The Taint (20 page)

SEVENTY-TWO

“Dr. Adams.”

He looked up from the microscope, startled. “Susan, I didn’t hear you.”

“I thought you left hours ago,” she said, coming further into the lab. “It’s after seven.”

“So it is.” He switched out the light on the scope. “Rachel was expecting me . . .”

“She called a little while ago, said she was feeling much better.” Susan watched him put away the glass slides. “Still waiting for an identification on the bug?”

“I might be on to something here.” He put the slides into a locking cabinet. “I’ve managed to isolate the invasive body in the blood.”

“It can’t be too soon for me. I’m a little out of practice, taking care of so many patients.”

He smiled conspiratorially. “So am I.” He put an arm around her shoulder and walked her from the room.

“We’ve turned the corner, though,” he said, locking the lab door. “Almost all of them have shown some improvement.”

“Except for Tyler.”

“Ah, the enigmatic Mr. Tyler.”

“I call him spooky.”

“Close enough.”

“Actually, he’s a little more restless today. When I was in his room earlier, I noticed he was following me with his eyes.”

“That’s a good sign.”

“Medically yes. But . . .” she shivered.

Nathan regarded her. “You know, I never thought about it before, but all of you nurses have the same response to him.”

“I’ve never reacted this way to a patient before. There’s just something about him that makes my skin crawl.” She turned and started back toward the nurse’s station. “I’ll be glad when he’s out of here, one way or another.”

He got into his truck and started it, letting it idle for a few minutes to warm up.

Gradually he became aware of his wrist itching and he scratched it, surprised to find that it was very tender and warm to the touch. He held his arm up, trying to catch the light from the mercury lamps in the parking lot, and rolled up his sleeve.

His arm was swollen around a two centimeter superficial cut on his wrist. He’d slipped while autopsying the Davis girl earlier but the blade had barely sliced the skin and it hadn’t bled at all. He’d washed with betadine and thought nothing more of it. Now it . . . he, was infected.

SEVENTY-THREE

“So you’re what Rachel wanted. Jon Scott?”

The voice came from behind him in the darkened office and he turned, reaching to turn on the desk lamp.

“I am. Something I can do for you?”

The man smiled. “A lot of things . . . I’m Kelly Hamilton.” He rose to his feet and extended a hand, which Jon took. “I’ve just come from seeing Rachel.” He sat back down and looked over his folded hands.

“I’m a little busy right now,” Jon said, “so if you’ll tell me what you’re here for . . .”

“Came to see the prototype.” Another smile. “It isn’t every day that you get to see the original.”

“I’m not following you.” Jon said, puzzled.

“Oh, but you are. I followed you and now you follow me.” His hands, still clasped, moved through the air. “We’ve come full circle.”

“I’m sorry, but I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Rachel. She’s in love with you.”

Jon did not answer immediately, but sat behind the desk and evaluated Hamilton’s condition. “Have you been drinking?”

“Of course I’ve been drinking. But it has nothing to do with what I’m saying. Rachel is, and always has been, in love with you.”

“Rachel and I are family friends.”

“God, you even talk alike. Family friends.”

“I think you’re drunk.”

“Spoken like a true . . . policeman. Don’t worry, I expect the rest of this conversation to sober me up before I drive down the hill.”

“What do you want, then?”

“I want her to be happy. You can make her happy.”

“So you’re telling me this . . .”

“Because you can’t see what’s been in front of your face for the past fifteen years.”

Jon paused. “How do you know so much about it?”

“She told me. Oh, not in so many words, but I’d have to be a fool not to see it.” He took out a cigarette. “You know what that makes you?”

“Look, I can see you’ve got a problem here and I know what happened between you and Rachel, but there is nothing going on . . .”

“Only because neither of you have started it.” He flicked the lighter and watched the flame. “Like this . . . the fire’s there, just waiting for the right touch.”

“Even if you’re right, what makes you think it’s any of your business?”

“Because I spent eighteen months trying to make her happy, living in your shadow. I have an investment here.”

“If you still feel that strongly, maybe you should . . .” his voice trailed off.

“Try to get her back? What, you can’t even
say
it. But don’t worry about me, because I know something about Rachel. This is your last chance. If nothing happens between you, she’ll leave again, and she won’t be back.”

Jon lifted his eyes.

“She’s loved you all these years but it won’t be the same if you turn her away again. Those were her dreams, and she had to come back before she could let herself let them go. But this is reality, and this time it’s for good.”

“Has she told you this?”

“She didn’t have to. I know her and I know that she won’t ruin her life waiting for you to come around. I don’t know how long it’ll take, but one of these days she’s gonna see for herself, and then she’ll cut her losses and leave. And I’ll be waiting when she does.”

“And you think she’ll come to you?”

Hamilton nodded. “It’s your move.” He stood, still facing Jon. “I’ll tell you something else. It’s not easy for me to think of her and you together, but I know that’s how it’s always been in her mind. Even when we were in bed . . . making love . . . it was you. Look at me! I’m as close as she could get to having you.” He took a last draw on the cigarette and leaned down to grind it out in the ashtray. “I think it’s time you gave her what she wanted.”

Then he was gone.

Jon sat for a long time before picking up the phone and dialing Rachel’s number, but just as it began to ring Earl stuck his head around the door.

“Shit, we’ve got another missing kid.”

Five year old William “Billy” Mitchell had not come home from summer school. It took the boy twenty minutes at most to walk the quarter mile to his home, and when he hadn’t made it by four-thirty, his mother had gone to stand at the end of the drive, looking for him up the road.

A little after five, the father began to search the woods along both sides of the road with no results. At six he called on Mrs. Frey to see if Billy was there, or if she’d seen him go off with another child.

Now it was dark and both parents were past worried and working on hysterical.

“Call some of his school friends,” Jon instructed Earl. “See if anyone saw him wander off after school.” Then he sat down and took the report.

Thursday

SEVENTY-FOUR

Nathan Adams woke from a sound sleep at two a.m., drenched with sweat and wracked with pain. His left arm throbbed and he sat up in bed, turning on the bedside lamp and rolling up his pajama sleeve to look at it.

The arm was puffy with edema, markedly warm and tender to the touch. Fine red lines extended from the wound up the inside of his arm and when he palpated, he could feel the swollen lymph nodes in his armpit.

He sat, holding his arm to his chest, waiting for the hot stabs of pain to ease.

It had been a long time since he’d last been a patient and he didn’t make a good one. He was irritated by the intrusion of a factor which he did not control, more so because he knew it would be a mistake to ignore it. He had seen people die of blood poisoning because they came too late to seek help.

He got to his feet and walked slowly, quietly, down the hall to the bathroom. Rachel had been asleep when he’d arrived home and he saw no point in disturbing her, especially now, when it seemed she might have to take over for him.

His medical bag was downstairs, but the bathroom cabinet was usually well-stocked and he carefully closed the door before turning on the light and checking it.

What he saw in the mirror stopped him.

His face had a grayish cast to it, sickly and drawn, and the whites of his eyes were streaked with thin red lines. Deep furrows were etched across his forehead and along both side of his nose. The overall effect was one of advanced degeneration.

He turned his head slowly, watching the face in the mirror, his face.

When he reached to open the cabinet, finally, his hand was shaking.

After he had taken two tablets of penicillin, he went back to his room, feeling with every step a shock of pain in his arm. It was a relief to lie back down, holding his arm cradled across his chest, and close his eyes against the images which taunted him.

He had seen that face before, years past, in the person of a Michael Harilty.

It was not a time that he liked to remember, having made a fool of himself by falling in love with his brother’s new wife and having declared the same. With Kathleen’s gentle rejection still smarting, he’d taken off and had accepted a position at a small private hospital which treated wealthy alcoholics.

Harilty was the wealthiest and the nastiest, a man who had devoted his entire life to the indulgences of the flesh. He was a big man, six foot four and at least two hundred and fifty pounds. It was never clear whether he was in the hospital to dry out or to get in shape for another fling at debauchery. Nathan was inclined to believe the latter.

As the junior doctor on staff, Nathan was assigned the patients that no one else wanted. The others had tried to treat Harilty in view of his potential gratitude, but within the course of a week they’d retreated. Nathan was not to be allowed that luxury; it was him or no one.

It didn’t take long to discover what had discouraged the others; Michael Harilty was determined that whoever put him through the hell of detoxification was going to suffer a similar fate by whatever means necessary.

In Nathan’s case, it took the form of constant verbal baiting, testing his professional composure, challenging his competence and in fact, daring him to care. Under the watchful eyes of the administration, Harilty unleashed a constant stream of abuse.

Kathleen, unknowingly, had provided Nathan with the answer. He was so absorbed in his psychic wounds, losing her to Joshua, that nothing could reach him. He was able to take the barrage because the insults were nothing more than what he was doing to himself.

Harilty was released within three months and they heard nothing more from him until one day Nathan got a call from the San Pedro police, asking him if he knew a “Big Mike.”

When he went to the small jail, there was Harilty, looking as if he had aged twenty years in the space of six months. He was drinking again, without restraint, and when Nathan examined his abdomen, he found the liver to be enlarged and hardened, in advanced stages of cirrhosis.

They took him back to the hospital but it was clear there was no drying out to be done. He lingered for a month and died, and it was his face, gray and haggard, that Nathan saw in his own. The unmistakable look of death.

He shook his head, annoyed with the memory. Fears of death were common in the still hours of the night. A poem of Rachel’s—he knew it by heart:

At two in the morning,

I’m afraid to close my eyes,

A shadow in the corner,

Waiting.

The rhythm in my wrist

is keeping quarter-time,

no fever now, (the body cools),

In no acute distress.

But symptoms, I have read,

precede the exquisite blade.

And if I close my eyes . . .

It was a long time before he closed his eyes to sleep.

SEVENTY-FIVE

Jon waited in the kitchen while Mrs. Boone went to wake up Celia. It was almost eight a.m. and they had yet to find a single child who could remember Billy Mitchell being among the group as they walked home.

Their questions were hampered by the fact that many of the children who would normally be enrolled in the summer school had been pulled out after the events of the past week. Those who were still going were not able to give the full names of their classmates, and no one answered at the Frey residence, so it had largely become a matter of knocking on doors and asking.

Celia Boone entered the kitchen, her face flushed from sleep, rubbing at her eyes.

“You said I didn’t have to go today,” the child whined and then she looked at Jon. A slow look took in the uniform and the gun and her face screwed up into tears. “I didn’t do it, I didn’t do it!” She flung herself at her mother’s legs.

Mrs. Boone smiled, embarrassed. “I’m afraid her father has told her that a policeman would come get her if she misbehaved.”

Jon came over and knelt down beside the sobbing child.

“I’m sure you didn’t do anything bad,” he said and was rewarded with a baleful look. He had to repress a smile; somewhere inside, Celia Boone was hiding a misdeed.

“I just came to ask you a few questions about Billy Mitchell. Do you know Billy?”

A cautious nod.

“Did you see him in school yesterday?”

“Yes,” she said in a quivering voice.

“Now this is very important; did you walk home, even part of the way with him?”

“He’s a boy.” Her five year old face exuded disdain.

“But did you see him while you were walking home?”

She shook her head no.

Jon looked at Mrs. Boone and back at the child, trying to gauge the best way to approach Celia’s literal young mind.

“Okay, you didn’t walk home with him, and you didn’t see him along the way. Do you know who he usually walks with?”

“Jeffy Thomas.”

“Did you see Jeffy yesterday?”

“Yes.” She made a face. “He can burp whenever he wants to.”

“Did you see Jeffy on the way home?”

Again she nodded.

“Was Billy with him?”

“No.”

“Celia, honey,” Mrs. Boone interrupted, “you’re sure that you’re thinking about yesterday?” She looked at Jon. “Sometimes she gets a little confused.”

“It
was
yesterday,” the little girl said and she frowned with concentration.

“Just one more question. When did you last see Billy?”

Her face cleared. “When I went to sleep.”

“I’m sorry, when was that?”

“At school. The little kids take a nap. Billy and Jeffy were throwing things . . . and Mrs. Frey told us to go to sleep, and when I woke up, Billy was gone.”

Jon radioed to dispatch, asking Earl to meet him at the church. He backed out of the Boone driveway, his mind going over the implications of what Celia had said.

If the child disappeared during school hours, why hadn’t Amanda Frey reported it? It was common knowledge that she was in poor health and worked too hard, but was it possible to forget the number of children she’d put down for a nap in the span of an hour?

He exceeded the speed limit on the way over.