The Widow's Revenge

by James D. Doss

  That tallied with the caller ID on the computer monitor. “Are you employed at the hospital, or are you a patient?” Snyder Memorial had a psychiatric ward.

  “I’m a nurse in ER, but right now I’m in ICU.” A pitiful whimpering. “I came to find out why nobody up here was answering the phone.”

  Now we’re getting somewhere. “So what’s the problem?”

  Silence.

  “Peggy—are you there?”

  “Yeah. I’m here.” A moan. “All by myself.”

  Either she’s nuts or something really bad has gone down. “Tell me what’s wrong.”

  Another indrawn breath, which was exhaled as a sigh. “They’re dead.”

  The dispatcher frowned at her computer monitor. “Who’s dead?”

  “All of them.” The sound of a fist banging on something, over and over. “Oh, God—maybe this isn’t real. Maybe it’s an awful nightmare—maybe I’m asleep.” The caller began to weep. Between wrenching sobs: “Or maybe I’m going stone crazy!”

  “Peggy—are you all right?”

  “No, you bone-headed idiot, I’m not all right! How could I be—there are dead people all around me!” The nurse made a choking-gurgling sound, then managed to compose herself. “I’m sorry. I’m just overwhelmed by all this . . . this . . .”

  “That’s all right, dear. Now tell me who’s dead.”

  “They’re all dead!”

  “Yes. I understand. But could you give me some names?”

  The caller was no longer listening. “I don’t have any idea who killed them—or why—or even how!” The ER nurse’s voice dropped to a suspicious whisper. “There’s not a mark on the bodies—not a mark.” Five seconds of dead silence. “You want my professional opinion, I’ll give it to you—I believe every one of them was poisoned!”

  “Please don’t hang up, Peggy. I’ll dispatch officers right away.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  SUSPICION

  IT WAS LATE MORNING WHEN SARAH FRANK HEARD THE APPROACHING vehicle. Visitors of any stripe were a welcome novelty during her long, quiet days on the Columbine. Most of the time. Precisely how such premonitions occur remains an impenetrable mystery, but from somewhere deep within Sarah’s budding feminine intuition, warnings began to bubble up. They were to the point, and terse. Unwanted company. Intruder. And worse still . . . Competitor.

  Thus alerted, the slender wisp of a girl hurried to a Columbine headquarters parlor window. She pulled the curtains aside just in time to see a shiny new automobile rumbling over the Too Late Creek bridge. The gray sedan was unknown to the Ute-Papago orphan, but not the tall, statuesque brunette who got out of it, slammed the door, and headed to the west porch. She’s come to see Charlie. And would soon be knocking on the front door.

  Unnerved by the sudden appearance of this world-class rival for the affections of Mr. Moon, the seventeen-year-old girl ran headlong across the parlor, down the dark hallway, and into the dining room, where she quickly concealed herself in the shadowy coolness.

  No sooner was Sarah hidden than she heard the sound of the determined lady’s knuckles rapping against the three-inch-thick 1870s-era oak door that could stop a flint-tipped Arapaho arrow or a .44 caliber pistol bullet.

  Feeling like a fool, the girl closed her eyes. This is totally stupid—I can’t just stand here in the dark.

  McTeague knocked again.

  I’ll have to go let her in. Sarah clenched her fists. But what’ll I say— “Hello, Miss McTeague, it’s so nice to see you”? No, that wouldn’t do. How about: “Oh, you must be looking for Charlie. I’m so sorry, he’s gone for a few days. Where? Oh, to Wyoming, I think it was—or maybe Montana.” No, that was another string of lies, even worse than “it’s so nice to see you.” And God expected a person to stick strictly to the truth.

  Steeling herself for a confrontation with this archenemy, Sarah had already abandoned her place of concealment when she heard Charlie Moon’s cowboy boots clomping down the stairway. She watched him stride across the parlor to open the door.

  Half expecting a visit from Scott Parris, the smile Moon wore for greeting his best friend slipped away when he saw Lila Mae. Her face was chalky gray. Something’s wrong.

  Something was. The FBI agent was about to tell him about it when she noticed the slim girl hovering at the far end of the parlor like a shy ghost. As Sarah withdrew soundlessly into the hallway, the fed said, “We have to talk, Charlie. Someplace private.” McTeague’s strained voice suggested a bone-dry, bent-double cottonwood branch that was about to snap. “I have something to tell you.”

  “Let’s go upstairs.” He led the way. I’ve got something to tell you.

  Sarah, who was peeking around the corner as they ascended the stairs, stared in stunned disbelief. Charlie’s bedroom was on the second floor. He never takes women up there. As far as she knew. Well, he never takes me up there. On the other hand . . . I guess I should mind my own business. But wait a danged minute—Charlie Moon was her business, and Job One was to make sure the competition didn’t muscle in and take over!

  Action was called for.

  Almost before she knew it, Sarah was sneak-creeping up the stairs. What would she do when she got there? If they see me, I’ll just say, “Would you like some coffee? I’ll be glad to make a fresh pot and bring you some.” At the instant her eyes were even with the upstairs hallway floor, Sarah heard Charlie Moon close his office door. Rats! But there was this consolation: At least Charlie didn’t take her into his bedroom. Not yet. But with a woman like that, they might end up there in a few minutes. She continued the sneak-creeping. This time, along the upstairs hallway. Inch by inch, she went. Ever closer to the closed office door. Sarah couldn’t hear a word they said. There was the tempting keyhole, fairly begging to be peeked through. Not that she would ever stoop to such a petty misdeed.

  MOON INVITED his guest to sit on an old, scruffy-looking, delightfully comfortable leather couch. “What’s up?”

  Special Agent McTeague plopped herself down. “I hardly know where to begin.” She had opened her mouth to give it a try, when—

  What was this? Aha—another rumble on the Too Lake Creek bridge.

  “That will probably be Scott Parris,” McTeague said. “Let’s wait until he gets here before I tell you what’s happened.”

  “Fine with me.” Moon remained standing. “In the meantime, I’ve got something to tell you.”

  “About what?”

  “The name I heard mentioned in the hardware store.”

  Oh, please, God! The FBI agent held her breath. Prayed that he would say—

  “Trout. That’s what the bad guy asked me—‘Did Trout send you?’ ”

  “Yes!” McTeague vaulted off the couch and raised her fists in a victorious gesture. “Trout is the top dog in the Family—the one who plans the jobs and calls the shots. Good work, Charlie!”

  “You sound just like my first-grade schoolteacher.” Moon grinned. “Do I get a shiny gold star on my forehead?”

  Better than that. Just as Sarah Frank put her eye to the keyhole, the lady grabbed the long, lanky cowboy by the neck and pasted a big, enthusiastic kiss—square on his lips!

  Charlie Moon stood there and took it like a man.

  The keyhole peeker gasped; her heart stopped. And started up again.

  Releasing the startled man from her embrace, the FBI agent placed a call to the Denver FBI Field Office. The SAC’s digital recorder advised the caller to leave a brief message. “This is Special Agent McTeague. Mr. Moon has tied Trout to the hardware-store robbery. More later.”

  SCOTT PARRIS parked his sleek black-and-white Chevrolet patrol car beside McTeague’s rental car and went stomping across the headquarters yard.

  Tears streaming down her face, Sarah Frank was barely aware of her leaden feet descending the stairway when Parris banged his big fist on the door and boomed out, “Hey—lemme in!”

  After hurriedly wiping her eyes, Sarah opened the front door.

&n
bsp; His face about as cheerful as warmed-over oatmeal, Parris tipped his hat at the sad-faced girl. “Where are those two?”

  The Ute-Papago girl pointed at the ceiling.

  The chief of police looked up. Seeing no one hanging from the chandelier, he picked up right away on the meaning of her gesture. The quick-witted fellow muttered a perfunctory “thanks” before bounding up the stairway three steps at a stride.

  As was her habit at such emotion-charged moments, Daisy Perika appeared, leaning against her walking stick. “What in the world’s going on?”

  Sarah mumbled that she did not know. And I don’t care.

  But she did, poor kid. And sooner or later, caring too much would prove to be—

  But we must not anticipate.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  WORSE THAN BAD NEWS

  SCOTT PARRIS CLOMPED HIS BIG BOOTS ALONG THE UPSTAIRS HALLWAY, jerked Moon’s office door open, and barged into the rancher’s private sanctum like a man looking for a knock-down, drag-out brawl with anyone who crossed his path. Without so much as a “hello,” the chief of police tossed his old-fashioned felt fedora onto Moon’s desk and fell heavily onto the leather couch. “What a day,” he growled. “I don’t know how things could get worse.” But the gloomy cop harbored a suspicion that one way or another, things would.

  Moon frowned at his friend, who seemed to have aged a decade since yesterday. “What’s happened?”

  The fed seated herself beside the chief of police and shot a glance at him. “You want me to tell him?”

  The cop rubbed a stubby thumbnail over the couch arm, making a deep crease in the soft leather. “No, I’ll do it.” He looked up at Charlie Moon. “You’d better sit down for this.”

  “Bad as all that?”

  “Worse.” Parris crossed the crease to make an X. “If this business was only ‘bad,’ I’d be tickled half to death.”

  Moon pulled up an armchair to face his guests. As he eased himself into it, his knees brushed McTeague’s, and he caught a hint of a scent of expensive perfume. It was enough to make a man dizzy.

  Oblivious to such hormonal distractions, Parris thumbed a lopsided circle around the X. “Last night, a person or persons unknown entered the ICU at Snyder Memorial and killed everybody on the floor.”

  Moon’s eyes narrowed to slits. “Everybody?”

  “Every living soul.” The lawman inspected the circled X with a critic’s hard eye, then rubbed it out. “Except for the two survivors of the hardware-story robbery.” Parris was experiencing a peculiar sense of detachment from reality; even his spoken words seemed to be coming from somewhere outside himself. When a sharp pain surged in his chest, he took a deep breath and gritted his teeth until it passed. “Those bastards are gone with the wind.” He gave McTeague a sideways glance. “They were snatched by that gang of lowlife murderers the FBI calls ‘the Family.’ ”

  The tribal investigator was also feeling pain, but of the psychic kind. “How many dead altogether?”

  “Sixteen.” A burning sensation seared Parris’s left arm. Go ahead. Kill me. I don’t give a hot damn! “Two night nurses. A state cop—some new guy I didn’t know. They tell me he had a wife and twin baby girls.” For the longest time, the lawman was unable to speak. He tried vainly to swallow the lump in his throat. Coughed. Swallowed again. Finally, he croaked, “And thirteen patients.”

  “That’s an awful lot of killing,” Moon whispered.

  Parris opened his mouth. Shut it. He put his hands over his eyes and wept silently while his massive shoulders shook.

  Lila Mae McTeague wanted to hug the big man. Tell him not to worry. By and by, everything would be all right. She resisted the motherly urge.

  Moon tried to think of some comforting words. Came up empty.

  At a loss for what to say or do, the FBI agent and the tribal investigator stared at the floor.

  After making a peculiar choking sound, the hard-boiled lawman got up, stalked into the hallway, and shut the door behind himself. Softly.

  A crotchety old clock on the office wall tickety-tocked precious seconds away, perhaps to be deposited in some hidden cache of time that would be recycled one fine day.

  The Ute addressed his former girlfriend. “Anybody see the killers?”

  Fighting off the urge to snap, Only the dead, McTeague shook her black mane. “So far, we haven’t located a witness who saw anyone.”

  “Somebody must’ve heard something.” Moon glared at the closed office door. “Screams in the night. Somebody putting up a fight.”

  “Yes, one would think so.” The woman’s tone was even, almost detached—as if they were discussing the likelihood of rain tomorrow or how best to skin a channel catfish. “Evidently, the thing was done very quietly.”

  “So how’d these people die?”

  The lady admired the expertly lacquered fingernails on her left hand. “The medical examiner’s preliminary findings—and this was based upon the four corpses that had been examined when I received the oral report—is that the victims’ brains were penetrated by a slender, pointed instrument.” Apparently satisfied with her expensive manicure, the federal cop licked her tastefully tinted lips to savor the bittersweet flavor of a lipstick called Raspberry Sunset. She had left a slight trace of this concoction on Moon’s mouth. “The working portion of the weapon was no less than eight centimeters long and approximately four millimeters in diameter.” She cocked her head, as if to mull this data over. “A common ice pick, I should think.” Anticipating Moon’s next question, Lila Mae McTeague touched a pointy crimson fingernail to a cultured pearl on her earlobe. “The wound entry point was in the victim’s left ear canal.”

  Charlie Moon experienced a sudden earache. Absurdly, this sympathetic response was followed instantly by recollection of the phrase better than a sharp stick in the eye.

  The office was suddenly uncomfortably warm. Oppressively stuffy.

  At a rumble of distant thunder over the Misery Range, the rancher got up to open a window.

  Wearing a sheepish smile, Scott Parris opened the door, thereby providing a path for a pleasant draft. The fresh breeze lifted a pair of gauzy window curtains that a long-dead occupant of the Columbine had crocheted more than eighty years ago. Parris explained his absence in this manner: “I asked Sarah to make us a pot of coffee.”

  “Good idea.” Moon was unable to return his friend’s strained smile. “We’re going to need it.”

  McTeague, who seemed to require no audience, might have been talking to herself. “The working hypothesis is that a person posing as a qualified nurse gained access to the ICU.” Before Moon could ask why, she explained. “The LPN who was scheduled to work the graveyard shift didn’t show up, but a substitute apparently did. We found an unintelligible scrawl on the night-duty log that is evidently the sub’s signature. After performing some routine duties and gaining the confidence of the state-police officer who was guarding the hospitalized felons, the phony stand-in probably murdered the officer first, then ice-picked the two nurses. The next step would have been to unlock the ground-floor door below the ICU and let in the Family members who would assist their hospitalized comrades in their escape. While that was happening, the counterfeit nurse would have had sufficient time to murder all of the ICU’s thirteen other patients.”

  Moon tried without success to avoid visualizing the cold-blooded massacre. His mind’s eye watched a wild-eyed, white-frocked nurse dash from room to room, stabbing a bloody ice pick deep into the brains of terrified sick folk who were too weak to defend themselves. “Have you located the nurse who didn’t show up for work?”

  Already the color of slate, Parris’s face faded a shade grayer. He had forgotten to add that grisly statistic, which raised the body count to seventeen.

  “I regret to say—yes.” McTeague had fixed her gaze on a Cattleman’s Bank calendar on the office wall, which featured an oil painting of a purebred Hereford bull. “Just before dawn, the victim’s corpse was discovered in the trunk
of her 1992 Mercury sedan, which was parked behind the hospital.”

  Parris groaned. “Killing a cop who’s guarding their buddies, even murdering the nurses—that’s bad enough.” He balled his right hand into a big fist that he wanted to hit something with. “But only a criminal lunatic would kill all those sick people just for the hell of it.”

  Despite her cool exterior, McTeague was beginning to feel the strain. “The hospital murders were not committed by a lunatic, or ‘just for the hell of it.’ ” As she turned her head to glare at Parris, the fed’s tone was icy. “The helpless victims were killed with definite and practical goals in mind—the most obvious being to eliminate any possibility of leaving a witness behind. Even a seemingly comatose survivor might have seen or heard something that would help us identify one or more members of the Family.” She eyed the disheveled town cop with distaste, like an epicure who has discovered a dung beetle in her cream-of-mushroom soup. “And there was a secondary objective to the mass murder, which was at least as important as rescuing two of their injured comrades.”

  Parris set his formidable jaw bulldog-fashion. “And what might that be?”

  He is almost cute. “The members of the Family consider themselves to be a pretty tough bunch of hombres. And like all of their ilk, they have their pride.”

  Mr. Bulldog goggled at the woman. “Pride?”

  “Well of course.” Explaining the obvious to dimwits was so very tedious. “Try to view the situation from their perspective. When a local cowboy just happens to wander by the hardware store and manhandles their team of four”—she shot a sharp look at Moon—“they end up looking like a bunch of bumbling amateurs. And in addition to suffering acute embarrassment, the Family ends up with two men stone cold dead, and two more seriously injured.” McTeague enjoyed provoking the angry chief of police. “I am firmly convinced that the hospital massacre was a sort of in-your-face method of making a point.” She waited for the hoped-for response.