Authors: Jeff Abbott
A long silence and she thought:
Either I got you or you’re about to strangle me here on a toilet.
He said, ‘I’m not some freak. I’m normal.’
His denial almost sent her into peals of hysterical laughter. She gripped the cool bowl of the toilet.
‘I know, Corey,’ she made herself say. ‘You’re normal. And a normal man lets a lady go to the potty in private.’ She paused.
‘You do that, and I’ll show you fun in bed you’ve never, ever seen before.’
Long silence. She prayed a true prayer, for the first time in a dozen years.
Please, God, please help me now. Please.
‘All right,’ he said. ‘I’ll wait outside. But don’t try anything.’
‘I won’t.’
She heard him step out and the door gently close.
She yanked off the cloth hood and ripped the silk blindfold from her head. The bathroom was small, decorated in sea-foam green
tile at least thirty years old. The shower was a stall, and the shower rod was bolted to the wall.
There was a small bolt on the door. If she locked it he would hear.
‘Hurry up,’ he called.
‘I am!’ she yelled, putting a teary tone in her voice. She groaned, as if troubled by a pained stomach. ‘Just a second.’ If
he heard her rummaging he’d crash in. She almost wept in anger. Nothing, nothing to fight with.
She knelt, gingerly opening the cabinet under the sink. Cotton balls. Toilet paper. Disinfectant spray.
Yes.
He shoved the door open. She sprang to her feet and jetted disinfectant hard into his eyes. He shrieked and fell back.
‘EEAGGGGH!’ he screamed, clutching his face.
Velvet shoved past him and ran down the hallway. To her left the hall opened up into a den and she saw a front door. She threw
herself at it.
Locked.
‘YOU BITCH BITCH BITCH.’ He staggered to his feet, clawing at his seared eyes.
Six locks on the door and three were dead bolts. These she clicked open and tried the door again. Still locked. The other
locks required a key.
Where would he keep the goddamned keys?
Fighting a surge of panic, Velvet scanned the den. Nothing on the table except a plate dirty with sandwich crumbs and a milk-smeared
glass. Nothing on the small kitchen counter.
She had heard the jingle earlier when he tossed the keys on the bedroom floor.
She turned and he charged at her, his face set in fury, his eyes red slits.
She grabbed a lamp from a side table and swung hard. It nailed him on the shoulder. He went down, and Velvet raised the lamp
to smash it on his head.
He seized her legs, trying to topple her, and she slammed the lamp’s base against his neck, then against the back of his head.
Don’t let him get you down. He wins if he gets you on the floor.
Teeth closed around her ankle, biting hard and deep, down to the bone.
She screamed and fell to the floor, kicking him. His teeth tore the flesh of her ankle.
She grabbed the fallen can of disinfectant and fogged him again, trying to loop the lamp’s cord around his throat. He sobbed
and lashed out with a punch that caught her hard in the windpipe. She gagged, gasping for breath. He swung the lamp hard,
connecting against her skull, the lamp breaking, and she went down, eyeballs rolling up. Her final thought was,
Not like this, no.
The Blade stood, then sank down again. His eyes burned like the bitch had poked hot matches into the irises. He crawled to
the sink and splashed water repeatedly into his aching eyes. She hadn’t gotten him so good with the last cloudy burst of disinfectant,
but the first had been unadulterated hell, toxic waste hitting his eye tissue.
She might have blinded him. Maybe even caused permanent damage.
He puked into the sink. He rinsed his eyes for what felt like an eternity. The pain subsided down to a dull roar, enough to
where he could read the instructions on the disinfectant. Call a physician. Not an option right now. God, he would make this
bitch pay. He went back to the rinsing.
Thirty minutes later, his hands still shaking, he could see well enough to relock the dead bolts and to drag her back to the
room. Her left ankle was a meaty mess and she wheezed, but she was still unconscious.
This is what being nice brought,
he thought. But none of the others had fought him so hard, and when the pain faded, that fire of hers would make punishing
and crushing her sweeter than killing Mama. Oh, the fun. He hardened at the images, even with the pain in his eyes and his
head. He’d hold her eyes open and spray till the can was empty. He put on his knife sheath so she could see what waited for
her after their chemical games.
He choked down a half-dozen aspirin and slung Velvet over his shoulder. He tossed her onto the bed and started to retie her
to the posts.
A knock pounded on the front door.
‘You’re in a bad situation,’ Whit said softly.
Kathy Breaux sat in one corner of Corey Hubble’s room, watching Whit. Her soap-roughened hands lay in her lap, fingers laced
together. Her fingernails were short and bitten, and she smelled of the antiseptic that wafted through the home like souring
perfume. Hair dyed a slightly too-bright red, a starved look about her face and hips. Gooch had left them alone, to go perform
an important errand at Whit’s request.
Kathy said, ‘I don’t know what you mean.’
There’s several different ways this can play out,’ Whit said. ‘Pretty much all of them involve me calling the police. And
me calling the FBI. What happens between now and then will make a big difference.’
‘Look, I just work here, okay? I just do what I’m told.’ She kept her voice hushed, accustomed to talking around the napping
old. She glanced at Corey, propped up in the bed, eyes shut, breathing slowly, abandoned to a world of his own.
‘Just following orders? That didn’t work at Nuremberg, why do you think it’s gonna work here?’
‘What do you want?’ she asked.
‘I want to know how this man got here.’
Kathy swallowed. ‘John’s been here at least five years. I don’t know much about what happened to him.’
‘John?’
‘John Taylor.’
‘I think his name’s Corey Hubble.’
‘I said I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘I want to see his files. Go get them and bring them back here.’
‘I can’t do that.’
‘I can either tell these folks you attempted to extort money from Pete to reveal his brother’s whereabouts, or I can tell
them you discovered this man’s real identity and sought to help his brother find him. Your choice.’
Kathy Breaux stood and said, ‘I’ll be right back, then.’ She hurried out the door.
Whit got up and went to Corey’s bedside. He took Corey’s hand; it was limp and bony and pale. Someone had created a new identity
for him. Someone had financed his care all these years. That narrowed the suspects considerably. He had trouble visualizing
Junior filling out insurance forms for a guy he turned into a vegetable.
It had to be the Hubbles. He tried not to think of Faith’s face on the pillow next to him, smiling, tracing his lip with her
fingernail.
‘Hey, Corey,’ Whit said quietly. Corey gave no answer. A thin dribble of drool collected in the chapped corner of his mouth,
and Whit wiped it away.
‘I don’t suppose you’re gonna tell me what got you here,’ Whit said.
Corey kept his silence. The vicious trench of scar on his head looked like a bullet wound, long healed. Corey had been shot.
The bullet must have obliterated his mind but not his functions, trapping him in this limbo.
If someone had tried to kill him, why keep him alive? Attempted homicide made no sense. It must have been an accident. But
then why the secrecy? Because the accident and its circumstances, if revealed, must threaten someone powerful.
He searched Corey’s room: neatly folded sweats from Wal-Mart, white tube socks, vanilla-scented hand lotion,
an uncracked Bible. In the back of the closet lay a plastic bag of new sweats, also bought at Wal-Mart, a sales slip still
inside. Paid with cash, but bought twelve days ago. He figured that was a Monday, an exact week before Pete’s death.
He had no idea about Lucinda’s schedule, but it would be easy enough to find out if she was out campaigning and where she
was. Or where Faith was. He pocketed the receipt from the clothes bag, careful not to get his own prints on it.
So what did he owe Faith? A consideration phone call?
Honey, I’m about to reveal to the press that your long-missing brother-in-law isn’t so missing anymore. You want to tell me
what you know before I call the cops?
If he cared for her, he owed her this. Didn’t he?
Corey lay in the bed like a broken dream.
Not yet, he couldn’t call her. He would need more proof. Fingerprints. Dental records. The business of proving who lay in
this bed meant more than simply picking up a phone and summoning the press. They wouldn’t run a story without harder evidence,
and he had none.
Gooch came back into the room. Whit tucked Corey’s cool hand back under the sheets. Corey moaned, rasped, a shuddery breath.
‘Any trouble?’
‘Nope. The local drugstore sells them.’ Gooch produced a cheap disposable camera from the bag and began to snap photos of
Corey from various angles. Whit had thought it an appropriate precaution. He told Gooch what Kathy had said.
‘So what are you thinking?’ Gooch asked.
‘I think Lucinda put him here.’
Gooch gave him a disbelieving squint. ‘I don’t like her, but if her child was hurt, she’d want him taken care of.’
‘He
is
taken care of. And his brother tracked him down here – he at least was in contact with this nurse here – and dies.’
‘You’re suggesting Lucinda killed one son because he found out about her other son.?’
‘I don’t know. And that missing girl, Marcy Ballew? She worked here, then she vanishes from Port Leo. She has to be connected
to this somehow.’
‘Consider this,’ Gooch said. ‘Kathy knows that John Taylor really is Corey Hubble, long-missing son of a prominent politician.
Maybe she wants to sell that information to Pete. And maybe the Ballew girl was in on the scheme. She goes to Port Leo to
deal with Pete, loses her wallet, and ends up missing or on the run.’
‘If Pete thought Corey was in this town, why not just come here and get him and publicize the hell out of it? It doesn’t make
sense,’ Whit said.
‘Maybe he didn’t know. She’s calling him from little Missatuck, Texas. Corey’s in Deshay, Louisiana. God only knows what story
she told him.’ Gooch finished his roll of film.
Whit ran a finger along the burr of hair and scar along Corey’s scalp.
‘So you think Lucinda shot her own kid and set him up here?’ Gooch asked.
‘No,’ Whit said, ‘I think Delford Spires shot him.’
‘Why would Delford shoot a teenager?’
‘Before he disappeared, Corey told Marian Duchamp that he was going to kill Delford Spires. I think Delford and Lucinda were
involved – he is still extraordinarily protective of her – and Corey found out. That weekend he vanished, I think he headed
north to Houston, to the conference his mother was attending. Suppose Delford’s shacked up there with Lucinda. Corey finds
them, there’s a fight, the gun goes off. Corey’s wounded.’
They would rush him to a hospital,’ Gooch said.
‘You’d think. But maybe Delford’s worried he’ll lose his job. Maybe Lucinda’s worried about the political ramifications of
her lover shooting her son. Obviously they chose another route.’
‘How would they have taken care of him, though, if he’d been shot?’
‘She’s an RN. I saw her diplomas in her office, it got mentioned a lot in the papers when she first ran for office and she
was big on health care, nursing home reform.’ He shook his head. ‘I don’t know, Gooch, but this
is
Corey, and he got here with a new identity.’
‘So how would this Kathy have found out about Corey?’ Gooch asked.
‘A Web site about Pete Hubble included a picture of Corey and the number to Pete’s answering service – sort of an on-line
milk carton. Kathy might have seen that and realized she was sitting on a financial opportunity.’
A jowly man with reddened cheeks and wispy blond hair stormed into the room. He wore a short-sleeve button-down shirt crisp
with starch. A succession of chins nearly hid his tie’s knot.
‘I’m Felix Duplessis, the chief administrator here. Who the hell are you people and why are you terrorizing my staff?’ he
demanded.
‘We’re not terrorizing anyone,’ Whit said mildly. ‘I’m Judge Whit Mosley, from Encina County, Texas, and this is my associate,
Leonard Guchinski.’
‘A judge?’ Duplessis blinked. ‘One of our nurses said you’re bothering this patient.’
‘Good,’ Whit said. ‘It’s about time someone bothered about him.’
‘I’m asking you to leave.’
‘We’re not going anywhere,’ Whit said. ‘This man has
been missing for sixteen years and he’s just been found, and we’re calling the police and the FBI.’
Duplessis gaped. Whit explained. At the mention of Marcy Ballew’s name Duplessis grew gray-pale. A return to the main office
of the nursing home showed Kathy Breaux was gone. Duplessis paged her over the intercom.
‘What can you tell us about John Taylor?’ Whit asked.
Duplessis shook his head as he dug through a file. ‘Not much. He’s our youngest patient by far. He’s supposed to be transferred
today. We just received a call this morning.’
Transferred. Someone wanted the evidence whisked away, dumped in a fresh bed. ‘How is his care paid for?’ Whit asked.
‘A trust fund pays for what the government don’t.’ Duplessis pulled a thick file with
TAYLOR, JOHN
on the tab.
‘Who administers this trust?’
‘A woman named Laura Taylor. From Texas. Austin, I believe.’
Faith worked out of Austin as Lucinda’s chief of staff. ‘Does she ever visit?’
‘Rarely. She was here, oh, a couple of weeks ago.’
‘What does she look like?’
Duplessis shrugged. ‘Big old girl type. Early forties, tall, heavyset, pretty hazel eyes. No nonsense.’
Pretty hazel eyes. Faith.
Whit flipped through the file. John Taylor, thirty-two years old, born in San Antonio, Texas, suffered severe head injuries
in a car crash sixteen years ago and vegetative since the accident. He had been moved to Deshay six years ago from a home
in Texarkana, where he had spent the past ten years. At the back of the file were the transfer papers from Texarkana, the
signature at
the bottom a loopy scrawl with the name typed beneath: Buddy Beere.
‘Oh, no,’ Whit said. ‘Oh, no.’ He reached for the phone.