Deficiency (21 page)

She reached for the phone. Call the police to her aid again? She was feeling so stupid. I'm behaving like a hysterical person, she thought.

She knew where Curt kept his pistol and went to the drawer. It was there and it was loaded. He had insisted they take target practice together.

"I'm sworn to do all I can to save lives," she told him. "How can I fire a pistol at someone?"

"If that someone is going to take your life, you're going to let it happen because of your Hippocratic oath? What will you be able to do for your patients when you're dead?" he reasoned.

"All I'm saying is I can practice with you, but I don't know if I can ever fire the gun at someone."

"You'll know," he said with a smile of cold confidence. "If the occasion should ever arise, you'll know."

She grasped the pistol and, after taking a deep breath, walked slowly out of the bedroom and listened again in the hallway. A squeak at a window in the den sent a hot chill down her spine. Heart pounding, she walked to the door of the den and peered in.

The window was up. She couldn't move. Had Curt left it up? Can't call him to find out now, she thought.

Instead, she backed up, returned to the bedroom and closed the door. As much as she hated to do it, she called the sheriff's office again and related her message to the dispatcher. The woman of course knew exactly who she was.

Then she got into bed, sat up with the pistol in her hand, and waited for either the door to open or the patrolman to arrive.

He was well on his way to somewhere when he suddenly slowed down. What am I doing? he wondered. Why do I have to run off like this? I'm starting to act like them.

Them?

Funny, he thought, he rarely differentiated between himself and the women he mined for nutrition and life-giving compounds, except to remind himself how superior to them he really was, and especially superior to their men.

He had a big night, too, and where was he going? A nice fatigue was setting in him, nice as compared to the fatigues he felt when he was in need. Nothing ached. There was just this sense of deep relaxation settling in his body. The prospect of lying in a bed and lowering his head to the pillow was looking better and better. In the morning he could reconsider everything and make decisions. Morning wasn't all that far off anyway.

The flicking bulb on a motel sign ahead seemed to be beckoning him. He smiled, slowed down, and pulled into the lot and parked by the office. This late in the evening, there was no one visible, but the door was open and there was a bell on the counter to summon someone.

The night manager was actually asleep in an oversized easy chair. He was dressed in a thin, yellowing T-shirt and a pair of jeans held up with suspenders. Under the weakened neon ceiling fixture's illumination, his face looked as if it consisted of old wax. The sick pallor of his complexion was emphasized by his obviously unprofessionally colored black thinning hair. He looked like someone who had dumped a bottle of ink on his head.

For a moment he stood there watching the manager breathe. He reminded him of a fish. His large nostrils moving in and out like gills. His face spotted with patches of reddened skin and a mole on the right side of his nearly indistinguishable chin.

The man is ugly enough to kill, he thought and for a moment actually considered doing just that. He grunted with the thought.

The manager's large round eyes opened as if they had two tiny springs on the lids. He looked up with an expression of utter astonishment at the sight of someone staring at him so intensely.

"Whaaa…" he said and scrubbed his face vigorously with his dry palms to bring some blood into it and maybe into his brain. He sat up, realized he had a customer, and immediately stood. His potbelly seemed to roll down and settle itself just under his waist as he rose to his feet. He actually looked like a pregnant woman in her ninth month.

"Sorry," he said. "We rarely get any customers this time of night."

"Why? It's on the road. Doesn't anyone travel on this road?" he asked with an unexpectedly aggressive tone.

"Oh, sure, sure. It's just not a main highway anymore," the manager said defensively. "Since they built the bypass. My parents left me the place just about the time it all went to pot." He shrugged to indicate there was nothing he could do about his fate. "I don't need much. I'm by myself here. So, you want a room for the night?"

"Maybe two nights," he said and the motel owner's eyebrows went up as if he had won the lottery.

"Oh, sure. Well, as I said we have lots of rooms available."

"Give me one as far from the highway as possible. I want it to be as quiet as possible," he said.

"Gotcha." He turned the sign-in book to him and stepped back to choose a room key.

Who am I tonight? he wondered as he lifted the pen to sign. He decided he would be Rip Winkleman. After all, he was going to sleep and he felt confident this excuse for a man wouldn't get the irony and humor. He was paying with cash so there was no name to check on a credit card.

"Thirty-eight fifty a night," the motel owner told him, and he gave him a hundred-dollar bill.

The owner went under the counter to get a cash box out and the change, which he gave him with the key.

"It's the last room on the end, as far from the entrance as I have."

"Perfect."

He spun around and started for the door.

"Where you headed?"

He turned to him, at first annoyed at his curiosity and then realizing that wasn't the best reaction to have, smiled.

"I've got to make my way to a business meeting in Newark eventually. Just taking my time. Enjoying the trip. Stopping to smell the roses, know what I mean?"

"Sure," the motel owner said, although it was clear from the look in his face that he had no idea what "smell the roses" meant. "If you need anything, just pick up the phone. It rings automatically in here."

"Thank you."

He went out to the car and looked back to see the ugly, overweight man
settling himself in the chair, looking as if he was sinking into his own body. He couldn't help wondering if this sort of man had any sexual energy whatsoever. His sex seemed to have dissolved into his fat. Who could be attracted to such a creature anyway? He looked like a personified wart. Who would mourn its death?

And then he thought, who would mourn mine? Did that matter? Should it matter? When you're dead, how do you know you've been mourned at all? Or in what spirit and with what pomp and circumstance?

These sorts of philosophical concerns only complicated life, he decided. They distract, depress, disturb. The only thing that was important was the moment, now. The past was the past. It couldn't be changed. And the future was unknown except for one thing. There was an end out there, a place where it all stopped, where the light inside you went dark. It seemed to him there was only one thing to concentrate on, one thing to have as your priority therefore, and that was to do everything possible to keep the light burning for as long as possible. Everything else was just a distraction.

It occurred to him that he was very much like any other creature out there. Like any of them, he spent his day working on keeping himself alive. There was a time, he thought, however, when he had more time for the distractions, when they weren't as detrimental or harmful to that effort. Vaguely at first, but suddenly getting more vivid in his mind, was the realization that the periods of time he could afford for such things was diminishing to the point where they were almost gone entirely.

He had no doubt, for example, that when he woke in the morning, he would feel the early signs of an oncoming need to hunt, and this, after just doing so the night before. Again, he concluded. This wasn't good.

The imagery of that rabbit's warren returned. What he might have to do, he thought, was find a central location and stock it with prey, gather up a half dozen or so and have them there for harvesting when he required and as he required. Not a bad idea, he thought and now regretted having set fire to the rooming house. It might have served him in that purpose. On the other hand, someone like that minister, was bound to come by and make things difficult. He'd have to go somewhere else.

After he brought his suitcase into the room and prepared for bed, he rested his head on the pillow and gazed into the darkness, still thinking about this great idea. What a wonderful fantasy. It would be like a fish with an endless supply of worms at the bottom of the bowl. Hungry? Just dip down and pluck one. It brought a smile to his lips.

Gather them, keep them in one place, and stop this endless traveling, he told himself. It was a real project to consider, a purpose, something with a beneficial objective, a new reason to be. How wonderful. He closed his eyes, turned in the bed, and snuggled comfortably under the blanket and against the pillow.

I might live forever yet, he thought, and fell asleep on the fluffy cloud of that enormous possibility.

"It's all clear, Dr. Barnard," the patrolman said. "No evidence of anyone breaking in or attempting to," he said. He was holding a walkie-talkie and conferring with another officer who had been searching around the house. This patrolman had inspected every inch of Curt's home and reported there was nothing of any concern inside as well.

"When I came back here tonight, I guess I didn't notice my fianc� had left the window open in there," she said. "I'm sorry I bothered you guys."

"No problem, Doctor. That's why they pay us the big bucks. Especially after what happened at your home. Why don't we hang around a bit out there just to be sure you're safe?" he said.

She was about to tell him it wasn't necessary when she could hear a little voice inside her say, "Don't be a big shot. Take their protection."

"Thank you." She looked at the clock. "Almost doesn't pay to go back to sleep," she said. She had called her service this time and left Curt's number, asking them to be sure to give her a wake-up call.

"I know what you mean, Doctor," the patrolman said smiling. He tipped his hat and started out. It wasn't until she was in bed and under the blanket again that she truly appreciated the patrolman's offer. The sense of security it gave her helped her to relax enough to fall asleep. She was sleeping so deeply that it took three rings to wake her.

"Good morning, Dr. Barnard," she heard.

"Thank you," she said and rose like a zombie to stumble her way into the bathroom and shower. If she could, she would have stood under the water for twenty minutes, she thought. She went to the phone right after drying her hair and called the hospital to find out how Curt was doing. The nurse on duty told her he was resting comfortably and he had a good night.

Better than mine for sure, she thought and amusingly wished she had been the one in the hospital.

"Please tell him I called and I'll be up later when I do rounds," she told her and hung up.

She had a great deal to do this morning. Both Curt's parents and hers had to be told something. She had no idea how she would begin to explain these events to them without putting them all into a panic. For sure, her parents were going to rant and rave about her staying by herself at Curt's house.

To put off the inevitable a little longer, she prepared some breakfast first. She turned on the television set to watch some news while she ate. The local station began with the story of the fire at the Martin tourist house. A reporter on the scene questioned the fire chief, who revealed Tilly Martin's death and an investigation that was considering the possibility of arson. He made it sound as if the fire might have been started by Tilly Martin herself to collect insurance on a building that was no longer providing enough income.

It was the reporter who then spoke of the depth of this family's tragedy by pointing out that Tilly Martin's granddaughter, the only person living with her, had recently died, too, and from all reports, a totally unexpected death.

"More reason to consider the possibility of arson," the fire chief said dryly, even more encouraged to project his theory. The implication that it might have been a suicide resulting from deep grief was clear.

"That's ridiculous," Terri shouted at the screen. "Why would someone burn a house down to kill herself? And besides, it's a painful death."

She went to the phone to try to contact Will Dennis. It took a while for her to be passed through to his cell phone.

"Yes, terrible coincidence," he said. "But arson? No one in my office has given out any information like that," he said. "There wasn't much left of the old lady. You'd need a psychic forensic expert to come to any conclusion this early in the investigation. All we know at the moment, as I understand it from the people I have in the field, is that the old lady was found away from where the fire actually had begun."

"Maybe it wasn't such a coincidence, Will. Could the families of these women be in some danger too?"

"Now, don't get wild on me, Doc. Expanding it into some fantastic sort of psychotic conspiracy won't do anyone any good," he said. "We'll panic the Thorndykes, to say the least."

"Of course, I don't want to do anything like that, but…"

"Anyway, Doc, we have other problems, more pressing," he interrupted. "Our fears last night were confirmed very early this morning for me: Paula Gilbert had zero traces of what she needed to clot blood. Our vitamin vampire took all of her K," he concluded.

"I had no doubt. This is an incredible nightmare."

"Who sleeps long enough to have nightmares?" he replied. "One good thing came out of it all last night," he continued. "We've acquired a fairly good detailed description from Darlene Stone, the bartender at the Old Hasbrouck Inn. It matches with what you gave me. I've already had a police artist draw a facsimile of the man Darlene claimed showed great interest in Paula Gilbert. The chief characteristics match our guy and the descriptions you've given. We got it completed in time to make the front page of the local newspaper."

"Good. About time," she added. She was not unhappy if Will Dennis took it as a bit of criticism. If he did, however, he ignored it.