“Come with me, Leo. We have more to do,” McShane told the deputy. McShane went directly to the nurse’s station. “How’s Anna Gold?” he asked Barbara Adamson, showing her his ID.
“She wasn’t stabilized when they took her to ICU,” she explained.
“Do you know a lab technician named Dunbar?”
“Gary? Sure.”
McShane leaned over the counter.
“Has he been down here?”
“Just a little while ago. Why?”
“Did he ask about Anna Gold or treat her in any way?”
“He asked about her, yes. But someone else did the blood work.”
“Where can I find him? Police emergency,” he added.
“I’ll call hematology,” she said, and picked up the phone. He waited while she inquired. “He’s on his rounds,” she told McShane. “Third floor.”
“Thanks. And Anna Gold’s in ICU, which is…?”
“Second floor.”
“Thanks. Come on, Leo.”
“Who’s this Gary Dunbar?”
“One of her captors,” McShane told him.
“No shit?”
McShane hurried toward the elevator, wondering if he had gotten to the hospital ahead of Miriam Gold.
He hadn’t.
She was in the ICU waiting area with her father, who had surprised her by insisting he go along. The nurse had promised to call them in as soon as they had Anna set up inside, but the minutes seemed like hours to her. She couldn’t sit. Harry Gold stared ahead at the door to the ICU, all the anger he had directed toward his daughter now focused on the monsters who had done this terrible thing to her.
He saw Gary Dunbar wheel his cart to the entrance of the ICU and go inside, but of course he thought nothing of it. Moments later McShane and Leo Hallmark appeared. When McShane saw Harry there, he smiled at Miriam, who smiled back.
“How’s she doing?”
“They haven’t permitted us to go in yet and no one has spoken to us—no doctor.”
“These people who did this horrible thing…you’ll get them?” Harry demanded.
“Absolutely,” McShane said. “In fact, I’m here to arrest one of them.”
“He works here?” Miriam asked, astounded.
“Lab technician.”
“Lab technician?” Harry asked, his eyes widening.
“Yes. He’s on the third floor. I just wanted to see you first. Hang in there,” he said, clutching Miriam’s hands between his and shaking them. He nodded at Harry before he and Leo started back toward the elevator.
“Mr. Detective?” Harry called to him.
“Yes, Mr. Gold.”
“I think I saw a lab technician go into the ICU just a minute ago.”
McShane froze, looked at Leo, and then ran to the door of the ICU, Leo right behind him. The moment he opened it and they stepped in, a nurse was at them.
“You can’t come in here now. Visitors are permitted only five minutes before the hour and—”
“Where’s Anna Gold?” McShane demanded. She didn’t respond quickly enough, so he charged past her, Leo at his side as he looked at the patients and into the units until he saw Gary Dunbar hovering near Anna Gold across the room on his left.
“That’s got to be Dunbar,” he said and screamed, “Dunbar!”
Gary Dunbar turned, hypodermic needle in hand. The nurse adjusting the intravenous flow looked up as well. Dunbar gazed at Anna Gold a moment and then back at McShane and Leo Hallmark, who walked toward him slowly, Leo moving to the left.
The nurses stood by, shocked and confused by the scene playing out before them.
“Get away from her!” McShane commanded.
Dunbar clutched the hypodermic like a dagger and faced them.
“Easy, Leo,” McShane said. The nurse beside Gary gasped and stepped away. “Put that down, Mr. Dunbar. It’s over now.”
Gary shifted his gaze from Leo to McShane and then turned the hypodermic toward himself. As he jabbed it into his own heart, McShane and Leo Hallmark rushed him. McShane seized Dunbar’s arm before Dunbar could push on the plunger. With Leo’s help, they drew his hand away from the hypodermic and McShane pulled it out.
Dunbar struggled, but Leo had him firmly in a bear hug and wrestled him to the floor. The two of them quickly pulled his arms behind his back and put on the handcuffs.
A small circle of blood soaked through the breast of his lab jacket.
McShane looked up at the nurse.
“Treat this, will you,” he said. “I need him alive.”
“Why did he do that?” the nurse demanded of McShane.
“He was about to do it to her,” he said, nodding at Anna Gold. “He’s one of the people who kept her captive.”
She cringed back.
One of the doctors was at his side a moment later and started to examine Dunbar.
“I guess,” McShane said, standing and turning to another nurse who had approached, “if he was going to do something like this to himself, he couldn’t have picked a better place for it.”
Her eyes widened and she gazed down at Dunbar and the doctor squatting beside him, who started to shout orders.
“Stay with him, Leo,” McShane said. Leo nodded.
McShane looked one more time at Anna Gold and left the ICU. Miriam and Harry Gold were just outside the door.
“It’s all right,” he told them. “We stopped him. Mr. Gold,” he said, “you saved your daughter’s life.”
Harry’s eyes watered. He nodded and reached for Miriam’s comforting hand.
“Thank you,” she whispered to McShane.
“I’ve got a little more cleaning up to do,” he said. “I’ll be back.”
Before he left the hospital, he stopped to call the station and fill the sheriff in on what had happened.
“We just got a call a few minutes ago from Billy. John Allan knows the land around there all right: He led them to a cliff and they found Judith Dunbar smashed and broken on some rocks below. Reynolds is checking to see if they’re members of the Shepherds of God.”
“They’re not,” McShane said with certainty. “They might be sympathetic to the cause, but they work for themselves,” he said, “and someone else.”
“Who?”
“Let me surprise you,” he told him, and hung up before Ralph Cutler could insist.
Twenty minutes later McShane entered Robert Royce’s law office just as the high-profile attorney was preparing to leave for a lunch date.
“This won’t take long,” McShane told him. He followed him back into his plush office.
“I hope not,” Royce said. “I’m having lunch with some pretty important state politicians. Seems there’s a move on to get me to run for Congress,” he said, smiling. “I don’t know if I could afford the cut in salary, though,” he added, sitting down behind his desk.
“Makes sense,” McShane said, hovering near the cherry-wood desk.
“Makes sense?” Royce smiled.
“Motive: You can’t run for political office if you’re exposed as an adulterer who has impregnated an innocent young woman and then had her abducted.”
Royce’s smile evaporated.
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“Anna Gold. They were going to keep her baby, which would have gotten you off the hook, and afterward we know what they would have done about her, don’t we? Then there is the little matter of Lidia Ambrook’s murder, which I’m sure you got Gary Dunbar to commit. You knew she could tie Anna to you.”
Royce stared.
“Now hold on here—”
“That map you drew, the people you sent me to observe…people you claimed wanted to adopt her baby…you did that just to put me on the wrong trail. Clever, but no gold ring.”
“You don’t expect me to believe you can actually prove any of this, do you?”
“I guess you haven’t heard the news yet. Anna Gold escaped from the home of Gary and Judith Dunbar.”
Royce
remained poker-faced.
“I see. And she told you I was her lover?”
“No, she’s still in a coma. I found this at the Dunbar house,” McShane said, and tossed the index card with Royce’s cellular number and business card attached over the desk. Royce gazed at it.
“What’s this prove?”
“That you put them on her. I’m sure I’m not going to have difficulty tying you to them.”
“Doesn’t mean anything.”
“Doesn’t it? What about when Dunbar talks, explains how he knew Anna Gold was pregnant and how you helped them with the details of the abduction? Think the district attorney will feel he has a case? You and he don’t exactly have a love affair under way either, do you?”
Royce turned a bit pale.
“These people are crazy. You can’t believe what they say.”
“It doesn’t matter what I believe. It’s what the jury will believe. Get up,” McShane ordered.
“Now, wait a minute…”
“By the way, your birthday’s October twenty-ninth, isn’t it?”
“So?”
“Here’s your belated astrological prediction,” McShane said, unfolding the paper in his pocket. “Too bad you didn’t see it first. Might have saved you and a lot of people some grief.”
“Huh?”
“Let’s be sure we do this right,” McShane said. He went to the door and called to Royce’s secretary. “Please come in here, miss.”
She rose from her desk and walked into the office.
“Witness this, will you,” he said, and went around the desk, taking his handcuffs out as he approached the attorney.
“Robert Royce, you have the right to remain silent…”
Epilogue
The store owner told him the only kosher wine he had in stock read KOSHER FOR PASSOVER. McShane blamed himself for not thinking about bringing something until the last moment. There wasn’t all that much choice in Parksville. It was either this or go back to Liberty, and he was already late.
“What does that mean?” he asked.
“Passover? It’s a Jewish holiday.”
“When was it?”
“I don’t know. Some time back in April.”
“April!”
“What’s the difference? This stuff don’t go bad.”
McShane considered.
“All right, I’ll take it,” he said.
A few minutes later he pulled into the Golds’ driveway. The first snow had fallen in the Catskills a week before, and it had remained near freezing ever since. Leafless tree limbs were coated with ice, and a fine crust of stale snow coated the ground and the yards. Harry Gold, back on his feet, had shoveled and swept his walkway clear.
Two days earlier Anna Gold had been released from the hospital and was home recuperating. She and her father had effected a cease-fire and begun a painfully slow reconciliation, each extracting the smallest compromises from the other. McShane had visited Anna a number of times at the hospital but had spent most of his visit talking quietly with Miriam in the waiting room. He had also had some conversation with Harry Gold and had discovered, to his surprise, that the man was a football fan.
“I don’t watch on Saturday,” Harry emphasized, “but I watch on Sunday.”
It turned out he was a Giants fan too, and he was anxiously looking forward to the Super Bowl. The Giants were playing today and Harry had invited him.
“My father’s not in a good mood,” Miriam said when she greeted McShane at the front door. “Someone important is not able to play today.”
“Gordon, knee injury,” McShane said. “But Foster’s good backup.”
“You tell him,” she said. He smiled.
“How’s Anna?”
“She’s good. Waiting to see you. She wants to know what you found out about that name on the wall.”
“Oh.” He stopped smiling. She pressed her lips together and shook her head in anticipation.
Anna was in the living room, reading a magazine. She was lying on the settee, a blanket over her. The moment she saw McShane her face brightened.
“How are you doing?” he asked her.
“Good,” she said. “You told me you would have information for me today,” she reminded him. He looked at Miriam and then back at Anna.
“Do you think it’s good to keep thinking about all this?” he asked gently.
“No, but I’ve got to face the horror and conquer it on my own,” she said. McShane smiled.
“Yes, there were two other victims, and yes, the name on the wall belonged to a teenage girl. We dug up her remains in the backyard. From what Dunbar said, it appears she induced her own miscarriage to get them to let her go.”
Anna nodded.
“I almost knew it all just from being in that room.”
“It’s over, Anna. Bury it,” McShane advised.
She smiled.
“I will.”
“My father is waiting in the den,” Miriam said.
“Oh. Good. I…er, picked this up without realizing it was kosher for Passover,” he said, handing her the bag with the bottle of wine. “Hope it’s still good.”
“It’ll be good on Passover next,” Miriam replied with a twinkle in her eye. “Go.” She took the wine from him and he crossed the hall to the den, where Harry Gold sat glaring at the television.
“Ah, Mr. Detective, you hear about Gordon?”
“Yeah, but Foster—”
“He doesn’t hold up under pressure. You’ll see. They’ll collapse in the fourth quarter again.”
McShane laughed.
“Sit. Miriam, you’re watching the turkey? It’s important it’s moist.”
“I know how to make turkey, Papa.”
“You ever have a kosher turkey, Mr. Detective?”
“I don’t know.”
“If you did, you’d remember. It has a better taste.”
“I still don’t understand this kosher thing,” McShane said.
“Miriam, the man needs something to drink. For you,” he said, “we have some of that beer.”
“Thank you,” he said. Miriam laughed and went for it.
“So, you don’t understand kosher. Where was I last time? Oh, yes: The Jewish dietary laws prescribed are not only a diet for the body but a diet for the soul, to maintain one’s spiritual well-being.” He paused to turn, his long, thick right forefinger up. “You must not be afraid of sacrifice, Mr. Detective.”
“Papa,” Miriam said, returning with a can and a glass, “you’re lecturing him again.”
“What lecturing? He asks questions, I answer.”
“Answer, but don’t lecture.”
Harry raised his eyebrows.
“I guess, even in my own house, I’ve got to be politically correct,” he said.
And they laughed.
It was almost time for the kickoff. McShane sat back. He couldn’t help feeling he was a stranger in a strange land, visiting another country, but for a long time now he had been wandering, a man without a country, a man whom Cookie had rightfully accused of being without faith. It was good to be someplace where there was faith without being threatened by it. Harry Gold wasn’t trying to convert him, wasn’t going to picket his home or his place of business, wasn’t going to threaten to withhold votes or boycott products. He would explain himself and his belief and then live and let live. His faith fortified him, and he was not to be condemned for that.
Why there had to be all these differences between people, McShane did not know. When he gazed at Miriam Gold, he saw her gazing back and he imagined she wondered about the same thing. It was a question that would take time to answer; it was a question that might never be answered, but it was a good question to ask and ask.
So many things abducted us in our lives and took us away from the basic truths, the basic good, he thought. He had made a contribution toward stopping it, and Cookie had been right: It had given him a renewed sense of purpose and built his self-confidence. It was good to be a
live and working and fighting the good fight.
The cheers went up on the television screen.
“You know that’s a pigskin, Papa,” Miriam Gold teased. Harry raised his eyebrows.
From the other room came the wonderful melodic sound of Anna Gold’s laughter.
Under Abduction Page 21
