Authors: Michael Palmer
CHAPTER 49
'Nicely done, Doctor,' the man said. His voice, low-pitched and gravelly, was one she had heard before, in the parking lot of the Sperelakis Institute. 'We knew you had it in you. Serves that nasty man right for messing with you. Now, come along quietly. We're headed out the back way.'
Thea could tell he was tall, though not as tall as Dan, and strong. She struggled and tried to bite his palm, but his hand easily controlled her as he pulled her through the MRI unit and out an emergency exit. The main entrance to the unit—the Grigsby entrance—was on a spur off the central tunnel. This emergency exit brought them out into an older, less well maintained, less well lit portion of that same offshoot.
Thea remembered this area of the tunnels. They were still on B-1, the uppermost underground level, but there was a stone staircase straight ahead, screened off by a padlocked metal accordion gate, that led down to a series of narrower tunnels on the B-2 level, and below that, the true subterranean passageways of B-3. On the B-2 level on either side were storage areas used primarily for older equipment— rolling carts, tray tables, bed frames, and gurneys—all on standby in case of a mass disaster. Farther down the B-2 corridor was a freight elevator made partially of wood, and probably dating back to the time of the father of the modern elevator, Otis, in the 1800s.
Thea shook her head violently, and the man loosened his grip. She had little doubt that he was Gerald Prevoir, who had surprised Dan outside the ICU, and whom Dan had been able to track to a seaside town in Delaware. If she was right, then he was also likely the man who had killed Albert Mendez, Dan's street-smart private eye.
Prevoir was dressed as he had been when Dan stopped him in front of the ICU—in orderly whites. The difference this time was that, from what she could see, his hospital ID seemed to be in perfect order, including the photo and the name Elliot Smolensky.
'No screaming,' the man said.
A deep breath, a plea with herself to stay alert and focused, and Thea felt her pulse begin to drop. She was allowed to take a step back. Prevoir was, in fact, tall. He was in his thirties and looked and felt absolutely solid. His jet-black hair was carefully trimmed, and his dark brown eyes were soulless. He wore a diamond ring of several carats on the little finger of his right hand.
'Why did you do that to him?' Thea asked, motioning back toward the MR I suite.
'What else does one do with a liability but get rid of it? That's the very essence of the insurance industry. Liability? Cancel the policy. The simplest rule in all of business—two words that pave the way to riches. Liability? Cancel. That was Hartnett behind the wheel of that truck, you know.' I wasn't sure.
'And when he called you about meeting him at the MRI unit, he thought he was baiting a trap for you. Instead, it was us—
we
—who were baiting the trap for him.'
'Bravo for you. Who's we?'
'Besides, the real question to be asked after such a magnificently imaginative piece of work is not why? But how?'
'I don't care,' Thea said. 'That was a terrible way to die.'
'So would drowning in that car have been.'
'I wouldn't know. It didn't happen. Boasting about killing is small and insecure. I watched teenagers do it all the time in Africa.'
Pre voir ignored her.
'You see,' he went on, 'the magnet has very little pull beyond six feet or so, but very intense pull inside four. Make that very, very intense. Hartnett was unconscious with a surgical mask on, and tied to that wheelchair when I brought him down to the MRI room. First I lashed his wrists to the machine with rope, and then I just flipped the chain over his arms from three feet or so, and voila. The magnet did the rest. You should have seen it—a perfect toss. If nobody turns off that magnet, he'll be there for all eternity.'
'Where's Dan? You've got him, don't you.'
'He's a pretty sharp guy, but I think he was distracted thinking about hooking up with you at one. That was his undoing.'
'I want to see him.'
'All in good time, Doctor. All in good time.'
'Now!'
'Setting up the wheelchair to roll toward the magnet when you opened the door was sheer genius, don't you agree? All it took was a mop handle—and of course, you.'
'If it was genius, you must not have been the one who figured it out.
Without a hint of warning, Prevoir grabbed her hand and twisted it until her wrist was close to snapping. Thea cried out despite her determination not to.
'Watch your mouth!' he snapped, releasing her only after an additional twist.
She glared at him and shook the circulation back into her hand. In that moment, she knew that there was no way in the world that this man was going to let her live. Silently, she prayed that Dan was still alive. It had been foolish of her to set foot inside the MRI suite when he didn't show up at one. She should have known better, although with Prevoir just a few feet away in the darkness, it really wouldn't have made any difference.
Prevoir removed the padlock, which he had apparently left unlocked in the closed position. Then he slid the gate aside, closed it again behind them, replaced the lock from inside, and guided her down the stairs clutching the back of her blouse. The hundred feet leading to the elevator featured a well-worn cement floor and un-painted stone-and-brick walls, heavily caulked over many decades with concrete, and illuminated from overhead by incandescent bulbs. To their right, labeled with a hand-painted white B, was a storage hall full to the ceiling with rusting stretchers, and looking as if it might not have been visited in months, if not years.
'The strobe was pure theater, wouldn't you say?' Prevoir was rambling on. 'Scary, distracting, hypnotic. Made you curious, huh? Made you not think about that pole.'
Thea cursed herself for being sucked in as she had been.
Gullible.
Dan had said he was glad she was gullible.
Nonsense!
She began concentrating on the situation and the man, searching for a way, any way, to get an advantage—to hurt him or, even better, disable him. His arrogance and confidence were her biggest allies. They had almost gotten him caught by Dan outside the ICU. He wore a snub-nosed revolver in a holster beneath his left arm. If she could only get at that…
The narrow corridor was damp and cool, with a distinct odor of mold. Twenty feet or so before the elevator was a second storage area, not nearly as full as the previous one. A white
A
was crudely painted on the wall outside the entrance. Suddenly, from somewhere inside that space, she heard Dan.
'Hello? Anyone out there? Help. Help me. I'm in here.'
Thea broke free of Prevoir and rushed into the century-old space. Dan was on his back on a rusting metal gurney, tied in place with clothesline across his chest and ankles. He was naked except for his underwear, and had been badly beaten—especially across the face and the chest. His eyes were swollen, and drying rivulets of blood coursed from both nostrils. His lower lip was split down the center, and both his nipples were macerated and discolored. A pair of pliers resting on the gurney suggested how that was accomplished.
Thea held his face in her hands and kissed the bruises enveloping his eyes.
'Why'd you do this?' she screamed at Prevoir. 'Why?'
'Many reasons,' Prevoir said calmly. 'I needed to know how our friend learned about me, for one.'
'Because you were stupid, that's how!' Dan cried hoarsely.
Prevoir, with his hands still gloved, punched him in the face, snapping his head to one side and creating a dense spray of blood and saliva that traveled several feet.
Thea recoiled from the viciousness of the killer's assault. Dan seemed to lose consciousness temporarily, then was exceedingly groggy. In that moment, Thea spied something that impacted her own consciousness, and stuck. It was the opening to a narrow staircase that ran from this level down to B-3, the deepest bowels of the old hospital, three stories below the ground. A prison? An armory? A place of torture? A hiding place for treasure? She could only guess. The stairway was dark and narrow, and from what she could tell, steep. The walls were sheer stone. No railings. If she could somehow start the killer falling, there would be no easy way for him to stop.
'I'm losing my patience with both of you. I have questions that need answers. I either get them from you or you each get to watch while the other gets hurt. As you can see, not only am I adept at inflicting pain, I enjoy it.'
Thea cast about Storage Area A for a weapon of some sort, but saw nothing except the pliers, and Dan's belt, which was lying on the floor with the rest of his uniform. He had a heavy flashlight and a nightstick, but there was no way she could see to get at them.
What about one of the gurneys? Could she shove one against Prevoir hard enough to do damage or send him down the stairs? There would certainly be some irony to that given the way Hartnett had been murdered, but it was doubtful she could get Prevoir in the right position, and loosen one of the rusty stretchers without making him aware.
It had to be the pliers.
In the time it would take a neurotypical person to remember facts in a book she had read a short while ago, Thea's mind flashed through dozens of varied volumes, looking for some sort of idea, some sort of plan. What she found herself focusing on was a book called simply
Rape,
written by a karate man named Jeff DeLott. Thea had read it for a women's self-defense course some years ago.
The situation may not present itself often, but one of the most vulnerable areas of a person is the backs of their knees. If you can somehow get behind a potential attacker, directly or at an angle, an unexpected block or kick to that area will cause the quadriceps muscles on the other side of the leg reflexively to relax, and the man will go down like a stone, long enough for you to turn if you are still standing, or to scramble to your feet, and run. If the blow is solid enough, count on dropping your attacker a hundred percent of the time. BUT HALF MEASURES WILL AVAIL YOU NOTHING! Your strike must be fearless, powerful, and precise.
Thea saw the words and the accompanying photograph as if they were etched on her mind. She bent over Dan and kissed him again, slipping the pliers into the pocket of her slacks, and testing the ropes that held him, which were not that tight. Dan moaned at her touch, and she thought he nodded, but otherwise he showed little reaction.
Burning for revenge, she approached Gerald Prevoir. The image in her mind was of the coquettes and charmers she had seen in the movies. Although role-playing had never been one of her strengths, she felt her best chance was to get him off guard and distracted—to say something that would shock him, something seductive. If she tried taking a line from a movie, he might recognize it. Her best chance was just to open her mind and improvise.
'Mr. Prevoir, could I talk to you over here for just a minute?' she asked in a kittenish voice, pulling her shoulders back the way she had done in front of her bedroom mirror before her first evening with Dan.
'I'm running out of patience,' he replied, following her to a spot right in front of the stairs. 'I want cooperation from you or he's in for an enormous amount of pain.'
'Please! Don't hurt him again. I'll tell you what. If you promise not to hurt him anymore, I promise you can have anything you want from me.'
'What?'
'I said if you want to, you can have it all. Everything.'
She gestured the length of her body for emphasis.
'I heard what you said. I'm just not at all sure I know where you're coming from.'
'I'm coming from right here, and you can have me. Right on one of those gurneys if you want. I mean it. Let me just talk with him and I'll answer any questions you have and do anything you want.'
She turned toward Dan and glanced back just as the killer looked away from her.
Fearless
… Powerful… Precise.
Thea withdrew the pliers and with all her strength threw them over her shoulder and down the stairway. The clatter echoed off the stone like a Catling gun. Prevoir whirled to the sound, and was instinctively reaching for his shoulder holster at the moment Thea dove at the backs of his knees like a football blocker. His legs collapsed just as the DeLott book promised they would, and he pitched face-first onto the steeply angled stairs, tumbling down into the darkness like a puppet. The sound of his head hitting the concrete below reverberated up the stairwell.
Then there was silence.
CHAPTER 50
Thea scrambled to her feet, ready to fight, ready to run. The narrow stone stairway was so steep, and the base so enfolded in darkness, that she could see nothing of the man she had just sent tumbling to the bottom. For a few moments, she held her breath and listened. The only sound she could hear was Dan's sonorous breathing coming from behind her. She hurried over to him, ecstatic to share her news.
'Hey, you, big guy, can you hear me? It's over. It's over.'
She kissed him softly on the lips and gently took his hand. His body was even more battered than she had first appreciated—especially his nipples—but none of his wounds seemed mortal.
'Dan, it's over, let's get you up and get out of here.'
She untied the knots holding him to the gurney and cradled his head, searching for any signs of neurological injury.
'Thea…'
The sandpaper word was accompanied by what might have been a grin.
She kissed him on the lips again.
'Oh, I'm so glad you're not dead,' she said, as excited as she could ever remember being. 'I would have really missed playing with you. Let's get out of here. This is a very bad place. I'll explain everything on the way to the ER or… on the way to get an ice cream if you want. You look like you could use an ice cream.'
Dan blinked up at her.
'Where's Prevoir?'
'He had an accident when I pushed him down the stairs over there.'
Dan gritted his teeth and tried to pull himself up.
'I want to see.'
Thea tested the strength in his hands, then checked his neck for tenderness and, finding nothing of concern, helped him to sit.
'We can come back after someone has had the chance to look you over. After being injured people have a lot of extra adrenaline shooting around that can mask some pretty serious—'
'Thea, he came up behind me and threatened to kill the first three people we saw if I didn't come quietly. Then, down here, he forced his gun inside my mouth and made me strip and lie down here. I need to see for myself what happened to him.'
'It's very dark down there.'
'I have a flashlight in my belt. Grab it and, just in case, my nightstick, too.'
'Promise to let me bandage you up and kiss you where you're hurt?'
I promise.
Thea retrieved the heavy flashlight and the short, stubby nightstick, and guided him to the head of the stairs.
Behind them, in the darkest corner of the storage area, the figure who had been crouching behind several carefully placed gurneys lowered his gun, but otherwise remained motionless. He had been there watching and listening since Prevoir arrived with Dan.
Dan fought to support his weight without help.
'I can't believe I let the bastard do this to me,' he said.
'You had no choice. There were lives at stake.'
'Just the same…'
At the top of the stairs, there was still no sound from the darkness below. For the first time, Thea wondered if perhaps Prevoir had gotten to his feet and continued along level B-3 to wherever the tunnel went. The passageway down to B-2 had been blocked by a padlocked gate that the killer had managed to open, just as he had the doors to the MRI unit. Could he have done the same to a gate down there in the darkness?
Dan switched on the flashlight, and in seconds they knew the answer. Gerald Prevoir, his orderly's whites bright within the gloom, lay motionless on his back at the base of the stairs, one leg folded awkwardly beneath the other, his arms spread out to each side much as Scott Hartnett's had been.
Following Dan carefully down the stairs, Thea was a third of the way down when she noticed the odd angle of Prevoir's head. They were another third of the way down when she saw him take a breath, and almost at the bottom when she realized his eyes were open. Dan shined the light directly into the face of his nemesis. The killer's breathing was labored and shallow, but it was steady. A grunt accompanied each exhale. Aside from the rise and fall of his chest, he displayed no movement whatsoever.
Fracture or dislocation of thefourth cervical vertebra,
Thea guessed.
Possibly the fifth.
Before she could do anything, Dan had reached down and, making no attempt to keep from jostling the man, snatched Prevoir's pistol from its holster and stuffed it into his pants pocket.
'Just in case,' he said.
He took a step back and allowed Thea to take his place.
'Can you move at all?' she asked, kneeling beside Prevoir, but careful not to jostle him.
'No,' he replied suddenly, his voice weak and rasping. 'Can't move… at all… Neck hurts.'
'Don't try to turn your head. It looks like your spinal cord may be damaged. Trying to move your head could just make things worse.'
'Kill me.'
'What?'
'Don't… leave me… like this… Shoot me.'
Every breath was an effort.
'Who paid you to do this to us?'
'Don't know… name… Just met for… first time.'
'What did you have to do with all this?'
'Can't move… Pain… Hard to breathe… Kill me, please.'
'Tell me how you were involved and we'll consider it.'
'Negotiated contract… with enemies of patients.'
Thea stared at the man in disbelief.
'You mean a contract like a Mafia contract? Someone paid to make sure the patients didn't survive their chemotherapy?'
'Yes… Please.'
'Dan, these people came into the hospital for diseases they didn't have, and some of them were killed for money in what looked like a reaction to their experimental chemotherapy or to their nonexistent disease. They were all on borrowed time anyway, so no one was that surprised when they died.'
'And those who survived gave bunches of money to the Beaumont out of gratitude.'
'Exactly,' Thea said. 'Prevoir, was Hayley Long one of those contracts? Was she supposed to die?'
'Yes… I can't move… Kill me… Kill me…'
'Prevoir, where is she? Where is Hayley Long?'
'Don't know. Van took her away.'
'So, which do you think would be worse,' Dan asked Thea, 'killing him or leaving him?'
Thea didn't answer. She was absorbed in examining the man's laminated hospital ID. It included an employee number that was close to her own and a photograph that looked as if it were taken just hours ago. Something must have been wrong with the ID he had worn the last time he and Dan crossed paths, otherwise Prevoir would have trusted it. Had it been this ID, Prevoir would have had no problem allowing Dan to check it over, and in all likelihood, Petros would be dead.
'Dan, look at this ID,' she said. 'It's just about perfect—as perfect as my driver's license. You know, I hate what I'm thinking, but I wonder if—'
'You know what?' a familiar man's voice boomed from the stairs above, reverberating down the stairwell. 'You were always too smart for your own good, that's what.'
Dimitri leaned casually against the ancient wall, a heavy pistol dangling at his side. He was absolutely dashing in a tweed sports coat, slacks, polished shoes, and a dress shirt, and looked like a corporate executive on a holiday. Thea recalled that he hadn't been this neatly dressed at their mother's funeral.
'You know,' Thea said, standing and turning to face her brother, 'a couple of times I thought briefly that you might have been involved in this business. But each time I decided no. You know why?'
'That cartoon,' Dimitri said simply. 'The one I made showing why Father's accident couldn't have been accidental. You think you're the only one in this family with an off-the-chart IQ?'
'No, Dimitri, I never ever thought for a moment that I was as smart as you.'
'I sent you guys in the right direction by suggesting that the hit-and-run was premeditated. By right direction, I meant away from me, of course. The police say accident, I say murder. How clever is that?'
'He thought he was clever, too,' Thea said, gesturing down at Pre-voir.
'You were too much for him, sis. Outfoxed him, you did. That you-can-have-anything-you-want bit was magnificent. All he was thinking about was what it might be like making the beast with two backs with you. I swear, he didn't know if he had lost a horse or found a rope. Then boom, right behind the knees. Brilliant and tough. A true Sperelakis.'
'Dimitri,' she said, 'I've always been on your side. Please don't hurt us.'
'Oh, you don't have to worry about me hurting you—at least not for the moment. I need your help, sis. Yours and the big guy, here. And you know who else needs your help? Your sweet, cancer-free friend, Hayley Long, that's who. Do everything I say and she lives. Cross me and she'll learn what it's like to die—not of cancer, but of dehydration and starvation. First, though, I believe we have a bit of unfinished business. Too bad my little company doesn't have any workman's comp.'
Without moving a step, Dimitri raised his pistol to his hip in a line that would take its bullet inches from Thea's cheek, and from twenty feet put a single shot into Gerald Prevoir's forehead, just above the eye.