Lasher (69 page)

Someone would bring some supper in a little while, wouldn’t they? Or maybe they would go uptown. Mona didn’t want to leave the office. She figured the next piece of information would be from a Houston emergency room, where the mysterious man, six and a half feet tall, had had to seek some sort of medical help.

The Houston truck driver had been the most important link.

This was the man who had picked up Rowan yesterday afternoon. He had stopped in St. Martinville last night to tell the local police about the thin, crazed woman who had struck off on her own into the swamps. On account of him, they had found Rowan. He had been called, questioned further. He had described the place in Houston where she’d run up to his truck. He told all the things she said, how she was desperate to get to New Orleans. He confirmed that as of yesterday evening when he last saw her, Rowan had been right in the head. Crazed perhaps, but talking, walking, thinking. Then she had gone off alone into the swamps.

“That woman was in pain,” he’d told Mona on the phone this morning, recapitulating the entire tale. “She was hugging herself, you know, like a woman having cramps.”

Gerald Mayfair, still stunned and sick over the fact that Dr. Samuel Larkin had slipped away from his care and vanished, had gone with Shelby, Pierce’s big sister, and Patrick, Mona’s father, off to the swamp near St. Martinville to search the spot where Rowan had been found.

Rowan had been hemorrhaging, just like the others, though she was not dead. At twelve last night they had performed an
emergency hysterectomy on the unconscious woman, with only Michael there—in tears—to consent. It was either that or she’d never make it till morning. Incomplete miscarriage. Other complications. “Look, we’re lucky she’s still breathing.”

And breathing she was.

Who knew what they might discover up there in the grass in that St. Martinville swamp park? It was Mona who had suggested this and was all for going herself. Patrick, her dad, was all sobered up now and determined to be of help. Ryan had wanted Mona to remain here with him. Mona couldn’t quite figure that one. Was Ryan worried about her?

But then when Ryan started to buzz her over the intercom every few minutes to ask her some minor question, or make some minor suggestion, she knew that he simply wanted her support. OK by her. She was there to give it. In between calls, she typed, she wrote, she recorded, she described.

The Houston office building had been discovered before noon.

It was only walking distance from where Rowan had appeared on the highway. Unoccupied except for the fifteenth floor, which had been leased to a man and a woman. The fifteenth floor was a grim scene. Rowan had been a prisoner. For long periods Rowan had been tied to a bed. The mattress was filthy with urine and feces, yet it had been laid with fresh sheets, and surrounded by flowers, some of which were still fresh. There was fresh food.

It was ghastly, all of it. There had been plenty of blood—not Rowan’s—in the bathroom. The man had been hurt there, obviously, maybe even knocked unconscious. Photographs of the bathroom had already come in. But the bloody footprints leading to the elevator, and out the front doors of the building, clearly indicated he had left on his own.

“Looks to me from this like he fell again in the elevator. See that. That’s blood all over the carpet. He’s weak, he’s hurt.”

Well, he had been
then
, but was he still hurt now?

They were canvassing every emergency room in the entire city. Every hospital, clinic, doctor’s office. They would check the suburbs, and then move in concentric circles, checking, until they found where the bleeding man had gone. Within the direct vicinity of the building they were checking door to door. They were checking alleyways, and rooftops, restaurants,
buildings that were boarded up. If the man was anywhere nearby, wounded, they would find him.

As it was, the bloody foot tracks had vanished under the wheels of the passing traffic. Whether the man had climbed into a vehicle or simply crossed to the other side could never be known.

The entire investigation was private, the best that money could buy.

One agency after another had been enlisted. Tasks were constantly being assigned, information collated. Private doctors had gathered the blood samples in the Houston bathroom and taken them to private laboratories, the names of which were known only to Lauren and Ryan. The grim prison rooms had been fingerprinted. Every article of clothing, and there had been many, had been packed, labeled and shipped to Mayfair and Mayfair. Things had already started to arrive.

Other leads were being followed. Crumpled stationery and a plastic door key card found in Houston had been traced to a hotel in New York. People were being questioned. Rowan’s truck driver was being brought in, at family expense, to give yet another thorough verbal report.

It was a hideous picture, the empty office tower, the filthy prison cell. Dead flowers. The broken porcelain on the bloody floor. Rowan had escaped, but then something dreadful had happened to Rowan. It had happened out in a grass field under a famous tree called Gabriel’s Oak. A beautiful spot. Mona knew it. Lots of schoolkids knew it. You went to St. Martinville to see it, the Arcadian Museum, and Gabriel’s Oak. There was Evangeline Oak in the city of St. Martinville, and Gabriel’s Oak out there near the old house. Gabriel leaning on his elbows, they said, to wait for Evangeline. Well, Rowan had gone down between the elbows in the grass.

Toxic shock, allergic reaction, immuno-failure. A hundred comparisons had been drawn. But the blood revealed no toxins any longer, not last night, not today. Whatever had happened with the miscarriage was over. Possibly she had simply lost the child and passed out.

Ugly, ugly, all of it.

But could anything have been uglier than the actual sight of Rowan Mayfair, in the white hospital bed, her head straight up on the pillow, her arms by her sides motionless, her eyes staring into space? She had been greatly emaciated, white as paper, but the worst part was the attitude of the arms, parallel,
slightly turned in, and the utter blankness of her face. All personality was gone from her expression. She looked faintly idiotic lying there, eyes far too round, and completely unresponsive to movement or to light. Her mouth looked small and strangely round also, as though it had lost whatever character caused it to lengthen into a woman’s mouth. Even as Mona sat there watching, Rowan’s arms began to pull in closer to the body. The nurses would reach over to stretch them out.

Rowan’s hair was thin, as if much of it had fallen out. More evidence of severe malnutrition and the aborted pregnancy. She was so small in the white hospital gown she might as well have been an angel in a Christmas pageant.

And then there was Michael, mussed and shaken, sitting beside her, talking to her, telling her that he was going to take care of her, that everyone was gathered, that she mustn’t be afraid. He told her he would put colored pictures up in her room, and he would play music. He had found an old gramophone. He would play that for her. He talked on and on. “We’re going to take care of everything. We’re going to…going to take care of everything.”

He was scared of saying something like, “We’ll find this bastard thing, this monster.” No, who would want to say that to the innocent, blank creature lying there, the grotesque remnant of a woman who knew how to operate with perfect precision and success upon other people’s brains?

Mona knew that Rowan couldn’t hear anything. There was nothing in there listening anymore. The brain was still working, a little, causing the lungs to function at a completely mechanical pace, causing the heart to pump with the same frightening regularity, but the outer extremities of the body grew more and more cold.

At any moment the brain might stop giving orders. The body would die. The mind had no concern for itself any longer. The boss of the body had fled. The electroencephalogram was almost flat.

The tiny little blips here and there were no more than you would get if you hooked up the machine to a dead brain in a room on a table. You always got something, they said.

Rowan had been badly physically hurt. That was really ugly. There were bruises on her pale arms and legs. There was evidence of a spontaneous fracture in her left hip. She bore the bruises and marks of rape. The miscarriage had been extremely violent. There was blood and fluid on her thighs.

At six o’clock this morning they had shut off the respirator. She had suffered no complications from the swift and simple surgery. All the tests were completed.

They had rushed to take her home at ten a.m. for one simple reason. They had not expected her to live out the day. Her instructions had been very explicit. She had written them out when she took possession of the legacy. She was to die in the house on First Street. “My home.” It was all in her own handwriting, completed in the happy days right before the wedding, beautifully in keeping with the spirit of the legacy. To die in Mary Beth’s bed.

Also there was the superstition of the family to consider. People were standing in the corridors of Mercy Hospital and saying, “She should die in the master bedroom. She should be home.”

“They ought to take her home to First Street.” Old Grandpa Fielding had been adamant. “She will not die in this hospital. You are torturing her. To release her, you must take her home.”

Mayfair madness in high gear. Even Anne Marie was saying that she ought to be returned to the famous master bedroom. Who knew? Perhaps the spirits of the dead in the house could help her? Even Lauren said bitterly, “Take the woman home.”

The nuns might have been shocked, if anybody gave a damn, but probably not. Cecilia and Lily had said the rosary aloud in the hospital room all night. Magdalene and Liane and Guy Mayfair had prayed in the chapel with the two Mayfair nuns in the family, the little tiny nuns whose names Mona always mixed up.

Old Sister Michael Marie Mayfair—the oldest of Mayfair Sisters of Mercy—had come down and prayed over Rowan, loudly, chanting Hail Marys and Our Fathers and Glory Bes.

“If that doesn’t wake her up,” said Randall, “nothing will. Go home and get her bedroom ready.”

Beatrice had done it, with a heavy contingent of helpers—Stephanie and Spruce Mayfair, and two young black policemen—reluctant as she was to leave Aaron there.

Now, back at First Street, enshrined beneath the satin-lined half tester and covered with ancient quilts and imported coverlets, Rowan Mayfair continued to breathe, unaided. It was already six p.m. and she was not dead.

An hour ago, they had commenced intravenous feeding—fluids, lipids. “It is not life support,” said Dr. Fleming. “It is
nourishment. Otherwise, we would be technically starving her to death.”

Michael apparently hadn’t argued. But then there were so many people involved. When he called, he told Mona the room was full of nurses and doctors. He confirmed that the security men were all over, and on the gallery outside the window, and down in the street. People were wondering what was happening.

But the armed guards were not such an unfamiliar sight in a city like New Orleans in this day and age. Everybody hired them for parties, get-togethers. When you went to school for a nighttime function there they were at the gates. The drugstores had guards near the register. Just the way of this banana republic, Gifford had said once.

Mona had answered, “Yeah, so brilliant. Guys at minimum wage with loaded thirty-eights.”

However crude, these measures had been relentless and effective for the family.

No further assaults had been made on Mayfair women. All the women were gathered in at various houses. There was no group smaller than six or seven. There was no group without men.

A separate fleet of detectives brought in from Dallas combed the city of Houston, fanning out from the building, asking anyone and everyone if he or she had seen this tall black-haired man. They had made drawings of him, based on Aaron’s verbal description, which had come to him through the Talamasca.

They were also searching for Dr. Samuel Larkin. They could not understand why he had left the Pontchartrain Hotel without telling anyone—until they found the message at the desk which had been called up to his room.

“Meet Rowan. Come alone.”

The message had everyone worried. It was a cinch Rowan had not called Dr. Larkin. Rowan was already on a hospital gurney in St. Martinville by the time the call had come in.

Samuel Larkin had been last seen walking fast up St. Charles Avenue, towards Jackson. “You be careful now,” a cabdriver had said, begrudgingly perhaps because the doctor wouldn’t hire the taxi. What did it matter? It had definitely been Dr. Larkin. And by the time Gerald hit the pavement, there was no sign of him in sight.

In a way, Beatrice Mayfair had been the biggest nuisance
and the biggest consolation the entire time. Beatrice was the one who kept insisting on normal procedures, who kept refusing to believe that anything “horrible” had really happened, that they should send for specialists and take more tests.

Beatrice had always taken that position. She was the one who went to call on poor crazy Deirdre and take her candy, which she could not eat, and silk negligees she never wore. She was the one who came three or four times a year to visit Ancient Evelyn, even during periods when Ancient Evelyn had not talked for six months.

“Well, sweetheart, it’s just the most dreadful shame they closed the Holmes lunch counter. Do you remember all the times we went down there to lunch at D. H. Holmes, you and me and Millie and Belle?”

And there she was at the house now fussing in the bedroom, most likely. And gone back up to Amelia Street to make sure everyone had something to eat. Good thing Michael liked Beatrice. But then everybody liked her. And the most amazing thing about her constant optimism was that she was clearly going to marry Aaron Lightner, and if anybody knew something horrible had happened it was Lightner, beyond doubt.

Aaron Lightner had taken one long look at Rowan and then walked out of the room. The expression on his face had been so wrathful, so dark. He had stared at Mona for a moment, and then he had gone off fast down the corridor to find a phone he could use in private, to call Dr. Larkin, and that is when they discovered that Dr. Larkin had left the suite.