Fatal (40 page)

At that moment, out of the corner of his eye, Matt saw movement from the direction of the truck.
Lyle!

“The bullet or the drop, Matthew?” Hal was asking. “Your choice.”

Frantic to stall and keep Hal’s and Larry’s attention fixed on him, Matt rejected the notion of some sort of outburst in favor of pandering to Hal’s ego.

“Hal, tell me one thing,” he said, “that was you who slipped that note about the toxic dump under my door, wasn’t it?”

Hal sighed and nodded with exaggerated modesty.

“If you really must know, yes. I am aware of pretty much everything that goes on around here, and I knew about that unusual—um—storage facility almost as soon as it was established. I sent the note to you figuring that as long as you were chasing after your vendetta against the mine, you were no threat to my interests. Brilliant, no?”

Lyle had moved under the open door of the truck and was pulling himself inside. Matt took a step toward his uncle. Larry moved forward to intervene, his pistol ready.

“Oh, give me a break,” Matt cried, raising his voice angrily. “You’re not nearly as brilliant as you think. You’ve made one miscalculation after another.” He laughed loudly. “Man, you must have swallowed your gum when Nikki Solari arrived in town. That’s where you and Grimes blew it. You should have just let her go back to Boston. You got worried that if somehow word got to me about Kathy Wilson, there was every chance I’d start looking for explanations other than the mine, and figure out the truth. So you went after her. That was a mistake, Hal. A big mistake.”

More movement. Somehow Lyle had found the strength to drag himself inside the cab.

“Big words for someone in your position,” Hal said, no longer cheery, “but words for which I have no patience. Now make your choice. Larry, if they don’t choose the drop, I want Mrs. Kroft shot first, please.” He pointed to a spot just above his own ear. “Right here from two feet.”

“You killed all those people for money?” Matt asked stridently, wondering if Lyle was lying dead on the seat of the Ford.

His uncle’s smile was coldly patronizing.

“Not for money, nephew,” he said. “For a great deal of money. I have owned more than forty percent of Columbia Pharmaceuticals for years and I was running out of funds to continue losing on the accursed company. Can you imagine what it’s like being my age with my tastes and no money? With what we’re being paid per dose of Lasaject, my financial concerns are about to be over. That’s over with a capital ‘O.’ Now, sir, I have things to do. You have not behaved at all like a respectful godson, and so, from this moment, you have ten seconds to choose your punishment . . . nine.”

“Hal, no, please!” Matt screamed at the moment the truck’s engine rumbled to life. “Stop!”

Larry and Hal whirled toward the noise. Lyle, his eyes virtually closed, the bridge of his nose resting on the steering wheel, threw the Ford into first, floored the accelerator, and popped the clutch. Spewing gravel, the truck shot ahead, straight at Larry. Mouth agape, the massive gunman fired off three shots. The Ford’s windshield shattered, and it looked to Matt as if at least one of the bullets had hit Lyle in the forehead. But nothing short of a cement wall was going to stop the truck now. The front bumper caught Larry at the knees. His gun spun to the ground as he was lifted up onto the hood, his moon face not two feet from Lyle, who looked to Matt to be unconscious or dead. Still, Lyle’s foot held the gas. The Ford shattered the rail fence, sped through ten feet of shrubbery, and hurtled off the edge of the precipice like a hang glider taking flight. Then, in what seemed like slow motion, the nose of the truck tilted downward, spilling Larry into the void before disappearing. Moments later there was a loud explosion from the rocks below.

By the time Hal Sawyer turned back from the scene, his godson was standing there calmly, with Larry’s gun leveled at him.

“Business is very bad, Uncle,” Matt said.

 
CHAPTER
37

MATTHEW, PLEASE, YOU'RE NOT THINKING OF THE 
greater good. Omnivax will save hundreds of thousands of lives every year. If you block the release of the vaccine, think of all the blood that will be on your hands. Why, you don’t even know for certain that Lasaject caused any of those deformities. You’re guessing, assuming. . . .”

Hal Sawyer ranted on nonstop as Matt and Ellen used lengths of clothesline to lash him tightly, facedown, on his bed. If someone happened to show up at his home and release him before they had the chance to report things to the state police, so be it. Grimes was gone for good, so were Sutcher and the other killers, Larry and Verne. Hal might try to run, but he wouldn’t get very far.

“Darn it, Matthew, this is no way to treat your own flesh and blood! . . . Who’s going to visit your mother if I’m not around? . . .
Your mother!
. . . This is going to break her heart, and it’s all your fault. . . . For crying out loud, Matthew, I’m your godfather. . . . Ellen, Ellen, you’re more my generation, explain to my nephew the importance of family. I’m his uncle—genetically, that makes us twenty-five percent of each other.
Twenty-five percent!
That’s like selling out a quarter of yourself. . . .”

“We can’t make it,” Ellen said, checking Matt’s watch. “We’re not even going to be close.”

“We can only do our best,” Matt replied, tightening the cord a bit more than it needed to be. “We have a shot, depending on the traffic. It’ll be closer than you think.”

“Can you do the rest of this yourself?”

“Sure, why?”

“I need to make a phone call before we leave. My friend Rudy will be worried sick about me. Also, he knows people. Maybe there’s someone he can call.”

“Quickly, though. I have just another minute or two here, then I want to be on the road. Listen, Hal’s girlfriend, Heidi, lives here. Why don’t you make a quick rummage through her things for some warm clothes. It can get chilly on the bike.”

It took just seconds for Ellen to appropriate a pair of dark slacks, a sweatshirt, and a leather jacket. She dashed to the kitchen while Matt looped the last length of rope around Hal’s ankle, then around the leg at the foot of the bed. He was badly shaken by Lyle Slocumb’s death and also by his uncle’s remorseless confession. His mother’s Alzheimer’s disease made her less aware of some things than she once might have been, but she would certainly be aware that her brother no longer came to see her—aware and deeply hurt. In spite of the situation and the urgency of their getting to Washington, he found himself composing explanations that would be gentler on her than the horrible truth.

“You can’t leave me here like this,” Hal was bellowing, each plea more desperate, more pathetic than the last. “What if I have a heart attack? What if I have to pee? In this country we’re presumed innocent until proven guilty. Who made you the goddamn judge, jury, and executioner? For Christ’s sake, Matthew, listen to me. I’ve known you since you were born. You can’t do this!”

“Hal, where are your car keys?”

“My what?”

“The keys to your car.”

Matt had found his bike in the garage and retrieved the key to it from the kitchen counter. But if he was going to drive 170 miles across Virginia at eighty miles an hour, he would much rather do it in a Mercedes sedan than perched on a Harley with a novice rider, who hated motorcycles, squirming on the seat behind him.

Hal stopped his machine-gun ranting and laughed.

“If I had them you surely wouldn’t get them,” he said. “Not unless you let me go. But thanks to you, I don’t have any keys at all.”

“What do you mean?”

“I had only one set—my other one’s with Heidi—and my set was in ol’ Larry Hogarth’s pocket when he made the big swan dive. Too bad.”

“Hal,” Matt said, checking the knots one last time, “I hope you don’t get the pleasure of driving an automobile again for the rest of your life.”

He stopped in the hallway for Hal’s fleece-lined leather jacket, hurried to the garage, pulled on his helmet, and revved up the Harley. He had made the drive to Washington in two and a half hours. Cutting fifteen minutes off that time stretched the bounds of possibility, but not past the breaking point. Then he checked the fuel gauge and groaned. Just under half a tank—two and a half gallons at best. At the speed he intended to be going, they would be getting around fifty miles per. There would be no chance to make the trip without stopping. Gassing up would be brief, but rolling into the station, pumping, and rolling out would probably add three minutes, maybe even four. Still, depending on when the actual injection took place and how lucky they were once they reached the clinic, it was still remotely possible.

Ellen raced out of the front door and met him as he was backing the Harley past Hal’s Mercedes. Dressed in Heidi’s leather jacket and black slacks, she looked every bit the biker.

“Let ’er rip,” she said, climbing up behind him.

“Just pull on your helmet, lean back, relax, hang on, and watch the world go by,” Matt replied, accelerating down the drive. “Did you reach your friend?”

“No, but I left him a message. Ordinarily he’d be fishing in the pond behind his cabin at this hour. Today I hope he’s out pacing about, worrying about why he hasn’t heard from me.”

“I’m sure he is. Well, here we go. Second star to the right and straight on ’til morning.”

“Don’t worry about me,” Ellen said. “Just go fast.”

Go fast. . . . Damn you, Hal.

With vivid, lurid images of the victims of the Belinda syndrome in full control of his thoughts, Matt swung onto the highway and hit the gas.

“SHER, THE LIMO'S 
here,” Don called out. “A white stretch limo, at that. Isn’t this something.”

“We’re just about ready,” Sherrie called out from the bedroom. “I want this girl to look her very best for her debut on national TV.”

“
Worldwide
TV,” Don corrected.

He watched as a man and a woman in dress suits, wearing sunglasses, emerged from the limousine and headed up the walk.
Men in Black
, he was thinking.

“Ta-da,” Sherrie sang, holding the baby out to her husband.

“You both look just fine,” Don said, beaming. “Really fine.” He took the baby and kissed Sherrie on the mouth. “No one could ever guess you had this baby just four days ago.”

“You’re pilin’ up some big-time points, sir,” she said, checking out the scene below their window. “Not every kid has the Secret Service escort them to their baby shots. You ready?”

“Ready as I’ll ever be. Even when I was fightin’ Golden Gloves, I don’t remember being this nervous.”

“You, nervous? What are you nervous about?”

“Believe it or not, the baby.”

Startled, Sherrie turned slowly and looked at him, a shadow of concern darkening her face.

“You mean the shot?”

“Uh-huh.”

She sighed.

“Me, too,” she said. “I’ve been afraid to talk with you about it because I was afraid you’d think I was crazy or . . . or ungrateful. I know Mrs. Marquand told us that plenty of people, babies and grown-ups, had received this shot when it was being tested. Still, Donelle’s going to be the very first to get it after it’s been approved.”

“I know.”

“I was speaking to Andrea last night about her son Randy. He was one in May. He has fits all the time that his doctor says are caused by a reaction he had to one of his baby shots. He has to take medicine, and now Andrea says the medicine is messing him up.”

“I didn’t know that. Is the shot one of the ones Donelle’s gonna get?”

“It has to be. She’s going to get thirty shots at once—all the ones she’s ever going to need.”

“I wish we knew more,” Don said.

Sherrie walked across the room and embraced him and their daughter.

“Same here,” she said, just as their Secret Service escorts knocked on the door.

THANKFULLY, THE DAY 
was sunny and dry. Matt pushed the Harley as hard as he dared, across the Virginia border, then along rolling two-lane roadways through the lush Shenandoah Mountains and the Appalachians. In less than an hour, they had picked up Route 81 in Staunton, and were headed north toward 66. Matt kept their speed at an even eighty, nudging it up a mile or two when he sensed there were no police around. The windscreen and top-of-the-line shocks made it feel like forty. In Harrisonburg, they took on four gallons and learned that they were about 110 miles from Washington. An hour and thirty minutes remained before the shot heard round the world would be fired.

Depending on the congestion once they hit the city, they had a chance. They picked up I-66 in Middletown and headed east, barreling on through light traffic. Riverton . . . Markham . . . Marshall . . . The Plains . . . bit by bit, they were making up time, closing the gap against the moment when Lara Bolton would trip a switch and inject the first dose of Omnivax into the thigh of a baby girl.

Three percent.
Maybe more. Not odds he would ever want to have operating against his child.

On the seat behind him, Ellen sat quietly for most of the trip, using the handgrips for balance, and occasionally his arms.

“This isn’t nearly as unpleasant as I remember,” she yelled as they sped through a particularly spectacular mountain pass.

“I’ll help you pick out your first bike,” he hollered back.

For most of the initial hour of their trip, Matt had constantly scanned his rearview mirrors and the road ahead, looking for problems or police. As the day grew brighter and the road more hypnotic, his thoughts drifted to Nikki. He pictured her hunched over Fred Carabetta, battling through the pain of her fractured ankle, using makeshift instruments to perform a delicate procedure that could easily have ripped the man’s vein in half. Courage, resourcefulness, compassion, intelligence—over the short time they had known each other, she had shown him so much. He had truly never believed there was a woman who could take Ginny’s place in his soul and his heart. Now, at least, he knew it was possible. Perhaps for the first time, he acknowledged the effect that Ginny’s death continued to have on him—the indolent and virulent depression that had functioned like a great wall, preventing him from experiencing true joy. Was Nikki the answer?
Maybe
, he said to himself as they rocketed along the interstate.
Maybe she was.

Catharpin . . . Centerville . . . Fairfax . . . by the time they passed through Arlington, they had ten minutes left. Probably not enough unless there were some preliminaries. There was still going to be the problem of getting in contact with someone with enough power to stop the injection, and doing it without getting killed.

Traffic was heavier now, much heavier, and Matt was forced to slow into the twenties to join the migration along the west bank of the Potomac. To his right he caught a glimpse of Arlington National Cemetery. Joe Keller would never be buried there, nor would Kathy Wilson or Teddy Rideout or any of the others who were victims of Hal Sawyer’s war. But Matt knew that thanks to the woman hanging on behind him, the death of every one of them would eventually save lives.

Eight minutes until three.

“Take this exit,” Ellen called out. “We’ll cross the Potomac here and look for signs to Anacostia. We’re almost there.”

They headed east on 395, crossed the Anacostia River at Pennsylvania Avenue, and then turned onto Minnesota. This was the tenement, lead paint, hard-scrabble section of the city—a drug-infested, 80 percent unemployed island of violence and despair, situated less than two miles from the Capitol. It was hardly an accident that Lynette Marquand had chosen a community health center here to showcase Omnivax. Her husband was trailing badly among black and Hispanic voters. Matt wondered how long it would take for Lynette to accept the tale of Lasaject and halt the inoculations.

Traffic had slowed to a near-crawl.

Two minutes, if that.

“Are we close enough for you to make it on foot?” Matt asked.

“Maybe. I’m not quite sure where we are relative to—wait! Fenwick Road. Over there! That’s the street. I’m certain of it.”

Matt accelerated and swung the Harley up onto the tree belt and across a weedy lawn, onto Fenwick. Several blocks down the street, they could see broadcast trucks, a number of them, lined up along the side of the road. Then they saw the blue barricade a block ahead.

“What time do you have?” Matt asked, hoping his watch and the one Ellen had taken from Heidi’s bureau disagreed.

“After three,” Ellen replied sadly, “maybe five or six minutes. You gave it a heck of a try.”

How long was the show going to last altogether? Matt wondered. Probably not more than ten or fifteen minutes, with maybe some commentary from the various networks’ health gurus after that. If regular broadcasting resumed, it might be hours before they could get their story heard, and get word out to the pediatricians of the country to stop the injections. They had failed to stop the initial injection, but there still might be a chance to get to someone in a position of influence in time to prevent thousands of other exposures.