Grounds to Believe (20 page)

W
ith a white maintenance overall covering his clothes in case someone walked in, Ross paced the hospital laundry room. He hated not having his hand in everything to do with a case. Bad enough he’d had to entrust Kailey to Rebecca and dash down here with no warning, once he’d heard about Ryan’s downturn. But oddly, Kailey seemed to like Rebecca, and the woman had been introducing the little girl to the wonders of making peanut butter cookies when he’d left.

Meanwhile, where was Rita? They had too narrow a window to risk any deviations from the plan. He’d seen Ryan himself earlier. Time was running out.

Soft footsteps sounded in the corridor outside, and Rita slipped into the room, closing the door behind her. “Sorry. Swing shift got called into a staff meeting and they always run long.”

“What’s the status?” Ross asked, hands loosely on his hips.

“I saw Julia just now, on her way out. Owen will probably leave in the next half hour or so. He’s been here all evening. My colleague says that Madeleine usually runs down to the machine on the next floor around nine for a snack. That gives us about five minutes to get the sample.”

“Did any of them see you?”

“Of course not,” Rita said. “They know I work here, but I keep out of their way. If anyone discovers I’m working with you, I’ve had it. I hope you don’t plan to stay long.”

“No. Once you get his blood sample, I’ll meet you in the parking lot. It’ll go in the priority courier to Seattle and with any luck, we’ll have some results from Dr. Chang in a day or two.”

“Let’s hope. But tell me something. If they find isopropyl alcohol, it will only prove that someone is poisoning Ryan. How will you prove it’s Madeleine and not one of us nurses?”

Ross nodded in acknowledgement of the risk. “Dr. Chang told me the best way was to catch her at it on video. But I don’t see how we can do that. I’m not going to stand on a ladder and drill a hole for a camera above his bed. Getting the approvals alone could take days. And from the look I got at Ryan a while ago, we don’t have days.”

“He’ll be lucky to make it through the week, if you want my opinion. My colleague says his condition is so fragile that if Madeleine gets to him even once more, it could send him under.”

Not for the first time that day, Ross clenched his teeth and prayed. It was an incoherent jumble of pleading and emotion, but the Father, the all-knowing and all-loving, would translate.

“What are you going to do?” Rita asked when the silence extended past her comfort zone.

“I think we need to bring Archer in to help us.”

Rita snorted. “Get real. He’s in love with her. And he’s true-blue Elect.”

“But if that sample comes back positive, he’ll have to listen. He can’t argue with the facts.”

“Ross, my big leather-clad innocent, the Elect have been denying the facts for a hundred years. Look at Melchizedek and that arrogant prune, Phinehas. They think they’re prophets, leading the people to heavenly glory, when Melchizedek is just an unemployed mill worker named Mitch Duckworth. Phinehas has been running this scam for so long I don’t think anybody knows who he used to be.”

He lifted an eyebrow. “What about the generations of McNeills and the wandering prophets and having the Elder’s position handed down and all that?”

“He’s a wandering prophet, all right. All of them are. They wander right in and start where the last one left off, getting weirder with every generation. Don’t fool yourself. Denial of reality is an art form here.”

Ross thought about the torture in Michael Archer’s eyes at his inability to diagnose Ryan correctly. If Madeleine really had been toying with him for most of Ryan’s life,
imposing her own reality on his and playing a game that pitted her cunning against his knowledge and the authority of the entire hospital system, the effects were beginning to show. And that could just work to Ryan’s advantage.

“I don’t know,” he said slowly. “Archer craves an answer. He feels he’s failing as a man and as a doctor because he can’t come up with one. If we give him that answer, the shock might just push him onto our side.”

“I think it’s a mistake, but this is your show,” Rita said flatly. “Now, I’ve got to get back to work and you’ve got to disappear.”

More than anything, Ross wanted to slip upstairs and watch while Rita took the blood sample, to make sure Ryan was still breathing. Maybe poke around and see if he could find any evidence of what Madeleine was up to. But he couldn’t. He’d looked in and Ryan had opened his eyes for a moment. He couldn’t risk it again.

He pushed open the door to the glassed-in staircase on the outside of the building and began the descent to the ground floor. At the landing, he ran smack into a woman.

“Oops! Sorry, miss, I—”

Julia looked up at him and smiled, as if his mere presence were a gift. Her hair glowed in the last of the daylight like Spanish gold. Longing rippled through him—longing for a warmth and promise that would be chilled forever in just about two minutes, after he’d said what he’d been holding back for weeks. Well, there was nothing left to lose, now. To do his best for her nephew, he had to tell her the last of his secrets.

“I need to talk to you.”

For a moment, her heart raced. Julia took a deep breath and tried to calm her responses to his closeness and the intensity in his eyes. That penetrating look always affected her, and she was too close to coming undone as it was.

“Is Kailey all right? Honest, Ross, I didn’t mean to leave her so suddenly, but when Rebecca told me about Ryan, I had to come. She’s okay with Rebecca, isn’t she?”

“She’s fine. Rebecca’s showing her how to make peanut butter cookies. And probably how to eat them, too. I mean I need to talk to you about your family.”

She had already reached the turn of the stairs, but that stopped her. “My family? Why, did my father call and ask about your intentions, or something?” That was all she needed right now. So far she’d managed to avoid her parents, but it wouldn’t last forever.

“Here, sit down.” He stripped off his white overall and laid it on a step. She did as he asked, his odd tone and hooded eyes preventing her from doing what she wanted to do, which was to touch his forehead and smooth away the frown that seemed permanently lodged there.

He paused a moment, as if trying to choose words. “I need to come clean with you about what I’m doing here,” he began.

She gazed at him curiously. “Here at the hospital? You mean you didn’t come to find me? I might have known.” Her attempt at humor fell flat.

“Not here at the hospital. I told you I was on vacation, taking a spiritual break, and that was true. At the beginning.
But two days into my ride I was called to Hamilton Falls on a case. It involved a group we suspected was abusing its children.”

Surprise stiffened her spine, and she stared at him.

“The guys at the station had me pulled off leave because crimes by small groups are a specialty of mine. I managed to gain entry to the group and began investigating the most current case. This hasn’t been easy for me. I want to get that out on the table first of all. I’ve felt pulled in two different directions since I started, but the well-being of the victims has to come first.”

“But what do abused kids in some organization have to do with my family?”

“I’m getting to that. A pattern became clear in the life of the most recent victim that worried me, so I did a little investigating. It seemed that whenever there was a major event in the family, like a wedding or a graduation or the start of a new job, the child got sick.”

“That sounds like us,” Julia said gloomily.

He paused, long enough for Julia to look up. She felt a prickle of unease. His eyes were gunmetal-gray, the way she’d first seen them.

“Right. Well, in my mind there might be a reason in this particular case. There’s a disorder called Munchausen’s syndrome by proxy where a mother hurts her child to get attention whenever the family’s attention is pulled elsewhere. Ever heard of it?”

“Never.” Goose bumps broke out on Julia’s arms, and she wished he would talk about something else instead of some grisly case.

“I believe there’s a strong possibility the mother in this case has this disorder. And she’s damaged her little boy almost to the point of killing him. I intend to find out for sure, and if I’m right, stop it.”

He seemed to be asking her to think about this, as if he wanted help with it. Julia ran over a list of all the people she knew. Who on earth would have done such a thing in Hamilton Falls? Nothing like that had ever been in the paper. She’d never heard a whiff of gossip. The only thing that came close was—

She stared at Ross in horror. “You’re not saying—you can’t possibly think—”

“I do, honey,” Ross said in a gentle tone. He took both her hands in his. “I’ve been investigating the Elect. It could be that Madeleine has the disorder. There is a very good possibility she is slowly killing your nephew.”

“No.” Even to herself, her voice sounded high and wobbly. “My sister loves Ryan. She’s a godly woman. The Elder’s wife. You must be crazy.”

“Even if I am, I can’t risk it. I need to prove it one way or the other. In a moment, when you get past the shock of all this, I’ll show you how. I’m going to need your help to—”

Julia pushed violently away from him and leaped to her feet. “Need my help?” she repeated. “My help to what?”

“To investig—”

“Do you mean to tell me you’ve been stringing me along all this time? In order to
investigate
—” she enunciated it bitterly “—my sister?”

“To help—”

“Why should I help you when all you’ve done is lie to me? You’ve been using me, haven’t you?” Her voice cracked on the last word.

“Honey, your sister could be sick. If she is, we need to get help for her. And we need to help Ryan.” His voice rose to a shout as she jumped up and bolted down the stairs. “I want you to watch for something. If they’ve put a feeding tube in, it means she could have a fast and easy way to put the poison in his system.”

With a squeal of denial, Julia covered her ears. He caught up to her and gripped both wrists.

“I’m going to make you hear this whether you like it or not. I have reason to believe she might be feeding him isopropyl alcohol. Starting tonight, his condition is going to go downhill fast. When that happens, you’ll know I’m right. Got that? And—”

Jerking her hands out of his grasp, she whirled and dashed down the stairs again, her footsteps loud in the silence. Ross leaned over the rail. “—and I’ll be here, Julia. All night. You look after my little girl and I’ll look after Ryan. Hear me?”

The slam of the outside door was his only answer.

Julia started awake with a gasp, the weight on her chest crushing the breath out of her. The cool dimness of dawn had brightened her room, but the sun wasn’t up yet. She glanced around, reassuring herself with the sight of her dresser, the wicker chair by the window, her books and clothes.

Just a dream.

Ross, Ross, why are you persecuting me? What he’d said at the hospital had shocked her into looking at reality clearly. Now that she’d lost him, she knew how deeply her feelings ran. Seeing him had been like a punch, like a gift, like being whooshed up in the air and then dumped back down by the knowledge that the only reason he was interested in her was because she was useful to him.

What did the police call them? Finks, that was it. She’d heard Jenny Kurtz use the term once, and not in a nice way. She lay back in bed, struggling with the magnitude of her crime. In the meadow she’d told him all about their family history. On the beach she’d spilled her deepest secrets about how she really felt about the Elect. She’d betrayed her community and given him everything, and he’d used it all, ruthlessly.

It would take her a long time to forgive him. And even longer to forgive herself.

And in the meantime, there was Kailey.

He hadn’t come back to the apartment by midnight, so she’d looked in on his sleeping daughter and wondered how this had happened—how she’d come to be looking after his child while he was—or said he was, anyway—looking after Ryan.

Because, of course, he was lying. Was this some weird, horrific way to deliver a breakup speech—to give him a reason to leave?

Regardless of what he was up to, she still had a Monday to get through, and a little girl to care for. Kailey woke with a start when Julia sat on the edge of the brass bed.

“Good morning, sweetie,” she said gently, and brushed the girl’s hair out of her eyes.

“Daddy?” Kailey looked past Julia, as if expecting to see her father on the threshold.

“Daddy’s working. He’ll be back after lunch, I think, or maybe by suppertime. Do you want to come to the bookstore with me?”

“No. I want Daddy.”

Now what could she do? “I saw him at the hospital last night when I went to see Ryan. He says to say he loves you, and he’ll see you a bit later.”

“Want him now.”

Julia had not been baby-sitting small children for four years for nothing. It took an hour, but she got Kailey fed and dressed in the pitiful sweatpants and T-shirt they’d found her in, and buckled her into the back seat of her car for the short ride downtown.

Item one on the to-do list was to spend a little time at work. Item two was to buy some clothes for Kailey. No matter what she felt about Ross, it wasn’t the child’s fault. Kailey’s need for the basics of life was greater than Julia’s hurt feelings.

She got Kailey settled in the kids’ section with a book that made animal noises when you pressed the pictures. Then she spent a few minutes restocking shelves. Book by book, putting them in their places like a mason walling himself in, she made order out of chaos.

But she couldn’t wall his voice out of her head. I have reason to believe she might be feeding him isopropyl alcohol…Munchausen’s syndrome by proxy…

It was all so fantastic, so ridiculous. The words were meaningless. Probably didn’t even exist. Julia got to her feet, glanced at Kailey to make sure she was still absorbed in the play book, and went to the medical and self-help section. Pulling down the first psychology book she could find, she flipped to the back and found it. Page 247. Okay. A whole chapter. So it did exist. She read the chapter reluctantly. Just because the syndrome existed didn’t mean Madeleine had it. In fact, half the list of symptoms was wrong.