Ramsey wanted to ask about Molly and Emma, find out if they were okay, but somehow, he just couldn’t get the words out. It was a weird feeling, this knowing words, feeling what those words meant to him, yet being unable to get them out of his mouth. He felt the man lightly pat his arm. “The doc gave you a shot of something really strong. He said you didn’t seem like the sort to kick back and relax, so he said he’d lay you out, it would be the best thing. Did you hear me tell you about your daughter and Mrs. Hunt? They should be here soon. The last I heard, Mrs. Rallis insisted that your wife and Emma have coffee and hot chocolate. I tried to stop the doc from giving you that shot, but I couldn’t. Can you talk, Judge Hunt?”
“No. I’m laid out,” Ramsey said, but McPherson never said anything more, so he guessed he’d spoken to him only in his mind.
HE smiled at Molly and Emma coming into his hospital room. Emma was wearing a new outfit he’d never seen on her before. As for Molly, she looked like a fashion plate in a pale yellow silky-looking pants outfit and high-heeled shoes, of all things, on her feet. Her beautiful hair was combed back, fastened with a fat gold clip at her neck. They both looked incredible to him, just incredible. He wanted to shout to them that this time they’d won. He wanted to yell at Molly for jumping in the water like that. He also wanted to thank her for saving his bacon. He wanted to tell them that he loved them more than he’d loved any two people in his entire life. But his mouth wouldn’t say anything. He wondered again where the words were that would say what he wanted to say.
He heard McPherson say, “No, he’s all right, ma’am, I promise. He’s been in and out. The doc wants him to rest and so he’s resting. You and Emma sure look like a million dollars. How do you feel, Mrs. Hunt? Would you like to give me a statement now?”
Then he heard Virginia Trolley’s voice, telling McPherson to leave Molly alone, that she’d speak to him once she was convinced that Ramsey would be all right. Boy, she’d gotten down here fast. He knew she’d take care of everything. He also knew she’d take a strip off her two cops who were supposedly protecting them. He thought he remembered one of the young cops telling him that he’d had to take a leak and that’s why they’d just been a couple of minutes late helping him. What about his partner? Ramsey had wanted to ask, but hadn’t been able to.
He smiled now vaguely at Emma, who’d slipped away from her mama to come to him. “I’m okay, Em,” he thought he said, but her face didn’t change expression. He felt her soft mouth on his cheek. He heard her whisper against his ear, “We got him, Ramsey. Mrs. Rallis promised me he wasn’t going to escape from her hospital.” He wanted to laugh, but he didn’t. He just slid away. The last thing he felt was the touch of Emma’s fingers on the back of his left hand.
“HE’S going to live,” Molly said. “They spent hours on him in the operating room, and now he’s going to live.”
Virginia Trolley said from his other side, with a deep sigh, “They knew who and what he was. I wish they’d just let him go. Now we’ll have to try him, there’ll be more garbage for you guys to go through.”
“It’s all right, Virginia,” Ramsey said, his voice deep and gravelly this morning. He wanted a cup of coffee badly, but they wouldn’t give it to him. The nurse had said he’d puke up his toenails if he drank coffee now. He wanted desperately to prove her either right or wrong. “Where’s Emma?”
“I’m right here, Ramsey. Mama wanted me to pay attention to something else, but I told her I know what’s going on. Does your shoulder hurt?”
“Nah, I’m a big guy, just like I told you. This isn’t anything. I seem to be getting better at having my body parts shot all the time.”
“I was afraid he would kill you, Ramsey,” Emma said. “The water was all red. I would have gotten to you to help you, but that big lady wouldn’t let go of me.”
The thought of Emma jumping into the water like her mother had, maybe landing on Dickerson’s head, nearly made his heart stop. He said, however, “Your mom saved my hide for you. Thanks. Now, Virginia, what’s going to happen to Dickerson?”
“Your friend Dillon Savich is on his way out here. The kidnapping is federal so it’s the FBI’s call. He wants to speak to Dickerson himself. Also a profiler is coming. You know they’re always interviewing sickos like Dickerson. He should be a gold mine of information for them. Are you up to giving the local boys a statement?”
He spoke to Lieutenant McPherson and his captain, Daniel Mapes. It took quite a while. He was white around the gills when Captain Mapes said, “That’s enough, Judge Hunt. If we have more questions, we’ll see you tomorrow.”
“I didn’t think they were ever going to leave,” Molly said, coming to the bed. “You don’t look so hot.”
“I want a cup of coffee.”
“I know. Here you are.” It was a miracle. He avidly watched her pull the lid off a Styrofoam cup. He took three long drinks, then promptly wanted to die. It was close, but he wasn’t about to let himself throw up. The nausea subsided, finally. Then he panicked. “Where’s Emma?”
“She’s all right. She’s with Virginia, telling her exactly what happened. From a child’s perspective, it should be very interesting. Now, you’re to rest for a while longer. It sounds stupid to tell you how lucky you were when you’re lying flat on your back feeling awful, but you are. You’ll mend. The surgeon said you’d be ready to take me dancing by tomorrow night. Well, maybe Wednesday night.”
Molly smiled at him, closed the door, and climbed up with him on the narrow hospital bed. She kissed his ear, his nose, his mouth. “You taste like hospital,” she said, nuzzling his neck. “But since I’m dressed in silk, maybe it’s that opposites-attract thing.” She gave a deep sigh. “I wish we could play doctor.”
“Molly, please don’t make me hard. I can’t begin to imagine what Nurse Hayman would do if she walked in and saw me pointing to the ceiling.”
“She adores you. She’d probably pull me off you and take my place.”
“Okay, enough of this newlywed stuff,” said a man from the doorway.
“Not nearly as bad as Nurse Hayman,” Molly said, and scooted off the bed.
It was Dillon Savich, grinning from ear to ear. Behind him was another man who looked as if he’d never smiled in his life. He looked like a medieval monk, all stiff and long and narrow, with a thin rim of gray hair circling his head.
“Hi, Ramsey, glad you’re well enough to kiss Molly. Guys, this is Thomas Galviani, otherwise known as Tommy the Eye, a gentleman whose specialty is child molesters. He’s one of the world’s leading experts.”
The man didn’t change expression, just calmly nodded and shook Ramsey’s hand. He said, “Savich thinks I’m too serious, but I’m not. I’m glad to meet you, Judge Hunt. I read about what a hell of a good job you did on those drug dealers in your courtroom. Everyone in the Bureau is still talking about it. I’m more than glad that this time our perp was caught before he killed. Congratulations on bringing him down.”
“Thank you, Mr. Galviani.”
“Tommy the Eye,” he said without skipping a beat, his expression all bland, and Savich laughed.
“Where’s Sherlock?”
Savich said to Molly, “She’s in the women’s room, cursing me. I said the P word to a doctor who was worried because she looked a bit on the pale side. I told him it had been a long trip and she was tired because she was pregnant. That was all it took.”
“I hope,” Tommy the Eye said, “that Sherlock doesn’t shoot you before she stops having morning sickness.”
They were still grinning when Sherlock came into the room. She walked up to her husband and punched him in the arm. Then she greeted Molly and Ramsey, all smiles. She said, “I stopped by the ICU. Dickerson is still out of it. They’ll let us know if and when he wakes up.”
“I would like to speak to him,” said Tommy the Eye. “I’ve read everything we’ve got, all the reports from his first trial, the transcripts of what he said when and to whom. He was a preferential child
molester, that is to say, he’s a pedophile who sexually molests children. The preferential abuses up to as many as a thousand children in his life, not like a situational molester, who may just abuse a dozen or so children. This guy is a classic, with one exception. He brutalized Emma as well as sexually abused her. We call that a sadistic molester. Add to that the fact that with Emma he became obsessional. You don’t see this all that often in child molesters, but it does happen. One particular child, the pedophile must have that child, no other. He lost all sense of survival. Most molesters would have just shrugged and moved on to another child, but Dickerson didn’t. He just couldn’t stop.
“He’s not a stupid man, but he had to have known on some level that this obsession he had with Emma would bring him down. But he just couldn’t help himself, couldn’t stop himself, couldn’t leave and forget her. I understand he’s also excellent at disguise and makeup.”
“That’s what he told me when we were in the water,” Ramsey said. “That’s one of the reasons Rule Shaker’s men hired him. Since Emma was going to be returned when Louey came around, the kidnapper couldn’t be recognized, thus the disguise.”
Tommy the Eye just shook his head. “He must have thought he’d died and gone to heaven when he got the job.”
Ramsey said, “How does all this get confused with his religious needs? He told Emma that he needed her, actually needed her.”
“I would really like to talk to him about that. He seems like a boiling cauldron with all sorts of things tossed in indiscriminately, from beliefs of how Emma would save him to hurting her so that she would be taking his punishments for him. I can’t wait to dig into his brain. But we’re mostly just thankful that he’s out of commission now.”
Molly said, “If and when you reach any understanding about him, Tommy, please tell us.”
“I will, Mrs. Hunt.”
He was rubbing his palms together.
33
BY THE TIME everyone had all the answers he or she wanted, Ramsey was feeling human enough to walk down to see Emma. She and Virginia Trolley were sitting in a corner of the cafeteria, their heads close together.
Emma looked up and saw him. She let out a yelp and dashed to him, wrapping herself around his leg. “It’s all right, Emma,” he said, patting her head. “See? I’m walking. It’s for real. Nobody’s holding me up. It was just another little bullet to a big macho guy like me. Now, let me pick you up so you can give me a proper hug.”
“No, let me do it,” Savich said and hoisted Emma up to eye level with Ramsey. She reached out and hugged him. He kissed her ear. “You smell good, Em. What is that? Oscar de la Renta?”
“No, that’s the soap from the hotel.” Then Emma drew back and said, “Was that a joke, Ramsey?”
Molly said to Sherlock, who was looking fit and quite beautiful and watching her husband with new eyes, “ Ramsey loves her so much. Maybe someday he’ll even love me.”
“The man’s found Nirvana and he knows it, Molly,” Sherlock said in a matter-of-fact voice, still looking at her husband holding Emma, a besotted look on his face. “I’ve always liked Ramsey. Now that he’s got you, everything will be just fine. What do you think, Molly? Does Dillon look like a natural holding Emma or what?”
THE orderly had brought two cots into Ramsey’s room the night before. The whole family was together. They were sound asleep when the door suddenly burst open and Lieutenant McPherson ran in.
Ramsey was out of bed in an instant, ready to fight, and he nearly passed out cold. He fell back against the bed, breathing hard. “What the hell’s wrong?”
“No, it’s all right, Judge Hunt,” McPherson said, panting. “I was just worried that something could have happened to you as well. Here, let me help you back into bed.”
“What are you talking about?” Molly said, helping Ramsey herself. Emma was halfway to Ramsey’s bed, intent, he knew, on protecting him.
“It’s Dickerson,” McPherson said. “They think somebody put something, maybe potassium, into one of his IVs. He’s dead.”
“BUT there are staff all over the place in the ICU,” Virginia Trolley said, shaking her head, still looking utterly incredulous even though McPherson had been talking about it for a good ten minutes. She’d thrown on clothes and rushed to his hospital room when Ramsey had called her. Ramsey had never seen her without makeup before and her hair uncombed and her red blazer wrinkled. She looked cute. He’d never tell her that, of course, because she’d knock him out.
“How could anybody get in there,” she continued, “stick a needle into the IV tube, and get out again, all without being seen by anybody? There weren’t any guards on him, why would there be? He wasn’t going anywhere on his own and no one ever thought he’d need protection. We’ve spoken to security and they’ve sealed off the hospital, but good luck on that. They’re checking videotape right now to see if there’s anything suspicious.”
“Lieutenant McPherson said a nurse saw someone dressed in hospital whites,” Molly said. “But that’s no big deal. It’s a little like wearing a uniform at the Pentagon. Nobody gives you much of a second glance if you appear to be someone who’s supposed to belong.”
“She’s right,” Ramsey said. “It’s the only reasonable answer. Actually I don’t think it’s all that reasonable, but hey, this is a hospital, not a top-security area. The hospital staff weren’t alerted to keep an eye out.” He closed his eyes a minute. He was exhausted, his rib hurt, his shoulder ached like the devil, and he was ready to call in the cavalry for a pain pill.
He suddenly felt Emma’s hand slip into his. He turned his head to see her studying him, knowing that he hurt, not knowing what to do about it. It was a lie, but he said cleanly, “I’m just fine, Emma. But I like you right here holding my hand.”
He also felt incredible relief. Dickerson was dead, long gone, no more threat to anyone. Emma was safe.
Lieutenant McPherson cleared his throat. “I also ran in here, Judge Hunt, because, to tell you the truth, you’re the best suspect.”
“I’m not moving too quickly right now,” Ramsey said. “I nearly hung it up when you burst through that door. I think stealing a white coat, finding some potassium, since I don’t carry any around with me, and walking nonchalantly into the ICU just might have been beyond even my abilities, astounding though they be.”
“That was a joke,” Emma said to Lieutenant McPherson.
“I know. I’m glad all of you were here. It makes things easier.”
Not an hour later, when the three of them were finally alone again, though they could see news vans below them in the street, they discovered they were all still too hyped to go back to sleep. The phone rang. Molly answered it, then, with a strange look on her face, she handed it to Ramsey. “I don’t understand. It’s my father. He wants to speak to you.”
Ramsey thought briefly about pressing the speaker button. No, Emma was here. He picked up the phone and identified himself. It was indeed Mason Lord. He said, “I’m much better and I understand that you’ll survive as well, Ramsey. Oh yes, I’m also given to understand that there will be no more problems with that animal who was after Emma, and shot you.”
Ramsey said very quietly, though he could feel the blood pounding through him, “How did you know, sir? Surely there hasn’t been enough time for it to be on the news yet.”
Mason laughed softly, then said, amusement lacing his voice, “I have friends everywhere, Ramsey. Of course I find things out very quickly. Actually, one could almost say that I find some things out almost before they happen.”
Had it been Gunther who killed Dickerson? Or had Mason hired local talent for just this one assignment? Now that he’d had a second or two to think about it, he wasn’t at all surprised. He didn’t say anything. Why bother? What was there to say anyway?
“Now Emma doesn’t have to be afraid, nor do you or Molly. I will expect the three of you here for Thanksgiving. That’s my favorite holiday. No one expects extravagant gifts, just a great meal, wh
ich Miles always delivers.”
“Yes,” Ramsey said. “We’ll be there.” Slowly, he placed the phone back in the receiver. He looked at Molly and shook his head. She frowned a moment, then he knew she understood. She made a big deal out of yawning. “I’m ready to fold my tent. How about you, Em?”
“I’m sleepy too, Mama. What did Grandpa want, Ramsey?”
“He wanted to make sure we were all right. Nothing more.”
“He was nice to call,” Emma said, kissed Ramsey, and let her mother tuck her in.
Ramsey leaned back and closed his eyes. His shoulder was hurting like the devil. His fingertips tingled. His head ached. Now this. Molly leaned down to kiss him. He whispered, “He had Dickerson killed. What am I supposed to do?”
“Tell McPherson the truth. It won’t matter, you know it won’t. No one will ever take down my father. In fact I’ll bet my father wants you to tell the cops. He’s probably laughing right now, imagining it.”
He suspected she was right. He called out, “Good night, Emma. Sleep well. You too, Molly.”
IT was all over, Ramsey thought, as he walked up the stairs of their San Francisco home, Emma at his side. All over. He was thinking about Dickerson’s mother in Duluth. She had paid for his cremation. Ramsey had actually gone, Savich with him, just to be sure, just to see the man before he was reduced to gray silt.
“Mama’s asleep,” Emma said. “She was really tired. I don’t think she slept well last night.”
That was true enough. He hadn’t either. Emma had said she’d wanted to sleep in her own room, which was the reason neither of them had slept much. It was odd, but he’d missed her cuddling against them, at least in the morning he had.