Retribution (35 page)

Now all he needed was the patience to wait. He coiled up by a tiny window that looked down on the gallery, making himself comfortable on wooden crates holding the remnants of a ceramics exhibit, watching the floor below, peering into a labyrinth of art. There would come a moment, in a few hours, when Janie would close up the gallery and head down the street to a small corner tea shop, where she would sit and have a pot of stout English tea, and raisin scones, and perhaps a finger sandwich of some kind, and dream about going home to London on holiday. She was a creature of habit, Janie was, and Valdor knew he could count on that.

All he had to do was wait for his opportunity.

* * *

"I'm not letting you take my daughter anywhere. I have security on my grounds. No one will bother us there. This will blow over as soon as another news story comes down the road." Quentin Saunders put his shoulders back, stared angrily at John, and set his jaw. His rising voice attracted attention throughout the ICU. John could see nursing staff stop and peer at the room curiously.

"In the meantime, she'll be hounded."

"It was your meddling that set this off."

"I can't deny that. But what I did, I did to give Charlie peace of mind. She'll be safe with me. If I can connect Valdor to any of this— through the paintings— Hubie will be able to move in and pick him up for questioning. I have Jagger and Flint out in the car. If we hurry, we can get her out of here before the media find out she's at Sunset. The clock is ticking, Quentin. You're right, she'd be safer at your place… but sooner or later she's got to help me match those paintings to dates. The media is following a blood trail and they're not going to leave you alone if they think they have a story. You and I both know they're going to go for the throat." John faced Quentin down.

Charlie had been bent over, fastening her brace. Her clothes reeked of smoke. She straightened. "Don't forget, Dr. Clarkson planned to meet me there, as well."

Mary took her husband's arm. "She'll be all right with John and the dog, Quentin. And if Wade can look at those paintings and get any understanding at all of the tumor…"

Quentin flinched as if to shake Mary off, then caught himself, and instead drew her in. He took the release papers from the hospital, folded them, and put them in his suit jacket, a gesture which seemed to reinforce him. "I blame you for this," he said to Rubidoux.

"After it's done and finished, and Valdor is in custody, I'll take all the blame you want. Right now, Charlie is all the matters."

The two men stared into each other's eyes. Then, abruptly, Quentin lowered his.

"Get the hell out of here."

John took Charlie's arm. "We're going out through emergency. Just stay with me, if you can."

She nodded and gave a slight, raspy cough. Mary gave her a hug and a kiss as they passed by.

John felt her leaning on him as he steered her through the hospital corridors. The sound of her breathing bothered him. He stopped once or twice to let her catch her breath.

"Are you all right?"

"My lungs feel like sandpaper, but they said that is normal, for a couple of weeks." Charlie entwined her arms around his. "You said you've got Jagger?"

"Waiting and anxious in the van." He rubbed her shoulder.

"Not as anxious as I am. Without him, I feel like my right arm has been cut off." She gave a slight shudder.

"What is it?"

"Just… just a chill." She chewed on the edge of her lower lip. "It's going to be rough, isn't it?"

"For a couple of days, yes. If there is any connection between your paintings and his activities, it might stay that way." He urged her into the elevator used only by staff.

"It doesn't matter. I have to do this. I have to know." She waited until the elevator door closed, shutting them away. "Don't leave me, John. I don't want to do this alone."

He drew her close. "I couldn't leave you now if I wanted to. Me and Jagger… we think you're the best thing this world has to offer."

That made her giggle. "Better than kibble?"

"Infinitely. A close run with a nice, juicy steak, though."

Charlie put her chin up, laughing. "I'm glad I understand my place in the scheme of things."

The ER was crowded with sick and mildly injured, who took little note of them as they wove their way through the sitting room and out the ambulance entrance.

John had his van parked there and handed her up to the front seat.

Jagger started chuffing and grumbling the minute he opened the door. He rattled the portable cage. Charlie put her hand back to its bars, tickling the dog's nose almost before she sat down. Flint raised his eye, looked at the scene with little curiosity, then dropped his wolfish face back to his paws.

As Ruby started the van, she let out a little cry. "Oh, John, his paws! He's hurt."

"Scraped up, he'll be fine. Running on asphalt will do that. His pads are tender, but he won't even notice it in another day or two."

She kept her fingers inside the cage, rubbing his silky ear, listening to the dog moan, half in complaint and half in contentment. "Makes you wonder, doesn't it?"

"How he got back?"

John pulled out of the lot and onto the service road, scanning for signs of the peculiar domed vans of the news units. To his relief, he saw none. "He's been that route with me a couple of times. They have senses we can hardly measure. I would have been more surprised if he hadn't made it back."

"Still." She rubbed the dog's knobby skull. "You're my good boy." Jagger's tail thwanged against the cage bars.

She noted John scanning the rearview mirror several times. "Even if we're free and clear… sooner or later, they'll come to the gallery. They'll want to look at the paintings themselves. I have to do this now, while we can."

He nodded.

They rode in comfortable silence to the gallery. Janie roused from her desk when Charlie limped in, Jagger's toenails clicking on the marble flooring. She pushed her fine, red hair away from her face and frowned in puzzlement. "Charlie! Are you all right?"

"I will be."

"How bad is it? Your father said it took out both your studios."

Charlie shuddered lightly. "I don't know yet, I haven't been back to look. He told me it was bad."

Janie hugged her lightly. "Oh, hon, I'm so sorry. If you need anything, tell me. You know I've kept duplicates of all your catalogs and such since I came aboard."

Charlie squeezed her back. "You're a peach, Janie."

The gallery manager blushed. "Hardly that." She frowned again as Charlie gave a hacking cough, then cleared her throat lightly. Janie swooped over her desk, rummaged around a drawer and brought up an unopened container of water.

"Sounds like you need this."

Charlie took the bottle gratefully. "Thanks. I need to look through the exhibit."

Janie smiled slightly. "They're all yours." She glance at John as he shifted his weight, feeling like a third wheel. She checked her watch. "How about if I take my teatime and give you some privacy?"

"That's not necessary—"

"You know I always eat lunch late. I've been working on that swap proposal with the Museum of Modern Art." Janie gathered up her purse. "Don't worry about the phones." She dialed in a code quickly to switch them over to voice mail. With a cheery wave, the thin woman ducked out the front door.

Charlie turned on her heel. Jagger flowed with her, close, happy to be in his harness, his own limp an uncanny echo of hers. She moved to the walls where her paintings had been hung. The latest were stood up at the far end, near the back, leaning up against one another.

John stood behind her as she moved from one to another, considering it. As she pointed, he took them down and stood them against the ladder used for hanging them.

Charlie took each in hand, examining her signature in the right corner, sometimes visible, sometimes half hidden by the framing. Then she turned the paintings over.

She shook her head. "The year, if we're lucky. Nothing closer than that."

"Do all artists do this?"

She smile ruefully at John. "We're an eccentric lot.

Most of us can remember our paintings by subject matter, and where we were in our life when we painted them, what moved us to paint them."

She pointed at a small painting, eight by ten, which showed a physician's caduceus, stark and bare, pared to an almost scalpel-sharp edge, against a blue-black background. "I painted that while I was waiting for surgery."

John picked up one of the paintings she'd examined, and turned it over. Faintly written in pencil on the wooden inner frame, almost hidden by the edges of the stapled down canvas, he could see V-11/86. "What is this?" He showed it to her.

Charlie frowned, studying it. Then she took it from him, and turned the canvas over. "One of my first big sales… I remember that."

"Could V be Valdor? Was he your agent then?"

She nodded. "This was the lead-off to a show he arranged for me. I remember, he'd sold everything almost before the first opening night. He bought champagne and Mom and Dad let me have a glass." Charlie wrinkled her nose in memory. "I didn't like it then."

He picked up another painting. Again, inconspicuously, penciled in was V and another date.

"Mom used to kid Valdor, telling him he sold the paintings before they were dry." She looked up at him, and their eyes met. "As good a dating system as any."

John pace down the wall. "Are either of them here?"

"I don't know." Charlie blushed faintly. "I haven't looked to see." She paused, then pointed.

"There is one," she said. "The abduction."

He stared at it for a moment, having seen only the magazine reproduction of it. In person, it was even more disturbing. Looking at the face, he recognized Linda Finley. Even more eerie, he could almost see her sister's and mother's faces in hers as well. He freed the ladder and put it in place to pull the painting down.

They held the painting between them, turned it over in concert, standing shoulder to shoulder. For a moment, he could not see any penciling. Then, very faintly, in the braced corner, he saw the marking.

V 12/88. Two months after Linda Finley disappeared.

"Thank God," Charlie said faintly. She let go of the painting, sagging abruptly against the ladder. She let out a sound that was half-cough, half-sob. He put the picture down and took her in his arms. "After the fact."

"Now," he told her, "all we have to do is try to understand what made you paint it in the first place."

There was a slight movement behind them. "Perhaps I can help with that."

John pivoted. Dr. Wade Clarkson smiled gently at them. He had come in without their hearing, and stood at the entrance to the wings of Charlie's exhibit.

He took the picture up and looked at it for long moments, his large, capable hands holding the frame as if they knew instinctively its value was far greater than it appeared. Finally, he set the canvas down.

"Tell me," he said to Charlie, "about Midnight. Tell me everything you can."

Jagger pressed uneasily against Charlie's brace. His tail went down, his ears flattened. John watched him curiously.

Charlie swallowed. "When Midnight comes… it comes at night, usually. I can be asleep, and it wakes me. But it is like a great, dark cloud and it swallows me and all my senses and then it… fills me. It replaces my sight with its own, my hearing is drowned out by its voices…."

"Voices," repeated Clarkson.

Jagger whined. Charlie seemed not to notice. "Yes. Voices. Midnight is never silent. It is loud, roaring… I try to listen… I can't always hear; it is too loud, too confused."

"Interesting." Clarkson leaned a hip to the wall. "When you can hear it, does it tell you what to paint?"

"No." She shuddered, the expression in her eyes hurt and vague. Jagger made a sharp sound, and bumped his nose against her leg. Charlie grew silent.

Clarkson said, "What else about Midnight?"

She did not answer.

"Charlie. Look at me. I want you to tell me if you see anything, do you get visions, feelings…?"

She did not respond.

Clarkson frowned. He straightened. "Charlie." There was command in his voice, not unlike the command John used with his dogs to make them obey.

Jagger whined again, urgently. The dog's actions suddenly made him realize.

John put his hand on the doctor's sleeve. "I think we're going to see Midnight firsthand."

"She's in seizure, you mean." Clarkson stepped close, taking the pencil light from the inner pocket of his suit and checking her eye response. "How do you know?"

"The dog," Ruby told him, kneeling and petting Jagger to soothe him. "You do know there are service dogs trained to be aware of epileptic seizures. Somehow they can sense the onset."

"Charlie doesn't use a dog trained for that."

"No. It appears to be a talent he's worked on all by himself."

Clarkson stayed at Charlie's side. "She's not exhibiting classical epileptic symptoms, except for the long period of inattention. If she goes into grand mal, be prepared to catch her." He looked keenly at John. "Have you seen this before?"

"No." Ruby straightened. "But I know her."

Once again, the two looked into each other's eyes. John had the eerie feeling they had crossed paths before, but he could not place it.

Clarkson replaced his pencil light in his inner suit pocket. He avidly watched her expression, her eyes. "Are you with us, Charlie? Can you hear me?"

Charlie moved abruptly, her hands going to her head, grasping her thick, long hair and knotting it lightly at her neck, drawing it out of her way. Then she went to the back wall and lined up the unframed paintings, the new ones, side by side, almost identically to the way she'd had John line them up, although the order of the third to last and next to last were reversed. Still wordless, as if the two of them did not exist, she left the isolated area of her exhibit, going to the blank walls and the easel of the acrylics artist. She stepped back, sized up the white wall-board being prepped for the new hangings, her face neutral, bland, yet intense in concentration.