Rude Awakening (25 page)

I had a twenty in my pocket. I threw it on the desk. ‘We'll settle up what we owe you later,' I said, and picked up my son in my arms. It was pretty apparent that my boy had been crying, and my heart was breaking for him, sitting there for hours, waiting for a mother who didn't show. And the thought of that turned my heart to ice, wondering why. Why didn't Jean show up to pick up our son? The only reason I could think of was something bad had happened. A wreck. An assault.

I tried to put that out of my mind to reassure my son, got him in his car seat and headed to Bishop, using my cell phone to call my sister, Jewell Anne, to let her know as much as I could with Johnny Mac sitting in the back seat listening to every word.

My sister was standing in her driveway when we drove up. Jewell Anne and me hadn't been close growing up as I was some thirteen years older than her, but trouble brings a family together and she had her share of it in Houston with her first husband. She and her kids lived with me for a while after that, until Jewell Anne's first love, a guy I helped my daddy get rid of 100 years ago, came back in to her life. He proved my daddy wrong, too. Daddy said the boy would come to no good; instead he now owns half of Oklahoma – at least the wrecked car part of it.

Jewell Anne had the back door open and Johnny Mac in her arms before I'd come to a complete stop. ‘Go!' she said, waving me on. And go I did.

It was getting on toward noon and Jean headed to the parking lot of her new office building to go get her son John and have their lunch. Her mind was on a patient recently admitted to the psych ward at the hospital. The meds she'd ordered weren't working, one of her interns had told her, and she needed to meet with the patient as soon as she got John settled. The woman had tried to kill her child, a two-year-old, which worried Jean. Two years is a long time for postpartum psychosis; she was betting on a more long-standing problem that had been showing itself in ways her family hadn't seen until now.

Her hand was on the door handle of her car when she heard her name called. She turned to see her partner heading toward her.

‘Hey, Anne Louise,' Jean said, smiling. ‘What's up?'

‘Are you headed for the hospital?' Anne Louise Cursey asked.

‘Eventually. I have to pick up John first for lunch.'

‘Oh,' Anne Louise said, obviously disappointed.

‘Is something up?' Jean asked. ‘I can call Milt and have him go get John.'

‘No, I don't want you bothering Milt about this. Could you just give me a ride? Where is John's morning day care?'

Jean laughed. ‘About half a mile from the McDonald's. It's a conspiracy.'

‘As far as the McDonald's would be fine,' Anne Louise said, getting in the shotgun side of the car.

Jean shrugged, opened the back door, laid her crutches across John's car seat and got behind the wheel.

Dalton got the call on his radio as he and Holly were leaving Bishop.

‘Car Three,' Dalton said.

‘Hey, Dalton, it's Anthony. Get to the shop pronto. Bad stuff going down.'

‘Ah, I got Miz Humphries in the car with me. Should I drop her off at the Longbranch?'

‘What's your twenty?' Anthony asked.

‘About ten miles from Longbranch coming out of Bishop,' Dalton said.

‘No time for the Longbranch. Bring her with you. Out.'

‘Ten-four, over and out,' Dalton said, one of the rare members of Milt's department to actually use the codes.

‘What's going on?' Holly asked.

Dalton shook his head but put on his lights and sirens. ‘Don't know. Guess we'll find out soon enough.'

They got to the office in less than ten minutes, pulling up to the side entrance and baling out. Once inside, they found Anthony, Emmett, Gladys, Lonnie Sturgis and Jasmine Bodine Hopkins, who was supposed to be on maternity leave, all on the phones or milling about looking anxious.

‘Gladys, what's up?' Dalton asked, going up to her place at the desk where she was holding Jasmine and Emmett's baby girl, tears running down her face.

‘Jean's missing!' she said. ‘Johnny Mac was sitting at the morning day care all day waiting for her! Why that stupid woman at the day care didn't call Milt sooner, I'll never know. But she's going to get a piece of my mind, I can guarantee you that!'

‘Where's Milt?' Dalton asked.

‘Taking Johnny Mac to Jewell Anne's house . . . Oh, I just don't know what to do!' Gladys said, beginning to cry in earnest.

Holly saw that the only other woman in the room, apparently the mother of the baby, was on the computer, typing like crazy, so she held out her hands to Gladys.

‘Let me take the baby for you, Miss Gladys,' Holly said.

Gladys handed over the baby. She was a tiny thing, maybe a month old at the most, and Dalton noticed how carefully Holly held her, hand behind her neck, as she walked her over to one of the orange chairs and sat down, cradling the baby in her arms. He had to tear himself away from the sight; he needed to do his job.

‘Her car's not in the lot at her office building or the hospital parking lot,' Emmett said, coming up to Dalton. ‘Get in your car and drive, Dalton. Find her.'

‘Yes, Sir,' Dalton said, and, with one last look at Holly and the baby, headed out the side door for his car, Anthony following to head out in his.

FIFTEEN

I
t was the hardest thing I've ever done, leaving Johnny Mac with Jewell Anne, telling him I was going to pick up Mommy, telling him I'd be back in just a little while, waving and smiling as I drove off. Lying out of my ass to my four-year-old son.

I was sick with fear. No way in hell this wasn't connected to the whole Emil Hawthorne fiasco. Whoever had killed Emil Hawthorne had my wife. I was as sure of that as I was that the sun would come up in the morning. But, on the other hand, if anything happened to Jean, there was a good chance the sun would never come up again – at least not for me.

I headed straight for Jean's office. I doubted either Anne Louise or DeSandra would be there this late. It was after seven now. Which meant Jean had been missing for over six hours. As I pulled the car up to the entrance of Jean's building, I opened my door and leaned out, puking for the first time in my memory.

I wiped my mouth with my handkerchief, stepped over the mess I'd made and found the key Jean had given me for the door to the building. There was another one for the door to her office, which was on the third floor. I used that to get in.

The office was dark. I turned on the lights and headed for Jean's private office. Flipping through her Rolodex, I found the phone numbers for both Anne Louise and DeSandra. Neither answered their home numbers, so I left messages for both. Then, finding their cell phone numbers, I dialed those, too. No answer to either of those.

I sat down at Jean's desk and turned on her computer. I knew her password just like she knew mine. I put in Johnmac, then checked out her last action. She'd been looking at her medical school graduation roster, except not hers, but the one from the year before. I moved some papers around on her desk, and found the following:

I knew about Eric Loeman, the oncologist at MD Anderson hospital who'd told her that Greta Schwartzmann Nichols had joined a convent. Obviously her nun's name was Sister Mary Mark. But where she was located wasn't in Jean's note. ‘Johnson – EH in love?' ‘EH'? Emil Hawthorne? But who was Johnson? Who was Annie? Hell, who was Bingo?

Jean wasn't sure where she was. It was dark, smelled bad and was hot and stuffy. Trying to move, she realized she was tied up, both her hands and her feet. She thought tying her feet was serious overkill. Then she thought maybe she shouldn't be thinking about words like ‘overkill'. Or any form of the word ‘kill', come to think of it.

She tried kicking out with her legs, but her legs didn't have the strength to do much more than straighten themselves, which did hit the end of the box or whatever she was lying in, but not with what one might call gusto.

The lid to the box opened, and a voice came from a face silhouetted in the light behind her. It was a woman, and the voice sounded familiar. ‘So you're awake.' She jerked Jean out by the arm, standing her up in the box. At that point, Jean saw her captor perfectly.

‘What's going on, Anne Louise?' she asked her partner.

DeSandra had seen Anne Louise get in the car with Jean. Whatever was going down, it was going down tonight. She called for backup and followed the two women. When Jean MacDonnell's car pulled off Highway-5, going up the road that led to that quack doctor's crime scene, DeSandra kept on Highway-5, knowing that following Jean's car up that hill would be a dead giveaway. She called in her new location to her backup, asking for no lights or sirens.

Five miles down the road, DeSandra braked and did a 180, heading back to the side road up Mountain Falls. She cut her lights as she turned up the road, slowing to five miles an hour as she eased up on the old cotton farm with the barn where the quack had met his maker.

This was surprising to DeSandra. Drugs, sure – but murder? She had no idea that crazy stalker doctor had been in on Anne Louise and Jean's scam. She parked her car by the broken down barbed wire fence that used to contain the cotton field, got out and walked toward the barn, staying in the shadows of the trees that lined the old driveway.

She knew she should wait for backup, but that wasn't in DeSandra's nature. DeSandra Logan was a cowboy, a rogue, a renegade. DeSandra Logan was a lone wolf. She didn't need no stinking backup!

I left Jean's office and headed to Anne Louise's house. She lived in Bishop, which was going back the way I'd come when I'd dropped off Johnny Mac, but it wasn't to be helped. Maybe the two women were there, just not answering the phone. Someone could have them trapped in the house – like that crazy secretary of theirs, although I couldn't think why.

I'd been able to decipher Jean's notes and the last page she'd looked at on her computer. I knew enough to realize that Jean was looking for someone named Annie Bingo Johnson. Why, I didn't know, and I wasn't sure how to find out, short of calling my in-laws to see if they knew a way of finding out where Sister Mary Mark, the former Greta Schwartzmann Nichols, was. That seemed to be the direction the information had flowed. But I wasn't up to talking to either of them at the moment. I didn't want to tell them that I had no idea where my wife – their daughter – might be, and, oh yeah, Dad, there's a killer on the loose.

Holly watched all the activity around her as the deputies rushed in and out of the station. Telephones rang and Gladys, wiping tears from her eyes, would answer them like a professional and, as soon as she hung up, burst into tears again. Jasmine, mother of the baby Holly was holding, kept up a steady stream of typing on the computer, running to the fax machine, the printer and back to the computer.

Holly had changed little Lily Marie's diaper, fed her a bottle of expressed milk her mother had stuck in the sheriff department's kitchen refrigerator and had just rocked her to sleep, swaying the baby back and forth in her arms. There was a mesh-screened travel bed set up next to Jasmine's desk, and Holly very carefully placed Lily Marie in it. Jasmine was on the phone and the computer simultaneously, but managed to smile her thanks to Holly. Holly smiled back, gave a little finger wave, and headed back over to the orange chairs, wishing there was something she could do to help.

She liked Jean a lot. She'd been a big help to Holly when she was first brought in here, and she hoped she'd be able to return the favor real soon.

The front door burst open and Dalton came in. Seeing Holly, he went over to the orange chair section first.

‘Hey,' he said, smiling tentatively. ‘You doing OK?'

‘Just got Lily to sleep,' she said, smiling back. ‘What can I do to help?'

‘You know how to make coffee?' Emmett asked, overhearing their conversation.

Holly stood up. ‘Yes, Sir. I sure do.'

Emmet nodded his head toward the kitchen and, with a backward glance and smile at Dalton, Holly went to make coffee.

After the coffee was made, Holly went back out to the big room. Gladys was at the fax machine, Jasmine was on the computer and Dalton and Emmett, the only others left at the station, were conferring over a map of the county. The phone began to ring. Looking around, and seeing no one running toward it, Holly picked it up.

‘Prophesy County Sheriff's Department,' she said.

‘Who the hell is this?' came a voice Holly immediately recognized.

‘It's me, Holly, Sheriff,' she said. ‘Everybody was busy so I—'

‘Let me talk to Emmett,' the sheriff said.

Holly found the hold button and called out to Emmett. ‘Emmett, Sheriff's on line one.'

He nodded and headed to the phone nearest him.

The main line rang again. Holly picked it up. ‘Prophesy County Sheriff's Department. How may I direct your call?'

She was in the barn where she was sure Emil Hawthorne had died. She could see the yellow crime scene tape around the space where the barn doors had once been. Milt's people and the medical examiner's people were finished here. Any other business they had could wait until morning, and morning was a long ways away. Jean had her doubts of whether she'd make it that long, what with the gun her partner had pointed at her face.