Dante's Poison (37 page)

“But I'm still waiting for you to sneer and tell me I'm not as smart as I think I am.”

“In the present circumstances, I think that goes without saying.” Graham came around behind me and stuck something hard in the small of my back. For all I knew, it could have been a broom handle. On the other hand, I wasn't about to test the theory. “Come. Let's go outside and talk.”

He marched me over and through the door and pushed me down into one of the two lawn chairs. I shivered in the chilly wind coming off the Lake. “How did you know where to find me?”

“Yelena, of course.”

I should have guessed.

“You really ought to have treated her better, you know. She responds very well to basic human courtesy. You could take a lesson from your fat friend. He never has to beg her to do her job. I doubt she's going to miss you very much. If you don't mind, I'm going to tie you up.”

“You're the boss. But what will you use? I don't typically keep a supply of rope on hand for visiting psychopaths.”

“No problem. I borrowed some of your sheets.” He began fastening my wrists to the armrests with what felt like torn-off strips of my bedclothes. I noticed he was wearing latex gloves.

“How did you know we were on to you?” I asked.

“Your pudgy friend again. In case you hadn't realized it, he's about as capable of keeping a secret as a teenage girl. I saw him running around collecting samples and figured it out. You should have gone to the police right away.”

I took this to mean he didn't know about O'Leary, which might give me something to work with if only I could delay things. “You mind telling me how you got in?”

“You should have invested in better real estate. I sprang the lock with a credit card. It's a crime how flimsy most construction is these days. With the prices they charge you'd think folks would insist on something more solid. Take this railing for instance.” He gave it a little knock. “I doubt it will hold even your weight for very long.”

The realization of what he was talking about made me shiver again. How was I ever going to save my neck? My only recourse was to keep him talking. He seemed awfully familiar with the premises, prompting me to speculate this wasn't the first time he'd paid them a visit. “You've been here before,” I said.

“Yes,” he answered patiently, “While you were putting in that performance at the conference.”

“What . . . what were you doing in my apartment?” I asked, remembering that night during the storm. For all I knew, he'd been in the same room with me the whole time.

“Getting to know you better. Oh, don't worry. I didn't tamper with much.”

“So it was you who left the terrace door open. And the window in my bedroom.”

“Mmm-hmm. I was hoping you might wander out of one of them under the influence of the little cocktail I prepared for you. By the way, I was impressed by all the bells and whistles on your computer. It took me a while to get the hang of the reading program, but once I turned down the speed I enjoyed the technology. I did consider wiping your hard drive clean like Gallagher's, but it was still useful to me and—”

I was caught totally by surprise. “Wait a minute,” I broke in. “You're saying it was you who destroyed Gallagher's files?”

“Why? Did you think it was Jane? Of course, I'd always planned on Gallagher's records making an untimely disappearance. I had to be certain there was nothing in them to connect me to his silly story. It apparently never occurred to the police that there were two different visitors to his home, or that they came on separate occasions.”

I nodded, cursing myself for not having thought of that possibility before now. Graham had finished tying my hands and sat down in the other lawn chair. I flexed my wrists and concluded I'd never be able to wiggle free. “You're saying she only took the hard copy of the report you passed to Gallagher?”

“Yes, because when I went looking for it, it was already gone and Jane was the only person who could have taken it. It's exactly what I would have done. She and I are alike in so many ways. I've been following her closely for years. You can imagine how pleased I was when she undertook that investigation for my employer.”

It was as I'd suspected. Graham had set her up.

“Then you admit you tried to frame her?”

“Frame her? No, that would imply a more direct role in Gallagher's death. All I did was set in motion a series of events that I hoped would play out a certain way. It was only my good fortune that they did. Incidentally, I give her high marks for how it was done. Nearly flawless. Her only mistake was being seen by that schoolteacher. But then again, she's always been brilliant—”

“Wait,” I said, floored even further by this new revelation. “It wasn't you who . . . ?”

“Fed him the Lucitrol? I'm sure that's what she'd like you to think. But no, it wasn't me.” He said it calmly and almost sadly, as though he wished he'd come up with the idea himself.

My head was reeling, but I had to keep him talking. “Why should I believe you? There were witnesses who saw you with Gallagher at a bar the same night. Who's to say it wasn't you who slipped him the pill?”

“No one, unfortunately. That was
my
mistake. Agreeing to go over the facts of the story with him one last time. But when he bragged about how he'd put Jane in her place a little earlier and I saw all the signs—you couldn't mistake them; he was as pale as a corpse and sweating like a pig—I knew my girl had come through with flying colors. Unfortunately, the coroner neglected to perform an autopsy, so I had to intervene again.”

“You sent that note to Gallagher's nephew. Why not to the police directly?”

“I knew they wouldn't pay any attention to it. The authorities are always getting letters like that from cranks and attention seekers. I thought I stood a better chance of getting the body exhumed if I sent it to someone with a financial stake in proving Gallagher didn't die from natural causes. Another correct assumption, as it turned out.”

“And the second note? What was that all about?”

“Second note?” he said, sounding genuinely puzzled. “I'm sorry but you've lost me.”

“The note you left in my office, after you attacked Hallie and me. You're not going to deny you were the one who came after us?”

“No. But I didn't send any letters. Why would I want to draw attention to myself? Going after you and your girlfriend was another mistake. I allowed my irritation over Jane's release to get the better of me.” He stopped. “Is there anything else you want to know? It's getting late and I have a plane to catch.”

I scrambled to come up with another line of conversation. “Why kill me? I had nothing to do with your father's death.”

“The better question is why not? You're just like all the other imposters in your so-called profession. Calling yourselves healers when you have no more understanding of the potions you prescribe than the most primitive of witch doctors. My father always looked down on psychiatry, said it wasn't the true practice of medicine. And I proved it, didn't I? Nobody knows how the drugs work. They might just as well be the sugar pills I snuck into my samples. It's about time someone repaid your arrogance in kind.”

It was time to play the O'Leary card. “You won't get away with it.”

“That's also part of the standard script, isn't it?” Graham said coolly.

“Yes, but what you don't know is that I
did
go to the police. They'll be searching your place any minute now.”

“And won't find a thing. Just as they won't find any evidence linking me to your apparent suicide. Of course, I'll have to relocate to a different country to avoid prosecution for whatever additional crimes they'll try to slander me with, but your death won't be one of them. It will be crystal clear to everyone why you chose to take your own life.”

I fought to keep a cool head. “I've managed to stay alive all this time. Why would anyone think I suddenly decided to kill myself?”

“Why, the experimental study you were enrolled in. Everyone knows how you've pinned all your hopes on it. How sad for you that the miracle didn't happen, and how terribly depressed you became when you could no longer deny that your blindness was permanent. It doesn't matter anymore, but I'll let you in on a little secret: I tested the pills in that bottle you were stupid enough to lose in the hall. You were in the group getting the medication. So now you know: the treatment was a complete failure.”

Somehow it paled in significance to getting out of there alive.

“My friends won't believe it,” I insisted, without much conviction. If Graham succeeded in his plan, who would be able to swear I'd never considered it? Even Josh, if you put him under oath, would have to concede he'd been worried about me. And hadn't I impressed upon Rusty that most suicides were unpredictable? Nine-tenths of the population believed that blindness was a fate worse than death. When they found me hanging by a sheet from my terrace, why wouldn't everyone draw the simplest and least debatable conclusion?

“And then there's the e-mail you'll be sending,” Graham added, almost casually.

“What e-mail?” I said, with rising panic.

“Haven't you been wondering all this time why I bothered to hack into your computer? It's already there, timed to go out just about now. The e-mail to your ex-wife and son, telling them about the treatment and apologizing for not having the courage to go on. Steady, now. I see that mentioning your little boy touches a nerve. What's his name again? Oh, yes, I remember. Louis. Well, it's a pity that Louis will have to grow up like I did. I always hated my father for leaving me like that—wasn't I a good enough reason for him to go on living? They say it's common for the offspring of suicides to experience such emotions. And now your son will come to despise you, too.”

NO
, I thought in near hysteria. Not that, too . . .

“HELP!” I screamed suddenly and at the top of my lungs while I jumped to my feet, thrusting myself and the lawn chair back and behind me with as much momentum as I could manage. If I couldn't save myself, the least I could do was create evidence of a struggle. “Help! I screamed again as the chair hit the plate glass behind me. There was a loud smack but no evidence of shattering. The chair toppled over from the force of the impact, sending me to the terrace floor in a fetal position with my wrists still attached to the armrests. I wasted no time kicking off the concrete with the sides of my feet and scuttling the chair backward against the glass again. This time I had the satisfaction of hearing a crunching sound upon impact. “Is anyone there? Call the police!” I continued to shout, still trying to make as much noise as possible. “There's a madman trying to kill me!!”

Graham came over and silenced me with a kick to my solar plexus. “That won't do you any good. By the time anyone gets here, you'll be twisting in the wind.”

I lay there on the ground gasping for air while he slipped the homemade noose over my head and proceeded to detach my hands from the chair. As soon as my right had been freed and while I was still struggling to breathe, I reached into my pocket and pulled out all the detritus—loose change, cane tips, and whatever else I'd been able to scoop up while I was retrieving my cell phone from the bowl near the door. Before Graham could stop me, I flung them wildly at his face, still hoping to slow him down.

“My, my, we are full of tricks,” Graham said. “That one will cost you, too.” He hadn't been lying about the gun, which he now brought down butt first on the hand he'd been working on. I heard my radius crack and let out a shriek of pain. When he was finished, he pulled me up by the unbroken wrist and turned me out, facing the wind. “Take a last look,” he said in my ear, pushing me forward until my feet were at the terrace's edge. “For whatever that's worth.” He tugged on the noose to secure it and gathered me up in a bear hug while I struggled to wrest free. I felt my feet come off the ground and summoned the lungpower to scream once more. “Tell Louis it wasn't me!!”

Just then I heard a sound from behind us, like a playful little pop.

And found myself sinking under Graham's considerable bulk.

“Thank God she was able to stop him,” Hallie said from her hospital bed. “But how did she happen to be there at just the right time?”

Jane's story, repeated many times to the police over the last twenty-four hours and with all-too-credible consistency, was as follows: that she'd been worried about me ever since I'd burst out of her penthouse several days ago in an apparently disoriented state. That after leaving several messages for me with my assistant—Yelena, reverting to her usual self, had neglected to pass any of them on—Jane became even more concerned about my welfare, resolving to come knock on my door as soon as her busy schedule permitted. That her receptionist, Gregory, had found my address in the online white pages and phoned ahead to make an appointment, only to discover that my phone line was disconnected. That she'd rushed over to the building, following one of my neighbors through the door and gone directly upstairs. That when she'd heard my screams from inside the apartment, she phoned 911 immediately—their records confirmed it—but thought the situation too dire to wait until the police arrived. That upon testing the door she discovered it to be unlocked and entered to see me struggling with a heavyset intruder on my terrace. That fortunately she always carried a semiautomatic pistol in her purse, having received several death threats during her tenure at the State's Attorney's. That when it appeared I was in imminent danger of being pitched over my balcony, she decided the use of deadly force was justified. That she did not consider herself a hero and was merely honored to have saved the life of the brave psychiatrist who had brought a dangerous psychopath to justice.