Weapon of Choice (10 page)

Natalie arrived at Trey's dorm at eight thirty. The darkened campus seemed empty, most students on their way home for the holidays.
She'd be off with her family starting tomorrow morning, so Trey planned to wait until Thanksgiving morning before hopping on his new purple Kawasaki for the sixty-mile trip to his home in Sarasota. But Trey had not called. Not yesterday. Not today.

He lived in a quad on campus. A central area in the middle, a bedroom on each side shared by two. Trey's roommate was from Taiwan, so he wouldn't be going home for Thanksgiving.

Natalie parked the car, no problem with parallel parking tonight. Shivering, she pulled her new blue sweatshirt over her head, then hesitated for an instant to say a quick Hail Mary. Something had to be wrong. She loved Trey so much—what would she do if he'd left her for another girl?

Smoothing her hair and straightening her miniskirt, she approached the kid doing security. They recognized each other. His eyes flashed something like alarm and he started to get out of his chair. Wow. Did everyone but her know that she'd been dumped?

She could turn and run, but she struggled to say, “Trey Standish?”

“I know who you are, Natalie. But don't you know—?”

“Know what?” Natalie asked, beginning to shake, her heart slamming in her chest.

“Are you okay?” the kid asked. “Do you want to sit down?” He got up, moved his chair toward her, never taking his eyes off of her.

“What?” Did he have a new girlfriend? Had something happened at school, like he'd cheated or something? Was he hurt? He was always messing around with pickup sports. “Did something happen?”

“Sit down, Natalie. I know you and Trey had a thing going. Please, sit.”

She did, her knees shaking so badly she had to steady them, pressing down hard with her elbows.

“There was an accident. Monday night. He was riding his motorcycle—”

“Is Trey hurt?” Natalie jumped up. “I have to go to him.”

“He's in critical condition. A concussion, multiple fractures. No
visitors, I heard. His roommate couldn't even get in, family members only. Geez, I hate to be the one to tell you. You and Trey had something special—”

Tears streamed from Natalie's eyes. Monday night. For two days she'd been getting more and more pissed because he hadn't called her. A concussion? Meaning he was still unconscious? She had to know. She had to see him. “What hospital?” she asked.

“Tampa City. Like I said, he's in the ICU, so—”

“My mother is the chief of surgery there. They have to let me in.”

Before the security kid could answer, Natalie had jumped up and bolted for her car.

By the time she reached the hospital, visiting hours were over. She knew the ICU was on the seventh floor, but she didn't know the hospital layout well enough to find some back elevator. She had to pass directly by the information desk.

“Miss, may I help you?”

“No, I'm okay.” she said.

“You can't go beyond the lobby,” the older woman in a mint-green smock said.

“I … I need to see a patient,” Natalie said. “I just found out—”

“Name?”

Should she tell the truth? How to get out of this trap?

“Trey Standish.” Should she have she said she was looking for her mother on the surgical floor. If the nurses up there knew that she was Laura Nelson's daughter, they'd let her up for sure.

“Miss, Mr. Standish is in the ICU.”

“I know that,” Natalie said, biting her lip to keep from crying. “That's where I'm heading.”

“Are you a relative?”

Should she say she was Trey's sister? No, the hospital would have a list of family members. Before Trey, Natalie had prided herself on never telling a lie. Nicole could lie nonstop, but not Natalie.

“A friend,” she said.

“Sorry, miss. No nonfamily visitors. It's highlighted on the
chart. They're very strict up there. Have to be. Maybe tomorrow, contact a family member. All I can tell you right now is that Mr. Standish's condition is critical.”

As visitors continued to pour out the front door, Natalie stood halfway between the information desk and the elevator. She was shaking, tears pouring down her cheeks. “My mom,” she tried once more. “I need to go up and see my mom. Dr. Laura Nelson, chief of surgery.” Natalie fumbled inside her purse. “I have something to give her. It's important.”

“Wait here.” The woman's eyes narrowed, but she did pick up the phone. “Switchboard says that Dr. Nelson is checked out. Dr. Plant is covering her patients until Monday morning.”

Natalie, turned toward the exit. The other departing visitors ignored her tears. She heard the woman at the information desk, “That girl is the spitting image of her mother.”

W
EDNESDAY
, N
OVEMBER
27

As he did on most Wednesday nights, Charles Scarlett dismissed the household help once they'd finished in the library, making it comfortable for his guests, stocking the bar, setting out the array of food the two other members of his cell of The Order had come to expect.

When Will Banks was in residence, the help knew they were forbidden to go into the basement for any reason. Charles could take no chances: the Feds and about every law enforcement agency in the South were hunting Will. How surprised the FBI would be to unearth the contents of the basement in young Charles Scarlett's mansion.

In addition to Will, Charles had only one other guest on Wednesday evenings. Russell Robertson had no criminal record. He was a young husband and father, a professor of nuclear physics at Georgia Tech. All three men had been born in the same year, 1952, each was thirty-three. Last year, all had been summoned to a convention in Arlington, Virginia, and while there, personally recruited by a patriot, a friend of all three of their fathers, Dr. William Pierce. Ever since, they'd been a cell, soldiers on call for their cause, the Aryan Resistance Movement—The Order—dedicated to the salvation of the white race.

On leaving Arlington on that September day as chosen members of The Order, they all had been instilled with radical zeal. But for Charles, at least, that excitement had gradually dimmed over
the past year; these days, The Order seemed to want from him only money and the use of his home as a safe house for Will.

Will, the munitions expert, had seen action all right. He had seen his own uncle gunned down in a forty-hour battle with the Feds, complete with helicopters and ground troops. After that showdown, Banks, like most in the vanguard, went underground as the FBI cracked down, made arrests—and yet more arrests when The Order's own yellow-bellied traitors turned informants. The Order's overt reign of terror had come to a halt a couple of months ago, after they gunned down a cop.

Charles's father didn't merely condone his son's induction into The Order, he actually had arranged it. Chas came from old-school Klan. He'd been a member and his father and father's father before him. Proud members.

When
Brown v. Board of Education
reared its ugly head, when the Klan was outlawed and went underground, Chas and his Southern chums founded the White Citizens' Council, opposed to racial integration, dedicated to protect the European-American heritage. When Charles Jr. was growing up, in the shadow of this organization, the “Uptown Klan” was for the privileged whites, “a white-collar Klan,” “a country-club Klan.” No shame, no stigma—a culturally acceptable way to promulgate racist practices. He remembered when he was a kid, roadside signs had proclaimed, “The White Citizens Council Welcomes You.”

Well, things sure had changed. Over time, the White Citizens' Council had faded from the scene and Charles's father joined the new Council of Conservative Citizens, still advocating white supremacy and relying on the support of sitting members of the U.S. Congress. Charles himself had heard U.S. Senator Trent Lott address the group, so for sure their organization had clout. His father, though, doubted that the genteel flavor of white supremacy was enough. Charles Senior became convinced of the need for the violence perpetrated by the movement's most radical factions. So he threw his surreptitious support and that of his son to various Southern white supremacy groups: The Covenant, The Sword and the Arm of the Lord, Posse Comitatus, as well as to the most vicious
bands of Aryan guerillas flush with money from robberies, equipped with weapons, code names, safe houses.

So now here was Charles hosting a safe house, playing hotelier. Is this why his father had introduced him to The Order? Was he testing him like he'd done when Charles was a kid? “What I cannot stomach, Rosabelle,” he'd once heard his father say when he'd walked unnoticed into his parents' bedroom, “is a coward. Our son is a chicken-shit coward. You know it and I know it. And I pray to God every night he'll grow a backbone and show some leadership.” Was Chas waiting for his son, for the first time in his cowardly life, finally to take a stand?

Charles, backing out of the room, had heard his mother mumble some reply, but whether she'd spoken up for him or sided with his father he'd never had a way to know. So by default, he bore the shame, nursing an obsession to prove to his father that he was indeed a patriot, that should he be tested, he would risk all for the cause. So far, he stagnated in the Aryan Resistance vanguard, proving nothing. But not for long. Tonight, he'd lay out a plan that would elevate him to the leadership that his father so craved for him.

The door chimes interrupted Charles's reverie. Russell Robertson had arrived. Charles breathed a sigh of relief. When Robertson had given some flimsy excuse for having missed the last cell meeting, Banks had gone off on a maniacal tear about allegiance to The Order. Tonight all three would be here: Banks with the necessary firepower; Roberts, nuclear access. And Charles, with flesh-eating bacteria.

T
HURSDAY
, N
OVEMBER
28
T
HANKSGIVING
D
AY

Thanksgiving morning or not, Laura woke as usual at five a.m. The house was quiet. Her kids were not morning people. The apple doesn't fall far from the tree: at their age she'd never have gotten out of bed a minute earlier than she had to. But later, a rigorous medical school schedule of a mom with young kids had altered her sleep patterns. For life.

Over a cup of coffee, she said a little prayer that all her plans would go perfectly today, for her mother's sake. The whole family of world citizens would come together. Her sister, Janet, who lived in Paris with her French husband and her Vietnamese adopted child; her brother Ted, a Jesuit stationed in Rome; and Laura and her five kids. They'd have dinner at Mom and Dad's on Anna Maria Island, about an hour by car from Tampa. And over the long weekend, everyone could hang out at the beach house Laura had rented on the lovely barrier island. She figured she'd leave about ten to get there in time to help Mom with the last minute dinner details.

After pouring her second cup of coffee, Laura's hand reached for the phone.
Just one call to the ICU
. “No,” she said, aloud. Dr. Plant had her practice covered. Her family deserved her total focus today.

Patrick joined her in the kitchen, followed by Mike, and not long after, Kevin. As she went about making their breakfast, they chatted about school, sports, friends. The evolving meal—eggs, sausage, bacon, biscuits, pancakes, Belgian waffles—whatever they
wanted—kept the boys in the kitchen talking, just as she'd hoped. Any minute, Laura would have to wake up the girls, but right now she floated happily on the currents of testosterone eddying around the kitchen.

At five after nine, Nicole came downstairs, still wearing her robe.

“You and Natalie better hurry,” Laura said, “or you'll miss breakfast. I'd like to be on the road about ten.”

“Mom,” Nicole said, “Natalie is sick. Really sick. She was throwing up all night. I could hardly sleep.”

“I'd better go check on her.” Laura felt more annoyed than worried. Her perfect plans had not included a sick child.

Laura found Natalie lying on her back, propped up by pillows, and rocking her chest up and down as if she were in pain. She looked up at Laura, her eyes puffy and bloodshot.

“What's the matter, sweetie?” Laura asked. Was Natalie in so much pain that she'd been crying? “Where does it hurt?”

Natalie pointed to her abdomen, to the center, the umbilical area.

Laura had developed a knack for reading body temperatures with just the touch of her fingers on a forehead. The nurses joked about not needing a thermometer when Dr. Nelson was on-site. She brushed aside long strands of blonde hair and felt her daughter's brow. Normal. “Lie down flat, okay, so I can feel your belly?” She removed the pillows supporting Natalie.

“This might hurt a little, but do your best to relax. I'll just move my hand around and push. Palpate, we call it. Do your best to relax.”

Laura placed her left hand over her right and carefully, slowly pushed down on Natalie's abdomen. No distention—good sign. She started at the right upper quadrant, over the liver and the gall bladder. As she pressed, she concentrated on Natalie's face. When you palpated an acute abdomen, the face said it all. She remembered that from her general surgical training, before she'd veered off into chest only.

“That hurt, Mom,” Natalie said, but her body did not react, her
face did not signal the type of pain that Laura would expect with an acute abdomen. She moved her hands across Natalie's abdomen, under the ribs. She stopped at the left upper quadrant, over the spleen. So far, the spleen on the left and the liver on the right both felt normal, not enlarged, not particularly tender.

When she moved down to the left lower quadrant, Natalie flinched. “There. That hurt bad.”

Her next move would tell the tale, the right lower quadrant. If Natalie had an acute abdomen, odds would be on an inflamed appendix. Laura hesitated before pressing down, watching Natalie's face. Nothing. More pain on the left than the right. Not likely an appendix. Good. One last pressure: center abdomen. Where Natalie said she hurt the most.