Final Stroke (54 page)

In her deep voluptuous voice, the GPS lady announced they had ar
rived at their destination just as Valdez turned into the Saint Mel in the Woods Rehabilitation Facility entrance road.

“I thought our contact was to meet us here,” said Valdez.

“Not here,” said Hanley. “She’ll be at a side road that goes around back. She said to go through the parking lot toward the back of the building.”

“Not much traffic in this place,” said Valdez.

“That’s because it’s not the kind of place people are drawn to on a Friday night.”

“So we’ll go in through the back?”

“Yes,” said Hanley. “According to our first contact, that will take us through the nursing home wing. Anyone going in or out who doesn’t want to draw attention to themselves would go that way, and we can become spouses of residents, or even residents if need be. My
self, I had practice with a walker and a wheelchair while recovering from my last surgery, and I’m sure there are plenty of those about.”

“Using a wheelchair might be more useful,” said Valdez.

“Good point,” said Hanley. “One old man pushing another old man.”

“I’m a better shot standing up,” said Valdez.

“That’s fine by me,” said Hanley.

As he rounded the perimeter of the parking lot, Valdez saw the road that went around back. The car driven by their contact, a black Honda Accord, was parked to the right side in the distance facing the back parking lot. Valdez slowed the rental car as he approached the Accord, taking his time.

“Tell me one more thing before we go inside,” said Valdez.

“What is it?” asked Hanley.

“In case one of us is disabled, we should both know where the money trail could possibly lead after tonight.”

“It’s about time you asked,” said Hanley. “I would have told you eventually for just that reason.”

Hanley adjusted himself in his seat, then zipped up his golf jacket. “Do you remember Tom Christensen from Langley?”

“Of course. Wasn’t he the deputy assistant for a while?”

“That’s him,” said Hanley. “Hell of a nice guy. Probably one of the brains behind this.”

“Didn’t he retire a long time ago?” asked Valdez.

“Yes, but not under his name. He and his second wife live in a retire
ment community south of Flagstaff in the mountains. His wife is twenty years younger than him. Almost ninety and the bastard still skis.”

“I can’t wait until I retire,” said Valdez, pulling up to the left of the Accord.

“You can say that again,” said Hanley.

The face of Maria, familiar because of the photograph he’d seen, looked out the driver’s window of the Accord as Valdez pulled up.

Hanley lowered his window at the same time Maria lowered her window.

“Good evening,” said Hanley.

“Good evening, yourself,” said Maria.

“Has anyone come out this way?”

“A handicapped van came out a minute ago, ” said Maria. “I saw only a driver. I didn’t recognize him. Before that, maybe five minutes, a police car went in and didn’t come out.”

“Is there room to park on both sides of the loading dock?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. You drive ahead first,” said Hanley. “Park to the right of the loading dock and we’ll park to the left. Not too close in. Simply visiting, and we’re not sure where the main entrance is.”

“Should I go in with you?” asked Maria.

Valdez leaned forward to speak to her. “No. Let us go in alone. We’ll be less conspicuous. Watch the back and if anyone else shows up, call us. If the police are back there and haven’t gone inside, keep them busy.”

Hanley turned to look at Valdez, seeming to question his instructions.

Valdez quickly added, “We need you out here to guarantee all three of us get away from this place.”

“Right,” said Maria, raising her window.

Valdez followed the Accord at a distance as it slowly circled around to the back of the building. The wooded area behind the building was quite dark, the parking lot lit but not brightly. There were no other roads leading out of the back lot. As he drove, Valdez memorized the way out and hoped he would be on his way soon. In the distance, Val
dez heard a jet overhead. The jet became louder and louder as he fol
lowed the Accord.

The van stopped after driving a short distance. When Tyrone lifted himself up a little in the seat so he could look out, he saw the Hell in the Woods main entrance.

Now what? he thought. Maybe they’ll come out with a gurney and take him inside. Maybe the spaghetti heads have a room com mandeered where they can take care of him in private. The skeleton night staff probably out on that balcony they’re not supposed to use
having themselves a few smokes while he sits in his own shit.

He turned to his left and saw his DeVille. There it was, sitting right there, and in his pocket he could feel his keys biting into his hip. He lay his head down against the back of the seat and stared at the DeVille. So close, but so far away.

Up front, the Gargoyle had turned up the police scanner. No calls to hurry out to Hell in the Woods. Only traffic calls and domestic disturbances.

Amid the chatter of the scanner, Tyrone could hear the Gargoyle humming a tune. Nothing Tyrone recognized, but it sounded like a tune from the forties or fifties. Something Sinatra or Como would croon. Any second the Gargoyle would burst into song. Then the in
sanity of the night would be complete.

CHAPTER

THIRTY

The wheelchair was tipped over and he had blacked out.
A stroke victim. Useless to himself or to anyone else. A stroke victim alone in his own world. A stroke victim who’d be better off …

No! Jan was here! He and Jan had fallen from the wheelchair. He had turned the corner too fast and caught a wheel on a crate holding open the door to the main hallway. Amid the noise of machinery from the short hallway behind them, he had heard Jan’s head hit the floor.

Desperate, he banged on the locked door to the kitchen, wast
ing precious time trying to get the attention of whoever worked the kitchen at night. There was no answer, and when he looked back and saw Jan sprawled on the floor, he knew only he could help her.

He touched his jacket pocket and felt the reassuring weight of his gun. He glanced at the small window in the closed door to the load
ing dock and, seeing that the lights from the police car had gone out, decided one stroker with a gun would never be enough.

He called Jan’s name and shook her shoulders. He lifted her into a sitting position. When she opened her eyes he could see she was in a
daze. She slumped against the wall in the hallway, staring back at the door to the loading dock, back the way they’d come.

He pulled the wheelchair upright, sat down, positioned the chair at Jan’s side, put on the wheel brakes, and, using all his strength, dragged her back into his lap. Although she’d been able to limp earlier, he could tell by the cut on the side of her head and the faraway look in her eyes that she was in no condition to limp now.

He wasn’t sure whether he’d also been knocked out for a while. His head throbbed and the noise coming into the main hallway through the door held open by a crate was deafening. He had a feeling that, for a few seconds, or perhaps longer, the noise had not been there.

Too much time had gone by. He’d seen Jan’s captors watching as he and Jan came in through the loading dock door. He’d seen the po
lice car coming into the back lot. He’d seen it was only one car and knew Jan’s captors were professionals, and were desperate. But maybe, just maybe, the cops had come through. Maybe they’d been lucky and there was no need to run.

He was in pain, but pain was something he’d managed to put up with this night. His leg brace was askew, digging into his flesh, but he didn’t have time to mess with it. Not now. Not here. Not in this in-between place where the word
maybe
wasn’t good enough.

It was insane. He had expected to see aides and residents about. He had expected a scene from Dante’s
Inferno
. Heads poking from doorways, old people in the nursing home wing looking out to see what was going on. But even when he had banged at the locked door to the kitchen near the loading dock exit, there had been no response.

As he raced around a corner with Jan on board and into the long hallway through the nursing home wing, his mind also raced. He thought he heard music playing. Music as ancient and melancholy as the curious faces he’d expected to see looking out doorways. The
music came from violins, but the violins were not here. The violins wept sadly in his memory making the nonexistent faces into ancestors looking back from the grave to see what humans have done with them selves and with the world.

He remembered having seen, a few moments earlier when he was not certain whether he’d been knocked out, that there had been tape on the latch of the alarmed door, the alarm not ringing even though the door was held open by a crate. He should have taken the tape off so the alarm sounded and the guards at the front desk would have been notified. But at the time, the connection between the door alarm and the tape hadn’t registered. The professionals had planned ahead, clearing the way for an undetected entrance.

For a moment he considered turning back. But the word
maybe
kept him moving. He and Jan could not afford to give time to des
perate men because time was the only thing on their side. Time and the distance they could keep between themselves and their pursuers until they could either hide, or figure out a way to defend themselves without shooting up the place and getting residents and aides killed or injured in the crossfire.

Yes, it was insane. People housed in the nursing home wing wait
ing to die, while a man and woman aboard a single wheelchair race down the hallway as if anxious to get on with their own deaths. A man and woman racing past parked wheelchairs, wheelchairs empty as if …

No! Don’t think about death. Don’t give up!

He had to lean sideways to see around Jan. On the right side of her head, behind her ear, blood oozed from the cut at her hairline. Any other time he would have wanted to forget about everything else and tend to Jan’s injury. But this was not any other time. And he was thankful she was not bleeding too badly.

The nursing home wing had a long hallway and he began to think that having come this far they might get away. But just as he thought this, just as they approached the nurses’ station centered in the hall
way, the sounds of running footsteps echoed from behind.

The nurse at the station stared at them in disbelief. There would be no time to explain, no time to tell of the danger. But suddenly, Jan came out of her daze and, as if able to read his mind, shouted to the open-mouthed nurse.

“Hide somewhere! Men with guns! Hide anywhere!”

The word
guns
had its effect. Before they reached the nurses’ station, the nurse ducked below the counter and disappeared as the sounds of footsteps grew louder, the men obviously rounding the cor
ner at the far end of the hallway.

His gun was in his left jacket pocket; he could feel its bulk press against the armrest each time he gave the left wheel a forward shove. Jan was helping now, reaching over the side to push on the right wheel and, at the same time, managing to help steer the chair by extending her right foot to the floor ahead. She had taught Steve how to correct the steering of his chair months earlier using gentle taps of one foot on the floor left or right of center. And now, Jan was doing so well at it he stopped trying to steer with his foot and concentrated on using his left hand to propel them forward.

For a moment he considered turning into one of the resident’s rooms in order to hide. But it was too late for that, the footsteps com ing closer and closer, the men obviously within sight of them. He paused in his pushing of the chair to get his gun from his pocket. He thought Jan might misinterpret his intentions and steered the chair around so they could make a stand, using the nurses’ station for cover. But she kept pushing forward toward the double doors at the end of the hallway. She, too, must have known that the only thing to do now
was to get through both sets of double doors to the lobby where there might be some fire power to back them up.

If they made it through the first set of double doors there would be no searching through rooms, no shooting here. No bullets rico
cheting down the hall, through walls and doors and into the rooms of residents. And if they made it through the second set of double doors, the confrontation would take place at the front desk where they would receive help from the guards. At least two guards on duty every time he’d looked. A plan. They had a plan. Either Jan
was
reading his mind, or he was reading her mind.

As they fled down the length of hallway between the nurses’ sta
tion and the double doors that led to the lobby of the main building, thin legs and a wheelchair appeared in a doorway and a head peeked out. A familiar face. A face he’d seen before.

Sue! So-long Sue who visited the third floor to compare herself to stroke victims, proving to herself she still has spunk. And behind Sue, the music he thought he had imagined earlier was replaced by a man shouting at the top of his lungs. Sue held something up in her hand for them to see and screamed to him and to Jan in her high-pitched voice.

“I turned up the volume! That’ll help! Gets their attention every time!”

A remote control! The music was not from the past. The man’s voice was not from the past. Not the result of his stroke. Not an an
cestor summoning him and Jan from the grave. The man’s voice was that of a late night news anchor. Sue had turned the volume of her set full blast. And now he recalled Marjorie trying to explain in rehab how Sue sometimes turned up the volume on her television as a form of protest.

But despite the volume of the television, and despite the crazy smile on Sue’s face, he was aware of the unmistakable heavy footfalls
echoing in the hallway behind them. Sue reacted to the sound by glancing down the hallway, quickly losing her smile, and doing a back ward caterpillar walk into her room.

No time to look back. Double doors ahead. His left foot out and Jan’s right foot out to impact the doors. But they are automatic doors, and as the doors swing away, helped by their feet hitting them, a man’s voice behind them shouts.

“Babe! I’ll shoot if you don’t stop! I’ll shoot her!”

As they slam through the doors that aren’t opening fast enough, he feels Jan’s reaction. Her muscles go taut, she screams, and when he hears the scream, all he wants to do is hold her to him. In that mo
ment, to hold her to him and die with her in his arms seems all that is left.

Because of the late hour, the hallway connecting the nursing home wing to the main building was empty. The only doorways along the hallway were staff offices, all the doors closed and, Jan knew, locked for the night. She recalled walking in this very hallway weeks ear
lier on one of the nights Steve was doing badly. The staff on the third floor had told her to go home, but she had not wanted to go home until Steve was better, until she knew he’d gotten enough drugs and was resting for the night instead of suffering the intense headache caused by swelling in his brain. She had walked the halls that night, coming down to the first floor and discovering this long connecting hall between the nursing home wing and the main building.

Her head throbbed from having hit the floor when the wheel chair overturned. Although her injured left foot was propped on the wheelchair footrest, each time she tapped her right foot on the floor to
correct their steering, it sent a signal to her left foot that resulted in a searing stab of pain that nearly immobilized her. When they passed a drinking fountain to one side of the hallway, she was aware of the raw dryness in her mouth and throat.

But there was no time to dwell on pain and thirst. There was only time to flee from Max and Dino. There was only time to concentrate on making it to the next set of double doors, the doors that opened into the lobby and the reception island where guards were posted.

Perhaps a guard had seen them on one of the closed-circuit moni
tors, a man in a wheelchair with a woman in his lap speeding crazily down the hallway. Perhaps the bedlam in the nursing home wing— the men running after them, shouting—had appeared on a monitor. But she knew there were no monitors in the nursing home wing. She had walked the halls often enough to know that security cameras were limited to the main building and its approaches. Now she could only hope the guards were alert and awake, not dozing like she’d seen them doing many times during her late night walks.

When she and Steve reached the double doors that opened into the lobby, she could hear the sounds of heavy footfalls closing in. She braced herself, holding her foot out to hit against the second set of automatic doors that would open much too slowly for the speeding wheelchair, but also braced herself for the shots that would surely kill them.

No! Dino and Max would not kill them because she and Steve still held the key, Marjorie’s litany of routes that would lead them to the drug money that had already destroyed the lives of Marjorie and her son and her son’s attorney, and God knows how many others.

She could see one of the monitor cameras now, off to the side of the doors they were flying through, her left foot on fire as the jolt of her right foot hitting the door made its way to her injured ankle. Lobby ahead, no visitors, no one sitting in the chairs along the walls.

The only movement she saw was the large screen television playing silently to an audience of vacant chairs. And behind the counter? No movement there either, only two heads slumped over until the one nearest slowly begins to turn.