Poison Flower

by Thomas Perry

  A few minutes later, a car pulled up and six teenagers-three boys and three girls-got out. In front, one of the boys was holding his left arm as though it was giving him pain.

  It was nearly an hour before a black Porsche wheeled into the lot and parked. Jane listened while the door slammed, then waited for the sound of male footsteps, trying but failing to determine where the man was. Finally she raised her head a bit and looked. It was Daniel Martel. He walked in long, quick strides to the emergency room door and disappeared.

  Jane got out of her car and walked to his. She saw that the Nevada license plates had been replaced by Indiana plates. She wrote the license number on a receipt, then the VIN number from the top of the dashboard, on the chance that having it would help her find the address he was using here. She checked to see if he had forgotten to lock the car, then to see if he had left a window open a crack, but it was a halfhearted effort because she knew Martel wasn't the type. She also felt fairly sure that Martel would have bought whatever optional high-end alarm system Porsche offered, so she left the car alone.

  She sat for another hour and then made a call with her cell phone.

  "Hello" The voice was sleepy, and Jane felt guilty.

  "Hi, Sarah. I'm sorry, but I need some information right away. Are you anyplace where Jim can't hear you"

  "He's asleep, and I'm in my room with the door closed. He can't hear."

  "Can you describe his wife, Susan, to me"

  "Well, let's see. She was about my height, five six. She had long blond hair. It was natural honey-blond, and it was thick, as blond hair usually isn't. And shiny, always, like a shampoo commercial. She had the kind of green eyes that sort of change color-bright if she wore bright colors, gray in low light, even a little blue if she wore blue. She was thin, but with a terrific body, with curvy hips and big boobs. She did zero to deserve that body. Her exercise was going to the bar to pick up her drink herself."

  "What would be the most distinctive characteristic Any marks, moles, scars"

  "Not on her. She was perfect-looking, like a nasty little doll. If there was anything unusual, it was probably her lips. They were cupid's-bow lips, you know They were big, kind of turned up at the corners with a little dip in the center of the upper lip."

  "I know the kind you mean, exactly," Jane said.

  "Can you tell me what-"

  "Not today. I hope another day, soon. Thanks." Jane hung up.

  She spent the rest of the night in the lot, thinking about what she had to do. At five thirty, Martel and his mother came out of the main entrance of the hospital and headed for the lot. Jane studied their posture, the way they spoke and walked. They seemed exhausted, but they didn't look like a pair who had just lost a close relative. There were no tears from the mother, no gestures of comfort or condolence from the son.

  The son walked the mother to her car, and she got in and drove off. The son got into his car, started it, and pulled out of the lot. But when he reached the street, he turned in the opposite direction from the mother.

  Jane followed him at a distance. There were the cars of early commuters and delivery trucks for her to hide behind now, so following a car seemed easier. He drove out of the city to a clean, quiet suburb just off a major highway. As his car approached the entrance to a big hotel, she expected him to turn, but he didn't. When he approached a large, modern apartment complex she prepared to turn in at a different entrance from the one he chose, but he didn't stop. He went on, and pulled the Porsche into the driveway of a house. He stopped in front of the garage, and the garage door opened. He eased the car in.

  Jane accelerated so she would be far down the street and around the first corner before he got out and walked to the house. It was best to let everything be a surprise.

  21.

  When Daniel Martel woke, it was already late afternoon. He remembered immediately what had happened. His father had been lucky. If Mom hadn't thought quickly and gotten him to the hospital, his little warning heart attack probably would have killed him.

  Daniel didn't relish the fact that he would have to spend much of his time during the next few days going to visit the old man in the hospital. They hadn't had much to say to each other while he was young, and now he could hardly bear to listen to the old man's voice. The irrelevance of his words to Daniel's life made all conversation an ordeal. The old man's thoughts never reached the world he lived in. He didn't know it existed.

  He'd had some hope of sampling the nightlife around here, and trying to meet a few interesting women. He hadn't spent much time in Indianapolis in the past fifteen years or so. There had been just a few one-day or two-day stops on the way to somewhere else, so he didn't know what the stock of women was. When he had been young they'd been plentiful enough. For the past few days he had not gone to any bars or clubs, because he'd been trying to get settled first.

  After dinner he would stop by the hospital. Visiting hours ended at nine, so he would go out after that. It occurred to him that he should get the house in order just in case he brought a woman home with him. He remade his bed, fluffed up the pillows, picked the dirty clothes off the floor and put them into the hamper, then went into his closet. He unfolded his tripod and extended the legs, then mounted the video camera on it, aimed the shot, and looked through the viewfinder to be sure. He turned it off. He selected some clothes, tossed them onto the bed, and went into the shower. He dressed, took another look at the bedroom, and stepped into the living room.

  The black-haired woman was sitting in his living room in his new wing chair. There was a short cocktail glass in front of her on his coffee table with a little paper napkin under it as though she were protecting the finish of the table, and beside it his previously unopened bottle of tequila taken from the bar across the room. He could see that the clear liquid in the glass had the same crystal clarity, with a slight oily quality, as the liquid in the bottle. Drinking his liquor was a deliberate affront. "Who-what the fuck do you think you're doing here"

  "You started with who. Did you stop because you already know"

  "What do you want"

  "So you do know," she said. "I gave you lots of reasons to leave Jim Shelby alone. Now I'm here to give you a chance to end it."

  He was near the sideboard that was against the wall. "What are you talking about" He leaned his right elbow on the top of it.

  "You killed Shelby's wife, Susan. I want you to go to the police and tell them you were the one who did it, and that Shelby's innocent."

  He laughed. "Are you crazy, or just stupid He's convicted. Cooked. No matter what I say or anybody else says, he's finished. He escaped. That's a crime, too. And why would I even-" He opened the top drawer, snatched the gun he kept there, and aimed it at her.

  "Try" she supplied the word.

  "You made a mistake coming here."

  "Maybe." She picked up the cocktail glass from the coffee table, holding it with the little paper napkin.

  "Get up," he said. "This way."

  "Which way" she said.

  "Through this door. Into the bedroom."

  "Not an attractive offer." She shook her head.

  "Get in there!" he shouted. "Now!"

  "I'm not here to give you another victim."

  The mention of it titillated him. Her knowing it was coming made it even better. She would be fearing his power, knowing the uselessness of resisting, long before he did anything. The gun in his hand meant that anything he wanted was his. He said, "Put down that drink." He watched her hand, hoping it would be shaking when she held out the drink to set it down.

  She leaned forward and set it on the table, but when she stood, he saw there was already a gun in her other hand. She'd had it hidden behind the arm of the chair. "Yes. I've got one, too."

  "If you were going to use it, you would have," he said. "Put it down."

  "Here's how it is," she said. "I found your photograph albums. I'm pretty sure there are other things-I'm guessing the still pictures were image grabs taken f
rom video-but it doesn't matter. I'm also pretty sure a few of those women are dead. And I think one of them-the first one in the second album-is Susan Shelby."

  "So here we are," Martel said. "What do you think the trade ought to be"

  "I'll teach you something about yourself. Then you'll clear Shelby."

  Jane had already begun to walk. She sidestepped slowly, steadily, around the back of the big chair. She stepped close to the heavy wooden furniture along the wall, her gun on him, aimed always at the center of his chest.

  Martel could not allow her to use his sideboard and the heavy cabinets to shield herself from his fire. He moved away from her along the wall, circling. He detested the weakness of appearing to retreat from her. He had to find a way to reassert his dominance, to expose the fear she must be feeling, and deflate her empty bravado.

  He was near the wing chair now. He noticed the glass of tequila she had poured herself on his coffee table beside the bottle. Keeping his eyes on hers, he bent his knees, took up the glass, sniffed it, smelled the tequila, and took a drink. He winced. It tasted much rougher than he'd expected-almost corrosive. He smacked his lips. "A little strong for you"

  Jane shrugged. "It's almost pure."

  He lifted the bottle and poured a little more over the ice, then took another drink. A few seconds passed, and then his eyes widened, and he gripped his belly. His face assumed a grimace and for the first time he seemed to forget to keep his eyes on Jane. He bent over, facing the floor. Both hands were on his knees. "I get it," he said. "What am I supposed to do How do I stop this"

  "You're not supposed to do anything," she said. "You don't stop it."

  His head jerked upward, and then he raised his gun. He pulled the trigger, but there was only a click. He held on to the empty gun. "Give me the antidote!" He seemed to become more determined. When he bent over in pain, he dropped the gun, jammed his trigger finger down his throat, and began to retch, but nothing came out.

  Jane stood where she was. "Throw up, cut your head off-whatever you like. What I came to teach you wasn't that you were scared. It was that you were stupid."

  He kept trying a few more times, but he couldn't get his vomit reflex to work now because the neurotoxin was taking over. He lost his balance and fell to the floor. He rocked back and forth, holding his belly for a few minutes, and went into convulsions. Then he lay still.

  Jane put on her surgical gloves as she watched. She picked up his gun from the floor, using only the pen from her purse in the barrel, and set it on the coffee table beside the glass of hemlock distillate and tequila. She set the full magazine she had removed from the pistol beside it, then carefully pressed the magazine release with the pen so she could remove the empty one she had inserted.

  She walked into his office and brought out his laptop computer. She plugged it in and read over the confession and suicide note she had written on the laptop. It was filled with the remorse and self-loathing he never had felt. The crime that the note claimed he regretted most was the murder of Susan Shelby and the framing of her husband for it. But there had been many other crimes. Jane saved the note, then knelt beside the body and pressed the fingers on the proper keys-the right hand on J, K, L, and all the right-side keys, and the left on A, S, D, F and all the left-side keys. Then she brought back the final note and left it on the screen. There was no printer in the house, so she was relieved of the chore of forging his signature.

  The fact that his prints were on the gun, the glass of poison, the bottle, and the computer keyboard would be sufficient. She went back into the kitchen and left the bottle of Cicuta maculata poison she had brought, so there would be no question of why cicutoxin was found only in the drink and the tequila. She went to the den again and brought out the two photograph albums. She opened the second one to the pictures of what must have been the last hour of Susan Shelby's life, and propped the other album to keep it open.

  Jane went through the house making sure everything else was the way she had found it, and there was nothing left that she had touched bare-handed. She went into the bedroom and found the video camera. She saw it was turned off, but turned it on, pressed the rewind button, then pressed "play," and watched the viewfinder just to be sure nothing had been taped. She rewound it and turned it off. It struck her that if Martel had gotten his way, he would have been taping himself killing her just about now. She went back through the living room to the entry.

  It was dark out when she opened the door. She set the lock button and closed the door before she took off her surgical gloves. She used one to hold Martel's spare key to lock the bolt from outside. As she walked away, she felt as though she had just lit a very long fuse.

  The gray Honda moved onto the interstate and out of the vicinity of Indianapolis, and then out of Indiana entirely. It was as though over a period of less than two days, a small shadow had passed over the town, and if people had seen it they had not separated it in their minds from all of the other variations in light and dark that had come and gone.

  As Jane drove, thoughts of death had already receded and become distant to her-once again, just one of the things that she knew. What she was thinking was that right now it was time for Jane McKinnon to go home while there was still enough left of her marriage to coax back to life. She was almost certain that, even with the new scars to remind him of her imperfection, she would be able to make Carey glad she was back.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Also by Thomas Perry

  Copyright

  Contents

  Dedication

  Chapter 1.

  Chapter 2.

  Chapter 3.

  Chapter 4.

  Chapter 5.

  Chapter 6.

  Chapter 7.

  Chapter 8.

  Chapter 9.

  Chapter 10.

  Chapter 11.

  Chapter 12.

  Chapter 13.

  Chapter 14.

  Chapter 15.

  Chapter 16.

  Chapter 17.

  Chapter 18.

  Chapter 19.

  Chapter 20.

  Chapter 21.