Devils cure, p.33
Devil's Cure, page 33
Kevin looked back along the side of the bungalow. A small square of frosted bathroom glass was lit up now, one of the panes slid open just a notch. He stepped closer, paused to one side, his staccato heartbeat churning up his empty stomach.
He could hear a little. Water running in a sink. The squeak of the faucet being stopped. Then something hard hit the floor. A curdled silence, then a low, inarticulate sobbing that sounded as though it was being muffled through a handtowel. Even so, it was increasing in pitch, and Kevin recognized the sound of terror. His damp hand closed around the grip of his Glock.
He ran back to the front of the house and threw his weight against the door. Three brain-jarring slams with his shoulder and he still wasn’t getting anywhere. He fired a shot into the lock, stepped back, and kicked like hell. The door splintered open and he was inside, his whole body ablaze with electricity.
“This is the FBI! If you need assistance call out now!”
The only light was the spill from the streetlamp through the open door, and, down the main hallway, a vertical slash coming from a door ajar. Bathroom. He moved quickly, pure reflex, eyes trying to take everything in, knowing how easy it would be for him to be shot, some pedantic part of his mind running down the Quantico checklist on securing the room before entering. No fucking time.
Outside the bathroom hallway he kicked the door fully open with his foot and fell back against the wall, gun pointing its accusing finger. A sink bright with blood snapped his eyes to it, and red splotches on the pink fluffy carpet. But no one in the room. Jesus.
He turned his face almost directly into the knife’s path, but instinctively jerked his head back. Not quickly enough. No pain, only a seeping wetness across his left cheekbone, eye suddenly awash. But he could still see her, blood shimmying down her own slashed forearms as she came at him again with the carving knife.
Left hand clamped instinctively to his wound, he staggered back and swung the gun up to Gail’s chest.
She stumbled, landing on one knee, the knife jumping from her slick fingers. She patted one puffy hand towards it along the carpet, but Kevin stepped forward, caught the knife behind his heel, and kicked it down the hallway.
“You get out,” she said weakly. “Get out of here.”
She was trying to push herself back into a sitting position, and succeeded in slumping against the wall. Shivering violently, she stared perplexed at her own wrists. In the shadow of the hallway, through the blood in his eye, it was hard for Kevin to tell how deep her wounds were, or whether she’d cut across the veins or parallel. Across, she’d be fine; parallel, there was a chance she might bleed to death.
He took several steps back and pulled out his cell phone and called 911.
“Get some towels and wrap up your wrists!” he told her, but she just sat there. He wanted to check his own face but didn’t want to step past her to get to the bathroom. Even weakened, she was big enough to topple him if she threw her whole weight against him. He looked at his left hand, awash with blood, and put it back over his cheekbone, pressing hard.
“Shit,” he muttered. “Gail! Get up!”
She seemed to be asleep. He snapped the handcuffs off his belt, planted his feet wide so she couldn’t pull him off balance, and started to manacle her. Stirring sluggishly, she made a halfhearted attempt to push him away. Both loops snapped into place. With relief he saw the slashes were across her veins, slowly pulsing blood. He backed up, blinking to clear his vision.
Behind him, a darkened doorway. He put his hand around the corner and flipped on the light switch. Took a peek. A bedroom. Bed near enough the door that he could dip into the room and snatch a couple of pillows. He’d started pulling off the pillowcases for bandages when his attention was pulled up above the bed.
A large painting hung there, and even though much of the face dropped down grotesquely like ribbons of flayed skin, it was obvious it was a portrait of David Haines.
On the photographic paper: three parallel columns of DNA fragments, arranged by length into ladders.
Rachel.
David Haines.
Sean.
Laura sat hunched at her workbench, staring.
A child got exactly one half of each parent’s DNA. Every fragment of DNA Sean had should be traceable back to one of the parents. There shouldn’t be a single piece unaccounted for.
She scanned it into the computer, and then did it herself by eye, twice, just to make sure.
Then she turned off the lights of the lab and went home to sleep.
CHAPTER TWENTY
HE SAT DOWN BESIDE HER BED ON THE ONLY CHAIR.
“I want a lawyer.”
“You’ll get a lawyer, Gail, that’s no problem. As soon as we get you into the lockup, there’ll be one waiting for you. You don’t have to say anything until then. But there are a few things I want to tell you.”
The hospital staff had bound her wounds and tethered her forearms to the siderails. Outside the door stood a security guard. In the corridor, a nurse had told him that Gail had contemptuously refused a unit of blood, as well as painkillers and antibiotics. Seeing her there on the hospital bed, her skin sickly pale but livid and swollen around the eyes, withered blue lips, Kevin pitied her, even though she’d tried to slash his face just a few hours ago. He’d been lucky: all he’d needed was twelve stitches and a tetanus shot. Less than an inch higher, the doctor said, and he’d have lost his eye.
Gail wouldn’t look at him.
“It’s not going to go well for you, Gail. We’ve got Dr. Donaldson’s eyewitness testimony. She saw you, she saw your license plate. That’s how we found you. We’ve got the stun-gun, too. Our team’s going through your house. I talked to them just a few minutes ago. Know what they’ve found? Your scrapbook, Gail. The one you started when David was first caught, all the photos and news clippings, and then, on the last page, that little bit of David’s hair, taped down and dated two days after his escape. So we know you were harboring him. Attempted murder, harboring a known fugitive. That’s really serious, Gail.”
He was hardly expecting her to collapse into a tearful confession, but he figured it wasn’t a bad idea to start off scaring the shit out of her. He wasn’t particularly interested in a confession; he wanted more than that. He wanted to know where David was, and to get that, he would have to convince her to betray him—virtually impossible in the short space of time he had.
Looking at Gail, it wasn’t difficult to imagine a life raw with disappointments and loneliness. He felt another pang of sympathy for her. He could see how it must have started. She would have sent him a letter, and David would have seen something, some kind of hunger he could shape. And before Gail even knew it, she’d have sensed her chance to finally be special, to believe in something that would haul her clear of the neglect and derision she’d suffered, and make her part of something rare and glorious and holy. But it was David who held it all in place for her. Remove him, and it would all come down. She didn’t slash her wrists because she’d failed God; she did it because she’d failed David. And feared he was never coming back.
He imagined her own sense of loss—like the aftertaste of the medication he’d taken during his long depression, wondering how many pills he’d have to choke back to escape the terror of his waking hours, forever. If it hadn’t been for his daughter, maybe he would have entertained the whispers in his head, turned whimsy into action. Again he looked at the bandages binding Gail’s wrists, and felt a visceral shudder.
“I know you didn’t want to kill her,” he began. “David’s a very charismatic man, a very smart man, and he gave you something to believe in. I think I know why you wanted it. I can relate, I really can. I’ve spent a lot of my life wanting to believe in something good. When I was younger I joined a group out west, and a big part of the attraction was the chief elder, Elder James. Amazing man, smart, devout. I thought, if a man like that believes there’s something to it … He made me believe, just through who he was. I believed everything. Putting kids in the cellar all night for punishment, okay by me. Beating his five wives, okay too. Jews and Muslims Satan’s ambassadors, fine by me. The plans to take over the whole damn island and kill everyone else just before the end time so we’d be safe—seemed good sense. There was a family there, with two small kids, and one of them, Jacob, got sick, very sick. Elder James wouldn’t let them take him to a doctor, said if they did, they weren’t welcome back. And he died, that little boy, and I thought that was okay, too. Just part of God’s plan. It’s amazing what you can make yourself believe, isn’t it?”
He forced himself to pause, to catch his breath, surprised at the bitterness that had crept into his voice. But he was talking now, unable to stop the hot rush of words.
“I never saw it on my own,” he said. “Know when it finally happened for me? I was driving a van back to the farm one night, the roads were wet, I was tired, and I flipped the van. Broke both my legs. At the hospital, I told them to call Elder James. You know who came to pick me up? My mother. Elder James couldn’t be bothered with me, now that I was laid up. The time I’d take to heal, I’d just be a drain to them, so he wrote me off.”
It was not an admission he made often, even to himself. It seemed to him to indicate a huge weakness of character, but here he was telling it to Gail Newton because … she was a fellow sufferer, a victim like him, and he hoped it might help bring her away from David.
“I trusted him, Elder James, I certainly loved him, and he betrayed me. He wasn’t worthy of all my love and trust, just like David isn’t worthy of yours. ‘By their fruits ye shall know them.’ David’s are rotten, Gail. He kills people. He asked you to kill, and you didn’t want to, not in your heart. I can tell just by looking at you now. And I bet you think you failed him, don’t you. But he’s the one who failed you. He tricked you, used you. And I don’t think it’s fair for you to go to jail while he takes off in your car to Mexico. It doesn’t have to be that way.”
She closed her eyes.
He uncrossed his legs, stood and walked to the foot of her bed, his vision constricting momentarily with fatigue and hunger. “As soon as the doctors say you’re ready to go, we’ll be taking you down to the field office. We’ll take your picture, do prints, and then you’ll be formally charged. You’ll be in a cell in the courthouse until your arraignment hearing. You won’t get bail. After that it could be months before your trial.”
Nothing. Maybe she was smarter than he thought. A lawyer could claim she’d never set eyes on David Haines, that the stun-gun was a weapon of self-defense, that Laura Donaldson was an unreliable witness. That he, Kevin Sheldrake, had trespassed in her home, and she’d slashed him thinking he was a thief.
He looked at her bandages. “You’re right about one thing. He’s not coming back. He’s washed his hands of you. You couldn’t kill for him. You couldn’t even kill yourself. You even screwed that up.”
Her eyes flickered open, filled with hatred. Good.
Kevin forced a laugh from his throat. “Come on, Gail, those weren’t serious cuts. You could’ve gotten take-out and driven yourself to the hospital before you bled to death. You weren’t going to kill yourself. You just wanted him to feel sorry for you. But he doesn’t. He doesn’t think of you at all. He’s not coming back, and why would he? You sheltered him when things were hot, you bought him his rifle, clothes, food. He’s got your car, Gail. He’s set. That’s all he wanted from you.”
He sighed, compressed his mouth into a mask of regret. “I’m sorry, Gail, but you’re going to have to get used to hearing the truth now. He couldn’t’ve cared less about you.”
He felt grimy doing it: for all he knew, David had treated her well, never lied to her, never made her promises. But he had to bet there was at least some deception on his part, and a huge amount of self-delusion on hers.
“You actually thought he’d love you? What were you thinking, wedding bells, a nice honeymoon in South America? A little beach house made of palm leaves?”
“I don’t want to talk to you!” she said.
“You don’t have to talk to me, Gail. I’m doing all the talking. I’m just trying to think of what he’d tell you. Oh, let me guess, that you were beautiful on the inside, and that’s all that mattered, that you had a good soul, that serving God was all you had to worry about, and shouldering your cross as best you could. You fooled yourself into thinking he cared about you, but Jesus, Gail, let’s be honest here. Look at yourself! What would induce him to fall in love with you?”
“You go to hell! Get out!”
Her mouth clamped shut like a cage, chest heaving, face splotched with anger. Kevin made himself count to ten, tried to look contrite, wanting to slam the wedge in all the way, to drive Gail to the point where she’d think: If I can’t have him, no one will.
More quietly he said, “It’s nothing to do with the way you look, Gail, honestly. That’s got nothing to do with it. Being beautiful wouldn’t’ve made a difference. All he wants is to get back to Rachel and his son.”
Her quick wince seemed less pained than genuinely confused, and for a moment, Kevin wondered if he’d misstepped. At once his mind started leapfrogging back, testing the circuitry of his logic. Gail had to be the one who’d impersonated Rachel over the phone. But he doubted Gail had come up with this elaborate fiction by herself: it had to have been fed to her by David, to lure Laura back to the lab. And David would have assured Gail that it was nothing but a story. Now Kevin wanted to make her think it was real. But there was something wrong. Had he fucked up, said too much?
“Come on, Gail,” he continued, as calmly as he could, “he told you about them, but you thought it was just a story, right?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said.
Oh, Jesus, he thought, I think she’s telling the truth. But maybe he was only tripping himself up, misreading her. Because if she didn’t make the calls, who did? He tried to shove it away, not wanting to lose momentum.
He said, “I didn’t know for the longest time either, Gail. Big surprise for both of us, huh? Having a kid with the woman who brought him into the New Apostles.”
Words shoved through her teeth: “You’re a liar.”
“It makes sense, really. They had so much in common, the shared purpose, they were both young, good-looking, fervent. Pretty hard to compete with all that, isn’t it? I guess Sean would be about six now.”
“There’s no son!”
Kevin snorted and shook his head sadly. “There’s more to David’s story than what you clipped out for your scrapbook, Gail.”
“I would know!”
“Think we spill everything to the media? I’ve spent years chasing David Haines. And even I don’t know everything about him. Know what I don’t know? Where Rachel and Sean live. ‘Cause I know that’s where David’s headed. That’s only natural, isn’t it, to get back to the woman you love, your own son you haven’t seen in years? First place I’d go, no matter what, just as soon as I could. Back to the people you love.”
Even as he spoke, he felt his lies taking on an uncomfortable but undeniable plausibility. Gail had fallen silent again, but the last of her restraint had seeped away, and her eyes traveled the walls restlessly.
“Gail, you know you’re going to jail, don’t you? You help us find out where he’s going, and we can help you, make sure you get into a good facility, shorten your sentence, make sure you’re up for parole faster. We can do that for you, Gail, if you give us just a little help.”
She was crying. Good, that was good. A breakthrough. Kevin felt a sympathetic moistening of his own eyes. He pulled a Kleenex and tried to dab her eyes, but she jerked her face away from him.
“I’m gonna be sick.”
He took the kidney-shaped bowl from the table and held it under her mouth with one hand, gathering her hair out of the way with the other. When she was finished, he lifted over her plastic cup of water and slipped the straw into her mouth so she could rinse. He was encouraged by the throwing up. It showed anxiety and dismay at the very least, possibly regret.
“All right?” he asked.
She said nothing, but tears continued to stream down her puffy cheeks. She looked like a heartbroken child.
“Your cat’s fine, by the way,” he told her. “We gave it to one of your neighbors to look after for the time being.”
“She liked him,” Gail said miserably. “David.” And her eyes suddenly screwed tight and she was sobbing.
Kevin sat back and waited, wondering if he should have brought up the goddamn cat. Her nose streamed, and this time, she allowed him to wipe it with a tissue.
“I didn’t want to do it,” she sniffed. “I did it because …”
“You wanted to please him, I know.”
“But I couldn’t. I turned the wheel. At the last moment I closed my eyes and turned away, and when I looked back and saw her moving, I was … relieved.”
“You did the right thing.”
Looking him face on for the first time, she said: “He never told me.”
“Where he was going?”
“About her, and his son.”
And again, he believed her. But if Gail hadn’t made those calls to Laura, then who? The possibilities scrolled out quickly. Another of Haines’s accomplices in Seattle? A bloody-minded prankster? Rachel—the real Rachel?
“I know, Gail, being betrayed is … it’s very upsetting. And if you know anything about—”
“He wouldn’t tell me. He never told me anything.”
“When did he leave?”
“Three days ago.”
“Have you talked to him since he left?”
“Yes.”
