Extreme Measures (36 page)

The two men dragged him out the back way, tied his ankles together again, checked to be sure his pockets were empty, and then shoved him onto the metal floor of a van that smelled as if it had been used for hauling rotten fish. For the next half-hour or more, they drove. Initially, Eric tried to make some sense of the turns and straightaways, but he quickly gave up.

At last the truck jounced onto what seemed to be a dirt road and stopped, its engine still running. Eric was pulled from the back and thrown to the ground. The bonds on his ankles were cut, but his gag and blindfold were left on, and his hands left tied behind his back.

“Just stand right there, man. Listen carefully, and don’t move. There’s, a nice sharp knife lying on the ground about four feet away from you. I won’t tell you where. Wait until you can’t hear this truck engine no more, and then go for it. We could use that knife to cut your throat, Mr. Bigshot Doctor, but we’re not going to. You know why? Because, man, we really don’t give a shit about you. We’ve got the one we want. She’s business. You’re sport. And whether you make it or you don’t, the disbelievers will get the message we want to send.”

Eric heard the two men laughing as they jumped into the van. It sprayed sand and gravel on him as it roared away. Moments later, the night was silent as a tomb.

W
orking blind, Eric spent what seemed an eternity finding the small folding knife, and longer still positioning it to saw through the clothesline binding his wrists. During the process he cut himself at least half a dozen times. Finally he shook his arms free. He ripped the blindfold from his eyes and the tape from his mouth, and used them to stem some of the bleeding from his hands and wrists. He was on a dark, wooded dirt road, with no sign of a house in any direction. The cool early-morning air smelled and tasted like country.

Eric felt himself still on the edge of panic, but he was steadied a bit by the realization that at least he was no longer helpless. If the only drug on his face was tetrodotoxin, someone somewhere had to know of a way to blunt or negate its effect. The key for him now was clear thinking and aggressive action.

He knew that a paved road was not far off, and he was fairly sure of the direction the van had taken. Unwilling to increase his circulation too much by
running, he strode quickly that way. In less than five minutes he was walking down a deserted, two-lane country highway. He sensed that he was north of the city, but it was only a guess.

Through some trees, around a curve in the road, he could make out a dim light and a structure of some sort. He cut across the woods and found himself standing beside a small Mobil station, which was darkened for the night but obviously in current use. There was no sign on the building that gave even a clue as to where he was. Eric scanned the narrow highway but saw no other buildings. He peered through the large plate-glass window, looking for a phone. There, on the cluttered metal desk, he spied something he needed even more at that moment—an envelope.

Above the desk, an STP wall clock told him that it was 2:15. Perhaps two hours had passed since he and Anna were poisoned. He felt desperate to get the death powder off his face.

In the weeds alongside the building he found a brick. As he stood poised before the window, he noticed the thin, metallic strip of a security system. It was just as well, he thought. With any luck he could get at the envelope and summon the police with the same maneuver. He stepped back a pace and hurled the brick with all his strength. The spectacular implosion of glass was accompanied instantly by the wailing of a siren. Eric kicked away a few large shards and stepped into the office.

He grabbed the envelope and hurried to the rest-room. Trying to ignore the bloody apparition in the mirror, he carefully used the small knife to scrape as much of the powder as possible from his cheek into the envelope. When he felt certain that Ivor Blunt could make an identification from a fraction of what he had saved, he scrubbed his face with soap, rinsed it, and then scrubbed it again. Still, with his eyes lost in dark hollows and his lower lip split and stiff with
clotted blood, he looked very much like precisely what he was at that moment—a man who was dying.

The pay phone behind the desk required a quarter even to get a dial tone. If the wailing alarm wasn’t somehow connected to the police, Eric knew there was no telling how much time he would lose waiting for someone to respond. He searched the top of the desk for a coin, but succeeded only in learning from several bills that he was in Bob Kuyper’s Country Mobil in Wayland—a rural community twenty miles or so west of Boston. He huddled over the desk, using his knife to work on the lock.

“Okay, asshole, get on the floor!”

The harsh voice, from not ten feet away, drove Eric’s heart into his throat. His service revolver leveled, a rugged young officer stepped through the shattered window and motioned Eric away from the desk. Behind the policeman Eric could see a second officer, undoubtedly this man’s backup.

“Wait, officer, please. I’m not a thief, I’m a doctor and—”

“Shut the fuck up and get facedown!”

The man, younger than Eric, seemed quite tough but also a bit nervous. Eric knelt in a spot away from the broken glass and then prostrated himself on the oily floor. The policeman circled him warily, finally positioning himself against a wall, safe from any attack from behind.

“Please listen to me,” Eric begged. “It’s a matter of life and death, believe me it is.”

“Put your hands behind you!”

“You’ve got to—”

“Do it!”

Eric did as he was ordered. The policeman knelt roughly against the small of his back and expertly snapped a pair of handcuffs into place. Pain from the knife cuts seared up Eric’s arms.

“He’s cuffed, Sarge,” the man called out.

“Keep him there,” the other man responded. “I’m going to check around out here.”

The policeman stood up.

“Okay, then,” he said. “I’m Officer Carney. That’s Sergeant Clarkson out there. You’re under arrest. You have the right to remain silent—”

“Please, please,” Eric begged. “I know all that. I waive all my rights. You’ve got to listen to me.”

“Sit up. Slowly.”

Eric did as he was told.

“Will you listen to me now?” he asked.

The young policeman nodded. For the next three minutes he listened without saying a word. Then he helped Eric to his feet and crunched across the shattered glass to what was once the plate-glass window.

“Hey, Sarge,” he called out. “I think you’d better get on in here.”

West Valley Regional Hospital was a tiny, fairly new facility located about five miles from the station house where Eric had been taken and booked for breaking and entering, plus malicious mischief. It was 3:30
A.M
. With Officer Carney keeping watch, a nurse was bandaging the lacerations on Eric’s wrists, two of which had required suturing.

The bleary-eyed physician on duty was a moonlighter, a senior surgical resident from Worcester named Jennifer Farrell. Trying mentally to place himself in her position, Eric had dropped a few names from her training program, and then cautiously and calmly recounted the events of the evening, using enough jargon to convince her that he was, in fact, a physician. Finally he showed her the envelope of powder and begged her to contact White Memorial for verification of his identity, and to get the home phone number of Dr. Ivor Blunt.

The nurse had just finished her work when Sergeant Clarkson and Jennifer Farrell reentered the room.

“Well, apparently you are who you say you are,” Clarkson said.

“That’s a relief.”

“Tell us again what you want us to do now.”

“Well, first of all I want someone to get over to Allston and see if they can find Anna Delacroix.”

“That’s already being done. We called the Metropolitan Police from the station.”

“Thank you. Now I’d like to call Dr. Blunt and have him meet us at White Memorial.”

“Who is he again?”

“He’s a toxicologist, and probably the only one in the city who has the equipment and know-how to identify this poison.”

“Do you agree with that, Doc?” Clarkson asked the resident.

Dr. Farrell shrugged. “I know of Dr. Blunt,” she said. “And I know that we can’t do a thing with this powder here.”

“How does our friend here seem to you right now?”

Jennifer Farrell rechecked Eric’s eyes, heart, lungs, and blood pressure.

“No problem,” she said. “Dr. Najarian, are you sure you don’t want me to sew that lip of yours?”

“I’m sure,” Eric said, unable to keep impatience from his voice.

“Okay,” Clarkson said after some thought. “Dr. Farrell, do you have a phone with a second extension?” She nodded. “Dr. Najarian, I’m going to listen while you talk to this Dr. Blunt. If it sounds on the up-and-up, I’ll drive you in to White Memorial. Just remember, you’re still under arrest. Any crazy stuff and you’ll be back on the floor.”

“I understand.”

Ivor Blunt was outraged at the early morning call. Eric quickly found himself squirming in his seat as the crusty toxicologist questioned his every statement.

“Let me get this straight,” Blunt said. “You want
me to get up, shlep into the hospital, turn on my equipment, and analyze some dust that was put on your cheek during a voodoo ceremony in downtown Allston?”

“Correct.”

“Dr. Najarian, are you crazy?”

“What I am is poisoned, Dr. Blunt,” Eric said evenly. “Please, you’ve got to help me.”

“Doctor, try to see it my way. You come into my office asking if I can analyze a woman’s blood for this toxin that’s never been found in Massachusetts. Then, not twenty-four hours later, you’re calling me from some podunk hospital, claiming to have been poisoned with the stuff.”

“That’s right, sir.”

“You sick now?”

“Not yet, no.”

“If these men wanted you dead, why didn’t they just put a bullet between your eyes?”

“I believe they wanted to make a point to the people they’ve been terrorizing,” Eric said.

“Terrorizing with tetrodotoxin.”

“That’s right.”

There was a prolonged silence, during which Eric rattled off what prayers he knew.

“I think you’re crazy,” Ivor Blunt said finally, “but since you’ve already got me wide awake, and since I’ll never get back to sleep over my wife’s snoring, I’m going to do what you want.”

“Thank you,” Eric sighed. “Thank you, sir. We can be at your lab in forty-five minutes.”

“Take your time. Bring me your powder and four red-top and one green-top tubes of blood.”

“I’ll have them drawn here.”

“Fine. Do you have a personal psychiatrist on the staff?”

“No. No, I don’t.”

“That’s too bad,” Ivor Blunt said.

I
don’t like this, Bernard,” Laura said, listening as Eric’s apartment phone rang a ninth, then a tenth time. “I don’t like this at all.”

For nearly three hours they had sat in Bernard Nelson’s office, drinking coffee, sorting through the material they had brought with them from the Gates of Heaven, and trying to locate Eric. There was a message from him at the Carlisle which had come in some time around ten, but since then, nothing. Five calls to his apartment and one to the hospital had gotten them nowhere.