Whiplash

  "Ah, maybe."

  "You've got a really nice smile, nearly as nice as your butt."

  "What? My-oh, well, thank you, but again, Erin, that's the morphine talking."

  "Hmm. You mean I won't like your finer points when the morphine is no more?"

  "I, ah, well, I don't know."

  "I might, you know. What are you going to do if I still like those gorgeous white teeth of yours and those big feet?"

  "I'll smile at you a whole lot with my bare feet up on the coffee table."

  "That was really smooth, Bowie," she said, and closed her eyes. "You're a great dad. Georgie does nothing but brag about you. I keep telling her you're just a plain old garden-variety sort of dad, but she won't have it. That's quite an honor."

  "Yes, it is, and nice to hear." He waited just a moment, to see if anything else outrageous would come out of her mouth, but she was still again. "Now, Erin, don't go under again just yet. Try to remember, did you see who was in that car?"

  "Nope. Hey, wait a minute. Even though the windshield was darker than usual, I remember I didn't see anyone in the passenger seat, yes, I'm sure of it. There was one guy driving but I didn't see him well at all. Rental cars don't have dark windshields, do they?"

  "I doubt it, but we'll soon see." When he punched off his cell a minute later, he said to her, "Agent Cliff will check it out. Okay, now, it's time-"

  "Georgie told me you liked Krissy but she wasn't a keeper. Georgie said she didn't think there would be any keepers for you since you really loved her mommy and then she died and your heart broke in two. Is that true?"

  "What? Georgie said that?" He was beginning to believe Georgie didn't keep any thought from Erin.

  She could see he didn't want to answer her, sensed a deep, longtime resistance, but then he said, "No, it isn't true."

  "I think morphine is the greatest stuff. I can say anything I want and it doesn't seem to matter and you can't get mad at me because I'm down and out."

  He laughed.

  "Georgie's got talent. Any dancers on your side? Was her mom a dancer?"

  "No, Twinkle Toes is all on her own, genetically speaking."

  Sherlock came running into the room. "Erin! I heard your Hummer exploded. The nurse told me you'd be all right, but I want to hear it from you."

  "I'm okay, Sherlock, really. I'll be down for a while. It's a burn on my back, but you know, I'm a fast healer, so say a couple of days and I'll be good to go again. Don't worry."

  "She's also loopy from the morphine so don't take it seriously when she tells you your hair is glorious."

  "Of course I'll take it seriously." She patted Erin's arm. "Dillon said you loved your Hummer more than he loves his Porsche. Let me tell you that's not possible."

  "I loved my Hummer a whole bunch," Erin said, and squeezed her eyes closed. Sherlock studied her too-pale face, her eyes trying for bright but clouding over from the drugs, and slowly nodded. "I'll make it a tie then, okay? Now, tell me what happened. Don't leave anything out."

  Sherlock never said a word until after Erin had stopped talking and closed her eyes. She looked limp and exhausted. "Thanks to Mom, who nagged at me for a solid three months, I got good health insurance last year. I've got good insurance on my Hummer too."

  Bowie said, "Thank God for mothers. Tell me your company and I'll handle it, both your medical and your car."

  Erin sighed. "Bowie said he'd help me find a new Hummer, but even if it's pale blue, it just won't be the same thing."

  "Dillon's Porsche got blown up a while back, just like your Hummer. He's got a new one, looks exactly the same, but sometimes I see him looking at it, all sorts of wistful, and I wonder if he's thinking about his old baby. When I asked him about it, he said time heals all wounds."

  "I sure hope he's right," Erin said.

  Sherlock stood back while Bowie stepped close, pen and notebook in hand, to take down all the insurance information Erin remembered. As she looked at Erin's vague drugged eyes, she realized the suspicions she'd had were inescapable, all the seemingly random points connecting right up. Had Bowie made any connections from everything Erin had let drop?

  She smiled at him when he left the room to deal with hospital administration.

  "You've got the neatest hair, Sherlock. Bowie's right, it's glorious. The color is like the Olympic flame."

  "Thank you."

  Erin grinned. "All those curls, I'll bet Dillon thinks you're edible."

  "Edible? Hmm, now that sounds interesting. Erin, as much as I like hearing Ms. Morphine pay me compliments, it's time we talked." Sherlock pulled a chair close to the bed and said very quietly not three inches from Erin's nose, "I know you're right in the middle of this, Erin. The fact that someone tried to kill you today clinches it. It's time for the truth. I don't want to give whoever is behind this another chance to kill you."

  Erin felt the velvet fist behind the words. She whispered, "You can't know-can you?"

  Sherlock said matter-of-factly, "You've dropped lots of things since we've met. You also tend to speak before you think. With you, if one really listens, everything is right up front."

  Erin shut her eyes. "It's true, I have the biggest mouth. I always have. My dad would say my big mouth was fine by him, I couldn't get away with anything."

  "Does Georgie beat you at poker since everything you're thinking troops right across your face?"

  "Haven't tried poker with her yet. You know, I lied once to a boyfriend in college, and you know what he did? The jerk laughed at me. It was so depressing."

  Sherlock waited.

  Erin felt fatigue wash over her, both fatigue and an overwhelming sense of failure. "I can't tell you, Sherlock, since he's a client. It's confidential. I'll have to speak to him first, see what he says."

  "Since you were nearly murdered, it seems to me this client's answer should be obvious unless he's in this mess up to his eyeballs, unless he knows who's behind the attempt on your life, or unless he's the one who tried to kill you."

  "He's a very nice man, but it's all very complicated. I'm in so bloody deep. I'll probably go to jail."

  Sherlock lightly stroked her fingers over Erin's pale cheek. "Don't be dramatic, it'll be okay. Believe me, nothing's simpler than the truth. Spit it out. We'll deal with it, trust me."

  "No, Sherlock, I simply can't, not until-"

  "Until you speak to your client who's a professor at Yale University?"

  "See? A fine example of my big mouth, but you've got to let me talk to him myself."

  "You really should tell me now, Erin, so we can clean this mess up without your getting killed in the process."

  Erin wished the morphine would knock her out again, but it didn't. She was even feeling some mild throbbing in her back. It wasn't fair. "Can I have more morphine?"

  "Yes," Sherlock said, and left her to speak to the nurse.

  Half an hour later, Sherlock and Bowie were sitting side by side watching Erin sleep the peaceful sleep of the drugged.

  "Well, damn and blast," Bowie said. "She'll have to tell us soon, Sherlock."

  "When she wakes up, I'll get it out of her. I'd rather have the truth when she's alert and willing."

  But what could Erin possibly know? Nothing important, he was sure of that. "Are you going to tell me what you think she knows?"

  "No, let's wait."

  36

  MERRITT PARKWAY REST STOP

  Thursday afternoon

  Caskie Royal zipped up his pants, walked to the rusted sink with its dulled mirror, and stared at a face he hardly recognized. In only four days, fear had leached the color from his skin, and his jowls looked pale and saggy. He looked ill, terminally ill. That thought brought a ghastly smile to his face.

  He was afraid, more afraid than he'd believed possible ever since that woman had broken into his office on Sunday night. He'd asked himself over and over how she'd known about the Culovort files, but he still had no clue how she'd known or why she'd copied them or who she was, but the
n again, neither did any of those agents who'd been stomping on him ever since. Was she a cancer patient? Or maybe it was her husband who was the patient? There were scores of patients very unhappy with him and the company since the Culovort shortage began, but still, that didn't ring true. If someone had merely wanted to make the papers public, why didn't the newspapers, or even the FBI, already have them? If she was a blackmailer, why hadn't she called?

  He shook his head at the stranger in the mirror. Nothing made sense anymore. He had no idea if she was the one who'd murdered Blauvelt, not that he cared.

  Caskie started to wash his hands. He turned on the warm water faucet, but the water was cold. He pressed down on the soap pump and lathered up, automatic after all these years. Jane Ann had nagged him to do it since the day he married her. His wife. He wasn't about to worry about her now, but his boys, Chad and Mark, were another matter entirely. How could he protect them? Protect their future? He felt a shaft of pain deep in his belly. It wasn't indigestion, it was grief.

  Caskie knew he was going to be sucked down into the swamp where all the hungry alligators waited. Unless he was real careful, he'd end up in jail, or dead. Who would have thought that any of this would end up as anything more than a fine for the company at worst, maybe an early departure for him as CEO if it all hit the fan. If he'd thought jail was a possibility, would he have turned all this down? Maybe, he thought, sure he would have. No one in his family had ever gone to prison. He wasn't a young man any longer, he wouldn't be able to protect himself from all the predators in prison and he knew the predators were there, everyone knew that.

  He turned his head slowly from side to side as he watched in the mirror. No, he thought, honest in that moment, the thought of jail wouldn't have deterred him. There was so much money, quite a lot of it already in his private accounts in the Grand Cayman.

  What he'd done, it hadn't been all that bad. Just look at what those clowns at Pfizer had finally been nailed for, they'd deserved the huge fines. They'd deserved prison too, but that didn't happen. Fines for criminal behavior, not jail. Wasn't that a kick?

  The party's over, he whispered to the deathly-pale face. The coffin lid was inexorably closing over him. He'd escaped for the moment to the men's room in the rest area, Toms with him at first, but Toms, who'd hummed while he'd peed, had finished and left. He hadn't washed his hands. Had he come back? Was he waiting outside the door? He wouldn't put anything past him, the bastard.

  They'd told him, not asked him, to sit on the backward-facing rumble seat with Toms, facing Bender, Dieffendorf, and Gerlach. He'd tried to act dignified, tried to act the consummate CEO.

  Dieffendorf hadn't bought it. He disliked Dieffendorf, always had, but the fact was, he hated Werner Gerlach now, hated what was in his eyes every time Gerlach looked at him. It was his own death he saw there if he couldn't convince them to trust him. And he saw in those eyes that he had failed. Caskie was nothing more than a pawn to Gerlach, he knew it to his soul. Gerlach had always been a priggish little man, barely five-foot-six in his elevator shoes-pathetic, really, when he wouldn't stop bragging about his sexy young wife, Laytha. What man in his right mind would want to be married to a woman younger than his daughter? Did she talk about getting zits? About going to bars and listening to music Gerlach hated? Caskie wondered whether Laytha cost Gerlach so much in maintenance that Gerlach had no choice but to keep coming up with new schemes to make more money. He had to keep up with Laytha's new shoes. He was brilliant at market strategies, at innovative ways to get around rules, and was endlessly greedy. Caskie supposed he'd recognized himself in Gerlach the moment the two men had met five years ago.

  Gerlach and Dieffendorf had known each other forever, it seemed to Caskie, had run Schiffer Hartwin for close to twenty years now. They had always shown a united front to the world, just as now, the second in command accompanying Dieffendorf to face the latest battle.

  Yet they couldn't be more different.

  It was odd, Caskie realized, but he was as afraid of Dieffendorf as he was of Gerlach, and Dieffendorf didn't even have his guard dog Blauvelt to solve all his problems any longer.

  Caskie saw Dieffendorf's calculating, emotionless eyes staring back at him in the mirror. He could still hear his accented voice as he'd said, "I sent Helmut here to get to the bottom of this Culovort shortage you have helped to create. He was coming to see you for explanations yet you claim you didn't see him, Mr. Royal. Is this true?"

  "Yes," Caskie had said, his voice steady, the ring of truth bright and shining. "I did not see him. He was murdered Sunday night. I was to see him Monday morning."

  Gerlach said, "And you were busy Sunday night, were you not? With your current lover, I understand. And thus you say you could not have killed Blauvelt. I hope your family is holding up under this painful scrutiny. It must be especially difficult for your boys. Their names are Chad and Mark?"

  "Yes, they are holding up well. They don't know anything. I thought that was best." Message received, Caskie thought, loud and clear.

  He looked at Gerlach's small hands clasped together in his lap. Caskie hated to shake his hand, the skin was dry and hard, desiccated like his face, like his soul. Gerlach crossed and recrossed his legs, showing off his Italian loafers with their nearly two-inch lifts.

  As the limo cruised smoothly east on the Merritt Parkway, Dieffendorf said, "I must tell you, Mr. Royal, when I was informed you had arranged to shut down the Culovort production in Missouri without consulting me, I was not happy, but I was not overly concerned since the drug doesn't add much to our bottom line. But when the plant in Spain went down recently-due to sabotage, mind you-and it became clear that worldwide supply of our drug Culovort would dry up completely, well, suddenly what you'd done took on a new significance. Would you agree?"

  "It was very unfortunate, more than unfortunate, tragic-but no one could have anticipated that, Mr. Dieffendorf."

  "If you know nothing about that, Mr. Royal, can you tell me why you left such detailed information about the effects you anticipated from the Culovort shortage in the United States on your computer? Did I make a mistake in hiring you, Mr. Royal?"

  Caskie sat forward, hands clasped between his knees, just the right note of sincerity in his charming voice, "I cannot tell you how I regret I did that, sir, but you see, no one is allowed in my office except my assistant and even she doesn't know my computer password. But this woman, she managed to-"

  Dieffendorf interrupted him smoothly as if what he was saying was not worth spit, "Is there anything as yet to point to the identity of this woman who broke into your office?"

  Caskie shook his head. "I know the FBI are trying very hard to find her."

  "Helmut would have located her by now." Dieffendorf sighed. "How I miss him. To hear he was murdered in such a brutal fashion, I cannot comprehend who would have done such a thing. Do you know, Mr. Royal?"

  "I have no idea, sir. I wish I did. Evidently it was close to the time the woman broke into my office. Perhaps she was involved. Like I said, the FBI is looking hard for her."

  Dieffendorf said slowly, "I am not certain I want the American FBI to find her. What would she say? I am here, Mr. Royal, to ensure that Schiffer Hartwin does not suffer from your negligence. I have promised the family that I will discover everything that is going on here and fix it. Do you understand me, Mr. Royal?"

  Gerlach said, "Actually, Adler, the FBI doesn't need to find her to have the axe fall on the company's head. She has but to give the papers over to the media. I sincerely hope she plans to blackmail us instead. What with the unfortunate sabotage of the Spanish plant, the hungry media here would crucify us. Isn't this correct, Mr. Royal?"

  Caskie nodded dumbly. He thought about grabbing a plane to South America, getting lost in Patagonia.

  Dieffendorf said, "Mr. Bender tells us you are thinking about speaking frankly to the FBI, Mr. Royal. May I ask what you would say to them?"

  The spit dried in his mouth. Caskie shook his head, back an
d forth. "No, Mr. Bender is quite wrong. I would never do that, never."

  Caskie saw from the corner of his eye that Bender would speak, but Dieffendorf raised his hand to keep him silent.

  "I really am curious what you would say if you decided to speak to them."

  Caskie ran his tongue over his dry lips. "Listen, sir, no one was more shocked than I was to hear about the closing of the Spanish plant. I owe my loyalty to Schiffer Hartwin, my livelihood, you know that. I've worked for you for five years now, five excellent years."

  "I found myself wondering why on earth it would be important to anyone to have a major shortage of such a simple drug as Culovort. It didn't take long to think of the CEO of Laboratoires Ancondor, the paltry unethical little hypocrite who produces the oral cancer drug Eloxium. Do you know Monsieur Renard? Did you perhaps make a deal with him? Stocks and cash in exchange for help cutting off our Culovort production, and forcing our patients to his high-priced oral drug?"

  "Sir, I have never met Monsieur Renard." It was the truth, he thought, but still, his armpits were wet. Could they smell his sweat?

  "If I discover that you have been lying to me, Mr. Royal, I will make a call. You will find yourself wishing for Helmut Blauvelt's tender mercies. Do you understand me?"

  "I understand," Caskie said at nearly a whisper. "I am guilty of nothing, sir, except bad luck. Our plant in Missouri will be much more profitable once our production problems are behind us. The papers on my computer, they were an exercise in thinking outside the box, something you encourage, nothing more."

  Dieffendorf slowly nodded. "Schiffer Hartwin will see to that, Mr. Royal." It was then that Caskie looked for the final time into Gerlach's eyes.

  Caskie washed his hands again, stared at himself once more in the old mirror over the ancient sink, maybe to reassure himself that he was really here, and not the ghost of a man who would shortly be dead.

  He knew what he had to do. He had to get home, gather his passport and some cash and his private bankbooks, and disappear. This rest stop was in the boonies of western Connecticut, thick woods all around, and very few people. He could get away here, but not through the restroom door, Toms or Bender might be there. He had to do something else. He looked up at the windows, not small like the window in his office bathroom, thank God. He judged the distance from the floor, wondered if he was strong enough to pull himself up.