No Time for Goodbye Part 42

The nurse ran back to her station, grabbed the phone, said, "Security! I said I needed you up here now!"

The elevator doors parted and I wheeled Clayton in, hit the b.u.t.ton for the first floor, and watched the nurse glare at us until the doors slid shut.

"When the door opens," I told Clayton calmly, "I'm going to be pus.h.i.+ng you out of here like a bat out of h.e.l.l."

He said nothing but wrapped his fingers around the arms of the chair, squeezed. I wished it had a seat belt.

The doors opened, and there was about fifty feet of hall separating me from the emergency room doors and the parking lot just beyond them. "Hold on," I whispered, and broke into a run.

The chair wasn't built for speed, but I pushed it to the point where the front wheels began to wobble. I feared it would suddenly veer left or right, that Clayton would spill out and end up with a fractured skull before I could get him to Vince's Dodge Ram. So I put some weight down on the handles and tipped the chair back, like it was doing a wheelie.

Clayton hung on.

The elderly couple who had been sitting in the waiting room earlier were shuffling across the hall. I shouted ahead, "Out of the way!" The woman's head whipped around and she pulled her husband out of my path just in time as we went racing past.

The sensors on the sliding emergency room doors couldn't react fast enough, and I had to put on the brakes so I wouldn't send Clayton through the gla.s.s. I slowed down as fast as I could without pitching him forward and out of the wheelchair, and that was when someone I a.s.sumed had to be a security guard came up behind me and shouted, "Whoa! Hold it right there, pal!"

I was so pumped up on adrenaline I didn't stop to think about what I was doing. I was working on instinct now. I spun around, using the momentum that seemed to be stored in me from moving so quickly down the hall, forming a fist in the process, and caught my pursuer square in the side of the head.

He wasn't a very big guy, maybe 150 pounds, five-eight, black hair and a mustache, must have figured that the gray uniform and big black belt with the gun attached would get him by. Fortunately, he hadn't yet pulled his weapon, a.s.suming, I guess, that a guy pus.h.i.+ng a dying patient in a wheelchair didn't pose much of a threat.

He was wrong.

He dropped to the emergency room floor like someone had cut his strings. Somewhere, a woman screamed, but I didn't take any time to see who it was, or whether anyone else was going to be coming after me. I whirled back around, got my hands on the wheelchair handles, and kept pus.h.i.+ng Clayton, out into the parking lot, right up to the pa.s.senger door of the Dodge.

I got out the keys, unlocked it with the remote, opened the door. The truck sat up high, and I had to boost Clayton to get him into the pa.s.senger seat. I slammed the door shut, ran around to the other side, and caught the wheelchair with the right front tire as I backed out of the spot. I heard it sc.r.a.pe against the fender.

"s.h.i.+t," I said, thinking about how perfect Vince kept the vehicle.

The truck tires squealed as I tore out of the lot, heading back for the highway. I caught a glimpse of some people from the ER, running outside to watch as I sped off. Clayton, already looking exhausted, said, "We have to go back to my house."

"I know," I said. "I'm already heading there. I need to know why Vince isn't answering, make sure everything's okay, maybe even stop Jeremy if he shows up, if he hasn't already."

"And there's something I have to get," Clayton said. "Before we go see Cynthia."

"What?"

He waved a weakened hand at me. "Later."

"They're going to call the police," I said of the people we'd left behind at the hospital. "I've practically kidnapped a patient, and I've decked a security guard. They'll be looking for this truck."

Clayton didn't say anything.

I pushed the truck past ninety on the way north to Youngstown, glancing constantly in my mirror for flas.h.i.+ng red lights. I tried Vince again with my cell, still without success. I was nearing the end of my battery.

When the turnoff to Youngstown came, I was hugely relieved, figuring I was more vulnerable, more noticeable, on the expressway. But then, what if the police were waiting for us at the Sloan house? The hospital would be able to tell them where their runaway patient lived, and they'd probably stake the place out. What terminal patient doesn't want to go home and die in his own bed?

I drove the truck down to Main, hung a left, went south a couple of miles and turned down the road to the Sloan house. It looked peaceful enough as we drove up to it, a couple of lights on inside, the Honda Accord still parked out front.

No police cars anywhere to be seen. Yet.

"I'm going to drive the truck around back where it can't be seen from the street," I said. Clayton nodded. I wheeled the truck onto the back lawn, killed the lights and engine.

"Just go on," Clayton said. "See about your friend. I'll try to catch up with you."

I leapt out, went to a back door. When I found it locked, I banged on it. "Vince!" I shouted. I looked through the windows, didn't see any movement. I ran around the house to the front, looking up and down the street for police cars, and tried the main door.

It was unlocked.

"Vince!" I said, stepping into the front hall. I didn't immediately see Enid Sloan, or her chair, or Vince Fleming.

Not until I got to the kitchen.

Enid wasn't there, and neither was her chair. But Vince lay on the floor, the back of his s.h.i.+rt red with blood.

"Vince," I said, kneeling down next to him. "Jesus, Vince." I thought he was dead, but he let out a soft moan. "Oh G.o.d, man, you're still alive."

"Terry," he whispered, his right cheek pressed to the floor. "She had a...she had a f.u.c.king gun under the blanket." His eyes were flirting with rolling up under his lids. There was blood coming out of his mouth. "f.u.c.king embarra.s.sing..."

"Don't talk," I said. "I'm going to call 911."

I found the phone, s.n.a.t.c.hed the receiver into my hand, and punched in the three numbers.

"A man's been shot," I said. I barked out the address, told the operator to hurry, ignored all her other questions, and hung up.

"He came home," Vince whispered when I knelt down next to him again. "Jeremy...she met him at the door, didn't even let him come in...said they had to go right then. She phoned him...after she shot me, said step on it."

"Jeremy was here?"

"I heard them talking...." More blood spluttered out of his mouth. "Going back. She wouldn't even let him come in and take a p.i.s.s. Didn't want him to see me...Didn't tell him..."

What was Enid thinking? What was going on in her head?

At the front door, I could hear Clayton shuffling his way into the house.

"f.u.c.k, it hurts...." Vince said. "f.u.c.king little old lady."

"You're going to be okay," I said.

"Terry," he said, so softly I almost couldn't hear. I put my ear closer to his mouth. "Look in...on Jane. Okay?"

"Hang in there, man. Just hang in."

43.

Clayton said, "Enid never answers the door without a gun under her blanket. Certainly not when she's home alone." the door without a gun under her blanket. Certainly not when she's home alone."

He'd managed to make it into the kitchen and was using the counter for support as he looked down at Vince Fleming. He was taking a moment to catch his breath. The walk from the truck around to the front of the house and inside had worn him out.

Once he had a bit of strength back, he said, "She can be easy to underestimate. An old woman in a wheelchair. She'd have waited for her moment. When he had his back to her, when he was close enough that she knew she couldn't miss, she'd have done it." He shook his head. "No one ever really stands a chance against Enid."

I still had my mouth close to Vince's ear. "I've called for an ambulance. They're coming."

"Yeah," Vince said, his eyelids fluttering.

"But we're going to have to take off. We have to go after Enid and Jeremy. They're going after my wife and my daughter."

"Do what you gotta do," Vince whispered.

To Clayton, I said, "He said Jeremy came home, that Enid wouldn't even let him in the house, made him turn around and head back right away."

Clayton nodded slowly. "She wasn't trying to spare him," he said.

"What?"

"If she didn't let him see what she'd done, it wasn't to spare him from an ugly scene. It was because she didn't want him to know."

"Why?"

Clayton took a couple of breaths. "I need to sit down," he said. I got up off the floor and eased him into one of the chairs at the kitchen table. "Look in the cupboard over there," he said, pointing. "There may be some Tylenols or something."

I had to step over Vince's legs and detour around the gradually expanding pool of blood on the kitchen floor to reach the cupboard. I found some extra-strength Tylenols in there, and in the cupboard next to it were gla.s.ses. I filled one with water and worked my way back across the kitchen without slipping.

The Tylenols had a childproof lid that was beyond Clayton. I opened the container, took out two tablets, and put them into his open hand.

"Four," he said.

I was listening for an ambulance siren, wanting to hear it, but also wanting to get out of there before it arrived. I shook out two more tablets for Clayton, handed him the water. He had to take them one at a time. Getting the four pills down seemed to take him forever. When he was done, I said, "Why? Why wouldn't she want him to know?"

"Because if Jeremy knew, he might get her to call it off. What they're planning to do. With him here, shot, with you heading off to the hospital to see me, you knowing who he really is, he'd realize it's all starting to come apart. If they're off to do what I think they're going to do, there isn't much hope now of getting away with it."

"But Enid has to know all that, too," I said.

Clayton gave me a half-smile. "You don't understand Enid. All she can see is that inheritance. She'll be blinded to anything else, any problems that might deter her. She's somewhat single-minded about these sorts of things."

I glanced up at a wall clock, the face made to look like the cross section of an apple. It was 1:06 a.m.

"How much of a head start do you think they've got?" Clayton asked me.

"Whatever it is," I said, "it's too much." I glanced over at the counter, saw a roll of Reynolds Wrap, a few brown crumbs scattered about. "She's packed the carrot cake," I said. "Something for the road."

"Okay," Clayton said, gathering his strength to stand. "f.u.c.king cancer. It's all through me. Life's just nothing but pain and misery, and then you get to finish it off with a mess like this."

Once he was on his feet, he said, "There's one thing I have to take with me."

"The Tylenols? Some other medicine?"

"Sure, grab the Tylenols. But something else. I don't think I have the energy to go downstairs to get it."

"Tell me what it is."

"In the bas.e.m.e.nt, you'll find a workbench. There's a red toolbox sitting on top of it."

"Okay."

"You open up the toolbox, there's a tray in the top you can lift out. I want what's taped to the bottom of the tray."

The door to the bas.e.m.e.nt was around the corner from the kitchen. As I reached for the light switch at the top of the stairs, I called over to Vince.

"How you holding out?"

"f.u.c.k," he said quietly.

I descended the wooden steps. It was musty and cool down there, and the place was a mess of storage boxes and Christmas decorations, bits and pieces of disused furniture, a couple of mousetraps tucked into a corner. Along the far wall was the workbench, the top of it littered with half-used tubes of caulking, sc.r.a.ps of sandpaper, tools not put away, and a dented and scratched red toolbox.

A bare bulb hung over the bench and I pulled the string dangling from it so I could better see what I was doing. I unlocked the two metal clasps on the toolbox, opened the lid. The tray was filled with rusty screws, broken jigsaw blades, screwdrivers. Turning the tray over would make a h.e.l.l of a mess, not that anyone would notice. So I raised the tray up just above my head to see what was under it.

It was an envelope. A standard letter-sized envelope, dirtied and stained, held in place by some yellowed strips of Scotch tape. With my other hand I peeled the envelope off. It didn't take much.

"You see it?" Clayton called down wheezily from the top of the stairs.

"Yeah," I said. I set the freed envelope on the bench, put the tray back into the toolbox, and relocked it. I picked up the sealed envelope, turned it over in my hands. There was nothing written on it, but I could feel what I guessed was a single piece of paper folded inside.

"It's okay," Clayton said. "If you want to, you can look inside."

I tore open the envelope at one end, blew into it, reached in with my thumb and forefinger, gently pulled out the piece of paper, opened it.

"It's old," Clayton said from the top of the stairs. "Be careful with it."

I looked at it, read it. I felt as though my last breath was slipping away.

When I got to the top of the stairs, Clayton explained the circ.u.mstances surrounding what I'd found in the envelope, and told me what he wanted me to do with it.

"You promise?" he said.

"I promise," I said, slipping the envelope into my sport coat.

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