“Phillip, those kids weren’t born through the Manning Clinic, and I’m sure I understand Helene’s connection to them. She wasn’t losing embryos at Manning through carelessness. I believe she was stealing those embryos and giving them to Dr. Williams for use in his donor program at Franklin.”
Why was Phillip looking at her like that? she wondered suddenly. Didn’t he believe her? “Think about it, Phillip,” she urged. “Helene worked under Dr. Williams for six months at Manning. For three years before that, when she was a secretary at Dowling, she used to haunt the laboratory. Now we can connect her to Williams at that time as well.”
Now Phillip seemed at ease. “Meg, it fits. And you think that Victor, not your father, sent the letter recommending Petrovic to Manning?”
“Absolutely. Dad was in Scottsdale. Annie had been in an accident and was close to death. We can prove Dad wasn’t in the office when that letter was sent.”
“I’m sure you can.”
The call from Phillip Carter to Dr. Henry Williams had come in at 3:15 Saturday afternoon. Carter had demanded that Williams be summoned from examining a client. The conversation had been brief but chilling.
“Meghan Collins has tied you to Petrovic,” Carter told him, “although she thinks Orsini sent the letter of recommendation. And I know that Orsini’s been up to something, and may even suspect what happened. We could still be all right, but no matter what, keep your mouth shut. Refuse to answer questions.”
Somehow Henry Williams managed to get through the rest of his appointments. The last one was completed at four-thirty. That was when the Franklin Assisted Reproduction Center closed on Saturdays.
His secretary looked in on him. “Dr. Williams, is there anything else I can do for you?”
Nobody can do anything for me, he thought. He managed a smile. “No, nothing, thank you, Eva.”
“Doctor, are you all right? You don’t look well.”
“I’m fine. Just a bit weary.”
By 4:45 everyone on the staff had left and he was alone. Williams reached for the picture of his deceased wife, leaned back in his chair and studied it. “Marie,” he said softly, “I didn’t know what I was getting into. I honestly thought that I was accomplishing some good. Helene believed that too.”
He replaced the picture, folded his hands under his chin and stared ahead. He did not notice that the shadows outside were deepening.
Carter had gone mad. He had to be stopped.
Williams thought of his son and daughter. Henry Jr. was an obstetrician in Seattle. Barbara was an endocrinologist in San Francisco. What would this scandal do to them, especially if there was a long trial?
The truth was going to come out. It was inevitable. He knew that now.
He thought of Meghan Collins, the questions she had asked him. Had she suspected that he was lying to her?
And her father. Appalling enough to know without having to ask that Carter had murdered Helene to silence her. Had he anything to do with Edwin Collins’ disappearance as well? And should Edwin Collins be blamed for what others had done?
Should Helene be blamed for mistakes she hadn’t made?
Dr. Henry Williams took a pad from his desk and began to write. He had to explain, to make it very clear, to try to undo the harm he had done.
When he was finished, he put the pages he had written in an envelope. Meghan Collins was the one who deserved to present this to the authorities. He had done her and her family a grave disservice.
Meghan had left her card. Williams found it, addressed the envelope to her at Channel 3 and carefully stamped it.
He stopped for a long minute to study the pictures of the children who had been born because their mothers had come to his clinic. For an instant the bleakness in his heart was relieved at the sight of their young faces.
Dr. Henry Williams turned out the light as he left his office for the last time.
He carried the envelope to his car, stopped at a nearby mailbox and dropped it in. Meghan Collins would receive it by Tuesday.
By then it wouldn’t matter to him anymore.
The sun was getting lower. A wind was flattening the short blades of yellowed grass. Meghan shivered. She’d grabbed her Burberry when she’d rushed out of the house, forgetting she’d removed the lining for her trip to Scottsdale.
Phillip Carter was wearing jeans and a boxy winter jacket. His hands were in its roomy pockets. He was leaning against the open fieldstone well.
“Do you think Victor killed Helene Petrovic because she decided to quit?” he asked.
“Victor or Dr. Williams. Williams might have panicked. Petrovic knew so much. She could have sent both of them to prison for years if she ever talked. Her parish priest told me he felt she had something on her mind that troubled her terribly.”
Meg began to tremble. Was it just nerves and the cold? “I’m going to sit in the car till Dad gets here, Phillip. How far does he have to come?”
“Not far, Meg. In fact he’s amazingly nearby.” Phillip took his hands out of his pockets. The right hand held a gun. He gestured toward the well. “Your psychic was right, Meg. Your dad’s under water. And he’s been dead a long time.”
Don’t let anything happen to Meg! I was the prayerful plea Mac whispered as he and Kyle entered the inn. Inside, the reception area was teeming with police and media. Employees and guests watched from doorways. In the adjacent sitting room, Catherine was perched at the edge of the small sofa, Virginia Murphy beside her. Catherine’s face was ashen.
When Mac approached her, she reached up and clasped his hands. “Mac, Victor Orsini’s talked to the police. Phillip was behind all this. Can you believe it? I trusted him so completely. We think he’s the one who called Meg, pretending to be Edwin. And there’s a man who’s following her, a dangerous man with a history of obsessive attachments to unsuspecting women. He’s probably the one who scared Kyle on Halloween. The New York police phoned John Dwyer about him. And now Meghan is gone, and we don’t know why she left or where she is. I’m so afraid I don’t know what to do. I can’t lose her, Mac. I couldn’t stand that.”
Arlene Weiss rushed into the sitting room. Mac recognized her. “Mrs. Collins, a traffic helicopter crew thinks they spotted the green car on an old farm near West Redding. We told them to stay out of the area. We’ll be there in less than ten minutes.”
Mac gave Catherine what he hoped was a reassuring embrace. “I’ll find Meg,” he promised. “She’ll be all right.”
Then he ran outside. The reporter and cameraman from New Haven were rushing toward their helicopter. Mac followed them, scrambling behind them into the chopper. “Hey, you can’t get on here,” the burly reporter shouted over the roar of the engine revving up for takeoff.
“Yes, I can,” Mac said. “I’m a doctor. I may be needed.”
“Shut the door,” the reporter yelled to the pilot. “Get this thing in the air.”
Meghan stared in confusion. “Phillip, I . . . I don’t understand,” she stammered. “My father’s body is in that well?” Meg stepped forward, placing her hands on the rough, rounded surface. Her fingertips curled over the edge, feeling the clammy dampness of the stone. She was no longer aware of Phillip or the gun he was pointing at her or the barren fields behind him or the cold, biting wind.
She stared down into the yawning hole with numbing horror, imagining her father’s body lying at the bottom.
“You won’t be able to see him, Meg. There isn’t much water down there, hasn’t been for years, but enough to cover him. He was dead when I pushed him in, if that’s any consolation. I shot him the night of the bridge accident.”
Meg whirled on him. “How could you have done that to him? He was your friend, your partner. How could you have done that to Helene and Annie?”
“You give me too much credit. I had nothing to do with Annie’s death.”
“You meant to kill me. You sent me the fax saying Annie’s death was a mistake.” Meg’s eyes darted around. Was there any way s
he could get to her car? No, he’d shoot her before she’d taken a step.
“Meghan, you told me about the fax. It was like a gift. I needed people to believe that Ed was still alive, and you delivered the way I could do it.”
“What did you do to my father?”
“Ed called me from the office the night of the accident. He was in shock. Talked about how close he’d come to being caught in the bridge explosion. Told me he knew Orsini was cheating on us. Told me that Manning had talked about us placing an embryologist named Petrovic Ed had never heard of. He’d gone directly to the office and had been through the Manning file and couldn’t find any reference to her. Blamed it on Orsini.
“Meghan, try to understand. It would have been all over. I told him to come to my house, that we’d figure it out, confront Orsini together in the morning. By the time he walked in my door he was ready to accuse me. He’d pieced it all together. Your father was very smart. He left me no choice. I knew what I had to do.”
I’m so cold, Meghan thought, so cold.
“Everything was fine for a while,” Phillip continued. “Then Petrovic quit, telling Manning she’d made a mistake that was going to cause a lot of trouble. I couldn’t take a chance that she’d give everything away, could I? The day you came to the office and talked about the girl who’d been stabbed, how much she looked like you, that was when you told me about the fax. I knew your father had something going out West somewhere. It wasn’t hard to figure he might have had a daughter there. This seemed the perfect time to bring him back to life.”
“You may not have sent the fax, but you made the phone call that sent Mother to the hospital. You ordered those roses and sat next to her when they were delivered. How could you have done that to her?”
Only yesterday, Meghan thought, Fr. Radzin told me to look for the reason.
“Meghan, I lost a lot of money in my divorce. I spent top dollar for properly I’m trying to hold on to. I had a miserable childhood. I was one of ten kids living in a three-bedroom house. I’m not going back to being poor again. Williams and I found a way to make money with nobody hurt. And Petrovic cashed in, too.”
“Stealing embryos for the Franklin Center donor program?”
“You’re not as smart as I thought, Meghan. There’s so much more to it than that. Donor embryos are small time.”
He raised the pistol. She could see the muzzle aimed at her heart. She watched his finger tighten on the trigger, heard him say, “I kept Edwin’s car in the barn till last week. I’ll keep yours in its place. And you can join him.”
In a reflex action, Meghan threw herself to the side.
His first bullet went over her head. His second hit her shoulder.
Before he could fire again, a figure came hurtling from nowhere. A heavy figure with a rigid outstretched arm. The fingers that grasped the knife and the shimmering blade itself were one, an avenging sword that sought out Phillip and found his throat.
Meghan felt blinding pain in her left shoulder. Blackness enveloped her.
61
W hen Meghan regained consciousness she was lying on the ground, her head in someone’s lap. She forced her eyes open, looked up and saw Bernie Heffernan’s cherubic smile, then felt his moist kisses on her face and lips and neck.
From somewhere in the distance she heard a whirring sound. A plane? A helicopter. Then it faded and was gone.
“I’m glad I saved you, Meghan. It’s all right to use a knife to save someone, isn’t it?” Bernie asked. “I never want to hurt anybody. I didn’t want to hurt Annie that night. It was a mistake.” He repeated it softly, like a child. “Annie was a mistake.”
Mac listened to the radio exchange between the police helicopter and the squad cars that were rushing to the area. They were coordinating strategy.
Meg is with two killers, he realized suddenly—that nut who was in the woods Sunday night and Phillip Carter.
Phillip Carter, who betrayed and murdered his partner, then posed as protector to Catherine and Meghan, privy to every step of Meg’s search for truth.
Meghan. Meghan.
They were in a rural area. The helicopters were beginning to descend. Vainly Mac searched the ground below. It was going to be dark in fifteen minutes. How could they pick out a car when it was dark?
“We’re at the outskirts of West Redding,” the pilot said, pointing ahead. “We’re a couple of minutes from where they spotted the green Chevy.”
He’s crazy, Meg thought. This was Bernie, the cheerful parking attendant who often told her about his mother. How did he get here? Why was he following her? And he said he had killed Annie. Dear God, he killed Annie!
She tried to sit up.
“Don’t you want me to hold you, Meg? I’d never hurt you.”
“Of course you wouldn’t.” She knew she had to soothe him, keep him calm. “It’s just that the ground is so cold.”
“I’m sorry. I should have known that. I’ll help you.” He kept his arm around her, hugging her as they awkwardly struggled together to their feet.
The pressure of his arm around her shoulder intensified the pain from the bullet wound. She mustn’t antagonize him. “Bernie, would you try not to . . .” She was going to pass out again. “Bernie,” she pleaded, “my shoulder hurts so much.”
She could see the knife he had used to kill Phillip lying on the ground. Was this the knife that had taken Annie’s life?
Phillip’s gun was still clutched in his hand.
“Oh, I’m sorry. If you want I’ll carry you.” His lips were on her hair. “But, stand here for just a minute. I want to take your picture. See my camera?”
His camera. Of course. He must have been the cameraman in the woods who had almost strangled Kyle. She leaned against the well as he videotaped her and watched as he walked around Phillip’s body, taping him.
Then Bernie laid the camera down and came over to her. “Meghan, I’m a hero,” he bragged. His eyes were like shiny blue buttons.
“Yes, you are.”
“I saved your life.”
“Yes you did.”
“But I’m not allowed to carry a weapon. A knife is a weapon. They’ll put me away again, in the prison hospital. I hate it there.”
“I’ll talk to them.”
“No, Meghan. That’s why I had to kill Annie. She started to scream. All I did when I saw her that night was to walk up behind her and say, ‘This is a dangerous block. I’ll take care of you.’”
“You said that?”
“I thought it was you, Meghan. You’d have been glad to have me take care of you, wouldn’t you?”
“Yes, of course I would.”
“I didn’t have time to explain. There was a police car coming. I didn’t mean to hurt her. I didn’t even know I was carrying the knife that night. Sometimes I don’t remember I have it.”
“I’m glad you were carrying it now.” The car, Meg thought. My keys are in it. It’s my only chance. “But Bernie, I don’t think you should leave your knife here for the police to find.” She pointed to it.
He looked back over his shoulder. “Oh, thank you, Meghan.”
“And don’t forget your camera.”
If she wasn’t fast enough, he’d know that she was trying to get away. And he’d have the knife in his hand. But when he turned and started to walk the half-dozen steps to Phillip’s body, Meghan whirled, stumbling in her weakness and haste, yanked open her car door and slid behind the wheel.
“Meghan, what are you doing?” Bernie shrieked.
His hands grabbed the handle of the car door as she clicked the lock. He hung onto the handle as she threw the car into gear and plunged her foot down on the gas pedal.
The car leaped forward. Bernie kept his grip on the handle for ten feet, shouting at her, then let go and fell. She careened around the buildings. He was emerging from the passageway between the house and shed when she headed down the dirt road through the open fields.
She had not reached the wooded area when i
n the rear-view mirror she saw his car lurch forward in pursuit.
They were passing over a wooded area. The police helicopter was in front of them. The photographer and cameraman were straining their eyes.
“Look!” the pilot shouted. “There’s the farmhouse.”
Mac never knew what made him look back. “Turn around,” he shouted. “Turn around.”
Meg’s white Mustang shot out of the woods, a green car inches behind it, repeatedly smashing into it. As Mac watched, the Chevy pulled alongside the Mustang and began sideswiping it, trying to run it off the road.
“Go down,” Mac shouted to the pilot. “That’s Meghan in the white car. Can’t you see he’s trying to kill her.”
Meghan’s car was faster, but Bernie was a better driver. She had managed to stay ahead of him for a short time, but now could not escape him. He was slamming into the driver’s side door. Meghan’s body whipped back and forth as the air bag ballooned from the center of the wheel. For an instant she could not see, but she kept her foot on the accelerator, and the car zigzagged wildly through the field as Bernie kept attacking it.
The driver’s side door smashed into her shoulder as the Mustang teetered and flipped over on its side. An instant later flames burst through the hood of the engine.
Bernie wanted to watch Meghan’s car burn, but the police were coming. He could hear the scream of approaching sirens. Overhead he heard the din of a helicopter coming closer. He had to get away.
Someday you’ll hurt someone, Bernie. That’s whatworries us. That’s what the psychiatrist had told him. But if he got home to Mama, she’d take care of him. He’d get another job parking cars where he could be home every night with her. From now on he’d only make phone calls to women. Nobody would find out about that.
Meghan’s face was fading from his mind. He’d forget her the way he forgot all the others he had liked. I never really hurt anyone before and I didn’t mean to hurt Annie, he reminded himself as he drove through the hastening darkness. Maybe they’ll believe me if they find me.