“Well, then I’m glad I did it.”
Into the living room.
To the window.
I studied the neighborhood. “I saw the newspaper articles in the bedroom.”
He said nothing.
No unfamiliar cars. No one sitting in the parked cars on the street.
No movement behind the bushes next door, no fluttering curtains in the neighbors’ homes. “Why did you circle my face?” I said.
“I admire you.”
Speech is individualized by vowels, pronunciation, and the suprasegmental phonemes of pitch, stress, and juncture, so as I listened to each of his sentences I tried to catch a sense of John’s pauses, inflection, intonation, cadence, but didn’t notice anything distinctive.
I ignored his comment about admiring me. “We were able to get Bennett out of the barn in time.” As I spoke, I finished checking the house room by room. “Saved Kelsey too. You’re getting sloppy, and I’m coming for you.”
Rather than argue with me, he said, “I wanted to tell you that I’m veering slightly from the text for this next story.”
“Veering?”
As we spoke, I looked in the garage. In the car. Under it.
“Updating,” he said. “Boccaccio wasn’t as politically correct in his collection of tales as today’s audiences would demand. So I’m adapting it to better reflect the diversity of our culture.”
I had no idea what that meant, but I would remember it. I would use it.
Then he added, “Have you figured out how I’m choosing the victims yet?”
I suspected he’d call my bluff if I tried one, so I was straight with him. “Not yet.” I went to the back door of the house, looked into the yard. Clear. “But I will.”
“That would really be the key here, I think. The only way to stop me is to get out ahead of me.”
“I can think of a few other ways.”
A slight pause. “I would congratulate you on rescuing Kelsey, but let’s be honest-that was a fluke. You stumbled onto her by accident.”
“You fled south down the cliffs, didn’t you? Then probably west along that old mining road skirting the national forest. Did you grow up in the area, John? Is that how you know it so well?”
Another pause, and I had a feeling I’d nailed it.
“Remember,” he said, “Kelsey was supposed to die of grief, not hypothermia.”
Check on her, Pat. He’s going after her.
Yes, I would check on her-both her and Bennett-as soon as I was off the phone.
He continued, “And after what she went through Friday night in the morgue-all that time in the freezer with those cadavers-I think there’s a good chance she’ll die of grief after all, and the story will play out like it’s supposed to.”
His words “The story will play out like it’s supposed to” troubled me.
Remember, Pat? He was prepared in the barn. He was ready for you.
If I was reading things right, Thomas Bennett was in grave danger. “Why did you wait so long before opening the door to the cage, John?”
“Ah yes. Gabriotto’s nightmare.”
It was a dream.
It was all a dream.
John went on, “What does he really die of, Patrick?”
No, please.
I grabbed the car keys from the kitchen counter.
“You know, don’t you? It isn’t the greyhound that kills him.”
Get to the hospital. Now.
I flew toward the front door but immediately realized that if John knew my phone number he might know where I lived. I couldn’t leave Tessa here alone. I ran back to her room.
“You’ll need to be calling the hospital now, I suppose,” John said. “To check on Thomas. We’ll talk again. I’m moving up the timetable. Dusk arrives tomorrow, just like it did in London.”
Then he ended the call.
My heart jackhammered.
As I turned on Tessa’s desk lamp, I flipped through my mental catalog of phone numbers. Found Baptist Memorial’s. Punched it in.
It rang, no one answered.
I patted Tessa’s shoulder firmly enough to wake her up, but she groaned and wrapped a pillow around her head.
The phone continued to ring.
Come on. Pick up.
Since I wasn’t on a mobile phone, I couldn’t take the receiver with me in the car. I had to wait in the house for them to answer.
Pick up!
Finally, a receptionist answered, “Hello, Baptist-”
“This is Special Agent Patrick Bowers with the FBI. I need you to send a doctor to check on Thomas Bennett-I don’t know his room number-”
“Sir, I can’t just-”
“And get a doctor to Kelsey Nash in 228. And security to both rooms. Do it!”
A slight hesitancy in the woman’s voice, but she agreed. “Yes, sir.”
I gave her my federal ID number, then tossed the phone onto Tessa’s desk. Shook her again. “Tessa.”
She moaned. “Turn off the lights.”
“You have to come with me. We have to hurry.”
“What are you talking-”
I clutched her arm, and I think I might have scared her because she stopped mumbling, blinked her eyes open, and stared at me. “What’s going on?”
“I need to check on someone at the hospital and I can’t leave you here.”
“Why not?”
Because it might be a trick to get me to leave you alone.
“It’s important. You can drive to my parents’ house afterward. Now, come on.”
She glanced at the bedsheets covering her. “I’m in my pajamas.”
“Grab some clothes. Be quick.” My tone of voice convinced her, and she crawled out of bed. “Where’s your cell?” I asked.
She pointed to the purse on her desk.
I fished out her phone, and while she gathered some clothes I left a voice message for Kurt to get to Bennett’s room ASAP.
“Go in the hall,” she said. “I gotta change.”
“You can change on the way.”
“Um, that would be a no.”
“We’re leaving.” And before she could argue with me anymore, I hustled her to the car.
And I did not drive the legal speed limit on the way to the hospital, but I had a sinking feeling that no matter how fast I drove, I would arrive too late.
66
The doctors didn’t get to Thomas Bennett in time.
The officer who’d been stationed at the door gave me the news as I pushed past him and burst into his hospital room. Denver’s chief medical examiner, Dr. Eric Bender, who was also the father of Tessa’s friend Dora, stood at the foot of the bed where Thomas Bennett’s body lay. I didn’t recognize the doctor and nurse who stood beside him.
“Pat, I was just going to call you,” Eric said somberly.
I walked to Thomas’s bed. His chest was motionless. His face contorted. It looked like he had died in agony. His eyes were closed. His body, still.
So still.
I felt a rising sting of failure, defeat. Somehow John had gotten to him. How? How!
“Was it his heart?” I asked.
Eric nodded. “Pericardial effusion with necrotizing fasciitis.”
I knew that “pericardial” had to do with the heart, and that an effusion was a release of fluid in the body. I didn’t know what necrotizing fasciitis was. “In layman’s terms.”
“Right. Sorry.” He shook his head as if to rebuke himself. “Necrotizing fasciitis is sometimes called ‘flesh-eating strep.’ It’s an infection. Very dangerous. Spreads rapidly. It looks like someone injected the bacteria into the sac that surrounds his heart.”
“The pericardium,” I said.
“That’s right. It’s not that difficult of a procedure; you just need a long needle, insert it under the xyphoid notch-”
“Early this morning he complained of chest pains,” the other doctor interrupted. “We did an EKG, then an ultrasound, and found fluid and air in the pericardium.”
“Necrotizing fasciitis can only be treated by removing the infected tissue,” Eric explained. “But since it was his heart…” He didn’t need to go on.
I thought about Boccaccio’s story, Gabriotto’s death.
“So basically it was pus, right?” I said. “He died of pus infecting his heart?”
Both doctors and the nurse were quiet for a moment, then Eric said, “That would be an accurate description of what happened.”