The Reunion (24 page)

43

Carolyn studied the contents of the small hospital room closet. The few things Franklin had brought over from the hotel hung neatly on hangers. Two pillows and an extra blanket were stacked on the shelf above. Carolyn winced as she reached for them. Her entire body was sore, and any sudden movement escalated the dull ache into piercing pain. Hidden under the pillow was the size six white dress she had snagged from the fourth-floor locker room during one of her many trips to visit Kenny in the pediatric I-C-U.

Now in her dress whites, she eyed the nurse's station carefully through the crack of her hospital room door. Only one nurse was on duty tonight. Carolyn had just taken her medication and wasn't scheduled for another dose until morning. The nurse would have no reason to enter her private room for the rest of the night.

When the nurse seemed sufficiently occupied, she swiftly slipped out into the hallway and headed for the stairwell. Kenny was one floor up. She passed only three people on her way to I-C-U, and two of those were patients. None gave her more than a passing glance.

Carolyn couldn't risk going into the pediatric unit, but she would at least get a last glimpse through the window. He was in his hospital crib, asleep, with an IV sticking into his chubby little arm. The large purple and yellow knot on his forehead seemed to be going down. The doctor promised that he'd be fine, yet she couldn't help but tear up seeing him like this.

She mouthed the words, “Mommy will be back in the morning,” just before turning to make her exit from the hospital. Two blocks away, she dropped an envelope into a mailbox. In it was a cryptic note to her birth mother asking that she look after Kenny if anything should happen to her.

***

Dunlevy found a free terminal at the nurse's station in the intensive care unit. It was the slow time of night, and the women were more than happy to accommodate him. They cleared a space and pulled up an extra chair to the long counter.

First, he popped the disk Carolyn had given him into the computer and pulled up the j-peg. He stared at the picture for the better part of thirty minutes. There were four people in the black-and-white photo. He immediately picked out the first woman as a fiftyish Mary Vocatura. The family resemblance was strong; he could see Manny in her face and body frame. The second, older woman, with two small children, he didn't recognize.

When Carolyn scanned the photograph, she also apparently typed in the caption. It read, “Church of the Immaculate Conception. Mary Vocatura, followed by housekeeper Evelyn Caccione and the Vocatura grandchildren: Manfred, age five, Vincent, age three. September 13, 1968.” Dunlevy stared at the oldest of the two boys and smirked. Little Manfred, Rhode Island's next U.S. senator, in short pants. That was a good one. He made a mental note to have the picture blown up and printed on good-quality stock paper.

He then keyed in Carolyn's screen name and password into Hotmail to retrieve her messages. It took him several tries to get it right. “Shit!” he blurted out every time he mistyped.

There was a faint chuckle beside him. “Having trouble?” the pretty nurse asked.

Dunlevy forgot where he was for a moment. He was embarrassed, his face red. “I'm sorry. It's been a long day.”

She never looked up from the chart on which she was scribbling. “Honey, don't sweat it. This is no convent.”

Dunlevy scanned through the junk mail until he found it. Gerhard Reussel
had
replied to Carolyn's inquiry, and his response now had the agent dumfounded. He propped his elbows on the desk and rubbed his temples as he read the e-mail over and over.

“Damn it,” he whispered. It didn't click. Dunlevy opened the jpeg again. He looked at the stern old woman and the nanny following two steps behind, seemingly dragging the boys along.

Then it hit him. Dunlevy's heart reacted to the outpouring of adrenaline as the situation started to come into focus. His brain processed all the bits and pieces. Reussel's e-mail didn't really prove anything, but it certainly complicated his life. He didn't even want to think about what Harris would say. And why had he made that stupid agreement with Carolyn to keep the investigation open if the old man recognized her? There wasn't much he could do about it now.

At some point before eleven o'clock, he found his way to the couch in the surgeon's lounge. It was a short and tweedy sofa, not long enough to accommodate his substantial frame. Still, it more than suited the purpose in his current state of fatigue. He really wanted a shower first, but just didn't have the energy. A three-hour nap was the most he could hope for now.

He had just dozed off when his pager started to buzz. Dunlevy rolled his cramped neck around on his shoulders, then picked up the phone and dialed the numbers from the pager's read-out.

“Marty?” a female voice asked.

“Yes.”

“Peggy Martin. I'm sorry to bother you so late, but I needed to know if you're canceling for the entire week.”

“Canceling?” He was still groggy.

“Yeah. If you don't need me I'll be on a plane to Denver in the morning. Your girl wasn't clear.”

The agent's eyes darted around the room, not sure of where he was for a moment. He thought he had covered all the bases, but then he remembered. “Jesus, Peggy, I'm sorry. We got our perp overnight.”

“I woke you up, didn't I?” she laughed. “Everyone in the country with a television knows you got your perp, Marty,” she scolded. “But do you need me anymore this week?”

“I should have called you. I'm sorry.” He rubbed his eyes, but they still wouldn't focus. “Did you drive all the way to Westerly?” he asked, ignoring her question.

She laughed again. “No, Marty. I told you, that woman called this afternoon and canceled for you, but just for tonight. She wasn't clear about the rest of the week.”

“What woman?”

“Your material witness. She said you asked her to call.”

Dunlevy's face tightened. “Carolyn?”

“Yeah, blondie, your witness.”

He was alert now. “Go to Denver, Peggy. I gotta go. Bye.”

He leaped from the couch, tucking in his shirt as he ran out the door. “No you didn't, Carolyn. No you didn't,” he mumbled to himself as the elevator doors closed.

The elevator seemed unusually slow, and Dunlevy impatiently bounced from one foot to the other during the ride. Maybe he was overreacting.
She can't be that unstable,
he assured himself. Dunlevy had blamed himself for the car wreck. He felt terrible guilt about placing Carolyn and her child in such danger. Now he wondered whether he had again miscalculated by letting her get so close.

When the elevator opened on the third floor, his normally swift stride became a full gallop. He hit the door hard and entered her dark hospital room, fumbling along the wall to find the switch. The fluorescent bulbs came to life to reveal an empty bed.

44

Carolyn stood there for a full minute, debating whether to knock or run. She tugged at her stolen dress whites, fiddled with her hair, and straightened her hose before finally rapping on the door. It was ten minutes to ten. She was a few minutes early.

The solid, cherry wood door creaked as it opened. “Hello,” beamed the woman. She had white hair and a kind face. “You must be the girl from the agency. We talked on the phone this afternoon.”

The nurse nodded.

“Come in, dear, come in. It gets so damp out here at night. I'm Beverly Caccione.” She wrinkled her brow. “I'm sorry, I can't recall your name.”

“Peggy Martin,” she managed. “I wasn't sure I had the right place.” She stood in the entryway, her heart beating like a drum. She looked desperately around the room for exits, resisting the urge to bolt.

“Did the agency go over your duties?” Beverly asked, directing her to the couch.

“Just briefly,” Carolyn lied.

“It's not very complicated. Mrs. Vocatura is asleep now. If she gets up in the night, she may need assistance getting to the bathroom. She won't recognize you, but that's all right. She might not even notice you're new. She's pretty groggy when she wakes up. If she asks, just introduce yourself. She's already taken her medication for the night. So, basically, it's a baby-sitting job. Any questions?”

The nurse shook her head. “No, I don't think so.” She stared downward, nervously, pushing the wrinkles from the white dress.

Beverly stood. “Let me show you around.”

They walked through the formal living room into an expansive kitchen. “I keep a small glass of apple juice on her nightstand. She'll drink it through the night. The juice is in the refrigerator.”

“I can do that,” Carolyn said as she continued to follow.

They stepped down into a small den off the kitchen. “Mrs. Vocatura's bedroom is right in there,” Beverly said, pointing toward the open door.

A television was blasting. Beverly smiled and motioned for her to follow. She put a finger to her mouth, sparking a muffled blast of nervous laughter from the impostor. There was nothing either of them could do or say that would have been any louder than the television.

It was the first time Carolyn had been in the same room with Mary Vocatura. She wasn't the iron matriarch she expected. Sitting up in her orthopedic hospital bed, the old woman looked more like a frail, pasty corpse. Her face was deeply lined and her gray hair seemed to be thinning on top. Mrs. Vocatura didn't move as Beverly extricated the remote control from her bony hand. She lowered the volume considerably. Again, she motioned for the new nurse to follow.

“I guess you know, this is election day for Mrs. Vocatura's grandson. She's been watching the returns come in.” Beverly laughed. “I knew she wouldn't make it until midnight. She's confident of a landslide anyway, she's been telling me all day.”

“Should we leave the television on like that?”

Beverly thought about this for a moment. “Let it stay on until you hear the tone when the station signs off. She likes to sleep with it on.”

“Okay.”

The older woman gestured to the den. “Now, you can make yourself comfortable in here.”

The small living area was just big enough for a couch, a recliner, a coffee table, and a twenty-one-inch television. Carolyn tried to act nonchalant as she pretended to admire the furnishings. Still, it was becoming difficult to breathe.
Keep it together, keep it together,
she told herself.

Beverly glanced down at her watch. “Well, if there's nothing else, I think I'll go watch the election returns come in from my bed and call it a night.”

“Goodnight.”

Beverly moved toward the staircase. “There's a phone in the kitchen and I'm right upstairs,” she said as she climbed the steps. “Oh, and if you get hungry, help yourself to anything in the kitchen. The cook made some fudge brownies today. They're to die for.”

45

Dunlevy raced down the stairs, jumping four or five of them at a time. He sprinted across the parking lot to the replacement Taurus. Inside, he cranked the key and gunned the accelerator, spinning the wheels as he left the hospital parking lot.

“Don't do it, Carolyn,” he said aloud as he weaved through traffic.
Maybe I'm overreacting,
he told himself. He wondered whether the woman he was coming to love was capable of violence.
Am I such a bad judge of character?

***

Carolyn spilled the contents of her hypodermic kit onto the marble countertop: two disposable syringes, two needles, still wrapped in sterile plastic, and a single vile of a clear serum, a concoction sure to induce a fatal myocardial infarction in a woman of Mary Vocatura's age.

Out of habit, she held the syringe high, bracing her forefinger against her thumb to sharply flip it, driving the bubbles to the top. She then pushed upward on the plunger, just a fraction, catapulting a few drops of the liquid into the air.

The television continued to blare. Carolyn stood frozen at the threshold of the bedroom and eyed the old woman with an unnerving tranquility. The election returns continued to scroll across the bottom of the screen as Conan O'Brien chattered mindlessly.

She moved closer to the bed. Sweat now dripped from her brow, and a sharp, searing pain shot through her head strong enough to momentarily blur her vision. The pills the doctors had given her were also playing havoc with her equilibrium and clouding her thoughts. As she stood near Mary Vocatura's wrinkled face, a nauseating rush of doubt was beginning to take hold.
You can do this,
she kept repeating to herself.

She thought about all those elderly men, their wives, children, and grandchildren left behind to suffer with the memory of their violent deaths. The mental picture of Derek Hudson's body, flaccid and drained of color, propped against his steering wheel, came to her next. This manipulative, ailing woman who had enjoyed a long life purposely deprived so many others of the same chance. Passing in her sleep was almost too kind for someone so evil.

She gently held the old woman's chin and eased her head to the side to get a better look at her jugular vein. It was blue and well pronounced. Carolyn moved the hypo toward that spot, determined to drive it in with force. As the needle nicked the skin, her thoughts wandered back to Kenny, still lying in a hospital bed with a bandage on his head. Growing up without her biological parents had been an incalculable hardship. Was she repeating the cycle? What would happen to Kenny if she got caught? The possibility of her child growing up with a mother in prison caused her hands to shake. She just couldn't do it.

“Run now,” her mind screamed as she tensed her hand and prepared to jab the needle.

“You sneaky little bitch!”

Carolyn's head spun toward the screeching voice. Beverly burst past her and positioned herself at Mary Vocatura's bedside, a pistol held high in her hand.

The old woman's eyes didn't even flutter as Beverly brusquely turned the old lady's head from side to side, looking for needle marks. Beverly's eyes were bright and alert as they darted back and forth between her patient and the impostor.

Carolyn nervously looked around the room for a means of escape. As she considered bolting toward the door, Beverly raised the pistol in her direction.

“Don't even think about it, missy.”

Beverly was still standing beside the bed, wearing her bathrobe and slippers. Her face was greasy from an application of cold cream. She checked the old woman's breathing one more time. All of her attention was now drawn to Carolyn. “Out to the den, now!” she demanded in a low but forceful voice.

As Carolyn took her first step out of the bedroom, Beverly gave her a powerful shove from behind.

“You stupid little bitch. I hope you go to prison for the rest of your life. Lay that syringe on the counter and then go sit on the couch,” Beverly ordered.

“You and that old woman in there are the ones that belong in prison!” she shouted back as she sat down as ordered. “This whole household is evil, and it
has
been for generations.”

Beverly scowled and waved the pistol in Carolyn's direction. “You are a sick young woman. I knew something was wrong the moment you arrived, but I couldn't put my finger on it. That's why I was watching you on the security cameras. You're that girl I saw on television, the one that's been helping the FBI. So now you're an executioner? Is that how the FBI works these days?”

Carolyn's head was spinning. “Go ahead, call the police. Turn me in.”

Beverly was smiling now. “That's what you want, isn't it?” she smirked. “Maybe I should give you what you had planned for Mrs. Vocatura.” The housekeeper laid the gun down on the kitchen countertop and picked up the hypodermic needle.

Carolyn's face darkened. “I guess it wouldn't bother you and your senile boss in there to add another name to the long list.”

Beverly glared at her. “Young lady, Mrs. Vocatura couldn't kill anybody. She's the kindest woman I've ever known. She's been taking in strays all her life, me included. The only one with the evil intentions in this house is you.”

“There's no point for you to lie now,” Carolyn said sharply. “There are other U-352 survivors that you don't know about. I've talked to the man that actually came ashore here during the war. He'll identify Mary Vocatura, and this will all be over.”

“No such thing will happen because none of it is true!”

Carolyn's face tightened with hatred. “That old lady passed along government secrets, secrets her husband stole from General Dynamics. And now, sixty years later, it was coming back to haunt her and her grandchildren. She couldn't let that happen. And if you didn't help, you at least knew about it, which makes you just as bad.”

Beverly let out a short cackle before her eyes locked in a cold stare. “That's what you think, little miss high and mighty?” She put down the syringe, picked up the gun, and plopped down on the love seat across from Carolyn. “It's a shame that little child of yours won't remember his mother. My mother died when I was ten, and I have only faint memories of her. Yours is a boy, isn't it?” she asked.