Life Support (39 page)

"So obsessed, Dr. Harper. Too busy worrying about a few old men.

You didn't even notice what was going on in your own home." She slapped the tape over Toby's mouth and said, in mock disgust, "And you call yourself a good daughter."

Bitch, thought Toby. You murdering bitch.

Jane clucked as she peeled off a second strip of tape. "I didn't want to hurt your mother. I was only there to keep an eye on you. Find out how far you were pushing it. But then Robbie Brace called your house that night, and everything got completely out of hand . . ." She slapped a second strip of tape over Toby's mouth. "Then it was too late for you to have an accident. Too late to shut you up. People are so willing to believe the dead." She tore off a final piece of tape and pressed it across Toby's face, ear to ear. "But will they believe a woman who'd hurt her own mother? I don't think so." She gazed down at Toby for a moment, as though evaluating her handiwork. In the van's semidarkness, cut only by the occasional gleam of passing headlights, Jane's eyes seemed to take on a glow of their own. How many times had Ellen awakened to find those same eyes staring down at her? I should have known. I should have sensed the evil in my home.

The van made an abrupt turn, and Jane reached out to steady herself.

No, her name is not Jane, thought Toby with sudden comprehension. Her name is Monica Trammell. Wallenberg's associate at the Rosslyn Institute.

The van swayed as it moved down a winding drive. The pavement gave way to the unevenness of a dirt road, and Toby could feel the old man's corpse bouncing against her, his flesh clapping against hers. They braked to a stop, and the side door slid open.

A man stood silhouetted against the moonless sky. "Gideon's not here yet," the man said. It was Carl Wallenberg's voice.

The woman climbed out of the van. "He has to be here for this. We all have to be here."

"The patient needed stabilizing. Gideon's staying with him."

"We can't do this without him. This time the responsibility has to be shared, Carl. All of us equally. Richard and I have done too much already."

"I don't want to do this."

"You have to. Is the hole dug?"

The answer came out a sigh, "Yes."

"Then let's finish it." The woman turned to the driver, who'd already climbed out of the van. "Get them out, Richard."

The driver grabbed Toby's bound feet and dragged her halfway out. As Wallenberg took hold of her shoulders, Toby squirmed.

He almost dropped her. "Jesus Christ! She's still alive.

"Just move her," said Monica.

"My God, do we have to to it this way?"

"I didn't bring the syringes. This way is bloodless. I don't want any evidence splattered around."

Wallenberg took a few deep breaths, then once again grasped Toby's shoulders. The two men swung her from the van and carried her through the night. At first Toby had no idea where they were bringing her. She knew only that the ground was uneven, that the men were having trouble navigating in the darkness. She caught glimpses of Richard Trammell's head, his hair white-blond under the moonlight, then she saw sky and the shadow of a construction crane arching across the field of stars.

Turning her head, she noticed lights shining through the filter of a fence, and she recognized the building in the distance, the Brant Hill nursing facility. They were carrying her into the foundation pit of another new building.

Wallenberg stumbled and lost his grip on Toby's shoulders. She fell, her head thudding to the dirt so hard it slammed her jaws together . Pain sliced her tongue, and she tasted blood, felt it pooling in her mouth.

"Jesus," Wallenberg muttered.

"Carl," said Monica, her voice flat and metallic. "Just get it over with."

"Fuck this. You do it!"

"No, it's your turn. This time your hands get dirty. And Gideon does too. Now finish it."

Wallenberg took a deep breath. Once again Toby was lifted and carried, squirming, into the pit. The two men came to a stop. Toby looked straight up into Wallenberg's face, but she could not see his expression against the moonlit sky. She saw only a dark oval, a fluttering of windblown hair as he swung her sideways, then released her.

Though she'd steeled herself for the landing, the sudden impact slammed the breath from her lungs. For a moment she saw only blackness.

Gradually her vision returned. She saw a bowl of stars suspended above her and realized she was lying at the bottom of a hole. A sprinkling of dirt tumbled in from the side, stinging her eyes. She jerked her head sideways and felt gravel against her cheek.

The two men walked away. Now, she thought. My one and only chance. She fought to free herself, twisting one way, then another, dirt spilling on top of her as she thrashed against the wall of the pit. No good, her wrists and ankles were too tightly bound, and her struggles only resulted in making her hands numb. But one corner of the tape had begun to peel off her cheek. She rubbed her face against the gravel, scraping her skin raw as more of the tape lifted away.

Ilurry. Hurry.

She was coughing and choking on clouds of dust. Another inch of tape peeled off, freeing her lips. She took a breath and screamed.

A figure appeared above the pit, staring down at her. "No one can hear you," said Monica. "It's quite a deep hole. Tomorrow it'll be gone, smoothed over. Tomorrow they pour the gravel. Then the foundation." She turned as the men reappeared, carrying one of the corpses. They threw it in, and it landed beside Toby, the man's head thudding against her shoulder. She recoiled against the far side of the pit, and fresh dirt sprinkled onto her face.

So this is how it ends. Three skeletons in a hole. A concrete slab to seal us in.

The men left to get the second corpse.

Again Toby screamed for help, but her voice seemed lost in that deep pit.

Monica crouched at the side of the hole, staring down. "It's a cold night. Everyone's closed their windows. They can't hear a thing, you know."

Toby screamed again.

Monica dropped a handful of dirt on her face. Coughing, Toby twisted sideways and found herself staring at the corpse. Monica was right. No one was listening, no one would hear her.

The men returned, both breathing heavily from exertion. They threw the last body into the pit.

It landed on top of Toby, the shroud flapping across her face, covering it. She could barely move under the weight of the corpse, but she could hear voices above her, and the sound of a shovel scraping through dirt.

The first scoop of soil fell into the pit. It landed on Toby's legs.

She tried to shake it off, but then another shovelful fell, and another.

"Wait for Gideon," said Monica. "He has to be part of this."

"He'll be here to finish up. Let's just get it over with," said her husband. He grunted, and a fresh load of dirt fell onto the top corpse, soil trickling onto Toby's hair. Again she tried to move under the corpse's weight. The shroud slipped down, uncovering her eyes. She stared straight up at the three figures standing around the pit. They seemed to sense that she was watching them, and they fell momentarily silent.

Monica said, "All right. Fill it in now."

Toby cried out, "No!" but her voice was muffled by the fabric. By the weight of the corpse.

Dirt tumbled down. She blinked against the sting of grit. Another shovel of earth fell onto her hair, then more dirt, rivers of it spilling around her body, covering her limbs. She struggled to move, but the corpse, and the steadily falling soil, trapped her in place. She heard her own heartbeat roaring in her ears, heard gasps of air rushing through her lungs. She caught one final glimpse of stars as she burrowed her face under the cover of the shroud.

Then her head was buried, and she saw no light at all.

It was his turn to wield the shovel.

Carl Wallenberg's hands were shaking as he gripped the handle and scooped up the first bladeful of earth. He paused at the edge of the pit, staring down into its darkness, thinking about the woman, still alive. Heart still beating, blood still pumping. A million neurons firing off in the panicked throes of death. Beneath that blanket of soil, she was dying.

He threw his load of dirt into the pit and scooped up another. He heard Monica's murmur of approval, and silently he cursed her for forcing him into this appalling act. This was the last evidence to be disposed of, the last two corpses to be covered up from an experiment gone horrifyingly wrong.

We should have been more careful with the donors. We should have screened the fetal materialfor more than just bacteria and viruses. We never considered the possibility of prions.

But Yarborough had been in a rush to implant the cells. The tissue had to be fresh, he'd insisted. The cell suspensions had to be implanted within seven days of harvest or they would not survive in the brains of the new hosts. They would not colonize. And then there'd been that long waiting list of eager recipients, three dozen men and women who'd paid their deposits, who were clamoring for their second chance at youth. Risk free, they'd been assured. And it was, in truth, a benign procedure, a local anesthetic, the X-ray guided injection of fetal pituitary cells into the brain, and weeks later, the slow rejuvenation of the master gland. He and Gideon had done it dozens of times, without complications, right up until Rosslyn had shut down the project on moral grounds. If not for the necessity of using aborted human fetuses, the procedure would have been hailed as a medical breakthrough. A fountain of youth, distilled from the brains of the unborn and unwanted.

A breakthrough, yes. But one that would be forever shunned because of the politics.

He paused, breathing hard, his sweat already chilling his skin. The hole was nearly filled. By now the woman's lungs would be choking with dust, her brain cells starved of oxygen. The heart pumping its last desperate beats. He disliked Toby Harper, he agreed she needed to be silenced, but he wished her a merciful death, one that would not haunt him in the years to come.

He had never intended to kill anyone.

A few fetuses had been sacrificed, true, but only at the beginning. Now they were using cloned tissue, scarcely human at all, implanted and nurtured in wombs. He did not feel guilty about the tissue's source.

Neither did his patients feel any qualms, they simply wanted it, and they were willing to pay for it. As long as Brant Hill knew nothing about it, his work would go on, and the private flow of money would continue.

But then Mackie had died, followed by the others. Now it wasn't just the money he could lose, it was his position, his reputation. His future.

Is it worth commiSng murderfor?

Even as he continued to shovel dirt into the rapidly filling hole, he was painfully aware that the woman below was dying. But then, we are all dying. Some of us more horribly than others.

He set the shovel down. He was going to be sick.

"More dirt. Make it level," said Monica. "It has to blend in. We can't have the construction crew noticing."

"You do it." He thrust the shovel toward her. "I've done enough."

She took the shovel and studied him for a moment. "Yes, I suppose you have," she finally said. "And now you're in just as deep as Richard and me." She paused, her shoe on the shovel, and prepared to scoop up another bladeful of soil.

"There's Yarborough," said Richard.

Wallenberg turned and saw headlights approaching. Yarborough's black Lincoln bounced onto the dirt road and braked to a stop at the construction fence. The driver's door opened and slammed shut again.

A bright light came on, its beam flooding the construction pit.

Wallenberg stumbled backward, shielding his eyes from the sudden glare.

He heard the frantic grinding of other tires over gravel, then heard two more cars doors slam shut, and the sound of running footsteps.

He squinted as the silhouettes suddenly appeared before the floodlights. Not Yarborough, he thought. Who are you?

Two men walked toward them.

Fresh air flooded her lungs, so cold it scared her throat. She gasped in another breath, and another, wheezing in air between coughs.

Something was pressed against her face, and she fought to escape it, thrashing out at the hands trapping her head. She heard voices, too many voices to keep track of, all of them taLking at once.

"Get that oxygen back on her!"

"She's fighting�"

"Hey, I need a pair of hands here! I can't get the IV in."

She twisted, clawing blindly. There was a light shining in the distance, and she fought to tear her way through the darkness, to reach the light before it vanished. But her arms felt paralyzed, something was pressing them down. The air she breathed in smelled of rubber.

"Toby�stop fighting us!" She felt a hand grasp hers as though to drag her from the darkness.

A black curtain suddenly seemed to tear apart before her eyes and she surfaced into a stream of light. She saw faces staring down at her. Saw more lights now, blue and red, dancing in a circle. Beautiful, she thought. The colors�so very beautiful. Static crackled in the night. A police radio.

, "Doc, you'd better come and see this," one of the cops said.

Dvorak didn't respond, his gaze was focused on the ambulance, taillights shuddering as the vehicle drove up the dirt road, bearing Toby to Springer Hospital. She should not be alone tonight, he thought.

I should be with her, it's where I want to be. Where I want to stay.

He turned to the cop and realized his legs were not quite steady, that in fact he was still shaking. The night had taken on a crazy neon quality. All the cruisers, all the lights. And there were onlookers gathered outside the construction fence�the expected crime scene groupies, but this was an older crowd, residents of Brant Hill who'd heard the multiple sirens and, curious, had wandered out into the night still dressed in their bathrobes. They stood in a solemn line, staring through the mesh of the fence into the foundation pit, where the two bodies had been uncovered and now lay exposed on the dirt.

"Detective Sheehan's waiting for you up there," the cop said. "He's the only one who's touched it."