Elixir. Part 40

Abigail's body was tiny, like an anemic dwarf, with newborn skin and hair, but with older movements. She looked like some alien replica of a human child. She opened her arms, but Laura didn't want to touch her.

"How old are you?" Laura asked, her voice rasping.

Jenny tried to cut her off. "No more chit-chat, please. Time for bed."

"Six."

"Six?"

"Almost seven. Then I can go outside."

"Why can't you go out now?"

"Enough, enough, you two," Jenny sang out. "Time for good little girls to go bed."

"Because I'm sick," Abigail answered.

"What's wrong with you? How are you sick?"

"I'm sick, that's all. But Mommy says the medicine will make me better. And then I can go to Boston. Do they speak French in Boston?"

Jenny got up. "Now I'm getting cross." She picked Abigail up and lay her on the bed to change her diaper. "If you don't mind," Jenny said and shooed Laura out of the room.

The door closed, and Laura leaned up against it with her eyes pressed shut. All her instincts were keyed to be as far from here as she could possibly get.

"You f.u.c.king b.i.t.c.h!"

Laura's eyes snapped opened.

A man stood before her with a gun at her face.

"What the h.e.l.l did you do to my daughter?"

"Ted?" She barely recognize him.

"You made her into a freak." He jammed the gun under her chin.

"I didn't know," she gasped.

"She's the same age she was ten years ago. The same f.u.c.king age. She never grew up." His expression s.h.i.+fted as he studied her face. "She gave her your s.h.i.+t then kept her locked up in here for ten years. And n.o.body knew. n.o.body. The neighbors thought she was a widow living alone. She never let her out of the house. Never."

All Laura could do was shake her head.

"She's never seen another kid." His voice cracked and tears began rolling down his face. "How did she get it?"

"She took them."

She explained how Jenny must have stolen some ampules years ago when they were at the cottage in the Adirondacks.

Ted listened and lowered the gun. "It took me a year to find her. I didn't know where they'd moved. She once said she liked the name Phoenix, so I checked the listing. For a whole year." His body slumped. "She still remembers me. Just like before I went away. She should be sixteen years old."

From inside Abigail was protesting something.

Ted put his gun inside his jacket as Jenny stepped out. She looked at him, and the grin slid off her face and her eyes instantly hardened. "I told you her next visiting hours were tomorrow, not today. Doctor's orders."

Ted looked at Laura. "She's out of her mind."

"Mommy, is that Daddy?"

"Now she heard you," Jenny snapped. "It's time to take her medicine." Then she turned to Laura. "The refills, please."

"Mommy, I want Daddy to give me my medicine. I'll show him how to do it," she shouted.

Laura fumbled in her shoulder bag for the packet of ampules.

"Please, Mommy? Daddy hasn't seen me since I was five."

"Just this once," Jenny said and opened the door. She made a face at Ted. "Make it brief," she snapped.

Abigail was propped up on her bed with her dolls and holding a hypodermic needle. "Then Daddy can tell me about the army."

Jenny led the way, and through the closed door Laura heard Abigail. "Don't cry, Daddy. It doesn't hurt at all."

Laura was trying to decide what to do when her cell phone rang.

It was Roger. The police were coming. He didn't know how they got tipped off, but his scanner had picked up a dispatch call for number 247 Farmington Road. She had to get out immediately. He'd pick her up in a minute.

Ted had called, she told herself. Yes, he had called the police to get help for Abigail.

Laura shot down the stairs and ran outside just as Roger pulled up. Roger flung open the pa.s.senger door. "Whose car is that?"

"Ted's. Roger, we have to give her the real stuff," Laura cried. It was packed in the trunks buried in the back of the van.

"Hurry up," Brett shouted. "They're right behind us."

"No. She gave it to Abigail."

Roger looked at her not knowing what she meant. "Get in!"

"She gave Elixir to Abigail. We have to give her more."

But Roger disregarded her and pulled her into the pa.s.senger seat.

They could send her a supply, she told herself as she closed the door. Yes, they'd mail some ampules from the road. Laura locked the door. The only problem was that she didn't know when her last injection had been.

They were just pulling away when from inside the house three sharp sounds rang out.

"OmiG.o.d!" Laura screamed. "Nooooo!" She started to open the door but Roger pulled her back and screeched out the drive and onto the main road. "Go back. For G.o.d's sake go back!"

Laura was still screaming as the police in several vehicles turned into Jenny's driveway and poured into her house.

"He killed them. He killed them."

Antoine lay the book on his lap and looked out the window of his Lear jet.

He was two chapters from the end, and he still could not figure out how the protagonist was going to slip the peril. That bothered him because he had always prided himself in second-guessing authors. Only Agatha Christie could throw him. This one was a close second. So far.

"Finished yet?" Vince asked.

"Another twenty pages."

"You can knock it off while they refuel."

Vince double-checked the sheets of specs downloaded from the various databases they had penetrated. He pa.s.sed a copy to Antoine and the other men in the cabin.

Antoine studied the material. They had narrowed it down, but it was still not enough to pinpoint them. There was a missing element, and timing was critical.

The aircraft descended into the Atlanta airport where they would refuel for the trip to Indianapolis. The unseasonable cold front had left a blanket of snow in the northeast but, gratefully, they would not be heading that far north.

Such bizarre weather for this time of year, Antoine thought. While meteorologists pointed to La Nina, El Nino's cool sister, one religious quack went so far to proclaim that it was "the wrath of G.o.d"-the same man who claimed that Roger Glover was the "hand servant of Satan" and Elixir "the Devil's brew."

While the authorities were hot after the Glovers, they did not have the data that sat in Antoine's lap. Data that but for one detail would point to where they were heading.

He checked his watch though he knew it was about four-fifteen.

4:09. He was losing his touch. Age, he told himself. It was mucking up his internal clockwork.

The plane landed.

While the ground crews filled the tanks, Antoine sipped his wine and finished his book.

He reread the last few pages in keen delight. A very interesting twist, he thought. Ingenious, in fact. He had not seen it coming at all. Not at all, even though, of course, there were enough clues-but nothing trite like planted b.u.t.tons or pipe cleaners. It was in the character of the protagonist herself. So obvious, in retrospect: The yearning for the past. Like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz. Three clicks of her heels.

Character, he told himself. And what is that, but the ill.u.s.tration of incident? And what is incident but the dramatization of character? Henry James, that one.

Antoine licked his lips the way he did when he got excited and picked up the phone to explain to the pilot that there was a change in plans. They would be heading northeast after all. And prepare for a descent in the snow.

34.

The Glovers were about three hours into Ohio when the story came over the airwaves: a double murder and suicide that shocked the small farming town of Prairie, Indiana. Information was still scanty, and authorities were not disclosing the names of victims until notification of next of kin.

Laura snapped it off. "Next of kin," she repeated, her voice ragged from crying. "We're next of kin."

Roger said nothing. Gratefully, the hysteria was gone.

Earlier she had been so frantic to turn around that getting caught meant nothing to her. Even if she couldn't have saved them, Jenny was her sister, and Abigail was still her niece. She had to be there, she demanded. She had to be certain their bodies were cared for properly, that they would get decent funeral and burial arrangements-if for nothing else, to draw closure to the madness. Besides, they were responsible for their condition.

"Laura, if we go back, we'd be arrested." Roger had said. "We could also be implicated in their deaths."

"I should have known," she said. "He had a gun. It's why he came. I should never have left."

"He might have killed you, too, Mom," Brett added.

But Laura did not respond to him. "My family is dead," she cried. "Look what we did to them."

For miles she said nothing else but lay her head against a pillow and receded into a silent grief. Every so often she'd weep quietly.

Exhausted, Roger drove on.

More than anything else, what ate at him was what all this was doing to Brett. First, the terror of his parents wanted by every law enforcement agency in the country. Then the horror of Jenny and Abigail's murder. Adding to that was how spent Roger and Laura were. She had always been a brick and he, the voice of reason. Now they were tottering on the edge of defeat.

When they pa.s.sed signs for the Interstate to Pennsylvania, Brett asked, "Where're we going?"

"Upstate New York," Roger said.

"Who's there?"

"n.o.body, I hope. But there's a safehouse we used to live in," and he told Brett about the cottage on Black Eagle Lake. "Think you could handle living in the woods for a few weeks?"

"Sure. It'd be like going to camp."

Brett was putting things in a good light, as if this were some backwoods adventure. And Roger drew some encouragement from that. Brett was at an age when he was expected to a.s.sume some responsibility for their fate. Likewise, his opinion and strength of purpose mattered.

Unconsciously Roger fingered the tube around his neck.

The religious loonies had called him the Antichrist. At first he had been humored by the absurd accusation, but as he drove on it struck him how those claims made some kind of sense. Rather than new life, every human and animal he had touched with Elixir had suffered afflictions that were almost biblical.

They pa.s.sed through Ohio and the northwest corner of Pennsylvania and into the western end of New York state.

While Brett slept through the night, Laura dozed fitfully or just gazed numbly out the window. She said very little.

Roger had thought about stopping at a motel for the night, but that was too risky. Besides, he wouldn't have slept, given the news.

According to the radio, anti-government protests were growing everywhere. People were demanding the White House come clean with the coverup. Others wanted Elixir released to the public. Meanwhile, a siege had taken place at the U.S. emba.s.sy in Cairo by fundamentalists. Some people were dead and hostages were being held by a group of men who had declared a holy war against the U.S. for "genetic imperialism." And Roger was its evil leader.

But his demonization did not stop there. Jewish cabalists to Christian millennialists saw Elixir as a sign that the Messiah would descend and wind things up. To some, Roger was simply a neutral harbinger. To others he was the devil incarnate.

There were other stories. One was a followup report about the murder/suicide tragedy in Prairie. Roger tried to turn it off, but Laura heard it and stopped him. She had been hoping against hope that it was somebody else's tragedy.