On Borrowed Time (13 page)

We talked for a while longer; Janice seemed eager for the company. But we made no progress in understanding what had happened in this house. I knew I was here, with Jen, for those four days, and she knew for certain that I was not.

The facts were on her side.

As we got ready to leave, Allie said to her, “We’re so sorry you had to go through all this,” and they hugged.

Janice teared up noticeably, and stepped back, as if to look at Allie. “My Jen would have been just about your age,” she said, and then hugged Allie again.

We finally left, and it was too late to track down anyone else. We weren’t terribly in the mood to do so anyway, both of us were feeling a little drained by what we had already been through.

“Doesn’t make much sense to drive back to the city tonight, only to come back up here tomorrow,” I said.

She nodded her agreement. “There was a motel near the exit where we got off the highway; it looked okay.”

I had seen it; it was a Hampton Inn and certainly seemed fine for the night. We went back there and checked in to two rooms, then went into the restaurant/bar off the lobby for dinner.

Neither of us wanted to talk much about our search; we had been blanketed by it for so long that we shared a desire to be rid of it, if only for a short time. So we talked about everything else, about how we grew up, about politics, about sports, about how we liked to spend time when we weren’t searching for missing loved ones.

I continued to be amazed at how at ease I felt with Allie, and I could tell she felt the same about being with me. Maybe it was our shared loss, or our shared goal, but we just clicked in a way I rarely have with anyone. Even the silences were fine, a sure indicator in my book that two people are in sync.

We didn’t just talk; we also drank. More than we should have, but we didn’t get blasted. Just drunk enough to feel good, a feeling that neither of us had experienced for a very long time.

We closed the place down, which was not exactly a sign of decadence in Ardmore, since closing time was eleven
P.M.
Our rooms were next to each other on the third floor, so we rode up on the elevator together and then walked together down the hall to the rooms.

What happened next I don’t think was because we were drunk, but I’m not really clear on any of it, and I’m not sure I ever will be. Allie opened the door to her room, and then turned back to me, maybe to say good night. I kissed her, or maybe she kissed me. She pulled me into her room, or maybe I pushed her.

Within moments we were on the bed making love, and I was not inclined to ponder who was the instigator or whether it was the right thing to do.

It sure as hell felt right in the moment.

I woke up at seven
A.M.
and discovered that Allie was already showered and dressed. I wasn’t sure how I was going to deal with the awkwardness left over from what had happened between us, but Allie solved it for me.

“It happened, Richard. There’s no going back, and there’s no undoing it. But it’s yesterday, and we need to focus on today and tomorrow.”

“So no guilt?” I asked.

She smiled, reached out, and lightly touched my face. “We don’t have time. Maybe later.”

We had breakfast downstairs and checked out. I had a list of the four clients that Frank Donovan had serviced in Ardmore, and we set out to visit each of them.

The first was a residential house on the outskirts of town. It was small and fairly run-down, and the people who lived there had no apparent desire to be helpful. They did tell us that they’d bought the place just three weeks before, and that they thought the previous owners had moved to somewhere in the Midwest. It would have been those people who hired Frank, so if we were being told the truth, there was nothing to be learned there.

The second client was also residential. Rita and Donald Church lived only three blocks from the Ryan house. They reacted to us much like they might have if Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie had shown up; I was a full-fledged celebrity in their minds.

Rita invited us in for some coffee and apple pie, which was about all we got out of the visit. They remembered calling Frank for plumbing services because a pipe had broken under their shower and their basement was flooding.

Ralph replaced the pipe and charged them what they felt was an exorbitant amount. The Churches were in their late sixties and retired, and if there was anything about them that would connect to the murders, neither Allie nor I could find it.

Our third stop was Ardmore General Hospital, where Frank had made three visits in the past two months. According to Craig, his company was on a retainer with the hospital, being paid a flat fee for handling whatever plumbing work needed to be done.

It was a much larger facility than I would have expected, and far bigger than the tiny place where I had been taken after the accident on the day Jen disappeared. There were three quite large two-story buildings, and a smaller annex building in the back, spread out over a tranquil, campus-type environment. The receptionist at the desk told us it was the only decent-sized hospital in the area, and people who lived as far as twenty-five miles away considered it their home hospital.

She also told us that the director of the hospital was Dr. Harold Gates, and we asked to see him. I told her I was from
Manhattan
magazine, and she said, “I thought you looked familiar. You’re that guy, right?”

I nodded. “I’m that guy.”

Allie walked back toward the hospital entrance as the receptionist picked up the phone and dialed a number, then talked softly so that I couldn’t hear. I assumed she was telling Gates, or his assistant, that “that guy” was here, and wasn’t that a big deal. It must have been, because within three minutes Allie and I were granted an audience with him.

Dr. Gates was surprisingly young, no more than forty. He had a smooth way about him, polished, as if he would be better at selling medical supplies than using them. Perhaps political savvy was necessary to work one’s way up the Ardmore General Hospital totem pole, and it seemed likely that Gates had it in significant quantity.

“Nice of you to see us without an appointment,” I said.

He smiled. “You’re a celebrity around here. If I turned you away, my staff would have revolted. So what can I do for you?”

“You had a plumbing company working for you run by Frank Donovan.”

His expression revealed nothing, if there was anything to reveal. “Okay, if you say so.”

“Mr. Donovan and his wife were recently murdered.”

Again no change in expression. “I’m certainly sorry to hear that. What does it have to do with the hospital? Assuming, of course, that you’re right about him doing work here.”

“We have reason to believe that he saw something here in Ardmore, very possibly at this hospital, that made him a danger to someone … that resulted in his death.”

“I can assure you that I have no knowledge of this whatsoever.”

“Who would have been Mr. Donovan’s contact here?”

“Probably someone in our engineering department. Why are you asking me these questions instead of the police?”

“I’m sure they will be,” I lied. With the unsubstantiated suspicions we had about the Donovans being related to Jen’s disappearance, there would be no chance we could get the police to back us up.

Allie, who hadn’t spoken a word since hello, held up a flyer she had gone back to take off the bulletin board near the lobby entrance. “You run drug trials here?”

He nodded. “Yes, a great many of them.”

“How does that work?” she asked.

“Pharmaceutical companies that have new drugs approved by the FDA for trial come to us. We carefully screen for people whose medical conditions fit the profile, and we conduct trials according to the specifications we are given. It is a specialty of ours. That flyer is for the purpose of recruiting volunteers.”

“Why do you do it?” Allie asked.

“It is worthwhile work, and it enables us to provide traditional medical services to our patients at reasonable cost. That’s not an easy thing for a hospital to do in this day and age. Now, if you don’t mind my asking, what does all this have to do with Mr. Donovan?”

I knew where Allie was going with this, so I jumped in. “Have you done work for Sean Lassiter?”

Finally, Gates changed his facial expression from painted smile to a mixture of annoyance and concern. “We don’t discuss our clients. That is privileged.”

“So Lassiter is a client?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“I know,” I said. “That’s why I asked.”

“I really have nothing to say about that.”

The conversation took a downhill turn from there, and Gates became noticeably less forthcoming. Within ten minutes we were ushered out; apparently my celebrity status had its limitations.

“You struck a nerve when you mentioned Lassiter,” Allie said when we got into the car. “I’d bet anything he and Lassiter are connected somehow.”

“I thought so too. If Donovan worked here, and Lassiter has a connection to the place as well, then you could be right.”

“About what?”

I smiled. “We could be getting somewhere.”

Our last stop was at a diner in the center of town, where Donovan had been summoned when the drains were clogged about six weeks prior. It seemed innocent enough, and both Allie and I had the same reaction, that it was not in any way connected to Donovan’s murder.

We drove back to the city, talking the whole way about our search for Jen and what progress we might have made in Ardmore. I dropped her off at her hotel and then went home.

When I walked into my apartment, I saw that the answering machine light was blinking. I walked over and pressed “play.”

“Richard, are you there? Richard, please be there … please.…”

Then there was a clicking sound, and that was the last I heard of the voice.

Jen’s voice.

Juice had no one to blame but himself. Getting careless and letting the amateurs make him, so that they knew he was following them, was making his job much more difficult. He could still track them; that was no problem. But getting Kilmer on tape, on camera, had become much more difficult. And that was his main job.

Fortunately, he had technology on his side, and his access to and knowledge of state-of-the-art devices was a huge help. Also helpful was the fact that Kilmer was absolutely predictable in what he would do and where he would go. Juice thought he actually could have gone ahead of Kilmer and waited for him to arrive; that’s how obvious his moves were.

But there was one surprise, one Kilmer move that Juice had not expected. That was his nailing the sister in her motel room; he didn’t think Kilmer would have the balls for that. Juice counted himself smart, and a little lucky, that he had chosen to plant bugs in both rooms and not just Kilmer’s, because it was her room that they had shacked up in.

Juice had also recorded every word spoken in the Ryan house as well as in Gates’s office at the hospital. Even without hearing it himself, he knew that the Stone would find it all very interesting.

Except for the mistake made in revealing himself to Kilmer, Juice took comfort in the fact that up to that point he had done everything right. He hoped that the Stone was having similar success, because Juice was getting tired of this assignment. And since it was the last one he would have to undertake, he was impatient to get on with the more satisfying part of his life. That would really be living.

The irony wasn’t lost on Juice that his life would begin when Kilmer’s ended.

Allie started sobbing softly as soon as she heard the voice. That told me all I needed to know; as positive as I was that it was Jen, she was just as sure it was her sister Julie. It was further evidence that Jen and Julie were one and the same, and very strong evidence, at that.

“She sounded so scared,” Allie said, once she had composed herself.

I nodded. “I know. But the most important thing is that she sounded alive. We need to hold on to that.”

“Who are these people?” she asked, as her pained expression started to give way to rage. “Who are these goddamn people?”

She laid her head on my chest, and I held her as she started crying again. “We’ll get them,” I said. “We’ll get them.”

“We need to go to the police. There’s a limit to how much we can do by ourselves.”

I had thought about that, but shook my head at the suggestion. “We don’t have anything that we can use. Think about it; they won’t even believe that Jen existed. And there’s nothing to tie Julie in to it. We have no proof of anything; it’s as if they’ve designed it that way.”

“What do you mean?”

“It feels like we’re being played; like whoever’s doing this is moving us around like pieces on a chessboard. But they’re always one step ahead.”

“Do you think that the call from Julie … Jen … was part of that?” she asked. “Could they have let her make the call because they wanted us to know she’s alive?”

“It’s possible. But we won’t know until we know.”

The phone rang and startled both Allie and me. I looked at the caller ID, which had been blocked on the phone call from Jen. It read
Ellenville Police Department
.

“Kilmer.”

“Mr. Kilmer, this is Lieutenant Kentris of the Ellenville Police Department. I would like to speak to you about the articles you have written.”

“What about them?”

“I believe that in some way they may relate to an open case we have up here.”

“I’m listening,” I said.

“I think it’s better that we talk in person. Would you be able to come up here? We’re about an hour and a half from the city, not too far from Monticello.”

“I know where you are,” I said. “Hold on for a second, please.”

I put my hand over the phone and told Allie the substance of the conversation so far. I wasn’t halfway through when she was already nodding eagerly and looking for my car keys.

“Would this afternoon work, Lieutenant?”

“That would work well, thank you. How about three o’clock in my office?”

I agreed, and Allie and I set off for Ellenville, with time to stop for lunch along the way. I brought along the answering machine with Jen’s voice on it, though I didn’t believe there would be a reason to play it for Kentris.