Whiplash (23 page)

Dr. Arch said thoughtfully, "Come to think of it, if my Ferrari exploded to smithereens, I might shed a couple buckets of tears myself. I take it all back, Ms. Pulaski, you go right ahead and weep." He was working on her shoulder now but she felt only a whisper touch against her skin. She vaguely heard him say to Bowie, "Would you look at that bruise. Well, it's no big deal in the great scheme of things. I don't think anything's broken, but we'll check her out with an X-ray. Say, if someone tried to blow her up, you're a federal cop, why don't you protect her from now on?"

"That's my plan," Bowie said. She felt blessed warmth when he took her hand, but his fingers against her skin brought her right down from above and she didn't know if it was worth it.

Erin usually hated lying on her stomach, but with the lovely morphine, she could have been standing on her head and not felt uncomfortable at all. "It was a light brown sedan, a Mitsubishi, I think, not very old. It looked like one of those rental cars-nondescript, butt-plain. I've always wondered why they even make cars like that. I mean, who'd want to buy one? I couldn't make out the license, they'd dirtied it up."

She'd have some pain for the next couple of days, Dr. Arch had told Bowie, but nothing a bit of Vicodin wouldn't handle. Her hair was still mostly in its thick French braid and they'd washed her face and all the rest of her he could see. She was lying on her stomach, her head to the side, looking like she didn't have a care in the world.

He lightly smoothed back a hank of hair that had fallen across her face and tucked it back into the braid. "That's good, Erin. The tinted windows give us something to work with."

She peered up at him with sudden interest. "It occurs to me that you look sort of cute, Bowie-all sorts of worried and mad."

"What? Oh, well, thank you, but that's the morphine talking."

"Nope, it's me."

He said, "Well, I am worried and mad."

"You wanna know something else?"

"Ah, maybe."

"You've got a really nice smile, nearly as nice as your butt."

"What? My-oh, well, thank you, but again, Erin, that's the morphine talking."

"Hmm. You mean I won't like your finer points when the morphine is no more?"

"I, ah, well, I don't know."

"I might, you know. What are you going to do if I still like those gorgeous white teeth of yours and those big feet?"

"I'll smile at you a whole lot with my bare feet up on the coffee table."

"That was really smooth, Bowie," she said, and closed her eyes. "You're a great dad. Georgie does nothing but brag about you. I keep telling her you're just a plain old garden-variety sort of dad, but she won't have it. That's quite an honor."

"Yes, it is, and nice to hear." He waited just a moment, to see if anything else outrageous would come out of her mouth, but she was still again. "Now, Erin, don't go under again just yet. Try to remember, did you see who was in that car?"

"Nope. Hey, wait a minute. Even though the windshield was darker than usual, I remember I didn't see anyone in the passenger seat, yes, I'm sure of it. There was one guy driving but I didn't see him well at all. Rental cars don't have dark windshields, do they?"

"I doubt it, but we'll soon see." When he punched off his cell a minute later, he said to her, "Agent Cliff will check it out. Okay, now, it's time-"

"Georgie told me you liked Krissy but she wasn't a keeper. Georgie said she didn't think there would be any keepers for you since you really loved her mommy and then she died and your heart broke in two. Is that true?"

"What? Georgie said that?" He was beginning to believe Georgie didn't keep any thought from Erin.

She could see he didn't want to answer her, sensed a deep, longtime resistance, but then he said, "No, it isn't true."

"I think morphine is the greatest stuff. I can say anything I want and it doesn't seem to matter and you can't get mad at me because I'm down and out."

He laughed.

"Georgie's got talent. Any dancers on your side? Was her mom a dancer?"

"No, Twinkle Toes is all on her own, genetically speaking."

Sherlock came running into the room. "Erin! I heard your Hummer exploded. The nurse told me you'd be all right, but I want to hear it from you."

"I'm okay, Sherlock, really. I'll be down for a while. It's a burn on my back, but you know, I'm a fast healer, so say a couple of days and I'll be good to go again. Don't worry."

"She's also loopy from the morphine so don't take it seriously when she tells you your hair is glorious."

"Of course I'll take it seriously." She patted Erin's arm. "Dillon said you loved your Hummer more than he loves his Porsche. Let me tell you that's not possible."

"I loved my Hummer a whole bunch," Erin said, and squeezed her eyes closed. Sherlock studied her too-pale face, her eyes trying for bright but clouding over from the drugs, and slowly nodded. "I'll make it a tie then, okay? Now, tell me what happened. Don't leave anything out."

Sherlock never said a word until after Erin had stopped talking and closed her eyes. She looked limp and exhausted. "Thanks to Mom, who nagged at me for a solid three months, I got good health insurance last year. I've got good insurance on my Hummer too."

Bowie said, "Thank God for mothers. Tell me your company and I'll handle it, both your medical and your car."

Erin sighed. "Bowie said he'd help me find a new Hummer, but even if it's pale blue, it just won't be the same thing."

"Dillon's Porsche got blown up a while back, just like your Hummer. He's got a new one, looks exactly the same, but sometimes I see him looking at it, all sorts of wistful, and I wonder if he's thinking about his old baby. When I asked him about it, he said time heals all wounds."

"I sure hope he's right," Erin said.

Sherlock stood back while Bowie stepped close, pen and notebook in hand, to take down all the insurance information Erin remembered. As she looked at Erin's vague drugged eyes, she realized the suspicions she'd had were inescapable, all the seemingly random points connecting right up. Had Bowie made any connections from everything Erin had let drop?

She smiled at him when he left the room to deal with hospital administration.

"You've got the neatest hair, Sherlock. Bowie's right, it's glorious. The color is like the Olympic flame."

"Thank you."

Erin grinned. "All those curls, I'll bet Dillon thinks you're edible."

"Edible? Hmm, now that sounds interesting. Erin, as much as I like hearing Ms. Morphine pay me compliments, it's time we talked." Sherlock pulled a chair close to the bed and said very quietly not three inches from Erin's nose, "I know you're right in the middle of this, Erin. The fact that someone tried to kill you today clinches it. It's time for the truth. I don't want to give whoever is behind this another chance to kill you."

Erin felt the velvet fist behind the words. She whispered, "You can't know-can you?"

Sherlock said matter-of-factly, "You've dropped lots of things since we've met. You also tend to speak before you think. With you, if one really listens, everything is right up front."

Erin shut her eyes. "It's true, I have the biggest mouth. I always have. My dad would say my big mouth was fine by him, I couldn't get away with anything."

"Does Georgie beat you at poker since everything you're thinking troops right across your face?"

"Haven't tried poker with her yet. You know, I lied once to a boyfriend in college, and you know what he did? The jerk laughed at me. It was so depressing."

Sherlock waited.

Erin felt fatigue wash over her, both fatigue and an overwhelming sense of failure. "I can't tell you, Sherlock, since he's a client. It's confidential. I'll have to speak to him first, see what he says."

"Since you were nearly murdered, it seems to me this client's answer should be obvious unless he's in this mess up to his eyeballs, unless he knows who's behind the attempt on your life, or unless he's the one who tried to kill you."

"He's a very nice man, but it's all very complicated. I'm in so bloody deep. I'll probably go to jail."

Sherlock lightly stroked her fingers over Erin's pale cheek. "Don't be dramatic, it'll be okay. Believe me, nothing's simpler than the truth. Spit it out. We'll deal with it, trust me."

"No, Sherlock, I simply can't, not until-"

"Until you speak to your client who's a professor at Yale University?"

"See? A fine example of my big mouth, but you've got to let me talk to him myself."

"You really should tell me now, Erin, so we can clean this mess up without your getting killed in the process."

Erin wished the morphine would knock her out again, but it didn't. She was even feeling some mild throbbing in her back. It wasn't fair. "Can I have more morphine?"

"Yes," Sherlock said, and left her to speak to the nurse.

Half an hour later, Sherlock and Bowie were sitting side by side watching Erin sleep the peaceful sleep of the drugged.

"Well, damn and blast," Bowie said. "She'll have to tell us soon, Sherlock."

"When she wakes up, I'll get it out of her. I'd rather have the truth when she's alert and willing."

But what could Erin possibly know? Nothing important, he was sure of that. "Are you going to tell me what you think she knows?"

"No, let's wait."

MERRITT PARKWAY REST STOP

Thursday afternoon

Caskie Royal zipped up his pants, walked to the rusted sink with its dulled mirror, and stared at a face he hardly recognized. In only four days, fear had leached the color from his skin, and his jowls looked pale and saggy. He looked ill, terminally ill. That thought brought a ghastly smile to his face.

He was afraid, more afraid than he'd believed possible ever since that woman had broken into his office on Sunday night. He'd asked himself over and over how she'd known about the Culovort files, but he still had no clue how she'd known or why she'd copied them or who she was, but then again, neither did any of those agents who'd been stomping on him ever since
.
Was she a cancer patient? Or maybe it was her husband who was the patient? There were scores of patients very unhappy with him and the company since the Culovort shortage began, but still, that didn't ring true. If someone had merely wanted to make the papers public, why didn't the newspapers, or even the FBI, already have them? If she was a blackmailer, why hadn't she called?

He shook his head at the stranger in the mirror. Nothing made sense anymore. He had no idea if she was the one who'd murdered Blauvelt, not that he cared.

Caskie started to wash his hands. He turned on the warm water faucet, but the water was cold. He pressed down on the soap pump and lathered up, automatic after all these years. Jane Ann had nagged him to do it since the day he married her.
His wife.
He wasn't about to worry about her now, but his boys, Chad and Mark, were another matter entirely. How could he protect them? Protect their future? He felt a shaft of pain deep in his belly. It wasn't indigestion, it was grief.

Caskie knew he was going to be sucked down into the swamp where all the hungry alligators waited. Unless he was real careful, he'd end up in jail, or dead. Who would have thought that any of this would end up as anything more than a fine for the company at worst, maybe an early departure for him as CEO if it all hit the fan. If he'd thought jail was a possibility, would he have turned all this down? Maybe, he thought, sure he would have. No one in his family had ever gone to prison. He wasn't a young man any longer, he wouldn't be able to protect himself from all the predators in prison and he knew the predators were there, everyone knew that.

He turned his head slowly from side to side as he watched in the mirror. No, he thought, honest in that moment, the thought of jail wouldn't have deterred him. There was so much money, quite a lot of it already in his private accounts in the Grand Cayman.

What he'd done, it hadn't been all that bad. Just look at what those clowns at Pfizer had finally been nailed for, they'd deserved the huge fines. They'd deserved prison too, but that didn't happen. Fines for criminal behavior, not jail. Wasn't that a kick?

The party's over,
he whispered to the deathly-pale face. The coffin lid was inexorably closing over him. He'd escaped for the moment to the men's room in the rest area, Toms with him at first, but Toms, who'd hummed while he'd peed, had finished and left. He hadn't washed his hands. Had he come back? Was he waiting outside the door? He wouldn't put anything past him, the bastard.

They'd told him, not asked him, to sit on the backward-facing rumble seat with Toms, facing Bender, Dieffendorf, and Gerlach. He'd tried to act dignified, tried to act the consummate CEO.

Dieffendorf hadn't bought it. He disliked Dieffendorf, always had, but the fact was, he hated Werner Gerlach now, hated what was in his eyes every time Gerlach looked at him. It was his own death he saw there if he couldn't convince them to trust him. And he saw in those eyes that he had failed. Caskie was nothing more than a pawn to Gerlach, he knew it to his soul. Gerlach had always been a priggish little man, barely five-foot-six in his elevator shoes-pathetic, really, when he wouldn't stop bragging about his sexy young wife, Laytha. What man in his right mind would want to be married to a woman younger than his daughter? Did she talk about getting zits? About going to bars and listening to music Gerlach hated? Caskie wondered whether Laytha cost Gerlach so much in maintenance that Gerlach had no choice but to keep coming up with new schemes to make more money. He had to keep up with Laytha's new shoes. He was brilliant at market strategies, at innovative ways to get around rules, and was endlessly greedy. Caskie supposed he'd recognized himself in Gerlach the moment the two men had met five years ago.