She sat back in her chair and closed her eyes.
* * *
When she got home, the sun was still shining low on the horizon the way it does late in a summer day. That was a trick of Daylight Savings Time to fool people into believing it’s still mid-afternoon, even though evening had sneaked in. Rhetta thought a better name for the spring and summer extended daylight hours would be Daylight Wasting Time, since it always served to lull the unaware into believing there was more of the day left than there actually was.
Rhetta showered, and then donned an old pair of denim jeans and a faded T-shirt. Wandering into the kitchen, she opened the refrigerator, searching for something to nibble on before heading back to the hospital, even though she wasn’t hungry.
She’d brushed her teeth forcefully and rinsed her mouth with a strong mouthwash in an attempt to rid herself of the tastes of bile and death.
Earlier, after Woody had finished with his customers, she finally had a chance to tell him about Peter. He collapsed in the chair near her desk, his head beginning to glisten.
“What on earth is going on?” Withdrawing a handkerchief from his pocket, he wiped his head. “I can’t believe there’s a terrorist plot. That can’t be happening here.”
Rhetta massaged her temples in an effort to get rid of the headache bubbling at each side of her head “Hakim Al-Serafi is dead. Agent Cooper is dead. Peter is dead. Then Randolph has an accident that’s a whole lot like Al-Serafi’s. What do you think is happening?”
Woody stood and began pacing. “This just can’t be a terrorist plot. I’ve changed my mind. It’s either your imagination or it’s all coincidence, or both.” He left her desk and charged for the door.
Rhetta was too stunned by Woody’s abrupt departure to stop him. She sighed, locked the office, and went home.
The cats had assembled on the deck, and Rhetta could hear their pathetic song of starvation. She fed them, gathered her purse, phone, and keys, then headed to the garage.
In spite of Woody’s denial, Rhetta was convinced that a plot of some sort, one involving the schematic wasn’t merely possible, but had already begun to manifest itself.
CHAPTER 21
After backing out of the garage into fading sunlight, Rhetta stole a glance at her watch. Although not limited to certain visiting hours because Randolph had a private room, she’d wanted to get to the hospital early enough to visit with him before his nighttime meds. It was already almost eight o’clock. She wanted to be there for him in case he got thirsty or needed help, since the nursing staff was always busy. She knew Randolph hated being a demanding patient. Discovering Peter’s body had definitely messed up her schedule.
Taking Cami up to 45 mph down the gravel road was chancy. Large rocks were deadly to the low-slung Camaro. She drove as fast as she dared, and prayed she wouldn’t throw any rocks into the oil pan. She urgently needed to talk to Randolph. If he felt up to it, she had to ask him about what he and Billy Dan had discussed.
The county road crew had come through earlier that day and graded the gravel roads; the washboard ruts were gone. The realization that the county had worked on the road made Rhetta slow down. More than once following the county’s road ministrations she’d managed to get a sharp rock in her tire that resulted in a flat. Changing Cami’s tire in waning daylight wasn’t high on her list of fun things to do. In fact, she didn’t find changing a flat at anytime particularly enjoyable. She could, however, do it competently if she needed to.
Her mother, Renate Caldwell, an independent, strong woman, not unlike herself, had taught Rhetta how to jack up her car and change a flat a long time ago. The recurring loneliness tugged at her now, like it always did when she thought about her mother. Many people who knew her mother said that Rhetta favored her. Rhetta loved hearing that, although her deep green eyes were unlike her mother’s cerulean orbs. Her eyes were her father’s legacy, she assumed.
When an aneurysm resulting from cancer claimed her mother nearly ten years ago, Rhetta got mad at God and stopped going to the church that she and her mother had regularly attended. If her father, who had abandoned them right before Rhetta’s second birthday, had heard of Renate’s death, he didn’t bother showing up for the funeral. Rhetta prayed all right—prayed that she’d never run into him and prayed he was dead.
She forced her melancholy back to its dark place and concentrated on her driving.
She made it safely to the highway and opened Cami up.
Flashing blue lights filled her rear-view mirror. A glance at her speedometer revealed the needle nosing past 65, ten miles over the posted limit. Slowing down did not stop the flashing lights. The police car, now right behind her, blasted once on the siren. Understanding exactly what that meant, she coasted to the shoulder and stopped.
The highway patrol officer exited his car and donned his flat brimmed Mountie-style hat. With flashlight in hand, he approached her driver’s door. Rhetta powered down the window.
“Good evening, ma’am.” The officer, a sergeant, touched his hat. “You were driving a little fast when I met you. I clocked you at 68.”
Crap.
He shone the flashlight beam around inside the car.
Before Rhetta could answer, he said, “May I please see your operator’s license and car’s registration?”
While waiting for her to rummage through the glove compartment and then to fish through the black hole of her purse for her wallet, the officer scanned around the outside of her car, then back inside.
She was proud of how beautiful Cami was. She and Randolph found the car four years ago and had gutted the stock interior and redone it in navy blue with white upholstery. The two-tone blue-on-silver blue exterior glimmered. Maybe the officer was admiring the car.
Rhetta removed her license from its case for the second time that day. She handed it, together with the registration, out the window to the officer. Her heart skipped when she read the name on his badge: Sergeant Q. Meade. The officer who responded to Randolph’s accident.
With her license and registration in hand, Sergeant Meade turned to walk to his patrol car. She knew the normal procedure would be to run her car’s plate numbers along with her license number, then write up the citation. After just a few steps, Meade, who had begun to examine the license in the narrow flashlight beam, stopped, then returned to Rhetta.
“Mrs. McCarter?” Meade asked, needing to bend his tall frame at the waist to talk through the window.
“Yes?”
Meade handed the license and registration back to her without an accompanying ticket. “How is your husband?”
Rhetta exhaled. “He had surgery for a head injury. The doctors tell me he will recover completely.” Thank you, God. She dropped the license and registration into her open purse. “You were the officer who responded to his accident?”
Meade nodded. “Yes, ma’am.”
She peered at his rugged tanned face. Even in the dim light, she spotted faint lines at the corners of his eyes. Meade had to be at least forty. “The report says you found an empty Jim Beam bottle, so you must have searched the interior. Did you find a manila envelope?”
“No, ma’am.”
A quick scan of his expression told Rhetta he was telling the truth. Where did the darn thing go? Could she ask him if anyone else was standing around the accident scene?
“Thank you for your help at the accident, Sergeant.” He touched the brim of his hat, and turned away. Rhetta called after him. “Excuse me, Sergeant, can I ask you something else? Were there any witnesses who saw the crash?”
“No one came forward claiming they saw exactly what happened. A family from Marble Hill heading to Cape glimpsed the taillights down in the creek bed when they crossed the bridge. Luckily, the wife made her husband pull over. That’s when they spotted a truck nose-down at the bottom of the creek.”
Hearing Meade say “nose-down” resonated with Rhetta.
That’s exactly how Al-Se
rafi’s car was found.
Meade continued. “They flagged an oncoming car to call 9-1-1, since their cell didn’t work on the bridge. They stayed and waited until I showed up.” He switched off the flashlight, and tucked it into the keeper on his belt. “Nobody was around the truck, because getting to it required climbing down a steep embankment. The emergency team thought they might have to airlift your husband, but they managed to haul him up the embankment on a stretcher.”
Rhetta forced herself to smile. “I appreciate your help and everyone else’s too. Thank God someone spotted him so quickly.” She shuddered at what might have happened had the family not stopped.
Randolph could’ve died.
CHAPTER 22
In her side mirror, Rhetta watched Meade return to his patrol car. When he opened his door, she turned on her left blinker and eased back out onto the highway. She managed to hold Cami to the speed limit the rest of the way to the hospital.
A glance at the dash clock told her that she had left home nearly an hour ago. She lucked into a parking spot close to the door and ran to the building.
Once through the hospital’s revolving doors, she surveyed the main floor in search of a faster route to the fourth floor post-op area. A stainless steel door marked STAIRS and AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY appeared to the right of the main door. Without hesitation, she strode to the door and pushed it open. She didn’t know exactly where the stairs led, but providing they went up four floors, she calculated that she should come out very close to Randolph’s room. Avoiding the labyrinth that was the medical complex in order to reach the elevator was worth any effort of the stairs. Climbing them didn’t bother her. She was used to running every morning. Inhaling, she grabbed the handrail and began.
Through the glass on the second floor doors, she recognized the rear of the emergency room triage area. The revolving doors she used to enter the hospital were on a level lower than the main floor level where the ambulances pulled in. The hospital complex had so many additions that it had become a maze of specialty wings connected by a warren of hallways and stairs.
Reaching the fourth floor, Rhetta paused to fish a tissue out of her purse to dab the sheen off her forehead. The stairwell, she noted, didn’t enjoy the frigid air conditioning of the rest of the hospital. With shoulders back, she pushed through the door with an air of importance, as though she was ‘authorized’ to be using those stairs. She needn’t have bothered. No one was around to notice. She quickly got her bearings and was pleased to find herself one door away from Randolph’s room. She fist pumped. Outstanding shortcut!
Randolph’s room was quiet—lights low, machines humming softly. As she began tiptoeing past his bed, a piercing alarm shrilled, causing her heart nearly to explode. Afraid that she’d set a machine off by tripping over a cord, Rhetta searched frantically to identify which one of the several machines clustered around Randolph was screaming.
Seconds later, a nurse threw open the door and immediately switched on the lights, flooding the room from the powerful overhead fixtures. The entire time the woman scanned the machinery, adjusting and checking knobs and dials, Rhetta noticed that Randolph didn’t stir. The piercing wail should have awakened not just him, but all the other patients on the floor, and a few souls from the nearby cemetery. Rhetta felt helpless. Her pulse raced in fear. All she could do was step back and let the nurse take charge.
Finally, after interminable shrilling, the machine fell silent. Randolph lay motionless. Hand flying to her chest, Rhetta whispered, “Is he all right? What’s happening?”
“Mr. McCarter is not responding, ma’am. I’ve paged the doctor.”
Rhetta’s head pounded. She willed herself to remain calm. “Not responding? What does that mean?” Randolph lay very still, his breathing shallow.
“We’ll have to wait for the doctor.” After checking the computer and making notations on a chart hanging on the foot of his bed, the nurse frowned. Her hands found the wireless mouse, which she slid back and forth to bring the monitor to life. With fingers flying over the keyboard, the nurse quickly located a computer file. Then the nurse read the screen, which Rhetta couldn’t see. She next reached for the chart and compared the chart to the screen.
A slender blond man wearing a lab coat over navy dress slacks and a stethoscope dangling from his lab coat collar, hurried through the door. From his awkward gait, Rhetta guessed the man had a wounded leg or a handicap. His ID badge read Henri Marinthe, M.D. He barely nodded to Rhetta before checking Randolph’s vital signs.
“I am Doctor Marinthe,” he said to her, after examining Randolph. “When did you first notice your husband was unresponsive?” His soft voice had a lilting, musical quality.
“I had just come into his room when the alarm, or whatever, began going off,” she said, gripping the rail alongside Randolph. “Just a few minutes ago.”
Marinthe nodded. “I will have blood work done and follow that with an MRI to see what is going on in his head. As you can see, he is unresponsive. He appears to be in a coma. I shouldn’t think there could be brain swelling now, but we must not overlook that possibility.”
Rhetta collapsed into the chair. Propping her elbow on the arm, she pressed her forehead into her palm. “What does this mean, Doctor? What’s going on?” Unable to stop a tear, she slapped it away with the back of her hand. “He was doing so well when I was last here. What could’ve happened?”
Marinthe turned toward her. “This isn’t good. We’ll scan him immediately. Then we will know what we are dealing with.” The nurse had unplugged the machines, which continued running on the battery back-up units as evidenced by periodic beeping.
A lab tech holding a tray of dozens of rubber-stoppered tubes used her elbows to push the door open enough so that she could enter. She deftly snapped a rubber tube around Randolph’s arm, swabbed the inside of his arm with a cotton ball she removed from a jar, and inserted a needle into the bend of his arm. Three vials quickly filled with his crimson blood. She finished labeling and hurried to the door. “I’ll be running these the moment I get to the lab, Doctor,” she called. Her blue lab coat billowed behind her as she sailed out of the room.
Doctor Marinthe approached Rhetta’s chair. She peered up at soft blue eyes that radiated caring and kindness. He patted her shoulder. “I will be here all night, and I will monitor your husband personally,” he said.
She nodded, registering for the first time that his English, while flawless, had a soft accent. She wondered where he was from.
“I will contact Doctor….” He leafed through the file. “I see here Doctor Reed is his surgeon.”
Rhetta nodded.
An orderly with shoulder-length dreadlocks hustled through the door, announced he was from radiology, then pushed Randolph’s bed out into the hall. “Please wait here, ma’am,” he called over his shoulder, wheeling Randolph expertly toward the elevator.
“Will you still be on duty when my husband returns from having the MRI?” Rhetta asked as Doctor Marinthe’s fingers flew across the keyboard.
“Yes, certainly. I have a call in to Doctor Reed, too.” He slid the keyboard drawer back into place. He rose slowly, avoiding any weight directly on his left leg. She noticed then that his left leg appeared to be shorter than the right.
“Where are you from?’ Rhetta asked, finally succumbing to her curiosity. “I can’t place your accent.”
“I am from Libreville, which is in Gabon, a country on the shore of Western Africa. Have you heard of it?” He turned to smile at her.
“I’m not very familiar with Gabon, but I have friends who live in France who spent a dozen years there,” Rhetta answered, remembering her college roommate and her husband who moved to Gabon to work for Shell Oil.
Marinthe nodded. “My parents were from Antibes in the South of France and emigrated to Gabon also to work in the oil business. They moved there because it was one of the few French-speaking oil producing countries. At that time, it was also a Muslim community th
at welcomed French Muslims.” Of course, his accent is French.
Marinthe glanced up when he heard the speaker page him to the nursing station. “I will be back whenever your husband returns from the testing, Mrs. McCarter.” He turned off the computer and limped to the door.
The room fell deadly quiet—no machines whirring, no activity, no Randolph.
CHAPTER 23
The slap of magazines hitting the floor startled Rhetta awake. If she believed the round clock with a large white face and oversized black numbers, Randolph had been gone nearly an hour. After the lab had taken him for testing, she found a current Newsweek and had tucked herself into the recliner alongside his bed. Before she read three pages, fatigue cascaded over her and she fell into a deep sleep.
Randolph should’ve been back by now. Irritated at herself for dozing, she snatched her purse, intending to walk to the nurses’ station and find out about her husband. Her purse was partially open, and her phone slid to the floor. She stooped to retrieve it, realizing that she forgot to power it off. Although she hadn’t heard it ring, her screen indicated she’d missed two phone calls and had two voice mails.
The first message was from Mrs. Koblyk, their Hungarian-born neighbor.
“Ah, Miss Rhetta? This is Anna Koblyk, your neighbor? I’ll go to your house and check on your cats? I heard Mr. Randolph was in the hospital?” Her voice rose at the end of each statement, like she was asking a question. “I will take some cat food over while you stay with him so you don’t have to come back to your house? Please do not worry about them? Mr. Koblyk has been watching over your house, too, ever since that green car went up your lane today? I am at home if you need me? Goodbye.” Her accent was more noticeable on the phone in spite of her obvious effort to speak slowly and clearly. Although Mrs. Koblyk had lived in America for over fifty years, she retained a good bit of her Eastern European accent.
With everything that had been going on, Rhetta had forgotten about her cats. The poor things. Thank God for Mrs. Koblyk.