Retribution (33 page)

Quentin saw her eyes open. She looked at him and he thought his heart would stop in his chest. She shook her head, hands desperate at her face. She looked at him, throat straining, and he knew he had made a terrible mistake. The ventilator sat silent, suffocating her instead of pumping air in. He grabbed her hands, pushing them away, ripping tape off her nose, and then her mouth, pulling the tubes from her.

She sat up, coughing and choking like a drowning person, pawing at him, and then she began to breathe, jaggedly, huge gulping breaths. Color flooded back into her face. She bent over his arm, holding onto him, coughing and inhaling. Quentin held her tightly, realizing how close he'd come to losing her.

"I've got you. It's all right now. Just breathe slowly, in and out of your nose."

He found the call button and pushed it anyway, even though the monitors should have brought them running, knowing that the drama at the other end of the hall held their attention. Charlie clung to him, still coughing, but taking in air. As he moved to hold her even closer, his feet tangled in a loose cord where the ventilator had been unplugged.

No one answered till he began shouting, roaring, for help.

White light flashed in her eyes. Charlie put out her hand, her mind fuzzy, her throat and chest still aching. "John?" She caught a hand at her face and grabbed it, holding it tight. She kissed it, pressing it to her cheek.

The hand extricated itself gently from her hold. "This is Dr. Clarkson, Charlie. I want you to wake up, if you can, and let me check your pupils again." Aside, the deep voice said, "Who is John?"

"John Rubidoux… he's a trainer. He's been helping with Jagger." Quentin coughed slightly in embarrassment.

The bed moved under her, lifting her, and she blinked out at them, her stepfather and the doctor. The ICU ward at their back remained a dim background. Quentin paced back and forth.

"Dad, don't make it sound like I've been sleeping with the stable boy."

Quentin halted in his tracks. "Well? Have you?"

She felt her face warm. "I don't have to answer that."

Clarkson took her pulse, his hand almost hot on her wrist. "I'd say she's been a bit too busy dodging fires anyway, Quentin."

He shrugged his shoulders heavily before saying, grudgingly, "I want to thank you for driving down here I the middle of the night."

Wade leaned over Charlie, his face intent on hers, his hand holding a pinpoint flashlight, catching her wide-eyed and making her see spots as he checked the pupil reflex. He put his hand out, two fingers extended. "Squeeze my fingers, both hands."

Then, conversationally, he said to Quentin, "Think nothing of it. I don't like hearing the news I heard earlier. She seems to be much better now. She's off the ventilator. According to the charts, she's already had one inhalation therapy. They might even release her in the morning. So where's Mary?"

"I sent her home." Quentin rubbed his face as if trying not to acknowledge his own fatigue.

Wade Clarkson bent over her again. His dark blue eyes looked at her, piercingly. "So tell me what happened, young lady."

"I smelled fire at the back of the house."

"Just like that?"

"No. John was over. He left… to check on the dogs at his kennel. I went in, fixed some ice tea, and went to my studio to look through my bookshelves."

"And that's when you smelled fire?"

He put her hands out in front of her, balancing them on his, dropping his suddenly, checking motor reflex.

"Well, not just like that."

"Charlie, are you having seizures again?" He did not look at her as he pulled her chart and reviewed it, walked to a monitor and picked the tape up to check the readings that had spilled out of it.

She did not answer right away. She look at Quentin, who made a face of encouragement.

Wade Clarkson said mildly, "Charlie, I need to know what's happening in that mind of yours. There are things tests can't tell me."

"Yes." Ashamed, she stared down at her hands, folded the hem of her sheet down, smoothed it.

"I need to know, if you can tell me, what the seizure feels like. Before, during, after. If you get any warning. If you smell anything or things seem peculiar somehow."

"Midnight comes."

He had dropped the hospital chart back in place and begun making notes in his own file folder. He paused, pen in midair. "The middle of the night?"

"I told you once," she reminded him.

Wade smiled slightly. He drew a stool up and sat by the side of her bed. "As special as you were, and are, I have to confess… I don't remember every moment Dr. Katsume and I spent with you. Tell me again."

"It's like… it's like a black cloud that covers me. And in it… voices. Visions. I don't remember what they are."

"Do you usually lose consciousness?"

Charlie looked at him. "I'm on the inside, I don't know. I think I do."

"And what happens afterward?"

"I paint."

"Always?"

"Usually."

"Do you paint other times?"

"I did. Until the operation."

He nodded.

"Is every seizure you have Midnight? Or only some of them?"

That gave her pause. She started to shake her head, then realized she was wrong. Clarkson noticed her hesitation and said to Quentin, "She's describing a fugue state. I would say from the tumor causing pressure, except that—" He stopped abruptly and stood. He spent a moment as if searching for the right words, then asked, "Charlie, are you painting again?"

"Yes."

Quentin started. "Those were new canvases?"

She nodded.

"Janie's got them at the gallery. She'll have the sense to catalog them."

"I need to see them, Quentin."

Charlie went cold. "Let me show them to you."

The doctor considered her a moment, then inclined his head. "If they discharge you, and you feel up to it. If not today, then perhaps tomorrow. I'm staying with the Lavermans today. George asked me down for a round of golf and dinner. Personally, I think he's sizing me up for the tournament." Wade laughed softly.

"I can't thank you enough, Clarkson," Quentin said again, and pumped his hand.

"You can thank me by convincing Charlie to trust me, and work with me. I don't want to have to open her up to see what's going on in that interesting skull of hers." Clarkson looked at her then, really looked into her eyes, measuring her. "I want you to trust me, Charlie, and to confide in me. I want you to tell me what it is you see, and hear, and when you need to paint, or want to paint." He stopped as the elevators doors opened suddenly on the floor, and a dog's bark rang out.

Clarkson turned and frowned, and put his hand on Quentin's upper arm. "Don't let her be disturbed further tonight."

"But that's John with Jagger—" she protested.

"Not tonight, Charlie." Quentin stepped out the cubicle, blocked John in the hallway. Jagger bounced a little in his harness, excited to catch her scent, looking for her. John gave her a look through the windows. She waved at him, and his face softened a little.

Clarkson shifted weight. "Tomorrow," he said, stepping over and blocking her view. He checked his watch, correcting himself. "Today… you'll show me the new paintings, agreed?"

Vaguely uneasy, Charlie murmured, "Agreed."

"Good. Contact my pager."

He stepped out of the unit then, patted Quentin on the back, swept his gaze over John, and went on to the elevators. John and Quentin exchanged a few more words before he waved at her, and mouthed something.

Charlie fell back onto the hospital bed as he took Jagger and left. She was not sure what he had said… she thought it had been, "I love you." The thought warmed her.

* * *

Hubie slogged through the wet debris and char beside John, his nose wrinkled at the smell, the aftermath, and said, "So what we have here is a fire of dubious origin."

John skirted a garden hose. The chill of coastal fog on a very early morning lay about them. He had not changed clothes, showered, or eaten. He'd called Hubie to pick him up as soon as it was light enough to see the damage.

"How is she?"

"I don't know. They wouldn't let me see her. Immediate family."

"That's a crock."

He looked at the graying edge of the sky, outlining the house. Axes had been taken to the tile roof. The front half looked like an eggshell ripped apart, its edges charred, dripping still with the water soaked into it. He did not know structures. All he knew was that the place did not look livable to him. "Nothing I could do about it. She's supposed to be released sometime today."

"So you think she was a target here?"

An arson inspector passed them, stared a moment, recognized Hubie, gave a wave and a nod and continued on, after cautioning, "Don't touch anything."

Hubie shouted after him, "Let me know what you find!" He raised his cardboard coffee cup to his lips and chewed on the rim, his ever-present cigar for once not there.

John sipped at the cold swirling mass still left in his cup.

Hubie eyed him shrewdly. "So what do you think happened?"

He shook his head. "I have no idea. But I think my dogs were let out on purpose, to get me away… and I know she didn't do it."

"She had two studios in the back there?"

He nodded.

"Sounds like a fire waiting to happen to me." Hubie chewed on his cup some more. "Everything right there for a pyro to play with. The paint thinner alone…." He stopped and toed a sodden rectangle of what looked to be a photo album, edges blackened.

John squatted, opening it. He flipped through pages. Clippings of young Charlie, framed by Quentin Saunders and her mother, with a sardonic looking, dark-haired man standing behind them. The family had their eyes fixed with pride on an easel and painting bearing an enormous rosette ribbon, but the young man was looking at the camera, his gaze avid. John pinpointed their names in the caption. This, then, was Federico Valdor, the manager/agent who had parted from Charlie so bitterly.

He straightened, to find Hubie looking over his shoulder.

"They get younger every day," the cop observed.

"This was ten, eleven years ago," John muttered.

Hubie eased the album from his hands. "Who is Cassius?"

"Cassius?"

"Yon guy with the lean and hungry look, to quote Shakespeare." He tapped the clipping.

"Used to be her manager. He's the reason Quentin brought her dog to me." In the car, on the way over, John had reluctantly parted with enough information to keep Valenzuela mollified.

"The one Jagger bit a couple of days ago?"

John nodded.

Hubie closed the album. "Let's go take a look and see what I can find on him." He let out a sharp whistle. One of the team of investigators straightened and turned, looking at them across the debris. "Got anything yet?"

"I'd say we have isolated the origin, and it looks like an accelerator was used… looks like we have a definite case of arson."

"Thanks." Hubie grunted. He waved good-bye and trotted downhill to where John had retrieved his van. "Looks like we have a definite suspect, although it sounds to me like a case of killing the goose who laid the golden egg."

John shifted uneasily. "I can't argue with that except that, when the goose is gone, those eggs get rarer and pricier."

Hubie grinned. He crumpled his coffee cup and threw it to the floor of his car as he opened the door and slid in. "Follow me down to the station." He chuckled. "You still think like a cop."

"Bad habits are hard to break," John told him.

* * *

Hubie's thick fingers stabbed at the keyboard, his gaze intent on the monitor's display. "So what we have here is somebody who lives way beyond his means."

John leaned in, reading the bad check charges, the detail of suit by a famous local heiress and art patron claiming fraudulent brokerage charges on acquisitions of artwork, and a forgery charge which had been dropped by Quentin Saunders. "That tracks with what Charlie's told me about it."

Valenzuela hummed as he refined his search. "Okay, so maybe he would torch the house to get her out and maybe lift some paintings in the havoc. But none of this relates to the paintings themselves— a con man is not a stalker. In other words, he's after the paintings because of their worth, not their content."

"I don't know that there is a connection. I'd be thrilled to find out there isn't. As far as content… she is scared spitless she's inspired someone to go out and do these things. You ever heard of anyone motivated by something like that before?"

"It's a crazy world, Ruby, you know that. Hardcore porn magazines, sociopathic genes, who knows what motivates some of these guys? If we knew, we might be able to stop it before they get started. Still, the fire doesn't fit the killer's pattern. I think we're dealing with nonrelated events. Valdor may be a weasel, but that doesn't mean he's a serial killer." His fingers tickled the keys. He leaned forward intently. "On the other hand… Hel-lo."

"What?"

"Two counts of rape, both dropped. One about ten years or so ago, the last one three years ago, and she claimed he used roofies on her." Hubie opened his desk drawer, got a cigar out, and began to unwrap it enthusiastically. "Valdor is not a nice guy sexually either. Big man, has to drug 'em unconscious first!" He snorted derisively.

John opened the photo album uneasily. Could they have been fueling each other, Valdor and the young artist… one feeding the other's fantasies, the other fueling the creative flame? He could not deny that the gap between killings seemed to match the gap in her paintings. It gave him a bad feeling in the pit of his stomach.