Wounded Earth (22 page)

The young man kept saying, “It was supposed to be sugar. Sugar, for God's sake.”

The emergency team had done a good job with Guillaume, too. Larabeth blessed every cent Consolidated had spent on their training. When the paramedics arrived, they complimented the first responders' work as they rushed Guillaume into an ambulance equipped with emergency equipment to support his faltering breathing.

Larabeth watched them load Guillaume's stretcher. His entire body was an angry, blistered, red-and-white. His eyes were burned and swollen shut.

Her anger was a real, solid thing. It had hands and it was shaking her into action, but there was nobody to slap, nobody to grab, nobody to punish. Babykiller had no face, no form. He was only an abstract someone that she had no choice but to hate.

As the ambulance pulled away, sirens wailing, Will turned to Larabeth. “What could have done that to him?”

She listened to her own voice, calm, controlled, precise. “I would say the white stuff was a corrosive of some kind. Maybe something common, like caustic soda. Something that doesn't hurt much at first, tingles a little maybe, until it mixes with water. It could be the water in your skin or your mucous membranes or just canal water. It doesn't matter. A strong enough caustic solution, given enough time, could flay the flesh from your bones.”

Her knees didn't want to support her. She kept talking, thinking they might quit wobbling if she ignored them.

“And the fire—Guillaume called it the Greek fire—” Larabeth was finding it hard to catch her breath. “Are you old enough to remember Vietnam? I wish I could forget what napalm can do. But napalm wasn't a new concept, you know. The Greeks used to mix petroleum and quicklime and sulfur. They were famous for it. Quicklime gets hot in contact with water, igniting the petroleum. The petroleum makes flames that water can't quench. Sulfur makes the fire burn hotter and releases sulfuric acid. Charming inventors, those Greeks.”

Willie's dark face had gone gray. “Who would be capable of such a thing?”

“Lots of people are capable.” Larabeth concentrated on putting one wet shaky foot ahead of the other. “We did it to the Vietnamese. The Byzantines did it to the Moslems. Heracles' wife did it to him. The question is this: What inhuman bastard did it this time?”

Larabeth's breath caught in her throat. She could get nothing out, no more words, just a heaving sob. Her knees were buckling. She felt herself going down, not quickly, just a slow sinking as the sobs kept coming. She clutched her arms to her breasts. Nothing was going to keep her from falling.

Then, before she hit the ground, she felt herself grasped in two strong hands and hauled gently to her feet. She couldn't see through her tears but the voice telling the reporters to get back, that Dr. McLeod had no statement to make at this time, was J.D.'s.

* * *

To hell with this undercover business, Yancey had decided. One look at Lefkoff's face as he watched Guillaume Langlois fry was enough. The Bureau said that Dr. McLeod was safe for the time being; their psychologists said that this Babykiller joker wouldn't harm the object of his affections.

Bullshit. Every ounce of him cried out that Dr. McLeod was the next target and if he lost his badge for disobeying orders, it was better than having an innocent woman's death on his head. He'd been an offensive lineman in college and, when necessary, he could by God open a hole in an onrushing crowd. He had put his head down and done just that.

He was a few yards away when J.D. Hatten did precisely what he had planned to do—grab Dr. McLeod with both arms and bull his way through the crowd to comparative safety. This was a positive turn of events.

He had checked into Hatten two days before, as soon as he discovered the man was working for Dr. McLeod. The private detective was apparently unmotivated by money—his parents had bundles, yet he lived well below his means. Many men in his profession routinely skirted the laws in the course of serving the client, but there was no sign that J.D. Hatten had succumbed to the temptation.

There appeared to be no dirt to be found on Hatten. Heaven only knew how hard the Bureau had tried to find some. Yancey felt fairly comfortable letting him take charge of Dr. McLeod's safety. Following at a cautious distance, he made sure they were safely away, then he turned around and looked at the mess behind him. People were still tripping over each other trying to get away. He would lay odds that someone had been trampled to death in the melee.

His guts said that Larabeth McLeod was the key to the weird goings-on of the past week. Maybe he and J.D. Hatten could keep her alive long enough to find out which lock the key fit.

* * *

Larabeth leaned her forehead against the passenger window. She needed to thank J.D. He'd just saved her from public embarrassment and maybe, though even now it was hard to absorb the idea, maybe he'd saved her from Babykiller, too. For she was sure, so sure, that Babykiller had maimed Guillaume. Her dear friend Guillaume. Could she have saved him?

If only she'd tried harder to convince the FBI, the police, somebody, to take Babykiller seriously. Maybe they would have—what? Put all fifty Bambi-slasher victims under constant, indefinite watch? Would the FBI have really thought to check three harmless bags of sugar? Would the Feds have been able to convince Guillaume to cancel his hullabaloo? Not bloody likely.

Babykiller had threatened her, her daughter, the world. How could anyone have defended her friend against a monster whose weapons looked so innocuous? And how could they hope to protect her?

Nevertheless, she had to let them try. Her audiotapes of Babykiller's calls were in her purse. She had fetched them out from under Guillaume's seat during the confusion and secreted them under her hardhat. She would risk no one else's safety; she would take these tapes to the FBI herself and ask them to hide her and Cynthia, to protect them until this dreadful thing was over, but for no longer. She had a life to live and a company to run. The Witness Protection Program was not an option.

This attack on Guillaume should notch the FBI's investigation into overdrive and Larabeth intended to use her clout to oversee their every move. She hadn't come this far to calmly hand her fate over to someone else.

* * *

Agent Chao swallowed hard as he watched news coverage of the attack on Guillaume Langlois. He had made a mistake that would haunt him for a long while.

He had agreed to let Lefkoff help Yancey because the young man asked for Lefkoff and because he thought Yancey was barking up the wrong tree. Lefkoff was an incompetent traitor, but how much harm could come from letting him accompany an enthusiastic young man on a fool's errand?

All these years, the only thing that had kept Chao from packing Lefkoff off to the penitentiary was the slender hope that the traitor would lead him to the nameless head of the shadowy organization that had bought Lefkoff. Now that Yancey's messenger had suffered a spectacular and public “accident”, the pieces fell into place. Babykiller, the villain Yancey kept squawking about, had eliminated Langlois very efficiently.

Chao considered the situation. Precisely who knew that Langlois was helping the FBI? Langlois himself, Larabeth McLeod, Agent Yancey...and Agent Yancey's partner. Yancey was trustworthy. That meant that Lefkoff was the one who betrayed Langlois. And it meant that Babykiller and Lefkoff's criminal contact were one and the same.

J.D.
parked in the hospital lot and pocketed his keys. Larabeth made no move to get out of the car, so he just cracked the door open to catch a breeze. This visit to Guillaume was going to be hard for her.

“Did you see everything that happened? I mean Guillaume and the fire and all,” she said, breaking the silence.

“I didn't miss a thing.”

“Thank you for getting me out of there,” she said again. “I would hate for people to see me like that.”

There was no breeze and the car was stifling. J.D. cranked the engine and turned on the air conditioner. “I might have been too late. I had to jostle a couple of photographers to get to you. I'm pretty sure one of them was the woman from
Time
. You'll probably be on the cover.”

“Well, thanks for being my lookout and my protector. Did your highly trained detective's eyes notice anything we can use to nail Babykiller?”

“Not yet,” J.D. said. “But we can watch it again. I made a videotape of the whole proceedings.”

“We should make a copy for Yancey,” Larabeth said as she glanced in the backseat. “I don't see a video camera.”

J.D. smirked. “The camera, my dear, is under this good-looking hat,” he said, gesturing to a Tulane baseball cap. “The recorder is in a waist pack under my shirt and the tiny little cables connecting them are threaded through these.” He fingered the cords that dangled from his sunglasses and fell casually inside his shirt collar. “You'd be amazed at the picture quality I can get with this thing.”

“I thought you were looking remarkably like a fashion victim today.”

J.D. looked hurt. “The guy at The Spy Stop told me I'd blend right in with the crowd.” She didn't respond.

He handed the cap to her, and she glanced half-heartedly at the hidden camera. He stated the obvious. “You're worried about Guillaume.”

She closed her eyes and rubbed the bridge of her nose. “I just this minute realized that he's my oldest friend. We've been trading insults since I got back from Vietnam, even before you and I met.”

“Do you think they'll let you in to see him? The nurses in intensive care are usually pretty. . .uh, intense.”

“For the afternoon, I am Eugenie Langlois, Guillaume's sister. They'll let me in.”

“This may be a stupid question, but what if his real sister shows up?” J.D. asked.

“She lives in Montreal and they don't speak. Ever. He has no other family in town to make sure he gets proper care, so I intend to take care of things. Now. Because tomorrow I expect to be in the merciful hands of the FBI.”

J.D. watched for another panic attack, but the only sign of her distress was the trembling in the hands she clasped tightly together in her lap.

* * *

Babykiller was so amused by his little prank. Guillaume Langlois was a dramatic creature. First, he heroically threw the girl overboard to safety, then he had the presence of mind to rave on about the Greek Fire—all while being burned alive. There were so few worthy adversaries in the world. Too bad this one was hovering near death in the burn unit. This was going to be hard on Larabeth, but she was strong. She was the worthiest adversary of all. He thought he would wait until Langlois died before he called Larabeth again. It shouldn't be too long.

* * *

Larabeth was oddly at home with the clatter of medical instruments and the stench of burned flesh. It was so much like Vietnam. She was sure Guillaume heard her voice. Thoroughly dosed with painkillers, he barely stirred when she spoke, but he heard her. She was certain.

She had lain in a hospital bed, half-butchered and fully doped up, and she knew what it was like. She had been aware of her surroundings. She had been aware of what had happened to her. She had even been aware of the pain. The pain was always out there, hiding in the twilight with the rest of the world, but she hadn't cared much and she wouldn't have been able to tell anyone, even if she had cared. Talking took too much effort and the morphine wouldn't even let her try.

Guillaume's doctor motioned her out into the hall. He had been very forthcoming with information. She could tell he liked her because she was cool and she spoke his language and she didn't faint at the sight of Guillaume's injuries. The real Eugenie wouldn't have handled the situation nearly so well.

She listened to the prognosis—grave—and thanked the doctor for his time. As she settled in the waiting room next to J.D., she said, “They've called in a pulmonary specialist to check out his lungs. If we wait here, we can talk to him, too.”

“What did this doctor say?”

“His lungs are bad. They've had to put him on a ventilator. They won't know for a while about his eyes. He has third-degree burns over a lot of his body. The doctor told me what percentage but I forgot.” She was doing a good job of holding back the tears and the nausea, but her mind was betraying her. “Why can't I remember that number? Numbers are what I do.”

She saw two men approach Guillaume's doctor, who was still standing near the waiting room door. One of them was fortyish and balding. He flashed a badge and identified himself as Agent Lefkoff of the FBI. The younger one was red-haired, broad-faced, and broad-shouldered. He paused and stared at Larabeth, who sat calmly in her damp clothes and stared back. The doctor and Lefkoff waited for the redheaded agent to identify himself.

After a moment, he turned back to the doctor and said, “My name's Yancey. We're here as part of an investigation into the attack on Mr. Langlois.” The three men moved away from the door.

Larabeth elbowed J.D. “Did you hear that?” she hissed.

He elbowed her back. “Of course I did,” he said quietly. “Didn't you expect them to show up here, looking for leads?”

“But Guillaume can't talk to them.”

“They don't know that.”

Larabeth twisted around in her seat, checking the other exits. She said, “I'm not ready to go with them yet.”