Season of Storm (23 page)

"So long," she agreed, and he turned and went through the door, and she watched him move across the dock toward the proudly beautiful shape of
Outcast.
 

***

"I'm sorry, miss," the nurse said coolly. "Dr. Collier isn't in the hospital today."

Smith sighed. "Well, who is?" she asked. She felt weary and irritable, and there was something in the nurse's attitude that was making her grit her teeth.

"There are many doctors here in the hospital, of course," the nurse said, with the air of one talking to a cretin. "Is it for a patient? What patient would it be for?"

Smith took a deep breath. "Cordwainer St. John," she said levelly. "Isn't there a doctor covering the whole—"

"I'm sorry, miss!" the nurse said, shocked, as though Smith had breached all the rules of etiquette at once. "Are you a journalist? Mr. St. John isn't allowed any visitors."

"I am not a journalist. I'm family. What other doctor is on his case?" Smith said. She was doing a slow burn, but there was a backlog of feeling in her that certainly wasn't the nurse's fault.

"That doctor is with another patient," the nurse said, as though this were a triumph. "But I can tell you myself that Mr. St. John is seeing no visitors."

Smith took a breath and tried to detach. "When will the doctor be free?"

"I really couldn't say how long—"

"Who's the head nurse on this ward?"

"I am." Another triumph.

"All right, Head Nurse," said Smith, her anger coming out like little bullets, with a soft, deadly accuracy. "Listen carefully, because I am not going to repeat myself. I am Shulamith St. John. Cordwainer St. John is my father. My father thinks that I have been kidnapped by activists. I am here to see and reassure him. He is not expecting me. Now—" she glanced at her wrist, where there was still no watch, then coldly up at the clock above the woman's head and back to her goggling eyes "—you have two minutes to go in there and prepare my father for the shock of seeing me. Because in two minutes I am going in to see him."

The woman looked paralyzed with astonishment. Not only her father, of course, thought she had been kidnapped by activists, Smith remembered belatedly.

"Oh! Ah!" the nurse gasped as Smith spoke, and then "Oh!" again. "Wait here, please, just wait here!" she cried and dashed off down the corridor. She returned in record time with a man in a white coat who introduced himself politely as Dr. Ramasingh.

"Your father will be delighted to see you, of course, Miss St. John," he said. "When the initial shock has worn off I am confident your visit will do him a great deal of good."

"Not that he's doing so badly, in spite of the radio reports?" she asked dryly, and then bit her lip as she saw her error. If her story was going to stick she would have to stop talking as though she had followed her father's progress on the radio.

Dr. Ramasingh didn't seem to notice anything. Outside the door of a private room he motioned her to silence. "Wait here," he said.

She had caught a ride from the marina with a rowdy group of teenagers who dropped her at the ferry dock. There she called for a helicopter pickup, and was dropped in downtown Vancouver. Smith had taken a taxi straight to the hospital.

Rolly Middleton was in the room when she went in, looking very businesslike, so she had probably guessed right about her father's condition.

"Hello, Daddy," she said with a smile. "How are you?"

The man in the bed looked almost as brown and robust as ever; the strongest signs of illness were the white band around his wrist and a bruising around his eyes. If he seemed shrunken in her eyes, that wasn't because of his illness.

"Shulamith!" he croaked, and the croak was caused by emotion, not weakness. "They've let you go? Who was it? Where did they take you?"

She crossed to the side of his bed and kissed him. "How are you Rolly?" she asked the business-suited figure by the window. "Let me go? Who? Don't you remember, Daddy?" she said. "I was on a boat with friends. We only turned on the radio this morning. I came back as fast as I could. How are you?"

He blinked and looked at her from under lowered brows. "What the devil are you talking about?"

She said slowly, looking at him, "I left Saturday night for a trip on a friend's boat. That must have slipped your mind."

"It must, eh? All right, Rolly," he nodded shortly. "I'll see you tomorrow."

Rolly lounged away from the window. "Right," he said. "Good to see you back, Smith. You had us all worried. Give Valerie a call, won't you?"

When the door closed behind him her father pushed at a pillow and sat up straighter. "What happened?" he demanded, his eyes searching her face.

"I was on a boat with friends," she repeated doggedly. "You—"

"Now you listen to me, girl." The tone of his voice brought her up short, as always. She cast him a glance: her father's head was lowered, like a bulldog's, and his eyes riveted her. "Did those filthy bastards rape you?" Smith was mute with astonishment. "You don't have to tell the world, Shulamith. You don't even have to tell the police. Nobody has to know the details of what you went through. Believe me, I can make that stick."

He paused, but she was speechless. "But you have to tell me. I promise you. I give you my word that those bastards will be hunted down and made to pay. No goddamn activist is going to hurt my daughter and get away with it." He held up his hand to stop her speech. "And you don't have to tell me that the law is no damn good at getting rapists. I'm not talking about the law. A man who leaves his daughter's rapist to the
law
—" he said the
word with disgust "—was born a fool. Now you just tell me here privately..."
 

Smith was aghast, shaken to the core. This had never occurred to her, however clearly Johnny Winterhawk had seen it. "Daddy, I.. .." She swallowed. "Truly I wasn't kidnapped. I was on a boat with a...with friends."

"What the hell are you playing at, girl?"

"Daddy, I'm not playing at anything! I—"

"Listen," he said. "I've seen more liars than you've had hot suppers, and I'm telling you, girl, you're lying, and you won't stick it. They're going to be onto you, and they're going to be onto you hard. There isn't a cop or a journalist anywhere who's going to swallow that story of yours. They're going to think you're protecting someone, and they're going to want to know why."

"Then I advise you to make sure they leave me alone." Her voice was cold and hard, perfect slivers of ice. She had never spoken to her father in that tone before, but he didn't react. He merely looked at her, assessing the information coming from her as he would that from a ticker tape or computer.

The head nurse bustled in then, all coy smiles, talking about "enough excitement" and "happy news" and "supposed to rest." The woman got to within ten feet of her father's bed.

"Get out of here," he said flatly, as though she were an inferior species of life, and without a word the head nurse turned and went.

The bully outbullied, Smith thought, finding it in herself to feel sorry for the head nurse. Her father took a breath.

"I can't buy every goddamned cop and newspaper in the province," he told her. "Even if I wanted to. So you better get your story sewn up tight—because no matter what you've promised those bastards, I am not going to let them get away with this. Nobody is going to do this to my daughter and get away with it!"

She was halfway across the lobby downstairs when they came to meet her, mikes waving and cameras flashing. "Miss St. John!" one began. "How does it feel—" "Where were you held, Miss St. John?" "What did your captors—" In an instant the hospital lobby was bedlam. Smith was amazed and appalled by their numbers. Had they been staking out the hospital, or had Head Nurse taken her revenge by tipping them off?

Just then the main doors opened and a television camera and crew rushed self-importantly in.
The little bitch
, thought Smith wildly,
has she called everybody in town?
 

She picked her position near the door, then waited while all the mikes and cameras jockeyed for position.

"I have been on a sailing holiday with friends. I did not hear any news reports and did not know my father was ill until this morning. I returned as soon as possible. Thank you."

With an agility that surprised them all she turned and was out the front door while they were still shouting questions. There was a taxi just outside the door, and she jumped in.

"Drive!" she shouted to the driver. He moved his head slowly around and looked at her, chewing ponderously. His hands were full of money. He had been counting.

"I'm waiting on a fare, lady," he said. "Din't you see I ain't got my light on?" He gestured lazily at the roof with one wad of notes.

They were coming out the door behind her. She wanted to kill him. "How about around the block for a hundred dollars? Now!" she insisted, slamming the lock on her door as what looked like half the hospital erupted onto the pavement, the television cameraman in the lead.

The driver's head jerked so far around she thought it was going to fall off, and his eyes widened hugely.

"Holy smokes!" he declared in stupefaction, and, no longer taking his own sweet time, he had the car in gear and a foot on the gas and was steering out into the road even before he got his eyes facing front.

"Little lady," he said calmly, as his tires screeched around the first corner, "now, it ain't none o' my business, but what you done?"

Smith laughed, as much from the release of tension as from the thought of this stranger leaping to the aid of someone he imagined might be a criminal. The brotherhood of man, she supposed, but she saw that he was tucking his cash away in an inside pocket as though he had learned that prudence was the better part of brotherhood.

"Nothing," she said. "Just trying to visit my father. Will you pull up here?" There was another cab at the curb. Smith jumped out, dropping a one-hundred-dollar bill on the front seat beside him.
Always carry a hundred dollars in a spare pocket,
her father had advised her, and she always had, though she had never before had such urgent need of it. She was in the other car before the man had finished thanking her.
 

***

Oh, what a luxury a bath was, after a few days on a boat! Smith lay back and let the perfumed heat soak away her worries, her aches, the memory of Johnny's body on hers....

She thought of her father and the reporters she had eluded. It wouldn't be long before they were at the house, she thought, closing her ears against the muffled sound of a ringing telephone. She was going to have to do some thinking; she was going to have to get a story that would stick. She thought of Johnny Winterhawk with a vague sense of loss. If only she could discuss this problem with him.

Temporary insanity. Was that what it was? An emotional heat so scorching that at times it was difficult to believe she wouldn't carry the scars for life. It had opened a cauldron inside her soul that she hadn't known existed.

Smith raised one leg and squeezed the cloth to let water trickle onto her thigh. It had seemed like paradise, that unbelievable closeness with Johnny Winterhawk. She had never experienced anything like it in all her life. It had really seemed like paradise.

Twenty-two

"Good afternoon, Miss St. John," said the man at the door, performing a sleight-of-hand with his wallet that was too fast for her to follow. "Sergeant Rice, RCMP."

Warning bells jangled along her nerves, as though she were in the presence of a dangerous enemy.
Be careful! Be careful!
a voice shrieked in her head.
 

She glanced past him to the unmarked car parked by the steps. A week ago the van had been parked there, and Johnny Winterhawk had been her enemy. Now he was again—wasn't he? But somehow this man was, too.

"I'm sorry, Sergeant," she said pleasantly, "could I have a look at that ID again?" He held it out. "I don't know what tricks journalists are using these days, but I'm sure they've got plenty."

It was like talking to a mountain. Sergeant Rice's expression didn't alter by a hair.
Be friendly!
the voice shrieked.
Don't be frightened. Don't act hostile!
 

She tried to school her expression to polite indifference. She had been on a holiday. What a lot of unnecessary anxiety and trouble there had been....

For the second time, Sergeant Rice put his wallet away in his inside breast pocket. "We'd like to talk to your for a moment," he said, and his voice was as empty as his face.

"Sure," said Smith, stepping back to give his huge bulk room. He was followed in by another man she hadn't noticed, performing a belated sleight-of-hand with his own wallet. Smith closed and locked the door behind them as they impassively watched her, then she led them into the formal sitting room.

She thought it politic to fire the first volley. "What a lot of trouble you must have been put to," she smiled. "If I'd known that not listening to the radio would have such repercussions I'd never have—"