Clay

by Jennifer Blake

  “You’re what?” The woman seemed to swell with her anger.

  “I thought you’d be pleased after your visit to the lake.”

  “Nonsense. I was a little annoyed, I’ll admit, but that’s only natural given the circumstances. Surely you didn’t take what I said seriously?”

  “I’m afraid I did, but it doesn’t matter now. I just feel that it’s best if we stop right here.”

  “But you are committed, you’ve paid the initial fee and everything is in place. You must continue.”

  “The fee is the main reason I’m here,” Janna said firmly. “I’ll need it returned, since I’ll have to pay for a legal transplant procedure, eventually, as well as Lainey’s care between now and the time a kidney becomes available.”

  Nurse Fenton’s lips tightened like a prune. “You can hardly expect a refund.”

  “But you are the one who said the procedure was canceled. I’m only following up on your ultimatum. I really do need the money.”

  “I explained about that misunderstanding. You do realize that this is a serious matter, Ms. Kerr? Your daughter could very well die.”

  “I realize that.” She did not appreciate this obvious attempt to play on her fear.

  “Dr. Gower will not be pleased. You have been fully briefed about the way these things are handled, you’re privy to information that could be dangerous to him personally and to the experimental work he’s engaged in here.”

  “Experimental?” Janna felt the hair crawl on her scalp.

  “Research into ways to preserve organs and with various drug combinations to neutralize rejection of cadaver transplants. The work cannot be hindered.”

  “I was never told that Lainey would be a test subject,” Janna objected.

  “It was implicit in the process. Surely you realized that?”

  “No,” Janna said with force. “No, I didn’t, and it makes me even more determined to withdraw my daughter from the program.”

  The face of the woman across the desk from her seemed to congeal. “I think you’ll find it difficult to extract yourself, Ms. Kerr. You are, or have been until this moment, a willing accessory to a criminal procedure. In the event of prosecution, you will be as guilty as any in the eyes of the law.”

  “I realize that,” Janna said, her voice clear, “and I’m willing to take the consequences.”

  “Very high flown. But what will become of your Lainey if you go to prison?”

  “Are you suggesting that you’ll have a hand in any charges that may be filed against me?”

  “I’m suggesting that it would be unwise to think of going to the authorities since you would only implicate yourself.”

  Janna stared at the woman for a long moment. Then she said, “You’re afraid I’ll go to the police. I suppose I should. However, I suggest Dr. Gower close this center voluntarily. I don’t doubt that he had good intentions at one time, or that he’s saved a few patients that might not have lived otherwise, but something has gone wrong. Teenagers are dying minus vital organs, and I think there’s a connection. It has to stop.”

  “Are you threatening us?” Incredulity and rage burned in Nurse Fenton’s eyes as she came to her feet and rounded the desk to pause at its corner.

  “I suppose I am.” Janna hadn’t intended it when she stepped into the office, but it seemed required. Since she’d come this far, what was going a little further?

  “You’re making a huge mistake.”

  “I sincerely doubt it. It’s only a matter of time before the authorities make the connection.”

  The phone in the reception area rang, demanding and shrill, a sound plainly heard through the thin walls. The murmur of the receptionist’s voice came in answer, followed shortly by an intercom message that sounded in the office just down the hallway. Seconds later, a man could be heard speaking. Anita Fenton glanced toward the phone, then at the inside door that connected her office to that adjoining one, but made no comment.

  “I need to be going,” Janna said as she got to her feet and settled the strap of her straw bag on her shoulder. She wasn’t cut out for this kind of confrontation. Her knees were wobbly, her hands sweating and her stomach felt as if it had no bottom. And yet, for now at least she had no regrets.

  “I’ll have to consult with Dr. Gower,” the nurse said. “He’ll want to talk to you, I’m sure, since I believe he is here now. Take a seat in the waiting room, please.”

  “I don’t have time to wait. Lainey is in the hospital and I need to get back to her.”

  “She’s fine.” The woman’s voice hardened. “It’s you who has a problem.”

  The nurse knew about Lainey. Maybe she’d tried to contact the camp, discovered they were gone, checked nearby hospitals until she found her. The memories of the shots fired the night before echoed in Janna’s mind, triggered by the grim look on Anita Fenton’s face. Had they been meant as a warning? Or as something more lethal?

  “I don’t think I do,” Janna said quietly. “Tell Dr. Gower that I appreciate everything he’s done for me and I’m sorry, but I can’t go through with it. That’s all.”

  The woman’s lips twisted. “You appreciate it?”

  “The hope he gave me. It was good to have that, at least for a while.” She’d come here driven by guilt and the remnants of a sense of obligation for the vanished promise of a miracle, but that was over.

  Janna turned toward the door, then stepped into the hall that led to the reception area. As she glanced in that direction, she saw a police car pull up outside with lights flashing.

  Abruptly the connecting door swung open inside the office she’d just left. Dr. Gower charged into the room, his eyes wide and his face so pale that the blotches on it stood out like oil spots on a white sand beach. “It’s a raid, Anita! My contact from downtown called. The damned sheriff of Turn-Coupe, up near Horseshoe Lake, can provide evidence and a witness against us. Destroy the files. Then we have to get out of here right—”

  He came to a halt, staring at Janna through the office’s open door. Surprise and concern chased themselves across his face. Before he could speak, however, the sound of shouts and sirens came from outside.

  The front door of the reception area down the hallway swung open to hit the wall with the sound of breaking glass. The receptionist screamed.

  Close on the sound, a harsh voice bellowed, “Police! On your feet! Hands in plain sight!”

  Comprehension invaded Dr. Gower’s eyes, turning them dark as he stared at Janna. “Oh, my dear,” he said in pained tones. “What have you done? What have you done to me?”

  18

  “We have no time for that,” Anita Fenton said with icy disdain in her eyes. “We have to get out of here. Now!” Diving toward the computer terminal, she tapped the keys briefly, then popped out a disk, leaving the drive grinding and whirring in erase mode.

  “As you say,” the doctor agreed, his gaze brooding. “I think we will all use the escape route.”

  Hard on the words, the doctor swooped down on Janna and caught her wrist, pulling her back into the office. He clamped an arm around her waist, then propelled her toward the open door that led into the second office beyond.

  “Wait!” Janna struggled, trying to set her feet.

  “You must come with us,” Dr. Gower said urgently.

  “And keep quiet!” the nurse said in a harsh whisper as she slid past them, then ran to another door that was set into the back wall, this one of rusting steel and with an Exit sign above it. Cursing under her breath, she put her shoulder to the heavy panel while shoving on the handle. As it swung open with ponderous slowness, she held it while reaching out with clawlike hands to drag Janna and Dr. Gower into what appeared to be a storeroom. When they were inside, she slammed and locked the steel barrier behind them.

  “What are you doing?” Janna demanded as she pulled free for a second. “You can’t hide in here!”

  “Shut up, I told you,” Anita snapped. “Unless you feel like answering a lot of v
ery unpleasant questions.”

  On the other side of the door, they could hear the voice of the receptionist raised in protest. Janna had seconds to make a decision. If she screamed and gave them away, there was no telling when she might see Lainey again. But how could she go with these two when they might have been responsible for the deaths of at least two teenagers?

  “Of course she’ll be quiet,” Dr. Gower said. “She isn’t stupid.”

  “She’d better not be.” From her purse, the red-haired woman pulled a handgun and pointed it at Janna’s midsection. “Let’s get the hell out of here before I’m tempted to make little Lainey an orphan.”

  The doctor’s face tightened in the gloom, but he made no protest. Turning, he led the way at a fast trot from the storeroom and through what was undoubtedly the back area of the old department store. They hurried past dust-covered clothes racks, naked and staring mannequins, piles of broken hangers and scattered drifts of rat-eaten cardboard. Janna went with them; she had no choice, though her mind worked at super speed to find an alternative.

  As they passed into the open sales section of the empty building, they could see the collection of police units and uniformed muscle beyond the display windows with their torn masking paper. Keeping well back, they skimmed through that semiexposed area as quickly as possible, though it was likely that the mirrorlike glaze on the windows prevented them from being seen. Entering another suite of offices, they plunged through them to the rear where they reached another steel exit door. This one opened into the steam and bustle of a kitchen. They were in the coffee shop, Janna realized, even before she’d inhaled the distinctive smells of chicory coffee and frying yeast dough that she’d noticed earlier.

  A man with a dingy white cap on his head and an apron tied around his middle, turned from the deep fryer he was tending to stare at them. “What the hell?” he began. Then he saw the pistol and closed his mouth with an audible pop.

  Dr. Gower spared him only a single glance before turning toward the kitchen’s rear. Yet another exit door was set into the dirty brick wall, next to a collection of trash cans, brooms and mop pails. From the one time that she’d approached the medical center via the back way, Janna was sure that it led into a fenced-in cul-de-sac for deliveries and garbage pickup. She felt rather than saw the movement when Nurse Fenton started toward it.

  Instantly Janna spun in the opposite direction. She didn’t hesitate, but ran for the swinging door that separated the kitchen from the front of the coffee shop.

  “No!” the doctor shouted. Janna glanced back to see him thrust Anita Fenton’s arm upward so her pistol pointed toward the ceiling. She expected to hear the crack of a shot at any second, but it didn’t come. Instead there was only the hard thud as she hit the door, then the squeak-squeak as it flapped back and forth behind her.

  No one came after her. Nurse Fenton, or more likely the doctor, must have decided against drawing that much attention. It seemed like a wise plan. Janna slowed her pace as the few customers craning their necks to see the police action at the front windows turned back to stare at her. She gave them a strained smile. Then moving with as casual an air as she could manage, she walked deliberately out of the shop.

  The number of police cars and uniformed men had grown, forming an effective barricade outside the entrance to the medical center. She ignored them studiously, like any ordinary citizen who didn’t want to be involved. Her car seemed miles away, but she began to walk toward it.

  Seconds passed. Her footsteps sounded unnaturally loud on the pavement. Then the car was in front of her and she was reaching for the door handle. As she unlocked it, she heard a commotion of shouts, car engines and sirens in the rear of the strip mall that sounded as if Dr. Gower and Anita had been spotted leaving and the police were giving chase. With only the mildest of curious glances in that direction for the benefit of anyone watching, she slid into the furnace heat of the vehicle. The seat burned through her dress but she hardly felt it. Fumbling with her keys, she slid them into the ignition and started the engine. Then, carefully, slowly, she drove away.

  No one tried to stop her. No one followed her that she could tell. She had appeared as she had intended, like a coffee shop customer with better things to do than gawk at such a common spectacle as police action in that part of town. Reaction hit her. She began to shake. The hard tremors ran over her entire body, making her muscles jerk so uncontrollably that she could hardly hold the car on the road. Afraid she might cause an accident, she pulled in at the first service station she came to and parked with the engine running. Bracing her arms on the steering wheel, she rested her forehead on her stacked hands and closed her eyes.

  She was safe. She had gotten away.

  She should have stayed; she knew that. She should have approached the police and told them everything she knew. Because she hadn’t, the doctor and his murderous assistant might well go free. Free to start over, free to experiment again on the desperately ill, free to go after those who had betrayed them.

  Nurse Fenton was behind the deaths of the teenagers; there seemed little doubt of that. It was she who normally made Dr. Gower’s financial arrangements, after all. Though she functioned as a nurse, she had considerably more medical training and expertise in her capacity as a physician’s assistant. Did she do it for the money, because she had some kind of stake in the center, or was it for love? As hard as it was to realize, women did sometimes invest in the obsessions of the men they cared about, even to the point of committing heinous crimes.

  Regardless of her reasons, Anita Fenton had to be stopped; Janna was clear on that. If she went back now, would it make a difference? Would it really, when the police seemed in control of the situation already?

  She didn’t know. And she didn’t see how she could afford to reveal her part in the sordid business when it might mean prison. She couldn’t leave Lainey to be cared for by people who didn’t know and understand her condition, had no instinct for when she was in serious trouble. No, she couldn’t do it. And yet the guilt over running away was a fierce, rending pain inside her.

  Why couldn’t the raid have happened just a few minutes later, when she was far from the medical center? Why did she have to be caught in the middle of it? Why couldn’t she have had the simple peace of being without blame for this, at least? Was that too much to ask?

  It was, of course. The damn sheriff of Turn-Coupe, as Dr. Gower had called him, was Roan Benedict. Sheriff Benedict was Clay’s cousin. If there was evidence against Gower, then Clay had supplied it. Clay was the witness whose testimony had doubtless proven the critical element in the decision of the Baton Rouge police to raid the center. He knew what was happening in the swamp because she’d kidnapped him. If she were going to be implicated in this mess then it would come about because of that. In all likelihood, she would have to tell her story to someone eventually.

  Clay had worked with Roan to shut down the transplant operation, had been working with him, perhaps, since the first night he left the camp. Even while he was making love to her, he had been busily seeing to it that she had no life.

  It shouldn’t matter what he’d done. Janna had come finally to the recognition that she couldn’t endure saving her daughter at the expense of another young life. However, Clay didn’t know that. He thought she still meant to go through with the illegal transplant. And since he did, his actions were in deliberate opposition to what Janna had proposed for her daughter’s health and welfare.

  He didn’t care what she wanted. He didn’t care about Lainey. He only cared about his damned Benedict notions of right and wrong, justice and honor. He felt his way of handling the situation, his reading of it, was superior. He had been so horrendously sure of it that he’d left her no choice except to do things his way.

  Well and good. He’d been right and she’d been wrong. The illegal transplant had been a desperate idea, one that should never have been attempted. She didn’t blame him for that, or for doing everything in his power to stop Dr. Gower
. What she did blame him for was not discussing it with her.

  He had taken the decision into his own hands, this man who had never had a child, never been a parent. He had discounted Lainey’s life. He’d thrown it away for the sake of some abstract sense of justice. He might say he had discounted it for the greater good, but that didn’t matter when the person who must pay had a child’s laughter and a child’s tears.

  He’d sacrificed Lainey. He’d given up Janna’s daughter for a principle, and for that Janna could never forgive him. And she could certainly never allow him to lay any claim to her, no matter how powerful the reason.

  Janna lifted her head, staring through the windshield with unseeing eyes. So what was she to do now? The first thing was to see her daughter, hold her in her arms and feel her small heart beating, smell the sweet child’s fragrance of her. Then the two of them would pack their things and leave the camp and Turn-Coupe behind, maybe go back to New Orleans, find a cheap apartment close to The Children’s Hospital. They would put as much distance as possible between them and Turn-Coupe and the Benedicts. Especially Clay Benedict.

  After a few minutes, Janna’s trembling eased. She took a deep breath, then shook herself. Moving like an automaton, she put the car in gear again and pulled back out into the traffic, headed for Turn-Coupe.

  The hospital bed was empty.

  Janna stood staring at the expanse of white sheet where her daughter should be while anguish curled itself around her heart. An empty bed equaled death; she’d seen it far too often during Lainey’s long sojourns in the pediatric renal units of various hospitals. It was almost certain when the room had been stripped of personal effects and cleaned, and no family or nurse-sitter was present.

  The bed was freshly made and with the sheets turned back on one corner. The wastebasket had a new liner. The closet was bare, as was the bedside table. April was nowhere in sight. What else could it mean? The only other possibility she could imagine was almost as paralyzing as the first.