Eclipse (30 page)

He was going to get out. This night of abject humiliation would end, because he was going to ‘bond out' – he had comprehended that much, that he would be bonding out on ROR – which stood for ‘released on his recognizance' – and here was a whole new vocabulary which he refused to learn, he who had lived to learn.

They were talking about a charge of Simple Battery.

He had not
battered
the woman, had done nothing, deliberately, to hurt her, and if she had not reacted as she had, screaming and pushing him, he would never have stumbled and his hand would never have struck her eye. He would
never
have caused her intentional harm.

He was a doctor.

The instrument had been one of his own, a lid speculum, and opportunities to examine recently operated eyes were rare and valuable, helping him to perfect his skills, and he had believed that the Becket woman would still be sufficiently relaxed by medication to be compliant, so that he could gently examine her, so that in the future . . .

No future now.

They hadn't found the speculum on him because he'd disposed of it with hospital waste – and that irked him, the waste of a fine, expensive instrument, and maybe they would search for it, find it, but even if they never found it . . .

If he could only
read
now, to calm himself, feel more like himself, he might have been better equipped to control the fears.

As it was, reality was coming at him like a high-speed train.

Court was coming.

And with it, truth.

Because even though this would be the word of a documented hysteric against a doctor, George Wiley was no fool. Even if the case was dropped, those people would not let him forget what had happened – he'd seen that in Dr Becket's eyes. And he'd overheard something else tonight, that the retired doctor had a homicide detective for a son, which had to be bad news . . .

They would investigate him. Take him apart.

Destroy him.

All that time. All that learning.

All the
yearning
.

To be the best he could. The only thing he'd ever wanted to be.

A physician.

They were going to take it away from him.

He had seen that in Ethan Adams's eyes, too, in that cold, unforgiving stare.

Just before the great man had turned his back on him.

Already finished then, at the Adams Clinic.

And if they did begin to look more closely at him – which they would, he could see that as clearly as the ugly graffiti on the wall – then everything he had ever lived for would crumble away to nothing.

George Wiley shivered, closed his eyes and covered his face.

He could not bear it.

Could not bear what had been done to him.

Or what they would still do.

They would say that he had transgressed, that he had violated the Oath.

He could not bear that.

Would
not.

While Toni Petit rested under guard at the station, Sam drove back to Hallandale General to check on Chauvin again and learned that the patient's surgery was scheduled for eight. Minor stuff, after which he should be ready for discharge by mid-afternoon latest.

Sam left the hospital and headed for home, feeling the need to touch base, to remind himself that his own world was clean and decent.

Not safe. He'd dropped that illusion a long time ago.

You just did your best, except, of course, that wasn't nearly good enough when it came to your own family.

He told his mind to shut the hell up, to allow himself to take a break, have a shower, see his wife without waking her.

She'd obviously done a great job, if Felicia Delgado had felt ready to describe those two women. Though Grace would see it as just one step toward her patient's long-term healing process.

He wondered, as he showered in their second bathroom so as not to wake Grace, if Felicia would ever feel strong enough to ID photographs, let alone testify against Toni Petit – though the way Petit's confession was flowing, they might not need to put the poor kid through any more.

He considered snatching an hour's sleep, decided it would only make him feel worse, went downstairs and made himself some toast and tea – plenty of lousy coffee to come later, back at the station.

He was glad in a way that Grace had not woken, because she'd have questions to ask, about Chauvin getting shot, about Beatriz Delgado's killing. And his answers, so far as he could give them, would lead to more questions, about Toni stopping Kate Petit from shooting him, then killing her own sister . . .

Only one of those questions he had an instant answer for.

Chauvin had implied to Martinez that he'd had some kind of intuition that he'd been in trouble, but the fact was the Frenchman had gotten himself shot because he was a moron. The rest was too damned complicated and grisly and, for the most part, unanswerable for now.

All down to what Toni Petit was going to tell them back at the station.

And how much of that would be the truth.

The Oath was everything to George Wiley.

Everything.

He'd been born Gregory Wendell, the only child of prosperous parents in Tampa, with whom he had never gotten along because neither John nor Frances Wendell had ever made any effort to understand him.

His life had
started
at age seven, after he'd broken an ankle and become mesmerized by the skills of the doctors who'd helped him heal and also to discover what he would do with his life.

He would become a doctor.

His industrialist father had other ideas. John Wendell loathed the medical profession, had blamed both his parents' deaths on doctors, whom he claimed were worse than murderers and far less honest. He ignored all advice given him by physicians and mocked his son when he disclosed his ambition – and if Frances ever disagreed, she didn't say so.

Nothing changed Gregory's mind. At school, he worked hardest on math, English and the sciences. In private time he read everything he could find about the aspirations and struggles of doctors, from Cronin to Erich Segal to the memoirs of the great physician, Thomas Starzl. When he wasn't reading, TV hospital shows sustained him; he'd been ten when
ER
and
Chicago Hope
had started, and soon Carter, Greene, Geiger and Shutt were his heroes alongside Pasteur, Fleming, Lister and Osler.

The afternoon Gregory told his father that he had been quietly concentrating on the subjects he was going to need for a medical career, so as to be sure of getting a head start, John Wendell suffered a stroke and died.

Frances blamed Gregory for her husband's death, and told her son that he could become an accountant or a janitor for all she cared, but that if he ever raised the subject of medicine again, she would disinherit him.

He chose accountancy, toed the line by day but used every cent that came his way to enable a secret education via books and, later, the Internet, setting complex passwords on his computer, encrypting texts, videos and lectures he downloaded for his
real
studies.

Three years into widowhood, Frances took a barbiturate overdose and tied a plastic bag around her neck, staging it so that her son would be the one to find her. Gregory buried her and the gruesome memory and set to celebrating – until he learned that her estate had firmly bolted the doors to medicine.

He could have waited till his twenty-fifth birthday, as stipulated, but that would have been too late because it took a decade just to get to the real starting gate, and though he'd heard tales of mature students battling through, Gregory knew that was not for him.

But he was no quitter.

If he'd had any real friends, they might have tried talking him out of his plans, but he'd never forged close bonds with anyone.

So, no living parents or other close family or friends.

No one to stop him.

Just after eight a.m., Toni Petit waived her rights again, and went on.

Every now and then, she said, one of Kate's urges would take her over so powerfully that she could not let it go.

‘I tried turning it into a game,' Toni said, ‘by making a plan.'

‘What kind of plan?' Sam asked.

‘A killing plan.' She looked at the others, then back at Sam. ‘I won't pretend that I had no choice in any of this, because of course I did. I let my sister control me, manipulate me into doing what she wanted.'

‘Your “killing” plan.' Sam drew her back on track.

‘Kate loved that part. I'd come up with suggestions and she'd get excited, urge me on. It made her feel good.'

In the beginning, they talked about general factors like location. Kate suggested luring victims to cheap motels, the kind where they could pay cash for a room. She said they could wear disguises, then just walk out when it was over and leave ‘them' to be found.

‘Was this still a “game”?' O'Dea asked.

‘I hoped so. It was all abstract, not real.'

‘Locations,' Sam pressed.

‘I told Kate that it could only work in the woman's own home.'

‘Was “woman” abstract too?' Sam asked.

Toni didn't hesitate. ‘The first was Arlene Silver. She lived in Fairview Shores, near Orlando.' She paused. ‘Kate and I had gone up for a few days in January to look at houses – we sometimes fantasized about relocating, and I thought it would be a fun thing to do.'

They'd been in a drugstore when they'd heard a woman talking to a sales lady about a new brand of diet food. The woman said she was a serial dieter, said that she'd kill for the perfect figure, but she was an attractive woman with a good body, and Toni knew Kate was watching and listening, and getting mad.

‘That was all it took. This perfectly nice woman called Arlene Silver – we heard her give her name to the saleswoman – and Kate perceived her as having everything, including beautiful, healthy eyes, but still wanting more.' She paused again. ‘In Kate's mind, she needed punishing.'

They had followed her home and waited. When the man they assumed was her husband came home, Toni had thought that was an end to it, but Kate wouldn't let it go. They returned early next morning, the man left at seven and no one else emerged, and though Toni argued that didn't mean no one else was inside, Kate insisted they set to work on a
real
plan.

‘I still believed it wouldn't come to anything. We were leaving in two days, and I was sure her rage would burn itself out, or maybe she'd just come home and take it out on a couple more toys.'

‘Like that's real normal,' O'Dea said.

‘Go on,' Duval said.

‘We'd already decided about using drugs and minimizing any mess.' She paused. ‘Neither of us were very good with blood.'

A swift, ironic nasal exhalation from Bobbi Gutierrez.

‘I know it's hard to believe,' Toni said. ‘But it's true.'

‘You mentioned drugs,' Sam said.

‘Diazepam,' Toni said. ‘It had been prescribed in the past for Kate, for panic attacks, but she didn't much like taking medication. I kept a supply for when she needed it, bought the pills from a website. Occasionally, she asked for them. Other times, if she was getting really worked up, I put them in her food.'

‘Did she know?' Sam asked.

‘Not always,' Toni said.

They had discussed what they would need to bring along. The gun and ammunition. The drugs, sheeting, gauze.

‘So you'd already decided on the gun?' Sam said.

‘In a way.'

‘What does that mean?' Gutierrez asked.

‘Kate had always said that when we did it, it had to be like the dolls, only better.'

‘What did she mean by “better”, exactly?' Sam said.

‘She wanted to shoot out their eyes,' Toni said.

Another brief, sickened silence filled the room.

‘What did you say about that?' Sam asked.

‘I still felt it was unreal,' she said. ‘I was still sure it wouldn't happen. That either she'd burn herself out, or I'd find a way to stop her.'

‘But neither of those things happened,' Sam said.

‘No.'

‘Why didn't you just put Diazepam in Kate's food?' Martinez asked.

‘I thought about it,' Toni said.

‘You had the drug with you in Orlando?' Sam asked.

She nodded. ‘I always had some, in case.'

‘But you didn't try giving some to Kate,' Sam said, ‘to calm her down?'

‘I might have, if we'd been home,' Toni said. ‘But because we were still in Orlando, Kate would just have slept for a while. Then she'd have woken up and been mad at me, and still have wanted to do it.'

‘Couldn't you have given her enough to knock her out and drive her back home?' O'Dea asked.

‘She'd have been mad at me,' Toni said again.

‘To clarify,' Sam said, ‘you were in possession of the Diazepam.'

‘It was in my purse.'

‘Did Kate know you had it?' he asked.

‘She knew I usually carried it.'

‘You could have told her that you'd forgotten it,' Sam said.

‘She'd have looked for it,' Toni said.

Sam moved on.

‘Had you brought the gun along on your trip?'

‘Yes. I never left it at home if we were both going away.'

‘Did you ever go away without Kate?' Martinez asked.

‘No,' Toni answered.

‘But you did go out without her sometimes,' Sam said.

‘You know I did.'

‘On those occasions, did Kate stay home?'

‘Yes.'

‘And did you leave the gun with her then?' Sam asked.

‘It was in a locked cupboard,' Toni answered. ‘I kept the key with me.'

‘You locked up the gun that you say you kept for Kate,' Sam said. ‘But if she needed protection, she couldn't get to it.' He went straight on. ‘To clarify again, on the Orlando trip, you, not Kate, were carrying the drugs and the gun?'