Phantoms

Page 53

“That's what they say.”
“In another year, if Timmy's still in a coma, Bryce might change his mind again. But for the moment, he seems grateful just to be able to sit down there for a while each day, holding his little boy's warm hand.” She looked Tal over and demanded: “What's with the street clothes?”
“I'm being discharged.”
“Fantastic!” Lisa said.
Timmy's roommate these days was an eighty-two-year-old inn who was hooked up to an IV, a beeping cardiac monitor, and a wheezing respirator.
Although Timmy was attached only to an IV, he was in the embrace of an oblivion as complete as the octogenarian's coma.
Once or twice an hour, never more often, never for longer than a minute at a time, the boy's eyelids fluttered or his lips twitched or a muscle ticked in his cheek. That was all.
Bryce sat beside the bed, his hand through the railing, gently gripping his son's hand. Since Snowfield, just this meager contact was enough to satisfy him. Each day he left the room feeling better.
There wasn't much fight now that evening had come. On the wall at the head of the bed, there was a dim lamp that cast a soft glow only as far as Timmy's shoulders, leaving his sheet-covered body in shadow. In that wan illumination, Bryce could see how his boy had withered, losing weight in spite of the IV solution. The cheekbones were too prominent. There were dark circles around his eyes. His chin and jawline looked pathetically fragile. His son had always been small for his age. But now the hand Bryce held seemed to belong to a much younger child than Timmy; it seemed like the hand of an infant.
But it was warm. It was warm.
After a while, Bryce reluctantly let go. He smoothed the boy's hair, straightened the sheet, fluffed the pillow.
It was time to leave, but he couldn't go; not yet. He was crying. He didn't want to step into the hall with tears on his face.
He pulled a few Kleenex from the box on the nightstand, got up, went to the window, and looked out at Santa Mira.
Although he wept every day when he came here, these were different tears from those he had cried before. These scalded, washed away the misery, and healed. Bit by bit, slowly, they healed him.
“Discharged?” Jenny said, scowling, “Says who?”
Tal grinned. “Says me.”
“Since when have you become your own doctor?”
“I just thought a second opinion seemed called for, so I asked myself in for consultation, and I recommended to me that I go home.”
“Tal-”
“Really, Doc, I feel great. The swelling's gone. Haven't run a temperature in two days. I'm a prime candidate for release. If you try to make me stay here any longer, my death will be on your hands.”
“Death?”
“The hospital food is sure to kill me.”
“He looks ready to go dancing,” Lisa said.
“And when'd you get your medical degree?” Jenny asked. To Tal she said, “Well… let me have a look. Take off your shirt.”
He slipped out of it quickly and easily, not nearly as stiff as he'd been yesterday. Jenny carefully untaped the bandages and found that he was right: no swelling, no breaks in the scabs.
“We've beaten it,” he assured her.
“Usually, we don't discharge a patient in the evening. Orders are written in the morning; release comes between ten o'clock and noon.”
“Rules are made to be broken.”
“What an awful thing for a policeman to say,” she teased. “Look, Tal. I'd prefer you stayed here one more night, just in case. – ”
“And I'd prefer I didn't, just in case I go stir crazy.”
“You're really determined?”
“He's really determined,” Lisa said.
Tal said, “Doc, they had my gun in a safe, along with their drug supply. I had to wheedle, beg, plead, and tease a sweet nurse named Paula, so she'd get it for me this afternoon. I told her you'd let me out tonight for sure. Now, see, Paula's a soul sister, a very attractive lady, single, eligible, delicious-”
“Don't get too steamy,” Lisa said, “There's a minor present.”
“I'd like to have a date with Paula,” Tal said, “I'd like to spend eternity with Paula. But now, Doc, if you say I can't go home, then I'll have to put my revolver back in the safe, and maybe Paula's supervisor'll find out she let me have it before my discharge was final, and then Paula might lose her job, and if she loses it because of me, I'll never get a date with her. If I don't get a date with her, I'm not going to be able to marry her, and if I don't marry her, there won't be any little Tal Whitmans running around, not ever, because I'll go away to a monastery and become celibate, seeing as how I've made up my mind that Paula's the only woman for me. So if you won't discharge me, then you'll not only be ruining my life but depriving the world of a little black Einstein or maybe a little black Beethoven.”
Jenny laughed and shook her head. “Okay, okay. I'll write a discharge order, and you can leave tonight.”
He hugged her and quickly began putting on his shirt.
“Paula better watch out,” Lisa said, “You're too smooth to be left loose among women without a bell around your neck.”
“Me? Smooth?” He buckled his holster around his waist. “I'm just good old Tal Whitman, sort of bashful. Been shy all my life.”
“Oh, sure,” Lisa said.
Jenny said, “If you-”
And suddenly Tal went berserk. He shoved Jenny aside, knocked her down. She struck the footboard of the bed with her shoulder and hit the floor hard. She heard gunfire and saw Lisa falling and didn't know if the girl had been hit or was just diving for cover; and for an instant she thought Tal was shooting at them. Then she saw he was still pulling his revolver out of his holster.
Even as the sound of the shot slammed through the room, glass shattered. It was the window behind Tal.
“Drop it!” Tal shouted.
Jenny turned her head, saw Gene Teer standing in the doorway, silhouetted by the brighter light in the hospital corridor behind him.
Standing in the deep shadows by the window, Bryce finished drying his tears and wadded up the damp Kleenex. He heard a soft noise in the room behind him, thought it was a nurse, turned-and saw Fletcher Kale. For a moment Bryce was frozen by disbelief.
Kale was standing at the foot of Timmy's bed, barely identifiable in the weak light. He hadn't seen Bryce. He was watching the boy-and grinning. Madness knotted his face. He was holding a gun.
Bryce stepped away from the window, reaching for his own revolver. Too late, he realized he wasn't in uniform, wasn't wearing a sidearm. He had an off-duty snubnose.38 in an ankle holster; he stooped to get it.
But Kale had seen him. The gun in Kale's hand snapped up, barked once, twice, three times in rapid succession.
Bryce felt a sledgehammer hit him high and on the left side, and pain flashed across his entire chest. As he crumpled to the floor, he heard the killer's gun roar three more times.
“Drop it!” Tal shouted, and Jenny saw Jeeter, and another shot ricocheted off the bed rail and must have gone through the ceiling because a couple of squares of acoustic tile fell down.
Crouching, Tal fired two rounds. The first shot took Jeeter in the left thigh. The second struck him in the gut, lifted him, and threw him backwards, into the corner, where he landed in a spray of blood. He didn't move.
Tal said, “What the hell?”
Jenny cried for Lisa and scrambled on all fours around the bed, wondering if her sister was alive.
Kale had been sick for a couple of hours. He was running a fever. His eyes burned and felt grainy. It had come on him suddenly. He had a headache, too, and standing there at the foot of the boy's bed, he began to feel nauseated. His legs became weak. He didn't understand; he was supposed to be protected, invincible. Of course, maybe Lucifer was impatient with him for waiting five days before leaving the caves. Maybe this illness was a warning to get on with His work. The symptoms would probably vanish the moment the boy was dead. Yeah. That was probably what would happen. Kale grinned at the comatose child, began to raise his revolver, and winced as a cramp twisted his guts.
Then he saw movement in the shadows. Swung away from the bed. A man. Coming at him. Hammond. Kale opened fire, squeezing off six rounds, taking no chances. He was dizzy, and his vision was blurry, and his arm felt weak, and he could hardly keep a grip on the gun; even in those close quarters, he couldn't trust his aim.
Hammond went down hard and lay very still.
Although the light was dim, and although Kale's eyes wouldn't focus properly, he could see spots of blood on the wall and floor.
Laughing happily, wondering when the illness would leave him now that he'd completed one of the tasks Lucifer had given him, Kale weaved toward the body, intending to deliver the coup de grâce. Even if Hammond was stone-cold dead, Kale wanted to put a bullet in that snide, smug face, wanted to mess it up real good.
Then he would deal with the boy.
That was what Lucifer wanted. Five deaths. Hammond, the boy, Whitman, Dr. Paige, and the girl.
He reached Hammond, started to bend down to him-
–and the sheriff moved. His hand was lightning quick. He snatched a gun from an ankle holster, and before Kale could respond, there was a muzzle flash.
Kale was hit. He stumbled, fell. His revolver flew out of his hand. He heard it clang against the leg of one of the beds.
This can't be happening, he told himself. I'm protected. No one can harm me.
Lisa was alive. When she'd fallen behind the bed, she hadn't been shot; she'd just been diving for cover. Jenny held her tightly.
Tal was crouched over Gene Teer. The gang leader was dead, a gaping hole in his chest.
A crowd had gathered: nurses, nurses' aides, a couple of doctors, a patient or two in bathrobe and slippers.
A red-haired orderly hurried up. He looked shell-shocked.
“There's been a shooting on the second floor, too!”
“Bryce,” Jenny said, and a cold blade of fear pierced her.
“What's going on here?” Tal said.
Jenny ran for the exit door at the end of the hall, slammed through it, went down the stairs two at a time. Tal caught up with her by the time she reached the bottom of the second flight. He pulled open the door, and they rushed out into the second-floor corridor.
Another crowd had gathered outside Timmy's room. Her heart beating twenty to the dozen, Jenny rammed through the onlookers.
A body was on the floor. A nurse stooped beside it.
Jenny thought it was Bryce. Then she saw him in a chair. Another nurse was cutting the shirt away from his shoulder. He was just wounded.
Bryce forced a smile. “Better be careful, Doc. If you always arrive on the scene this soon, they'll start calling you an ambulance chaser.”
She wept. She couldn't help it. She had never been so glad to hear anything as she was to hear his voice.
“Just a scratch,” he said.
“Now you sound like Tal,” she said, laughing through her tears, “Is Timmy okay?”
“Kale was going to kill him. If I hadn't been here…”
“This is Kale?”
“Yeah.”
Jenny wiped her eyes with her sleeves and examined Bryce's shoulder. The bullet had passed through, in the front and out the back. There was no reason to think it had fragmented, but she intended to order X-rays anyway. The wound was bleeding freely, although it wasn't spurting, and she directed the nurse to stanch the flow with gauze pads soaked in boric acid.
He was going to be all right.
Sure of Bryce's condition, Jenny turned to the man on the floor. He was in more serious condition. The nurse had torn open his jacket and shirt; he'd been shot in the chest. He coughed, and bright blood sputtered over his lips.
Jenny sent the nurse for a stretcher and put in an emergency call for a surgeon. Then she noticed Kale was running a fever. His forehead was hot, face flushed. When she took his wrist to check his pulse, she saw it was covered with fiery red spots. She pushed up his sleeve and found the spots extended halfway up his arm. They were on his other wrist, too. None on his face or neck. She had noticed pale red marks on his chest but had mistaken them for blood. Looking again, more closely than before, she saw they were like the spots on his wrists.
Measles? No. Something else. Something worse than measles.
The nurse returned with two orderlies and a wheeled stretcher, and Jenny said, “We'll have to quarantine this floor. And the one above. We've got some disease here, and I'm not entirely sure what it is.”
After X-rays and after his wound had been dressed, Bryce was put in a room down the hall from Timmy. The ache in his shoulder got worse, not better, as the shocked nerves began to regain their function. He refused painkillers, intending to keep a clear head until he knew what had happened and why.
Jenny came to see him half an hour after he was put to bed. She looked exhausted, yet her weariness didn't diminish her beauty. The sight of her was all the medicine he needed.
“How's Kale?” he asked.
“The bullet didn't damage his heart. It collapsed one lung, nicked an artery. Ordinarily, the prognosis would be fair. But he's not only got surgery to recuperate from; he's also got to deal with a case of Rocky Mountain spotted fever.”
Bryce blinked. “Spotted fever?”
“There're two cigarette burns on his right calf, or rather the scars of two burns, where he got rid of the ticks. Wood ticks transmit the disease. Judging from the look of the scars, I'd say he was bitten five or six days ago, which is just about the incubation period for spotted fever. The symptoms must've hit him within the past several hours. He must've been dizzy, chilled, weak in the joints…”
“That's why his aim was so bad!” Bryce said, “He fired five times at close range and only winged me once.”
“You'd better thank God for sending that tick up his pants leg.”
He thought about that and said, “It almost does seem like an act of God, doesn't it? But what were he and Teer up to? Why'd they risk coming here with guns? I can understand Kale might want to kill me and even Timmy. But why Tal and you and Lisa?”
“You're not going to believe this,” she said, “Since last Tuesday morning, Kale's been keeping a written record of what he calls ‘The Events After the Epiphany.' It seems that Kale and Teer made a bargain with the Devil.”
Four o'clock Monday morning, only six days after the epiphany of which Kale had written, he died in the county hospital.