The Devil's Cauldron (26 page)

Becca rubbed his shoulder. She pried his fingers off the flashlight. “It’s okay, Ruk. You had to push her in. She was going to kill us.”

“I forgot something. What is it?”

“Seems you lost your shirt,” she said with a smile in her voice. “And your shoes. Did you forget to get dressed before you left your room?”

“I didn’t have time to put on my shoes,” he said. “And I left my shirt with . . . with Meggie! I left her behind!”

He snatched the flashlight from her hand and ran down the trail leading to Foggy Hill.

“Wait!” Becca cried. “Eric!”

He ignored her and raced to find the woman he’d abandoned by the side of the trail. Hopefully, she wasn’t angry with him.

#

Tears welled in Meggie’s eyes when Eric came running back down the hillside, shouting her name. He was okay. He was alive.

She had been waiting in terror. Listening for additional gunshots. When another shot came, her guts turned to liquid. She was sure they’d killed him, like the first two shots had killed Wes’s brother and his wife. That was a good half-hour ago.

And so she waited in fear and anguish to see that hated blue penlight searching the trail again, looking for her. It didn’t come. What was taking them?

Relief flooded through her when she picked out Eric’s voice and realized it was him.
Here I am!
she tried to call.
Over here!
 

In that brief moment, she forgot she was paralyzed and helpless. She had to wait for him, doing nothing, absolutely nothing to help.

Eric ran past her spot. Calling, looking. Sounding confused. Where was she? Worry tinged his voice. He came past another time. The light swept past the rock where he’d propped her, but he didn’t stop long enough to find her.

“Eric!” a woman’s voice called. It wasn’t Kaitlyn, thank God. Another light flashed along the trail. A wider, stronger beam.

“I can’t find her,” he cried. “I lost her. Maybe animals. Maybe more kidnappers.”

“I’m sure it wasn’t animals. Now think, where was it? Where did you leave her?”

“I remember this tree. It tripped me after I got on the trail.”

I’m right here!

“Slow down. Let’s be careful. She’ll turn up.”

Moving methodically now, the two of them walked up and down the path. It still wasn’t a good search, as Eric couldn’t remember so much as which side of the trail he’d left her on.

And then came the wonderful moment when Eric’s flashlight shone in her face and she squinted her eyes shut, while he let out a whoop of joy. He rushed up and hugged her. She looked him over, feeling more grateful than she could ever remember. Scratches raked his face, and blood trickled down his right shoulder. But he was alive.

The woman came down. “Thank God.” She squatted and gently peeled Eric away. “It’s okay, you’re safe now. Kaitlyn is dead. Benjamin gave himself up. He confessed on camera. We’re going to turn him over to the police.”

Meggie thought she couldn’t feel any deeper relief than upon her discovery moments earlier, but this time she felt ready to collapse. It was like a giant stone had been pressing on her chest and now she could breathe.

“And we have enough evidence to force the Costa Rican government to turn you over to our care. My name is Becca Pilson, and I work for a foundation that brings locked-in patients into the real world. Blink once if you understand.”

Blink.

A smile broke across the woman’s face.

“I know it has been hell,” she said, “but I can promise you one thing. From this moment on, it gets better.”

“You fooled us,” Wes told Uncle Davis. “I’ll give you that. We thought you really wanted us to come home.”

Three weeks had passed since the fight at Devil’s Cauldron, and a nightmare of police, lawyers, paperwork, media coverage, and all the other hassles involved in exonerating Wes, Becca, and Eric of any crimes. Wes endured surgery at a Costa Rican hospital and hobbled around on crutches for the next ten days.

Eric—fiercely loyal to the end—had insisted on attending Diego’s funeral in San Jose. While Wes stood back, feeling guilty and self-conscious, Eric hugged Diego’s widow and his children. They wept in his arms, and Wes watched, marveling at his brother’s heart. After a talk with Becca and his uncle, Wes quietly set up a bank account for the grieving Palomar family.

With all of the distractions, it had taken almost two weeks to return Meggie to the United States. And this was the first time Wes and Becca had had a chance to sit down with Davis and talk.

They met in his house overlooking Lake Champlain, on the west side of the Green Mountains. Summer had arrived in Vermont, when the fields and forests turned a brilliant shade of green. Meadows and pastures sloped toward the lake. Herds of content cows grazed the knee-high grass. Here and there white-clapboard farmhouses and red barns dotted the countryside. The lake itself was a sparkling blue strip, pinned between the mountains of Vermont and the more rugged Adirondacks of Upstate New York on the other side.

Davis’s chair turned and his eye flickered across the video screen that hung in front of his chest. The computer voice responded with a speed and fluency that made it easy to forget that the man couldn’t talk, couldn’t move, could only blink and move his eyes. Even that was an accomplishment clawed loose from his paralysis by years of work.

“I thought you’d get it on your own,” Davis said. The computer even added a hint of teasing. “Was I expecting too much?”

“Almost,” Wes said. “At first, we couldn’t figure out why you wanted us home. Or why you didn’t ask for us at the house. We were too caught up in the case.”

Becca came in from the kitchen, where she’d been pouring herself a glass of iced tea. In the other room, gunfire chattered from Eric’s latest video game. Meggie was also in the house, working with Walter Fitzroy in the language lab.

“We guessed it in the end,” Becca said.

Wes had seen the email that threw Davis. An anonymous, threatening letter. Stay away from Meggie Kerr or I will destroy you.  

“You were right,” Davis said, “I figured I’d been hacked. Too much research into Kaitlyn Potterman and her ways to think otherwise.”

“That was more suspicion than we had,” Wes said. “At that point, anyway.”

“I’d looked into that keystroke-logging accusation a little more. If I hadn’t wasted so much time blathering about the case in the Bronx, I’d have told you already. Soon as I got that email, I decided to play it safe. Of course, it wasn’t really safe in the end.”

Wes glanced in at Eric and was relieved to see only the back of his brother’s head as he stared at the T.V. Eric was playing the newly released sequel to the zombie assassin game,
Sherlock Holmes: Werewolf Adventure.
In the background, Holmes exclaimed, “Give him the silver bullet, Watson!”
 

Good. Wes didn’t want his brother to hear this. The police had grilled Eric more than anyone. A lawyer was always present, and Wes served as his translator, doing his best to shield him. The police were only doing their jobs; Wes never felt that they were being too hard, even though they grew exasperated by Eric’s inability to tell a straight story. He would forget details, then remember them, then forget them again. It was a grueling set of interrogations, spread over four days. At the end of it, Wes was a wreck, and his brother so agitated that it took three days back in the States before he calmed down to his usual self. Even then, he woke with nightmares over what had happened at the Devil’s Cauldron.

“Why didn’t you follow up with an email from an anonymous provider?” Wes asked. “Used a different computer?”

“Once Becca didn’t show up, I knew you were on the case. Didn’t necessarily think this woman would try to kill you, but it all turned out okay in the end, right?”

“I could have done without surgery, but yeah, I guess so.”

“Unfortunately,” Davis said, the computer making his voice somber, “there’s this friend of Eric’s who didn’t make it. I feel awful about that.”

“The only good thing about that is that it put the police firmly on our side. There was no getting around that she’d murdered a Costa Rican national.”

“And Meggie’s husband?” Becca asked.

“Better not call him that,” Davis said. “She never agreed to that. Fiancé. Even that word is ugly enough.”

“Okay, Kaitlyn’s cousin, then,” she said. “Benjamin Potterman. What are the charges?”

“First degree murder. Or whatever they call it down there. Doesn’t matter that he didn’t actually do the stabbing. Costa Rica doesn’t have the death penalty, but with the confession the two of you extracted, the case looks cut and dried. If something crazy gets him off, though, there are plenty of crimes he committed in the U.S.”

“Murder is a better charge,” Wes said. “Lock him away where he belongs.”

“He didn’t tie bad knots at the cave,” Davis said. “According to Meggie, Kaitlyn untied the rope, taunted her, then smashed her fingers with a rock so she’d let go and fall.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Wes said. “He’s still a weasel and a bastard and deserves whatever he gets.”

“There are a few loose ends,” Becca said. “What about Jerry Usher? Why did he get involved?”

“Money,” Davis said. “Pure and simple greed. Kaitlyn paid him off. Fifty thousand dollars a year—stolen from her company, naturally—directly into Usher’s bank accounts. And he apparently paid some bribes to officials in the Ministry of Health as well. The Costa Ricans know all about it now.”

“So he’s going to jail,” Wes said.

“No. They’re more concerned with their corrupt officials than a foreigner. He’s worked out some sort of plea bargain.”

“Doesn’t seem fair,” Becca said.

Davis said, “He’s losing his job. That’s something.”

“Here’s the thing that bugs me,” Wes said. “Why didn’t Kaitlyn kill Meggie when she had the chance?”

“She could have done it any time in the past seven years,” Becca said. “Why wait?”

“I doubt we’ll ever know for sure,” Davis said, “but I’ve been talking to Meggie. There was an incestuous relationship between Kaitlyn and Benjamin. He was completely under her control. And Meggie thinks Benjamin’s brothers were trying to seize control of the company. Somehow, Meggie was a tool.”

Wes didn’t understand and shook his head.

“Kaitlyn was just the cousin,” his uncle continued. “Not the side of the family to control the company. But she
could
control Benjamin. And she worked him over with guilt about sexual acts between cousins, about his role in his wife’s—excuse me, fiancé’s—accident.”
 

“And Kaitlyn thought she had to get Meggie out of the way before she married Benjamin,” Becca said. “That would have broken Kaitlyn’s control.”

“So why didn’t she finish the job?” Wes asked.

“Who knows?” Davis said. “Maybe all she wanted was to torture a rival.”

It was a horrible thought. What kind of psychopath would do that?

They were quiet for a long moment.

“One final thing,” Becca said at last. “Who sent the anonymous note that put us onto the Meggie Kerr case in the first place?”

“I wish I had a definitive answer,” Davis said. “I can only guess. Maybe it was one of Benjamin’s brothers. They didn’t otherwise seem concerned with her, and both have claimed they thought she was brain damaged, not suffering LIS. But maybe they knew, and didn’t care, except as a way to get rid of their cousin.”

“Or maybe it was Benjamin, feeling guilty,” Wes offered.

“Seems too brave for him,” Becca said. “Even done anonymously. Besides, if Meggie were rescued, his crimes would get out.”

“Yeah, I guess we’re back to that.”

“Or maybe it was someone in Costa Rica,” Davis said. “A worker at Colina Nublosa. Someone observant, who had figured things out, but didn’t want to risk his or her job. I don’t know if we’ll ever know for sure. Whoever it was saved Meggie’s life.”

“How is she doing, anyway?” Wes asked with a glance toward the language lab. The door was closed.

“Walter said she’s the best patient he’s ever had.”

Walter Fitzroy was another LIS patient, rescued from his own personal hell in Vanderzee, a care center for wealthy individuals in Upstate New York. Determined to dig out patients like himself, he’d fought his way through the treatment, then pledged his personal fortune to the cause, if they would only let him join the team.

“The best?” Becca said. “That’s a high compliment. In what way does he mean?”

“Why don’t you ask him?” Davis asked. “Better yet, why don’t you ask
her
?”
 

Wes blinked. “What? It’s only been a week. She can talk already?”

“Nine days, to be exact, but yes. She’s getting there. Come on.”

Upon first glance, the lab room held what looked like two people frozen in wheelchairs, surrounded by computers, monitors, and laboratory gear. They were strapped in, heads and bodies restrained and immobile. Cameras focused on their eyeballs. Three cameras in the case of the woman, studying her eyes from all angles while she stared at a large screen. It showed a mixture of letters and common syllables, like a sort of shorthand. Level four already, Wes saw, surprised.

“Welcome back,” Walter’s computer said. “Sounds like one hell of an adventure. I’m starting to think Costa Rica should be put on a watch list for the State Department or something.”

He spoke in a deep, authoritative bass, almost like Christopher Lee or James Earl Jones. Before his accident, he said, he’d suffered a rather nasal-sounding tenor. May as well make use of the technology. Why not? If you had to attach a cybernetic arm, you’d make it strong enough to lift a car, wouldn’t you? And if you had to borrow someone else’s voice, you may as well borrow the voice of an Old Testament prophet.

“It was worth it,” Wes said. He and Becca pulled up chairs where they could be seen by both Meggie and Walter. “But no, not exactly a kick-back-on-the-beach sort of vacation.”

Davis rolled into the room, but stayed near the door. “Give us what you’ve got.”

“Ready to show off, Meggie?” Walter asked.