The Deadline (21 page)

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

P
erry County Memorial Hospital’s emergency room was cold as death.

Jefferson Morgan was alone in the waiting room for more than an hour, except for a janitor who was scrubbing fresh blood stains out of the carpet.  He’d choked down two cups of bitter vending-machine coffee, unsweetened, but he was still chilled.  The muscles in his gut shivered.

And the smell.  Ever since Bridger died, maybe longer, Morgan hated the antiseptic odor of hospitals.   Whatever chemicals they used to strip away the blood and disease and death also sterilized hope.

Neeley Gilmartin clung to life, however tenuously, but that’s all the nurse would say when Morgan first arrived, breathless from his run across the parking lot.  He phoned Claire from a pay phone in the waiting room to tell her about Gilmartin’s collapse, and he called
The Bullet
to say he’d be back late in the afternoon, maybe after dinner.  Then he settled into a thinly padded steel chair, and tried to read a week-old edition of
USA Today
someone had left on the seat.

Morgan couldn’t focus.  If Gilmartin died now, there could be no redemption, if he deserved it at all.  And although the original case against the old man had been air-thin, Morgan had uncovered no shred of real evidence pointing specifically toward anyone else.

The only evidence in Gilmartin’s favor was in Morgan’s gut.  He had a visceral feeling about the old man, and on the mean streets of Chicago, he’d learned to respect his intuition.  He knew fear drove men through rage to insanity.  He believed that much of Gilmartin’s story, that a streetwise punk in the hungry maw of the justice system would do anything to save his life. 
Anything ...
even confess to a crime he didn’t commit to avoid a searing, agonizing death.

But even if Gilmartin didn’t kill Aimee Little Spotted Horse, after fifty years, her real killer might be dead now, and it was hard enough proving live killers guilty without chasing after murderous corpses.  The old man had given him an impossible task and too little time to accomplish it.  Morgan was dead in the water.

Except for the money.

He touched the lump of cash in his pocket.  He could almost smell the blood being washed from someone’s guilty hands.  If he could find its source, he knew a big piece of this puzzle would fall into place.  He might even find Aimee Little Spotted Horse’s killer. 

A stainless-steel water fountain vibrated and hummed on the wall nearest the nurses’ station, scattering his thoughts.  Morgan stood up and checked his watch.  It was after three o’clock, still no word.  He paced toward the water fountain, just to keep moving, and to rinse the acidic taste of guilt and bad coffee from his mouth.

“Are you here with Mr. Gilmartin?” asked a woman’s voice behind him.

Morgan turned, wiping cool, metallic water from his lips with the back of his hand.  A blond woman in her late twenties, wearing blue surgical scrubs, was standing at the nurses’ station.  Even for a young woman, she looked tired and serious.

“Yes,” Morgan replied.  “Is he okay?”

“I’m Doctor Gail Snyder.  Are you a relative of Mr. Gilmartin’s?”

“No.  He doesn’t have anybody else.  I guess I’m it.”

The doctor managed a brief, disappointed smile.

“Well, he’s in serious shape.  His lungs are full of small-cell tumors.  It’s likely he fell unconscious from anoxia, too little oxygen getting to his brain.  Near as we can tell by looking, the cancer in his lungs has probably spread to his liver and other organs, maybe his brain.  We can’t be sure without the test results.”

“Is he in pain?”

The doctor paused.  She studied Morgan’s face to be sure he really wanted to hear what she was about to say.

“He must have been in very great pain before this episode,” she said gravely.  “He probably felt claustrophobic, as if he were suffocating very slowly.  Progressive cancer at this stage is quite excruciating.  The tumors in his lungs alone are putting enough pressure on the nerves in his shoulders and arms to torment him day and night.  If it’s in his liver and bowels, well, there’s not much we can do except try to make him comfortable.”

Morgan looked at the gray carpet beneath him, expecting it to fall away at any second.

“Is he going to die?  I mean, you know, tonight?”

Dr. Snyder offered little hope and less of a prognosis.

“Time will tell.  I don’t really know.”

Morgan pressed her.

“Best-case scenario, doctor.  How long?”

“God knows how he’s fought off the pain this far.  If he maintains his extraordinary will to stay alive, maybe a few more days.  Not much longer.”

“Will he wake up again?”

“I’m sorry, but I just don’t know right now.  We’ve got some fluids back in him and he’s starting to breathe easier.  He’s responding but he’s still in a stuporous state, so we’ve got him restrained.  In a few minutes, we’ll be moving him up to ICU.  What I need to know right now is whether he has any medical directives, to your knowledge.”

“Like what?”

“Does he have a living will, or any specific orders should we face a life-or-death choice?”

“Only one.  He doesn’t want to die here.  That’s all I know.  And, please, unless it’s absolutely necessary, could you take off the restraints?  I don’t want him to wake up and be shackled.  It’d scare him to death.”

“The restraints are for his protection.  He was flailing around semi-conscious, trying to pull off the oxygen mask and his IV lines.  It’s natural.  If he comes around, we’ll take them off.”

Morgan only heard the
if
.  His jaw clenched.  The sterile, hopeless smell of the place came back to him.  He wanted to cry.

“Don’t let him die, doctor.  Please.”

The young doctor smiled and touched Morgan’s arm supportively.

“We’ll do our best.  Now, there’s no need for you to wait around here.  It’ll be a few hours before we know anything more.  Just leave your name and phone number with the clerk and we’ll call if his condition changes appreciably.”

“Can I see him before I go?”

Dr. Snyder considered the request, then nodded.  She led Morgan through the nurses’ station down a narrow hallway past three empty trauma rooms.  Neeley Gilmartin’s bed was parked in a narrow alcove on the other side of the hospital linen closet.

He was a living corpse, withered and yellow against the bleached white sheets.  His skin was translucent, as if coated in a thin layer of wax;  his eyelids parted slightly as death peered into him.  Only the rhythmic, reassuring beeps of the monitors around him told Morgan he was alive.

He stood at Gilmartin’s bedside, holding the rail.  A deathly odor rose from him, overpowering even the disinfected air of the hospital.  Padded restraints were looped around his emaciated wrists, and the tobacco-stained fingers of his right hand fluttered as oxygen whispered through his mask.

Morgan reached down and touched Gilmartin’s twitching hand.  His skin was papery and cold.  He wondered if the old man was dreaming, if he’d ever dreamed.

“Don’t go,” he leaned close and whispered softly.  “It’s not time.”

Gilmartin’s fingers closed weakly around Morgan’s, then relaxed.

A package was waiting for Morgan when he got back to
The Bullet
.

“Who left it?” he asked Crystal, inspecting the sealed bubble-pack envelope for clues to its origin.  It was unmarked except for three words handwritten neatly in blue ink on its front: 
Jeff Morgan, Confidential
.

“I don’t know.  I took some classified ads to the backshop and when I came back, it was on the front desk,” she said.  “I didn’t see anybody come in or leave.”

Morgan carried the envelope back to his desk, where he fished an X-acto knife from the clutter in his top drawer.  He slit a neat incision across the top.

Inside were twelve floppy disks, all numbered in sequence, and another smaller envelope.  It contained a short, typewritten note.

Dear Jeff,

These disks contain the complete database of the state court in Perry County, from 1962 to present. After you left here today, I called Bell Cockins, who told me the difficulties you’ve been facing.  He said you were a good man and I should help you in any way I could.  It is not known to anyone but me (and now you) that Old Bell paid for my college education after my father left.  I can never repay what I owe him, but consider this a “down payment.”  Please be discreet, since it is a felony to disclose these records.  Let me know if I can help further.  I hope you find what you’re looking for, whatever it may be.  

Cassie Gainsforth

Morgan tore up Cassie’s note, the only evidence that connected her to the disks.  With his handkerchief, he wiped the disks clean of any fingerprints except his.  He would keep Cassie’s secret forever.

He knew what to do.  The data could be downloaded to his laptop at home, then he could browse through it with Paradox, the same database software that had helped him discover P.D. Comeaux’s serial-murder spree.

He’d start with the secret case of Hosanna Pierce.  Morgan couldn’t shake Simeon Fenwick’s offhand remark that Malachi Pierce’s retarded daughter was a “punishment” sent by God.  Punishment for what?  What guilt gnawed at the old fanatic’s black heart?  Morgan knew these disks were unlikely to answer those questions, but maybe he’d find some key, some tiny clue to the fearsome character of Malachi Pierce.

Then again, maybe not.  He didn’t know what he’d find, if anything.  No reporter ever did.  But he wouldn’t be guessing anymore.

He dialed Cassie’s number at the court clerk’s office, to thank her, but it was almost five and she’d already left for the day.  So he stuffed the disks in a fresh envelope and tucked them safely in his briefcase.

Cal Nussbaum stood in the backshop doorway, saying nothing.  It unnerved Morgan that the old printer always seemed to be watching him.

“Everything okay, Cal?” he asked.

Cal said nothing for a moment, then spoke.

“Got some pages for you to check,” he said.

All twelve pages of this week’s
Bullet
were spread out along a bank of the backshop’s slanted composing tables.  Seven were finished;  the other five waited for unsold ads, unprinted photos and unwritten stories to fill ominous blank spaces.  Morgan suddenly remembered the film he’d stashed in the darkroom cabinet. 

“Looks like we’re in good shape,” Morgan said as he scanned the headlines and ad copy on the completed pages.  “Let’s see, we’ve only got the front and back pages, sports and the last classified pages to go, right?”

Cal huffed.

“And the edit page.”

Morgan grimaced and glanced up at the ink-smudged backshop clock.  Time was running out on his indecision.  He ran his finger over the hole on the page where his editorial should be.  It not only remained unwritten:  At this moment, it remained unimagined.

“Don’t worry,” he told his impatient printer.  “It’ll be there before deadline.  I’ve got a few other stories to write and I’ll soup the photos tonight.  Anyway, we’re ahead of the game at this point, thanks to you.”

Ironically, Cal Nussbaum’s long face drooped even more.

“I ain’t takin’ no chances this time,” he said in his slow-burning drawl.  “I’m gonna work on these later tonight.  We ain’t gonna miss no more deadlines if I have to write the goddam stories myself.”

“We’ll put her to bed right this time,” he assured Cal, patting his shoulder.  “I think we’re finally getting the hang of it.  Now, if we could only sell a few more ads ...”

Half of Cal’s face crinkled in a tepid smile.  He was the kind of guy who found most forms of hope delusive.

“I’m goin’ to dinner,” he said.  “I’ll come back later and work on these pages.”

After Cal left, Morgan sat before his blank computer screen in the empty newsroom for two hours.  He again weighed an endorsement in the sheriff’s race, but his mind drifted to Neeley Gilmartin and Malachi Pierce, and to the photograph of little Aimee still stashed safely in his briefcase, proud in her Sunday best.  He sharpened his pencils, shuffled papers on his desk, rocked in his uncomfortable chair.  His reporters had drifted in, filed a few stories and left to see a movie together, but he still had not written a single word.  The time got away from him.

The street outside was dark when the phone rang.  It was Claire.

“Can I interest you in some dinner?” she asked.

“Can you give me an hour?  I have a couple things to do.”

“Is that sixty-minute hour, or is it one of those ‘I’ll-tell-you-an-hour-and-be-home-at-midnight’ kind of hours?”

“Sixty minutes,” Morgan said.  “Give or take a day.”

“I’ll be waiting,” she promised him, and hung up.

Claire never scolded him.  She knew a newspaperman’s time was measured not in minutes and hours, but in irregular moments.  To her husband, no two hours elapsed at the same rate and, for as long as she’d known him, his days rarely ended at exactly the same moment, although they all tended to end very late.

Morgan locked the darkroom door behind him and flipped off the dim, red bulb that hung overhead.  The complete blackness unbalanced him;  he spread his invisible feet on the damp wooden floor to regain his equilibrium.  He fumbled with the undeveloped rolls and wondered why he bothered to close his eyes in the darkness.

His mind projected the faded picture of Aimee, only it wasn’t a still photograph as it flickered in the dark theater of his brain.  Now it was a movie, tinted the brown of memory, unreeling in the slow motion of a dream.  Yellow clouds scudded across a buckskin sky, and the earth was dusty mahogany.  The light in her cinnamon eyes was like the chinook winds that seeped from the eastern slope of the mountains into the basin, ethereal, warm and soft.  She turned toward him, toward the camera in his mind, and smiled innocently.  Then she looked away, off to the empty west, behind the camera where a rusty shadow spilled across the margin of Morgan’s imagination.  She wasn’t afraid as she held out one of her flowers to the specter.  Suddenly, the wind rose and ochre dust swallowed her.

Then the screen went blank.

Morgan looped the movie in his head again and again, but the swirling wind always swept her away before he saw the shadowy figure lurking at the edge of his consciousness.

Was it Aimee’s allegedly dead father, who still had not quite shaken Morgan’s suspicion?  Or had it been Kate herself haunting his imagination?  Or was it simply a blank, evil space for which he had no face, no name?

Morgan didn’t know who it was, but he now knew who it
wasn’t
:  Neeley Gilmartin.  The old man hadn’t killed Aimee Little Spotted Horse, he was certain.  If Gilmartin’s claim of innocence was just an elaborate con, he’d have long ago surrendered to the agony of his cancer.  But another pain burned more intensely in him, and the promise of deliverance had kept him alive.  There was enough room in one man’s heart for guilt or for hope, but not both.