Third Degree Part 17

Auster was turning purple. He had the face of an innocent man being dragged bodily into prison.

"Besides," Warren went on, "I've recently discovered that my blus.h.i.+ng bride might be a fan of the Penthouse Forum. She's a closet p.o.r.n addict."

"This is insane," Laurel muttered.

With sudden defiance, Kyle shook Danny's letter under Warren's nose. "This isn't my handwriting, kemo sabe. It's not even close."

"Do you know whose it is?"

"How could I? It's block print. It could be anybody's. Or n.o.body's. I don't know any grown men who write this way. I think somebody's messing with you. And you don't have time for that right now. Look around you, man. You're married to one of the greatest women ever. You've got two fine kids. Get past this high school bulls.h.i.+t and think about what really matters. Being free to raise your children, not stuck in a cell somewhere."

Laurel found herself nodding. Amazingly, when the s.h.i.+t hit the fan, it was Auster who had his priorities in line, whereas Warren seemed lost.

Kyle dropped the letter on the floor and stared hard into Warren's eyes. "You want the truth, buddy? Listen up. We were going to let you take the fall. Vida and me. That's why the bonds and the ledgers are here. But it's all happening too fast. The only way out for any of us now is to get rid of all the evidence. Everything, ASAP. Those ledgers have to go, and the bonds have to disappear."

His pragmatic tone broke through Warren's sarcastic front. "And how do you suggest we manage that?" Warren asked.

"We go down to the creek behind your house and have a little bonfire. Then I'll take the bonds somewhere safe."

Warren laughed. "As a favor to me, right? You'll take that two hundred thousand off my hands?"

"Do you want the bonds for yourself? Is that what this is about?"

"I want to know what they're really doing here!"

Kyle spoke as he might to a child. "I just told you. I planted them here last week-with the ledgers-so that you'd take the fall for what's been going on at the office. That's it. End of story."

When Warren didn't respond, Kyle turned to Laurel. "What the f.u.c.k is wrong with this guy?"

"He won't take yes for an answer."

Kyle tapped Warren on the shoulder. "You want my secrets? I was s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g Shannon Jensen, okay? Midlife crisis maximus. But Vida caught me, so I ditched her. But your wife was nowhere in my plans." Kyle glanced at Laurel, then pushed on, his voice ragged with fear. "We're standing on the edge of a cliff, partner. You wouldn't believe the penalties they have now. I'm talking fifty years in prison and millions of dollars in fines. Tens of millions. That's buried so deep you'll never get another chance at life. We've got to take care of each other now."

Contempt chilled Warren's eyes. "Like you've taken care of me all along?"

Kyle groaned in frustration. "Buddy...most of the time, life is every man for himself. But sometimes, we all have to pull together. We have to hang together, or we'll all hang separately, right? Ben Franklin said that."

"The circ.u.mstances were rather different."

"Yeah, well, the sentiment's the same. Come on, bro. Don't be a sucker."

"But I am. That's what I've always been." Warren pursed his lips, his gaze far away. Laurel tried to read his face, but her old systems of spousal interpretation were no longer reliable. She had no idea how this new version of Warren reasoned. He looked from Kyle to her like a man trying to judge the lesser of two evils.

"The computer will decide," he said finally. "That's the only thing I can trust. If you're not Laurel's e-mail buddy, you can go."

Auster stared at his junior partner for several seconds. "You're crazy if you think I'm staying here. I'm not spending my last good years in prison because your wife is poking somebody else. You'll just have to shoot me." He turned and started walking toward the foyer, which probably meant the safe room.

Warren raised his pistol and c.o.c.ked it with a loud click. "It's your choice."

Auster took two more steps. Then he stopped and looked back, his face sagging under the strain. Laurel saw a wet glint in his eyes.

"You're committing suicide," Kyle said. "Okay, fine. But why make me do it with you?"

"Because we're partners," Warren replied, smiling with irony. "We share everything, right?"

Chapter 13.

Nell was standing in line for a teller at the Planter's Bank when a blast of precognition so strong it made her dizzy hit her. She didn't know what to call it: foreboding, ESP, the heebie-jeebies, whatever. She just knew in her heart that something was dreadfully wrong at the office. Something about Vida's manner had rattled her to the bone, but without her quite realizing it. It was a delayed reaction, like somebody dying in the night from a blow to the head during the day.

Vida was too calm.

The situation was unraveling, yet she was walking around and joking like a jaded undertaker at a funeral. Nell hurried out to her car, drove down the frontage road, and crossed Highway 24 onto Audubon Boulevard. Then she turned into the employee parking lot, which was practically deserted, except for Dr. Auster's Jaguar and Vida's old Pontiac. She ran to the back door of the office, which was locked and bolted. She let herself in with her key, then moved quietly into the hall.

The door to exam room six was partly open. She saw stockinged feet sticking off the examining table. So there were still patients here. But she saw no staff whatever. As she pa.s.sed X-ray, she looked in, but Sherry wasn't at her counter. Same in the lab. No sign of JaNel, and the lights were off. The blood-chemistry machines were still running, though.

A cold chill raced the length of her body, and her shoulders jerked as though a static charge had suddenly left her. The building seemed alien to her, as though she had entered an office that looked like the one where she worked, but was not. Some of the office buildings near the hospital were almost identical. But not this one. Dr. Auster's building had a hipped roof and dormers, unlike the "modern" boxes with flat tar roofs standing in front of the hospital.

Suddenly Nell understood the reason for her anxiety. The computers were silent. She had never been inside the office when the computers were shut off. It seemed a different place without their steady, rea.s.suring hum. The machines gave the building a sense of being alive, whereas now the whole place seemed dead.

The clinic had always smelled of rubbing alcohol, but as Nell neared the reception area, its biting odor became overpowering. And there was something else in the air, too. Something even more volatile...

Gasoline.

She rounded the arch that led to reception and saw Vida leaning over an open file drawer. Vida was pouring something into the drawer, right onto the papers. It was alcohol, Nell realized. Rubbing alcohol from one of the brown push bottles they used in the exam rooms. Twenty other file drawers stood open to various lengths.

"Vi?" she said softly.

Vida jerked erect and whirled, but relaxed when she saw it was only her sister.

"What are you doing?" Nell asked.

"TCB, honey. In a flash. Like Elvis always said."

"What?"

Vida laughed. "Taking care of business in a flash. I forget how much younger you are sometimes."

"Not that much," Nell said, very afraid and not quite sure why.

"A lifetime, baby girl. I thought I told you to clear out."

"I had a bad feeling. Like I get sometimes, you know?"

Vida looked down at the file drawer and sighed.

Nell scanned the room, and what she saw sent her to the edge of panic. Empty alcohol bottles were all over the room. Most stood in a row on the floor by her computer, but some lay atop the file drawers. A red metal gas can stood right beneath Vida's desktop. If someone lit a match in here, they would all die in a giant fireball.

"Why are you doing this?" Nell asked.

"No other way." Vida opened another bottle of alcohol and dumped its contents into a drawer full of patient records. "We're having a fire sale. Everything must go! No exceptions!"

Her laughter had a hysterical edge that scared Nell. "Is this why you went to the store today?"

"Mm-hm. We didn't have enough alcohol. But they had loads of it at Walgreens. I had to sneak it in, inside an old Dell computer box. The Medicaid people have somebody watching the back door. They're waiting for their pit bull to get here."

"Pit bull?"

Vida's humor evaporated. "You need to go, baby. Now."

"But...how can you light this stuff without killing yourself?"

Vida's smile was cagey. "I go down to the switch box and shut off the main breaker. Then I come back here and plug the computers and copiers back in. One more trip down the hall, flip the breaker on, and boom! Gone with the wind."

"How do you know about this kind of stuff?"

"I had a boyfriend who did insurance jobs. Torch jobs, you know? Remember Randy?"

Nell vaguely remembered a scrawny, unshaven Cajun of indeterminate age.

"But we don't have time for nothing fancy," Vida said with regret. "You do the best you can with what you got."

Nell stepped farther into the room. "There are still patients in the back, Vida. I saw somebody on the way in."

"Just a couple. I'll take them out with me." Vida tossed the empty bottle on the floor. "A heroic rescue will make it look more like an accident. As if anything could. But we try."

"Where's everybody else?"

"I sent them home. Told them we'd had a computer crash and couldn't keep up with billing or insurance. They were out of here like a shot."

"And Dr. Auster?"

"He's getting that stuff out of Warren's house, like I promised he would."

Nell felt a warm rush of grat.i.tude. "Vi...why don't we just get out of here? You've got money squirreled away, I know you do. Let's both go down to Cancun. We could rent a condo by the month and just figure out what to do next."

Vida smiled dreamily at this fantasy. "I'd love to, sweetie, but I can't. I've put in with Kyle, and I'm going to stick by him all the way. If we get through clean, he'll have to stick by me."

Nell closed her eyes, nearly overcome with sadness. "But he won't, Vi. You know he won't. As soon as he's sure you've saved him, he'll find some other girl. Somebody younger, who doesn't know what a jerk he is."

Vida's smile stretched so tight that Nell thought it would crack at the corners. Then it changed to a grimace. Nell heard a man's voice behind her. She turned.

A black-haired man wearing a gray suit stood in the hall door. He looked like a lawyer or maybe an FBI man-what they looked like on TV anyway.

"Afternoon, ladies," he said in a deep, Yankee-sounding voice. "Where's Dr. Auster?"

"Gone," said Vida. "We've been having some trouble with our computers. I think he might've gone to RadioShack for some parts."

The newcomer's eyes roamed over the computers and open file drawers. He must have seen the alcohol bottles, but he didn't mention them.

"Ladies, I'd like you to walk slowly toward me and step out of the room. I want to talk to you for a few minutes. Nothing serious. Please don't make any sudden movements on your way out. We're all in grave danger at this moment."

Vida looked back at him with an almost playful smile. "You think?"

"Just step away from the wall, Ms. Roberts. And please join me in the hall."

Vida almost preened like a cat being petted. In some perverse way, Nell knew, it gratified her sister that they knew her by name.

"Are you Biegler?" Vida asked.

"That's right."

"The pit bull with a tick up his a.s.s?"

Biegler signaled to someone out of sight down the hall. "I haven't heard that one, but I wouldn't doubt they say that about me." He looked at Nell. "Would you step into the hall, miss?"

Nell felt the man's voice pulling her toward him. It was so calm and reasonable. He seemed nothing like a pit bull. More like a good, steady Labrador. Nell moved slowly toward him, her eyes imploring Vida to follow.

But Vida would not be led. Nell realized that her sister must have noted long before she did that Biegler wasn't holding a gun, and that even if he were carrying one, he could not use it for fear of setting off the bomb that the fume-filled room had become.

"You want to take me to jail, don't you, Mr. Biegler?" Vida said in a challenging voice.

"That depends. If you'll cooperate with us in trying to achieve a just resolution, you might be able to avoid punishment altogether."

Vida laughed harshly. "You mean if I squeal on Kyle Auster, you'll give me a get-out-of-jail-free card?"

Biegler sighed and backed deeper into the hall. "Something like that. It depends on exactly what your role in all this has been."

Nell saw something change in her sister's eyes. Then Vida murmured, "Run, baby girl. Run." Nell screamed, but Vida was already reaching into her pocket. She took out her cigarette lighter, a blue Bic, and held up her thumb. Strong arms seized Nell and dragged her toward the door. Someone charged up brandis.h.i.+ng a gun, and then a muted roar sucked the air from Nell's lungs.

Laurel sat cross-legged on the floor behind the couch, watching Kyle Auster. Warren had forced his senior partner to sit on the hearth with his back against the marble fireplace. Warren himself was pacing the great room and periodically checking the progress of Merlin's Magic on the laptop. Thankfully, the children had not appeared. Laurel figured Warren's bizarre behavior upstairs had frightened them enough to keep them out of sight until someone else came for them. It hurt Laurel's heart to think of Beth terrified, but Grant would comfort her. He happily picked on his sister every day, but if anything truly hurt or upset her, he immediately went into a protective mode.

Laurel felt a strange kins.h.i.+p with Kyle. After all, they both wanted the same thing, short term. Escape. Beyond that, Auster was trying to keep both himself and Warren out of jail, which made sense to her. But Warren seemed to be in the grip of some sort of guilt reaction to whatever had been going on at the office. He was like a killer who wanted to be caught. Conversation had dropped to nothing, and Auster appeared resigned to being stuck where he was. Yet something told Laurel he was only acting. Twice she had seen him wipe tears from his cheeks. Warren must have seen this, too, but when he deigned to look at his partner, his face held only disgust. Laurel tried to stay ready for anything. Even a futile escape attempt by Auster might give her a chance to smash the Sony against the floor, or even to get the kids out of the house.

"May I say something, Warren?" Kyle asked in a shaky voice.

"If you must."

"All your life you've done the right thing. All your life you've been the golden boy. But this past year, you've done some things you don't feel good about. Things you probably never thought you'd do."

Laurel watched her husband, trying to judge the effect of these words.

"Your reasons are your own business," Kyle went on, "but right now, you're overcome with guilt. You think you're about to be exposed. Ruined. You're going to lose the respect of all those patients who think you're Albert Schweitzer. So what do you do? Try to pull the whole house down around you before that happens. You want to show the world that n.o.body's more disgusted with Warren s.h.i.+elds than Dr. s.h.i.+elds himself."