Second Opinion (14 page)

CHAPTER 24

Before heading out to Wellesley, Thea took the tunnels back to the step-down unit. Visitors' hours were over, and the hospital, like a beast with a thousand hearts, was stretching and yawning, settling into the night. The SDU seemed quiet, but Thea was disturbed that there were no security people on watch, and no private-duty nurses tending to her father.

He looked peaceful enough, lying there by his ventilator, but Thea couldn't help but wonder if the two of them had communicated for the last time.

'Dad?' she whispered. 'Dad, it's me.'

The monitor overhead continued to record a pattern of stability, which it then transmitted to the nurses' station. Thea removed the paper tape from Petros's eyes and inserted the lubricating drops. Melancholy had rarely been an emotion that was a part of her, but she had talked about the feeling from time to time with her neurotypical friends. At the moment, there was a heaviness in her chest and a fullness in her throat that felt foreign and strange, and that she suspected might represent melancholy.

So much was confusing to her. So little of what was swirling about her father made sense.

'Dad, it's Thea. Move your eyes if you can hear me. Just look up.'

The Lion's dark eyes stared ahead, fixed on a spot somewhere on the ceiling. 'Dad, what's going on? Please tell me what's happening?'

It was only then that she recalled the slight change in his pupils. They were smaller than they had been—not quite the pinpoint pupils of a narcotics overdose or certain brain stem disasters, but headed in that direction. She made a mental note to call the finding to the nurse's attention, and to review his meds and the reports on his hourly neuro checks, which would include pupil size and reactivity.

The unpleasant fullness in her chest intensified.

Melancholy.

Maybe she shouldn't have been so quick to turn down Hayley's offer of help from Sean Flowers. Her father's tenuous, spiderweb connection with the world seemed to have snapped. Was this the natural progression of his brain injury? If not, who did this to him? Who was responsible? What did Jack Kalishar have to do with anything? What was she willing to do, what principles was she willing to sacrifice to get to the bottom of things?

'Please. If you can hear me, Dad, let me know. Move your eyes.'

Thea blinked back a sudden rush of tears. Things might have been better if Niko had never been able to reach her in the Congo. This was going to be a nightmare. No, no. It was a nightmare already.

Replacing the paper tape, Thea bent forward and kissed her father on the forehead. He wasn't going to wake up again. She felt it in the deepest part of her. If this was melancholy she was experiencing, she wanted no part of it. She stopped by the nurses' station and was allowed to review her father's medications. None of them could have caused his pupillary constriction. Perhaps it was time for another MRI, or at least a recheck by the neurologist.

What difference does it make?
Thea found herself thinking as she cut through the deserted lobby of the Sperelakis Institute and out into the parking lot where she had left Petros's Volvo.

What difference does any of it make?

The lighting in the lot wasn't the best, but there were still a number of cars. It would be good to spend a little time with Dimitri, who had left her a note that he would be up late as usual.

Thea fumbled through her purse for her keys and opened the lock with the remote. At the instant she was about to open the driver's side door, she became aware of movement behind her, but there was no time to react. A plastic bag was pulled over her head and a drawstring at its mouth was tightened around her neck. At the same instant, she was slammed against the Volvo, a man's full weight pressing against her from behind.

Driven by a rush of adrenaline, she clawed at the bag and at her attacker, but she had no leverage. The cord securing the heavy plastic seemed made for that purpose. In fact, she realized as she struggled, the cord was knotted or held with a clamp, and both of the man's gloved hands were free. She wasn't being strangled, but there was little space in the bag—no more than a couple of minutes' worth of air, she guessed. The choking sensation and the smothering black plastic were terrifying.

Thea tried with only minimal success to force herself not to panic, and to analyze her situation.

For fully half a minute, she was totally helpless, pressed against the car, her hands held tightly at her sides, the hardness of the man's groin jammed into the small of her back. If he was going to rape her, he certainly didn't seem frantic about getting on with it. If he was intent on killing her, her larynx would already have been crushed, or her neck snapped. If he wanted her to slowly asphyxiate to death, he was well on his way to succeeding.

Was there anything she could do to stop him?

'Please, no!' she screamed, but the sound was lost in the bag. 'No!'

She kicked backward, but her one connection with his shin was feeble.

The erection expanding against her low back might be a target, but how could she get at it? The air was beginning to feel heavy. She had to slow down. Breathe slower.

Think
… Think.

Not letting up the pressure holding her face and chest against the car, the attacker pushed her down to her knees.

If he tried forcing her to give him oral sex, she thought immediately, he was going to be in for a most pleasant surprise—for about one second. Then the
real
surprise would come.

Still holding her fast on her knees, he knelt, setting one of his knees between hers. Then, still holding her arms against her sides, he leaned close to her ear and spoke, his voice a menacing, harsh whisper.

'Okay. Listen and listen good. I could kill you right here and right now. I can kill you anytime I want to. You have been meddling in things that are none of your business. Continue to do it, and you're dead. And while you're dying, you'll wish I had used this bag. I promise you that. Now, just lay off anything to do with the man in the hospital, and go back to where you came from.'

'But—'

'Shut up! Lie down on your face!… Okay. Now, if I so much as see you twitch in the next minute, I'm going to come back here and stamp on your neck. Is that clear? Just nod if it is. Okay. And if I learn you've spoken to the police about this conversation—and I assure you I will—that's it. I'll find you, and I'll kill you.'

Thea, her pulse hammering at the viciousness of the man's words and tone, felt his pressure on her body let up, then vanish.

Soft footsteps moved slowly away, then there was silence. She lay there, prone on the pavement, for as long as she could comfortably breathe. Finally, she reached behind her neck and slid open the clasp that had been holding the narrow drawstring in place, and pulled the bag off her head.

It was another two minutes before she risked pushing up to her knees. There was no sight of the man, but there wouldn't be even if he were watching her. She felt badly shaken at having been so close to such a person, to such unabated evil, and she felt confused at what was behind his demand.

Almost certainly he had been hired by someone to frighten her. But by whom? How did whoever it was expect her to respond? Did they think she would just pack up, leave her father, and fly back to the Congo? Were they warning her to stop trying to find out what had happened to him, or were they demanding that she stop being so aggressive and just let him die?

The questions swirling about in her mind far outnumbered their answers.

For a time she sat in the car in the dimly lit parking lot, nearly hyperventilating as she tried to get her feelings in some order.

One thing at a time
…
Breathe in
… Breathe out… One thing at a time.

Thea heard the words as if Dr. Carpenter were sitting there speaking them.

Breathe in
… Breathe out… When you're becoming overwhelmed, just make a list. Make a list and do one thing at a time.

She withdrew a pen and a small spiral-bound pad from her bag.

Musgrave.

Dan.

Hayley.

Police.

She studied the short list for a minute. Then she looked down at the plastic bag on the passenger's seat and crossed off
Police.
If Dan wanted her to go to them, she would go. But first he had to be made to understand the evil—the absolute, quintessential evil emanating from the man; evil that had led him to actually become sexually aroused at the thought of hurting or killing her.

She flipped to a page in her pad with two dozen or so phone numbers written on it. Her first call, despite the hour, was to Amy Musgrave, the director of nursing. The woman had said, 'Call anytime,' she reasoned, and this was certainly anytime.

'Amy, it's Thea, Thea Sperelakis.'

'Is everything all right?'

'Yes… Well, no… Well, I don't know. Amy, I want to hire special-duty nurses to stay with my father.'

'I heard they transferred him to the SDU.'

'I would have fought it if they told me before they did it.'

'It's always a tough call—especially with a patient as important as your father. But the importance of the patient isn't a factor we usually take into consideration.'

'It seems like it's too late to do anything about it now.'

'Unless his condition suddenly deteriorates, I would agree. You want a special just for nights?'

'Twenty-four hours a day.'

'That can get very expensive very quickly, and we have excellent coverage during the—'

'Twenty-four hours starting now. We can afford it.'

'I'll see what I can do. Do Selene and Niko know you're doing this?'

'They will tomorrow.'

The shakes had stopped, and much of her confusion had begun to abate. A few more breaths and she called Dan.

'Hi, it's me,' she said.

'Hi there, me.'

'Were you sleeping?'

'Do you want the socially expected answer or the Thea answer?'

'What does that mean?'

'It means yes, I was sleeping.'

'Some bad things have been happening. I feel like I need to tell you about them.'

'Go ahead.'

'In person. Can you come out to Wellesley?'

'Now?' Now.

'I'm looking for my other sock right this second.'

'I've been thinking about you a lot.'

'That's great. That's really great, because I've been thinking a lot about you, too.'

'Thanks. I don't want to shock you or scare you, but I'm probably going to want to make love to you.'

For ten seconds, fifteen, there was silence.

'I just found my other sock,' Dan said.

The third call on her list was the most difficult. The hospital switchboard was closed, but Hayley's business card, wedged in the small notebook, had her cell phone number on it.

'Hayley, I've changed my mind,' Thea said.

'About what?'

'About Sean Flowers.'

'But why?'

'I'll tell you in the morning. For now just know that people are pushing against me, and I've decided to push back.'

CHAPTER 25

Thea drove out on Route 9 toward Wellesley, barely aware of the traffic moving alongside her. Only one thing seemed clear to her at this point. If the assault on her was a warning, it was also, in essence, a confession that the near-fatal hit-and-run was not accidental. Dimitri had been right from the beginning, and the twins had been wrong not to listen to him.

Now they needed to work together if they were to identify the motive and the person behind the first attempt on Petros's life, as well as the attempt in the hospital. It seemed likely that the man in the parking lot and the orderly in the hospital were the same. Who had hired him?

Thea also needed help understanding how much immediate danger she was in, and also Petros. It wasn't that simple to get away with killing a patient who was on constant monitoring, assisted ventilation, and close observation. Of course, even with the sort of excellent CPR that most ICU nurses were trained to perform, there was always a bullet, a garrote, or drugs that, if given intravenously and in a large enough dosage, could stop a heart irretrievably.

The killer would have to be ready to escape from Petros's bedside during the commotion of the cardiac arrest. In fact, Thea felt certain that was precisely what Dan's bogus orderly had intended to do. In the ICU, most visitors were logged in or at least noted. In the SDU, that was not always the case, but the special-duty nurses she had just ordered would close that loophole.

Lost in thoughts about murder in an SDU and Dan coming out to Wellesley, Thea had to lean on the brakes and screech into the turn to avoid missing the road home. Their house, a sprawling Tudor dating to the late nineteenth century, was set back from the street on several wooded acres. During her childhood, Thea remembered, their home always seemed warm and busy. But since the death of her mother, most of the rooms were never used, and the place had grown cold and lifeless. The constant presence of her brother in the carriage house, and their father's sixteen-hour workdays, only added to its strangeness.

Thea left the Volvo to one side of the drive where Dan would be able to see it, and turned on some lights. Then she crossed the back lawn to the carriage house. Many lights were on there, but the doors were locked. She walked around to the back, where Dimitri kept his sports car—an Audi, she thought she remembered. The small gravel parking area was deserted. Odd.

Before she asked Dan to come out to the house, she had called Dimitri to tell him she would be stopping by when she got home, and would bring Dan over to hear Dimitri's theory about the disaster. He hadn't mentioned having any plans, but when they were last together he had in passing spoken of a girlfriend. When Thea asked for some details about her, he quickly changed the subject without even giving the woman's name. Perhaps he was off somewhere with her. The notion made her smile. Her brother was always such a loner, much as she had once been. It would be great to learn that he had someone, and to get to know the female who could become close to him despite his eccentricities.

She finished circumnavigating the carriage house, peering in the windows as she passed. Then she returned to the main house and brewed some decaf. Dan had been drinking coffee when they first met—that was one thing she knew about him. Actually, through her affinity for details and her ability to listen and retain, she had gleaned quite a bit about the man: about his caring and gentleness and determination, his pride and intelligence, and the tragedies and other events that had shaped his life.

They hadn't known each other long, but with all that had been going on in her life, he had already become something of a rock for her. Did she mean anything yet to him? How much had he noticed that she was different from most of the women he had been with?

Dr. Carpenter had made it clear that there was no sense in trying to be someone that she wasn't just to attract a man, and the truth was, Thea didn't feel capable of being someone she wasn't anyhow. But it would be sad to drive the man away when they were just getting to know each other. If it happened, he wouldn't be the first. One man had said he was breaking up with her because she wasn't aggressive enough. Another had said he felt she was too outspoken and aggressive. It had never made sense.

Over the years, as she had come to understand more and more of what it meant to have Asperger's, she had found ways to deal with her family issues and her career. She had learned what it meant to be a friend, and had discovered that it was something she was good at, so long as she spent as much time listening as she did talking. She had largely mastered the art of small talk, both face-to-face and on the phone, and had gained the skills necessary to conduct the simple business of her daily life. Defensiveness to fabrics and sounds had become less of an issue, as had playing certain sports, which she enjoyed even though her poor motor planning skills often caused the ball to arrive before she even knew it was coming.

But there were two areas where she didn't feel she had learned much of anything—men and sex.

'Join the club, honey,' a nurse friend at the field hospital had told her when she expressed her disconcerting confusion. 'Join the club.'

Now, in just a few minutes, a man she found immensely attractive and was growing to care about was due to come over. Had she already messed things up by telling him how much she wanted him? Would he consider her too assertive?

Thea checked the time—almost ten thirty. She looked down at her clothes—a loose-fitting pair of chinos, a broad leather belt cinching her waist, and a bright plaid blouse she had bought at a bazaar in Kisangani. Did she have time to change? Did she have anything to change into? What would he like?

Men.

She hurried upstairs to her bedroom and looked at herself in the mirror behind the door.
Not so bad.
Most people thought she was pretty and often said so, and in truth, she thought so, too. She ran a brush through her hair and then put on a swatch of pale pink lipstick that seemed serviceable despite having been on a corner of her desk for at least two years.

Finally, she slipped off her blouse and bra, dropped them over a chair, and returned to the mirror, arching her back so that her breasts seemed more prominent.
Not so bad,
she thought again, appraising them. Decent shape. Decent size. Much bigger and that might be all he would be looking at. Not that that would be so horrible. Men were just into women's chests—especially when culturally breasts were treated as forbidden fruit, unlike they were in much of rural Africa. She was wondering if the other bra she had brought from the DRC would make her look any larger, when she heard him call out from downstairs.

'Thea? It's me. The bell's not working.'

Startled, she made one last check of her lipstick, then bolted from the bedroom. Halfway to the stairs, she glanced down at her bare breasts and realized her oversight. Smiling, she decided simply to go with the plaid blouse. She hurried back to her bedroom, plucked it off the chair, and buttoned it as she went down the stairs.

'Hey, there,' Dan said as she bounded down the staircase. 'You look great.'

'So do you.'

And he did. Thea realized that except for the hospital scrubs they had given him in the ER, she had not seen him out of his uniform. Tonight he was wearing sneakers, tightish jeans, and a black long-sleeved tee that stretched across his chest in a most appealing way. His eyes, still the best of many good features, crinkled at the corners when he smiled.

'You okay?'

'Sure, I'm fine.'

'But when you called you said—'

'Oh, you mean the man who attacked me in the hospital parking lot.'

'The what?'

'The man. He pulled a plastic bag over my head and said he'd kill me if I didn't back off and stop messing in business that was none of my affair. He kept referring to himself as 'us' and 'we,' so I think he's working for someone. I also think he might have been the orderly who kicked you. Maybe we should go into the living room. Do you want some water?'

'Water would be perfect. Did he hurt you?'

'He wanted to. I could tell. But I think whoever hired him to scare me told him not to hurt me.'

'Jesus. Thea, this is serious stuff.'

'I suppose. It sure felt serious.'

'Given what happened to you, you seem so calm.'

'Seeing you is like a paradox—a mysterious paradox. I get excited in one way and calm in another. You know what I mean?'

'I… think so.'

He followed her to the kitchen, then to the living room, and sat down next to her on the couch. The large room, heavily furnished, had once been the center of their family life. Now she wondered when the last time was that someone had actually sat down in it. There was a slight mustiness to the air, but the Oriental rug and sofas looked recently vacuumed, probably by Bernice, the devoted cleaning lady, who had been with the family for as long as Thea could remember.

Anxious to achieve just the right ambience, Thea leaned over and turned on a table lamp. Then she assessed the result, got up, and switched on a sconce over the broad marble mantel. Then she turned off the sconce and lit a standing lamp across the room. She was headed back to the sconce when Dan patted the sofa cushion next to him.

'The lighting's fine, Thea. Everything's fine. Now, come and tell me about the man.'

Thea turned off the standing lamp, kicked off her sandals, and sank down onto the couch next to him, with one leg folded beneath her, close enough so that their shoulders and legs were touching. As she recounted the details of the attack, Dan listened intently, and placed a hand reassuringly on her knee. It was the first time she had noticed how beautiful and sexy his fingers were.

She recounted the information as quickly as possible, afraid that she was losing her focus. Experiencing a sudden, vague lightheadedness, she ruled out dehydration by silently estimating her fluid intake over the last twenty-four hours, which was unremarkable. Could the sensation be an effect of Dan's hand on her knee?

'If you never saw his face and he wore gloves, I don't know what good it can do to involve the police unless maybe they can come up with a rapist or someone who used a bag like this guy did.'

'I couldn't think of anything helpful I could tell them.'

'Why don't you let me bring the plastic bag into the crime lab and see if they can find anything on it. Then we can decide about the police.

'Sounds like a plan. So tell me, do you miss being on the force? What made you quit?'

Even to Thea, the transition seemed awkward. She managed to edit herself enough to stop, but she sensed damage might have already been done.

If you've wrecked this, Sperelakis, I'll never speak to you again!
she shouted at herself.

Dan rescued her.

'Is that what you want to talk about?' he asked. 'Why I left the force?'

'People often talk before they, well, you know. I just thought that might be an interesting subject.'

He brought her hand to his lips and held it there.

'You are a piece of work, Doctor,' he said before setting her hand down. 'An absolute piece of work. Okay, you ask, you get. But I warn you, it's not a very pleasant tale.'

For half an hour they talked about the terrible sequence of events that led up to and followed the shooting of fourteen-year-old Patrick Suggs in the front yard of the Montrose Middle School. As she listened, Thea ached for the man. His sensitivity was what had drawn her to him in the first place. Now, it seemed, that deep gentleness and caring were destroying much of the promise of his life.

'Isn't there a position in the police force where you wouldn't have to carry a gun or… or shoot anyone?' she asked.

'Nothing I'd really care to do. For as long as I can remember, the only thing I ever wanted to do was to be a cop. The fallout of the shooting is that I was unemployed and unemployable. Then I stumbled on the ad for a security guard here. So far, so good.'

'So far, so good,' she echoed, her eyes nearly filled.

His scent was intoxicating. It didn't matter if it was cologne, aftershave, or shampoo, or his own unique chemistry. She felt herself getting excited just breathing him in. Dan slid his hand from her knee up along her inner thigh.

'Mmmmm,' she murmured. 'There's more that I want to learn about you, but I can't wait any longer to kiss you.'

'Good idea,' he said.

He held her face gently between his hands, bringing his own face so close that their breaths became one. Her eyes closed, she felt him briefly kiss each eyelid, then the tip of her nose before setting his lips upon hers. Her lips parted as his tongue moved between them.

Kissing Dan was not what she had expected. It was better. It would have been perfect if she hadn't suddenly found her mind listing all of the muscles involved in their kiss. Although such a thought was absolutely typical for her, she fought back the urge to laugh and share it with him.

'Until you know a m
an, and know him well,'Dr. Carpenter had once told her,
'don't ever laugh during sex no matter
how happy or giddy you might be feeling. Regardless of the saintliness of the fellow you're with, he's sure to misunderstand and take it as a personal affront to his manliness.'

With their lips still touching, his hand slid from her neck and brushed across the front of her blouse, pausing over each erect nipple.

'I… um… forgot my bra upstairs,' she said, wondering if an explanation was even called for.

'Hey, no problem. You're just sparing me the humiliation of wrestling with the clasp.'

He removed his black T-shirt before unbuttoning her blouse and letting it slip from her shoulders. His hands caressed her breasts and glided over her hips, resting on the curves of her behind.

'I really love doing this with you,' she whispered, unbuttoning then unzipping his jeans.

Tighty whities.
Where had she first heard that term, she wondered now. It had to have come from Dimitri. When he was a teen, he was always parading around in his underwear.