Megan's Cure (18 page)

“The medical information about Megan is something that I don’t believe I could ever publish,” the scientist said.
 
“It’s the result of unauthorized treatment.
 
But on another level, she is the proof of everything I hoped to accomplish.”

“How’s that?” said Lee.

“Well…Megan’s alive, isn’t she?”

Chapter 36

IT WAS ENZO Lee’s second day in Savannah but his body clock still was operating on California time.
 
He had slept late into the morning after the long session with Novak.
 
It was overcast and muggy.
 
Finally, the skies opened up after noon, flooding the streets.
 
The rains continued into the night, tapering off finally to a light drizzle around midnight.
 
Even with the light rain, it was warm enough with the humidity to keep the window cracked in the living room.

The reporter couldn’t sleep.
 
He tried to read a book but his mind kept circling back to what Novak had told him.
 
He tried to make sense of it all and figure out what he could do about it.
 
How could this help his grandmother?
 
Was Novak a complete paranoid or did he have reason to worry?
 
Was Megan truly in danger?

It was the sound of footsteps on the front steps of the house that caused him to peer out the window.
 
Through the blinds, Lee could see the top of someone below.
 
The man wore a trench coat.
 
Lee saw a streak of white in an otherwise dark head of hair.

The man backed down the steps and stood on the sidewalk for a moment as he surveyed the building.
 
Then, he walked across Chippewa Square.
 
Lee saw him lean against the driver’s door of a dark car that had its parking lights on.
 
He saw another car idling two spaces behind the first.

Lee walked down the hall in the third-floor flat to Novak’s room.
 
He knocked once and opened the door.
 

“Walter,” he said.
 
“There are people outside.
 
They’re checking out the house.”

Novak rubbed his face and gave himself a moment to completely wake up.

“Okay,” he said finally.
 
“There’s a set of stairs down the back.
 
Wake up Megan while I get dressed.”

Lee went to Megan’s room and shook her by the shoulder.

“Wake up, Megan,” he said with urgency in his voice.
 
“You need to get dressed right away.
 
There are people outside.
 
We’re going out the back way.
 
Hurry.”

Within three minutes they were heading down the stairway.
 
It was enclosed and opened onto an alley.
 
When they reached the alley, Lee could hear loud pounding on the other side of the house.
 
Then he heard a crashing noise and the sound of wood splintering.
 

“Christ,” he thought.
 
They must have brought sledgehammers or something.
 
Talk about prepared.

Walter led them down the alley and out to the street.
 
He looked both ways.

“What do you think?” said Lee, coming up on his shoulder.

“There’s more activity near the river,” said Walter.
 
“There might be police around.
 
Or even just people.
 
Enough of a crowd might scare them off.”

Lee wasn’t sure that the people who had just busted their way into the house behind them would be scared off by anything.
 
But he had no better idea.
 
In the dim light of a distant street light he nodded his agreement.

They came out on Drayton Street and Novak guided them left, heading north toward the river.
 
After two blocks, he took them left again.

“Let’s stay on smaller streets,” he said.
 
“We’ll be more difficult to see.”

 
They came to another small square and cut across it, keeping in the shadows created by the towering oak trees above.
 
They left the square and ran another three blocks to the next one.
 
Lee slowed his pace.
 
Megan was tiring.
 
He thought he might have to put her on his back in another block.

As they came to the next square, they heard a car moving fast in the street off to the side a block away.
 
Lee knew they’d been spotted.

They were half way through when they heard the car screech to a stop behind them.
 
A door opened.
 
Then gunshots.
 
One.
 
Then another.

“Go! Go! Go!” urged Lee, leading the way and weaving to the left to put the statue in the middle of the square in the line of fire behind them.
 
He heard the car door slam again behind them, and then the noise of the car accelerating, then stopping, then accelerating again.
 
The streets here were full of dead ends.
 
Their pursuers had to figure out the detours to get to them.
 

Lee stopped.
 
He bent down and gestured for Megan to climb on his back.
 
She jumped on without hesitation.
 
He stood, grabbed the backs of her knees to hold her on as she hooked her arms around his neck.
 
Lee took off at a jog behind Novak and they continued toward the river.
 

What had he gotten himself into?
 
What was he doing running in the dark while someone fired shots at him?
 
But Lee knew the shots and the bullets were real.
 
He could worry about how he’d gotten here later.
 
Right now he had to figure out how to keep himself and the girl on his back alive.
 

Lee focused on keeping his footing, finding a pace he could maintain and keeping his breathing deep and steady.
 
He could see a small golden dome ahead of them.
 
He knew it was a building on the river not far ahead.
 
A landmark of some type.

But behind them he also heard footsteps running after them.
 
They were distant.
 
Maybe two blocks away.
 
But they would close quickly.
 
Already he was tiring from carrying Megan.

They came out finally on the street above the river front.
 
There was no one around.
 
The rains had driven everyone inside.
 
A ramp in front of them led down to the river.
 
As they hurried down, Lee watched his step even more carefully.
 
The roadway was lined with round cobblestones worn smooth and made even more treacherous by the rain.

When they came out on the river walk itself, Lee saw that it was deserted as well.
 
But he also spotted in the promenade a sandy area, an oversized sand box for kids to play in.
 
In the middle sat a small tug boat maybe 12 feet long and painted red, white and blue.

“Quick…the boat,” said Lee panting hard.
 
He dropped Megan onto the asphalt of the street and motioned for the two of them to go to the boat.

“Hide,” said the reporter, pausing a moment longer to catch his breath.

He saw Megan and Novak reach the boat and dive inside.
 
Perfect.
 
He couldn’t see them at all.
 
He continued up the promenade, staying on the single-lane roadway.
 
He heard footsteps again behind him.
 
The men had reached the river front.

Lee made no effort to run quietly.
 
He let his feet slap the pavement, leading his pursuers away from Megan and Novak.
 
He heard them following along the river front.
 
Then he cut right through one of the gaps in the warehouse row.
 
When he got to the back of the buildings, he turned left and moved down a tunnel-like corridor that ran behind them.

It was very dark.
 
Even if they heard his footsteps they wouldn’t be able to see him or know that Walter and Megan were no longer with him.
 
He was settling into a steady rhythm now, his running regimen paying off.
 
Unless one of his pursuers was a dedicated runner, they wouldn’t be able to keep up with him for long.
 
But he knew he had the cars to worry about as well.
 
They could be out there, waiting for him to get back to the street level.
 
Maybe they were communicating with the people running behind him and knew exactly where he was.

He must have run the equivalent of three long blocks along the back of the buildings.
 
He worried now about reaching the end of the corridor.
 
He didn’t want to hit a dead end and be trapped.
 
When he reached another gap in the tunnel-like pathway and saw a staircase to his right, he didn’t hesitate.
 
He would get back to the street level and take his chances there.

He ran up a ramp and then up the 15 steps to the street.
 
The uphill stretch slowed him but he kept moving at a jog, away from the river now.
 
He crossed one street, ran down the next block and came to another street.
 

Suddenly, a car pulled up in front of him, coming from his right and going the wrong way in the divided roadway.
 
It braked in front of him with a loud screech, forcing him to pull up before he slammed into it.
 
The driver’s window was down right in front of him.
 
Lee thought about trying to dodge around the car.
 
But something about the driver made him pause.
 
He was balding and had his elbow resting on the opened window.
 
And he was smiling.
 
Then Lee noticed the heavy bar of lights – all darkened – running across the vehicle’s roof.
 
A cop car.

“Mister Lee, I presume,” said Chief Cliff Davidson in his slow drawl, looking out from the car’s window and behind Lee to see if anyone was coming.
 
He flicked a switch on his dashboard and intense blue lights atop the car suddenly filled the darkness.
 
They were painfully bright, flashing in a quick staccato rhythm that was visible blocks away.

Chapter 37

THE BRIEF PHONE call Chief Davidson had received from Lee around noon earlier in the day had been more than enough incentive to launch him on the eight-hour drive from Bayou La Batre to Savannah.
 

Megan Kim was fine, Lee had assured the police chief.
 
He was staying with her and Novak next to one of the squares in the central core of Savannah.
 
Davidson knew the city.
 
His boyhood friend was a deputy chief on the city police force.
 
He was confident he would find Megan, bring her home and reunite her with her mother.

The chief had been dozing in his car a few blocks from Chippewa Square, waiting for the morning, when he heard the unmistakable sound of gunshots.
 
Then he saw cars burning rubber as they headed toward the river front.
 
The lone figure he saw jogging away from the river fit the quick description of Lee that Det. Bobbie Connors had given him a couple of days earlier.

Chief Davidson was determined to take Megan back to Bayou le Batre and he convinced Lee and Novak that he could keep them all safe together in his patrol car.

He must have called in every chit he had acquired in his long career in law enforcement in order to have two Georgia State Patrol cars escort the four of them along the 140-mile run down the Georgia coast through thick pine forests and across the many coastal streams on the way to Jacksonville.
 
Then the Florida Highway Patrol took over for the 350 miles across the Florida panhandle.
 
Outside of Pensacola two cars from Davidson’s own force picked them up for the last hour.

With Megan in the car, Lee had only given Davidson a partial explanation during their long drive of why Novak had tracked down Megan at her school more than a week earlier and why they had been running for their lives through the streets of Savannah in the early morning hours.
 

“There’ll be time for all that later,” the police chief said.
 
“I know how a bullet sounds when it comes out of a gun.
 
Occupational necessity, you might say.
 
You’re on someone’s hit list.
 
That’s enough for now.”

They came in from the southeast – the “scenic route,” according to Davidson – following the roads close to Mobile Bay until they hit Shell Belt Road leading them into Bayou La Batre.
 
The remnants of piers ruined by Katrina – pairs of pilings jutting through the ocean water 70 yards out into the bay – ran off to their left.
 
The houses on the right were either perched high atop stacks of concrete blocks 10 feet high, or had been washed away entirely by the hurricane, leaving only traces of their foundations.

As they drove up along the river mouth that cut northward through the town, Lee saw the tops of the shrimpers and fishing boats tied up together with their long outrigger booms pointing skyward.

“Got most of ‘em back in the water finally,” said Davidson, nodding toward the boats.
 
“Should have seen ‘em right after the storm.
 
Like the water drained out of the bathtub and left ‘em wherever…maybe in your backyard.”

He drove them over the trestle-style bridge in the center of town and a half mile north up Wintzell Avenue to the 22-unit Gulf Coast Inn.
 
The town’s only hotel was small enough to guard with a patrol car on each side, explained Davidson.
 
There were plenty of open rooms to accommodate Novak, Lee, Megan and Megan’s mother who met them at the hotel.
 
Lee wondered if Mary Kim would ever let Megan out of her grasp again after their tearful reunion.

“Unless those boys send a tank after y’all, you should be safe here,” said the police chief.
 
Davidson left them in the hands of his deputies, one of whom took everyone’s dinner order up to a Wendy’s by the interstate.
 

“Right now, I got a hot date with a king-sized bed,” he told Lee and Novak in the hotel parking lot, promising to meet them for breakfast the next morning.

The first thing Enzo Lee did after he took a shower and put on clean clothes was call Lorraine Carr in New York.

“Bayou where?” she asked.

“La Batre,” said Lee.
 
“It’s on the Gulf of Mexico.
 
It’s the land of shrimp and crab. And, oysters, too, I guess, judging from the piles of shells I saw on the way here.
 
Mountains of them.”

“Sounds yummy,” Carr said.
 
“And why are you there? Are you okay?
 
You sound exhausted.
 
I can hear it in your voice.”
 

 
“Yeah,” said Lee.
 
“It’s been a long couple of days.
 
And it’s a long amazing story.
 
But first I wanted to ask you something.”

“Fire away,” said Carr.

“Who do you know at the National Institutes of Health?”