Abandon (44 page)

Though she was fading from the big dose of laudanum, her heart still reeled.

“Go ahead, Milton.”

Here came the cloth, sharp bite of ether in the back of her throat, and then she floated in a warm gray sea, flanked by swirling voices.

“Damn, that was fast.”

“Hold the cloth to her mouth.”

“She ain’t awake.”

“Do what I tell you or get the fuck out.”

Lana smiled, gleaming with morphine, and still in that same bed in that same room in the Grand Imperial, only now it was filled with the natural light of morning and noise from the street below.

She thought,
I’ve survived
.

Beautiful Dr. Primack stood at the foot of her bed, speaking with another man—round and gray-bearded, holding a bowler against his thigh, a shiny object catching early sunlight pinned to his black frock coat.

When she tried to lift her right hand to catch their attention, she felt the straps binding both arms to her sides.

She made a noise with her throat.

The men quit talking and looked at her. They walked over, sat on either side of the bed.

The older, bearded man ran his fingers through his thinning hair, his dirty nails leaving fleeting white trails in the ripples of his rosy scalp.

“Miss, I’m Sheriff Donaway, and Dr. Primack has explained to me the tragic predicament.”

Thank God,
she thought.

“He’s had to take off both legs and arms, and arrangements are being made to transport you on the narrow-gauge to Mercy Hospital in Durango.”

She looked up at Dr. Primack, who watched her with something that might have been mistaken for compassion.

The doctor turned back the cover so Lana could see the bloody, bandaged stubs below both elbows.

The morphine elation fading.

My right arm was fine. You told me it was.

“I understand this is most upsetting,” he said, “but there was nothing I could do. Both arms had sustained severe damage. You’d be dead by now if I hadn’t taken them off.”

She opened her mouth.
Why haven’t you told him about Abandon?
But it came out as little more than the ramblings of an idiot.

“Try to settle down, Miss Hartman,” the doctor said. “You’re in a fragile state.”

They’re dying.

“Please, Miss Hartman.”

Why are you doing this?

“Can you give her something, Doc?”

“I sure can.”

Dr. Primack hurried over to his hand case, which was sitting on the dresser.

She heard the words in her head as clearly as she used to speak them, but the room resonated with only an ugly, tongueless noise.

“Listen,” the sheriff said, and he placed his hand on her shoulder. “Dr. Primack has also divulged to me your mental condition.”

Bottles clinked in Primack’s hand case.

“You’re going to recover in Durango.”

The doctor was coming back now.

“I have a connection with the asylum in Pueblo.”

Primack unscrewed the cap, tilting the bottle’s open mouth onto a white cloth.

“I’m certain I can get you admitted. They’ll help you there, Miss Hartman. Make the life God has seen fit to afflict you with as dignified and comfortable as can be hoped for.”

Look in his notebook. For Chrissakes.

“You’re lucky to have fallen under the care of Primack.”

She screamed and writhed, but the restraints held.

“Lana.” The doctor spoke softly into her ear. “I want you to know I’m waiving my fee for the amputations. Now don’t fight it.”

The ether-soaked cloth descended toward her face.

“Just close your eyes and take a long, deep breath.”

Abigail reached the front desk.

“I need help. Call the police.”

“There’s no police here.”

“
What?
”

“Just a sheriff.”

“Give me the phone.”

“Are you a guest with us?”

“Are you
joking
—”

“The courtesy phone is only for guests of the GI.”

Abigail placed the young woman at sixteen or seventeen. She sat behind an expansive antique desk, a horror novel clutched in her left hand. She was sucking a green lollipop that wafted a bizarrely scented amalgamation of apples and whiskey.

Abigail read the clerk’s name tag. “Listen, Tracy. A man has chased me out of the mountains, and he’s coming to kill me. Think we could make an exception tonight?”

The desk clerk laid the paperback down beside a keyboard and withdrew the lollipop from green-ringed lips, making eye contact with Abigail for the first time.

“Fine.”

There was the screech of brakes, and, glancing in the mirror behind the desk, Abigail caught the reflection of the large front window that looked out onto Greene Street, saw an old beater of a Bronco slide into the Suburban’s rear bumper—a slight collision that barely shook the vehicle.

“Is that him?” the clerk asked.

“Does the sheriff live in town?”

“Yeah, end of Fourteenth.”

“Which way is that?”

A door slammed.

“Two blocks north.”

Boots clomped on the sidewalk.

“Tracy, get down behind the desk and keep quiet.”

Quinn stepped under the awning, and as he opened the door and started into the foyer, Abigail bolted up a carpeted staircase under a sign that read
TO THE ROOMS
.

She turned left, climbed twenty steps, already breathless.

In the lobby, a man yelled, “
Where’d she go?
”

She reached the second floor.

Left or right?

She went left, then right, heard footfalls racing up the steps behind her as she came to an intersection of corridors and stairs.

Left, right, or climb?

She turned left, sprinting down a hall—pink walls, white trim, white doors, squeakiest floor she’d ever encountered, past room 201, under a chandelier with two fried bulbs, room 202, then a series of black-and-white photographs of old steam engines, room 203, right turn, long, narrow hallway: 214, 215, 216, 217.

It dead-ended at a door with a sign under the metal handle:
DO NOT OPEN. FIRE DOOR ONLY. WILL SET OFF ALARM
.

Bursting through into icy rain, the alarm wailing, Abigail stood on a fire escape that overlooked a sparsely populated parking lot, the globules of slush glittering under the yellow streetlamps like jewels on the hoods and windshields.

She glanced back through the glass-paned door, didn’t see him coming, prayed he’d taken a wrong turn in the maze of corridors.

She dropped to her hands and knees, lowering herself down the slippery ladder, and as her feet touched the pavement, the fire door banged open above her.

She crawled into the shadow of a nearby Dumpster. The ladder’s metal rungs resonated under the impact of his boots.

He hit the ground.

From where she crouched, she could only see his breath pluming in the floodlights.

She reached down, felt the hard bulge of the Ruger in the side pocket of her jacket, but it was zipped in and she didn’t want to risk the noise.

Ice pinged the Dumpster’s metal lid.

Quinn stepped a little farther out into the parking lot. Abigail wondered if the shadow where she squatted was as dark as she thought.

He stood there for some time, motionless.

The floodlights cut off, and she couldn’t see him anymore.

When they came on thirty seconds later, Quinn was gone.

Abigail got up and jogged through the parking lot, away from the illumination of streetlamps, the blaring alarm, into a dirt road cratered with puddles icing over.

Silverton at this hour consisted of cold and darkness and the isolated lights of little Victorian houses, some run-down and vacant since the mining bust, others polished up and slathered with bright paint by mountain-worshiping Yuppies.

She ran up Reese, blinded by sweat and freezing water that trailed down the back of her neck and along the curved ridge of her spine.

Somewhere in the dark, a truck engine mumbled.

She glanced over her shoulder, saw twin light beams slash through the pouring rain, the Bronco speeding up Twelfth Street.

She ran harder, splashing through puddles crusted with paper-thin ice.

A dog yapped at her through the window of a nearby house, and several blocks away, the courthouse clock tolled 8:00
P.M.

One street up, the Bronco bounced along a dirt road. She saw it streak between the houses, make a right turn onto Thirteenth, then haul ass for a block before initiating another hard right, the high beams now blasting head-on, accompanied by the roaring engine.

She dived off the street, her head just missing a mailbox, then flattened herself in wet grass against a chain-link fence as the Bronco screamed past, mud slinging into her hair, slopping down all over her clothes.

Abigail waited, listening to the engine dwindle up the road and the distant fire alarm and the deep, almost imperceptible static of the Animas River on the opposite side of town, running low in advance of winter.

When the Bronco turned onto another street, she struggled to her feet and wiped the mud out of her eyes and went on, soon crossing the intersection of Reese and Thirteenth, every footfall sending new shoots of pain up into her tailbone.

Another minute brought her to Fourteenth, where she veered left at an abandoned brick building and ran for one long block past decrepit white
Victorians and a double-wide into Snowden, another muddy road, rougher and more washboarded than Reese.

She looked around—just the faint drone of the fire alarm, like some psychotic mewling cat, and shards of house light, the air permeated with the rain-mellowed odor of wood smoke, and thirty yards on, at the end of a gravel drive, blades of porch light lying in triangles upon a Ford Expedition with a modest suspension lift, giant tires, a wench, and a light bar mounted on the roof.

Two blocks down, the Bronco turned onto Fourteenth, barreling toward her.

She wept from the pain as she staggered up the drive, passing the driver’s door of the Expedition—gold-emblazoned with S
AN
J
UAN
C
OUNTY
S
HERIFF’S
D
EPARTMENT
.

She pounded on the front door and, looking through the inset of curtained glass, saw a light flick on, heard footsteps crossing a hardwood floor that squeaked and groaned.

A bolt turned, a chain slid out, flopped against the door frame, hinges creaking, and there stood that petite, beautiful woman who’d hassled Scott over his fishing license four days ago at the trailhead, though no braided pigtails this time. No Stetson or parka. Just a woman in a pink satin nightgown and sheepskin slippers, hair pinned up with chopsticks, breath spiced with the faintest glimmer of vodka.

“Help you with something?” she asked.

Abigail’s knees buckled. She sat down hard on the porch.

“What’s wrong?”

Abigail couldn’t speak, just pointed back toward Fourteenth, but there were no oncoming headlights, only streetlamps and darkness.

The sheriff squatted down in the threshold of the door.

“You were with that group headed out to Abandon. Last Sunday, right?”

“Yes.”

“Your face is frostbit. What happened?”