Deadly Medicine (35 page)

“Should we bother him at this hour?”

“Oh, he’s workin’. He won’t mind.”

A minute later, Frank Henderfield was on the phone. Ward relayed all the details. “And now you can’t find the sheriff, either?” he asked.

“That’s right.”

“Let me look into this.”

Fifteen minutes later, Frank was on the phone again. “I just talked to Zeke. He says he’s headin’ out to the hunting cabin to talk with Jess and her friend. They had some sort of argument, and he’s helping them straighten it all out, but everything’s fine.”

Ward’s entire body relaxed. “Thank you, Frank. I really appreciate it.”

“I feel like an idiot,” she said, shaking her head and frowning. Jess was having a lovers’ quarrel with Wendy, that was all. Ward knew her nerves were fried, but this was a pretty extreme case of jumping to conclusions.

“Who woulda expected that?” Frieda asked.

“I was worried,” Abby said, “and I don’t even know Jess. We did the right thing, coming here.”

Ward was happy to hear their reassurances. Relief swept over her, and over all of them, bringing exhaustion with it, so they decided to spend the night at Frieda’s. Ward had switched her shift for the morning, and Abby had nothing pressing, so they’d awaken and head back to Factoryville after they bought Frieda breakfast. Before they could leave the kitchen, a high-pitched voice from the upper floor of the house startled them.

“Frieda!”

“Oh, no, we awakened the beast,” Frieda said as she lowered her head and cringed.

“Do you have lesbians down there?” Irene screamed.

“Yes, Mother. We’re having an orgy.”

“Well, send them home and come to bed. It’s the middle of the night.”

They all laughed. “Okay, Mom,” Frieda said as she guided them toward the stairs.

“Thanks, Free. You’re a gem,” Ward said and hugged her.

Ward collapsed into the old four-poster bed, thinking about Jess, feeling an odd mixture of sadness and concern. In spite of Jess’s indifference, Ward would always care for her. It had been a rough couple of years for Jess, first with her mom’s illness, then their move and a career change, and finally Pat’s death. But now Jess was taking pills and missing shifts. It worried her, and she wished she could do something to help, but she felt too distanced from Jess to bring it up. Shit, now that she knew Jess was all right, she wouldn’t even tell her she’d been to the house. Jess might file charges against her for entering the house uninvited.

Her sleep was restless, even with Abby’s calming presence beside her. She was startled into consciousness by the ringing phone. It was light outside, and it took her a few seconds to realize where she was and to find her phone in her backpack. The familiar ring tone caused Ward’s heart to race. “Jess,” she said as she answered. “Thank God.” And then she accepted the call.

“I’ve been worried about you,” she said, trying to keep the fear from her voice, stopping before she said anything else. Jess already thought she was a drunk, and violent. What would she think if she knew she’d driven to her house, broken in, stalked Wendy’s and Zeke’s place, and spent the night at Frieda’s house? Shit, she’d think Ward was really crazy. Shit. Maybe she was really crazy.

“Hi, Ward. Where are you?” Jess asked. Her voice was far away, like she was talking on a speaker phone, and it sounded hoarse, like she’d just awakened. Well, since it was only six in the morning, maybe she had. But what an odd question, Ward thought. Did Jess suspect? Yes, she’d left Zeke a few messages when she couldn’t reach Jess, and she’d called and texted Jess a dozen times before Frank had put her fears to rest, but Jess didn’t need to know Ward was hovering just a few miles away at Frieda’s place. She still had some pride.

“I’m in Philly,” she lied. “How about you? The hospital said you didn’t show up for work last night.”

“That’s right.”

Ward’s heart stopped. The voice that answered this time wasn’t Jess’s. It was a male voice, and although Ward had spoken to him only once, she had no question it belonged to Edward Hawk.

“Hawk!”

“Very good, Dr. Thrasher. You’re smart. Perhaps too smart for your own good.”

“Jess? Jess, are you there?”

“She’s here, Dr. Thrasher, but she can’t talk right now. I’d like to talk, though. Maybe you should come over and we can discuss your suspicions about me. Your accusations are too serious to discuss over the telephone, don’t you think?”

“Where are you?”

“At the hunting club. In the cabin. When I program your address in Philly into my GPS, it tells me you should be here in two hours and thirty-eight minutes. I’ll expect you then.”

“Hawk, wait. I need to take a shower and eat something. Stop for gas!” Ward was stalling, but she didn’t know what else to do. She couldn’t let him hang up. If she kept him talking, kept him occupied, he couldn’t possibly hurt Jess, right?

“Too bad. Two hours and thirty-eight minutes. And if I see anyone else coming up the drive, your girlfriend’s going to die.”

“Hawk, calm down! It’s a hunting club. People come and go constantly. I can’t control that.”

“I’ve been in the Poconos for a few months now, Dr. Thrasher. I can tell the difference between the locals riding in their SUVs and the local sheriff. Who, by the way, is also my guest. Anyone else shows up, and I’ll kill them all. And I think you know I’m quite capable of it.”

The hairs on the back of her neck stood up. “I understand. I’ll be there.” The phone went dead.

Abby placed a hand on her back. “Hawk?” she asked.

“He has them at the cabin. He says he’ll kill them if I’m not there by eight thirty.”

Abby looked at the clock beside the bed.

“What do I do?”

“Let’s get Frieda. We’ll call Frank and ask him.”

Frieda wasn’t in her room. They found her at the kitchen table, looking fresh in spite of only five hours of sleep. Ward filled her in.

“You have to call the police, Ward.” The voice of reason was Abby’s.

“Hold on for a second,” Frieda said. “This guy is an egomaniac. Maybe he just wants to talk and find out what you know. You can’t prove anything. Maybe he realizes that. Maybe he’ll just tell you to back off, threaten you.”

“So you don’t think he wants to kill me?”

Frieda shook her head. “He’s been getting away with murder because he’s been sneaky about it. No one suspected a thing. Well, nothing they could prove, anyway. But if he puts a bullet in you, there’s not much room for speculation.”

“He could make it look like an accident. Or a murder-suicide,” Abby suggested.

“It still draws attention to him, doesn’t it?”

Abby shrugged. “Unless he just slips away and pretends he wasn’t there. Shit, Ward, I don’t know. He seems like a coward—killing helpless people. He’s used a syringe to do his work, never a gun. But maybe he has to do something drastic now, because he’s scared.”

“I guess we can’t be sure of anything he’ll do. But he’s in real trouble if the police show up. I think he’ll kill Jess and Zeke, and himself. And Wendy, too, if she isn’t already dead. No, guys. We can’t call the police.”

Abby seemed to read Ward’s mind, and she shook her head. “Ward, no. You can’t go there. It’s too dangerous. You don’t even own a gun.”

Something Hawk had said triggered an idea. “No, but I know a lot of people who do.”

She told Abby and Frieda her thought. “It could work.” Abby agreed, though reluctantly. “But I still think you should call the police.”

“He thinks I’m in Philly. We have a two-hour advantage, and a surprise could work in our favor.”

“If you’re wrong, people could die. One of them could be Jess. Or you.”

Ward reached out for Abby, pulled her close. “Ab, he’s a psychopath, and he’s killed dozens of people already. If he’s caught, he’s going to prison. He won’t allow that. If the police show up, Jess is dead. Her only hope is for us to surprise him. Now are you with me?”

Abby gazed at Ward, who was astonished by what she saw in her eyes. Love. Abby had never said it, but there it was, written in the clouds of concern. The realization was startling, but not quite as amazing as the understanding that she loved Abby, too.

The nod was almost imperceptible, but Abby’s voice was strong. “Let’s go get ’em, tiger.”

Gunshot Wounds

Tom Billings, whose cell-phone number had been stored in Ward’s phone under the first name
Quad
, held up the arm Ward had set six months earlier and twisted it enthusiastically. “Good as new,” he boasted.

In spite of the circumstances, a smile spread across Ward’s face. Tom was just as she’d remembered him, and that was exactly why she’d reached out to him for help in this mess. He hadn’t been put off by the early morning call or skeptical of the information she’d relayed. He believed her story, and if three citizens of his town were in trouble, he and his friends were more than willing to help get them out of it.

And so, twenty men and their all-terrain vehicles were parked along the old road that led to Towering Pines, and Ward, Abby, and Frieda watched as they unloaded their ATVs from pickup trucks and trailers. Their plan was simple. The men would ride over the mountain and down to the lake, making enough noise to capture Edward Hawk’s attention. Then Frieda would drive up to the cabin in her truck. If the three prisoners were in the cabin, Hawk wouldn’t be able to let Frieda inside. He also wouldn’t shoot her, with those twenty witnesses lingering so close by. Hopefully, he’d leave the shelter of the cabin and meet Frieda outside. That’s when Ward and Abby and a few of the sharpshooters in the bunch would take him down. They were all armed with rifles, loaded with tranquilizers. Ward and Abby would hitch rides over the mountain on the ATVs, then wait with the other shooters in the woods behind the cabin for Hawk to emerge.

It seemed so simple. Ward didn’t want to imagine what would happen if Hawk panicked and decided to shoot everyone and just flee down the mountain. She didn’t think he would, though. He clearly thought he was smarter than everyone else, and Ward hoped his ego would hold out awhile longer, that he’d continue to believe he could outsmart everyone and get away with this. He wanted her, because she knew what he’d done. Hopefully, he’d wait. She glanced at her watch. It wasn’t even seven thirty. He didn’t expect her for an hour. This posse was going to be a surprise.

When everyone was in formation, Ward hugged Frieda and wished her well. “Don’t approach the cabin until you see the guys heading down to the lake.”

“I got it,” she said, and saluted Ward. “Try not to shoot yourself, Doc.”

Frieda had thought she should have been the one with the gun in the woods, but they all agreed she was the least threatening of them all to approach the cabin. Hawk wasn’t likely to panic at the sight of an elderly woman with a fishing rod in search of indoor plumbing. He’d recognize both her and Abby, so they weren’t possibilities. The men, though, would be a threat, and who could predict what would happen if he suddenly felt threatened?

Frieda pulled away in her truck, and Ward and Abby climbed onto their assigned ATVs. Ward rode with Tom, and Abby with his son Tommy. The roar of engines soon filled the quiet, and then they were off, a single line of hunters out on a deadly mission.

The sun hadn’t reached this side of the mountain yet, so it was still cool at this early hour, and as they ventured deeper into the forest, Ward was glad she’d worn jeans and a hoodie for their mission. On the other side of the mountain the sun shone brightly. Would that help or hurt them? A blanket of fog would have been good for cover, but not so good for eyeing a target. Perhaps the bright sun was a good omen.

Years of neglect had caused the road to fill in with weeds, but the drivers seemed unfazed as they climbed the rugged path that zigzagged up the mountainside. In ten minutes they were at the top and began the descent without pause. Halfway down, four of the quads stopped and allowed the others to pass. The six marksmen—Ward, Abby, Tom, Tommy, and another father-son team named RJ and Rex—readied their guns and gathered around Tom for instructions.

Tom pulled a paper out of his pocket. He and Ward had drawn a rough sketch of the hunting club as they’d developed their plan, and now he used it to show them the positions he wanted them to take.

“Tommy, you’re here,” he said, pointing to a spot in the tree line several hundred yards to the right of the cabin’s front door. “You’re going to have to hoof it to get in position, so start moving. You’ll be shooting from behind Hawk, but we have to be prepared that he might come out a window or something like that. Please don’t hurt yourself, or your mother will never forgive me.” Tom winked at his son, who gave him a thumbs-up and began jogging through the woods.

“RJ, you’re going to be here.” His position was to the right, and he’d be shooting just over Frieda’s shoulder as she stood in the driveway at the cabin.

“The rest of us are here, behind and to the left.”

“Can he escape out the back?” Abby asked.

Tom shook his head. “The cabin is built into the mountainside, with no windows on the back side. He has to come out the front door or the door on the left. We can’t cover the front of the cabin, except from this bank of trees where Tommy’s going to be. There’s nothing but open space between the front porch and the lake, so we won’t have anywhere to hide. Hopefully, he comes out and walks left toward Frieda.”

Their approach down the mountain was hundreds of yards to the right of where the SUVs had gone, and they stayed well back in the woods to keep under cover. When the cabin was in sight, they stopped. Ward scanned the area for movement but saw none. Two vehicles were parked next to the cabin, and she recognized them both. The missing hearse from the funeral home and Zeke Benson’s truck.

At Tom’s signal, they fanned out. Ward was grateful for the thick, low-lying pine branches that hid them from view. They were nearly at the clearing behind the cabin before she could clearly see it, and if she was having trouble seeing the cabin, Hawk would surely have trouble spotting her posse sneaking through the woods. They took cover behind a line of pines and waited as Frieda’s truck slowly made its way up the long drive. In the distance, Ward could see the ATVs parked by the lake, the drivers gathered around them.