Twice Dead

by Catherine Coulter

  “Out, Ollie.”

  Once they were alone, she didn’t take a strip off him, just stepped against him and wrapped her arms around his back. “I can’t say that I’ve never been more frightened in my life, since you and I have managed to get into some bad situations.” She kissed his neck and squeezed him even tighter. “But today, at that barn, you were a hot dog, and I was scared spitless, as were your friends.”

  “There was no time,” he said against her curly hair. “No time to bring you in. Truth is, sweetheart, I scared myself, but I had no choice. And then those howling wind things were there. I honestly can’t say which scared me more—Tammy Tuttle or whatever it was she called the Ghouls.”

  She pulled back a bit. “I really don’t understand any of that. You described it all so clearly I could almost see them whirling through those barn doors. But Ghouls?”

  “That’s what the Tuttles called them. It was like they were acolytes to these things. I’d really like to say it was some sort of hallucination, that I was the only one who freaked out, but the boys saw them, too. I know it sounds off the wall, Sherlock, particularly since none of you guys saw a thing.”

  Because he needed to speak of it more, she held him while he again described what had burst through the barn doors. Then he said, “I don’t think there’s anything more to do about this, but it was scary, Sherlock, really.”

  Jimmy Maitland walked into the men’s room.

  “Hey, where’s a man to piddle?”

  “Oh, sir, I just wanted to check Dillon out, make sure he was okay.”

  “And is he?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “Ollie caught me in the hall on my way to the unit, Savich, said you were getting whaled on in the men’s room. We’ve got a media frenzy cranking up.” Jimmy Maitland gave them a big grin. “Guess what? No one’s going to pound on us this time—only good news, thank the Lord. Great news. Since you were the one in the middle of it, Savich, we want you front and center. Of course, Director Mueller will be there and do all the talking. They want you to stand there and look like a hero.”

  “No mention of what we saw?”

  “No, not a word about the Ghouls, not even speculation about whirling dust. The last thing we need is to have the media go after us because we claim we were attacked by some weird balls of dust called into the barn by a couple of psychopaths. As for the boys, it doesn’t matter what they say. If the media asks us about it, we’ll just shake our heads, look distressed and sympathetic. It will be a twenty-four-hour wonder, then it’ll be over. And the FBI will be heroes. That sure feels good.”

  Savich said as he rubbed his hands up and down his wife’s back, “But there was something very strange in there, sir, something that made the hair stand up on my head.”

  “Get a grip, Savich. We’ve got the Tuttle brothers, or rather we’ve got one brother dead and one sister whose arm was just amputated at the shoulder. The last thing we need is a dose of the supernatural.”

  “You could maybe call me Mulder?”

  “Yeah, right. Hey, I just realized Sherlock here has red hair, just like Scully.”

  Savich and Sherlock rolled their eyes and followed their boss from the men’s room.

  The boys claimed they’d seen the Ghouls, could speak of nothing else but how Agent Savich had put a bullet right in the middle of one and made them whirl out of the barn. But the boys were so tattered and pathetic, very nearly incoherent, that indeed, they weren’t believed, even by their parents.

  One reporter asked Savich if he’d seen any ghouls and Savich said, “Excuse me, what did you say?”

  Jimmy Maitland was right. That was the end of it.

  Savich and Sherlock played with Sean for so long that evening that he finally fell asleep in the middle of his favorite finger game, Hide the Camel, a graham cracker smashed in his hand. That night at two o’clock in the morning, the phone rang. Savich picked it up, listened, and said, “We’ll be there as soon as we can.”

  He slowly hung up the phone and looked over at his wife, who’d managed to prop herself up on her elbow.

  “It’s my sister, Lily. She’s in the hospital. It doesn’t look good.”

  TWO

  Hemlock Bay, California

  Bright sunlight poured through narrow windows. Her bedroom windows were wider, weren’t they? Surely they were cleaner than this. No, wait, she wasn’t in her bedroom. A vague sort of panic jumped her, then fell away. She didn’t feel much of anything now, a bit of confusion that surely wasn’t all that important, a slight ache in her left arm at the IV line.

  IV line?

  That meant she was in a hospital. She was breathing; she could feel the oxygen tickling her nose, the tubes irritating her. But it was reassuring. She was alive. But why shouldn’t she be alive? Why was she surprised?

  Her brain felt numb and empty, and even the emptiness was hazy. Maybe she was dying and that’s why they’d left her alone. Where was Tennyson? Oh, yes, he’d gone to Chicago two days before, some sort of medical thing. She’d been glad to see him go, relieved, plain solidly relieved that she wouldn’t have to hear his calm, soothing voice that drove her nuts.

  A white-coated man with a bald head, a stethoscope around his neck, came into the room. He leaned down right into her face. “Mrs. Frasier, can you hear me?”

  “Oh, yes. I can even see the hairs in your nose.”

  He straightened, laughed. “Oh, that’s too close then. Now that my nose hairs aren’t in the way, how do you feel? Any pain?”

  “No, I can barely feel my brain. I feel vague and stupid.”

  “That’s because of the morphine. You could be shot in the belly, get enough morphine, and you wouldn’t even be pissed at your mother-in-law. I’m your surgeon, Dr. Ted Larch. Since I had to remove your spleen—and that’s major abdominal surgery—we’ll keep you on a nice, steady dose of morphine until this evening. We’ll begin to lighten up on it after that. Then we’ll get you up to see how you’re doing, get your innards working again.”

  “What else is wrong with me?”

  “Let me give you the short version. First, let me promise you that you’ll be all right. As for having no spleen, nothing bad should happen in the long run because of that. An adult doesn’t really need his spleen. However, you will have all the discomfort of surgery—pain for several days. You’ll have to be careful about when and what you eat, and as I said, we’ll have to get your system working again.

  “You have a concussion, two bruised ribs, some cuts and abrasions, but you’ll live. Nothing that should cause any scarring. You’re doing splendidly, given what happened.”

  “What did happen?”

  Dr. Larch was silent for a moment, his head tilted a bit to one side. Sun was pouring in through the window and gave his bald head a bright shine. He said slowly, studying her face, “You don’t remember?”

  She thought and thought until he lightly touched his fingers to her forearm. “No, don’t try to force it. You’ll give yourself a headache. What is the last thing you do remember, Mrs. Frasier?”

  Again she thought, and finally she said slowly, “I remember leaving my house in Hemlock Bay. That’s where I live, on Crocodile Bayou Avenue. I remember I was going to drive to Ferndale to deliver some medical slides to a Dr. Baker. I remember I didn’t like driving on 211 when it was nearly dark. That road is scary and those redwoods tower over you and surround you and you start feeling like you’re being buried alive.” She stopped, and he saw frustration building and interrupted her.

  “No, that’s all right. An interesting metaphor with those redwoods. Now, everything will probably all come back to you in time. You were in an accident, Mrs. Frasier. Your Explorer hit a redwood dead on. Now, I’m going to call in another doctor.”

  “What is his specialty?”

  “He’s a psychiatrist.”

  “Why do I need . . .” Now she frowned. “I don’t understand. A psychiatrist? Why?”

  “Well, it seems that you possibly
could have driven into that redwood on purpose. No, don’t panic, don’t worry about a thing. Rest and build up your strength. I’ll see you later, Mrs. Frasier. If you begin to feel any pain in the next couple of hours, hit your button and you’ll get morphine from your IV.”

  She looked away from him, toward the window, where the sun was shining in so brightly.

  “All I remember is last evening. What day is it? What time of day?”

  “It’s late Thursday morning. You’ve been going in and out for a while now. Your accident was last evening.”

  “So much missing time.”

  “It will be all right, Mrs. Frasier.”

  “I wonder about that,” she said, nothing more, and closed her eyes.

  DR. Russell Rossetti stopped for a moment just inside the doorway and looked at the young woman who lay so still on the narrow hospital bed. She looked like a princess who’d kissed the wrong frog and been beaten up, major league. Her blond hair was mixed with flecks of blood and tangled around bandages. She was thin, too thin, and he wondered what she was thinking right now, right this minute.

  Dr. Ted Larch, the surgeon who’d removed her spleen, had told him she didn’t remember a thing about the accident. He’d also said he didn’t think she’d tried to kill herself. She was too “there,” he’d said. The meathead.

  Ted was a romantic, something weird for a surgeon to be. Of course she’d tried to kill herself. Again. No question. It was classic.

  “Mrs. Frasier.”

  Lily slowly turned her head at the sound of a rather high voice she imagined could whine when he didn’t get his way, a voice that was right now trying to sound soothing, all sorts of inviting, but not succeeding.

  She said nothing, just looked at the overweight man—on the tall side, very well dressed in a dark, gray suit, with lots of curly black hair, a double chin, and fat, white fingers—who walked into the room. He came to stand too close to the bed.

  “Who are you?”

  “I’m Dr. Rossetti. Dr. Larch told you I would be coming to see you?”

  “You’re the psychiatrist?”

  “Yes.”

  “He told me, but I don’t want to see you. There is no reason.”

  Denial, he thought, just splendid. He was bored with the stream of depressed patients who simply started crying and became quickly incoherent and self-pitying, their hands held out for pills to numb them. Although Tennyson had told him Lily wasn’t like that, he hadn’t been convinced.

  He said, all calm and smooth, “Evidently you do need me. You drove your car into a redwood.”

  Had she? No, it just didn’t seem right. She said, “The road to Ferndale is very dangerous. Have you ever driven it at dusk, when it’s nearly dark?”

  “Yes.”

  “You didn’t find you had to be very careful?”

  “Of course. However, I never wrapped my car around a redwood. The Forestry Service is looking at the tree now, to see how badly it’s hurt.”

  “Well, if I’m missing some bark, I’m sure it is, too. I would like you to leave now, Dr. Rossetti.”

  Instead of leaving, he pulled a chair close to the bed and sat down. He crossed his legs. He weaved his plump, white fingers together. She hated his hands, soft, puffy hands, but she couldn’t stop looking at them.

  “If you’ll give me a minute, Mrs. Frasier. Do you mind if I call you Lily?”

  “Yes, I mind. I don’t know you. Go away.”

  He leaned toward her and tried to take her hand, but she pulled it away and stuck it beneath her covers.

  “You really should cooperate with me, Lily—”

  “My name is Mrs. Frasier.”

  He frowned. Usually women—any and all women—liked to be called by their first name. It made them feel that he was more of a confidant, someone they could trust. It also made them more vulnerable, more open to him.

  He said, “You tried to kill yourself the first time after the death of your child seven months ago.”

  “She didn’t just die. A speeding car hit her and knocked her twenty feet into a ditch. Someone murdered her.”

  “And you blamed yourself.”

  “Are you a parent?”

  “Yes.”

  “Wouldn’t you blame yourself if your child died and you weren’t with her?”

  “No, not if I wasn’t driving the car that hit her.”

  “Would your wife blame herself?”

  Elaine’s face passed before his mind’s eye, and he frowned. “Probably not. All she would do is cry. She is a very weak woman, very dependent. But that isn’t the point, Mrs. Frasier.” It wasn’t. He would be free of Elaine very soon now.

  “What is the point?”

  “You did blame yourself, blamed yourself so much you stuffed a bottle of sleeping pills down your throat. If your housekeeper hadn’t found you in time, you would have died.”

  “That’s what I was told,” she said, and she swore in that moment that she could taste the same taste in her mouth now as she had then when she’d awakened in the hospital that first time when she’d been so bewildered, so weak she couldn’t even raise her hand.

  “You don’t remember taking the pills?”

  “No, not really.”

  “And now you don’t remember driving your car into a redwood. Your speed, it was estimated by the sheriff, was about sixty miles per hour, maybe faster. You were very lucky, Mrs. Frasier. A guy happened to come around a bend to see you drive into the tree, and called an ambulance.”

  “Do you happen to know his name? I would like to thank him.”

  “That isn’t what’s important here, Mrs. Frasier.”

  “What is important here? Oh, yes, do you happen to have a first name?”

  “My name is Russell. Dr. Russell Rossetti.”

  “Nice alliteration, Russell.”

  “It would be better if you called me Dr. Rossetti,” he said. She saw those plump, white fingers twisting, and she knew he was angry. He thought she was out of line. She was, but she didn’t care. She was tired, so very tired, and she wanted to close her eyes and let the morphine mask the pain for a while longer.

  “Go away, Dr. Rossetti.”

  He didn’t move for some time.

  Lily turned her head away and sought oblivion. She didn’t even hear when he finally left the room. She did, however, hear the door close.

  When Dr. Larch walked in five minutes later, his very high forehead flushed, she managed to cock an eye open and say, “Dr. Rossetti is a patronizing ass. He has fat hands. Please, I don’t want to see him again.”

  “He doesn’t think you’re in very good shape.”

  “On the contrary, I’m in splendid shape, something I can’t say about him. He needs to go to the gym very badly.”

  Dr. Larch laughed, couldn’t help himself. “He also said your defensiveness and your rudeness to him were sure signs that you’re highly overwrought and in desperate need of help.”

  “Yeah, right. I’m so overwrought—what with all this painkiller—that I’m ready to nap.”

  “Ah, your husband is here to see you.”

  She didn’t want to see Tennyson. His voice, so resonant, so confident—it was too much like Dr. Rossetti’s voice, as if they’d taken the same Voice Lessons 101 course in shrink school. If she never saw another one of them again, she could leave this earth a happy woman.

  She looked past Dr. Larch to see her husband of eleven months standing in the doorway, looking rather pale, his thick eyebrows drawn together, his arms crossed over his chest. Such a nice-looking man he was, all big and solid, his hair light and wavy, lots of hair, not bald like Dr. Larch. He wore aviator glasses, which looked really cool, and now she watched him push them back up, an endearing habit—at least that’s what she’d thought when she’d first met him.

  “Lily?”

  “Yes,” she said and wished he’d stay in the doorway. Dr. Larch straightened and turned to him. “Dr. Frasier, as I told you, your wife will be fine, once she r
ecovers from the surgery. However, she does need to rest. I suggest that you visit for only a few minutes.”

  “I am very tired, Tennyson,” she said and hated the small shudder in her voice. “Perhaps we could speak later?”

  “Oh, no,” he said. And then he waited, saying nothing more until Dr. Larch left the room, fingering his stethoscope. He looked nervous. Lily wondered why. Tennyson closed the door, paused yet again, studying her, then, finally, he walked to stand beside her bed. He gently eased her hand out from under the covers, something she wished he wouldn’t do, rubbed his fingers over her palm for several moments before saying in a sad, soft voice, “Why did you do it, Lily? Why?”

  He made it sound like it was all over for her. No, she was being ridiculous. She said, “I don’t know that I did anything, Tennyson. You see, I have no memory at all of the accident.”

  He waved away her words. He had strong hands, confident hands. “I know and I’m sorry about that. Look, Lily, maybe it was an accident, maybe somehow you lost control and drove the Explorer into the redwood. One of the nurses told me that the Forest Service has someone on the spot to see how badly the tree is injured.”

  “Dr. Rossetti already told me. Poor tree.”

  “It isn’t funny, Lily. Now, you’re going to be here for at least another two or three days, until they’re sure your body is functioning well again. I would like you to speak with Dr. Rossetti. He’s a new man with quite an excellent reputation.”

  “I’ve already seen him. I don’t wish to see him again, Tennyson.”

  His voice changed now, became even softer, more gentle, and she knew she would normally have wanted to cry, to fold into herself, to have him reassure her, tell her the bogeyman wouldn’t come back, but not now. It was probably the morphine making her feel slightly euphoric, slightly disconnected. But she also felt rather strong, perhaps even on the arrogant side, and that, of course, was an illusion to beat all illusions.

  “Since you don’t remember anything, Lily, you’ve got to admit that it wouldn’t hurt to cover all the bases. I really want you to see him.”