“Thank you,” she said quietly. “I’m told you kept him alive.”
“It’s my job,” Craig answered. “I could do nothing less.”
She bent her head in a slight nod, then passed through the doorway, hurrying after the gurney.
She did not seem to have even noticed McKenzie, who stood as still and quiet as she could in the corner behind Craig. Silently observing. Closing and unclosing her hands. Watching.
Let sleeping dogs lie. Don’t question, don’t stir the pot.
But, oh my God, what she thought she’d seen Susan Craig doing.
As if hearing McKenzie’s raging thoughts, the doctor pivoted and looked her way. There was chilly consideration on her face. The piercing blue eyes held none of the warmth of the parting smile she’d given Ms. Walker.
McKenzie involuntarily took a step backward, then froze, knowing she had betrayed herself, ever so slightly.
Susan paused in holding out her hand, then reextended it. “Ready for your session?”
She did not answer the doctor.
Susan put her hand in her trouser pocket. Her lips pursed a little as though she began to speak, then paused. Finally, she said, “What you’ve just seen must be very upsetting to you. Why don’t you come with me a moment? Let the lab get cleaned up. Talk a walk with me.”
McKenzie could not control her hesitation. Had she even seen anything? Had she seen the doctor deliberately let a patient lapse into trauma? What would have happened if Mac had never entered the lab?
Ibie Walker would have died. She was almost certain in her heart that Susan Craig never intended CPR or any other lifesaving method. Had been waiting, like a vulture, over Walker’s body to ascertain the exact moment of his death, when Mac had interfered.
If the doctor noticed the tension in her body as she took Mac by the elbow and escorted her down the corridor, Craig never said anything. She walked lightly beside McKenzie, guiding her through the hall to the locking double doors and beyond, into the main body of the hospital.
Neither woman said anything as they got onto the elevator and it carried them upstairs. McKenzie recognized the Intensive Care Unit as soon as they stepped out. The activity over Ibrahim Walker quietly took over part of the U-shaped unit, doctors and nurses in attendance, with Walker’s granddaughter vigilantly observing. No one noticed them come onto the floor. Susan Craig looked briefly in that direction, then put her hand on McKenzie’s elbow again, and steered her the opposite way.
Toward the cubicle which her father had shared with Ibie and in which Walt Smith now lay alone. The number of tubes and cables connected to him had diminished greatly. Susan Craig pulled the chart posted on the door, running her long nail down the cryptic jottings. “Brain swelling has gone down considerably. It says here he’s had moments of consciousness.”
“He’s waking?”
“Yes. Though,” and Susan tapped her nail on an immaculate white tooth now, “his condition stabilized, and then regressed sometime during the night. He may have many, many weeks of recuperation ahead of him.” She leaned into Mac’s face intently and said, “He’s not out of the woods yet.”
McKenzie turned her face away. She had just been threatened silently, subtly, like the hard look a pitcher gives a batter who’s just come up to the plate. Second warning, the brush-back pitch.
Third warning, a straight shot to the head, a duster.
Mac didn’t think Susan Craig gave second warnings. She turned back to face her.
“I have a study,” the woman prompted. “I would like to see it finished. That’s all.” McKenzie had not seen what she’d thought she’d seen happen with Ibie Walker. Doubts would never be voiced.
Mac had no proof of anything else and who in the hospital would believe her otherwise? “May I see him?” she asked softly.
Craig opened the door. McKenzie slipped in. The monitors made their soft machine sounds. One of them beeped every six seconds or so. She noticed that it kept time with the IV drip. She approached and took his hand. The flesh felt warm and firm. Life, somewhere, somehow, was banked and kept kindled inside of him.
“Daddy. It’s me, Mac. I hope you can hear me. Please, be all right.” She squeezed his hand tightly, brought it up to her chin, rubbed it.
A finger moved, knuckling her jaw. Mac started, looked down into her father’s face, saw his eyes open and focus weakly on her.
His voice broke into a croak. “Mac-kenzie.”
“Daddy!” She swallowed back a lump which made words difficult. “You’re going to be okay. You hear me?” His right eye bleared. It watered ferociously and she took the corner of a sheet and wiped it for him.
“Mac-kenzie,” he got out again. “I tried....”
She knew that. She’d thought of little else the past few days. How he had tried to keep her safe. The father she had always wanted, at last, then struck down. “I know. I’m here.”
“Trouble. Jack.”
“I’m okay. You just ... you just ...” McKenzie pulled at the sheets and blankets ineffectually as a shudder ran through his form. “You just get well.”
“Mac-kenzie.” He squeezed her hand tightly. “Circled ... bases.”
Icy blue eyes looked at her from the other side of the hospital room. “Incoherent,” Susan Craig said softly.
McKenzie shook her head. No, it meant something to her. Everything to her. She’d circled the bases, she’d come in a winner. He was telling her that in the only language that the two of them shared easily. She leaned close to him. “Home,” she confirmed. “I came home. You waited for me, and I came back.”
The monitor jumped and began beeping erratically. Her father tried to squeeze her hand again. “Mac—” His voice broke off.
“Cardiac arrest.” Susan Craig shouldered her away from the bed abruptly. She hit the intercom and for the second time shouted for a Code Blue team.
Mac stepped back, trembling. She had felt the strength, the warmth, ebb from his hand even as she’d held it. She could not take her eyes from the bed as her father died despite all they tried to do for him. Jack Trebolt, in one way or another, had taken nearly everything from her. Her blood went cold.
Susan Craig stepped away from the bed, pushing past the Blue team wearily, brushing her white-blonde hair away from her forehead. She focused on McKenzie as though surprised to see her standing in the corner of the room. “You shouldn’t have stayed.”
“You have a project to finish.”
The doctor nodded.
McKenzie said numbly, “Then let’s get it over with.”
The visor helmet fit snugly. Craig instructed, her voice muffled, “I’m going to be showing you some relaxation programs first. You don’t need to react in any way, just sit back and watch.”
Her body felt brittle, as though she might snap in two. Let the doctor have whatever brain wave data she needed, let the hours drift by, and then Joyce would come and get her. Carter would be by. The jackal was at the gates, she could not pass without the help of friends, but they had said they were friends. She was alone now without them.
They’d said they would come back to get her.
Mac found herself gritting her jaw until it made her fillings ache. She jumped as Susan slipped a cold hand down her neck and began rubbing her shoulder muscles. The fingers were like iron, the doctor’s nails scraping her skin every once in a while. She was so tense, the massage only sickened her.
Mac sensed, rather than felt, the doctor move away. The virtual reality visor lit up, and she looked into a world of water, running water, rocky mountain slopes with tumbling brooks, pink-sanded beaches with foaming tides, bridal veil falls cascading from the heavens....
The knot in her back began to ease. The doctor had said she did not need to do anything, but who could resist the puddling stream that she could almost put her feet into, the tiny fingerling trout darting away as her hand broke the still waters, the dragonfly that knifed through the air past her face—
Mac jerked back. She
blinked inside the helmet, the tranquil scene around her interrupted as well, as if the virtual reality sunlight had suddenly become a strobe light.
Flash. A knife blade, dripping red, in midair. Stark in its stainless steel sharpness, black and white background. Flash. The image as quickly gone.
Mac breathed through her mouth rapidly. In, out. Had she seen it? Or had its image already been there in her mind, painted in Cody’s blood? Was she seeing the program the doctor was feeding her, or had the images she’d begun to see on her own taken over?
What was real and what was not?
And if this was not real, then what was happening to her was what she had always feared. She carried her father’s rage inside her, an unwanted gift, a legacy which had always terrified her. Don’t let it wake.
That rage was a river and in its torrents, she could see the potential consequences of acting on it. Blood. Destruction. Mutilation. Death.
Her mother had known. Had sensed it in her. Had always removed her quickly from her father’s tantrums as if fearing Mac would ignite as well.
Her head throbbed. Stinging pangs jabbed her eyes.
Flash. Dead children, strewn upon wild grass and brambles, their faces twisted in agony. Rage had killed them. She could not begin to guess whether it had come from within them or from another.
She did not recognize them. But she would not be one of them. She would not be a victim anymore!
Moss-covered boulders led her down to the brookside, and across. The sound of the river pouring over its bed filled her ears. Trees dipped down to the banks, lushly green and heavy-boughed. Their roots cracked the rock beds, sinking deep into the earth, determined to drink freely—
Flash. A woman’s breast, the nipple dimpled erect, the mound full and round, bursting open with the slash of a knife—
Mac jerked in the chair. She felt its frame around her, though her senses told her she walked, no, ran, through the woods. Branches slapped at her. Fog rose in white cottony banks, obscuring the pathway to safety. Her footfalls pelted the ground.
The hunter woke. Leaped to its feet, running. The rage came to a life of its own, outside of her skin, yet inside, knowing where she ran. Tracking her. Intent on destroying her.
She could hear the sound of other breathing, other racing steps, other branches cracking and whipping behind her.
Don’t stop.
She the prey, the other the hunter, the chase was on, was all, blood-pounding, heart-bursting. She darted to her right. Fog exploded from the tangle of her legs as she hit it. She expected the mist, the coolness of it on her face, but all she felt was the fiery stream of her blood pumping through her body. Run.
Susan Craig’s voice, hotly whispering in her ear. “What is it, McKenzie? What do you see? What are you afraid of?”
Keep running. Don’t look back.
Joyce checked her watch. The limp salad she’d picked up from the fast food joint down the block had picked a corner of her stomach and was filling it like a lead cannonball. That was what she got for being good, uh-huh, and didn’t that make her madder than a wet hen, that and being stood up here at the morgue. She clicked a heel on the marble floor. She clutched a brown envelope with Graciela’s and Donnie’s records between her thumb and her purse. She had other places to go and then Mount Mercy. God help me, but I’ve got appointments with the living. I can’t do any good here. She was about to leave when someone plucked at her sleeve.
“Miss Tompkins?”
She whirled, surprising both herself and the attendant, a young college-type, glasses, narrow face, his black hair thatched on top of his head like some scruffy little bird. He blinked. “I’m sorry I’m late. We’ve been busy.” He paused. He wore a lab coat over his jeans and shirt, and sturdy jogging shoes, with the aquamarine paper protectors still over them. The lab coat was clean though spotted with old stains. “We’re not the murder capital yet, but we’re close. Very close.” He rubbed his palms on the coat nervously. “I’m Grady.”
Joyce briskly handed him the envelope. “You asked for records.”
“Oh, good.” He blinked again. “This will make it a little easier.” He turned. “Ah. Could you follow me?”
Joyce did so, wondering if it was his first viewing. It certainly wasn’t hers. Her ex-husband had been first. Over the years, two or three of the women she’d been an advocate for. Her staccato steps echoed in the building as they approached the elevator. He cleared his throat several times as he held the door for her.
Misinterpreting her look, he said, “This door is a killer. It closes fast, and it hurts. There’s supposed to be a safety on it so that if it closes on anything, after so many pounds of pressure, it pops back open. Don’t you believe it. It’s like a boa constrictor. We call it Crusher.”
She entered the elevator. “Grady, I’m not a novice at this, but I’d like to know what I’m expecting.”
The watery hazel eyes fluttered rapidly. “Oh. Ah, well, it’s not going to be pretty. I, ah, tried to arrange some sheets—and Vicks. I’ve got some Vicks you can put on your upper lip. The juvenile is a burn victim. It’s, ah, pretty gross.”
She looked at him, hoping for his sake that he would never face Attorney Robert Shapiro in an L.A. courtroom. “I don’t think I’ll need the Vicks, thank you. I’ll be quick.”
“Well, ah, with the dental records, we’ll know for sure, anyway.”
The elevator glided to a halt.
“Grady.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Have you been doing this long?”
“Ah, no. Two weeks.”
She nodded. And pointed. “It’s this way.”
He flushed. The stand-up ends of his dark hair seemed to reach even higher. “Um. Right.”
The viewing room felt good, momentarily, after the heat outside which was pushing 90, but it carried a smell with it that even the chill and the antiseptic cleaner couldn’t scrub away.
He said, “The young woman first. We’re pretty sure who she is, because of the fingerprints and the ID in the apartment the police gave us.”
“All right.” Joyce braced herself.
He carefully peeled back a corner of sheeting that she realized he must have arranged just as meticulously. She found herself staring into dull eyes, widened into a terrified expression. No one had even taken the time to close her eyes yet. She wondered if they were going to be able to later.
Blood stiffened and matted her hair, her beautiful hair, the hair that she had such skill with and which had led her into what Joyce had hoped would be a successful career for her. There were smears upon her face, and though she could not see her mouth or throat, Joyce could tell from the draping of the sheet that both yawned open in agony. She looked away.
“That is Graciela.”
“Thank you,” Grady murmured. He quickly reclosed the drawer.
She took a deep breath, telling herself that shedding tears for the dead did nobody any good. Her lungs seemed to fill with the odor of death in the viewing room. The smell worsened considerably as Grady pulled open a second drawer.
From the shape, she knew it had to be Donnie’s remains. She had a moment in which to regret not taking the Vicks when the young assistant pulled a corner of the sheet down. There was another second in which she recognized the boy despite the stench of burned flesh, and the hair torched from the scalp, for the upper face was almost clear.
She choked. Tried again. Faintly, “Yes, that’s him.” Joyce put a hand out to Grady, meaning to ask for the Vicks when a roaring in her ears took away her hearing, and then her vision narrowed down to pinpricks. Everything went dark.
She heard Grady squeak, “I’ll catch you.” Then the room caved in.
Chapter 31
Susan Craig watched her patient. Virtual reality did not hold its dreamers in the near-catatonic stasis of real sleep. With every flinch McKenzie Smith made, every gasping breath she took, Susan followed her through the world she’d programmed especially for Mac. She could on
ly guess what scenario she might be in at any given moment, but there were actions which tipped her off, things MacKenzie did, like warding her face unconsciously, which placed her within the VR theater.
Craig had put a blood pressure cuff lightly around McKenzie’s left arm. Every fifteen minutes or so, she took a reading. The girl’s heart rate fluctuated wildly as she reacted to the programming, but nothing had reached dangerous levels. After the Ibrahim Walker incident, Craig could not risk another. She needed the sponsorship of the hospital, for however long she could obtain it. The dosage of drugs had been so light, the girl had not even felt the needle prick when Craig had massaged her neck muscles to ready them. Their hallucinogenic dose even now raced through her body. The faster McKenzie’s heart beat, the quicker they spread, bringing her to the state Craig wanted. Vulnerable. Pliable.
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