True Evil (44 page)

She nodded. He wasn't handsome, but he would certainly have been decent-looking without that awful web of indigo and scarlet on his left cheek.

The bell dinged again.

"Good afternoon," said the man, then he walked out.

Alex stood there in a trance, thinking of the day at the bank, of the flying glass she had seen only as flashes of light, and of James Broadbent lying on the floor with his chest smashed into something his wife would weep to see—

"Miss?"

The man with the birthmark was back; he was holding the door open with his elbow. "This is the lobby."

"Oh! I'm sorry. Thank you."

He nodded and waited until she had cleared the doors to let them go. "Tough night?"

"My mother is dying."

Genuine sympathy furrowed his brow. "You got on at Oncology. Is it cancer?"

Alex nodded. "Ovarian."

The man shook his head like a consoling priest. "A terrible disease. I hope she doesn't suffer too much."

"I think she already has."

He sighed heavily. "I'm sorry. Will you be all right?"

"Yes. I'm right over at the Cabot Lodge."

He smiled. "Good. They know how to take care of people over there."

"Yes. Thank you, again."

"Anytime."

The man gave her a small wave, then walked down a hall that led deep into the bowels of the hospital. The floor had colored lines painted on it. Red lines and green lines and yellow lines and even black ones. Alex wondered whether, if you knew all the color codes, you might guess your prognosis by where you were sent. Probably not. The yellow line might take you to McDonald's, for all she knew. There was a McDonald's in the hospital somewhere.

As she hitched her purse over her shoulder and walked out into the dusk, her cell phone chirped. It was a text message from John Kaiser:
I'm at Gallman, MS. 25 mins away. See u soon.
She needed to hurry. Will Kilmer was supposed to meet her in the lobby of the Cabot Lodge with an unregistered gun. She wanted to hide it upstairs before Kaiser arrived. He wouldn't like the idea of her carrying while suspended. Even if he understood, it would make his position more difficult. Alex caught sight of her car across the huge parking lot and started running.

Eldon Tarver stood at the window of the second-floor doctors' lounge and watched Special Agent Morse jog across the parking lot. She ran with purpose, her head well forward like a sprinter's, not like the hobbyists he saw jogging all the time. As he stared, he felt a near-euphoric sense of triumph flowing through him.

"She doesn't know me," he said softly. "She was three feet away…she looked right into my face, she heard my voice…and she didn't recognize me." The fact that his beard hid the wound she'd given him undoubtedly helped.

"Are you talking to me?" asked a female resident sitting on the couch behind him.

"No."

He heard the girl shift on the couch. She was probably pissed off that he was here. The slut had probably told some attending to meet her for a quick fuck, and now he'd screwed up their plans. Eldon felt so invulnerable in this moment that he considered locking the door and bending her over the counter of the little kitchenette, showing her what penetration really was—

Take it easy,
said his inner censor.
Everything is falling your way.

And it was. First Neville Byrd had discovered the EX NIHILO site, and now Alex Morse had walked right into his hands. She'd even given him the name of her hotel! Eldon didn't believe in fate, but it was hard not to see Jungian patterns in all this.

Of course, it was also possible that Morse was deeper than he'd been led to believe. Rusk's judgment could not be trusted, and Morse had risen to stardom in the FBI. That she'd disobeyed orders was more a recommendation than a black mark to Dr. Tarver, especially in a rulebound bureaucracy like the FBI.

Yes, he decided, their whole conversation could have been a performance. And even if it wasn't—even if Morse really had no idea who he was—could he take the chance that he was wrong? His policy had always been zero risk, and that policy had served him well. He had been committing felonies almost daily for five years, some of them capital crimes, yet he was not in jail.

It was time to call Biddle back.

CHAPTER 38

Alex had to park a hundred yards from the lobby of the Cabot Lodge. When she trudged through the double doors to check in, she saw Chris sitting in a chair against the wall to her right. His head was bent over his knees, and he was rubbing his temples like a man with a migraine. She walked over and crouched beside him.

"Chris?"

He looked up with red-rimmed eyes. "Hey."

"My God. How's your headache?"

"A little better. My stomach's the problem now."

"Do you have any new information?"

He groaned softly. "I talked to Pete Connolly again. He wants me to fly up to Sloan-Kettering today."

"Then you should do that."

Chris shrugged with a fatalistic air. "Actually, I can take the same drugs here that he can give me there. Tom Cage already called in a prescription for some strong antiviral drugs. AZT, ritonavir, enfuvirtide, and vidarabine. I think that's why I'm nauseated."

"Does Connolly think those will work?"

Chris laughed darkly. "How can he know that when he doesn't know what was injected into me? Pete thinks I should start intensive IV chemotherapy as well."

"Then why haven't you done that?"

"There are serious risks. A lot of chemotherapy drugs are carcinogenic themselves. I'm not sure I'm desperate enough to try that. But Connolly thinks that blasting me as soon as possible gives me the greatest chance of survival."

Alex tried to follow the logic. "How could chemotherapy help you, if you don't have cancer yet?"

Chris stood slowly, took hold of her arm for balance, then looked into her eyes. "It's possible that I do."

Alex paled. "What?"

"Remember Pete's scariest scenario? The one where someone gets hold of your cells, turns those cells cancerous in the lab, then injects them back into you?"

Alex nodded slowly.

"Those would be active cancer cells from the moment they entered my body."

She thought of the needle mark in Chris's anus. "What do you think happened last night? Did someone steal cells in order to alter them? Or did they inject cancerous cells into you?"

Chris's eyes held only bitterness. "I pray it's the first. But I doubt I'm that lucky."

"Why?"

"Because there are easier ways to get my cells."

Alex shook her head in confusion. "Like how?"

"Think about it. Who has constant access to my body?"

"Thora?"

"Right. And she's a nurse."

"All right. But how could Thora take your blood without you knowing about it?"

Chris moved his hand in a "Come along" gesture, urging Alex toward the truth. "Not blood."

She tried to imagine what other cells Thora could take from Chris. Hair? Skin? Or—Her mouth twisted in horror and disgust.

"You get it now?" Chris asked.

"Semen?"

"Exactly. How's that for cold and calculating?"

Alex shook her head. "I can't believe she'd be capable of that."

"Why not? Once you've made the decision to commit murder, how does the method matter? You think any of the other victims died pretty?"

She stared at him, not knowing what to say or do. The situation was simply beyond her comprehension.

"The other night," Chris whispered, "the night of the day that you and I met, Thora came out to my studio and made love with me. She told me she wanted to get pregnant. It was really out of character, with the way things had been, but I went with it, hoping for the best." Chris's jaw flexed in fury. "Three days later, I found out she'd taken a morning-after pill."

Alex felt cold.

"Thora never meant to get pregnant at all. So…why the sex?"

Alex shook her head in disbelief. "But surely no one could induce cancer in those cells that rapidly, not even in the lab."

"I hope not. That's one reason I haven't taken the chemo yet. But who knows what's possible?"

Alex put both arms around him and hugged tight. Chris stiffened at first, but then she felt him go limp. When his arms closed around her back, she realized he was shivering. Was it the drugs? Or was he about to break down right there in the lobby? Anybody would, given the unimaginable strain he was under.

"Let's go upstairs," she said. "Have you checked in?"

He nodded.

She left a message at the desk for Will, and sixty seconds later they were unlocking the door to room 638. Alex had reserved a suite on the "executive" floor. Attached to the bedroom was a little den with a sofa, two club chairs, and a desk against the wall. In one corner was a sink, a minifridge, and a microwave oven.

"Is that a minibar?" Chris asked.

Alex checked the fridge. "No alcohol."

He cursed softly.

"What do you want?"

"I don't care."

She checked the bedroom. "Here we go, under the TV."

"Vodka?"

"Coming up. I'll get you some ice."

She handed him a tiny bottle of Absolut, and he drank most of it in a single gulp. Alex wasn't sure how Kaiser would react to a drunken witness, but she wasn't about to reprimand a man who had just learned he might be dying.

"Is Kaiser in town yet?" Chris asked.

"He'll be up any minute."

"Why did you pick him?"

She walked to the window and looked out at the verdant campus of Millsaps College, with its clock tower rising into the sky. She'd been offered an academic scholarship there as a high school senior. "Kaiser worked with the Investigative Support Unit for a long time. He worked with the guys who invented it, when it was still called Behavioral Science. He's seen stuff that the suits in Washington can't even imagine. Reading it in a report just doesn't communicate the horror of some things, you know?"

Chris nodded. "It's like reading about diseases in a textbook. You think you know what something is until you see a patient rotting away before your eyes."

"Exactly. Kaiser gets it. He served in Vietnam before he entered the Bureau, heavy combat. He's a first-class guy. His wife is the best, too. He met her during a serial murder case. She's a war photographer."

"What's her name?"

"Jordan Glass."

"You're kidding."

"You know her?"

"No. But I do some documentary-film work, as a hobby. Jordan Glass is up there with Nachtwey and those guys. She's won a Pulitzer."

"Two, I think."

Chris drank off the rest of the vodka and went back to the minibar. Alex started at a knock on the door. She answered expecting Kaiser, but Will stood there with a shoe box in his hands.

"Thanks," she said, taking the improbably heavy box. "What is it?"

"A Sig nine. Untraceable."

"Thanks, Will. You'd better get going."

The old detective looked as if he'd been wrestling some dark demons.

"What is it?" she asked. "What's wrong?"

"I feel like I let the doc down."

You have no idea.
"Last night doesn't matter now. It's going to work out. Get going, Will."

Kilmer trotted down the hall to the fire stairs.

When Alex went back inside, Chris was drinking bourbon.

"Room service delivers shoes?" he asked.

"Nine-millimeter shoes." She took the box into the bedroom and stowed it on the top shelf of the closet. "Kaiser doesn't need to know."

Chris nodded. "My .38 is down in my car."

"I'll get it for you after John leaves."

"I can definitely see myself using it on a certain person."

Who?
Alex wondered.
Thora? Shane Lansing? Both of them?
"Chris…you're not really thinking that, are you?"

"I was raised in Mississippi. I've got some redneck in me that'll never wash out."

Alex touched his arm. "I hope you're kidding. Because that wouldn't solve anything. It would only guarantee that Ben would be raised by someone besides you."

Chris's eyes went dead.

"What do you think caused the headache?" she asked, trying to divert him from thoughts of Ben.

"I think we were all sedated before the attack. I'm not sure how. Will ate the same turkey and cheese I did, but Ben had frozen pizza. And Ben didn't drink any beer. We have a watercooler…it could have been that. In the end, it doesn't really matter, does it? As long as Ben and Will aren't sick."

Three strong knocks echoed through the room.

Chris followed Alex to the door.

A tall man with deep-set eyes and longer hair than Chris had expected stood there. Chris could hardly believe the guy had served in Vietnam, because he looked about forty-five. He had to be at least seven years older.

"You gonna invite me in?" asked the newcomer.

Alex smiled and hugged Kaiser, then pulled him into the suite. Chris stepped back and watched the FBI agent set a leather bag down on the sofa. Then Kaiser turned and held out a hand to Chris.

"Dr. Shepard?"

"Yes." Chris shook his hand.

"Glad to meet you."

"You, too."

"I have a lot of catching up to do."

Alex folded her arms and looked up at Kaiser. "It's worse than I thought, John. Chris is already in bad trouble. He was hit last night."

Kaiser's eyes roamed over Chris for several moments. He was taking in the smell of alcohol, the look of fatigue, even desperation. Alex knew he would have a lot of questions, and right now Chris looked as if he wanted only to climb into one of the beds and go to sleep. Kaiser looked at Alex.

"Somebody fill me in before Dr. Shepard passes out."

CHAPTER 39

John Kaiser stood at the window overlooking the college. Alex was sitting beside Chris on the bed, holding a trash can for him whenever he vomited. He'd started about twenty minutes into Alex's summary of events, and the waves were still coming.

"It's probably the drugs," he said, clutching his cramping midsection with both arms. "My body's not used to them, and I'm taking three at once."