Dewey was still there with me, though. Thoughts of her remained, along with the deep, deep regret I now felt that I hadn’t recognized the truth about Pilar before I spoke the idiotic words that Dewey had overheard.
Off to my left were spoil islands, and the rectangular green mountain of phosphate spoil that marked Gibsonton. I slowed to 40 mph and cut in close to an island furred with pine and a few scraggly cabbage palms, before slowing to idle near a section of white beach that looked like it might have a creek near shore.
I checked my watch: 7:25 P.M. on a Friday, early May.
A little more than a half an hour before sunset.
So should I run up Bullfrog Creek, get closer to the trailer park, and risk meeting Prax Lourdes coming out? Or should I assume he was already sitting somewhere near the Sunshine Skyway, waiting for me to arrive by car?
Meeting him, I decided, might not be such a bad thing.
I pushed the throttle forward, jumping my skiff onto plane, and headed for the creek.
THIRTY
Dr. Valerie Maria Santos remembered very little of what had happened late Thursday night, the night that she’d been abducted. The details failed to imprint on her brain because the perpetrator had nearly killed her accidentally, he was so freakishly strong, plus he knew almost nothing about administering ether as an anesthetic.
Dr. Valerie remembered being in Operating Room II-her favorite-and that she’d told the techs to play opera, loud.
That was standard. Dr. Valerie was well known for scheduling late surgeries-she was a night owl-and also for playing unusual music while she operated.
There was a brilliant thoracic surgeon in southwest Florida who required that AC/DC’s heavy metal rock be piped in through the surgical theater’s Bose speakers when he cut a chest. (Physicians who succeed in the esoteric fields of surgery are artists, after all, as well as technicians.) But Dr. Valerie’s musical selections-Peruvian flute, Cuban jazz, and now opera-were the favorite among the staff.
When Dr. Valerie operated-with her fast and gifted fingers, and with Bocelli’s “Our Prayer” echoing in the operating room-it was like attending church but at the same time watching a brilliant composer conduct her own symphony.
With opera as a backdrop, and charged with the sensation of playing accompanists to her solo genius, the nurses and techs, when finished, would sometimes leave the room and head to the lockers or lounge in tears. Dr. Valerie’s choice of music seemed an indicator of the famous woman’s intellect, as well as the empathy that the doctor invested in each and every patient.
The little woman really could perform magic, seemed to be able to make burned tissue rejoin itself and heal.
Lately, Dr. Valerie’s music of choice was exclusively opera. Almost always sung by Andrea Bocelli. But on Thursday night, the night she was abducted, her selection was Madama Butterfly -appropriate, considering not only what happened, but her own screwed-up romantic life.
She also remembered that the case was a skin transplant on a five-year-old who’d pulled a pot of boiling water off her mother’s stove. Dr. Valerie let her assistants do most of the close-needle work, which was increasingly common-spread the skills. It was a tiny patch of skin, and the little girl was going to be just fine.
Then the woman’s memory skipped, and she was downstairs in the female doctors’ locker room, standing at her locker, C-217, changing into her running clothes. Because it was a hot night and very late-close to midnight-she just wore shorts, a knit shirt, and a pair of well-worn New Balances.
She’d stopped in the doctors’ lounge-the business sections from half a dozen newspapers were spread everywhere; that’s all her colleagues seemed to read-and took a couple of bites from an apple, then chugged a bottle of water before heading out the hospital’s rear exit, past the little rose garden.
She’d dreaded going home. For years, she’d disliked spending time alone with her husband, Edward. But in the last few weeks, it was worse than ever because, she felt certain, he had finally found out about her two-year affair with a local nurse anesthetist.
Sooner or later, the man would confront her. It was inevitable. And when he did, Dr. Valerie had already decided, she was going to tell him the truth. Which meant divorce, and also meant headlines in the rag newspapers.
Ed had been staying up later than usual, sullen and moping, spoiling for a fight. She felt that Thursday might be the night.
That’s all she remembered until she was standing at the electronic gate outside their home. She had a good sweat going, was running in place as she typed in the combination, when from behind her, she heard a man’s deep voice say, “Dr. Valerie? Do you have time for a patient?”
She’d turned to see a huge man wearing a hospital gown, his face wrapped in gauze. There was the strong odor of ether on him.
“Do I know you?”
“Kinda. We’ve written some e-mails back and forth. Say-do you know anything about a skin condition called trig-eee-minal neur-al-gia? That’s a fuckin’ hard word to say.”
She remembered feeling a chill at the inappropriateness of his language; remembered backing away, but the damn gate was still locked.
“Yes,” she said, “I know about trigeminal neuralgia. It’s terrible. The pain can be even worse than the original burn. But I don’t discuss medicine away from my office. I’m sorry.”
She’d turned sideways and was trying to punch in the gate combination while still keeping an eye on the big man.
“What about those new anticonvulsion drugs? Someone told me they might work. Might take away some of the pain.”
The doctor’s steady hands were shaking. She couldn’t get the combination right!
“Yes, that’s true with the anticonvulsives. We’ve been getting excellent results. I’m very interested in your case, but I’ve got to go now. Call me at the office. We’ll talk about it.”
She heard the man say, “I’ll be damned. The fuckin’ boy is right again!”
Because she loved children, she asked without even thinking about it, “What boy is that?”
The big man said, “The boy. The kid I wrote you about in the plane crash deal. The kid who’s gonna be my donor.” Talking as he stepped toward her, he lifted her as if she were no heavier than a pillow, the stink of ether suddenly overwhelming.
There were then a few blurry memories of lying on the bottom of a fast, open boat… and then of being sealed tight in darkness; cramped in a space no larger than a coffin… or a 50-gallon drum.
Terror.
Dr. Valerie Maria Santos remembered that.
If she hadn’t been wearing her digital cross-trainer’s watch, the one with the heart monitor, the famous plastic surgeon wouldn’t have known that it was Friday morning close to noon when she awoke. She was in a steel room that was painted gray. There was the muffled rumble of an engine, and the room was rocking gently.
She was on a ship.
She lay on a cot, her arms and legs bound with duct tape. Fortunately, whoever had abducted her hadn’t also gagged her.
There was vomit on the cot, and on the floor of the boat.
The doctor was thirstier than she could ever remember being.
She called out weakly, “Hello? Can someone help me? I need help. Please.”
She called out a few more times over the next ten minutes before she heard a clanking at the door, and a hugely fat blond woman stepped into the room. The woman was wearing a baggy T-shirt, sweatstains at the armpits, and smoking a cigarette. Without taking the cigarette from her mouth, the woman shook a warning finger as she said, “You fancy little bitch, if you open your mouth one more time, make the slightest fucking sound or fuss, I’ll stick you back in that can and dump your ass overboard! I ’bout busted my ass getting that fancy microscope of yours into sick bay, so I ain’t in the mood to take your shit!”