Deadly Nightshade (21 page)

“My friend! You came to see me!”

“How are you?” Victoria put out her hand, and Dojan took it in his grimy paws.

Howie, who had settled into a chair in the hall, scraped the chair back and stood up.

“No contact with the prisoner.” He sat down again.

“I don't feel so good,” Dojan said.

“I brought you some candy.”

Dojan paled and shook his head. “Let the guys have it.”

“I need to warn you, Dojan,” Domingo said. “Don't eat anything until we get you out of here, not even jail food.”

“I'm not hungry.”

“And don't tell anyone what you told me this morning.”

Victoria looked at Domingo in surprise. “What...” she started to say. Domingo put his hand on top of hers.

“The spirits got to me.” Dojan's eyes were rimmed with red.

“Spirits is right,” Domingo said. “Stay away from booze.”

“I had to talk with the spirits “

“Don't talk to anyone, especially spirits!”

Victoria looked quizzically from one to the other. Howie sat at the doorway, within hearing. He leaned back in the chair, the front legs off the floor, the back against the banister. He began to clean his fingernails with his penknife.

“No one's pressing any charges against you,” Domingo said.

“I.. . I. ..” Dojan looked around, wild-eyed.

“We'll get you out this afternoon, you understand? Don't say anything to anybody. Understand me?”

“Yes.” Dojan looked down at his hands. “Yes,” he said again.

Victoria put her gnarled hands on top of Dojan's. Howie tipped his chair back onto all four legs with a thump.

Victoria pulled her hands away. “When you get out, will you bring me more lobsters? I want to pay.”

“Yes, ma'am.” Dojan looked at her bleakly. “I'll bring you lobsters. You don't owe me nothing.”

Howie stood, pulling up his uniform trousers by his gun belt, which was dragging them down around his slim hips.

“Time's up.”

“Take care, Dojan.” Domingo rose to his feet.

Dojan's eyes wobbled from Domingo's face to Victoria's.

“Maybe sometime you'll show me your boat,” Victoria said.

Dojan cracked a small smile. “I can take you out in my boat. I can take you lobstering. You can help me pull my lobster pots.”

Domingo's eyes went from Dojan to Victoria. He started to say something, then seemed to think better of it.

“Yes,” Victoria said. “I'd like that.”

When they were out on the brick walk that led away from the jail, Domingo took her elbow. “You don't want to go out in that leaky bucket of his.”

“I don't know why not,” Victoria said tartly, her mouth a firm line. “I'm perfectly capable of hauling lobster pots.”

“I guess you are,” Domingo said. “Yes. I guess you are.”

When they arrived at the hospital, the ambulance had already pulled up in the emergency room bay. Domingo glanced at the sky and put the top back up on his Rolls. Victoria watched as the EMTs unloaded Fatso and Jernegan from the ambulance, and she and Domingo followed them through the wide doors. Both men were strapped onto wheeled stretchers. A uniformed man stood to one side of the stretchers, and Victoria recognized Howie, the freckle-faced jail attendant.

As they entered the emergency room, Victoria heard an orderly say, “They're both on something, that's for sure.”

Fatso was straining to get to a sitting position. His eyes were wide open, and the irises were so huge, Victoria couldn't tell what color they were.

“Let me outta this fucking straitjacket before I beat the shit out of all of yous.” Fatso gasped for air, and the straps creaked.

“Chill it, man,” the orderly said.

“Jesus Christ, get them fucking spiders of fa me!” Fatso screamed and strained against the straps. The stretcher flexed and creaked with his movements.

On the other stretcher, Jernegan, whose eyes were shut, kept gasping in a weak voice, “Water! Water!”

Victoria watched in awe from a safe distance.

Domingo took her arm and led her to the row of seats in the waiting section. “Sit here, sweetheart, until we know what this is all about.”

It seemed a long time before Dr. Erickson came out of the examining room. He was shaking his head.

“Domingo, we got to contact their families. They're sick puppies, both of them.”

Victoria left the
Vogue
magazine she had been thumbing through on the table next to her seat.

“Are they going to be all right?” She joined Dr. Erickson and Domingo by the examining room's door.

“One probably will. The other”—Dr. Erickson waggled his hand, palm down—”I'm not so sure about.” He took off his glasses and slipped them into the pocket of his white lab coat. “We've pumped both stomachs. Flushing them with a weak solution of tannic acid now. Found remains of chocolate in both.”

“Any idea what poison?” Domingo reached unconsciously for his cigarettes, and patted his shirt pocket instead.

“We're analyzing stomach contents now, as we speak,” Dr. Erickson said. “Don't know yet.”

“You got a best guess?” Domingo put his hands in his trouser pockets and paced a couple of steps from the doctor and back again.

“Well...” Dr. Erickson said, drawing the word out. “Dilated eyes. Rapid pulse. Aggressive behavior. Hallucinations. Thirst. Flushed skin. Could be several things.” He unbuttoned his lab coat and put his hands in the pockets of his tan slacks, flipping his coat behind him. “You think it might have been administered in the fudge, eh? Not something they had for lunch that might already be digested?”

“Fudge,” Domingo said.

“How long ago?”

“Couple of hours at most.”

“Well...” Dr. Erickson drew the word out again. “An easy poison to acquire, the right symptoms, same time frame from time of administration to appearance of symptoms would be atropine.” He stuck his jaw out and nibbled at his pale mustache with slightly crooked ivory-colored lower teeth.

“Atropine?” Domingo said thoughtfully. “Belladonna. Deadly nightshade.”

Victoria made a choking sound and put her hand to her mouth. Domingo stopped his pacing, scowled at her, then turned back to the doctor.

“Easy to acquire?”

“Deadly nightshade grows everywhere on this Island. Every part of it is poisonous—roots, leaves, flowers, berries.”

Dr. Erickson glanced at Victoria, who seemed to be about to say something. He continued. “Easy to make an infusion and doctor whatever you want to doctor. Inject it into mashed potatoes. Chop up the berries and mix them into fudge. Add it to someone's drink. Doesn't take much. One berry can be fatal to a child. Surprising it isn't used more.”

“They use atropine to dilate eyes for examinations, don't they?” Victoria asked.

“They used to. In minuscule quantities.” Dr. Erickson turned to an orderly who'd come out of the examining room. “Yes?”

The orderly looked at Victoria, at Domingo, then back at the doctor.

Outside, the sky had turned a greenish black. Newly planted trees in the small garden outside the waiting room windows whipped back and forth against their supports. The trickle of water in the fountain blew to one side. Leaves and small branches whirled across the grass and pelted the large windows.

“Speak up,” Dr. Erickson said. “Problems?”

“The larger man”—the orderly consulted his clipboard— “Medeiros, has lapsed into coma. Vital signs are weak and getting weaker. His heartbeat is loud, but erratic.”

“Still flushing his stomach?”

“Yes. It's clear solution.”

“Discontinue it. Get their families here immediately.”

Rain suddenly began to hammer against the windows. Lightning illuminated the small garden in the courtyard outside. Thunder rattled the windows.

“Medeiros?” Domingo said. “What's his first name?”

The orderly consulted the clipboard again. “Manuel.”

Domingo patted his shirt pocket and paced. Victoria stood there, feet slightly apart, her arched-up toe protruding through the hole in her shoe, hands hanging quietly at her sides. Domingo stopped pacing abruptly.

“How old is Medeiros?”

Dr. Erickson consulted the clipboard the orderly held. 'Twenty-two.”

“Which Medeiros is he?”

“I don't know,” Dr. Erickson said. “A hell of a lot of Medeiros on this Island.” He turned to the orderly, who was standing beside him. “The jail will have the number for his folks. Get them here right away.”

The lightning flashed. Rain beat against the windows. Thunder crashed. A nurse walked past with a sheaf of green forms in her hand, her shoes squeaking on the linoleum. In the waiting room around the corner, a baby cried. Victoria sat down again and picked up the copy of
Vogue
she'd been looking through. A soft voice came over the speaker, “Dr. Montrowl to Obstetrics. Dr. Montrowl to Obstetrics.” The rain slashed outside the windows.

The wide emergency room doors were flung open, and Chief Medeiros strode into the room, yellow foul-weather jacket glistening and dripping rainwater. His boots left wet puddles on the linoleum floor. He threw back the hood of his jacket. His garrison cap was in place, visor straight on his brow, flat top curved sharply up in front. He pulled open his jacket with the ripping sound of Velcro disconnecting.

“What's this all about, Doc?”

Dr. Erickson looked up at the much taller man. “You have a son, Manny?”

“I got a son Manny,” the chief said. “In jail at the moment. What's the kid done now?”

Victoria's eyes widened.

Domingo stopped pacing and stared from the chief to Dr. Erickson and back at the chief.

“Bad news,” Dr. Erickson said. “Your son is here, and it doesn't look good.”

“What happened? He was in jail, safe.”

“Suspected poisoning.” Dr. Erickson looked down at the floor and rocked onto his toes. “Administered in jail.”

“How in hell did he get hold of poison?”

“You'd better see him right away. What about his mother?”

The chief winced. “She's on the West Coast somewhere. She has nothing to do with the kid. Where's he at?”

Dr. Erickson led the chief into the curtained-off examining room. Medeiros's boots squished on the floor. He came out almost immediately.

“He doesn't know me.” The chief whirled on Dr. Erickson. “Don't stand there! You, Mingo. Who slipped drugs to him? Who?”

Domingo turned and gazed out the window at the storm pelting the little garden.

The chief glared at Domingo's back. “My kid's a pothead. This isn't pot.” He marched back and forth, his boots squishing. “What did you have to do with this, Mingo?”

Domingo said nothing.

The chief turned to Dr. Erickson. “Save that kid of mine, whatever it takes.” He poked his forefinger into Dr. Erickson's madras-clad chest.

“We're doing everything we can.” Dr. Erickson hunched his shoulders, hands back in the pockets of his chino slacks, lab coat behind him. “We can't do much at this point.”

The chief marched back into the examining room and out again.

“Helicopter him to Boston. Get the Coast Guard here. If anything happens to that kid of mine, you'll never practice medicine again. Anywhere. You get me?”

A jagged fork of lightning slammed into the fountain in the patio garden outside the window, turning it for an instant into a fluorescent yellow-green torch. Thunder exploded, rattling windows. A woman in the waiting room screamed and put her hands over her ears. The hospital lights dimmed and went out, then came back on almost instantaneously with the sound of a generator kicking on. Rain beat against the building, slammed the roof, poured down the windows, flowed in wide lakes of water, mud, and gravel across the concrete walkway on the other side of the garden.

A few minutes later, an orderly reported to Dr. Erickson. Victoria heard him say quietly, “The medevac helicopter can't get to the Island. They'd route it through Providence, but the wind is too strong.”

“Shit!” The chief slammed his hand onto the admitting desk.

“If the substance he ingested is what I think it is, atropine,” Dr. Erickson told the police chief, who was pacing again, “everything that can possibly be done has been done.” The chief glowered as he continued. “There's no known antidote. Boston can't save him.”

The chief flung off his yellow slicker, threw it onto a chair. It slid onto the floor. Victoria picked it up and put it over the back of the chair. Domingo gazed past the sheet of water that poured off the roof.

Manuel Medeiros had a series of convulsions, one after another, in the emergency treatment room, then straightened out his body, arched his back, gasped, and lay still.

Chief Medeiros was with his son at the end. He laid his hand on his dead son's chest, put his head down, and wept.

Neither Victoria nor Domingo had much to say on the way back to West Tisbury. The death of Chief Medeiros's son was too appalling to discuss. The storm had moved on to the southwest and was now only a distant flicker and rumble in the evening sky. Domingo drove by way of Vineyard Haven. The power was still off and houses and shops were dark; the few streetlights that marked the intersections were out. They passed white ComElectric trucks parked by the side of the road. Workers in hard hats conferred with one another, looked up at transformers, pointed to lines.

“I must say, it's pleasant with the electricity off,” Victoria said. “I wouldn't mind if they didn't get it back on for a few days. There's too much light pollution.”

As they drove up the hill to Tisbury Meadow, branches and leaves littered the road. They crossed a wash of sand and gravel, dodging foot-ball size rocks. Near the Chicama Vineyards road, they moved over into the oncoming lane because a downed tree blocked their way.

The sun settled behind the receding storm clouds, and brilliant rays shot high into the clear sky. Scarlet and crimson edged the clouds. As Domingo negotiated Victoria's rutted driveway, the sun set over Doane's pasture, and while they watched, the vivid colors changed to muted rose and purple.

When Domingo opened the door for Victoria, McCavity flipped himself over on his back in the driveway and rolled back and forth, soft belly and paws in the air, eyes closed.