Lightning (33 page)

Now it was the boy’s turn to be baffled. He looked at her with little understanding of where money came from, how it was put aside for future use, or how difficult it was to obtain. “Well, for a couple of days, we can just drive around, sleep in motels—”

“We can only sleep in motels if I pay cash. A credit card record might be all they need to find us. Then they’d come back in time to the night I used the credit card, and they’d kill us at the motel.”

“Yeah, so we use cash. Hey, we can eat at McDonald’s all the time! That doesn’t take much money, and it’s
good.
”

They drove down from the mountains, out of the snow, into San Bernardino, a city of about 300,000, without encountering assassins. She needed to get their guardian to a doctor, not only because she owed him a debt of life, but also because without him she might never learn the truth of what was happening and might never find a way out of the box they were in.

She could not take him to a hospital because hospitals kept records, which might give her enemies from the future a way of finding her. She would have to obtain medical care secretly, from someone who would not have to be told her name or anything about the patient.

Shortly before midnight she stopped at a telephone booth near a Shell service station. The phone was at the corner of the property, away from the station itself, which was ideal because she could not risk an attendant noticing the Jeep’s broken windows or the unconscious man.

In spite of the hour-long nap the boy had gotten earlier and in spite of the excitement, Chris had dozed off. In the compartment behind the front seat, their guardian was sleeping, too, but his sleep was neither restful nor natural. He was not mumbling much any more, but for minutes at a stretch he drew breath with a dismaying wheeze and rattle.

She left the Jeep in park, the engine running, and went into the telephone booth to look through the directory. She tore out the Yellow Pages’ listings for physicians.

After obtaining a street map of San Bernardino from the attendant in the service station, she began searching for a doctor who did not operate out of a clinic or medical office building but from an office attached to his home, which was how most doctors in small towns and cities had worked in years gone by, though these days few continued to keep home and office together. She was acutely aware that the longer she took to find help, the smaller the chance that their guardian would survive.

At a quarter past one, in a quiet residential neighborhood of older homes, she pulled in front of a two-story, white, Victorian house built in another era, in a lost California, before everything had been constructed of stucco. It stood on a corner lot, with a two-car garage, shaded by alders that were leafless in the middle of winter, a touch that made it seem like a place transported entirely, landscaping and all, from the East. According to the pages she had torn from the telephone directory, this was the address for Dr. Carter Brenkshaw, and beside the driveway a small sign suspended between two wrought-iron posts confirmed the directory’s accuracy.

She drove to the end of the block and parked at the curb. She got out of the Jeep, scooped a handful of damp earth from a flowerbed in front of a nearby house, and smeared the dirt over the front and back license plates as best she could.

By the time she wiped her hand in the grass and got back in the Jeep, Chris had awakened but was groggy and confused after being asleep for more than two hours. She patted his face and pushed his hair back from his forehead and rapidly talked him awake. The cold night air, flowing through the broken windows, helped too.

“Okay,” she said when she was sure he was awake, “listen closely, partner. I’ve found a doctor. Can you act sick?”

“Sure.” He made a face as if he was going to puke, then gagged and moaned.

“Don’t overplay it.” She explained what they were going to do.

“Good plan, Mom.”

“No, it’s nuts. But it’s the only plan I’ve got.”

She swung the car around and drove back to Brenkshaw’s, where she parked in the driveway in front of the closed garage, which was set back from the house. Chris slid out by the driver’s door, and she picked him up and held him against her left side, his head against her shoulder. He held on to her, so she only needed her left arm to keep him in place, though he was quite heavy; her baby was not a baby any more. In her free hand she gripped the revolver.

As she carried Chris along the walk, past the stark alders, with no light except a purplish glow from one of the widely spaced mercury-vapor streetlamps out at the curb, she hoped no one was at a window in any of the nearby houses. On the other hand it probably wasn’t unusual for someone to visit a doctor’s house in the middle of the night, needing treatment.

She went up the front steps, across the porch, and rang the bell three times, quick, as a frantic mother might do. She waited only a few seconds before ringing it three more times.

In a couple of minutes, after she had rung the bell again and was beginning to think that no one was home, the porch lights came on. She saw a man studying her through the three-pane, fan-shaped window in the top third of the door.

“Please,” she said urgently, holding the revolver at her side where it could not be seen, “my boy, poison, he’s swallowed poison!”

The man opened the door inward, and there was an outward-opening glass storm door, as well, so Laura stepped out of its way.

He was about sixty-five, white-haired, with a face that was Irish except for a strong Roman nose and dark brown eyes. He was dressed in a brown robe, white pajamas, and slippers. Peering at her over the rims of tortoiseshell glasses, he said, “What’s wrong?”

“I live two blocks down, you’re so close, and my boy—poison.” At the height of her hysteria, she let go of Chris, and he got out of her way as she shoved the muzzle of the .38 against the man’s belly. “I’ll blow your guts out if you call for help.”

She had no intention of shooting him, but she apparently sounded convincing, for he nodded and said nothing.

“Are you Dr. Brenkshaw?” He nodded again, and she said, “Who else is in the house, Doctor?”

“No one. I’m alone here.”

“Your wife?”

“I’m a widower.”

“Children?”

“All grown and gone.”

“Don’t lie to me.”

“I’ve made a lifetime habit of not lying,” he said. “It’s gotten me in trouble a few times, but telling the truth generally makes life simpler. Look, it’s chilly, and this robe’s thin. You can intimidate me as well if you come inside.”

She stepped across the threshold, keeping the gun in his belly and pushing him backward with it. Chris followed her. “Honey,” she whispered, “go check out the house. Quietly. Start upstairs, and don’t miss a room. If there’s anyone here, tell them the doctor has an emergency patient and needs their help.”

Chris headed for the stairs, and Laura kept Carter Brenkshaw in the foyer at gunpoint. Nearby a grandfather clock was ticking softly.

“You know,” he said, “I’ve been a lifelong reader of thrillers.”

She frowned. “What do you mean?”

“Well, I’ve often read a scene in which a gorgeous villainness held the hero against his will. As often as not, when he finally turned the tables on her, she surrendered to the inevitability of masculine triumph, and they made wild, passionate love. So when it happens to me, why do I have to be too old to enjoy the prospect of the second half of this little showdown?”

Laura held back a smile because she could not continue to pretend to be dangerous once she allowed herself to smile. “Shut up.”

“Surely you can do better than that.”

“Just shut up, all right? Shut up.”

He did not go pale or begin to tremble. He smiled.

Chris returned from upstairs. “Nobody, Mom.”

Brenkshaw said, “I wonder how many dangerous thugs have pint-size accomplices who call them Mom?”

“Don’t misjudge me, Doctor. I’m desperate.”

Chris disappeared into the downstairs rooms, turning on lights as he went.

To Brenkshaw, Laura said, “I’ve got a wounded man in the car—”

“Of course, a gunshot.”

“—I want you to treat him and keep your mouth shut about it, ’cause if you don’t, we’ll come back some night and blow you away.”

“This,” he said almost merrily, “is perfectly delicious.”

As Chris returned, he switched off the lights he had switched on moments ago. “Nobody, Mom.”

“You have a stretcher?” Laura asked the physician.

Brenkshaw stared at her. “You really do have a wounded man?”

“What the hell else would I be doing here?”

“How peculiar. Well, all right, how badly is he bleeding?”

“A lot earlier, not so much now. But he’s unconscious.”

“If he’s not bleeding badly now, we can roll him in. I’ve got a collapsible wheelchair in my office. Can I get an overcoat,” he said, pointing to the foyer closet, “or do tough molls like you get a thrill out of making old men shiver in their peejays?”

“Get your coat, Doctor, but damn it, don’t underestimate me.”

“Yeah,” Chris said. “She shot two guys already tonight.” He imitated the sound of an Uzi. “She just cut ’em down, and they never had a chance to lay a hand on her.”

The boy sounded so sincere that Brenkshaw looked at Laura with new concern. “There’s nothing but coats in the closet. Umbrellas. A pair of galoshes. I don’t keep a gun in there.”

“Just be careful, Doctor. No fast moves.”

“No fast moves—yes, I knew you’d say that.” Though he still seemed to find the situation to some degree amusing, he was not quite as lighthearted about it as he had been.

When he had pulled on his overcoat, they went with him through a door to the left of the foyer. Without snapping on a light, relying on the glow from the foyer and on his familiarity with the place, Dr. Brenkshaw led them through a patients’ waiting room that contained straight-backed chairs and a couple of end tables. Another door led into his office—a desk, three chairs, medical books—where he did turn on a light, and a door from the office led farther back in the house to his examination room.

Laura had expected to see an examination table and equipment that had been in use and well maintained for thirty-odd years, a homely den of medicine straight out of a Norman Rockwell painting, but everything looked new. There was even an EKG machine, and at the far end of the room was a door with a sign that warned X-RAY: KEEP CLOSED IN USE.

“You have X-ray equipment here?” she asked.

“Sure. It’s not as expensive as it once was. Every clinic has X-ray equipment these days.”

“Every clinic, yes, but this is just a one-man—”

“I may look like Barry Fitzgerald playing at being a doctor in an old movie, and I may prefer the old-fashioned convenience of an office in my home, but I don’t give patients outdated care just to be quaint. I dare say, I’m a more serious physician than you are a desperado.”

“Don’t bet on that,” she said harshly, though she was getting tired of pretending to be cold-blooded.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “I’ll play along. Seems like it’ll be more fun if I do.” To Chris, he said, “When we came through my office, did you notice a big, red-ceramic jar on the desk? It’s full of orange-slice candies and Tootsie Pops if you want some.”

“Wow, thanks!” Chris said. “Uh ... can I have a piece, Mom?”

“A piece or two,” she said, “but don’t make yourself sick.”

Brenkshaw said, “When it comes to giving sweet treats to young patients, I’m old-fashioned, I guess. No sugar-free gum here. What the hell fun is that stuff? Tastes like plastic. If their teeth rot out after they visit me, that’s their dentists’ problem.”

While he talked, he got a folding wheelchair from the corner, unfolded it, and rolled it to the middle of the room.

Laura said, “Honey, you stay here while we go out to the Jeep.”

“Okay,” Chris said from the next room, where he was peering into the red-ceramic jar, selecting his treat.

“Your Jeep in the driveway?” Brenkshaw asked. “Then let’s go out the back. Less conspicuous, I think.”

Pointing the revolver at the physician but feeling foolish, Laura followed him out of a side door in the examination room, which opened onto a ramp, so there was no need to descend stairs.

“Handicapped entrance,” Brenkshaw said quietly over his shoulder as he pushed the wheelchair along a walk toward the back of the house. His bedroom slippers made a crisp sound on the concrete.

The physician had a large property, so the neighboring house did not loom over them. Instead of being planted with alders as was the front lawn, the side yard was graced with ficus and pines, which were green all year. In spite of the screening branches and the darkness, however, Laura could see the blank windows of the neighboring place, so she supposed that she could be seen, as well, if anyone looked.

The world had the hushed quality that it possessed only between midnight and dawn. Even if she had not known it was going on two in the morning, she would have been able to guess the time within half an hour. Though faint city noises echoed in the distance, there was a cemeterial stillness that would have made her feel like a woman on a secret mission even if she had only been taking out the garbage.

The walk led around the house, crossing another walk that extended to the back of the property. They went past the rear porch, through an areaway between house and garage, into the driveway.

Brenkshaw halted at the back of the Jeep and chuckled. “Mud on the license plates,” he whispered. “Convincing touch.”

After she put the tailgate down, he got into the back of the Jeep to have a look at the wounded man.

She looked out toward the street. All was silent. Still.

But if a San Bernardino Police cruiser happened to drive by now on a routine patrol, the officer would surely stop to see what was up at kindly old Doc Brenkshaw’s place....