The Charity (76 page)

His stomach rolled over in dread as he touched Jessica. Her skin was so cold that it was firm to the touch. The knife imbedded in her side had been twisted and jerked out when her assailant died. It was as if he was trying to inflict one last vestige of pain.

Bandages he brought in his pack were not enough to stem the flow of blood. He packed what he could into the wound and listened for the sound of the approaching helicopter. He could hear nothing more but the soft shiftings of the forest.

He wrapped his parka around her and grabbed the bedroll from the tent and gently rolled her onto it, getting her off the snow. Much care was taken not to jar her leg which jutted from the ankle at an odd angle. His attempts to give her warmed water failed. She seemed so far away. He never stopped talking to her. He would not let this woman die not knowing the truth about who he was.

That had happened once, and the pain was too great to allow it to happen again.

There was no noise until the helicopter rose over the ridge. Instantly, the forest was attacked by circular thrusts of wind as the craft hovered overhead.

Once, she even gasped. The sign of life spurred him on, but it was gone as quickly as it came.

He guided the orange rescue basket through the small clearing of trees and helped the medic to the ground. All he could do now was stand back and wait.

“Sheriff. You’ve done enough. Go home and get some rest.”

Dr. McCarthy patted the sheriff’s shoulder. He was in a very ill temper to have been called out again after he put in a double shift at the hospital. It was not his usual night to be on-call and he blamed his untimely rousting on the addlebrained on call service he had recently joined. The service had made mistakes like this before and he thought that the wrath he placed on them would have been sufficient motivation for them never to make that mistake again.

Once she arrived at the hospital, he knew why he was summoned and his anger vanished. He remembered her as the woman who fell from her roof. The patient before him now bore little resemblance to—who was it? Yes. Tess White. He saw the tension on the sheriff’s face and remembered the concern Conant had when she fell.

“I’ll stay, thanks.”

The doctor flipped through the series of test results and reports on the medical chart he held in his hand. “We had to raise her body temperature with regulated flow blankets before we put her into surgery.” He was referring to the large, rectangular ‘blankets’ that were really a series of plastic tubing with warmed saline solution running through them. The temperature of the blanket could be closely controlled, enabling the medical team to gently raise the body temperature of a hypothermia victim.

“The good news is that she’s shivering. That’s her body trying to generate heat on its own. The bad news is that the bleeding keeps recurring because she’s shaking so badly. We’ve had to sedate her. We’ll know more later.”

“Thanks. Good night, Doctor.”

Dr. McCarthy closed the chart and left to attend his next patient. As soon as Michael was permitted, he entered the ICU and sat by Jessica’s side. A nurse came in, adjusted the temperature on the blanket, assessed the patient with a critical eye then left as efficiently as she came. He did not move for hours.

A light sleep crept over him. The sounds of the hospital were muffled in the early morning hours. He heard Jessica stir and leaned over her, taking her hand in his as he did so.

It was a few more minutes before her eyelids began to flicker. He watched as she tried to open them, then focus. They rolled back into her head.

Finally, they opened and fought for something to focus on. “Jessica. It’s over. It’s all over.”

She closed her eyes and slipped back into unconsciousness.

March 1996

COLLEEN SHAUNESSY-CARILLO
surveyed the surroundings with a keen eye. Sheriff Conant’s home was a brick colonial with chimneys guarding each corner of the house. A small barn and paddock, with weathered wooden rails, stood off to one side. A patch of tulips had sprung up from bulbs planted long before, and the last of the snow was in scattered patches of shady areas along the hillsides. The pasture fell away, leaving a view of quiet countryside green in the warm spring light. She was seated on the small stone wall bordering the driveway and had been at this post for nearly three hours. The wait had given her enough time to reflect on what she had learned over the past months and to mull over her strategy.

Her preliminary research based on tips she received in Boston proved fruitful and she needed to follow them. The first leads brought her to Lainely Smythe. Lainely seemed thrilled just to talk about all she knew about everyone, especially the sheriff. Colleen got the impression that Lainely wanted to be very connected to the dynamic man and would say anything to impart the impression of ‘inside knowledge’.

The additional leads Lainely gave took a few weeks to follow up on completely. Colleen was about to file a story focused solely on the sheriff based upon her conversations with Lainely when two things happened. The first was Electra Lavielle herself invited Colleen up to her home for a little ‘professional luncheon.’ The other was the heiress risking her life to save a little boy lost on the mountain. That story was gripping, current, crisp and it took up a great deal of her time over the last couple of weeks to cover it from all perspectives. The angle of the sheriff and his role in the heiress story and position in town took a back burner—until now.

Electra had tried to steer her off any story about the sheriff completely. Instead of writing about illegal corporations, stolen real estate, mysterious fund transfers, Electra suggested that Colleen should only write about a small town sheriff that earned a lot of money, created jobs in mining and lumber around this economically depressed portion of the state, and donated his bucks to a school for disabled kids and some other minor international causes. A great human interest story, but not one of the dirty investigative stuff Colleen loved to dig up on her own. When further research pulled up nothing more than legitimate deals worth millions, her editors called her off the criminal activity angle until she had something more to go on. They had been sued for libel and harassment on lesser allegations than what she had. She reviewed her notes on her research and the comments of her editors. They gave her a tentative go-ahead for this confrontation, but also a lot of restrictions.

She leapt into action as soon as the pickup truck turned up the long drive. She fumbled with her equipment and turned her recorder on. Her brown eyes brightened with excitement. This was the quarry she had been stalking for a personal interview for nearly a week, and she did not want to waste a minute. Colleen scrambled toward the vehicle, juggling equipment and notebooks. Slowly, the door opened as her prey got out of his truck. His demeanor told her he had a long day.

“Sheriff Conant!” She held out her hand and introduced herself. “You might remember me from Boston?”

“Yes,” he replied evenly, “I do remember you.”

“Nice place you have here. You do pretty well as a sheriff. If you don’t mind, I just want to ask you a few last questions before I leave.”

“You’re leaving? I heard you decided to relocate here since there were so many stories that needed to be told.” Colleen watched as he gave her a large grin and tried to muster up some of the charm that had long since hardened.

She took the comment lightly and wanted to get him to relax. “Nope. Relocation is not what I’m going for. I just stopped by Perc on my way back north. My editors think I’ve covered all the angles on this story and called me home. I have to say that my series of articles on Wyeth was getting me a lot of attention, but when my readers heard about your rescue of her on the mountain, well, they just cannot get enough to read about you.”

He hesitated for a moment. A wry expression crossed his face. “Just doing my job.”

“Some job. And then you had to take a trip for just long enough for my editors to get itchy and call me home.” She strode up to the passenger side of the truck and saw a garment bag with the telltale airline luggage tags still on them. “Shea’s memorial service?”

“Excuse me?”

“The luggage with Logan Airport tag stubs. Shea’s funeral was kind of rushed so his staff used the past few weeks to put together a memorial service and scholarship dedication. Did you go?”

She watched his jaw muscles work as he grit his teeth. “Yes, as well as other business.”

“Your passport’s on the floor, too. You had business that took you to Boston and out of the country? You’re a busy guy.” She looked around a little more. This fishing expedition was proving to be very interesting and she decided upon one last try to dig up dirt on this man’s success. “Why do you want to keep all of your business dealings a secret?” Colleen asked the question as she held a tape recorder up and tried to flip through pages of notes she had written on a small pad. She watched him attempting to keep his face locked in position.

“I do not keep them a secret. My private matters are just that—private.”

He was practiced enough to be concerned about becoming cornered, and would not give her the satisfaction of a retreat or ‘no comment.’ Either one of those tactics would not have played well on the evening news and would have given her more reason to pursue him.

“Mrs. Electra Lavielle stated that you and she were business partners on several matters. Why would you want to hide behind a woman of such substantial means?”

The question was artfully phrased and he looked at the aggressive reporter from the side of his eye. “Excuse me? I’m sorry. I must be tired and can’t understand your question. Could you elaborate?”

Colleen took the hesitation as a sign of weakness and focused in on her target. “Mrs. Lavielle told me off-the-record that you anonymously donated large sums of money to the Franklin School. Why not just give the money directly yourself and ask that your name not be used?”

“Is this what you are referring to as my ‘business dealings’?” His look told her more than she was able to understand.

“Donations to the Franklin School made by you through Electra was one of the things I was referring to.”

“It seems that anonymity has a way of leaking out in a small community.”

“So you created shell companies with silent partners and used your position as sheriff to locate people desperate enough to sell their property for nothing?”

“That’s quite a theory. Do you have proof of that?”

Colleen grimaced. “Not yet.”

Michael stifled a laugh. He nodded his head in the direction of her car.

“I don’t want to keep you from your editors. Good-bye, Ms. Shaunessy-Carillo.”

“It’s amazing no one saw you while you were in Boston,” she said as she placed herself in his path. “I was assigned here and couldn’t go to either Shea’s service or the other funeral.”

“The funeral?”

“Yeah. I guess that old coot Magnus Connaught died too. Did you go?”

“What? Oh, no. No need to.”

“Some say it was suicide. Others said his medication made his heart give out or something like that. It’s all very hush hush.”

“I guess that’s the end, then. No more defendant. No more case. No more story.”

“Too bad. I hear that assistant of Shea’s, Abbey Somebody, is a real go-getter and would have nailed him to the pillars. Now she’s after some homeless guy for related charges.”

“Good for her. Now, if you don’t mind, I’d like you to leave.”

“The timing’s amazing, don’t you think?”

“Excuse me?”

Colleen watched his face for any clue of nervousness or deceit. His unmoving mask told her she was hitting nerves, but was not keeping him off balance enough to get him to talk. She just had a sense that there was something really big here but that she was missing the mark. Aware that the window of opportunity would close if she did not come up with something soon, she decided to take the pin out of the grenade and launch a final round of questions. “The IRA resumed their bombing campaign in London last week. I guess that means the cease-fire is officially over and any hope for reconciliation and peace among the parties is pretty well dashed. Magnus died after the explosions in London happened. And, you were somewhere, too.”

Michael’s eye flicked quickly away then back to lock on hers. “Look, I’m tired of this fishing expedition of yours. There’s nothing to gain from wild speculation. There’s no news here.”

She leveled a cool gaze at Michael and refocused her attention on the questions. Her ear cocked in his direction and she eyed the amount of tape whirling around the recorder. There were a lot of things that did not make sense and she listened for any cues that may give him away. Instincts told her to keep after him. Editors told her not to pursue anything that would get them sued. She brought the interview up to safer ground. “For the record, I want to hear again how you found Jessica.”

“Keep me talking, is that it?”

“I can either print that you were nervous and belligerent when I attempted to interview you or you can talk to me about being a hero. Your choice.”

“Then you’ll leave?”

“Then I’ll leave.”

Michael embarked on his practiced response. “The night Jessica did not respond to any more of our radio hails, I spent in the ranger station. I knew at that point what the search was going to be like. People expressed a lot of concern about the search, and I had no choice but to suspend it because of the storm. I used the time to go through every piece of equipment in the station.” He hesitated for a moment. Not all the details were known about what happened on the mountain. An edited version of the search would draw out what Colleen knew without seeming to blunt her questions.

He continued reciting his response. “I learned two things. The first was that all transmitters used by the park rangers and my department for searches were of a universal frequency. All rescuers are equipped with transmitters in case of emergency. Anybody with a receiver could track motions up to two miles away. Even though we lost contact with Jessica, I could calculate how far away she was from the various checkpoints that last reported reading her transmitter. The second thing I learned was...”

He wanted to say that the location of Jessica’s disappearance was too perfect. The killer knew his prey and it was clear that the plot from the beginning was for the search to have horseback teams deployed along the worst terrain. Jessica was the only one around who would be brazen enough to take on that mountain alone. Once he figured out who was behind this, he poured over the maps to determine where the killer was plotting his ambush. He could not tell anyone what was going on because it was personal. He could not say that he used Jessica as bait to find Magnus’ aide just as the boy was used as bait to find her. Michael did not say any of this.

Instead, he finished his sentence with, “I didn’t realize what I was getting into until it was too late.”

The garment bag was retrieved from the back of his truck and he began to walk up the stone steps to his home. Colleen kept pace as he continued his story. “I grabbed my pack and snow shoes and headed that way alone. After the tension created from others being out in the storm, it wasn’t feasible to ask anyone to go with me or even tell anyone where I was going.” Again he paused. There was no way he would risk anyone else’s life but his own. “I took a snowmobile as far as I could and ‘shoed in the rest of the way. I made good time, the whole trek took a few hours. About two hours before I found Jessica, I saw Gapman, the horse she was riding. It was pretty easy to follow his trail directly to her. I put my transmitter on an alternate frequency hoping...” He caught himself before saying too much. What he was about to say was that he was hoping the killer would not do a sweep with his own receiver since he already had his prey. He concluded his thought, “hoping that another frequency would aid in the search efforts. It did. The helicopter found us on the far side of the ridge.”

“That’s it?”

She watched as Michael tried to keep his posture as relaxed and open as possible. The expression on his face was willed to look approachable, interested. “That’s it.”

“With all due respect, Sheriff, that’s a lot of crap and you know it.”

“I really don’t think you want to be recorded talking to me like that.”

“Look. I’ve cooled my heels here for over a week waiting to talk directly to you. Not one person in this town is giving me the straight scoop as far as you’re concerned, and that includes you. The search was a hoax from the beginning and no one seems willing or prepared to tell me why. The papers around here print your word like it was gospel. I would think that when a hoax endangers numerous rescue volunteers, mangles one and kills another, all hell would break loose with people trying to find out the truth. Instead, they all shrug and tell me how happy they are that they live in a community where people pull together.”

“Why keep digging for a story if there isn’t one? They answered your questions. Be happy with that.”

“I don’t have to dig too far. That ‘rescuer’ died from two bullet holes, not a fall down the chasm. The bullets are from a gun the same make as yours. I had to pay dearly for that information and my hunch is that you shot him. Why you shot him I don’t know yet. The coroner is terrified to talk to anybody about the identity, or lack thereof, of the man. Wyeth was too experienced a mountaineer to get that debilitated in such a short period of time, and stab wounds don’t just happen. No one seems concerned that Mrs. Saunders called in a hoax lost child and now she and the boy are nowhere to be found. Now then, would you like to tell me again what happened on that mountain or do I need to cultivate a few more sources?”

Any civility the sheriff possessed disappeared with a wintry stare. She suddenly wished for a winter parka to ward away the chill.