A Cold Day in Hell (31 page)

He considered alerting Matt, but about what?

Eileen couldn’t stand up straight. She bent almost double from the waist, consumed by the agony in her shoulder and arm. Faintly she felt how bruised she was all over, but only faintly.

Behind her, Gracie held Eileen’s tortured arm and pushed her toward another room. Once there, Gracie reached around Eileen and pushed open the door into a tiny bathroom.

“I want your clothes off,” Gracie said.

Eileen’s knees began to buckle and she screamed again.

For moments she was left alone beside a free-standing tub.

Eileen slipped down and hit the linoleum floor, banged her head and moaned. Why didn’t she pass out? She wanted to be unconscious.

Her feet weren’t bound. Struggling, Eileen rose to her knees, fighting back the urge to vomit. Too slowly she got one foot flat on the floor, then started to push up with the other. The fronts of her shoulders rested on the edge of the bath.

Hands on her shins, jerking her feet up behind her, shocked another scream out of her.

Insane with fear and pain, Eileen landed face-first in the tub. She started to scream and scream again but a piece of tape over her mouth cut off the sound.

Again she tried to move, and again blows flew at her back. “Keep still,” Gracie ordered. “It’ll go easier for you.”

Cold, unyielding metal pressed into the base of her skull. The muzzle of a gun.

“I want this as clean as possible,” Gracie said and a thick towel settled over Eileen’s head.

When Angel punched in Eileen’s number again, he got the canned message that the customer wasn’t available. She wouldn’t turn off the phone without telling him first.

Images, sparse as pen sketches, hovered before his eyes and Angel’s heart took a huge, shuddering beat. He hadn’t had this kind of vision since South America. They usually followed the colored auras. He’d started to see them in Chuzah’s cell, but not like this. Though the psychic connections had stopped while he worked for ATF, since he’d been in Pointe Judah, there had been increasing signs that the unasked-for visions were returning.

The images faded but not his anxiety. There had never been a time when he’d seen the stick figures and they’d proved to mean nothing.

His own phone rang and he heard Chuzah’s rumbling voice. “This dangerous man has been released upon an unsuspecting world. There was no DNA match.”

“Thank God. I’m heading for—”

“Rusty Barnes’s house. I know. It would be better if you didn’t need me this time. Days present their own difficulties for me. Eileen invited me for dinner. I’ll see you there. It’s very important for you to hurry, Angel.”

Angel realized his mouth was open and closed it. He saw the back of a figure, only a black outline, he saw through and past it to the road ahead. The turn to Rusty’s house was coming up.

The outline formed again, and it slipped, fell forward and disappeared.

Someone was in terrible danger.

He gave the bike all the power it had. The wheels all but left the ground entirely.

Angel’s only thought was that the slipping figure could be Eileen. He was sure it was.

Sounds bounced around inside Eileen’s brain. Loud, a broken scream—a man’s voice shouting Gracie’s name. The muzzle of the gun left her head. “Stay out,” Gracie yelled. “Don’t you come in here.”

The door crashed into the wall with the sound of splintering wood. Rusty had fallen against the door and crashed it into the wall. “You’ve got to help me,” he said, his voice barely audible. Relief poured over Eileen. He would get her out of this.

“You fool,” Gracie said. “What’s the matter with you?”

“A fever,” Rusty said. “I’m burning up. I can’t see straight.”

Eileen managed a look at him. His face was splotched red. Sweat plastered his hair to his head and ran in rivulets down his face. A cotton shirt clung to his body. He moaned, and cried out—staggered forward.

“Get away from me,” Gracie said. “Go to bed.”

“I’ll die up there. I’m on fire,” he said, coughing. He retched and bounced against another wall. “What are you doing? Is that Eileen? Is she hurt?”

“I’m going to call the police,” Gracie said. “I just got home and found her in here. Lie on my bed and I’ll call Mitch Halpern just as soon as I get the tape off Eileen.”

Eileen tried to shout at Rusty through the tape on her mouth. He mustn’t leave her alone with Gracie.

“I can’t,” Rusty muttered. “Can’t move.”

“I’ll help you,” Gracie said. She grunted, and Rusty wailed.

“Don’t touch me,” he cried.

Eileen managed to turn her head and peer upward, in time to see Rusty fall, with Gracie beneath him.

The bike’s wheels howled. Angel dropped it on its side when he jumped off.

Either Rusty was at the paper or he’d put his car in the garage. Eileen’s van was parked by a broken curb.

If he remembered from the one time he’d been to Rusty’s, the entrance to the apartment was downhill, at the back of the house and on the bayou side. If everything was okay, there would be no reason not to go down there and ring the bell. But if Chuzah’s instincts were right, and his own, he’d better go carefully and quietly.

At the back door, he tried the handle and it turned smoothly. He opened it an inch and it didn’t squeak, so he pushed again and stopped. Listened.

He heard coughing, then a sound like a trapped animal.

“Fucking get off me!” The voice was Gracie’s.

The howling went on, and a man groaned. He said something but Angel couldn’t hear him. Angel breathed deeply, shoving the fear away. He had to stay calm for Eileen, who could be in this mess.

Once inside, Angel slipped the door shut again, afraid a current of air would alert someone to the door having been opened.

With his gun at his shoulder, he crossed the main living area of the house. The noises came from an open door into what he thought was Gracie’s apartment.

Flat against the wall outside that door, he listened. The man screamed and kept on screaming. Angel knew it was a man by the pitch and the way the sound fell low and rose again. The woman shouted at him and now he heard Gracie’s voice clearly.

“I don’t want to shoot you, too, Rusty, but I will. Move. I’ll help you.”

“Can’t!”

Angel assumed it was Rusty Barnes.
I don’t want to shoot you, too, Rusty.

Who else had she shot—or was she going to shoot?

He could see into a galley kitchen inside the apartment. Through the crack in the door, simple furnishings showed and no one moved.

With two fingers he eased the door open wider.

He couldn’t see anyone yet, but he could tell where the noise was. Another door, in the opposite wall, stood open and the mounting sounds came from there.

Angel went swiftly across the first room and stood, gun at the ready, where he could ease sideways to see inside a bedroom.

Gracie shouted, “Get—off—me, Rusty. You’re suffocating me. Roll, you fool, roll. I can’t help either of us down here.”

Angel crossed the bedroom and peered cautiously inside a bathroom. Rusty, spread out and apparently close to unconscious, lay on top of Gracie whose right hand almost touched the butt of a gun she must have dropped.

But worse than that, Eileen, her left hand taped behind her back, lay in a bathtub. She clawed for the edge with her free right hand.

“Shit! Move, Rusty,” Gracie said hoarsely. “I swear to you, Eileen—I’ll shoot you full of holes if you keep on coming.”

“So hot,” Rusty said. “Maggots are crawling out of me. I feel them. All over me. Going for my eyes. Gracie, help me.”

A crash sent Angel towards the bathroom. He had everything to lose by holding back.

Eileen had pulled herself up and fallen from the tub. With her free hand she tore the tape from her mouth. She struck at Gracie’s reaching fingers. Again and again, she thumped them, and then she grabbed the gun from the floor.

At that moment, Gracie finally heaved enough to scramble from beneath Rusty and turn on Eileen.

Eileen held the gun steady and pointed it at Gracie’s chest, but the other woman came for her, teeth bared, fingers extended to claw at her.

And Gracie grabbed the hand that held the gun and wrenched the weapon free.

Angel blasted into the bathroom.

Gracie saw him and her eyes stretched wide. He saw her start to pull the trigger.

Already aiming, Angel shot first. Gracie’s wrist and hand blew apart in a bloody mass of sinew and bone.

At least he knew where he had seen those eyes that haunted him. For an instant, at the Boardroom, he had seen them when Gracie looked into his face.

“T
his clinic is busting out all over,” a tall nurse said when he saw Angel and Eileen coming in. The nurse stopped and looked at them. “Which of you is the patient?”

Angel said, “Eileen is,” at the exact moment when she announced, “Neither of us.”

“Her arm is about dislocated,” Angel said. “And a wound on her head’s been opened up again.”

“I can see that,” the nurse said. “How’s the pain?”

“A helluva—a whole lot better than it was,” Eileen said. “Really, I’m fine to go home. I’ve got dinner to cook.”

A woman in floral scrubs, a long black braid hanging forward over one shoulder, gave Angel a knowing look. “Someone else will be cooking dinner tonight, dear. If you even care after Dr. Halpern works his magic.”

“I’m not taking sedatives,” Eileen said.

With another pitying smile at Angel, the nurse carried on down a corridor much too busy for Pointe Judah’s modest clinic.

“Eileen,” Angel said, “please do whatever Mitch decides you should. I don’t think he’s going to be too keen on you using your arm a whole lot at first.”

“I’ve still got one good arm.” Eileen drew her brows down.

“Of course,” he said, keeping an arm around her waist. She had refused to be transported by aid car.

“I’ve got one chance to get my licks in,” she said. “Once Mitch realizes I’m here, I won’t get another chance.”

Angel looked at her head and wondered just how hard the blow had been this time. “We should sit down.”

“You sit down,” she told him. “And don’t worry. I’m not into killing people, or trying to kill them. That’s what she did, y’know. All that talk about me getting back with Chuck. She didn’t want that. She wanted me dead, and Aaron, so Chuck would turn to her.

“What a crazy woman. If she could aim a gun, Aaron would have died in the swamp, or in our backyard. And I’d have died—” she checked left and right “—in your bathtub. You, too, probably. That skylight’s a bubble—I think she saw my face and didn’t know who was what. She was trying to kill
me.
”

“Kind of hard to know who was what with us all mixed up together like that.” He made sure not to grin, or, worse yet, laugh.

“Gracie told me it was her idea for Sonny to take Aaron into the swamp in the first place. Sonny went into Buzzard’s where she’s the part-time bartender and she set those boys up.”

“Sonny was in Buzzard’s? He’s going to be sorry about that.”

Eileen poked her leg and winced. “Shoot, that hurts,” she said. “Everything hurts. Stay here, there’s just something I’d like a chance to do. I want to ask Gracie a couple of questions. Take that look off your face. I told you I’m not a killer.”

“Don’t even talk like that,” he said, but she ducked out of his arm and took off toward Emergency, hugging her arms close to her body.

Angel gave her a few minutes, then followed.

“Psst.”

Eileen paused and saw Betty Sims, in a wheelchair, one leg in a cast and stuck out in front of her. Betty hung back inside a door. “Hi,” Eileen said. “You look so much better.”

“Shh,” Betty said, beckoning. “I saw all the cops and heard the commotion. Did they get him? I want to look him in the eye.”

“I know how you feel,” Eileen told her. “They don’t have him yet. But they’ve picked up a woman who’s going to end up in jail. I don’t know what she had to do with the man who attacked you. But the cops will find out, then they’ll get him. I’ll stop by on my way back.”

Still supporting her left arm, she continued down the corridor. Deep down she knew who the man was. She didn’t want to admit that she’d married a monster, and that the same monster was Aaron’s father, but there was no denying it now.

There were two sets of swinging doors into Emergency, one on either side of the pharmacy. Eileen made sure she wasn’t seen and sidled up to peer through a window in the closest door.

Right inside, still in his crumpled shirt and jeans, Rusty lay on a gurney, his eyes closed, obviously sedated. He had a drip in his arm. By the time the medics had got to him, he was howling and tossing on the floor.

Several other patients occupied beds beyond where Rusty lay, but Eileen noted there were two empty beds between them and Rusty—probably in case he had something contagious.

She couldn’t see Gracie and crossed to the opposite door, strolling when she passed the pharmacy where a technician concentrated on whatever she was doing.

Eileen repeated the process of looking through a window. The two nearest beds were empty, the curtains drawn back, but curtains were drawn around the third. Yards farther on stood Matt, Simon Vasseur, and two men in suits whom Eileen hadn’t seen before. While she watched, all four used the counter at the nurses’ station to spread papers.

Shelves beside Eileen contained folded scrubs, skullcaps and booties. Past caring about modesty, she found a set of scrubs, pulled off her shirt and pants and pushed them behind the clean laundry. No one interrupted her while she managed the painful task of pulling on pants and a short-sleeved shirt over her head.

She reached for a cap, then saw a separate pile made like helmets that would cover everything but the middle of her face. With the helmet on, she pulled booties over her shoes, waited for the pain in her arm to calm down again, and pushed into the unit.

Just before the door closed behind her she heard footsteps and glanced back. Angel appeared and approached the pharmacy. Eileen turned away before he saw her.

Eileen walked to the head of the second empty bed, on the side where curtains were closed around the next one. If this wasn’t Gracie, she would feel like a fool, but so what?

She looked inside the curtain. Gracie dozed on the bed. She was receiving blood and her right hand and arm were heavily bandaged.

Her head humming with tension, Eileen went to Gracie’s side, close to her head, and put both hands over the woman’s mouth.

Gracie’s eyes flew open and Eileen whispered in her ear, “Call out and you’ll wish you hadn’t. I just want you to answer one question for me.”

Gracie watched her, horrified.

“Was it Chuck who attacked people who used to belong to Secrets? Was it his way of getting back because that’s how I finally figured out I was a human being and he was nothing?”

Gracie stared for a long time, then nodded her head.

“What happened to Bucky? Did he catch Chuck after he’d pushed Emma under that truck? Did Chuck kill him to keep him quiet?”

Once more Gracie stared at her. She didn’t agree or disagree.

“If I take my hand away, are you going to shout for help?”

This time Gracie shook her head no.

Eileen removed her hand and tears poured down Gracie’s cheeks. She got her mouth close to Eileen’s ear and said, “He threatened me. He told me if I didn’t do what he wanted, he’d let the whole town know about us.”

“Once they check his DNA against Bucky’s samples, and the ones they got from Betty Sims’s cane, I guess the truth will come out anyway,” Eileen said.

“But you’ll tell the cops how Chuck threatened me?” Gracie said. “You’ll tell them he was going to murder me if I didn’t do as he said?” Her face twitched. “And I didn’t hit anyone I shot at, did I? That’s because I didn’t want to. I missed on purpose.” She grabbed a handful of Eileen’s scrubs. “You’ll stand up for me?”

“You missed because you’re a lousy shot and you were scared out of your wits, too,” Eileen said softly. “And that dumb little .32 needs to be screwed into someone’s ear before you can be sure it’ll shoot anything straight enough to hit a target.”

Gracie panted.

“That gun was stolen from Toussaint, from the evidence room. It was used in some killings there several years ago. Your prints are on it and so are the other killer’s. Think about that. What are the chances of a thing like that happening?”

“I bought the gun from a pawn shop,” Gracie said. “I’m fine now. I’m going to go home now but I promise I won’t leave town.”

“Don’t tell
me.
I’m not a cop.” She got close to the woman’s ear again. “You’re going to be accused of attempted murder and I’m going to do everything I can to make sure you’re found guilty. I can repeat every lie you ever told me. First I’ll pass them along to Chuck, just in case he feels like coming and having a chat with you. They’re really nice around here. They’ll make sure you get lots of privacy while you two talk. You deserve everything you get for trying to kill my son.”

Gracie shook her head.

“Nice of you to visit the sick,” Matt said from a gap in the curtains at the bottom of the bed. “No surprise there, though. But you do have to watch the quiet ones, Angel, and don’t you forget it. I wouldn’t turn my back on that one if I was you.”

Angel had come in by the same route as Eileen. He said, “Nice hat,” to her.

That’s when the peace of the emergency facility fractured and screams of pain reverberated from every wall.

“Stay there,” Angel told Eileen and ran after Matt.

Eileen counted to five and followed. She figured Gracie wouldn’t be going anywhere with a smashed hand. And from the ruckus, there was a lot going on that she wanted see.

Angel arrived on the opposite side of the unit right behind Matt and the gaggle of other officials.

Seated in a wheelchair beside Rusty Barnes, one casted leg extended, Betty Sims wielded a steel instrument, a long, narrow, tubular thing. Rusty yelled and tossed and batted the air as if a swarm of bees had assaulted him.

Nothing he said made any sense.

Rusty’s shirt was already torn open. Betty had managed to poke the tube through from the inside of the garment and stab a hole in the right sleeve. Holding both ends of the instrument, she leaned away, pushed her chair back with her good foot and tore away most of what was left of his shirt.

“There,” she said, her face red. She wheeled up close again. “See that?”

A nurse came at a trot and looked at Rusty’s chest. Mitch Halpern was right behind and Angel shook his head when Eileen arrived.

“He’s got burns on his chest,” the nurse said.

Like burns from boiling fat, Eileen thought. They were open and weeping pussy fluid. The surrounding skin flamed.

“Never mind his chest,” Betty said, waving the tube above her head. “It’s his shoulder and back. Look at ’em. Putrid. They stink. Can’t you smell that?”

Angel could smell rotting flesh.

“These are burns,” Mitch said, still concentrating on Rusty’s chest area. “Like he got spattered with something hot.”

“Shit,” Matt said. “Would boiling fat do that?”

Mitch shrugged. “Sure. The wounds are infected. Why wouldn’t he have this treated?”

“Because he killed Bucky,” Angel said. “Bucky grabbed at Rusty’s chest and that’s when he got the paper and hair under his fingernails.”

For an instant it looked as if Betty would poke Rusty’s shoulder but she caught Angel’s eyes, smiled slightly, and drew back.

Mitch got to her side and, hardened as he was, the subtle shock was impossible to miss. “Everybody out. Marion, we’re going to have to operate on this.”

“Here?” the nurse said.

“He’s not going to make it if we don’t try,” Mitch said. “It looks as if he was attacked by something. We’re looking at a flesh-eating disease.”

An intern with excitement glowing in his eyes all but skidded to a stop beside Mitch. “Wow,” he said. “If I hadn’t switched shifts with someone else I’d have missed this.”

“He’s the one who attacked Frances and tried to kill me,” Betty said. “I’d know that whiter-than-white skin on his neck and that curly hair anywhere.”

“He was engaged to Denise,” Eileen said, horribly fascinated by Rusty’s wounds. “She was murdered, remember, and she belonged to Secrets. She and Rusty planned to be married.”

“Vengeance,” Matt said quietly. “Finally he couldn’t stand the sight of the rest of you living while Denise was dead. He must have blamed Secrets, I guess. Must have fallen on a rake or something to do that to his shoulder.”

“Rake?” Betty said. “It wasn’t what he fell on. It was what mauled him. Biggest wolf I ever did see. You should have seen his claws. And those fangs. Hoo Mama. Took that boy in his mouth and shook him till I thought he was dead. Then he looked at me and at first I thought I was wolf meat, too. But that animal—almost a block long, he was—he just smiled at me, then winked and ran off.”

“I guess someone brought in that Bailey’s for you, Betty,” Eileen said.

Angel stood beside her. He put a hand on the back of her neck and led her from the unit. Then he faced her and said, “Aaron saw the wolf, too. And so did I.”

“Yes,” Eileen murmured. “Me, too.”