THE FBI THRILLERS COLLECTION Books 1-5 (116 page)

The cat yawned and curled up next to Laura on the sofa. The mynah bird hopped from chair back to sofa section until he was finally looking down at the cat. Grubster cocked an eye open and regarded the bird with complete indifference.

“Would you like some more coffee, Mac?”

I just nodded, staring from Grubster to Nolan. Someone was hanging me out to dry. Someone was playing a very big game with me and I didn’t have a notion yet about the rules. I didn’t know where the game left off and reality kicked back in. I also had no clue where Jilly had gone. Laura’s claim that she’d had a bad headache and slept throughout the night was a good one, one I couldn’t check out.

Laura handed me a new cup of coffee. Steam was snaking off the top of it. I took a sip. It was delicious. Maybe she’d tossed in a dash of Amaretto. I drank some more, trying to get my brain back on track. She handed me a chocolate chip cookie. She couldn’t have known they were my favorite. I ate two, to help soak up the dash of alcohol in the coffee, then said, as I watched her drink
her own coffee, “When you were at Jilly and Paul’s last Tuesday night, what did you do after dinner?”

She took another drink of her coffee. “Very well. There were just the three of us. I got there about six-thirty. Jilly wanted fish. Paul made a salad, spinach, I think. I sliced and garlicked some bread. We ate, then listened to some music. Jilly and I even danced a couple of numbers. Paul drank a good bit. Jilly knew I couldn’t stay late because I had to work at the library the next morning and because Grubster needed meds. She told me that some other people were coming, but later, so I’d have to meet them another time. We’d have another party in Edgerton real soon, she said.”

I leaned forward in my chair. “Is this the truth, Laura?” She remained silent for a long time. I sipped more of my coffee, watching her.

“There’s more, isn’t there?”

She looked down at Grubster and began to scratch behind his ears. I could hear the cat purring from where I sat.

Finally she nodded. “Yes, there is more. I really don’t want to talk about it, but Jilly’s gone, and I know you won’t be happy until you know everything, even if it doesn’t have anything to do with what happened to Jilly.” She sucked in a hard breath. “When Jilly went to the kitchen, Paul grabbed my breasts and pushed me down on the sofa. He started kissing me, tried to shove his knee between my legs. Then he heard Jilly call out something from the kitchen, and he jumped back away from me. He was breathing real hard. I looked at him and told him he was a creep.

“When Jilly came back to the living room, I made up the story about Grubster needing medication earlier than
he really did. I just wanted to get out of there. I didn’t want Jilly to realize what her precious husband had done, the jerk. She adored him. She worshiped him. She wanted to have a kid with him. God, it was awful.”

“And you never got the impression that Jilly was more than an infertile housewife?”

She shook her head, mute. “No. Neither of them ever said anything to make me believe what Jilly had told me wasn’t the truth.”

“Them’s all the facts?”

“Yes, them’s all the facts, the whole truth. I swear it.”

“All right. Tell me, Laura, what kind of fish did you have for dinner?”

“Fish?” Her face was blank. “I don’t particularly go for fish, so I really didn’t pay any attention. Maybe it was bass, or halibut.”

She’d gotten the fish right on the second guess. At least the rest of the meal was as Paul had described it to me, whatever good that did.

I felt suddenly so tired that I couldn’t seem to think two words ahead. It crashed over me, dragging me under. I stood up quickly and began pacing. It didn’t help. I felt like I was slogging through mud.

“Mac, what’s wrong?”

I just kept walking around her living room. “I’ve got to go,” I said. I needed to get out of there, breathe in some fresh air. What the hell was wrong with me? That was stupid, I knew exactly what was wrong. I’d been pushing my body too hard and now it was getting back at me. I hadn’t felt this dragging sort of fatigue for more than a week, until now. I knew that I should keep questioning her, but for the life of me I couldn’t think of anything else to ask.

“I’ll see you later, Laura,” I said and left. I heard her call my name, but I didn’t stop or look around. I heard Nolan give a final squawk toward my back.

I rolled all the windows down in the Taurus, turned the radio onto a rock ’n’ roll station, and cranked the volume up as high as it would go. I even stopped at a McDonald’s and got more hot coffee.

I sang “King of the Road,” and when I forgot the words, I hummed as loudly as I could. I couldn’t keep my eyes open. I kept banging my forehead against the steering wheel. Three or four times I went off the road and scared the shit out of myself before I managed to twist the car back. I nearly hit a truck, which would have smashed me six feet under. The sound of his horn zinged through my head. Fear cleared out my mind for a few minutes. Then it was back, this overpowering, brain-numbing fatigue.

I knew that I wasn’t going to make it back to Paul’s house. I was sweating, remembering how close I’d come to biting the big one with that truck. The hospital, I thought. Yes, I could make it to the hospital. It wasn’t more than six minutes away, maybe seven minutes. I managed to keep the car reasonably in my own lane. Only about half a dozen oncoming drivers honked at me. Finally, disbelieving that I’d really made it, I pulled into the Emergency Room parking area, clipping a bush on the way in. I watched my fingers try to turn the key off and fail. I felt like I was folding in on myself, that whatever strength I’d had until this minute was gone. I just let go because I didn’t really have any other choice.

Odd, but I heard a horn blasting in my eardrums. It was the last thing I remembered.

M
ac. It’s time for you to wake up. Come on now, you can do it.”

I didn’t want to move. I didn’t want to open my eyes. The voice came again, low and insistent. I recognized that twangy voice vaguely, and I hated it. It made my head ache. Finally, I managed to get words out of my mouth. I said, “Go away.”

Twangy Voice said, “No can do, Mac. Open your eyes. Let me see that you’re alive.”

“Of course I’m alive,” I said, pissed now, wishing I could lift my arm and punch the voice out. “Just leave me the hell alone.”

I heard the man speaking to someone else. “Slap his cheeks,” a woman said. It was Mrs. Himmel.

Smack the man—that was a woman for you. “No,” I said. “Don’t hit me.”

“He’s coming around,” Twangy Voice said, and I swear I could feel his breath on my skin. Skin? What did that mean? I felt something cold touch my bare chest. I didn’t have my shirt on. How did that happen?

“Vitals are stable,” another man said. I didn’t recognize his voice at all. “Yeah, he’s coming back now.”

It pissed me off even more that this damned stranger would stick his oar in.

“Mind your own business,” I said. “Nobody asked you.”

Twangy Voice chuckled. “It will take him awhile to get back to normal. Just give him a few more minutes. He’s coming out of it just fine.”

“Yes,” I said. “Go away.” Then I opened my eyes and stared up at Dr. Sam Coates, Jilly’s doctor, Mr. Twangy Voice.

“Ah,” he said, smiling down at me. “You’re back. Can you understand me, Mac?”

“Yes, I can understand you. What’s going on? What are you doing here? Where’s my shirt?”

“It seems you managed to drive nearly into the Emergency Room itself before you collapsed. You smashed down the horn with your forehead. There were a dozen nurses, orderlies, security, patients, and doctors with you within two seconds.”

I remembered the loud noise. The horn blasting in my ear. “I’ve been pushing too hard, haven’t I? My body’s angry at me and finally just shut down?”

“Paul told us you’d been in a terrorist attack out of the country, and in the hospital until very recently. But no, this had nothing to do with any relapse. Actually, you had a high level of phenobarbital in your system. You’ve been out of it for about three hours now. Once we guessed the problem, we began treating you, but this kind of thing takes time. You’re going to feel groggy for a while.”

I thought about the likely treatment and nearly turned green. “Tell me you didn’t pump my stomach. I saw that done once and nearly puked.”

“Sorry, Mac, we had to. We didn’t have a choice. But hey, you were unconscious. We also put some activated charcoal in your stomach. There’s still some flecks of black above your mouth and a bit dried on your chest. Pretty gross, but it soaks up all the poison. Don’t worry about the IV and the oxygen. That’s just in case something goes wrong. We’ll keep them in for a while longer. Does your throat hurt?”

It did hurt. I nodded. My brain was finally kicking in again. “I was drugged, you said? With phenobarbital?”

“Yes. No one’s suggested yet that you were trying to kill yourself. Who gave you the drug, Mac?”

I looked up at Dr. Coates, then over at Mrs. Himmel, whose face was shocked and still, and at a man I didn’t know. “Well, damn,” I said.

A few seconds later, Dr. Coates knew I was very much awake because I had his wrist in a vise as I said, “This is important. The cops need to get to Laura Scott’s house in Salem. That’s where I was this morning. She may have tried to kill me.”

Dr. Coates wasn’t a young man, but he could move fast. He was out of the room in a flash. Mrs. Himmel patted my hand. “You’ll be all right now, Mac. Oh, this is Dr. Greenfield, he’s the one you told not to butt in.”

I looked at a skinny older guy who wore a thick black beard and sported a green and white dotted bow tie. “I’m alive,” I said. “Thanks.”

He said, “Your body’s still not fully recovered. That must have been some terrorist, er, incident.”

“Yeah, an incident.”

“You’re young and strong, Mr. MacDougal. You’ll pull through this just fine. I’ll leave you in good hands.” He turned on his heel, gave Mrs. Himmel a little salute, and left.

“He’s our resident guru,” Mrs. Himmel said. “Now you just rest, Mr. MacDougal. Why would this woman try to kill you?”

“I don’t know. I drove to Salem early this morning to speak to her. I’d like to think she had something to do with Jilly’s leaving the hospital last night, but I didn’t find out anything. I drank her coffee, then got really tired. I left.” I wanted to cry or howl, I didn’t know which. How could I have been so wrong about her?

“You almost didn’t make it back, Mac,” Dr. Coates said, coming back into the hospital room. “Why didn’t you just pull over and go to sleep?”

“I didn’t think of doing that, for some reason. I just thought about getting back. I guess I was blurry because stopping wasn’t an option in my mind.”

“Well, you made it back. Some of that road you were driving is tricky enough when you’re not drugged to the gills.”

“A truck nearly got me and the adrenaline surge bolstered me up for a few minutes. I was singing, shouting, anything to keep myself awake. I just couldn’t go over a cliff in the car, like Jilly. I had to make it back.” I drew a deep breath. “All right, what about Laura Scott?”

“Detective Minton Castanga will get back to us as soon as they get to her house and find out what’s going on. I got him when I mentioned the words
attempted murder
and
FBI agent
all in the same breath.”

“She could be long gone. If she wanted to kill me I don’t think she’d hang around.” Then I thought that if Laura had done it, she’d go to prison. I wondered:
In prison for what? What has she done? It had to be something bad enough to make her believe she had to kill me.

Dr. Coates said, “As to that, there’s no way to know if
her intent was to kill you, unless she’s caught and admits to it. You had a butt-load of the drug on board, but you probably would have survived the dose even without us. Your blood level was never that high, and you were never really unstable. They’ll have to find her and see what she says.”

I shook my head as I said, “I just don’t think they’re going to find her. She’s a very smart lady. She won’t be there and they’re not going to catch her.”

Dr. Coates listened to my chest again and Mrs. Himmel took my blood pressure. Then he said, “Oh, I nearly forgot. Dr. Paul Bartlett was here, pacing and upset, until finally we got him to go home. I’ll call him and he can bring back the sheriff and some of your other friends who were trying to pile into your room. Maggie did tell me she was going to call the FBI and tell them what happened.”

“Oh, no,” I said. “I don’t suppose you tried to talk her out of that?”

If Maggie did call the FBI, she would have gotten my supervisor, Big Carl Bardolino. I looked at the phone beside my bed. I didn’t see much choice now. I made the damned phone call and got put on hold by his secretary. Big Carl was a man I respected, a twenty-five-year veteran, a canny team player but not a yes-man, and I really didn’t want to talk to him about this.

“Yeah? Is this you, Mac? What the hell’s going on? I get this call from a sheriff out there in boondocks U.S.A. telling me about your getting yourself poisoned.”

“Yes, sir, that’s why I’m calling. I wanted to let you know that I’m fine. The local cops are on it. No need to worry.”

“Damnation, you got yourself involved with a woman, didn’t you? How many times have I told you young people that you’ve got to be careful about letting your
hormones go on a rampage and getting you compromised. Or should I say poisoned?”

“Yes, sir, you’ve told all of us that at least half a dozen times. That isn’t exactly what happened.”

“Yeah, right. I can hear the truthfulness in your voice. You’re a lousy liar, Mac. How many times have I told all of you that only vigilance conquers lust?”

“At least half a dozen times.”

“Right. And none of you ever listens. I’m fifty-three years old, thankfully beyond all that sort of thing, but you’re not. You’re supposed to be on leave. You’re supposed to be taking care of yourself, not getting poisoned. How are you feeling? How’s your sister?”

“Well, she was in an accident and she’s okay, but she’s out of the hospital right now, and I’m not sure just where she is. I’m sorry the sheriff called you. I really don’t think the drug I took was meant for me. There really wasn’t any need to call you.”

“Mac, I’m going to ream you if you get yourself hurt, you understand me? The FBI is a team, not a bunch of hotdoggers doing their own thing.”

“I understand, sir. I’m not hotdogging. This is all about my sister, and where she’s gone. It’s not an official investigation. I’d appreciate it if you’d let me deal with it for now. I don’t see any need to call in the cavalry.”

He grunted. Finally, after I knew he’d chewed his unlit cigar nearly through, he said, “You will keep in touch with me, you understand?”

“Yes, sir. I understand.”

I was so thankful I fell asleep, the oxygen still up my nose and the IV still dripping into my arm.

I woke up to see another man I didn’t know staring down at me. His expression was thoughtful, and his long
fingers stroked over his clean-shaven jaw. He had light hair, a narrow nose, and an obstinate look. He was dapper, no other way to say it, from his French-cuffed white shirt to his highly polished Italian loafers. I put him at about forty, on the lean side, probably a runner, with smart, dark eyes that had seen more than their share of the world. He didn’t look at all like a doctor.

When he saw that I was back among the living, he said quietly, in a lazy drawl that shrieked Alabama, “I’m Detective Minton Castanga from the Salem Police Department. I understand that your name is Ford MacDougal and you’re an FBI agent here to find your now-missing sister.”

“That’s it exactly.”

“Well, not all of it. You’re flat on your back because someone laced your coffee with phenobarbital.”

“Laura Scott,” I said. “Did you find her?”

“Oh, yes, I was at her condo within ten minutes of Dr. Coates’s phone call. However, she didn’t tell us a thing.”

“She’s very smart. I doubted you would find her.”

“You don’t understand, Agent MacDougal. Laura Scott was lying unconscious on the floor of her living room, a huge cat curled up on her back and a mynah bird squawking on the seat of a chair just a foot from her head.

I couldn’t take it in. “No,” I said, struggling up to my elbows. “She’s not dead. She isn’t dead, is she?”

He cocked his head to the side, and I could nearly see his mental wheels turning. “No, no, she’s not dead. She’s at Salem General Community Hospital. They’re still working on her, lavaging her stomach, the whole bit you went through with the nasogastric tube, the oxygen up the nose, and the rest. They said she’s going to make it.

“So, Agent MacDougal, she gave you coffee, you drank it, and she drank it as well, in front of you?”

“Yes.” I thought back. “She had only about a half a cup, at least while I was there. I got more of the phenobarbital than she did. I drank two cups.”

“Was anyone else there in the condo? Or was it just the two of you?”

“No, no one else that I saw. Just me, the bird, the cat, and Laura.”

“One of two possibilities, then,” he said, smiling down at me. It was a smile filled with irony and a good deal of understanding. “Someone wanted both of you dead, which doesn’t ring true unless that person knew you were going to visit her.”

“I didn’t tell anyone I was going to visit her.”

“All right then. It appears that you were an accident and it was Ms. Scott they were after.”

“But who would want to kill Laura?” Saying the words made me crazy with worry, and guilt. Because I’d blamed her.

“Not a clue yet. We have to wait to talk to her. You don’t think she did try to kill you and then gave herself just a bit of the drug to fool us?”

“No,” I said. “Absolutely not. Now that I’ve got my brain back in gear, I realize there was no reason for her to try to kill me. As far as I know she isn’t guilty of a thing. Don’t get me wrong, Detective, there’s lots of stuff going on here, stuff I haven’t figured out yet. My sister, primarily. Why she went off a cliff and now has vanished. I know she believed that Laura betrayed her. She didn’t want to see her. Perhaps she was even afraid of Laura. Or was that a lie? No matter how I slice it though, there’s no reason why Laura would try to kill me.”

“Maybe you were getting too close—to something,
Agent MacDougal.” I heard the tinny ring of a cell phone. He excused himself and walked over to the windows. He pulled a small cell phone out of his jacket pocket and spoke quietly.

I couldn’t just lie there like a piece of meat, just like I had back in Bethesda for more than two weeks. Slowly, I slid my legs over the side of the bed. They’d left me stark naked. I looked around for anything to put around me.

Detective Castanga said from behind me, “Ms. Scott is waking up. Oh, yes, I had my forensics folk check over her condo. They found a bottle of phenobarbital in the medicine cabinet of the second bathroom. It didn’t have many pills left in it. It was prescribed to a George Grafton, and expired at least a year ago.”