Dangerous Depths (19 page)

Mary and I went in to see Elyse. She did seem
better—some animation in her face, and when I took her hand, she
moved her fingers.

“Come on back, Elyse,” Mary said.

“I’m worried,” I whispered to Mary. “I know
you don’t think anyone tried to kill her, but what if you’re wrong
and I’m right? Snyder’s spent the past few nights here for me, but
the stakes will get a lot higher when the news gets out that Elyse
will pull through. If it was Jergens, he could be ruthless enough
to come back and finish the job. And what about Jilli? She’s just
up on the next floor.”

“If someone wanted to hurt Elyse it wasn’t
Jillian. You’re grasping at straws, Hannah. Come on. I’m going up
to see her. You can give her the news about Elyse and evaluate her
reaction for yourself.”

Mary punched in her code and we were buzzed
into the unit. I sat in the lounge while she spent some time alone
with Jilli. The TV was on but no one seemed to be watching it. A
couple of patients were sitting in the corner playing chess.

Finally Mary signaled from the hall and I
walked with her back to Jillian’s room.

“I’ll let you two visit while I look in on a
couple other patients,” she said.

Jillian was sitting cross-legged on the floor
near the window, a book opened across her knee. She looked up and
smiled when I went in. She looked good. The tension that had marred
her face was gone.

“Hi, Jilli. Whatcha reading?” I asked,
sitting down beside her and leaning against the wall.

She held up the book so I could see
it—
Little Women
. “Mary gave it to me.”

“You doing okay here?” I asked.

“Yeah. This is a good place. I feel safe. But
my parents want me out. My dad still thinks he’s going to have me
on a plane to that school on Sunday.”

“Do they know you don’t want to leave the
hospital?”

“Yeah, but my dad says he knows best and that
I’m just being coddled and no wonder I want to stay. It’s not like
that though. We have group sessions every day, and counseling.
Sometimes it’s real hard to talk about what you’re going through.
Sometimes I feel totally alone. But at least the people here
understand. There’s another girl here my age who got abused too. We
talk a lot.”

Finally, she asked about Elyse.

“Looks like she’s going to make it,” I said.
Her expression turned from one of dread to utter relief. She
covered her face with her hands and sighed deeply.

“Wow, that’s good,” she said. Typical teenage
understatement. The kid seemed genuinely relieved. She obviously
cared about Elyse. But still, I wondered whether in a moment of
drugged confusion she had hurt Elyse. Mary thought she knew the
answer. I hoped she was right, because this kid needed a break.

When I stopped at the nurse’s station to be
released from the unit, Jilli’s parents were on their way in. Joel
Ingram gave me a nasty look and walked right past me. I knew Mary
hadn’t told them about the abuse at school. Evidently, it would be
up to Jilli to do it. God knows what Ingram’s reaction would
be.

***

I went home, took a swim with Sadie,
showered, ate and went to the hospital to spend the night. Snyder
had been there the last two nights and he’d started looking a
little haggard. Dunn had gotten on his case when he’d fallen asleep
at his desk. Besides, if someone had tried to kill her, he—or
she—would be back, and I didn’t want Jimmy hurt again because of
me.

The hospital was like a cavern at night. The
day shift was gone and a skeleton crew took over the duties, mostly
there to check on patients every few hours and hold down the fort.
I’d brought a book and a thermos of coffee and planned to settle in
for the night. It would be the green vinyl chair in the corner for
me.

An aid came in with a couple of blankets, a
pillow, and a cribbage board. “Where dat Jimmy be?” she asked,
clearly disappointed.

“Tonight’s my night,” I said. Now I
understood why Jimmy had suddenly started volunteering to stay. She
couldn’t have been over eighteen, tiny and cute, big black eyes,
high cheekbones, delicate features, and a pink uniform.

“Jimmy and me be havin’ a couple classes
together over at da college. We’ve been studyin’ together while he
be here and I’ve been beatin’ him in cribbage,” she said, eyes
twinkling. “How about a game?”

“Love to,” I said.

“Great.” She pulled up a table and chair and
put pegs in the board while I shuffled the cards. Forty-five
minutes later, I’d learned she was working on her degree in biology
and wanted to become a physician’s assistant. She lived at home,
had two brothers and a sister. She was the oldest. Her father owned
a barber shop over on Challwell Street and her mother was a
seamstress.

By the time the game ended, she’d out pegged
me on every hand. The girl was a shark. Poor Jimmy. He’d have to
scramble to keep up with this one.

“I be at the nurse’s station if you be
needin’ anything,” she said, packing up the board and gently
closing the door when she left.”

I positioned the pillow in the chair and
curled up under the blankets. No raspy mechanical breaths echoed
off the walls now that Elyse was no longer on a respirator. She
simply breathed peacefully. I sat there, trying to figure out who
to whisper thanks to that Elyse would live. Lots of people would
thank God, but I tend to avoid anything that smacks of
religion.

I’d spent my grade school years being taught
by women in black habits and kneeling in church every Sunday
morning. I didn’t mind it, didn’t question it. That’s what my
family did. I still miss the tradition sometimes and the sense of
belonging. But I’d given up any notion of redemption one sunny
Saturday morning when I’d watched a little girl die on the
sidewalk, chalk still in her hand, her blood spilling over the
outline of the yellow tulip she’d drawn. I just couldn’t see how a
God could let that happen.

I fell asleep thinking that the best concept
of God that I could muster was one that resided smack in the middle
of each of us, and then dreaming about Sister Edinia, my seventh
grade teacher. She’d slapped me on the wrist with a ruler and left
a welt.

***

I don’t know what woke me. The dream? A
noise? A change in Elyse’s breathing? My eyes shot open. I was
alert but confused. The room was pitch black, only a slice of light
at the bottom of the closed door. Then I heard it. Someone moving
in the room. As my mind cleared and my vision focused, I could just
barely make out a figure standing beside Elyse’s bed. Too big to be
the petite nurse’s aide. A man’s build.

He hadn’t registered my presence. I probably
looked like a pile of blankets on the chair in the dark corner. I
remained motionless, waiting to see what was happening, who this
was. He just stood there, looking down at Elyse. What the hell was
he doing? It became clear this was no doctor or nurse bending over
Elyse, checking her pulse or listening to her vitals. I was out of
the chair in one swift motion, grabbing him from behind. He reacted
quickly, shoving me backward into the wall, hard. A sharp pain shot
up my rib cage and the air rushed out of my lungs. Then he slammed
a fist in my face, and I felt reality slipping away.

***

I don’t know how long I’d been unconscious.
When I opened my eyes it was black. I was stunned and confused.
Then I heard shuffling, and I realized I was sitting in that vinyl
chair, my hand in something sticky, my body covered with the
blanket.

I yanked the blanket off just as the man
headed out the door.

“Elyse!” I leaped to her bedside and flipped
on the light. Her breathing was labored, raspy, hardly there at
all. I jammed my thumb on the call button, and waited, it seemed
like hours. Finally, they came, two nurses burst into the room
followed by a doctor.

Now I was just in the way. A nurse ushered me
out, banishing me to the other side of the door. I knew Elyse was
fighting for her life in that room. Hell, I wasn’t going to just
stand there.

“Did you see that man?” I asked the young
aide, who was running toward me, looking frightened and
confused.

“I heard the noise. I saw him go down the
stairs.”

“Call the police,” I hollered back as I
headed to the exit sign. I half hobbled, half slid down the stairs
after him, barely registering that the stickiness in the chair had
been blood—my blood—and probably accounted for the severe pain at
the back of my skull. All that was important was that I could still
move. I wanted this guy. A sickening dread filled my chest, an
image of Elyse upstairs barely alive.

I raced out the door into the hot night. I
heard an engine roar to life, then tires squealing on the pavement.
I ran across the lawn to the lot and caught a glimpse of a
taillight through the trees as the car disappeared.

But this wasn’t the big city. There were only
so many roads this guy could go down. He was headed up the main
road west toward Frenchman’s Cay and the end of the island. I
fumbled in my pocket for my car keys, grateful they were there,
jumped into the Rambler and went after him.

I took the sharp turn out of the parking lot,
the car fishtailing on loose gravel. Once on the highway, I pulled
my .38 out of the glove compartment and placed it on the seat
beside me.

I pushed the pedal to the floor and sped down
along the waterfront, the Rambler maxed out at about eighty-two,
the speedometer needle quivering. I was gaining though and finally
the taillights appeared, a dim glow up ahead. At Sea Cow Bay, the
car took a hard right and started up into the hills, the road
twisting, and rutted. And dark.

By the time I took the turn, the lights had
disappeared around the next bend. I was climbing towards the ridge
and the high point of the island. Once at the top, the guy could
drop down to Cane Garden Bay on the other side of the island or
continue along the ridge to the east. He could also decide to pull
onto any one of the dirt turnoffs that lead to people’s houses or
just dead-ended to nowhere.

The Rambler was no match for the car in front
of me. The lights were getting farther and farther away and when I
made it around the next curve, he was gone. I kept going, hoping to
catch a glimpse of the car. At the top I stopped, pulled onto the
overlook, and stepped into the gravel. I could see the harbor
lights on the south side of the island twinkling below and the soft
glow of lights through trees of the occasional village or home that
dotted the hillsides. But I couldn’t see any headlights moving down
the other side, and nothing on the straight road to the east.

Where the hell had the guy gone? He had to
have pulled off somewhere. I had probably driven right past him. I
jumped back in the Rambler and started back the way I’d come.
Either the guy had pulled off and was hiding down one of the gravel
driveways, or he was speeding back down to the main road. If that
were the case, he was probably all the way back to Road Town by
now. I drove slowly, shining my flashlight down each of the
driveways as I went and turning down several that seemed more
suspicious. I knew that at this point, finding him was a long shot,
but it was the only one I had.

Each drive was as deserted as the last. An
occasional dog barked in the distance, and eyes glared yellow in my
headlights—cats, mongooses, creatures of the night. I saw a light
down the next drive and drove to the house, where a man stood on
the porch in his robe. I got out of the car and identified myself
as a police officer. He was not pleased. He said he’d been awakened
by the neighbor’s dog and come to check.

I took the next turn and headed up another
driveway. When I got to the end, there was no house, no dog
barking, and no car. I turned the Rambler around and headed back to
the road. Just as I pulled out, a car screeched out from under a
stand of thick trees not ten feet back. He came up fast, lights
blinding in my mirror, and slammed into the back of the Rambler. My
first thought was Jergens, swerving past me the other day. I braked
and wrapped my fingers around the .38.

This was a game of chicken that the driver
had every intention of winning. He cut into the other lane and
slammed his car into the side of the Rambler, hard. I never got a
shot off as the .38 skittered to the floor. I managed one quick
glance at the car, an indistinguishable figure at the wheel, as my
tires left the road, and the car sped past. I held on for the ride.
It was short. The Rambler slowed in all the thick undergrowth, then
came to an abrupt halt against a gumbo-limbo tree.

I made one attempt to restart the Rambler.
When I turned the key, the engine made a grinding sound and gave
up. I grabbed my gun and scurried back up to the road, praying that
the guy would come back.

My foot had barely struck the pavement when I
saw lights bouncing off a nearby hillside—car lights coming up the
road and just about to appear around the bend. I scrambled back
into the ditch, stretched out on my stomach, and propped my gun
between my hands, my elbows firmly planted in the dirt. I took
careful aim at the driver’s side and waited, intent on taking my
best shot. I had every intention of killing this guy.

I could feel the muscles in my forearms
cramping, my fingers tightening around the trigger. The car was
moving way too slowly. It was still several yards away when a light
flicked on from the driver’s side, a focused beam that swept across
the terrain and directly above my head. The perfect target. I took
aim and waited.

Milliseconds before my finger pressed the
trigger, I recognized the car and its driver. Dunn.

I climbed to my feet and stood by the side of
the road, the tension draining from my body. Dunn unfolded his huge
body from behind the wheel, stepped to the pavement, and walked
toward me, his face contorted, eyes troubled. I pressed my palms
against my ears.