Dead Ringer

by Lisa Scottoline

  One paramedic jumped in after Marshall’s stretcher, the other paramedic took off to drive, and Bennie tried to board until he blocked her. “No riders! Not on my bus, lady.”

  “But I’m family!”

  “Sorry. Liability issues.”

  Marshall cried out, “Let her come! I want her here!”

  “I’ll write you a release,” Bennie said, jumping in anyway as the paramedic scrambled past her to the backdoors, slammed them closed, and twisted the inside lever to lock them, and the truck lurched off.

  “Hang on, Marshall,” Bennie said, squeezing Marshall’s damp hand. There was a padded jump seat behind her but she didn’t sit down. “Hang on, honey, we’re going to the hospital.”

  Marshall thrashed on the gurney, trying not to scream, and Bennie held fast to her hand, appalled. Clotty bleeding soaked her sunny yellow dress, bathing her knees and calves. The paramedic rolled up a hand towel, set it between her legs to absorb the blood, and wrapped a blood pressure cuff on her arm, his dark eyes fixed on her trembling form. He appeared to be counting her breaths.

  “What’s the matter with her?” Bennie asked, panicky.

  “We don’t do the diagnosis, lady. We’re the swoop and scoop crew, me and Derek.” The paramedic frowned at the blood pressure gauge, then placed two fingers at the pulse on Marshall’s wrist. “Everything’s fine, Marshall. So how do you take your pizza? Double cheese?”

  “Please!” Marshall cried out, in torment, and the sound went right through Bennie. “Is the baby okay! How’s my baby?”

  “The baby’s going to be fine, Marshall,” the paramedic answered, but the rescue truck bucked and stalled in rush-hour traffic. Sirens screamed in Bennie’s head. She kept telling Marshall everything was going to be okay, though she knew the person she was trying most to convince was herself.

  “Let’s move it, Derek!” the paramedic called out to the driver. “BP is sixty over forty! Respiration is thirty! Pulse is a hundred ten! She’s diaphoretic!”

  “Goddamn it!” the driver cursed in the front seat, and the truck slowed almost to a full stop. “This Lexus is trying to turn the corner!” Suddenly there was a crackling over the radio in the front seat, near a computer keyboard and small blue screen, and the driver called back, “Change of plans. We’re going to Memorial. Tractor-trailer overturned on 95, and they got the ticket to Penn. Traffic to Memorial will be lighter too.” The driver hit the horn, hard, honk honk, and the truck finally broke free and, with a few stutter steps, took off, veering around the corner.

  “Memorial Hospital?” Bennie asked. “Her husband will be going to Penn.”

  “So call and tell him.”

  “Right,” Bennie said, then remembered she didn’t have a cell phone. She’d left it somewhere on the floor of her office. Carrier and David would go to Penn to find Marshall. Damn. She’d have to find a pay phone at the hospital.

  Honk honk honk, the horn blared. The siren screamed. The truck accelerated, then began to fly. Everything on the shelves rattled, even behind smoked plastic windows. Boxes read VIONEX WIPES and a container labeled GLUCOSE TUBES. Marshall’s head bobbled, and Bennie leapt to hold it still. It was something she could do as they raced through the city. They were on the way to the hospital. They were going to save Marshall and the baby. They were going. They were moving. They were flying.

  “Go, go, gophers, watch ’em go, go, go,” the paramedic sang under his breath. But the tune stopped abruptly when he slipped a stethoscope into his ears and placed its bulb on Marshall’s huge belly.

  Bennie held her breath. She wanted to ask how the baby was, but in the next second the paramedic looked up and met her gaze. His face had gone completely white.

  And something in his eye told Bennie to start praying.

  34

  I’m sorry, but you have to go,” one of the nurses told Bennie. They’d rushed Marshall to Memorial’s Labor and Delivery floor, and a group of nurses were hurrying to prepare her for an emergency C-section. A nurse grabbed the checked curtain that hung around Marshall’s bed and whisked it along its metal J-shaped track with a zzzipp, blocking Marshall from Bennie.

  “I hate to leave her alone,” Bennie said, her throat thick with emotion. “Her husband’s not here. He’s at the wrong hospital.”

  “Husbands can stay, but you can’t.” The nurse’s brown eyes softened. “We’ll take good care of her and the baby. She’s getting blood now. The baby’s on the monitor. The doctor will be right here. He’s dealing with another emergency.”

  “What’s the matter with her? She’s in so much pain.”

  “We think it’s placenta abruptio,” she said, and Bennie looked puzzled. “An abruption. The placenta peels away from the uterine wall. It’s terribly painful.”

  Oh my God. “How did she get that? She was fine.”

  “No one knows why it happens, but it does.”

  “Is there a phone, so I can call her husband? I left my cell phone.”

  “You couldn’t use a cell here anyway. Use our L and D phone.” The nurse pointed to the station behind them, covered with baby photos and thank-you notes, but another nurse in a puffy scrub hat was already on the phone. “There’s a pay phone, but it’s quite a ways, because the new labor wing is under construction. I probably shouldn’t tell you this, but take the shortcut.”

  “Where?”

  The nurse pointed down the hall and to her right, at a makeshift plywood door with a handmade sign that read NO ADMITTANCE! CONTRACTION SITE. “Take that door, go through the double doors, take a right at the sign for the elevators, and you’ll see the pay phones. I think they’re still there. But tell Dad to get here quick. We go in five minutes.”

  “Five minutes?” Bennie took off. She hustled down the hallway to the door, flung it open, and found herself in a construction site, with temporary drywall where corridors evidently used to be. Her house had looked like this for two years, while she’d rehabbed it. The air was warm here—the air-conditioning hadn’t been put in yet. She ran down the hall of exposed drywall and raw concrete subfloor, but it ended in another corridor of drywall, which she also ran down, then stopped.

  Shit! There were no double doors. Just another makeshift corridor. A trash bag against one wall overflowed with empty Mountain Dew cans, Tastykake wrappers, and bunched-up paper bags. There were no workmen around to ask for directions. It was after five, and they would have cut out by four.

  Bennie spun around. Two glass doors lay on their side, resting on a pile of two-by-fours, and next to them hung a bright blue tarp, duct-taped over a hallway entrance to keep the dust out, which everybody knew never worked. On the tarp hung another sign that read DANGER—KEEP OUT. Maybe the tarp had become the double doors, or vice versa. The phones must be on the other side of the tarp. Bennie didn’t have time to be law-abiding.

  She ducked under the tarp and came out the other side, into another drywall corridor, almost finished and painted with white prime coat. The floor was bare cement, spotted with drips of paint. What had the nurse said?

  Damn. Go! She ran down the corridor, which angled into another corridor, less finished than the first, partly unpainted. She ran down it, too, and it was longer, some twenty-five feet. The drywall was completely unpainted in the corridor, and the air smelled like something burning. It didn’t seem more finished, it was obviously less so, and Bennie couldn’t believe phones were anywhere near here.

  Fuck! She must have gone the wrong way. It was like a maze of drywall! She didn’t have the time to run back, but this couldn’t be right. She heard a sound and spun around on her pumps.

  And came face-to-face with herself.

  35

  Alice!” Bennie said, startled. Her twin stood directly in front of her. She was Bennie’s double. Same blond tangle of hair, same light makeup, same linen suit. Bennie could have been standing in front of a mirror, but for the gun. A Beretta, it was small, black, and deadly. And its snub nose was aimed at her heart.

  “Scream
and I’ll shoot you dead.” Alice’s voice had the same tone and timbre as Bennie’s. She raised the gun, sending a tingle of fear through Bennie.

  Stay calm. At least Marshall is being cared for. Bennie sensed that talk was her only chance of getting out of this alive. David was up at Penn. She was on her own. “I am curious why.”

  “Why what?”

  There are three two-by-fours on the cement floor, by the drywall. “Are you kidding? The whole thing.”

  “This is a hard one? To take everything from you.” Alice’s lips—Bennie’s lips—curled into a sneer. “To take every last thing you owned, worked for, built, or created. Because you got all of it at my expense.”

  The lumber is about ten feet away, slightly behind Alice and to the right. Bennie took a step closer to the plywood, as if she were startled, which wasn’t hard to fake. “I didn’t even know you until two years ago.”

  “And I didn’t know you either. But it doesn’t mean you didn’t take from me.” Alice cocked the gun, and it made a mechanical clik. “Every day you lived in the nice house, with the boyfriend and the furry doggie, those were days that belonged to me. Things that I would have had, but you got instead. And once I knew that you had it all, I wanted it, too.”

  I have to get close enough to dive for the wood, then swing it at her. Bennie inched closer to the lumber. Nine feet away now. “I defended you when you were charged with murder, Alice. I got you out of jail, free.”

  “You didn’t do it for me. You did it for yourself. You’re the famous one. You’re the one with the degrees and the cool job. You were the one who got the glory.” Alice’s eyes narrowed, and Bennie was reminded of herself. “Tell the truth, Bennie. Isn’t there a part of you that feels guilty that Mommy gave me up, and not you? But for that one little thing, my life would be yours, and yours would be mine.”

  It’s true. Bennie swallowed hard.

  “You’ve thought about me since we met, haven’t you? You’ve tried to find me, I know. I heard.”

  Bennie couldn’t deny it. She looked into the eyes of her twin. Her own eyes. Denying her would be denying herself.

  “So it’s true. That guilt tells you something. It tells you how wrong you are, and how right I am. You want justice? I’ll give you justice.” Alice took aim.

  “Did you know that Dad died?”

  Alice blinked behind the gun.

  “Obviously not.”

  “You’re lying.”

  “No. I went to see him, to find you. He’s gone. I found out.”

  “When?” Alice seemed to falter. “I was . . . going to see him.”

  Just like me. “You waited too long. Too bad. I guess you were too busy wreaking havoc.”

  Alice’s lip twitched. “When did he . . . when did this happen?”

  This could work. I know how to get to her, because she is me. Bennie took a step closer to the discarded lumber, eight feet away now. “Don’t tell me that you care about him, Alice. You don’t have a bit of human emotion in you.”

  “I do, too.”

  “You didn’t even know the man.”

  “I knew him better than you.” Alice’s tone echoed a child’s. “He knew me better than you. He knew that I was the one who cared about him, not you. You were Mommy’s girl.”

  Bennie felt something happening under their talk. Alice wanted her to know that she was their father’s favorite. And if that was true, then Alice needed her approval. Power shifted from Alice to Bennie, but the gun didn’t. Bennie inched closer to the lumber. Seven feet away. “So you were Daddy’s girl?”

  Alice pursed her lips, just slightly.

  “You were?” Bennie had had no idea. She took another step. Six feet now. Almost close enough.

  “We kept in touch the past two years. On the phone, we talked. He wasn’t ill, not that he said.”

  But Alice fell suddenly silent when a rustling came from the other side of the blue tarp that hung behind Bennie.

  Somebody was pulling the tarp aside.

  36

  Georges St. Amien stood in front of the tarp, pointing a black handgun at Bennie. Her heart froze in fear. So she had been right. He was Robert’s killer. And now he was after her.

  “Welcome to my hospital, Bennie,” Georges said calmly. His gaze shifted from Bennie to Alice and back again. “I was back making my rounds when the ambulance brought your friend in.” He managed a civilized smile and reaimed his gun at Alice. “So you do have a twin, eh? I read this in the papers.”

  “Who the fuck is this joker?” Alice spat out, and pointed her gun at Georges.

  “He’s my client’s brother. His name is Georges. Say hi, Sis.” Bennie defaulted to stalling, and she wanted the truth. She had realized Georges was the killer during her conversation with Carrier and Murphy, when she’d watched them bicker. They had reminded her of sisters, and Bennie had thought of the depth of rage that sibling rivalry could breed. And Bennie had made the connection to Robert’s “wacky” brother, Georges. Even the cops always said look to the nearest and dearest. But Bennie needed to hear it from Georges. “You killed Robert, didn’t you?”

  “Yes, I did,” Georges answered. His blue eyes had gone hard as ice. “He calls and says he isn’t coming to dinner that night and I know the restaurant, so I go there. He sits in the window, and I follow him when he leaves, walking home. I take him when he goes past the alley.”

  My God. Bennie could even hear pride in his confession. But she needed time to think. To save herself. “Your cast came off?”

  “Of course. I made it myself, with a slit in the back that no one sees. Micheline is out that night with friends. I get back before anyone knows anything, home to my chair and my study.”

  “But why?” Bennie asked, but she was sizing up the situation. Alice was aiming her gun at Georges. Georges was aiming his gun at Alice. She could duck and let them shoot each other, but that only happened in movies. “Robert was your brother.”

  “Ha! Robert ruins my life. He makes me a nothing, a cipher. He turns me into the unsuccessful one, the useless one.”

  “But why now, Georges? It makes no sense.” It sounded so much like Alice, but Bennie doubted her twin would make the connection, especially at the end of a gun. With all this firepower, there was no time for family therapy.

  “Because of the Belgian banker. I know the police are already thinking it is because he was a foreigner, and I say, this is my time. So I pretend I have the riding accident, put on the cast, and wait for the opportunity. Then Robert, he cancels our dinner that night, for business.” Georges snorted. “Gustave doesn’t throw me, not in a million years.”

  Keep him talking. “But what did you gain by killing him? Revenge?”

  “Not only.” Georges brightened behind his gun. “Money, lots of money, because now I ‘ave my family business back. Now I will own and run St. Amien & Fils, and now I will share in the money from the lawsuit. It is my business, by rights!”

  “But Julien—”

  “He will not stay with it. Everyone but Robert sees this. I cannot do this with Robert alive, so he has to go. He makes his own bed.” Georges’s eyes went cold again. “But, I think I will need a new lawyer, eh? You have to go too, Bennie. C’est dommage.”

  “Why kill me?” Bennie asked. She tried not to panic. The two-by-four lay less than five feet away. Almost close enough to her right hand. She kept her eye on Georges. “I don’t have anything to do with it.”

  “Because I know you are onto me, my dear. You tell me you don’t believe the police theory. You are talking with Julien, secretly, outside my building. When I ask you about it on the phone today, you lie. You say it is business, and I know it is not. Julien doesn’t get upset about business. He doesn’t care enough.” Georges’s eyes narrowed over the gun. “Does he suspect me also? Is that what you two were discussing?”

  Bennie’s heart sank. She was going to die because she was a lousy liar. It didn’t seem fair. “Georges, put the gun down. You can’t get away with
this. There’s no reason to do this.”

  Alice laughed abruptly. “I don’t think you’re gonna talk him out of it, girl.” She raised her gun and aimed it dead-on at Georges’s forehead. “And right now, I got this clown in my sight.”

  “Ha!” Georges raised his gun, pointing it at Alice’s forehead. “And I you, madame.”

  “Everybody stay calm,” Bennie said. She edged toward the board. Four feet away. No time left. She was about to lunge for it when suddenly she saw a murderous flickering in Georges’s eyes. He was going to shoot Alice. A voice told Bennie what to do. She knew that voice. She recognized that voice.

  “No!” Bennie dove in front of Alice as both guns exploded into fire and earsplitting sound. Smoke filled Bennie’s nostrils. Georges’s shoulder erupted in blood. He collapsed to his knees, his gun clattering to the concrete.

  Bennie found herself in her twin’s arms. She blinked once, then twice. There wasn’t a mark on Alice. Georges must have missed. Thank God.

  Then Bennie felt herself slipping from Alice’s grasp. The room began to whirl. Her stomach turned over. The only sound was a hideous gasping. It took her a moment to understand why. Pain stabbed through her back like a hot steel spike. She couldn’t breathe. “Huh huh huh,” went the gasping. It was her. She fell to the concrete, her head slamming against the floor at Alice’s feet.

  Bennie gasped for air. Her chest seared with pain. She struggled to function. She looked up at Alice, her eyes welling with tears. She tried to speak but she choked on her own blood, bubbling hot in her mouth.

  Help me help me why aren’t you helping?

  Alice aimed the gun down, hot smoke curling from its barrel. She cocked the gun and took aim. “Why did you save me, you idiot?” she asked, standing over her twin.