Death at the Wheel

by K. J. Emrick

  “No,” Alan argued. “We have to get out of this town and back home to our lives. Coming here has already caused Lindsay too much pain.”

  “She needs to get better, Alan.” Darcy tried to find the words to convince him. “Someone tried to hurt her. He’s still out there. The police haven’t been able to find him or even learn who he was. Lindsay needs to stay somewhere safe.”

  That was enough of the truth for now, Darcy figured.

  Alan leaned closer to her, his voice dropping lower. “She needs to be with her husband.”

  Darcy looked away from the turmoil in his green eyes. It was something she could almost feel, in a physical way, pushing against her. She lowered her gaze as she tried to come up with something else to say, some other argument to make, and her eyes fell on his wedding band, hanging suspended on its necklace.

  His wedding band.

  Cold prickles spread across her skin. She had to get to Jon. She had to find Wilson Barton, and warn Jon.

  It might be the only way to save Lindsay’s life.

  “Rosie, why don’t you stay with Lindsay?” Darcy said, already heading for the door. If nothing else, Rosie arguing with Alan would delay him leaving with Lindsay. “I need to talk to Jon. Is that all right?”

  Rosie gave Darcy a you-can’t-leave-now look. It seemed that she had counted on Darcy’s support in convincing Lindsay to stay in the hospital. Darcy came back for just a moment to lean down and hug Rosie and whisper in her ear, “It’s important. You’ll have to trust me.”

  Then she was out of the room and heading for the elevators once again.

  ***

  How could she have been so stupid?

  That was the question Darcy asked herself over and over as she hurried out of the ICU. She needed to find a phone and call Jon, right now, but she knew she couldn’t do it from the second floor. There was too much chance that Wilson would wander back into the ICU to check on Lindsay. She had to get this information to Jon first.

  The proof she had so desperately been looking for had been right there in front of her the whole time. If only she’d opened her eyes! Worse, Jarred had given her all the clues she needed down in the morgue. More than just the brief glance at the other driver or the clue that Lindsay used to date the killer. He’d shown her exactly what she needed to see, and she had missed that, too.

  Now she had enough to prove who the killer was, and the parts she didn’t know for fact she could guess at. The story all made sense. She just had to get to Jon before Alan put Lindsay back in danger by taking her out of the safe confines of St. John Camilus Hospital.

  The elevator was taking forever, or that’s what it felt like in her panic to get help, so Darcy decided to take the stairs down to the first floor where she knew the admissions desk had a courtesy phone for people to use. She had never regretted not owning a cell phone more in her life than she did in that moment. Creepy long-distance ghosts or no.

  The stairway was a cold, functional space of concrete steps and red and white pipes snaking their way up the walls. Every step she made echoed.

  Just like the steps of whoever was coming upstairs toward her from the lower landing. She turned the corner at the landing to find a familiar face looking back at her in surprise.

  It was Detective Wilson Barton.

  Darcy couldn’t slow herself from her headlong dash down the stairs and they collided with enough force to knock them both off their feet. He grabbed her arm to keep her from falling and grabbed the metal railing with his other hand to steady himself and Darcy let out a shriek that echoed up and down the stairwell.

  “Darcy!” he said, still holding her arm in an iron grip. “Calm down! You’ll have the whole hospital in here! What’s the matter with you?”

  Getting her balance back she planted her palm against his chest, hard, and pushed away from him. “I know who killed Jarred Perrigon in the car accident. Now, get away from me! I have to—”

  “Wait, what did you say?” Wilson blocked her way down the stairs and she almost cried out again, ready to do whatever it took to get past him and get to a phone where she could call Jon for help. His face was dark and his tone was demanding. “How can you know that?”

  She stopped, meeting his eyes with a look that should have told him how serious she was. He held his ground, though, and Darcy realized she would have to lay all her cards on the table. “There were only two people in Jarred’s car, Wilson. Lindsay, and her husband.”

  He blinked at her. “How do you know there were only two people in Lindsay’s car? How could you possibly know that? What are you saying?”

  This was the clue she had missed from Jarred’s memories. He had shown her, albeit in a choppy and disorganized way, what had happened in the moments leading up to the accident. Jarred had been driving. His attention kept going to Lindsay in the front passenger seat.

  But when he finally noticed the other car was chasing them down through the streets of Misty Hollow, Jarred had looked in the rearview mirror. He had shown the memory to Darcy. In the rearview mirror, Jarred had seen a clear view of the car following them. There was nothing to block that view.

  There was no one in the backseat. It was just him, and Lindsay, in the car.

  Lindsay, and her husband.

  Detective Wilson Barton wasn’t the missing driver. Alan Harlow was.

  “Lindsay’s in danger, Will. We have to call Jon and we have to get Lindsay out of that hospital room.”

  “In danger?” he repeated, confused. “From who? You mean from her mother? Rosie would never hurt—”

  “What? No! Of course not from Rosie. Think, Will! Alan is pretending to be Lindsay’s husband. He was the driver of the second car.”

  His jaw dropped. “What?”

  Darcy clenched her fists in frustration. She did not have time to explain everything she knew or how she knew it. She didn’t have time to explain how Alan had inserted himself into the accident scene to make it look like he had been riding with Lindsay and Jarred. To explain that Alan had stayed so close to Lindsay not out of dedication or love but because he needed to make sure when she woke up she wouldn’t identify him as the man who had caused the crash. He was afraid she would know it was him, and he was prepared to take care of her if she did.

  Darcy did not have time to explain how she now understood that Alan had once dated Lindsay, and had never gotten over her, and was just crazy enough to do anything to get her back. Even ramming into her car in the middle of Main Street. Even pretending to be her husband by stealing the wedding ring necklace from around dead Jarred’s neck.

  And, she did not have time to explain that Alan was trying to steal Lindsay away now that she had amnesia because he saw his chance to reprogram her memories and make her believe that he was her husband, not the dead Jarred Perrigon.

  Once he had Lindsay away from the hospital and away from everyone who knew them, he could take them somewhere no one would find them. Ever.

  Darcy didn’t have time to explain any of this to Wilson, or to tell him how truly psychotic Alan Harlow was. Psychotic enough to be dangerous. She didn’t have time to explain any of that.

  All she had time for were cold, hard facts.

  So she told Wilson about the clue she had just found. “I got close enough in Lindsay’s hospital room just now to see the inscription on the inside of the wedding ring Alan is wearing. It’s not his. The inscription says ‘Lindsay and Jarred.’ Not Alan. He isn’t her husband. He’s trying to pass himself off as Lindsay’s husband, and he’s trying to get her out of the hospital now and take her away and I’m pretty sure if he does that we’ll never see her again so we have to get help!”

  Wilson looked horrified at the thought of Alan doing that to Lindsay, but then his expression melted into its serious police officer mask, and he pushed past her. “He isn’t taking her anywhere,” he growled. “I won’t let him. I’ll go stop him. Right now.”

  That was so not the reaction that Darcy wanted from him. “No,” Darc
y told him, grabbing his arm with both hands to hold him back. “We can’t confront him when he’s right there with Lindsay. I don’t know what he’ll do. We need Jon. We need more help than just the two of us. Listen to me!”

  The echoes of her plea were punctuated by the soft thud of a door closing above them. The door from the second floor.

  Alan Harlow leaned over the railing, looking down at them. It was obvious that he’d heard most of what Darcy had just said.

  Of course he had. Why should it be simple?

  Throwing off Darcy’s grip Wilson reached into the inside of his suit coat, going for his gun.

  Alan was faster.

  From behind him his arm came up and over his head in a roundhouse motion, a long red cylinder flashing through the air and then hurtling down on them. Part of Darcy’s mind recognized it as a fire extinguisher. One of the ones from the glassed in cubbyholes in the hallways of the hospital.

  She threw herself to the side, pushing Wilson out of the way as she did.

  The fire extinguisher projectile landed hard on Wilson’s leg. Darcy heard a sickening, squishy snapping sound just before the cylinder bounced with a crash against the stairs and clattered away to the main floor landing below.

  Wilson screamed in pain. His gun went off, so loud and deafening in the enclosed space that Darcy found herself down on her knees, her hands over her ears, sure she was going to be bleeding from both eardrums.

  When she looked back up, Alan had disappeared.

  The door to the second floor was just closing on its pneumatic slide. Alan would be going back for Lindsay. No doubt he would try to grab her now and leave before anyone could stop him. He knew he was found out. There was no reason for him to stay any longer.

  So much for calling in Jon and the cavalry and surprising Alan before he could do anything stupid. He must have come after her when she left Lindsay’s room. Maybe he saw her looking at the wedding ring on his necklace. Maybe she hadn’t kept her suspicions off her face as well as she thought she had. Either way, Alan knew they were on to him now.

  Lindsay’s life was in grave danger.

  Wilson had dropped his gun and was holding his left leg with both hands. Blood pooled on the dirty tiles of the stairs underneath him. A vein at his temple pulsed and his jaw was clenched and Darcy could see how much pain he was in. “I think it’s broken,” he said, gently probing the wound under his pants leg and then crying out. “Yup. Oh, yeah. Definitely broken. Darcy, we have to stop him. Help me up.”

  “Are you kidding?” she asked him. “Wilson, I can’t carry you. I don’t think you should move with your leg broken, either. I’ll get help. Just stay here, and call Jon!”

  She left him there, racing up the stairs, having absolutely no idea what she was going to do when she caught up to Alan.

  If she caught up to him in time.

  Chapter Nine

  The gun. Wilson’s gun. Why hadn’t she picked up his gun?

  There were lots of reasons, actually, she reminded herself as she ran. She wasn’t going to try to shoot someone inside of a hospital full of people, for one.

  For another, she simply hadn’t thought of it in her rush to get back up to the ICU.

  The main part of the second floor was busy with nurses doing rounds and patients walking slowly up and down the hall dragging IV poles with them. In other words, business as usual. If anyone had heard the commotion in the stairs they hadn’t been concerned about it. At all. No one even knew anything was wrong.

  That was about to change.

  Darcy didn’t even bother going up to the counter at the main second floor nurse’s station to explain to the nice nurses and employees working there that they had a psychopathic murderer running around their hospital.

  She shouted it at them as loudly as she could as soon as she got off the elevator.

  “Help! My friend is in the stairway. His leg is broken. He’s bleeding and he needs help. Call the police! The man who broke his leg is in the ICU!”

  She left several stunned faces watching her race to the double doors that sectioned off the ICU. A few people started to move to the stairway. She saw one nurse pick up a telephone. Whether she was calling the police like Darcy asked or calling for security to remove the crazy lady that had just burst out onto the second floor, Darcy didn’t care. Either way, help would be coming.

  She had called Wilson her friend. Not half an hour ago she’d been sure he was a crazed ex-lover capable of murder. Now she knew different.

  That man wasn’t Wilson. It was Alan Harlow.

  Hand on the metal door to the ICU, Darcy hesitated. What if Alan was waiting for her? What if he had armed himself with something worse than a fire extinguisher? He’d already killed one man in a deranged attempt to get Lindsay for himself. Without any hesitation at all he had broken Wilson’s leg, and that was only because Darcy had pushed him out of the way in time to keep him from having his skull crushed in.

  She was scared to see what waited for her on the other side of this door.

  Biting her lip, she pushed through anyway. No matter what was waiting for her, Lindsay and Rosie needed her help. That was all that mattered.

  The door creaked open slowly on its hinges and then as Darcy stepped inside she let it swing back closed behind her. The air displaced by its motion whumphed around her. It reminded her of swirling currents of mist, and she knew that she was right to be afraid.

  It was eerily silent here. She remembered from earlier how the place had been full of soft noises. People talking, machines beeping, other sounds. Now there was nothing but the hammering of her heart.

  There was no one at the nurse’s station. Looking at the monitors that were supposed to be keeping an electronic eye on the three rooms here, she saw that their screens and electronic control boxes had been smashed. The monitors that were still intact stared back at her like cold, dead eyes.

  “No, oh no,” she whispered. Those monitors would have let her see into every room, including Lindsay’s. She could have found Alan easily. She could have known if Lindsay and Rosie were safe. Now, she would have no way of finding—

  Darcy stopped. She had gotten close enough to the nurse’s desk to see that the station hadn’t been abandoned. The nurse from before, with her painted nails and her scrubs with the motorcycle riding turtles, was slumped over the desk, eyes half-lidded, a bleeding lump raised up behind her left ear. Her eyelids fluttered and her breathing hitched through her open mouth.

  Alan had already taken care of this woman. She wasn’t dead, but she wouldn’t be able to help Darcy either. There was no way of knowing how long it would take any help to get here. Obviously the medical staff and other hospital employees were keeping their distance from the ICU because no one had rushed to her aid.

  For now, she was on her own.

  Doors faced her everywhere. There was only the one long hallway here, three patient rooms on the one side, administrative offices and closets on the left, but closed doors had never seemed so scary in all her life. Should she go straight for Lindsay’s room? Wouldn’t that be where Alan had gone after bludgeoning the poor nurse at her desk and then attacking her and Wilson? He’d be in a hurry. He’d be ready to run at a moment’s notice.

  Plus it was where Lindsay and Rosie were. Alan wanted to take Lindsay. Rosie was a potential witness he wouldn’t be able to leave behind. He would head straight there.

  Right?

  Room 2-C it was.

  As quietly as she could Darcy stepped down the hall. One foot in front of the other, she kept her eyes on the door to Lindsay’s room down at the end of the hall.

  Step, step.

  She felt vulnerable and exposed. She didn’t have a weapon or anything to fight Alan Harlow with. What was she going to do if he attacked her? How could she protect Lindsay and Rosie?

  Step, step.

  Maybe there was something in one of the supply cabinets that she could use, she thought.

  Step.

  She turned
to her left, found a door marked “Custodian.”

  Step…

  Ahead of her the second patient’s room swung inward. A man stood there, tall and threatening, and Darcy sucked in a long breath that choked off the scream that would have come pouring out of her.

  “What’s going on?” the man whispered. He was skinny, and elderly, now that Darcy’s mind could take a second to focus. A full beard of white hair dropped low over his chest.

  Not Alan Harlow.

  “My wife needs her medicine,” the man continued, thankfully in that same soft voice. “Why hasn’t the nurse come yet?”

  “Get back in your room,” Darcy answered him in a whisper. “I’ll make sure someone comes to see her.”

  Apparently satisfied with that answer, the man nodded, stepping back inside to close the door to room 2-B.

  Darcy took a moment to let her racing heart calm down. The last two rooms down the hall were the ICU administrator’s office on the left, and Lindsay’s room on the right.

  She gave another thought to the custodian’s closet. Biting her lip, feeling the seconds tick past and slip away from her, Darcy figured the extra time it would take to arm herself with a mop handle or maybe even a utility blade would be worth it if it saved her life in the end. Hers, or someone else’s.

  She caught hold of the round doorknob of the supply closet, making sure her grip was tight before turning it slowly. It didn’t squeak. That was what she had been worried about. If Alan didn’t know she was here yet, maybe she would still have the advantage.

  The door opened outward, toward her, just as quietly as the knob had turned. Her luck was holding out.

  A hand reached out to grab her left wrist and yank her violently sideways, off her feet, slamming her into the wall and sending her in a piled heap to the floor. Pain jarred up her arm, across her elbow, as her attacker kept an iron grip that clamped tighter and harder until she cried out in pain.

  Alan Harlow had her arm twisted up behind her head, forcing her to her knees, her free hand pawing at the wall to steady herself. His left arm was wrapped around Lindsay’s throat, her neck in the hollow of his elbow. She gagged and tried to pull at his sleeve with her one hand, kicking her feet, the hospital gown sliding down her shoulders as she tried desperately to get away. Her right arm hung heavily in its cast.