Chapter 16
16
G inny was poised at the edge of the diving board, waiting for Sully to swim out of range before she dived in. But he stopped about halfway out and turned, treading water and motioning for her to come in.
“Get back!” she yelled. “You’re too close.”
“No, I’m not.”
Webster Chee was leaning against the side of the house. The gun and shoulder holster he was wearing stood out in stark contrast to his white short-sleeved shirt. Kevin Holloway was coming out of the house carrying two cans of Coke. He was wearing shorts and an unbuttoned cotton shirt, but Ginny knew he also had a gun beneath his shirt. Ginny supposed Franklin Chee was asleep. She was getting used to being the object of so much attention, but the guards seemed an incongruous accessory to the holiday atmosphere around the pool.
“Come on, Ginny. Don’t chicken out on me now,” Sully jeered.
“I don’t chicken,” she said, and then took a deep breath, but instead of diving neatly, she bounced as high as she could and then cannon-balled right where Sully was waiting. She saw the startled look on his face just before she went under and knew that she’d scored a big hit. Seconds later, she felt hands at her back. Sully was pulling her up. She surfaced laughing.
“So you thought that was funny, did you?”
The growl in his voice was fake, and she laughed again as she wrapped her arms around his neck and let him carry them both to solid ground.
Kevin Holloway handed her a towel as Sully set her on the side of the pool.
“She got you good, Sully.”
He grinned wryly. Holloway was the youngest man there and was, he suspected, more than slightly infatuated with Ginny’s charms. But that was as far as it went. Holloway was a by-the-book man, just like his two partners.
“Yeah, she did that,” Sully said, and hefted himself out of the pool. “If you guys want to swim a bit to cool off, I’d be glad to stand watch for you.”
“Thanks, but no. Orders are orders. Besides, I took a quick dip last night before I went to bed,” Kevin said, then looked at Webster. “I’m going to check the perimeter.”
Webster nodded, then took a slow sip of his Coke while Ginny slid into the lounge chair, lay back and closed her eyes.
Sully was drying his hair when his cell phone rang. Ginny pulled a towel over her face to shield it from the sun as he reached across her stomach to the table where it was lying.
“Sullivan.”
“It’s me,” Dan said. “I’ve got news, and it isn’t good.”
Sully stilled. Suddenly the fun of the day seemed silly, as if they’d forgotten why they were there.
“What’s wrong?”
“We found Fontaine.”
“And?”
“And he’s dead.”
“Shit.”
“That’s not all.”
Sully’s chin jutted as he unconsciously braced himself for a blow.
“He hasn’t been dead all that long,” Dan said. “It seems he went for a morning walk a week or so ago, just like he’s done for the past twenty years, only this time he fell off a pier. And get this, the pier has a five-foot-high railing around it.”
“Not the best diving board in the world,” Sully muttered. “I don’t suppose there were any witnesses?”
“Hell no, and funny you should mention diving,” Dan said. “People said the old man had never learned to swim.”
The hairs rose on the backs of Sully’s arms.
“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Sully asked.
“Yes, only we checked his house. Everything was in perfect order. The phone was on the hook, and there were witnesses who saw him on the way to the pier. He stopped and talked to them, just as he did every morning, so he wasn’t in any kind of a trance. If he died because of those women, then he had a little help.”
“Have you located any of the other teachers?”
“All but two. One’s deceased, and the other has Alzheimer’s. The ones we’ve talked to remember a guy who came once a week for the hour in which the class was held, but no one remembers his name or what he looked like. They said he always left when the class was over.”
“Great. That’s just great,” Sully said, and started pacing.
Ginny took the towel off her face and sat up.
“What? What is it?”
Sully was too deep into the conversation he was having to answer.
“Isn’t there anyone else? Like a janitor…or some of the cooks from the lunchroom? It can’t end here, damn it! Someone has to remember something!”
Dan sighed. “We’re working on it, Sully. If you’ll check the book, you’ll see that there weren’t any pictures of the staff. We’re re-interviewing a couple of the teachers today who might be able to help us with some names in that direction, but it’s a long shot. According to their stories, most of those people were close to retirement age then, and it’s been twenty years. The chances of them still being alive are not on our side. When I know something, you’ll know something, okay?”
“It has to be okay, doesn’t it?” Sully said, and disconnected.
Ginny stood. She could tell by the set of Sully’s shoulders that she needed to be standing when he told her the news.
“It isn’t good, is it?” she asked.
He shook his head. “No, baby, it’s not.”
“They couldn’t find Mr. Fontaine?”
“He was dead.”
“Oh, that’s too bad,” she said. “Well, he must have been pretty old. I guess it was to be expected.”
“That’s not what I mean,” Sully said. “They fished him out of the ocean about a week and a half ago. Seems he forgot he couldn’t swim and took a dive over a five-foot railing on the pier.”
Ginny clapped a hand over her mouth to keep from screaming.
The world was coming undone. When Sully took her in his arms, she began to cry.
“He’s killing everyone, isn’t he? He’ll find me, Sully, and when he does, I’ll be helpless.”
“I won’t let that happen,” he said. “Remember what I promised?”
She shuddered.
“Look at me, Ginny.”
A wave of calm swept through her body. Those were the same words he’d used the night they’d first made love. Look at me, Ginny . And she’d looked and seen the eyes of love.
“I see you,” she said.
“What did I promise you?”
“That you wouldn’t let me die.”
“That’s right, and don’t you forget it.”
“Okay.”
He rubbed his hands up and down the sides of her arms and then kissed her gently.
“Honey, you’ve had too much sun. Why don’t we call it quits for now and come back out after sundown?”
She nodded, picked up her towel and walked into the house.
The moment she was out of sight, Sully headed for Webster. The men needed to know what had happened and to be on the alert. There was no way of knowing how long they could keep her location a secret.
The evening meal had been a sober affair. Ginny had picked at her food, and every bite Sully put in his mouth burned his gut. Idle chitchat seemed superfluous, but discussing the issue at hand was too painful.
Finally Ginny carried her plate to the sink and scraped the contents down the garbage disposal.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “It was good, but I just wasn’t hungry.”
“It’s all right, honey. We’ve had some hard news today. It was a setback, but it’s not the end of the world. Why don’t you watch a little TV? Find something good, and I’ll come watch it with you as soon as I clean off the table.”
“No. I’ll help you. When it’s done, we’ll both go watch some TV.”
“It’s a deal.”
He emptied his plate down the garbage disposal, while Ginny cleaned off the table. Then he loaded the dishwasher as Ginny put some of their clothes into the washing machine. It was a very domestic moment for a woman on the run for her life.
A short while later they were side by side on the sofa. Ginny was skimming through a magazine she’d already read two times while Sully channel surfed the TV.
“What time is it?” he asked. “I left my watch on the bedroom dresser.”
She leaned forward to read the dial on the clock across the room.
“It’s about ten o’clock. Let’s watch the news, okay? I’ve been so focused on what’s happening to me I have no idea what’s been going on in the world.”
Sully aimed the remote. The screen blipped, and then the familiar logo of a national syndicated network appeared.
“Just in time,” he said.
Ginny tossed the magazine aside and then pulled her feet up off the floor to sit cross-legged on the sofa. Sully grinned to himself, marveling at how someone as tall and lithe as Ginny could wind herself up into such a small ball.
“ And now for the national news. Recently crowned Nobel-Prize-winning doctor Emile Karnoff is in Santa Fe this week, speaking at a state medical conference. His revolutionary technique of using hypnosis as a healing tool is being shared with his younger colleagues, much to the dismay of some die-hard practitioners. Dr. Karnoff recently returned from Ireland, where he was instrumental in reversing the terminal prognosis of a young mother dying of cancer .”
As they flashed a picture of Emile Karnoff coming out of a hotel, waving at the cameras and then getting into a cab, something went off in Ginny’s mind. She leaned forward, her elbows on her knees, her chin resting in the palms of her hands.
Sully noticed her interest, and it occurred to him what Ginny’s life had been like before all this happened.
“You know, we’ve never talked about your career. I’ll bet you’ve met some really interesting people over the years. Who was your favorite person to interview?”
“Sully, I—”
The story shifted from the archived film clip to a sound bite of Karnoff’s address to the medical community.
“Turn it up!” Ginny said.
The tone of her voice was a little startling, but Sully reached for the remote without comment. As he aimed it toward the screen, the deep, resonant voice of Emile Karnoff filled the room.
“… lifelong pursuit of the human spirit as well as the mind. As you know, we use but a tiny portion of the marvelous brain that God has given us. It only made sense to me that we were capable of so much —”
“I know him. I know him .”
Sully looked at her, and as he did, a shiver ran up his spine. Not only was the childish singsong manner in which Ginny had spoken almost creepy, but she was sitting with her eyes closed, listening to the man talk.
Oh hell . “Ginny?”
“Do you hear the power?”
He stared at her, his mind turning in a dozen directions at once.
“What do you mean?”
“In his voice. Do you hear it? I know him.”
“Well, sure you know him. He’s been on television quite a bit in the last few months. It isn’t every day that an American wins a Nobel Prize.”
She was rocking back and forth now, her eyes still closed, and there was an almost imperceptible tremor in her hands.
“I know him.”
Panic struck. Sully bolted up from the sofa and ran into the kitchen, where he’d left the walkie-talkie. As he pressed the button to talk, a short burst of static erupted from the mike; a warning for someone to listen.
“Franklin! This is Sully. I need you in here now.”
By the time he got back into the living room, Franklin Chee was coming in the front door, his weapon drawn.
Sully shook his head and motioned toward Ginny. Franklin replaced his weapon as he moved to Ginny’s side. She was rocking to and fro in a childlike repetitive motion, her eyes closed, her hands folded in her lap.
“When did this happen?” Chee asked.
“Just now.”
“Do you know what triggered it?”
Sully pointed to the screen. The last images of Emile Karnoff were fading as the newscaster moved on to other stories.
“Who was he?” Franklin asked.
“Emile Karnoff, the doctor who—”
“Won the Nobel Prize for using hypnosis to cure disease,” Franklin said, finishing Sully’s sentence for him.
They looked at each other and then again at Ginny.
Franklin laid his hand on Ginny’s knee.
“Ginny?”
“Yes, teacher?”
At the sound of her own voice, she jerked and then opened her eyes.
“Franklin. For a moment, I thought you were someone else.”
“Christ almighty,” Sully murmured, as the implications of what she’d said began to sink in. All this time they’d been looking for an educator. But what if…?
“Ginny, where did you go just now?” Franklin asked.
Ginny swayed where she sat and then looked at Sully for guidance, her eyes a bit dazed and unfocused.
“Did we go somewhere?”
Sully groaned. “Damn it, Franklin, tell me I’m wrong in thinking what I’m thinking.”
Franklin shrugged. “I can’t do that. I don’t know what you saw or why Ginny slipped away, but I know where you’re going with it. Are you going to call Dan or shall I?”
Ginny covered her face with her hands.
Sully was at her side within seconds.
“It’s all right, baby. I was right here all the time. Nothing happened to you.”
Angrily, she pushed him away. “Nothing? You call losing touch with reality nothing?”
Franklin got to his feet. “I am going to call Dan.”
“Use the phone in the kitchen if you want,” Sully said.
Franklin patted his pocket. “I have mine. I will be back.”
He walked out of the house, leaving Ginny and Sully alone.
“Why did this happen?” Ginny muttered. “What happened? You didn’t play the tape, so what was it that—”
“You don’t remember?”
“No,” she said, and jumped to her feet, unable to sit still any longer. “We were watching the news, for God’s sake, and then…” She frowned and then stared at the floor, mentally replaying the sequence of events. “And then…they had a piece about…” She looked up. “About the Nobel-Prize-winning doctor, right?”
He nodded.
“What else do you remember?”
She started to pace, mentally ticking off the images still lingering in her head.
“There was a film clip…and we were talking about…about…” She frowned. “I don’t remember anything more until Franklin spoke to me. What did I do? What did I hear?”
“A man’s voice. You kept telling me you knew him, but you weren’t looking at him, honey. You were listening to the sound of his voice.”
“Then what?”
“You called him teacher.”
Her legs buckled. Sully caught her before she fell. Her head lolled against his arm as he carried her to the bed. When he set her down on the spread, she covered her face and began to cry. Not loudly, just soft, helpless sobs that nearly broke his heart.
“Honey? Talk to me. Come on now. You’re tougher than this. I saw what you can do. Don’t give up on me now.”
“I am coming apart, aren’t I, Sully? First the tape, now something as simple as the sound of a voice. What next? How will I ever cope again? I wouldn’t dare drive a car for fear of blanking out at some inconsequential sound. I can’t do my job if I’m afraid to answer a phone. I don’t know what to think, and half the time I don’t even want to remember. We were babies, Sully. Six years old. What did he do to us? My God…what did he do?”
Sully lay down beside her and pulled her close against his strength.
“I don’t know, but we’ll find out. And you will be all right. And it will be over. And I will be with you every step of the way.”
She turned her face against his chest and finally let herself grieve—not just for herself, but for Georgia, and Emily, Jo-Jo and Lynn, for a woman named Frances and a young teacher named Allison. She cried because she was the only one left who could.
A short while later the phone rang. Sully slipped his arm from beneath Ginny’s neck and then answered.
“Sullivan,” he said, speaking quietly.
“I got Chee’s message. We need to talk.”
“Hang on a minute,” Sully said. “Ginny’s asleep. I’m going into another room.”
With a last glance to make sure she was still resting, Sully headed for the living room.
“Okay, start talking,” Sully said.
“First things first. How is she?”
“She’s coming undone,” Sully said, and then shoved a hand through his hair in frustration. “It’s killing me just sitting here, not being able to do anything. I want to find the bastard who’s doing this and break his sick neck.”
“What do you think about her reaction to the piece on Karnoff?” Dan asked.
“Hell if I know, but you should have seen her. And when Franklin came in and woke her up, just before she came out of it, she called him teacher.” His voice rose angrily as he slammed the flat of his hand against the wall. “Teacher! All this time we were looking for a regular teacher. What if we were wrong? What if that was just a name he told them to call him to make it okay for him to do what he was doing?”
“What do you think he was doing?” Dan said.
“I don’t know,” Sully snapped. “But it’s eating Ginny alive. Get some sound bites of Karnoff from some of the television stations and bring them with you. We’ve got to make sure this isn’t a fluke. But I swear to God, if she reacts this way again, I want a background check done on the son of a bitch. I want to know where he was in 1979. I want to know what he was doing and who he was doing it to, right down to how many times he made love to his wife.”
“Is that all?” Dan drawled.
“Sorry. It’s your case, but she’s my—”
He stopped. What was she, exactly, besides the woman he loved?
“You didn’t finish what you were saying,” Dan said. “Don’t know how, or don’t want to?”
“Let’s just say that I’m not looking forward to a future without her in it.”
“Enough said. I’ll be there in a few hours. I’ve got to set the wheels in motion on Karnoff and get some film on him, too.”
Dan disconnected, and Sully tossed the phone on the sofa and walked outside. As late as it was, it should have been dark, but with the full moon reflecting off the light desert sand, the air seemed caught between daylight and dusk. In the distance, he could just make out one of the Chee brothers sitting on an outcropping of rock. A tiny lizard scooted across the gravel in front of him and disappeared between a pair of round squatty cactus, a huge contrast to the stately Saguaro scattered about the area. Compared to the lush green mountains and deep running creeks where he’d grown up, it was like looking at the surface of the moon.
He thought better when he walked, so he stuffed his hands in his pockets and began a trek toward the back of the property.
It was almost too improbable to contemplate, but stranger things had happened in this world. Could Emile Karnoff, the current darling of the medical world and the man most likely to be the news magazines’ man of the year, be involved in something this sinister? If they went exclusively by Ginny’s reactions, then his guilt seemed evident. But there were so many things to consider. Phone records to trace. Trips that might coincide with the deaths of Georgia or Edward Fontaine. That part of the case he would have to leave up to Dan. All he could do was make sure that Ginny stayed in one piece, both physically and mentally, until someone was charged with the crimes. After that…
He stopped, staring across the pool and into the desert beyond. What about after that? Would Ginny be so sick of it all that she would want to be rid of everything connected to this case, including him? Or would her feelings still hold true? He could only hope. All he knew was that when she’d collapsed in his arms earlier today, he’d never been so scared in his life. In those few seconds, he’d wanted to take her and run and never look back. If she would have him, he would spend the rest of his life with her and consider himself blessed. But until the mystery was solved and the guilty brought to justice, what he wanted would have to wait.
Emile was preparing a drink before dinner when someone knocked at his hotel door. He set the glass down and went to answer it, smoothing his hair as he went. The hotel manager and a police officer were standing outside his door.
“Dr. Karnoff? Emile Karnoff of Bainbridge, Connecticut?”
Puzzled by the officer’s presence, he smiled nervously at the manager and then nodded to the cop.
“Yes, I’m Emile Karnoff.”
“Dr. Karnoff, may we come inside for a moment?”
Emile’s heart gave a little skip and then settled back into rhythm. It couldn’t be bad news, but rather something to do with a needy patient.
“Certainly. I was about to have a drink before going down to dinner. Would you join me?”
“No, sir,” the officer said. “But thank you, just the same.”
The manager shook his head in denial, but stood back. It was obvious to Emile that he’d come only as an accompaniment to the policeman.
“Officer, how may I help you?”
“Sir, I’m sorry to have to inform you that your son, Phillip, is dead, and your wife, Lucy, is in a hospital under sedation.”
Emile blanched. For a moment he thought he’d misunderstood, but the sympathy on both men’s faces told him otherwise.
“Dead? Dear God, how? Was there an accident? Was Lucy injured as well?”
“All I know is that the Bainbridge police asked us to find you and give you this information. I can say that your son did not have an accident. We were told it was suicide. Your wife witnessed it, and that’s why she’s under doctor’s care at this time. However, we were not led to believe she was injured in any way.”
“No.” Emile staggered. “Not suicide. I can’t believe it. There was no warning, no—”
He suddenly flashed on Phillip in his room, ranting and laughing and flaunting his sarcasm and disregard for courtesy. Emile covered his face. He’d known then that something was horribly wrong, and he’d turned his back and walked away.
“If I had paid more attention. Oh God…helping everyone but my family. What kind of man have I become?”
“Dr. Karnoff, I think you’d better sit down,” the manager said, and helped him to a chair. “Sir, on behalf of everyone here at the hotel, please accept our sympathies. If there is anything I can do…anything at all, you have only to ask.”
Emile shook his head, like a dog coming out of the water, and started fumbling with his tie, then the creases in his pants, as if neatness was the most important thing in his life.
“Home. I’ll have to go home. I need to call the airport and cancel my appointments here. And Lucy…dear Lucy. That a mother should have to witness such a horrible thing…”
Tears rolled down his cheeks.
“Dr. Karnoff, if you have an itinerary, I will see to calling all your people here. And if you would allow me, I will make arrangements to get you on the first plane out of Santa Fe.”
Emile nodded. “Yes. Yes, I would appreciate it very much.” Remembering his manners, he stood abruptly and shook hands with the officer, as well as the manager of the hotel.
“Gentlemen…I must pack now.”
The officer departed, leaving the manager to wait for Emile to furnish the itinerary.
A short while later Emile found himself alone. Now there was no one between him and that which he knew to be the truth. He’d seen something dangerous in Phillip and let Lucy’s will prevail because he hadn’t wanted to be bothered. Now the death of his son and the sanity of his wife would be on his head.
He went to the closet to begin packing his clothes. Halfway through the process, he began to shake. Within minutes, he was in the bathroom, on his knees, vomiting until there was nothing left in his belly but guilt.