Critical Judgment (1996) (51 page)

“What do you want me to do?” he asked.

Abby called the ER and was told that Dr. Alvarez was outside at the helipad, helping to load Kelly Franklin
onto the MedFlight chopper for a trip to the hyperbaric chamber in Castro Valley. She insisted that her call was an emergency and waited until Alvarez came on the line.

“God, but I’ve been worried about you,” he said in a near whisper. “The police have been here twice asking about you. I think they’re still around. Where are you?”

“I’m at a phone booth at Five Corners.”

“I’ll pick you up there.”

“No! I mean, I told a guy here that my car had broken down. He’s waiting to take me to your place. Just meet me there. I’ll wait by the barn.”

“I’ll be there in five minutes. If you wait inside the barn, be careful not to go walking around. There are rotting floorboards all over the place.”

Abby glanced over at the pickup.

“Thanks for the warning,” she said.

“Abby, the news on Kelly is good. She’s lighter. Much lighter. I think the steroids are kicking in. Med-Flight’s just taking off with her. Apparently the decompression chamber is ready.”

“What about Quinn?”

“Did that hermit Ives do that to his leg?”

“Do what?”

“He was shot with an arrow—the same sort of arrow Ives makes. His kneecap is shattered. I mean blown to bits. The arrow went right through it, then right through the joint. It may have severed the popliteal artery. Ortho’s in with him now. So’s the vascular team. They may not be able to save the leg.”

“Ives did what he had to, to save my life. Lew, I’ve got to get going. I’ll see you at the farm.”

“I’m so glad you’re all right, darling.”

“I know you are, Lew. Hurry home and I’ll tell you what I found.”

F
ive minutes. Abby felt wired—the same tense anticipation as she had felt so many times in the ER.

We are on our way to your facility with Priority One traffic. Repeat, Priority One traffic. Our ETA is five minutes.…

Organize the troops. Start thinking through treatment protocols. Check off a mental list of potential problems and responses. And above all, no matter how shaky you’re feeling, get ready to be composed—prepare to be the eye of the storm.

Her mouth unpleasantly dry, Abby swung open the large front doors of the barn and positioned the rifle just a few feet inside, in the deep shadow between two rough-hewn supports. Then she returned to the truck, set the plastic garbage bag on the floor in the cab, and helped Josh up onto the cargo bay. He was definitely too weak, too ill, to rely upon, except perhaps for helping to tie up Alvarez once she had the rifle pointed squarely at him.

As a precaution, she tore off several two-foot lengths of duct tape and hung them on the door of the truck. Then she made a loop and slip knot at one end of the
clothesline. If she had to work alone, she would be ready.

“It’s almost over, Josh,” she said, handing him his gun. “A few more minutes, and we’ll be headed to the city. We’ll go straight to St. John’s. Once they get you on treatment, you’re going to feel much better.”

Josh propped himself up against the metal side wall, steadied the gun with two hands, and aimed it at a spot in the darkness.

“Ka-pow!” he whispered.

“Please, honey. Please don’t do anything except wait. I want to take him with us and hand him over to the police in San Francisco. So, please, just keep out of the way.… Promise? … Josh, I’m begging you.”

“Promise,” he muttered.

He rubbed at his eyes again and shook his head as if trying to dislodge claws that were piercing his brain.

Abby hopped down from the truck. With the front doors open, light from the outside illuminated most of the barn. She made certain the wooden wall of the stall kept the pickup from being spotted from the doorway.

“Stay still and stay quiet,” she whispered.

She moved to the front of the barn, leaned against the siding, and waited. Five minutes went by. Then another five. Nothing. She left her post and hurried back to check on Josh. He was still sitting, but he was asleep, his head lolling to one shoulder. His hands were still wrapped around the grip of his gun.
Just as well
, she thought.

Abby checked her watch again. For the first time a knot of panic began to tighten in her chest. Something was wrong. She stepped outside the barn and peered down the driveway. Another five minutes passed. Alvarez had said five minutes. Now it was more than fifteen.

She had placed the rifle in the shadows for surprise. Now, suddenly, she felt as if she needed it for protection. She turned toward the back of the barn and gasped.
Alvarez was standing behind her, not five feet away, grinning at her arrogantly.

“I know you too well, Abby,” he said. “I’ve known you inside out since the day we met. That’s why you’ve been so easy to control. You didn’t sound quite like yourself when you called me from the so-called pay phone. And there was no traffic noise in the background. So just in case, I decided to come up an old logging road and walk across the fields to the door back there. I notice you broke the window in my kitchen door.”

“Just to use the phone.”

“How I wish I could believe that. I also noticed my old pickup over there is uncovered. Is that the phone you used? I assume tonight you stumbled on it by accident and recognized it from that day on the road. That’s why you broke into the house.”

Without taking a step Abby took a quick, vicious kick at Alvarez’s groin. Before she connected, he snapped one hand down and caught her ankle. Then he twisted her foot until she fell heavily to the floor.

“You know,” he said, “I was going to have that truck painted sometime before you asked to move in with me. Now I guess I don’t have to bother.”

“I would never have moved in with you.”

“As I said, I know you like a book. Two or three weeks ago, before your friend Wyler even moved out on you, I circled tomorrow’s date on my calendar. That was the day we were going to become lovers.”

“Go to hell.”

Abby forced her eyes to remain locked on his. The rifle was just a few feet away, but Alvarez hadn’t spotted it. He hadn’t discovered Josh yet, either. Perhaps if she could just head him toward the house and make some noise, she might be able to wake Josh up.

“You hurt a lot of people,” she said. “A number of them are dead.”

“You were in my house. I assume you saw pictures of
my village. This is war. In war there are casualties. I want to know how you got from the hospital to Colstar, and what you found there that upset Lyle Quinn so.”

“The police have been up here twice looking for me. They’re due again any minute.”

Alvarez snatched her wrist, yanked her to her feet, and twisted her arm high behind her back. Abby cried out in pain. Tears instantly filled her eyes.

“I asked you a question,” he said, forcing her deeper into the barn.

“Let go of me!” she screamed.

Alvarez released some of the tension on her arm. They were moving closer and closer to the truck.

“Tell me!” he snapped.

“You were wrong all the time,” she said loudly. “Wrong! It was never cadmium. They have a lab down there set up for testing sarin, phosgene, and a bunch of newer chemical weapons, and for trying out antidotes to them.”

“They put the gas in through the MRI?”

“Yes! Now let me go!”

She shouted the words again. It was no use. Apparently Josh was comatose.

“Did you take things from Gabriella’s room upstairs?” He twisted her arm even more viciously than before. “Did you?”

“In the truck,” she sobbed.

Alvarez eased the force on her arm and dragged her several feet closer to the pickup. One or two more steps and there was no way he could avoid spotting Josh sprawled in the back. All Abby could think about now was the weapon in Josh’s lap. Which would give her the better chance—trying to rouse him somehow, or trying to pull free and vault into the cargo bay herself? She decided to do both.

“Josh!”

She screamed the word at the same instant she yanked her arm free and dived headfirst over the side
wall of the pickup. The metal rim caught her at the waist, sending pain screaming from her pelvic bones. The cargo bay was empty. Alvarez whirled, caught her by the leg, and threw her back to the floor. She rolled away from him, over and over, until she was well outside the stall. Alvarez came after her quickly, but he was still several feet away when Josh stepped out of the dimness on the far side of the truck.

“Hold it!” he ordered.

There was little strength in Josh’s voice. Alvarez stopped short and turned slowly, his hands open in front of him. Abby scrambled to her feet. She could see that Josh was able to stand only because his back was braced against the wall. He was struggling to keep his gun trained on Alvarez’s chest.

His icy smile unwavering, Alvarez slid several paces to his left. He was now no more than ten feet from the side door—about the same distance he was from Josh and from Abby.

“Wyler, you don’t look well,” he said.

“Don’t … move.”

The words were barely audible.

Abby could see the pain and confusion in Josh’s eyes, and she had no doubt that Alvarez could see it, too. If Alvarez dived for the door, he was almost certain to make it before Josh reacted. Instead, he stood his ground. His expression was bemused, his eyes were riveted on Josh.

“Josh, give me the gun,” Abby said, taking a tentative step toward him.

There was no response.

“Josh?” she said again.

The barrel of the gun sank toward the floor. She realized that Josh was virtually unconscious on his feet. Alvarez tested the situation with a slight move toward the door. Then another. At that moment a dreadful gurgling rose from Josh’s throat. His head snapped back and his body stiffened. Then he lurched to his left and
fell, his back arched and his limbs pumping in a violent seizure. The weapon spun out of his hand and under the truck. Alvarez had a much better angle on the stall than did Abby. He dived headfirst toward the pickup and was scrambling over Josh when Abby whirled and sprinted for the spot against the front wall where she had propped the rifle.

She grabbed it just as Alvarez shoved Josh clear of the truck. He was on his belly, reaching for the gun, when she dropped to the floor about twenty feet away and leveled the rifle.

“Stop, Lew! Right there!”

She punctuated the command with a shot that splintered the floor beneath the truck, just a foot or so away from his face. Then she quickly bolted another round into the chamber. Slowly, he wriggled out backward from under the truck. She could see that he held the gun. Behind him, Josh had stopped seizing and was now lying motionless.

“Throw it away, Lew,” she barked. “Now!”

He slithered around to face her. The gun was still in his hand, but turned almost under him so that it would be impossible to ready it and shoot before she fired. He tested her with a tiny movement.

“Okay, that’s enough,” she said.

He adjusted his arm another few inches.

“I said enough!” she snapped. “You say you know me so well. What does your wonderful insight say I’m going to do if you don’t throw that gun away right now?”

He made a show of sizing her up.

“It says you won’t fire,” he said finally.

“Good. I’m glad that’s how you feel. You haven’t been wrong about me yet, so why don’t you go ahead?
My
intuition tells me you’re too much of an egomaniac to want to chance having the world endure without you forever. Let’s see who’s right.”

Fifteen endless seconds passed. Then, finally, with a
flick of his wrist, Dr. Luis María Galatín sent the weapon spinning across the coarse wooden floor.

“Stay on your belly,” Abby barked, advancing to him, her rifle leveled at the base of his skull.

“How are you going to tie me up without setting that gun down?”

“Put your hands behind you, Lew. Now!”

“If I don’t?”

“If you don’t, I’m going to shoot you. Maybe in your leg, maybe in your groin. Do you believe that? … Do
you?”

Slowly, Alvarez brought his hands behind his back. Abby dropped the loop of clothesline over his wrists and pulled the knot tight. Next, she wound the rope several times around his ankles, and then looped it around his neck. Only then, keeping constant tension on the rope, did she risk cradling the rifle as she reached for the duct tape.

It took more than twenty careful minutes, all of the clothesline, and most of the roll of duct tape before Abby felt certain she had bound Alvarez securely. He was on his belly, hands lashed behind him, ankles secured. It was only then that she felt able to tend to Josh.

He was in the condition Abby had observed hundreds of times after patients’ seizures—conscious, but dazed, moaning softly with each breath. In the course of his fit, he had bitten his tongue and the inside of his lip. Now a trickle of blood had darkened the corner of his mouth. Abby gave passing thought to leaving him there and calling for an ambulance when—if—she got free of the valley. But she sensed she would never make it out of the area without his knowledge of the back roads through the hills.

She checked his pulses, which were strong, and his pupils, which were somewhat less pinpoint than they had been. The seizure was probably an effect of the cadmium, although it could have been alcohol. Either way, the narcotic painkillers may have kept it from being
worse. The expertise to perform chelation therapy, and indeed, the chelating medication itself, was at St. John’s, not here in Patience. But the drive to the city could prove disastrous for him. Even so, Abby knew they had to take the chance. She propped him up with an arm around his shoulder. His head lolled at first. But after a short time he began to regain some control.

“Josh, can you hear me?” A faint nod. “You had a seizure, probably from the poison in your body. We need to get out of here and down to St. John’s. Do you understand?” Another nod.

Abby helped him to his feet. Then she belted him into the passenger seat of the truck. She found the key on a ring in Lew’s pocket. Next she pulled on the clothesline, stretching his arms backward until he had to stand up. Then she ordered him to the back of the truck. He refused to move. Abby retrieved Josh’s gun and held it against one of his thumbs.