Shadow of Eden (31 page)

Exhausted, but his thoughts in turmoil, he wandered through the hospital, an oddly dressed, restless spirit passing through nursing stations and down corridors, which gradually filled with people as the hospital woke up. He drifted through the hallways, his churning thoughts pushing him along as he tried to make sense of the events of yesterday and last night. The men after him must have orchestrated the lawsuit, the newspaper ad, the medical board complaints, and the pictures delivered to his wife. But why? And who would want to go to all the trouble?

Eventually, he found himself in the intensive care unit and collapsed into a chair near Shirley’s room. The lights were still turned low and the dimness suited Steve. It was, he thought, almost inevitable that he ended up here. Shirley drew him in as surely as a flame draws a moth.

He swung his feet onto the counter and slid down into the chair resting his head on its back. In her room he could see Edith, wrapped in an oversized sweater trying to sleep in a large reclining chair, occasionally stirring uncomfortably. Steve closed his eyes and tried to ease the tension out of his tired body. He felt old.

He thought about Anne and Johnnie. Poor bewildered Johnnie, who had been so terrified in the car and ran so bravely when told to. Steve tried not to think about what could have happened to his little John, so young and trusting, in shock from these events and now without his dad.

Steve pushed down his anger. He needed to rest. He settled into the chair and relaxed his exhausted muscles. In moments, he drifted off.

A hand touched his arm, waking him. He opened his eyes to see Edith.

“Dr. James?” she said tentatively.

“Edith, not now, please.”

“What are you doing here?” The gentleness and concern showed in her voice.

Steve dropped his tired feet to the floor and sat up in the chair, rubbing his burning eyes.

“Does it have something to do with the news I saw on TV last night?”

“Yeah.”

“Is any of it true?” she asked.

“Huh?”

“The lawsuit, the suicide attempt with your boy.”

“Oh.” Steve shook his head. “No. It’s all made up.” Steve sighed, not wanting to discuss his troubles, but the look of concern on Edith’s face made him continue. “Somebody tried to run me off the road. Last night, they burned my house down. I just put my wife and son on a plane to get them out of town. For their safety.” He fought down a flood of self-pity, “I’m not feeling too good about things right now.”

Edith leaned over and placed her hand on his arm again. “Well, for whatever it’s worth, I know you’re a fine doctor.”

Steve nodded absently, wishing he were elsewhere. Maybe he should have gone to a hotel after all.

“No, I mean it. You really care. Whatever people are saying about you, I know it’s not true.”

Her earnestness made Steve smile “Thanks. That’s nice of you. But then I see Shirley . . .”

“I know.” She self-consciously pulled a stray lock of graying hair behind her ear, averting her eyes. “To tell you the truth, when you told me it might be Eden, I was really upset at you for giving it to her.”

She paused, pursing her lips, “But not anymore. Let me tell you why.”

Steve at that moment was not remotely curious. He wanted to slide back into the chair and rest. It had felt so good.

“I was reading her diary and came across something.”

“Her diary?” Steve knotted his forehead wondering how this could have the remotest bearing on the conversation.

“Yes. She kept one until about a year ago. I was looking for things at the house to bring in that would make her feel at home when I ran across it. I’d like to read it to you.”

She reached into a pocket of her sweater and pulled out a bound, blue faux-leather book with gold edging on its leaves. There was a locking strap across the covers, which Edith unsnapped and turned to a page marked with a piece of scrap paper.

She began reading. “I’m entering a weight loss study tomorrow. I think it will be the best chance yet for me to lose weight. You know, I’ve tried about everything. I met Dr. James today. He is so nice. He explained everything to me and gave me confidence in myself and what I’m doing. If this works I’m going to be so happy.”

Edith dabbed her eyes with a tissue. “Sorry, I’ve done a lot of that lately.” She picked up the diary and resumed reading, “I’ll wear the clothes I always wanted to. Guys will ask me out. People will see me as me and not that fat girl. I can’t wait.”

She lowered the diary and said with a stronger voice, “So you see, because of you, she had hope. Dr. James, I lost my husband in a car crash. We’d been married only two years and I loved Harry with my whole heart. When he died, I . . . I hurt so much. But little Shirley gave me a reason to keep going. She was just a baby.” She wept, “I’m going to miss her so much.”

Steve held her hand gently, feeling renewed anger at what Eden had done to her daughter.

“I’m sorry.” Edith wiped her red eyes. “I just don’t know what I’m going to do without her. I’m so alone.” She paused, gathering herself. “That’s why I was so upset with you. Then I read her diary and remembered that you were trying to help and—and really you did. When she got on Eden, she had so much more fun. She was still my little Shirley, but happier. It changed her life. You didn’t know that this would happen.”

From the back of the diary, Edith pulled out a wallet-sized picture and handed it to Steve. It was a photograph of Shirley, smiling in that carefree way only young people can.

“She sounds like a wonderful daughter. I wish I had known her better.”

With an intensity that caught Steve by surprise, Edith leaned forward and clutched his arm, “Dr. James, there are other daughters out there who may be getting this terrible drug. They have hopes and dreams just like my Shirley did, and their families will suffer like me. I can’t do anything about this, but you can. At least I think you can.”

Steve, already overwhelmed, did not know where he would find either the time or the strength to do anything, even if he could. How could he possibly continue his pursuit of Eden’s disease?

Steve’s eyes returned to the picture, again feeling the warmth of Shirley’s bright smile.

How could he not?

There was a familiar stirring of energy somewhere inside. There were nearly a hundred pictures just like Shirley’s all around the country. “I’ll do what I can.” He handed the picture back to Edith as he found a new resolve taking the place of his gloom and self-pity. “You don’t know how much your faith means to me.”

Chapter 66

I
t had been a long night, Mallis thought as he let himself back into his hotel room. He had wanted to personally kill James and his family, but with the neighbor’s interference, Mallis had to be satisfied with their dying in the explosion. The explosion had been gratifyingly loud with the house consumed in flames as they drove off.

Afterwards, Joe and Doug split off to connect taps to the phone lines at Sheridan’s house and office while Mallis had made clean-up trips to James’s hospital and office. Masquerading as an on-call doctor, he had found Shirley’s hospital chart. Looking through the progress notes, he identified several references to prions in Shirley’s records. He had surreptitiously pulled those pages. Inspection of James’s office revealed a stack of printed journal articles about prions which he dropped into a Safeway dumpster as he drove away.

Although tired, Mallis’s sexual arousal after his operation drove him from the hospital to Van Buren and its streetwalkers. At that early hour, he was lucky to find one. She was young and street-wise, but not looking for a John when he pulled up beside her and called her over to the car.

He took her hard with his hand over her mouth to stifle her screams. With no small satisfaction, he saw that she had bled, although not as much as he expected. He paid her well for his pleasure before he left her.

And now, back in the comfortable Ritz Carlton, he turned the TV to the first news show he could find. He needed closure, confirmation of his success. Watching his crimes reported on TV or in the paper was like reading the reviews of a triumphal Broadway opening. The news reports of his killing were tributes to him and his skill.

He flipped the TV to Channel 3 and its local Good Morning Arizona news show. It would do. He slipped out of his clothes and into the hotel’s thick terry cloth bathrobe in anticipation of a hot shower.

Ahh, there it was, the report of the famous, then infamous and now dead Dr. James. As he expected there were copious pictures of Dr. James’s flattened and burning house. Then Mallis stared in abject disbelief.
It wasn’t possible.

The footage had been taped earlier that morning while the house still burned. And there was Dr. James, wrapped in a blanket and with his arms around his wife and kid, getting into a patrol car. An officer shut the door and they were whisked away.

For a moment, Mallis refused to believe what he had just seen. It was like seeing his own dead father.
It wasn’t possible.
James was dead—he had heard the explosion moments after he left. He couldn’t possibly have gotten out in time. The scene should have shown the corpses in body bags. But it didn’t.

Mallis finally had to admit what his eyes told him.

Dr. James was still alive.

Chapter 67

T
hird Avenue near the Maricopa County Courthouse in downtown Phoenix was lined with seedy, shopworn buildings and storefronts that housed bail bondsmen and criminal lawyers. Steve looked at the back of detective Harmon’s card with the scribbled address on it and then at the off-yellow 1950s brick building with the matching address. Its soiled patina and dirty windows spoke of an absentee landlord who never had to look at his property.

The elevator doors opened onto the fourth floor hallway with an old, slack, rust-colored carpet. Steve found the suite he was looking for and pushed through a glass door that read in hand-painted letters, ANTHONY VALENTI, PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR. Underneath, it said:
Surveillance, Photography, Insurance, Confidential.
Showered and now wearing hospital scrubs, he was early for the appointment he had set up that morning.

Steve walked in, his hand in his pocket, touching his cell phone, his only link to his family. They had called him when they landed in Las Vegas telling him they had made it fine and were on schedule for the Portland flight. Anne promised to call when she landed in Portland and her parents had picked her up.

Steve found himself in a small, surprisingly modern office with light wood furniture. There was a standard L-shaped reception desk with a computer screen turned on, but the receptionist was gone.

“Hello . . . Anyone here?” He heard a grunt from behind a partially closed door to the right of the receptionist’s desk. He pushed the door open to see a sizable man in his late forties, feet propped on his desk, holding up a
People
magazine that obscured his face with only his dark wavy hair showing above. The maroon striped shirt had short sleeves revealing arms that were thick, but without apparent tone, an athlete gone to flab. Steve was not impressed.

“Mr. Valenti?”

“That’s me.”

A hell of a way to greet a prospective client.
“We had a ten-thirty appointment . . .?”

“So we did.”

“The secretary was gone so I looked around.”

The magazine dropped a hair revealing two bored eyes with fleshy eyelids.

“You’re . . .?”

“Dr. James. Steve James.”

“Right. So what can I do for you?” The magazine hovered in place.

“Well, Detective Harmon told me you were a good private investigator. I could use someone with your experience. I need to find out who’s framing me.”

“Framing you.” Valenti rolled his eyes.

That did sound incredibly lame, Steve thought. Until that moment, he had never actually said the word ‘frame.’ But that’s what it was.

“You may have read in the papers—”

“Never touch them,” interrupted Valenti. “Please, go on.”

Getting more pissed by the minute, Steve walked towards a chair in front of Valenti’s desk. He noticed a muted TV tuned to CNN and didn’t see a turned up flap of the area rug. He tripped over it, but caught himself on the chair. He sat down.