The Edge

  “Wh-what?”

  I thought Laura was going to pass out. She turned utterly white and leaned at the last minute against a white wall, barely missing a mirror with a brightly colored frame. She was shaking her head slowly, back and forth. The thing was, I wanted to comfort her, to hold her and pat her back. I wanted to bury my face in that long straight hair of hers.

  “Squawk.”

  She looked wildly over at Nolan and spread her hands in front of her. “No, you’re making that up, Mac. Jilly told me she was a housewife, that she didn’t have a single skill. I always just laughed at her when she went off on those self-bashing kicks of hers. She was so very beautiful, you see, and she had this natural confidence that made everyone respond so eagerly and positively to her. She was bright, well spoken. I can’t believe it. A scientist? A master’s degree?” She looked suddenly as if she was going to cry. She was still shaking her head, her hair swinging. She looked shaken and confused. It couldn’t be an act, I told myself. No one was this good.

  “I was sleeping all evening, all night. I was alone. Why did Jilly lie to me?”

  I said, “Paul told me there was no party at all last Tuesday night, the night of Jilly’s supposed accident. He said that they ate dinner alone. He said that Jilly left at nine o’clock to drive around in her Porsche and he was in his laboratory, working.

  “He also admitted, finally, that he hadn’t slept with you, that he’d wanted to but you weren’t interested.”

  She looked like a blind person, feeling her way along the back of two chairs until she finally collapsed onto a section of the sofa. She lowered her head to her hands, her hair falling forward. “This is crazy,” she whispered through her hands. “I don’t understand any of it.”

  “That makes two of us. But the fact remains that Jilly is gone. Vanished.” I had to attack straight on, I thought, whether I liked it or not. “I want to know where she is, Laura. I want to know how you convinced her to leave with you. I want to know how you managed to get out of the hospital without anyone spotting you.”

  She looked up at me, eyes focused and hard. Her voice was fierce. No more shock or palpitations out of her. “Listen up, Mac. I didn’t lie to you, about any of it, the party included. I told you I had to leave early to give Grubster a pill. If there turned out not to be a party, that has nothing to do with me or with what Paul and Jilly told me.”

  “Where is Grubster?” I asked, looking around. Who would have a cat around when Nolan was sitting quite at his ease on the back of a chair, looking at my coffee cup?

  She shook her head as she rose from the sofa. “Now you don’t even believe I have a cat.” She left the living room. I heard her light steps up the stairs. When she returned a couple of minutes later she was carrying a huge tiger-striped cat. “This is Grubster. As you can see, he likes his food. He weighs eighteen pounds. He doesn’t move very quickly, unless it’s a matter of food. He’s nearly eight years old. He just looks at Nolan and yawns. Sometimes they just have staring contests. Sometimes Nolan even deigns to sit on his back and dig around behind his ears with his beak.”

  “Squawk.”

  Laura looked over at the bird. “Come here, Nolan, and say hello to Grubster.”

  The cat yawned and curled up next to Laura on the sofa. The mynah bird hopped from chair back to sofa section until he was finally looking down at the cat. Grubster cocked an eye open and regarded the bird with complete indifference.

  “Would you like some more coffee, Mac?”

  I just nodded, staring from Grubster to Nolan. Someone was hanging me out to dry. Someone was playing a very big game with me and I didn’t have a notion yet about the rules. I didn’t know where the game left off and reality kicked back in. I also had no clue where Jilly had gone. Laura’s claim that she’d had a bad headache and slept throughout the night was a good one, one I couldn’t check out.

  Laura handed me a new cup of coffee. Steam was snaking off the top of it. I took a sip. It was delicious. Maybe she’d tossed in a dash of Amaretto. I drank some more, trying to get my brain back on track. She handed me a chocolate chip cookie. She couldn’t have known they were my favorite. I ate two, to help soak up the dash of alcohol in the coffee, then said, as I watched her drink her own coffee, “When you were at Jilly and Paul’s last Tuesday night, what did you do after dinner?”

  She took another drink of her coffee. “Very well. There were just the three of us. I got there about six-thirty. Jilly wanted fish. Paul made a salad, spinach, I think. I sliced and garlicked some bread. We ate, then listened to some music. Jilly and I even danced a couple of numbers. Paul drank a good bit. Jilly knew I couldn’t stay late because I had to work at the library the next morning and because Grubster needed meds. She told me that some other people were coming, but later, so I’d have to meet them another time. We’d have another party in Edgerton real soon, she said.”

  I leaned forward in my chair. “Is this the truth, Laura?” She remained silent for a long time. I sipped more of my coffee, watching her.

  “There’s more, isn’t there?”

  She looked down at Grubster and began to scratch behind his ears. I could hear the cat purring from where I sat.

  Finally she nodded. “Yes, there is more. I really don’t want to talk about it, but Jilly’s gone, and I know you won’t be happy until you know everything, even if it doesn’t have anything to do with what happened to Jilly.” She sucked in a hard breath. “When Jilly went to the kitchen, Paul grabbed my breasts and pushed me down on the sofa. He started kissing me, tried to shove his knee between my legs. Then he heard Jilly call out something from the kitchen, and he jumped back away from me. He was breathing real hard. I looked at him and told him he was a creep.

  “When Jilly came back to the living room, I made up the story about Grubster needing medication earlier than he really did. I just wanted to get out of there. I didn’t want Jilly to realize what her precious husband had done, the jerk. She adored him. She worshiped him. She wanted to have a kid with him. God, it was awful.”

  “And you never got the impression that Jilly was more than an infertile housewife?”

  She shook her head, mute. “No. Neither of them ever said anything to make me believe what Jilly had told me wasn’t the truth.”

  “Them’s all the facts?”

  “Yes, them’s all the facts, the whole truth. I swear it.”

  “All right. Tell me, Laura, what kind of fish did you have for dinner?”

  “Fish?” Her face was blank. “I don’t particularly go for fish, so I really didn’t pay any attention. Maybe it was bass, or halibut.”

  She’d gotten the fish right on the second guess. At least the rest of the meal was as Paul had described it to me, whatever good that did.

  I felt suddenly so tired that I couldn’t seem to think two words ahead. It crashed over me, dragging me under. I stood up quickly and began pacing. It didn’t help. I felt like I was slogging through mud.

  “Mac, what’s wrong?”

  I just kept walking around her living room. “I’ve got to go,” I said. I needed to get out of there, breathe in some fresh air. What the hell was wrong with me? That was stupid, I knew exactly what was wrong. I’d been pushing my body too hard and now it was getting back at me. I hadn’t felt this dragging sort of fatigue for more than a week, until now. I knew that I should keep questioning her, but for the life of me I couldn’t think of anything else to ask.

  “I’ll see you later, Laura,” I said and left. I heard her call my name, but I didn’t stop or look around. I heard Nolan give a final squawk toward my back.

  I rolled all the windows down in the Taurus, turned the radio onto a rock ’n’ roll station, and cranked the volume up as high as it would go. I even stopped at a McDonald’s and got more hot coffee.

  I sang “King of the Road,” and when I forgot the words, I hummed as loudly as I could. I couldn’t keep my eyes open. I kept banging my forehead against the steering wheel. Three or four times I wen
t off the road and scared the shit out of myself before I managed to twist the car back. I nearly hit a truck, which would have smashed me six feet under. The sound of his horn zinged through my head. Fear cleared out my mind for a few minutes. Then it was back, this overpowering, brain-numbing fatigue.

  I knew that I wasn’t going to make it back to Paul’s house. I was sweating, remembering how close I’d come to biting the big one with that truck. The hospital, I thought. Yes, I could make it to the hospital. It wasn’t more than six minutes away, maybe seven minutes. I managed to keep the car reasonably in my own lane. Only about half a dozen oncoming drivers honked at me. Finally, disbelieving that I’d really made it, I pulled into the Emergency Room parking area, clipping a bush on the way in. I watched my fingers try to turn the key off and fail. I felt like I was folding in on myself, that whatever strength I’d had until this minute was gone. I just let go because I didn’t really have any other choice.

  Odd, but I heard a horn blasting in my eardrums. It was the last thing I remembered.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Mac. It’s time for you to wake up. Come on now, you can do it.”

  I didn’t want to move. I didn’t want to open my eyes. The voice came again, low and insistent. I recognized that twangy voice vaguely, and I hated it. It made my head ache. Finally, I managed to get words out of my mouth. I said, “Go away.”

  Twangy Voice said, “No can do, Mac. Open your eyes. Let me see that you’re alive.”

  “Of course I’m alive,” I said, pissed now, wishing I could lift my arm and punch the voice out. “Just leave me the hell alone.”

  I heard the man speaking to someone else. “Slap his cheeks,” a woman said. It was Mrs. Himmel.

  Smack the man—that was a woman for you. “No,” I said. “Don’t hit me.”

  “He’s coming around,” Twangy Voice said, and I swear I could feel his breath on my skin. Skin? What did that mean? I felt something cold touch my bare chest. I didn’t have my shirt on. How did that happen?

  “Vitals are stable,” another man said. I didn’t recognize his voice at all. “Yeah, he’s coming back now.”

  It pissed me off even more that this damned stranger would stick his oar in.

  “Mind your own business,” I said. “Nobody asked you.”

  Twangy Voice chuckled. “It will take him awhile to get back to normal. Just give him a few more minutes. He’s coming out of it just fine.”

  “Yes,” I said. “Go away.” Then I opened my eyes and stared up at Dr. Sam Coates, Jilly’s doctor, Mr. Twangy Voice.

  “Ah,” he said, smiling down at me. “You’re back. Can you understand me, Mac?”

  “Yes, I can understand you. What’s going on? What are you doing here? Where’s my shirt?”

  “It seems you managed to drive nearly into the Emergency Room itself before you collapsed. You smashed down the horn with your forehead. There were a dozen nurses, orderlies, security, patients, and doctors with you within two seconds.”

  I remembered the loud noise. The horn blasting in my ear. “I’ve been pushing too hard, haven’t I? My body’s angry at me and finally just shut down?”

  “Paul told us you’d been in a terrorist attack out of the country, and in the hospital until very recently. But no, this had nothing to do with any relapse. Actually, you had a high level of phenobarbital in your system. You’ve been out of it for about three hours now. Once we guessed the problem, we began treating you, but this kind of thing takes time. You’re going to feel groggy for a while.”

  I thought about the likely treatment and nearly turned green. “Tell me you didn’t pump my stomach. I saw that done once and nearly puked.”

  “Sorry, Mac, we had to. We didn’t have a choice. But hey, you were unconscious. We also put some activated charcoal in your stomach. There’s still some flecks of black above your mouth and a bit dried on your chest. Pretty gross, but it soaks up all the poison. Don’t worry about the IV and the oxygen. That’s just in case something goes wrong. We’ll keep them in for a while longer. Does your throat hurt?”

  It did hurt. I nodded. My brain was finally kicking in again. “I was drugged, you said? With phenobarbital?”

  “Yes. No one’s suggested yet that you were trying to kill yourself. Who gave you the drug, Mac?”

  I looked up at Dr. Coates, then over at Mrs. Himmel, whose face was shocked and still, and at a man I didn’t know. “Well, damn,” I said.

  A few seconds later, Dr. Coates knew I was very much awake because I had his wrist in a vise as I said, “This is important. The cops need to get to Laura Scott’s house in Salem. That’s where I was this morning. She may have tried to kill me.”

  Dr. Coates wasn’t a young man, but he could move fast. He was out of the room in a flash. Mrs. Himmel patted my hand. “You’ll be all right now, Mac. Oh, this is Dr. Greenfield, he’s the one you told not to butt in.”

  I looked at a skinny older guy who wore a thick black beard and sported a green and white dotted bow tie. “I’m alive,” I said. “Thanks.”

  He said, “Your body’s still not fully recovered. That must have been some terrorist, er, incident.”

  “Yeah, an incident.”

  “You’re young and strong, Mr. MacDougal. You’ll pull through this just fine. I’ll leave you in good hands.” He turned on his heel, gave Mrs. Himmel a little salute, and left.

  “He’s our resident guru,” Mrs. Himmel said. “Now you just rest, Mr. MacDougal. Why would this woman try to kill you?”

  “I don’t know. I drove to Salem early this morning to speak to her. I’d like to think she had something to do with Jilly’s leaving the hospital last night, but I didn’t find out anything. I drank her coffee, then got really tired. I left.” I wanted to cry or howl, I didn’t know which. How could I have been so wrong about her?

  “You almost didn’t make it back, Mac,” Dr. Coates said, coming back into the hospital room. “Why didn’t you just pull over and go to sleep?”

  “I didn’t think of doing that, for some reason. I just thought about getting back. I guess I was blurry because stopping wasn’t an option in my mind.”

  “Well, you made it back. Some of that road you were driving is tricky enough when you’re not drugged to the gills.”

  “A truck nearly got me and the adrenaline surge bolstered me up for a few minutes. I was singing, shouting, anything to keep myself awake. I just couldn’t go over a cliff in the car, like Jilly. I had to make it back.” I drew a deep breath. “All right, what about Laura Scott?”

  “Detective Minton Castanga will get back to us as soon as they get to her house and find out what’s going on. I got him when I mentioned the words attempted murder and FBI agent all in the same breath.”

  “She could be long gone. If she wanted to kill me I don’t think she’d hang around.” Then I thought that if Laura had done it, she’d go to prison. I wondered: In prison for what? What has she done? It had to be something bad enough to make her believe she had to kill me.

  Dr. Coates said, “As to that, there’s no way to know if her intent was to kill you, unless she’s caught and admits to it. You had a butt-load of the drug on board, but you probably would have survived the dose even without us. Your blood level was never that high, and you were never really unstable. They’ll have to find her and see what she says.”

  I shook my head as I said, “I just don’t think they’re going to find her. She’s a very smart lady. She won’t be there and they’re not going to catch her.”

  Dr. Coates listened to my chest again and Mrs. Himmel took my blood pressure. Then he said, “Oh, I nearly forgot. Dr. Paul Bartlett was here, pacing and upset, until finally we got him to go home. I’ll call him and he can bring back the sheriff and some of your other friends who were trying to pile into your room. Maggie did tell me she was going to call the FBI and tell them what happened.”

  “Oh, no,” I said. “I don’t suppose you tried to talk her out of that?”

  If Maggie
did call the FBI, she would have gotten my supervisor, Big Carl Bardolino. I looked at the phone beside my bed. I didn’t see much choice now. I made the damned phone call and got put on hold by his secretary. Big Carl was a man I respected, a twenty-five-year veteran, a canny team player but not a yes-man, and I really didn’t want to talk to him about this.

  “Yeah? Is this you, Mac? What the hell’s going on? I get this call from a sheriff out there in boondocks U.S.A. telling me about your getting yourself poisoned.”

  “Yes, sir, that’s why I’m calling. I wanted to let you know that I’m fine. The local cops are on it. No need to worry.”

  “Damnation, you got yourself involved with a woman, didn’t you? How many times have I told you young people that you’ve got to be careful about letting your hormones go on a rampage and getting you compromised. Or should I say poisoned?”

  “Yes, sir, you’ve told all of us that at least half a dozen times. That isn’t exactly what happened.”

  “Yeah, right. I can hear the truthfulness in your voice. You’re a lousy liar, Mac. How many times have I told all of you that only vigilance conquers lust?”

  “At least half a dozen times.”

  “Right. And none of you ever listens. I’m fifty-three years old, thankfully beyond all that sort of thing, but you’re not. You’re supposed to be on leave. You’re supposed to be taking care of yourself, not getting poisoned. How are you feeling? How’s your sister?”

  “Well, she was in an accident and she’s okay, but she’s out of the hospital right now, and I’m not sure just where she is. I’m sorry the sheriff called you. I really don’t think the drug I took was meant for me. There really wasn’t any need to call you.”

  “Mac, I’m going to ream you if you get yourself hurt, you understand me? The FBI is a team, not a bunch of hotdoggers doing their own thing.”