Charlaine Harris (65 page)

The nurse opened the door yet again. She was a pretty, trim woman of about forty-five, with dark hair and bright blue eyes. She was so healthy and cheerful that I felt better just looking at her. “Miss Connelly,” she said, and looked at us curiously.

Tolliver leaped to his feet and reached down to help me get up. This was just plain weird. I took his hand, and he hauled. The nurse showed us back to our designated waiting room. She weighed me and measured me and took my blood pressure, which was just fine. Then she began to ask me questions. It was mostly a repeat of what was on the forms, and the stuff from the hospital.

“So you just wanted to see Dr. Thomason today to get him to check up on your injuries?” She sounded a little dubious.

“Yes, I'm having more pain than I'd expected, though that may be because I'm so very, you know, depressed.”

“Oh, I guess in your line of work, that would be…understandable.”

“But surely—excuse me—you must be feeling the same way, here in Dr. Thomason's office.”

“Because most of the boys were patients of ours? Yes, it's a sad thing. A sad, sad thing. You never think something like that would happen to anyone you know. And we knew all those boys, though a couple were patients of Dr. Whitelaw's.”

“And Jeff's grandmother said he'd been in here recently,” I lied.

“Oh, you must have misunderstood her. Jeff goes to Dr. Whitelaw.”

“I must have, sorry.”

“No problem. Let me tell Dr. Thomason you're ready.” She sped out on her soft-soled nurse's shoes, and before I could think everything through, Dr. Thomason breezed in. “Hello, young lady. Marcy tells me you're not feeling as well as you'd hoped. You've been out of the hospital—let's see—just since yesterday? That right?” He shook his head, as though keeping track of the passing time was an incredible task. “Well, let's have a look at you. No fever, blood pressure good,” he muttered, checking what Marcy had written on the chart. He ignored Tolliver as if Tolliver weren't there. Dr. Thomason looked and thumped, and felt, and listened. He asked questions very quickly, hardly seeming to give himself time to absorb the answers…as if he did not believe I would tell him the truth, or as if he weren't interested in the truth. He came to stand right in front of me. Since I was up on the examining table, his eyes were slightly lower than mine, and as he looked up at my face his eyes looked almost luminous behind his gold-rimmed glasses.

He smiled at me. “You seem fine to me, Ms. Connelly. You're doing well as anyone could hope, after being attacked the way you were. No cause for alarm. You're healing right on schedule. Still got plenty of pain pills, I hope?”

“Oh, yes,” I said.

“Good. If they were all gone, I would worry about you. I think you're good to go. You're simply not going to feel wonderful for a while.”

“Oh. Okay, then, thanks for seeing me.”

“Right. Good luck. You're cleared to travel.” And he strode out, white coat flapping around his legs. He was delighted that I was leaving town, there was no two ways about it. Tolliver came over to help me down from the examining table, and we left in silence, paying on the way out. I glanced at the big filing cabinet in the receptionist's area. If I were a daring detective, I would think of way to get the receptionist and the nurse out of the way and look through the files of the dead boys. But I wasn't, and there wasn't an excuse on this earth that would get the receptionist, the nurse, and the doctor out of the way long enough for me to do more than roll open the relevant drawers. Women did this all the time in movies and on television. They must have better scriptwriters. Real life didn't afford chances to examine private records unless you just broke in at night and read them, and I wasn't about to do that. My need to know who had done this would only carry me so far. I wouldn't risk going to jail myself.

And, I asked myself, why was I even concerned? The law enforcement people on hand were trained and efficient, and they had all the labs and their own expertise at their beck and call. They would find who'd done this, I had very little doubt. And the deaths would cease. Someone would go to jail after a long and lurid trial.

“There's something nagging me about this,” I said. I had to break the silence or burst. “There's something wrong about this whole thing.”

“Something wrong, aside from eight dead kids?” Tolliver's voice was level, but his words were edgy.

“Yes. Something wrong.”

“Like what?”

“I just think that someone's in danger.”

“Why?”

“I don't know. There's just…where are you going?”

“Back out to the cabin.”

“Are we leaving?”

“The doctor said you were good to go.”

I turned on the car radio. After the warmth of the morning, the temperature was dropping sharply, just as predicted.

“And what's the weather news, Ray?” asked a female voice on one of the local stations.

“In a few words, Candy, the news is…stay home! There's an ice storm on the way, and you don't want to get caught in it. The highway patrol is advising all motorists to stay home tonight. Don't try to travel. Wait until the morning, and get another road advisory then.”

“So, Ray, we should bring in a lot of firewood and rent a lot of old movies?”

“Yeah, you can watch 'em until your electricity goes out!” Ray said. “Get out your board games and flashlights and candles and stock up on water, folks.”

They went on for two more minutes, advising people in the area on how to weather the storm.

Without saying a word, we stopped at the little Wal-Mart.

“Stay in the car,” Tolliver said roughly. “You'll just get jostled.” It was really crowded, and people were coming out with carts full of emergency stuff, so I didn't argue. We keep a throw blanket in the back of the car all winter, and I pulled it around me as he made his way inside.

Since there were only two of us to provide for and since we didn't plan on staying in the area any longer than we could help, Tolliver didn't have that much shopping to do. Nonetheless, it was at least forty-five minutes before he came out of the store with his buggy.

When we got back to the lake, we parked right by the stairs, about halfway down the steep drive. I decided I could help by moving one thing at a time from the car trunk to the middle of the stairs up to the living quarters, with pretty much a level swing of my arm. Then Tolliver could come down a few steps and get the stuff and put it away. It saved him a little work, and I felt like I was contributing. But I was shaking by the time we finished.

There was one more thing I needed to do. As a last-minute precaution, I backed the car up the sloping driveway and parked it parallel to the road. It wasn't a neat job since I was driving one-handed, but least we wouldn't have to negotiate an iced-over slope. I locked the car and went down the driveway and up the steps, moving carefully. The first licks of moisture were in the air.

Ted Hamilton came over a little later to make sure we'd heard the news about the weather. His wife, Nita, came with him, and she was just as small and slim and spry as her husband. They both seemed pretty excited by the prospect of the oncoming ice storm.

Tolliver had brought up so much wood that I thought we might have to leave Twyla some money to pay for it. The older couple nodded approvingly and settled in for a nice conversation. We unfolded the remaining two chairs, which had been leaning up against the wall. They were cloth spectator chairs, and they smelled a little off, but at least there were chairs. I could only offer the Hamiltons bottled water and a chocolate chip cookie, after we'd thanked Nita for her wonderful casserole, which we planned on finishing up for supper.

“Oh, no, we're fine,” Nita said, speaking for Ted and herself after a glance in his direction. “You know, we've always been worried about that pine growing behind this cabin.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Pine roots are so shallow, and it overhangs this cabin,” Ted said. “Pretty poor planning. I said something to Parker about it last summer, but he just laughed. I hope he's not sorry he didn't listen.”

Okay, they were that kind of people.

“We're out here year-round, not like the people who just come here when it's good weather and everything's going well,” Nita said. As if they were the people who really stuck with the poor lake when things weren't going so good. The true friends.

“We'll just have to hope the pine can handle the ice,” Tolliver said. “Thanks for making us aware of it.” He maybe spoke a little dryly, because Ted's face tightened up a bit.

“I hope it stays up, too,” Ted said. “Hate for something to happen to you two. Specially since you're visiting.”

“We're lucky to have you two out here,” I said, to smooth over Ted's ruffled feathers. “I think I'd be scared if we were out here by ourselves.”

That made Ted and Nita both happy. “We'll be right next door; don't forget to call us if you need us. We got all kinds of emergency gear, anything you might need.”

“That's really good to know,” I said, and they finally, thank God, rose. We kept assuring each other we were so happy to have the other there until they were really down the stairs and on their way back to their own cabin.

We had brought in a radio we kept in the trunk, and we turned it on. The weather news was still the same. The police news was still the same. I guess I'd harbored some wild hope that they'd arrest someone, some secret suspect. Or maybe someone would just walk in to confess, unable to bear the burden of guilt any longer. I said as much to Tolliver.

“A guy that could do this so often, to kids he knew,” Tolliver said, “he's not going to walk in and say he's sorry unless he craves the attention. He's going to be pissed off that he can't do it again, that he has to relive all his old good times instead of making new ones. And you're the one responsible for that.”

I stared at Tolliver. This was what had been griping him.

“I don't think so,” I said, as calmly as I could. “I think he came to the motel in a fit of anger, sure enough. But I'd think right now he'd be most concerned about keeping his skin intact and remaining at large. He's not going to do anything that would draw him to police attention. He's going to lie completely low.”

Tolliver thought that over; I'll give him that. “I hope so,” he said, sounding unconvinced. He went to the window and looked out into the darkness. “Can you hear it?” he asked.

I went to stand beside him at the window. I could hear a
plink-plink-plink
as the ice hit the glass. In the light that spilled from the window and the big security light, considerately aimed straight down, that the Hamiltons had fixed high on a pole, we could see tiny bits of ice hurtling toward the ground. It was eerily pretty. I had never felt so isolated in my life.

It didn't stop while we got ready for bed. I was tired, but not nearly as achy as I thought I would be. My head was okay now, and my arm was at least much better. I was able to cope with getting undressed and into my pajamas with less help, though Tolliver still had to do the bra-unhooking. We both read for a while; as Tolliver remarked, if we still had electric light we should use it. He was reading an old Harlan Coben, and I was reading Gavin de Becker's
The Gift of Fear
. Finally, I got too sleepy to keep my eyes open, and the bed had gotten warm around me, and I laid down the book and closed my eyes. Some time later, I heard Tolliver snap off the lamp between the beds, and then the only light that came in the room was a faint glow from the Hamiltons' security light. I'd been too exhausted to notice it the night before, and I didn't really think about it now…until I woke some time later and that light had vanished. The cabin was in absolute pitch darkness. The wind was howling around the corner of the cabin like a banshee, and I heard an odd sound in the wind.

“What is it?” I asked, and I heard myself sounding terrified.

“It's the frozen branches brushing together,” Tolliver said. “I woke a few minutes ago and I've been listening. That's what I decided.”

I scare pretty easy where Mother Nature's involved. “Okay,” I said, but I didn't sound any calmer.

“Come over here, I'm closer to the fire,” Tolliver said. “Bring some blankets.”

I got out of the bed faster than I would have believed possible. My bare feet thudded on the boards as I yanked the blankets off my bed and brought them over to Tolliver's. I tossed them over the bed awkwardly. I slid in beside him and could hardly wait until the covers settled back over us. My teeth were chattering with cold and fear.

“Here, here,” he said, and put his arms around me. “You were just out of the covers for a second or two.”

“I know,” I said. “I'm a chicken. I'm a wuss.” I burrowed into his warmth.

“You're the bravest person I know,” he said, and when I pressed my face into his chest, he said, “Are you listening to me?”