CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR: Just for Good Measure
It wasn’t hard to figure out where Jeremy Driscall would be on this fine, Sunday morning, and Calvin was more than happy to point Blair in the right direction. Jeremy was downtown in Cal’s office preparing casework for some of the patients he was scheduled to see the next day. Calvin had been nice enough to have a chauffeur drive Blair over there so that he wouldn’t have to rely on Horace’s old bike.
When they reached the office, Blair got out and helped the driver take the bicycle down from the rack on top. “Is there anything else I can do for you, sir?” the chauffeur asked, and Blair had to admit that it was nice being catered to.
“No,” Blair said, “and thanks for the lift.”
“No problem, sir,” he said, turning to get inside the car again. Just before driving off, he gave Blair a wave.
When Blair reached the front door to the office, he found it locked. He knocked, but nobody came. Deciding to pound on it for as long and as loud as he could finally brought Driscall out from the dark hole he’d crawled in.
“What do you want?” Jeremy said in that distinctive, booming bass voice of his the moment the still chained door was ajar.
“Cal sent me over.”
“To do what? Collect the biohazard waste?”
“If you don’t believe me, give him a call.”
Jeremy hesitated, the look of disgust intensifying on his face, but he slid the chain back and opened the door. The minute he did, Blair grabbed him by the collar and punched him right in his gorgeous face. Jeremy stumbled backward but didn’t fall. After not eating or sleeping for quite some time, Blair was feeling pretty weak. He shouldn’t have started a fight with Driscall without being fit enough to have a prayer of winning.
Jeremy threw Blair head first against a wall. After giving Blair several punches of his own, Jeremy then let him drop down to the floor. “You ever put your hands on me again, I’ll kill you, you crazy bastard! Now get out!”
“So you killed Vinnie, huh?” Blair said, wiping his bloody mouth with the back of his hand as he struggled to stand up again.
After a revelation like that, Blair could tell that he had Jeremy’s undivided attention. Confidence was a very fragile thing; it didn’t take long to lose it. “Everybody knows that you allowed the man kill himself,” Jeremy said, his strong voice cracking a bit. “You just stood by and did nothing. He’d be alive today if you would’ve been man enough to handle difficult situations.”
“Driscall, you were the one who forced sleeping pills down his throat.”
“Ingesting too much alcohol is rotting your brain, Blair. Better lay off the stuff while you still have some viable brain cells left.” After tossing the smock he’d been wearing onto a chair, Jeremy turned to walk out of the office. “Lock the door on your way out,” he said.
“Calvin Maxwell told me everything,” Blair said, and Jeremy stopped before reaching the threshold and turned around again.
“You’re bluffing.”
“Call him,” Blair said. “You know, if he testifies against you, they’ll put you away for a very long time.”
Jeremy stood between Blair and the door and pulled out a nine millimeter, semiautomatic handgun. Never dreaming that Jeremy would be this touchy about the possibility of incarceration, Blair ran out of the back lab and into the hallway. A couple of bullets whizzing by his ear sent him diving into an operatory. Operatory five was connected to number four, so Blair ran through the common archway and hid behind the dental unit mounted to the floor.
As Jeremy came into the area, Blair spun the chair around and knocked the foot of it into Jeremy’s legs. While Jeremy was off balance, Blair ran from the room and into the sterile lab. Happy to see a beaker full of pickling solution, he grabbed the glorious mix of potassium dichromate and sulfuric acid and stood as far back as he could behind the door, waiting for Jeremy’s handsome face to poke through. Without fail, Jeremy came creeping down the hall and the moment he stuck his head into the lab, Blair doused that Adonis with every drop of sulfuric acid he had.
“Aiiee!” Jeremy screamed, squeezing the trigger and ripping off a shot before falling to his knees and clutching his face. The bullet came through the wall and missed Blair’s body by about two inches. It did hit the triturator, denting the metal. Then it ricocheted off, zipping through the air and hitting the steam autoclave.
Perhaps Jeremy was beginning to realize first-hand that a pickling solution had the ability to burn and char the skin and cause irreparable damage to the eyes, not to mention the pulmonary irritation part. While Jeremy was busy trying to preserve the skin he still had, Blair bolted from the sterile lab and headed toward the front office where the panoramic X-ray machine was.
Blair grabbed a lead apron from the dark room and trotted off down the hall, all the way back to the sterile lab. And he didn’t take one of the regular aprons, either. Instead, he took the super deluxe, neck-to-knee apron, the kind women use when they’re pregnant.
Jeremy was leaning over the sink in the sterile lab, trying to wash the acid out of his eyes. When he heard Blair, he paused, aimed the gun, and started firing. Blair ducked, using the lead apron for protection. There was an operatory behind him, and the bullets blasted the light out on the unit, put a hole in the headrest of the chair, and a third hit the storage cabinet behind the handpieces, suction, and air-water syringe.
Blair rushed at Jeremy, holding the apron to cover himself. When he got close enough to do some damage, Blair started swinging it. The first hit caused Jeremy to drop his gun. The second and third blows brought him down to his knees, and the fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh were thrown in just for good measure. By the time Blair stopped swinging, Jeremy was a burned and bloody mess. Kicking the gun out of Jeremy’s reach, Blair grabbed him by what was left of his collar and held on tight.
“Did you know Kevin Massey?” Blair asked, shaking him to revive him enough to speak. Jeremy’s face was as red as a tomato. It was only a matter of time before the blisters across the bridge of his nose started erupting like little volcanoes.
“Yes,” Jeremy croaked in a barely audible voice, “he was the bastard who stole the rubies.”
“Did you know that Cynthia knew him?” Jeremy didn’t answer, so Blair shook him again. “Did you know that Kevin and Cynthia were brother and sister?”
“No, I didn’t. I thought they were friendly, and that was it. And he’s the bastard who took the rubies from Calvin’s safe, and it was probably Cynthia’s idea. At first I thought Calvin was just lying about them being stolen, but Corinne set me straight. She told me about Kevin.”
“Corinne? Corinne Maxwell?”
“Yeah.”
“Corinne knew about Kevin?”
“Yeah,” he said. “I just assumed that Cynthia and Kevin were screwing around together.” After pausing to gasp for breath, he added, “Cynthia’s been everybody’s lover at one time or another. I never knew Kevin was her brother.”
Blair let him go and then turned to leave.
“Wait. Am I…?”
“Are you, what?”
“Am I burnt bad? My face hurts like hell.”
“Well you look like hell, so it only stands to reason.”
“Are you serious?”
“Dead serious, just like the skin cells on your face.”
“Oh, man!” Jeremy said, raising his hands but afraid to touch himself. Blair smiled and started to walk off again.
“Don’t go without helping me, man. Call a doctor. My eyes are stinging and my vision is blurry. I can hardly see.”
“Maybe I’ll call the same doctor you called for Cynthia,” Blair said. “Or how about the one you sent to help Kevin, Thomas, and Ingrid?” Just the sight of Jeremy was making Blair sick all over again. If he was going to help the dirty bastard, he’d better do it quickly before he changed his mind.
Blair grabbed Jeremy and threw him over his shoulder. He took him out to the front desk and shoved him into a chair by a telephone.
Taking the phone off the hook and dialing 911, Blair then handed him the receiver. “After you get out of the hospital, you can get all the rest you can stand in prison,” he said and then finally headed for the door.