressed a piece of cotton to the puncture site so it wouldn’t bleed, and smiled. Then she rushed toward the door. “I’m taking this to the lab myself,” she said. “I’ll be back at eleven, when my shift ends.”

Earl loosened his grip on the makeshift weapon but remained tense. He couldn’t stay awake forever; eventually he’d have to hire a security guard. Even then he’d only be delaying an adversary who had already gotten to him once without his knowing. It would also tip him or her off that he, Earl Garnet, was onto the fact he was a target. Unless Janet hired the people in the guise of a twenty-four-hour nursing service. Still, better to chance luring the killer in now, while this creep still believed Earl to be unprotected as well as unaware. Having already refused any more Demerol, he counted on pain to keep him from falling asleep, at least until morning. If by then nothing had happened, he’d ask Janet to bring on the watchdogs.

As he lay waiting, the afternoon light waned, and a thickening sludge of dirty brown smog nuzzled the window.

That same Friday, November 23, 6:55 P.M.

Hampton Junction

Mark’s attempts to reach the doctors on Victor’s list had proved futile. All were gone for the day, and he’d ended up talking to machines or leaving messages with tired-sounding operators at their answering services.

The last thing he felt like doing was eating dinner at Nell’s.

On the other hand, Lucy was adamant they go. “If the woman knows anything about these places,” she said, folding up her spreadsheets of statistics and sticking them in her purse, “I want to talk with her.”

“She’s not going to look at a bunch of numbers.”

“They’re for me to use, like notes, to guide me in what questions to ask.”

“Such as?”

“I won’t know until she talks to me.” She slipped the strap of her purse over her shoulder and walked out the front door.

Mark followed her to the Jeep, once more with the uneasy feeling that she was leaving something out. He took a breath of the crisp air, trying to clear his head. Dealing with Victor all day had occupied his thoughts, but now they roamed freely through all the other unknowns that were piling up, as foreboding as thunderheads. He couldn’t shake his fear about Earl being in danger, so much so that he’d tried to phone Melanie again, figuring she could ensure a security guard would be at his door. But he’d only reached her answering service. Pulling out of the driveway, he started to call Nell on his cellular, then hesitated, his finger suspended over the number pad.

One way someone could have known that Victor had found something suspicious at Nucleus Laboratories might be a phone tap. Mark recalled that on the night of the break-in, he’d found the clock on his phone stand slightly out of position. Someone could have been trying to place a tap on the line. And how would the person who shot at him know when he’d be driving on the road from Nell’s? Maybe those damn clicks weren’t the usual problem with his line.

He’d check when he got home. And forget using the cellular. Anybody determined to listen in on him could buy scanners for them. Shit! Had Nell been overheard saying she had new information about Kelly’s death?

Jesus, he thought, and gunned the car, heading for the nearest pay phone on the edge of town.

“What’s up?” asked Lucy.

“I just realized our phone conversations may no longer be private.” He explained why in the minutes it took to reach the booth.

To his relief, Nell picked up. “Nell, listen-”

“I know. You’re going to be late,” she said without letting him speak.

“We’ll be there in twenty minutes. But maybe we should rethink this.”

“What do you mean?”

“We’re going to go somewhere else for dinner.”

“Are you crazy?”

“We’ll pick you up-”

“Just come on over. I can use the extra time to have a bath.” And she hung up.

He tried dialing her back.

Off the hook.

Not this nonsense again.

“Oh, God,” said Lucy when he told her.

As he drove, he figured out how to convince her she needed protection. Hell, maybe she’d even get off on the idea. And he’d call Dan. She might listen to him. But listen she would, because damned if he was going to put anyone else in danger. The entire day he’d agonized over the possibility that he’d gotten Victor killed by encouraging him to play computer detective. He remembered his singing at the piano only two nights ago, and the thought of performing an autopsy on him in the morning became unbearable.

Lucy rode staring out the window.

The quiet between them grew suffocating.

“You know, we could both go deaf in this kind of silence,” he said.

She gave a small, solitary chuckle. “Sorry. I was just thinking how sometimes in the camps, when I felt most overwhelmed and helpless, I’d take care of some small, personal matter, just to get the world back into perspective.”

“Such as?” He welcomed the chance to discuss anything that might get him out of his own head.

“Writing letters home worked best, saying things I hadn’t had the chance to say to the people I loved most. Once I did that with each of my brothers, Mom, and Dad, I usually felt better. At least, it seemed less daunting to face the big problems in front of me.”

“What would you write about?”

“Usually I’d pick something I really liked about the person I wrote to and let them know. And if there were any unresolved quarrels, I’d try to patch them up. That way if something happened to me, I wouldn’t have left precious words unsaid.”

“Sounds like a nice kind of letter to get.”

She grew quiet again, her gaze fixed on the dark blur of forest at the road’s edge. “Would you like me to write one to you?” she asked after a few seconds.

He grew very still. “Yes, I’d like that.”

“Because that’s what I’ve been doing, Mark. Sitting here composing a letter to you.”

“Really?” He drove the next mile without saying anything. “What’s in it?” he finally asked.

“Most I think you already know. How great a doctor I think you are. How much I adore working with your patients and being up here. And how worried I am that I’ve permanently ruined your opinion of me by coming to you under false pretenses.”

She was right. He did know all that. And her failure to be up front with him had stoked his suspicions of her. Once fooled, it was easy to wonder what else she might keep from him. And he still felt a woman as smart as she should have known better, especially about letting her personal issues place evidence at risk.