Fever Dream (52 page)

As they moved her from the stretcher onto a surgical bed, June Brodie turned to the little man in white. “Intubate her,” she
said sharply. “Orotracheal. And oxygen.”

The man leapt into action, passing a tube into Hayward’s mouth and delivering oxygen, both of them working with a swift economy
of action that clearly attested to years of experience.

“What happened?” she asked Pendergast as she cut away a mud-heavy sleeve with a pair of medical scissors.

“Gunshot wound and alligator bite.”

June Brodie nodded, then listened to Hayward’s pulse and took her blood pressure, examining the pupils with a light. The movements
were practiced and highly professional. “Hang a bag of dextran,” she told the man in scrub whites, “and run a 14g IV.”

While he worked, she readied a needle and took a blood sample, filling a syringe and transferring it to vacuum tubes. She
plucked a scalpel from a nearby sterile tray and, with several deft cuts, removed the rest of the pant leg.

“Irrigation.”

The man handed her a large saline-filled syringe, and she washed the mud and filth away, plucking off numerous leeches as
she did so and tossing everything into a red-bag disposer. Injecting a local around the ugly lacerations and the bullet wound,
she worked diligently but calmly, cleaning everything with saline and antiseptic. Lastly, she administered an antibiotic and
dressed the wound.

She looked up at Pendergast. “She’ll be fine.”

As if on cue, Hayward’s eyes opened and she made a sound in the endotracheal tube. She shifted on the surgical bed, raised
a hand, and gestured at the tube.

After briefly examining her, June ordered the tube removed. “I felt it was better to be safe than sorry,” she said.

Hayward swallowed painfully, then looked around, her eyes coming into focus. “What’s going on?”

“You’ve been saved by a ghost,” said Pendergast. “The ghost of June Brodie.”

H
AYWARD LOOKED AT THE VAGUE FIGURES IN
turn, then tried to sit up. Her head was still swimming.

“Allow me.” Brodie reached over and raised the backrest of the surgical bed. “You were in light shock,” she said. “But you’ll
soon be back to normal. Or as close as possible, given the conditions.”

“My leg…”

“No permanent damage. A flesh wound and a nasty bite from a gator. I’ve numbed it with a local, but when that wears off it’s
going to hurt. You’re going to need a further series of antibiotic injections, too—lots of unpleasant bacteria live in an
alligator’s mouth. How do you feel?”

“Out of it,” said Hayward, sitting up. “What is this place?” She peered at June. “June… June Brodie?” She looked around. What
kind of hunting camp would contain a place like this—an emergency room with state-of-the-art equipment? And yet it was like
no emergency room she had ever seen. The lighting was too dim, and except for the medical equipment the space was utterly
bare: no books, paintings, posters, even chairs.

She swallowed and shook her head, trying to clear it. “Why did you fake your suicide?”

Brodie stepped back and gazed at her. “I imagine you must be the two officers investigating Longitude Pharmaceuticals. Captain
Hayward of the NYPD and Special Agent Pendergast of the FBI.”

“We are,” said Pendergast. “I’d show you my badge, but I fear the swamp has claimed it.”

“That won’t be necessary,” she said coolly. “Perhaps I shouldn’t answer any questions until I call an attorney.”

Pendergast gave her a long, steady look. “I am not in any mood for obstructionism,” he said in a low, menacing voice. “You
will
answer any questions I put to you, attorney and Miranda be damned.” He turned to the man in surgical whites. “Stand over
there next to her.”

The short man hastily complied.

“Is that the patient?” Pendergast asked Brodie. “The one you mentioned earlier?”

She shook her head. “Is this any way to treat us, after we helped your partner?”

“Don’t irritate me.”

Brodie fell silent.

Pendergast looked at her, a terrible expression on his face. His Les Baer still hung ominously by his side. “You will answer
my questions completely, starting now. Understood?”

The woman nodded.

“Now: why this extensive medical setup? Who is your ‘patient’?”

“I am the patient,” came a cracked, whispery voice, to the accompaniment of a door opening in the far wall. “All this largesse
is for me.” A figure stood in the darkness outside the door, tall and still and gaunt, a scarecrow silhouette barely visible
in the darkness beyond the emergency room. He laughed: a papery laugh, more breath than anything else. After a moment the
shadow stepped very slowly from the darkness into the half-light and raised his voice only slightly.

“Here’s Charles J. Slade!”

J
UDSON ESTERHAZY HAD GUNNED THE 250
Merc and aimed the bass boat south, accelerating to a dangerous speed down the old logging pullboat channel. With a supreme
effort of will, he drew back a little on the throttle, quieted the turmoil in his mind. There was no question it had been
time to cut his losses and run. He had left Pendergast and the injured woman back in the swamp, without a boat, a mile from
Spanish Island. Whether they made it there or not was not his most pressing concern; he was safe and it was time to beat a
strategic retreat. He would have to act decisively, and soon, but for now the wise course was to go to ground, lick his wounds—and
reemerge refreshed and stronger.

Yet somehow he felt uncomfortably certain Pendergast would reach Spanish Island. And—even given all that had happened between
him and its occupant—he was finding it hard to leave Slade behind, and unprotected; harder, so much harder, than he’d steeled
himself to ever expect.

In a curious way, deep down, he had known this would be the result as soon as Pendergast had shown up in Savannah with his
accursed revelation. The man was preternatural. Twelve years of meticulous deception, blown up in a matter of two weeks. All
because one barrel of a bloody rifle had not been cleaned. Unbelievable how
such a small oversight could lead to such enormous
consequences. And he hadn’t helped matters any, blurting out about Audubon and New Madrid in his surprise at seeing Pendergast.

At least, Esterhazy thought, he had not made the mistake of underestimating the man… as so many others had done, to their
great sorrow. Pendergast had no idea of his involvement. Nor did he know of the trump card he held in reserve. Those secrets
Judson knew—without the slightest doubt—Slade would take with him, to the grave or elsewhere.

The night air breezed by his boat, the stars shimmered in the sky above, the trees stood blackly against the moonlit sky.
The pullboat channel narrowed and grew shallow. Esterhazy began to calm further. There was always the possibility—a distinct
one—Pendergast and the woman would die in the swamp before making it to the camp. After all, the woman had taken one of his
rounds. She could easily be bleeding to death. Even if the wound wasn’t immediately fatal, it would be sheer hell dragging
her through that last section of swamp, infested with alligators and water moccasins, the water thick with leeches, the air
choking with mosquitoes.

He slowed as the boat came to the silted-over end of the channel. Esterhazy shut off the engine, swiveled it up out of the
water, and began poling. The very mosquitoes he had just been thinking about now arrived in swarms, clustering about his head
and landing on his neck and ears. He slapped and cursed.

The silty channel divided, and he poled into the left one; he knew the swamp well. He continued, checking the fish finder
to monitor the depth of the water. The moon was now high in the sky, and the swamp was almost as clear as day. Midnight: six
hours to dawn.

He tried to imagine the scene at Spanish Island when they arrived, but it was depressing and frustrating. He spat into the
water and put it out of his head. It didn’t concern him anymore. Ventura had allowed himself to be captured by Hayward, the
damn fool, but he’d said nothing before Judson put a bullet through his brain. Blackletter was dead; all those who could connect
him to Project Aves were dead. There was no way to put the Project Aves genii back in the bottle. If Pendergast lived, it
would all come out,
they
might ultimately get wind of it, there was no help for that; but what was now critical was erasing his own role from it.

The events of the past week had made one thing crystal clear: Pendergast would figure it out. It was only a matter of time.
That meant even Judson’s own carefully concealed role would come to light. And because of that, Pendergast had to die.

But this time, the man would die on Esterhazy’s terms, in his own good time, and when the FBI agent least expected it. Because
Esterhazy retained one critical advantage: the advantage of surprise. The man was not invulnerable, and Esterhazy knew now
exactly where his weakness lay and how to exploit it. Stupid of him not to have seen it before. A plan began to form in his
mind. Simple, clean, effective.

The channel deepened enough to drop his engine. He lowered it and fired up, motoring slowly through the channels, working
his way westward, constantly monitoring the depth below the keel. He would be at the Mississippi well before dawn; he could
scuttle the boat in some backwater bayou and emerge from the swamp a new man. A line from
The Art of War
surfaced in his mind, unbidden:

Forestall your opponent by seizing what he holds dear, and contrive to strike him at the time and on the ground of your choosing
.

So perfectly apposite to his situation.

T
HE SPECTER THAT PRESENTED ITSELF IN THE
doorway froze Hayward with shock. The man was at least six and a half feet tall, gaunt, his face hollow with sunken cheeks,
his dark eyes large and liquid under heavy brows, chin and neck bristling with half-shaven swipes of bristle. His hair was
long and white, brushed back, curling behind the ears and tumbling to his shoulders. He wore a charcoal-gray Brooks Brothers
suit jacket pulled over a hospital gown, and he carried a short stock-whip in one hand. With the other he wheeled an IV rack,
which doubled as a kind of support.

It seemed to Hayward that he had almost materialized out of thin air, so quiet and stealthy had been his approach. His eyes—so
bloodshot, they looked almost purple—didn’t dart around the room as one would expect from a lunatic; rather, they moved very
slowly from one person to the other, staring at—almost through—everyone in turn. When his eyes reached her, he winced visibly
and closed his eyes.

“No, no, no,” he murmured, his voice as whispery as the wind.

Turning away, June Brodie retrieved a spare lab coat and draped it over Larry’s muddy shirt. “No bright colors,” she whispered
to Hayward. “Keep your movements slow.”

Sluggishly, Slade opened his eyes again. The look of pain eased
somewhat. Releasing his hold on the rack, he slowly raised
a large, massively veined hand in a gesture of almost biblical gravitas. The hand unfolded, the long fingers shaking slightly,
the index finger pointing at Pendergast. The huge dark eyes rested on the FBI agent. “You’re the man looking to find out who
killed his wife.” His voice was thin as rice paper, and yet it somehow projected an arrogant self-assurance.