Critical Judgment (1996) (24 page)

A McDonald’s tractor trailer roared by, no doubt headed for the glittering new addition to the chain at Five Corners. On either side of the road the forest deepened. Abby opened the sunroof another inch. Sweet, moist mountain air filled the car.

Everything is going to be all right
, she told herself. Quite possibly, the answers for Willie Cardoza and Josh were as close as the cooler right behind her. And then,
once that business was over, she could turn her attention to finding the answers for Abby Dolan.

She was reaching down to punch the repeat button for an encore of Chapman’s “Fast Car,” when the Mazda was hit from behind. Though the jolt itself was minor, the surprise was anything but. Abby shot upright, confused and frightened. Had she hit an animal or run over something? A second jolt, this time with a crunch of metal against metal, brought everything quickly into focus. She checked the rearview mirror and then risked a glance over her shoulder. A large battered red pickup with a black steel frame in front was no more than a few feet behind her. It had oversize tires that raised its cab a foot or two above the Mazda.

Abby’s hands whitened on the wheel, and, instinctively, she jammed down the accelerator. The rain-slicked roadway flashed beneath her wheels, rising and falling like an amusement-park ride, twisting from right to left with no predictable pattern. The truck sped up once more. Abby glanced in the mirror just as it hit her again. The jolt was harder than the others, though she still had no trouble maintaining control.

The unbroken double yellow line was snaking under the driver’s side whenever she chanced looking behind her. She was constantly whipping the wheel to the right to correct. Suddenly, just as she was drifting again, a massive tractor trailer shot up from a deep swale, barreling past just a foot or so from her. The roar was deafening. The vacuum it created nearly tore the Mazda from the road. Abby screamed out loud as she wrenched the wheel to the right. The pickup, which had backed off a bit, began to close in once more. Was she unlucky enough to have happened into the path of a madman? Or was she specifically the target? Through her rearview mirror she caught a glimpse of the driver. At first it appeared as if a demon of some sort were behind the wheel of the pickup. Then it registered. The driver was
wearing a ski mask. This was no chance encounter. It had to be Quinn or someone who worked for him.

Determined to avoid being hit again, Abby accelerated. She was nearing seventy. It was only a matter of time before she failed to handle a curve or simply skidded into the trees. Her hands and arms were shaking on the wheel. Her mind, though, was responding reflexively, in the way it had been programmed to react over twelve years of medical crises. Her thoughts were becoming clearer, more focused. The movement around her, as it had done so many times in the ER, was actually beginning to slow down.

The truck crept up on her again, closer and closer still. There was no way she could chance going any faster. Any substantial bump was bound to send her spinning out of control. But the nudge this time was much less than that—a tap, perhaps a reminder that she was at the madman’s mercy. Her speedometer hit seventy. The truck pulled out to the left, intending, it seemed, to force her off the road to the right. Just as quickly it swung back as a convertible flashed past, its horn blaring.

The road turned sharply to the right, then dipped. For a moment the pickup dropped out of sight. Abby wondered why Quinn, or whoever it was, hadn’t just bashed her from behind until she lost control. One explanation, a lame one, was that he wanted to frighten her without actually killing her. More likely, though, he was toying with her.
Toying
. Vintage Quinn.

With the driver allowing some daylight between them, Abby hoped he was simply giving up on her. But she knew that possibility was unlikely. She had to take action. There were no gas stations, houses, or restaurants along this stretch that she could remember, and there was no sense in trying to attract the attention of someone speeding the other way. Her choices were either to stop and run, or to find some way off the road.

The roller coaster was going uphill in stages now—a
rise, a small dip, another rise. The Mazda actually left the road at the top, slamming down hard enough to grind the chassis into the pavement. Abby’s teeth snapped together, biting the inside of her cheek. She tasted her own blood and imagined it all ending right there with a ruptured gas tank and a fireball explosion. But after the vicious bounce the Mazda sped on.

Suddenly, as Abby crested another hill, a car emerged from the woods beyond the right-hand soft shoulder not that far ahead. It hesitated for a fraction of a second, then sped across both lanes and vanished into the trees to the left. A crossroad of some sort! It had to be. She glanced in the rearview. The pickup was still some distance back but seemed to be gaining again. She might be able to make the turnoff before it crested the hill. No time to process. No time to reason.
Just act
.

Holding her speed, Abby pulled off the road, skimming along the gravel shoulder just a few feet from the trees. She waited as long as she dared, then slammed on the brakes and swung the wheel sharply to the right. The antilock system stammered like a machine gun as the car skidded into what was nearly a perfect right-angle turn. Almost before she realized she had done it, she was jouncing mercilessly down a narrow dirt two-track logging road. She tried glancing behind her, but the turns were too treacherous. All she could do was barrel ahead and hope for the best. She was going forty now, but given the circumstances, that speed was nearly suicidal. She had to slow down. As she rounded a sharp curve, the dirt road forked. For no reason other than her right-handedness, she swung the wheel that way. The parallel tracks dropped quite steeply and looked for a moment as if they were going to end altogether. Branches whipped wildly at the windshield and scratched along the doors. The car lurched on, scraping rock as it bumped through a dry streambed, then shot upward on the other side.

How long had it been since she’d left the highway—a minute? Five? Maybe thirty seconds. Reluctant to slow
down, Abby continued to lean on the accelerator as hard as she dared. Her arms were aching horribly. Her hands felt welded to the wheel. Spewing dust and gravel, the Mazda bottomed out again and again. She tore up an embankment and once more became airborne. This time, though, the car slammed down on pavement. It was another road, even narrower than the two-laner she had been on, but fairly well maintained. She jerked the wheel hard to the left and skidded to a stop, shaking as if she had been dunked in icy water. The road was utterly deserted. With some effort she flicked off Tracy Chapman and opened the door. The silence was consuming. She turned her ear toward the dirt road she had left, straining to hear the truck’s engine. Nothing. Still wary, she forced herself to stand on rubbery legs and opened the cooler, which was upside down, wedged between the rear and front seat. The tubes were intact.

“Thank God for bubble wrap,” she whispered.

She breathed the oxygen-rich air. Gradually, her pulse rate slowed toward normal. Her trembling ceased. But her thoughts continued to race. Lyle Quinn, or someone sent by him, had just tried to kill her.

Or
had they?

The truck, with its mammoth tires, was certainly capable of stopping, turning around, and catching her in the woods. Perhaps her pursuer had missed seeing her turn off the highway. Perhaps something mechanical had gone wrong with the truck. One thing was clear. Quinn knew of her cargo. He had to know. She patted the Mazda’s roof, then slid back behind the wheel. Perhaps the Colstar security chief had just meant to send a message that would frighten her back to the city for good. If that was the case, he had misjudged her. The harder he pushed, the more committed she would become to seeing things through. It had always been that way for her, and it would be that way this time as well.

Abby turned the key. The engine hummed to life as if nothing had happened. The light rain had stopped,
and the smallest opening had appeared in the clouds. She took one final deep breath to purge the last of the shakes and drove toward what seemed to be east. The trip to San Francisco was going to take a little longer than she had intended. But, dammit, she was going to make it there … 
and back
.

Lyle Quinn had just seen to it.

I
t was late afternoon when Abby arrived at Sandra Stuart’s office in the pathology building at St. John’s. The toxicologist whose lab was going to assay Willie Cardoza’s blood for cadmium left a message that she was delivering a lecture and would meet Abby in the hospital library at five-thirty. Meanwhile, the librarian would have a bibliography and articles waiting for her to begin reviewing.

After emerging from the narrow logging road, it had taken Abby nearly half an hour to locate a gas station and get pointed toward San Francisco. She had given some thought to reporting the attack to the state police but quickly discarded the notion. What could possibly come of it? They’d never find the truck, and she certainly didn’t need the police to explain what had happened to her, and why.

She was ensconced behind a fortress of bound journals when Sandy arrived at the library. To many the toxicologist seemed taciturn and introspective, but Abby had always found her to be droll, compassionate, and a terrific listener. And before a class she transformed into an animated, invariably fascinating teacher. A meticulous academician, Sandy was a few years older than
Abby and was the mother of two young boys. Her husband, who was a pathologist at another hospital, had always seemed to Abby to be married more to his work than to his wife. But she had never once heard her friend complain about the man.

“Sorry I’m late,” Sandy said. “This was my exotic-poisons lecture, and I can always count on an endless stream of questions at the end regarding everyone from Socrates to Napoleon to Howard Hughes.”

“I just appreciate your being here for me.”

“Nonsense. It’s great to see you. After we finish here, Fred’s going to watch the kids so we can go out for dinner and catch up. Ristorante Milano okay?”

“Only perfect. As I recall, you were the one who first brought me there. Now I obsess about the place every time I’m forced to patronize the Leaning Tower of Pizza in Patience.”

“No wonder. Well, let’s do our best here. Then tomorrow I’ll get the lab geared up for your assay. I’ll be teaching most of the day, so it will be late afternoon, or more likely sometime the day after tomorrow, before I have results for you.”

“Listen, I’m relieved you can do this at all.”

“I’ll confess we don’t get much call for cadmium assays these days, but I’m sure we can handle it. You said Josh might be involved in some way?”

Abby described the frightening changes in Josh that spanned nearly six months and seemed to be accelerating. Sandy listened intently, occasionally making a note on whatever paper was handy, studying it for a moment, then sliding it aside. When Abby had finished, Sandy sighed and reached across to pat her on the arm.

“I’m really sorry, Abby,” she said. “I was so happy when you and Josh found one another.”

“So was I.”

“But I will admit that I always thought he kept his emotions somewhat pent up, especially when he was having such trouble finding work and constantly maintaining
such an upbeat front. Still, I just can’t imagine his behaving the way you describe unless he’s sick from something, either a toxin or maybe a tumor of some sort.”

Abby sighed. “I wish I could get him tested for cadmium, but there’s no chance that’s going to happen, not with the way things are now.”

“Well, I don’t consider myself exceptionally well versed on the nuances of cadmium toxicity, but I hope that by the time we finish plowing through that bibliography you sent me and the additional articles I’ve located, we both will be.”

They stayed in the hospital library for three more hours, poring over journals and textbooks, searching especially for some reference to fluorescent ophthalmic rings and psychotic violence in cadmium-toxic patients. There were a number of allusions to acute mental illness, especially in workers who had ingested or inhaled massive amounts of the metal. And there was one particularly intriguing—and terrifying—article from Poland, reporting on a baker who had been a pillar of his community and had suddenly, viciously, stabbed his wife and two children to death. The baker’s health had rapidly deteriorated, and one of the many blood tests performed on him disclosed high levels of cadmium. The source turned out to be a cadmium-contaminated gold dental implant. Removal of the prosthesis, and subsequent chelation therapy, resulted in negative blood levels and complete reversal of his symptoms.

A cure
, Abby thought.
But, unfortunately, just a little late for his wife and children
.

There were no references to the specific eye findings Abby had discovered in Willie Cardoza, but as she suspected, it appeared that no researcher had ever had reason to examine such patients with a black light.

Finally Sandy closed the last of the latest pile of journals, set her glasses down, and rubbed at her eyes.

“Well, Abby, I don’t know about you, but for the last
ten minutes every other word I’ve read looks like either Ristorante or Milano.”

“I’m ready.”

“Well, I promise you some results on your Mr. Cardoza by the day after tomorrow at the latest. My lab will gear up and run the blood, and we’ll also send it off to a commercial lab for confirmation of whatever we find.”

“That would be great.”

“But, tell me, what will you do if the findings are negative?”

The question took Abby by surprise. Swept along by Lew’s enthusiasm, she had never really considered the possibility.

She thought for a moment, then said, “If the test is negative, I think I’ll be coming home. Hopefully, some hospital around here will have an opening for me in their ER. If not, maybe I’ll end up as a Doc-in-the-Box at some mall. Worse things could happen.”