Читать книгу 24 Hours - Greg Iles - Страница 10

Will took the phone from Cheryl and held it to his ear.

“This is Will Jennings.”

“Doctor Will Jennings?” said a male voice.

“That’s right.”

“You got some unexpected company down there, Doctor?”

Will looked over at Cheryl, who was watching intently. “Yes.”

“She looks hot in that black dress, doesn’t she?”

“Listen, I need to explain something to you.”

“You don’t explain anything, college boy. I’m in charge tonight. You got that?”

“I’ve got it, but—”

“But nothing. I’m going to ask you a question, Doc. Kind of like the Match Game. Remember that one? That freakin’ Richard Dawson; what a fruitcake.”

Will heard an eerie laughter.

“Anyway, we’re going to see if your answer matches your wife’s. This is really more like the Newlywed Game, I guess. Uhh … that would be the butt, Bob.” The man broke up again.

Will breathed deeply, his entire being concentrated on understanding with whom he was dealing.

“The question is … does your child have any serious medical condition?”

A trickle of hope flowed into his veins. “She has juvenile diabetes.”

“That’s a match! You just won the all-expense paid trip to beautiful Puerto Vallarta!”

The man sounded like Wink Martindale on speed. Will shook his head at the surreal horror of the situation. “Abby needs that insulin, sir. Immediately.”

“Sir?” The man laughed darkly. “Oh, I like that. This is probably the only time you’d ever call me ‘sir.’ Unless you had to tell me I was dying or something. Sir, I’m afraid you’ve got terminal pecker cancer. Stand two steps back please.”

“I’m an anesthesiologist. I don’t handle things like that.”

“No? You never told anybody they were dying?”

Will hesitated. “When I was an OB/GYN, I did.”

“Ahh. So, no means yes. You ever kill anybody, Doc?”

“Of course not.”

“Really? Nobody ever died on the table while you were passing the gas?”

“Well, of course. But not as a result of my actions.”

“No? I’ve got to wonder how honest you’re being about that. I really do.”

“Would you mind telling me your name?”

“Joe Hickey, Doc. You can call me Joe.”

“All right, Joe. Are you a former patient of mine? Or a relative of a patient?”

“Why would you ask that? I mean, you never killed anybody, right?”

“It’s just that you seem to have a lot of animosity toward me personally.”

“You feel that? Huh. Could be, I guess. Well, let’s leave that for now. ’Cause I’m about to show you what a nice guy I am. I’m about to set it up so your little princess gets her insulin.”

“Thank God.”

“God’s got nothing to do with this. Let me talk to my partner.”

“Joe, could I speak with my wife for a moment?”

“Put Cheryl on, Doc.”

Will held out the phone.

“Get in the bathroom while I’m talking,” she said.

“Your partner didn’t tell me to go in the bathroom.”

She shook the automatic at him. “Get in the goddamn bathroom!”

Will held up his hands and backed into the spacious cubicle of white marble and gold fixtures. He kept the knob turned as he closed the door, and after he heard Cheryl’s voice resume, opened it a couple of inches and put his ear to the crack.

“Why didn’t we know about this medicine thing?” she asked. “Well, I don’t like it. Getting on the road with her is dangerous. What if a cop stops you? … Okay … I’m all right, I guess. But this guy isn’t like the others, Joey … I don’t know how. His eyes are on me every second. He’s like a wolf, waiting for his chance … I know. I know. Okay. Thirty minutes.”

Will put his eye to the crack and saw Cheryl grimace as she hung up.

“All clear?” he asked, pushing open the door.

“Yeah.”

“What did he say?”

“He’s taking the medicine to your little girl. I mean, he’s taking your wife to give her the shot. See? If we didn’t care what happened to her, would we take the risk to get her medicine to her?”

“Yes. Because you know if anything happened to Abby during the night, you wouldn’t get your money.”

“You wouldn’t know whether anything had happened to her or not.”

“If I don’t get confirmation that Abby’s gotten her insulin within seven hours, I’ll assume she’s gone into ketoacidosis. And you’ll talk then. You’ll talk if I have to break every bone in your body, one at a time.”

The threat seemed to have no effect on Cheryl. From her expression, he got the feeling she’d heard such things before. Maybe she thought he wasn’t capable of such barbarity. Or maybe she knew he wasn’t.

“You think Joey hasn’t thought of that?” she asked. “I don’t even know where your kid is. But even if I did, and you tortured it out of me, the police couldn’t possibly get there in thirty minutes. I know that for sure.” With the gun still in her right hand, Cheryl rubbed both arms as if she were cold. “And you don’t want to start making threats to Joey, Doctor. He could do a lot of things to your little girl besides kill her, you know? You’re not holding any cards here.”

Will closed his eyes and fought a nauseating rush of terror. “Who the hell is this Joey?”

Cheryl looked at him like he was an idiot.

“He’s my husband.”

Abby lay sleeping on an old sofa in the cabin. A crocheted comforter lay over her. Huey sat on the floor beside her, whittling slowly at a piece of cedar. Huey was nervous. He knew the little girl was going to be scared when she woke up, and that scared him. He wished she was a boy instead of a girl. Boys were easier. Three of the five times they had taken boys. Girls made him think too much, and thinking made him sad. He barely remembered his sister now, but he remembered some things. Coughing, mostly. Long, terrible coughs with wheezing whistles between them, whistles with every breath. Thinking of those whistles made him cringe. Huey had slid Jo Ellen’s little bed over by the wood stove to keep her warm, but it hadn’t done any good. His mother and the first doctor kept saying it was just a bad cold until it was too late. By the time they got her to the city doctor in a neighbor’s pickup, she was stone dead. She looked like a little china angel lying across the seat, bluish white, one of God’s chosen, just four years old. Diphtheria, they said. Huey hated the word. Someone had said it on TV once, years afterward, and he’d picked up the TV and smashed it to kindling. Joey had never known Jo Ellen. He was living in Mississippi then.

Abby groaned again, louder this time, and Huey picked up the Barbie doll Joey had passed him through the window.

“Mama?” Abby moaned, her eyes still closed. “Mama?”

“Mama’s not here right now, Abby. I’m Huey.”

Her eyes popped open, then went wide as she focused on the giant sitting before her. Tears pooled instantly in her eyes, and her lower lip began to quiver.

“Where’s my mama?” she asked in a tiny voice.

“She had to go somewhere with your daddy. They asked me to baby-sit you for a while.”

Abby looked around the dilapidated cabin, her cheeks turning bright red. “Where are we? Where is this place?”

“A cabin in the woods. Not very far from your house. Your mama will be back soon.”

Her lip quivered harder. “Where is she?”

“With your daddy. They’re both coming soon.”

Abby closed her eyes and whimpered, on the edge of panic now. Huey took the Barbie from behind him and set it gently before her. When her eyes opened again, they locked onto the doll, drawn to the tiny piece of home.

“Your mama left this for you,” Huey said.

She snatched up the Barbie and clutched it to her chest. “I’m scared.”

He nodded in sympathy. “I’m scared, too.”

Abby’s mouth opened. “You are?”

He nodded again. His eyes were wet with tears.

Abby swallowed, then reached out and squeezed his little finger as if to reassure him.

Forty miles northeast of the cabin, on the outskirts of Jackson, Joe Hickey drove Karen’s Expedition southward on Interstate 55. Karen sat beside him, the small Igloo in her lap. Hickey reached into his pocket and pulled out a long silk scarf he’d taken from the Jenningses’ laundry room.

“Put this over your eyes.”

Karen tied the scarf around her head without argument. “Are we getting close?”

“Less than an hour. Don’t ask me anything else. I might change my mind about the insulin.”

“I won’t talk at all.”

“No, talk,” he said. “I like your voice. It’s got class, you know?”

Though blindfolded, Karen turned to him with amazement.

In the heart of Jackson, in the elite subdivision of Eastover, a white-columned mansion stood gleaming in the beams of spotlights fixed to stately oak trees. On the circular driveway before the house sat a yellow 1932 Duesenberg, the dazzling cornerstone of a vintage car collection of which its owner had spent the better part of the last year divesting himself.

Inside the mansion, Dr. James McDill, owner of both the Duesenberg and the mansion, sat across the dinner table from his wife, Margaret. He felt a deep apprehension when he looked at her. Over the past twelve months, she had lost twenty pounds, and she’d weighed only one hundred twenty-five to start with. McDill wasn’t in the best shape himself. But after weeks of personal struggle, he was about to speak his mind on a very sensitive matter. He knew the reaction that would follow, but he had no choice. The closer the convention got, the more convinced he became that he was right. Time and reflection had brought it all back to him, particularly the things they had said in passing.

He put down his fork. “Margaret, I know you don’t want me to bring this up again. But I’ve got to.”

His wife’s spoon clattered against her bone china plate. “Why?” she asked in a voice that could have shaved glass. “Why do you have to?”

McDill sighed. He was a cardiovascular surgeon of wide experience, but he had never approached any surgery with the trepidation with which he now faced his wife. “Maybe because it happened exactly a year ago. Maybe because of the things they told us. I couldn’t get it out of my mind in the OR this morning. How this thing has affected our lives. Poisoned them.”

“Not mine. Yours! Your life.”

“For God’s sake, Margaret. The convention started tonight on the coast. We’re not there, and for one reason. Because what happened last year is still controlling us.”

Her mouth opened in shock. “You wish you were there now? My God!”

“No. But we were wrong not to go to the police a year ago. And I have a very bad feeling now. That woman told me they’d done it before, and I believed her. She said they’d done it to other doctors. They took advantage of the convention … of our separation. Margaret, what if it’s happening again? Right now?”

“Stop it!” she said in a strangled whisper. “Don’t you remember what they said? They’ll kill Peter! You want to go to the police now? A year after the fact? Don’t you know what would happen? You’re so naive!”

McDill laid both hands on the dinner table. “We’ve got to face this. We simply cannot let what happened to us happen to another family.”

“To us? What happened to you, James? You sat in a hotel room with some slut for a night. Don’t you ever think for one minute of anyone but yourself? Peter was traumatized!”

“Of course I think about Peter! But I refuse to let another child go through what he did because of our cowardice.”

Margaret wrapped her arms tight around herself and began rocking back and forth in the chair, like schizophrenics McDill had seen in medical school. “If only you hadn’t left us here alone,” she murmured. “All alone … Margaret and Peter … alone and unprotected.”

McDill fought the stab of guilt this produced. “Margaret—”

“Medical convention, my foot,” she hissed, her eyes going narrow. “It was that goddamned car show.”

“Margaret, please—”

He fell silent as their eleven-year-old son appeared in the dining room door. Peter was a pale, thin boy, and his eyes never settled in one place long.

“What’s the matter?” he asked timidly. “Why are you guys yelling?”

“Just a misunderstanding, son. I had a tough surgery today, and we were discussing some tax problems. I lost my temper. Nothing for you to worry about. What time are you going over to Jimmy’s?”

“His dad is picking me up in a minute.”

Margaret took a gulp of wine and said, “Are you sure you want to spend the night over there tonight, darling?”

“Yeah. Unless … unless you don’t want me to.”

“I like having my baby under this roof,” Margaret cooed.

“Nonsense,” said McDill. “Go have some fun, son. You’ve been studying too hard this week.”

A car horn sounded outside.