Clay (21 page)

“I don’t think I do,” Janna said quietly. “Tell Dr. Gower that I appreciate everything he’s done for me and I’m sorry, but I can’t go through with it. That’s all.”

The woman’s lips twisted. “You appreciate it?”

“The hope he gave me. It was good to have that, at least for a while.” She’d come here driven by guilt and the remnants of a sense of obligation for the vanished promise of a miracle, but that was over.

Janna turned toward the door, then stepped into the hall that led to the reception area. As she glanced in that direction, she saw a police car pull up outside with lights flashing.

Abruptly the connecting door swung open inside the office she’d just left. Dr. Gower charged into the room, his eyes wide and his face so pale that the blotches on it stood out like oil spots on a white sand
beach. “It’s a raid, Anita! My contact from downtown called. The damned sheriff of Turn-Coupe, up near Horseshoe Lake, can provide evidence and a witness against us. Destroy the files. Then we have to get out of here right—”

He came to a halt, staring at Janna through the office’s open door. Surprise and concern chased themselves across his face. Before he could speak, however, the sound of shouts and sirens came from outside.

The front door of the reception area down the hallway swung open to hit the wall with the sound of breaking glass. The receptionist screamed.

Close on the sound, a harsh voice bellowed, “Police! On your feet! Hands in plain sight!”

Comprehension invaded Dr. Gower’s eyes, turning them dark as he stared at Janna. “Oh, my dear,” he said in pained tones. “What have you done? What have you done to me?”

“W
e have no time for that,” Anita Fenton said with icy disdain in her eyes. “We have to get out of here. Now!” Diving toward the computer terminal, she tapped the keys briefly, then popped out a disk, leaving the drive grinding and whirring in erase mode.

“As you say,” the doctor agreed, his gaze brooding. “I think we will all use the escape route.”

Hard on the words, the doctor swooped down on Janna and caught her wrist, pulling her back into the office. He clamped an arm around her waist, then propelled her toward the open door that led into the second office beyond.

“Wait!” Janna struggled, trying to set her feet.

“You must come with us,” Dr. Gower said urgently.

“And keep quiet!” the nurse said in a harsh whisper as she slid past them, then ran to another door that was set into the back wall, this one of rusting steel and with an Exit sign above it. Cursing under her breath, she put her shoulder to the heavy panel while shoving on the handle. As it swung open with ponderous slowness, she held it while reaching out
with clawlike hands to drag Janna and Dr. Gower into what appeared to be a storeroom. When they were inside, she slammed and locked the steel barrier behind them.

“What are you doing?” Janna demanded as she pulled free for a second. “You can’t hide in here!”

“Shut up, I told you,” Anita snapped. “Unless you feel like answering a lot of very unpleasant questions.”

On the other side of the door, they could hear the voice of the receptionist raised in protest. Janna had seconds to make a decision. If she screamed and gave them away, there was no telling when she might see Lainey again. But how could she go with these two when they might have been responsible for the deaths of at least two teenagers?

“Of course she’ll be quiet,” Dr. Gower said. “She isn’t stupid.”

“She’d better not be.” From her purse, the red-haired woman pulled a handgun and pointed it at Janna’s midsection. “Let’s get the hell out of here before I’m tempted to make little Lainey an orphan.”

The doctor’s face tightened in the gloom, but he made no protest. Turning, he led the way at a fast trot from the storeroom and through what was undoubtedly the back area of the old department store. They hurried past dust-covered clothes racks, naked and staring mannequins, piles of broken hangers and scattered drifts of rat-eaten cardboard. Janna went with them; she had no choice, though her mind worked at super speed to find an alternative.

As they passed into the open sales section of the empty building, they could see the collection of police units and uniformed muscle beyond the display windows with their torn masking paper. Keeping well back, they skimmed through that semiexposed area as quickly as possible, though it was likely that the mirrorlike glaze on the windows prevented them from being seen. Entering another suite of offices, they plunged through them to the rear where they reached another steel exit door. This one opened into the steam and bustle of a kitchen. They were in the coffee shop, Janna realized, even before she’d inhaled the distinctive smells of chicory coffee and frying yeast dough that she’d noticed earlier.

A man with a dingy white cap on his head and an apron tied around his middle, turned from the deep fryer he was tending to stare at them. “What the hell?” he began. Then he saw the pistol and closed his mouth with an audible pop.

Dr. Gower spared him only a single glance before turning toward the kitchen’s rear. Yet another exit door was set into the dirty brick wall, next to a collection of trash cans, brooms and mop pails. From the one time that she’d approached the medical center via the back way, Janna was sure that it led into a fenced-in cul-de-sac for deliveries and garbage pickup. She felt rather than saw the movement when Nurse Fenton started toward it.

Instantly Janna spun in the opposite direction. She didn’t hesitate, but ran for the swinging door that separated the kitchen from the front of the coffee shop.

“No!” the doctor shouted. Janna glanced back to see him thrust Anita Fenton’s arm upward so her pistol pointed toward the ceiling. She expected to hear the crack of a shot at any second, but it didn’t come. Instead there was only the hard thud as she hit the door, then the
squeak-squeak
as it flapped back and forth behind her.

No one came after her. Nurse Fenton, or more likely the doctor, must have decided against drawing that much attention. It seemed like a wise plan. Janna slowed her pace as the few customers craning their necks to see the police action at the front windows turned back to stare at her. She gave them a strained smile. Then moving with as casual an air as she could manage, she walked deliberately out of the shop.

The number of police cars and uniformed men had grown, forming an effective barricade outside the entrance to the medical center. She ignored them studiously, like any ordinary citizen who didn’t want to be involved. Her car seemed miles away, but she began to walk toward it.

Seconds passed. Her footsteps sounded unnaturally loud on the pavement. Then the car was in front of her and she was reaching for the door handle. As she unlocked it, she heard a commotion of shouts, car engines and sirens in the rear of the strip mall that sounded as if Dr. Gower and Anita had been spotted leaving and the police were giving chase. With only the mildest of curious glances in that direction for the benefit of anyone watching, she slid into the furnace heat of the vehicle. The seat burned through her dress
but she hardly felt it. Fumbling with her keys, she slid them into the ignition and started the engine. Then, carefully, slowly, she drove away.

No one tried to stop her. No one followed her that she could tell. She had appeared as she had intended, like a coffee shop customer with better things to do than gawk at such a common spectacle as police action in that part of town. Reaction hit her. She began to shake. The hard tremors ran over her entire body, making her muscles jerk so uncontrollably that she could hardly hold the car on the road. Afraid she might cause an accident, she pulled in at the first service station she came to and parked with the engine running. Bracing her arms on the steering wheel, she rested her forehead on her stacked hands and closed her eyes.

She was safe. She had gotten away.

She should have stayed; she knew that. She should have approached the police and told them everything she knew. Because she hadn’t, the doctor and his murderous assistant might well go free. Free to start over, free to experiment again on the desperately ill, free to go after those who had betrayed them.

Nurse Fenton was behind the deaths of the teenagers; there seemed little doubt of that. It was she who normally made Dr. Gower’s financial arrangements, after all. Though she functioned as a nurse, she had considerably more medical training and expertise in her capacity as a physician’s assistant. Did she do it for the money, because she had some kind of stake in the center, or was it for love? As hard as it was
to realize, women did sometimes invest in the obsessions of the men they cared about, even to the point of committing heinous crimes.

Regardless of her reasons, Anita Fenton had to be stopped; Janna was clear on that. If she went back now, would it make a difference? Would it really, when the police seemed in control of the situation already?

She didn’t know. And she didn’t see how she could afford to reveal her part in the sordid business when it might mean prison. She couldn’t leave Lainey to be cared for by people who didn’t know and understand her condition, had no instinct for when she was in serious trouble. No, she couldn’t do it. And yet the guilt over running away was a fierce, rending pain inside her.

Why couldn’t the raid have happened just a few minutes later, when she was far from the medical center? Why did she have to be caught in the middle of it? Why couldn’t she have had the simple peace of being without blame for this, at least? Was that too much to ask?

It was, of course. The damn sheriff of Turn-Coupe, as Dr. Gower had called him, was Roan Benedict. Sheriff Benedict was Clay’s cousin. If there was evidence against Gower, then Clay had supplied it. Clay was the witness whose testimony had doubtless proven the critical element in the decision of the Baton Rouge police to raid the center. He knew what was happening in the swamp because she’d kidnapped him. If she were going to be implicated in
this mess then it would come about because of that. In all likelihood, she would have to tell her story to someone eventually.

Clay had worked with Roan to shut down the transplant operation, had been working with him, perhaps, since the first night he left the camp. Even while he was making love to her, he had been busily seeing to it that she had no life.

It shouldn’t matter what he’d done. Janna had come finally to the recognition that she couldn’t endure saving her daughter at the expense of another young life. However, Clay didn’t know that. He thought she still meant to go through with the illegal transplant. And since he did, his actions were in deliberate opposition to what Janna had proposed for her daughter’s health and welfare.

He didn’t care what she wanted. He didn’t care about Lainey. He only cared about his damned Benedict notions of right and wrong, justice and honor. He felt his way of handling the situation, his reading of it, was superior. He had been so horrendously sure of it that he’d left her no choice except to do things his way.

Well and good. He’d been right and she’d been wrong. The illegal transplant had been a desperate idea, one that should never have been attempted. She didn’t blame him for that, or for doing everything in his power to stop Dr. Gower. What she did blame him for was not discussing it with her.

He had taken the decision into his own hands, this man who had never had a child, never been a parent.
He had discounted Lainey’s life. He’d thrown it away for the sake of some abstract sense of justice. He might say he had discounted it for the greater good, but that didn’t matter when the person who must pay had a child’s laughter and a child’s tears.

He’d sacrificed Lainey. He’d given up Janna’s daughter for a principle, and for that Janna could never forgive him. And she could certainly never allow him to lay any claim to her, no matter how powerful the reason.

Janna lifted her head, staring through the windshield with unseeing eyes. So what was she to do now? The first thing was to see her daughter, hold her in her arms and feel her small heart beating, smell the sweet child’s fragrance of her. Then the two of them would pack their things and leave the camp and Turn-Coupe behind, maybe go back to New Orleans, find a cheap apartment close to The Children’s Hospital. They would put as much distance as possible between them and Turn-Coupe and the Benedicts. Especially Clay Benedict.

After a few minutes, Janna’s trembling eased. She took a deep breath, then shook herself. Moving like an automaton, she put the car in gear again and pulled back out into the traffic, headed for Turn-Coupe.

The hospital bed was empty.

Janna stood staring at the expanse of white sheet where her daughter should be while anguish curled itself around her heart. An empty bed equaled death; she’d seen it far too often during Lainey’s long so
journs in the pediatric renal units of various hospitals. It was almost certain when the room had been stripped of personal effects and cleaned, and no family or nurse-sitter was present.

The bed was freshly made and with the sheets turned back on one corner. The wastebasket had a new liner. The closet was bare, as was the bedside table. April was nowhere in sight. What else could it mean? The only other possibility she could imagine was almost as paralyzing as the first.

“Hi there! I guess you’re looking for your little girl, huh?”

Janna spun around to face the nurse who stood in the open doorway. In a voice that sounded as if she’d been running for miles, she asked, “Where is she?”

“Jeez, honey, take it easy. She’s okay, really. Clay just took her home.”

The face of the plump, dark-haired nurse was creased with sympathetic distress. It made little impression on Janna, since she remembered very well that this particular nurse, Johnnie Hopewell, was a part of the Benedict clan. “You mean Dr. Hargrove released her?”

“Yeah, about an hour ago. She was basically over the problem, and he thought she could recuperate at home just as well, considering she was in such good hands. Boy, was that kid ready to get out of here.”

“And Clay took her…where, exactly?”

“Home with him, like I told you. To Grand Point.”

So much for putting trust of any kind in him. With
her voice gathering strength, Janna said, “He can’t do that. Lainey is my daughter, mine. I gave no permission for her to be moved.”

“But you came in with Clay.” Johnnie frowned in perplexity, as if she couldn’t see the problem.

“That doesn’t mean anything!”

“Means he’s got a strong interest in the welfare of your little girl. There’s no cause to be upset, hon, really there isn’t. Clay dotes on that kid, as anybody with half an eye can see. He wouldn’t hurt her for the world.”

“You’re saying he can walk into this hospital and take any child he wants just because he likes them?” she demanded. “That’s outrageous! What about release forms, a legal signature? Payment, for God’s sake! Who the hell does he think he is?”

“All arranged, every bit of it.” Johnnie’s smile curled one corner of her mouth. “He’s a Benedict, sweetheart. That’s the way they are.”

She should have known. Tunica Parish was Benedict country. Here, they were kings. They could do anything they wanted and get away with it. Or thought they could.

It was her greatest fear made real. Clay had taken Lainey. He had taken her away from her mother. Still, it was so hard to believe. She didn’t want, couldn’t bear, to believe it.

“Are you sure Clay wasn’t going back to the camp?” Janna insisted.

“Didn’t hear him say, really. I suppose he could have been, or might even have taken her to April and
Luke’s house, since they were here. But I sure got the idea they were headed for Grand Point.”

“Bastard,” she whispered.