Read The Bannerman Effect (The Bannerman Series) Online

Authors: John R. Maxim

The Bannerman Effect (The Bannerman Series) (7 page)

BOOK: The Bannerman Effect (The Bannerman Series)

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Urs Brugg started to speak, to argue other possibilities, to point out that no action could be taken on mere intuition. He chose not to state the obvious. “What would Lesko do if you shared that conviction with him?”

“He would go after Reid. And Reid would crush him.”

“In that case, Elena, I suggest that we leave the matter in the hands of Mr. Bannerman. He seems more than equal to the task. Has Mr. Lesko been told about his daughter?”

”I have left a message. I will wait here for his call.”

“Elena.” A thoughtful pause. ”I am posting armed guards at your house. If you leave it, I want Josef and Wil-lem with you at all times.”

“It is not necessary,” she argued. “If Palmer Reid
wanted
to harm me he would have done it two years ago.”

“Not Reid,” he said. “Bannerman. Perhaps even Lesko.”

The line went silent for a moment. “Lesko would not harm me,” she said, her voice small.

“Elena, listen to me.” His tone became stern. ”I have intuitions of my own in this matter. Neither Bannerman nor Lesko are likely to be behaving dispassionately, especially if the girl dies. The use of cocaine points to you, if not as the killer than as the indirect cause. If you are right about Reid, this may well have been his intention. To set you, Bannerman, and Lesko one against the other.”

“Lesko will not harm me,” she said stubbornly.

In the intensive care unit of Davos Hospital, a nurse approached the bed where Susan lay. She checked the flow of glucose into Susan's arm, then checked her pulse and jotted the result. Next she lifted the patient's head with one hand and tugged at a bloodstained pad with the other. She replaced it briskly, a bit roughly. The man sitting by the bed looked up at her. The nurse met his gaze, hesitated for a moment, then withdrew. For the remainder of her shift, she would shudder at the look she saw in that man's eyes.

Bannerman stood up. Carefully, tenderly, as if in apology, he smoothed the edges of her pillow. The right side of her face was now in view. He had deliberately placed his chair where he could only see the left side, the less damaged part. Her right eye was swollen shut. The brow was held together by sutures. The cheekbone was fractured. The impression of a gloved hand was still visible across her mouth. An oxygen tube was taped to her nostrils. Her left eye remained partly open, seeing nothing.

”I am so sorry, Susan,” he whispered.

In his mind, he saw her as she had been. Lovely. Young. Full of life. A childlike enthusiasm at the prospect of her first trip abroad. Delighting in everything she saw.

They'd gone to London first. She'd never been there. She adored it, she said. Thrilling to all the sights that he barely noticed anymore. She made them fresh again. From London, they boarded a boat train, reaching Paris by early evening, Zurich by the next morning, then on to Landquart at the foot of the Engadine Alps. She was in heaven, every moment of it.

As he sat by her bed, whatever the direction of his tght, Bannerman's mind would drift back to that train ride. She was so happy then. So excited. She'd met new friends. They were charmed by her. They exchanged addresses. One couple, Americans, promised to visit them in Klosters. He hoped they would not come. Not to see her like this. Her father would be enough to deal with. He was coming. Anton had arranged it. Bannerman wanted him there even less but he could not decently have prevented it.

“Our choice,” Anton Zivic had told him, “was to fly him there under escort or to leave him to his own devices. The man is barely rational. This way we will be better able to control him.”

“Who else are you sending?”

There was an edge to the question. Zivic, on his own authority, had dispatched the team of Carla Benedict and Dr. Russo to be in place before he and Susan reached Klosters. Bannerman, he had decided, could pretend all he wished that he was just another American on holiday, but someone had to be a realist.

“Molly Farrell and Billy McHugh,” he answered. “Until your mind is clear, I suggest you leave all operational decisions to Miss Farrell. If there is a confrontation between yourself and Mr. Lesko, I have instructed Billy to deal with him.”

“Anton, I don't want him harmed.” Enough is enough.

“That may not be your choice, Paul. Lesko knows who you are.”

“From whom? You told him?”

“He has his own sources. The man has been busy. So have we. Miss Farrell will brief you when she arrives. In the meantime,” Zivic warned, “Lesko is certain to conclude that his daughter's present condition is a result of her involvement with you.”

“We don't know that,” he answered, stung. “The father made enemies of his own. This is more their style.”

“The father,” Zivic pointed out, “will be no more willing to see himself as the cause of this than you are. This is human. It is foreseeable. You should assume, therefore, that it is foreseen by someone else as well.
Until
we
know who
that is, let us try not to oblige him.”

Zivic was right. Bannerman knew it. And he knew that he was not thinking clearly. Trying to put this on Lesko's head may have been human but it was also stupid, not to say petty. Still . . .

“Mr. Bannerman?” A nurse, a different one, touched his shoulder. He turned. “There is a call for you,” she said. “It is a Mr. Lesko.”

Bannerman took it in a private waiting room. He picked up the phone and said his name.

“This is Lesko.” The voice was pitched low, little more than a hoarse whisper. Bannerman could hear a rage, and a hatred, held barely under control. In the background he heard a flight announcement in English. The father was calling from Kennedy Airport. “How is she?” he asked.

Bannerman told him all that the doctor had said. Coma. Waiting for tests. Twenty-four hours would tell. He chose not to mention the battering of her face.

“Who did it?” Lesko hissed.

”I don't know.”

“Then fucking guess. Who did it?”

“Mr. Lesko”—Bannerman sighed—“it depends on whether this was done to you or to me. Nobody had anything against Susan. I don't know whether she had worse luck being my friend or your daughter.”

Lesko took a breath. He had the sound of a man biting his tongue. “What about who did the hit? You got anything there?”

“No.”

“No? What's no?”

The question caught him off guard. He had, he realized, answered it almost dismissively because the habit of his years in Europe was rarely to concern himself with trigger men but rather those who sent them. Chasing after hired hands was a waste of time and energy. But a policeman, he realized, would not think that way. In this case, when he thought of it, neither did he.

“So far, no one seems to have seen anything,” he said wearily. “All we know is that she took the train to Davos to do some shopping. Then she stopped for lunch at a mountainside restaurant. It was walking down from it that she . . .” Bannerman stopped. In his mind he was staring at an American Express receipt that the Swiss police had shown him earlier. It was from the Schatzalp Restaurant where she paid for her lunch by credit card. The amount. What she paid for the lunch. He'd seen it but it hadn't registered. Almost eighty Swiss Francs. Enough for two lunches. More likely three. When Bannerman spoke again, his voice was soft and distant. “She had lunch with them,” he said. “She paid for it.”

“Lunch with who? Whoever did it?”

“Unless she ran into ... I don't know . . . someone she knew from the states.”

“Come on, Bannerman. Wake up.” Lesko's voice was rising. “Her friends from the states don't hang around Davos and they don't try to kill her. Who did she know in all fucking Europe well enough she'd buy them lunch?”

Bannerman felt the blood drain from his face. Suddenly, he knew. He more than suspected. He knew.

“You there, Bannerman?”

“I'm here.”

“Our flight's in a few minutes. We'll get there in about ten hours. Do you think maybe you can give this a little thought in the meantime? Maybe keep an eye on her for a change?”

“I'll see you in ten hours.” He replaced the phone.

_-_6-

Bannerman's eyes were burning. He returned to Susan's bedside where he dampened a towel in a pitcher of ice water and pressed it to his face. It helped him to separate the sting of Lesko's words from their content.

Lesko, of course, was right. Even with his daughter lying close to death, his cop's mind had continued to work while Bannerman's had become paralyzed by the pain of what he'd brought on Susan. The killers had to have been people she knew. People she was so pleased to see again that her own plans for the day could wait. And as clearly as he knew that, he knew that sooner or later the phone would ring and he would hear the voice of the man or woman, the American couple, that they'd met on the train.

They would announce that they were in Klosters, passing through, had hoped to find them free for dinner, and had somehow heard the terrible news of what had happened to Susan. Maybe they stopped at the apartment. Heard it from the housekeeper. In a village the size of Klosters, an attempted murder would be on everyone's lips. They would be shocked. Horrified. Eager to help in any way they could. And, as long as they heard no suspicion in his voice, and as long as they were sure that she was still in a coma, they would insist on coming to the hospital. Good old Ray and Caroline. Middle-aged southerners. Salt of the earth. First trip to Europe. They would volunteer to forego it. To come sit with her. Take up the vigil. Share his burden. Let him get some sleep. And then, because they were paid for results, they would finish her.

Bannerman even knew how.

The Swiss doctor had told him, not an hour before, when he came into the room to describe Susan's condition. Almost lost in his litany of tests they had run and treatments they had given was the mention that no suppository had been found.

“Wait a minute,” he'd said. “No what?”

“No suppository. No more cocaine.”

“Doctor,” Bannerman tried to shake off the fog, “what are you talking about?”

The doctor, his expression now confused, explained about the suppository and its purpose. A guarantee. A time bomb. In the event that the original dose failed to kill her. Bannerman, for a long moment, could only stare. During his years in Europe, he thought that he had seen every possible way one human being could kill another.

“Yes, but,” he managed finally, “how would you know to look for such a thing?”

“There was a phone call,” the doctor told him. ”A man. He suggested that we check for a suppository. Until this moment, I assumed it was you.”

“Then you didn't speak to him.”

“No. Another doctor. In the emergency room.”

”I would like to see him.”

The doctor who had taken the call was a younger man, a resident, who had gone with the paramedics to the scene of the attack and had stayed with her until her condition stabilized. The call, he told Bannerman, had been brief. Only a sentence or two but quite insistent. It was taken seriously for two reasons. First, he saw that the girl's ski pants had been torn at the waist as if someone had tried to rip them open but had apparently not succeeded. PerhafJfthe assaüants heard the boys and their dog coming. Second, if there had been a suppository, and it had released its contents, even though the machinery that monitored her vital signs would have reacted violently to it, it probably would have killed her before they could find the cause.

“This man who called,” Bannerman asked, “can you tell me anything about him?’*

”A deep voice,” the doctor shrugged. ”A mature voice. Educated. A Zurich accent.”

“He was Swiss? You're sure?”

“Definitely Swiss.”

Bannerman was more troubled than before. He was not at all in control. Events were controlling him. Too many question marks. Why would a Swiss national be involved? Why would he want to help? How would he know about killing with cocaine?

But after Lesko's call, the most urgent question, at least, had come into focus. Ray and Caroline. If they now appeared, they would be the ones.

They would come to the hospital and they would try again. They would wait until he left them alone with Susan. To make a phone call or go to the washroom. They would need only seconds. He would let them try. Susan would be helpless, he'd be putting her at risk. But if they used cocaine, as he was sure they would, the risk would not be great as long as he was near.