Deficiency (23 page)

"You're not going to be much good to your patients like this, Terri. You think you can put it all out of your mind and for a while in your examination room here, you might, but every quiet moment, every pause in the action, you will be thinking about Curt, the attack on him, your fears, this madness.

"Are you going to be happy with a policeman parked in front of your home, in front of this office, following you everywhere you go? I know your mother," he added with a smile. "I'm surprised she's not camped out on our front lawn this morning."

"Give her a chance," Terri said and they both laughed. "I don't know, Hyman. Let me see how it goes, okay? And thanks."

He lifted his hands, palms up, and shrugged.

"Every time you think you've lived long enough to have seen everything, there's something new waiting around the corner."

"See," she said, "you have good reason to live forever."

He laughed again and then they broke to begin to see the first patients of the day. Her lunch hour was cut short because Mrs. Mogolowitz kept coming up with new pains and aches extending her visit a good fifteen minutes. Hyman had wanted her to join him and Estelle at Willy's Luncheonette, the small village's one and only place for lunch, but she had decided to use her time to take a quick ride up to the hospital and visit with Curt. She still had a good two hours before she had to see her next patient. She wasn't all that hungry anyway, and she knew Hyman would just have Estelle join him in a ganging up on her to persuade her to take him up on his invitation.

Because her last morning examination had cut into her time, she wanted to drive faster. Having a police car on her tail was intimidating, however, and she stayed just a hair or so over the speed limit. When she arrived at the hospital, Curt's parents had just left. She considered that good fortune.

Her fianc� looked tired and very upset when she entered his room.

"Dad showed me the newspaper," he said as soon as she kissed him and stepped back. "I don't like Will Dennis releasing your name and the event at your office like that. I think it puts you in even more danger. Dad agrees and your mother called me this morning. She's going to come after you with handcuffs," he added.

"If you lie here worrying about everything, you won't recuperate as quickly, Curt. You won't sleep well and you will be laid up longer," she threatened.

"Don't change the subject. What are you going to do tonight?"

"I have police protection, Curt, round-the-clock."

"It's not enough," he insisted.

She sighed deeply.

"What do you want me to do?"

"Stay with either my parents or your own," he replied. "Until I'm out of here."

"Okay," she said quickly. He raised his eyebrows suspiciously.

"I'll call," he threatened.

"I'll stay with my parents. I promise, swear," she said raising her right hand. "You'll be able to tell. You'll see the aggravation in my forehead the next day."

He finally smiled.

"I want to go home. They're not doing much for me here anyway," he complained, now appealing to her as a doctor.

"It will take a while for the bruising and swelling to go down."

"So? It. can go down outside as well as inside the hospital."

"We'll see," she said, noncommittal.

"Who is this guy? How is he doing these things, Terri?"

"I don't know. According to Will the FBI is here in what he calls significant numbers." She paused, wondering if she should add anything more substantial. Despite his condition, he sensed it.

"What?" he asked.

"They think he's definitely still in the area, something about a major change in his M.O., whatever that is. They don't tell me everything, of course. Maybe they know a lot more."

"I wish we were on our honeymoon," Curt said, closing his eyes and shaking his head.

"Maybe we will be," she told him, thinking of Hyman's offer. "Or, at least a test run."

He looked up sharply.

"Really?"

"Hyman offered us his cabin for a few days, maybe a week."

"You'd do that?"

"Let me think about it a little more," she said. "I'll be back tonight."

She kissed him again and then went to speak with the nurse on duty to review his chart. Satisfied he was doing as well as he should, she left the hospital. He could be released tomorrow, she thought.

Her patrolman escort was parked right beside her car. He's not very subtle about it all, she thought, but then again, such protection wasn't meant to be subtle. She just waved at him and then got into her own vehicle.

When she turned the key, nothing happened. Surprised, she did it again and still, the engine didn't start. It was as if there was no engine, not a sound, nothing.

"What the…"

She did it again and again and then slapped the dashboard as if the car was a disobedient child. Checking her watch, she realized she didn't have time to wait for AAA. Now, she was happy she had a police escort.

She got out of her car and opened the passengers' door of his vehicle.

"My car won't start. You have to get me back to the office," she said. "I have patients lined up to the street."

She slipped in and he put his transmission into reverse and backed out without saying a word. She thought he took off rather quickly, too.

"It's all right. We have a little time," she said.

"Oh, I know," he replied. He turned and looked at her. "We have lots of time now."

Her heart seemed to fold up inside her chest the moment she saw the cleft chin.

He practically tore the man's bathroom apart, throwing things behind him — pill bottles, cough syrup, deodorants — until he found what he thought he could use. He hated being a scavenger, but he hated being on the run even more. He would need everything and anything to keep himself strong, protected.

Searching the closets he found some sweaters he could wear. On the floor of one closet, he discovered a coffee can stuffed with twenties and fifties, too.

Every time he passed through the living room, he paused to thank the corpse.

"Very thoughtful of you to keep cash on hand," he told it.

Pictures of what must have been the owner's family were in an album on a shelf of a side table in the living room. Curious, he flipped through it.

"Your parents weren't much better looking," he told the corpse. "Looks like you were an only child, huh? Lucky for the world. It limited the ugly."

He laughed at his own cleverness and then, for a moment or two, he considered how much in common he had with this dead man. They were both loners. He actually felt sorry for him, for the motel owner had none of the power he had. He was trapped in this life. What sort of a legacy was this for his parents to have left him?

"Inconsiderate bastards!"

He hated them and began tearing their pictures out of the album and scattering the pieces over the living room floor. The rage took him over for a while and then, suddenly, the sound of a bell froze him. He listened and the bell sounded once more.

"What is that?" he asked the corpse.

Then he rose and peered through the door at the motel office lobby.

He saw a tall, dark-haired woman with a far shorter, elderly lady standing there. The woman had short hair and a comely face, with just a light shade of lipstick to give it any brightness. She wore what he thought was a much too heavy dark brown coat. The old lady looked a bit distressed.

He gazed at the corpse as if he expected it would be resurrected at the sound of that bell and go and do its duty. Then, he moved out to the motel lobby slowly.

"Oh, hi," the woman said. She smiled. Her teeth were the best part of her face, he thought, very white, very straight.

"Hi."

"We need a room. We started out a little too early this morning and I'm afraid we got a bit lost. My mother is tired. We need to just have a good day's rest before continuing."

"Where are you going?" he asked. He was really curious about it.

"Oh, we're heading for Raleigh, North Carolina. My mother's older sister is very sick and I promised to take her to see her. I had some vacation due me and took it," she added.

The speed and ease with which she revealed personal information impressed him. First, it was nice to have personal information, and second, it was nice to see someone so trusting, so expecting of compassion and sympathy.

"Sure," he said moving with more enthusiasm now. He looked at the old lady. "You need to rest, Mom," he said as if he had known her all his life. She didn't smile. She was one of those elderly people who resented people who became too personal too quickly. He could see that, but he ignored it.

He turned the sign-in book around and the young woman opened her purse.

"How much is a room?" she asked.

"Thirty-eight fifty," he replied.

She nodded and opened a wallet to take out four tens, which she counted carefully.

"Mom hates credit cards," she whispered. "She thinks it makes people spend way above their means. Is cash all right?"

"Oh, absolutely," he said. "Just sign in and I'll give you the keys to…" He looked at the board of keys and saw the room next to his. "Unit 12. Next to the very end. It will be quiet there for you."

"Oh thank you," she said. "We need to get some rest before we go for some dinner. Are there good places nearby?"

"Oh, absolutely," he said. "When you're ready, just let me know and I'll point you in the right direction."

"Thank you very much."

He turned the book around and saw she had written Erna Walker. Her address was in Rochester, New York.

"What time did you two start out, Erna?" he asked.

"A little before four in the morning. I guess we were a bit too enthusiastic, but this is the longest trip I've taken in a car, and certainly the longest for my mother," she said.

"Well I'm sure you two will get some rest. Do you need help with your luggage?" he asked.

"Oh no. Thank you," she said taking the key.

The old lady had been looking around and he could see she wasn't pleased with the lobby. The walls were too dull and the baseboard was dirty. The floor needed a good vacuuming and washing and the windows needed washing, too. She smirked at him, showing her disapproval.

Old people can be so critical, he thought. They expect everyone to be just like they are.

He watched them return to their car and then drive down to the room. Erna took two small suitcases out of the trunk of her car and then opened the door of the unit. She entered and her mother followed very tentatively. He expected them to come charging out, the old lady complaining about cobwebs or something, but they didn't.

"That's good," he muttered. And then, suddenly, he had an epiphany, an incredibly explosive and wonderful revelation.

That woman was choice. She had a virginal aura about her. Everything in her was fresh and high quality. He could mine her, draw everything he needed, and she had come to him!

In fact, he thought, gazing around, this is what I was thinking of, the fish bowl, my feeding ground. They'll come here. I'll have something in every room. I'll never be without.

He rubbed his hands together. He no longer wanted to jog. The struggle with the motel owner had taken too much of his energy. That troubled him for a few moments. He wasn't usually this tired this fast after something physical.

But he rejected all negative and troubling thoughts in light of the good luck he had somehow stumbled upon here. I'll grow very strong and then, when I'm ready, I'll go on.

And on.

And on, forever….

He returned to the living room to thank the corpse.

In a real sense, he should thank all the corpses that trailed behind him.

It amused him.

I'll send thank-you cards to cemeteries, he thought, and laughing, felt more like his old self.

Whoever and whatever that was.

"I need your help," he began. "Don't panic. Please."

During the few moments that had passed between her realizing who he was and the moment he began to speak, a parade of deficiency diseases and illnesses marched through her mind. The three young women she had seen degenerate right before her eyes were sharing the Grand Marshal position, waving their dead hands in warning.

"Who are you?" she asked.

"You knew I wasn't really a state detective when I met you at the hospital the other day, right? I sensed that, but I was hoping you would be cooperative anyway.

"I'm not picking on you, Doctor. I had to visit you after the first death to be certain I was on the right track, that the M.O. fit, and I had to see just how much you really knew and understood.

"I'm sorry about frightening you before, and I'm sorry about your fiancé, but I don't have much time to waste, and now that the rather good rendition of his face and mine is on the front page of the newspaper and undoubtedly being broadcast periodically on television stations, there is even more urgency. He'll become more dangerous, more like a cornered rat.

"He's very smart, very intelligent, and he will find a way to avoid detection. He will go on and he will, as I fear he has already, find new victims at a geometric level of activity. He's obviously growing more desperate. Something is happening to him. He might die or he might kill at a rate that will create panic in the streets… literally," he concluded and turned down a side road that degenerated into a gravel one.

He stopped the car and turned off the engine.

"Where is the policeman who was with me?" she asked.

"He's in the trunk," he replied. "Don't worry. He's still alive, only sedated."

She reached back, behind herself to fumble for the door knob.

"Don't," he said quickly realizing what she was doing. "Where are you going to run to anyway? And don't you think I could catch you? Settle down, Dr. Barnard. You are a very intelligent young woman, my best hope so far. I need to know what you do know, what that second victim told you before she expired. I need to know his whereabouts or anything that might lead me to him. I need to find him before anyone else does and I need to destroy him before anyone discovers what he is," he continued.