24 Hours (11 page)

“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 a 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, still in 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 East-over, 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.

Peter looked uncertain. “I guess that’s them.”

“You’d better run, son. We’ll see you in the morning.”

Peter crossed the room and kissed his mother. Over his shoulder, Margaret glared at McDill.

“We’ll be right here if you need us for anything,” she said. “Just call. We’ll be right here.
All night.
”

McDill stared dejectedly at his plate. He had lost his appetite.

The Expedition jounced and jumped along rutted ground beneath black trees, Hickey sitting stiff behind the wheel. Karen gripped the handle on the windshield frame, the ice chest cold between her legs. She was terrified that Hickey would wreck the Expedition before they reached Abby. He had let her remove the blindfold after the last turn, but she felt like she was still wearing it. He refused to use the headlights, and with only the running lights on, she was astonished that he could pick his way through the dense trees. Wherever this place was, Hickey must have spent a lot of time here.

“We’re going to meet Huey on this road,” he said. “You and I will walk forward with the ice chest. You will not get emotional. You will not freak out. You hear? You can hug your kid long enough to calm her down. Then you take her blood sugar and give her the shot. After that, one last hug, then we go.”

“I understand.”

“Be sure you do. She’s going to go crazy when you start to leave, but you’d better tough it out. Just like the first day of school. Huey’s told her he’s baby-sitting her for one night. You reinforce that. Tell her everything’s okay, we’re all friends, and you’re going to pick her up in the morning. If you flip out . . .” Hickey turned to her for an instant, his eyes hard as agates. “If you flip out, I’ll have to hurt you right in front of her. She’ll have nightmares all night. You don’t want that.”

A pair of headlights flashed out of the dark and speared Karen’s retinas. As she threw up her hand to shield her eyes, Hickey stopped the Expedition and blinked the headlights twice. Then he left them on, creating a long tunnel of halogen light that merged with the dimmer headlights pointing at them.

“Come on,” he said, shutting off the engine. “Bring your stuff.”

Karen picked up the ice chest and climbed out. When she got to the front of the Expedition, Hickey grabbed her arm and said, “Start walking.”

Night mist floated through the headlight beams as they walked along them, and the humidity was heavy on Karen’s skin. She was straining for a sight or sound of Abby when a giant form blotted out the other pair of headlights.

The silhouette was about thirty yards away, and it looked like the outline of a grizzly bear. Karen stopped in her tracks, but Hickey pushed her on. Suddenly a squeal cut through the night.

“Mama?
Mama!
”

Karen rushed forward, stumbling in the ruts, picking herself up, going on. She fell to her knees and embraced the tiny shadow that had emerged from behind the massive one.

“I’m here, honey!” she said, squeezing Abby as tight as she dared and choking back a wave of tears. “Mama’s here, baby!”

Abby keened and cried and screeched all at once. She wanted to speak, but each time she tried, her little chest heaved and caught, and she kept repeating the same syllable over and over.

“Wh—wh—wha—”

Karen kissed her cheeks and nose and forehead and hair. Abby was almost hyperventilating, mucus and tears running down her face, sheer panic in her eyes.

“It’s okay, baby. Take your time. Mama’s here. I can hear you, baby.”

“Wh-why did you leave me here, Mama? Why?”

Karen forced herself to appear calm. She couldn’t let Abby see how terrified she was. “I had to, honey. Daddy and I have an important meeting. One we forgot about. It’s only for grown-ups, but it won’t last long. It’s only for tonight.”

“Are you
leaving
again?” The confusion in Abby’s eyes was the most wrenching sight Karen had ever seen. Terror of abandonment was something she had known herself, and seeing it in her daughter made her bones ache.

“Not for a while yet,” she said. “Not for a while. We need to check your sugar, baby.”

“
Nooooo,”
Abby wailed. “I want to go home!”