Retribution (5 page)

Wade paused inside the house, not quite ready to plunge into the Mardi Gras scene, or involve himself in the conversation drifting to him. Invariably, someone would recognize his name and connect him with Dover's miraculous recovery. Unlike the plastic bag rapist, appeals had done Dover no good and he sat on Death Row, waiting. Alive, far more alive than any of his victims, and waiting. Wade felt a sudden need to relax and took a long, hard gulp of his rum and coke before backing away from the patio.

Turning around, he went into the house, crossing a plush carpet and wandering through an open door to find himself in a library, cool, quiet, mahogany bookshelves dominating the walls, a couch before a fireplace and an upholstered chaise lounge in the corner under reading lamps. The fourth wall, over the mantle, held a number of paintings. He found himself looking at one of them, somewhat primitive, but evocative, color flooding his vision, and he could feel the sheer enthusiasm of the artist.

Leaning close, he thought he could make out the sweeping signature, small yet flashy. He did not recognize it.

"Quite a talent, don't you think?"

Wade swung around in guilt, to face an auburn-haired woman wearing a bronze satin ball gown, her neck and shoulders no less exquisite than those of Audrey Hepburn. He felt the impact of her presence jolt him down to his feet.

She put her hand out. "I'm Abby Switzer, your hostess. And you are?"

"Wade Clarkson." He shook her hand. She had a firm, if slightly cool, grip. Diamonds, white gold, and emeralds amply decorated her fingers. Her blue-gray eyes seemed somewhat amused. Her upswept chestnut hair complimented her firm chin and neck, despite the twenty some years she must have on Wade.

"Ah! Kevin's new doctor. I approve." Abby moved even with him, with a slight ruffling of her satin gown. "That one was done by Charlie. Have you heard of her?"

"Afraid not."

She nodded. "She is just now getting a reputation. I find that owning paintings gives me a great deal of pleasure, as well as the fact they should appreciate quite a bit over the years. I make it a habit never to collect anything I do not like. And I adore her." Abby took a drink from the tall, slim glass she held in her left hand. "She is only eleven, you know."

"Eleven years old?"

His hostess inclined her head. "Remarkable, I think."

Wade studied the painting again. "Astounding."

Abby put her arm out. "I think you should meet my other guests, Dr. Clarkson."

He took her hand and settled it upon his arm. "I would be delighted to."

Abby laughed, a low, sultry laugh that managed to send a message down his spine, as she stroked his arm lightly. "And while we walk, let me twist your arm into coming to another benefit I run— a bachelor auction. You are single, are you not?"

He smiled firmly under her assessing gaze and she gave a triumphant laugh. "Yes, I think you must be. Well, let's get your fortune told and meet the donors who keep the hospital able to hire staff like yourself."

She swept forward to leave the room, and he was hard put to keep up and escort her. He would remember a lot of things about that night, the fine dinner, the tumbling black-and-white dice at the gaming tables, her subtle and expensive perfume, and the way the gown fell from her body in her dusky blue bedroom.

But what jolted through him, what would sear into him as though he'd been struck by lightning, would be sitting at the fortune teller's table, hearing the snap of tarot cards, and the woman's dark eyes boring into him as she tapped the cards.

Her nails were the color of freshly spilled blood, wet and glistening. She would touch a stone tower being destroyed by thunder and bolts, the whole world being turned upside down. "You will face the end of everything you know… if you do not reverse yourself."

"An eye for an eye," she would tell him. "Never forget that. God's law and the law of the universe. Even God's own law finds and dictates the balance."

It would not strike him then, for Abby had stood behind him, delicately, just barely brushing the back of his tuxedo jacket with a rustling of her gown and the perfume of her presence, but she had still garnered all his attention, his own masculinity acutely aware of her femininity. Every nerve in his body had been focused on her and a different kind of balance, the silken balance of a man and a woman.

It would not be until later, lying in her bed, listening to her soft breathing, his own body steeped in sexual well-being but unable to surrender to sleep that his beeper would vibrate on the nightstand, and he would reach over and thumb it to retrieve the message and see his code for emergency surgery report flash in the plastic window.

And when he stood in scrubs cleaning his hands, going over the routine, the smell of the betadine soup sharp in his nostrils, so opposite from Abby's aroma, that the doctor who'd requested him had come loping in to brief him, mask hanging down around his neck, eyes red with fatigue.

"What we have here is a real mess coming up from ER. I don't know if we can save him or not or if the bastard even deserves it, but I needed the best so I had you paged."

"It's all right," Clarkson murmured, concentrating on the scrubbing routine, nails, fingers, palms, back of the hand, wrists, forearms, until his skin felt scraped raw. "What happened?"

"He just got out of prison yesterday for rape… and went back out tonight to his old neighborhood. He got caught in an attempt… and the whole block went after him. Beat his skull in. Took knives and razors to anything else they could reach. He should be a dead man. The only thing I could think of to do was put him in your hands. You have the technique on bleeders that I need while I work on the head fractures." The surgeon put his shoulder to the door and let Wade go in ahead of him to where the anesthesiologist was doing his best to administer to a living corpse.

He scarcely had time to feel the irony as an assistant pulled gloves down over his waiting hands and he entered the sterile room.

Operating theater lights did little to soften angles or aspects. They were there to illuminate, in the sharpest way, every feature, to emphasize so that the surgeon could perform his best. Flesh hardly looked real, blood sometimes garishly dark. The surgical team, working around the table in efficient strokes, parted slightly to let him approach.

Wade looked down on the plastic bag rapist, covered in fresh blood, glistening. He looked at the man, half flayed alive, his skull beaten badly enough that it had caved in in one spot, and yet the man lived, or struggled to, and Wade knew that the object he looked on did not deserve to live. He thought of the one man's definition of surgical arrogance and competence. If he could play God, wouldn't he have to? Wouldn't he have to look behind the anatomic technicalities of what he had before him and consider the ramifications? Wouldn't he? Wouldn't he?

"Ready," Wade murmured and reached out to touch the man.

When it was over, and the patient gone despite or because of their efforts, the surgeon who had called him in, one of the country's foremost neurosurgeons, clapped him on the shoulder, commending him for his valiant efforts, and asked if he would consider taking on a few more years of residency and join his neurosurgery team.

He did not hesitate with his reply, for surely the brain was the closest thing to the human soul.

Wade did not watch the local news channels. He could not bear the style of reporting in Los Angeles, which resembled real reporting about the way he resembled a rhino, going for glitz and entertainment value, given with a zeal and smile that hardly matched the horrendous content of the stories the anchors were delivering. The anchors looked as beautiful as the movie-star town they covered, the women young and fresh and ethnically diverse, everything candy for the eye, although he was certain if allowed they might have pithy opinions on the stories they were permitted to cover. He scarcely had time in which to kick back and enjoy anything, and within his apartment walls, where he could be king, he used the remote control to his television relentlessly.

He watched CNN where, to his amazement, some of the local news stories would creep in despite his vigilance. It was just as well that his surgery schedule kept him away from the television on the average day and he did not have to suffer the indignity often. He picked up the remote to thumb it off, the picture screen filled with black tie and evening gown society milling around at yet another self-serving event, reminding him of Abby Switzer in a bittersweet way, dear Abby, two years gone now of cancer, a lump that he had discovered himself one night while avidly fondling her breast in their lovemaking. The old saw about breast cancer being too, too true in her case, that it had not been painful, had not been discovered until too late; despite all the surgery and chemo and radiology— and money— nothing could be done which would save Abigail Switzer. The poignant memory kept him from channeling away from the glitzy story, a story which quickly materialized into something more.

"Famed child prodigy and artist Charlotte Saunders, known by art collectors the world over merely as Charlie, collapsed today at this benefit unveiling her latest painting…."

Wade sat up straighter in the corner of his couch, his eyes glued to the television shot of a honey-haired girl, tall and willowy and still very, very young, going pale in front of a bank of microphones and then swaying, dropping so quickly no one could catch her. The clipping showed chaos, screams, the mother dropping to her knees, an oily-haired young man pushing others back, the glitterati screaming in response to the emergency. The camera view was almost immediately flooded with obstacles, but a thin view of the girl remained visible. His trained eyes picked out the still form which then began to convulse, but in a way which he thought he could recognize, not the unconscious trembling of a fainting victim.

He picked up the phone.

"Get me Katsume," he said to the pleasant voice who answered him.

"Yes, Dr. Clarkson," she responded swiftly, knowing his voice instantly, taking no umbrage at his brusqueness. She came back. "He is paged and will return your call immediately."

Wade disconnected, and sat, remote in one hand and the portable phone in the other, dissecting what he saw on the television screen.

"Her agent Federico Valdor acted as spokesman for the family, saying only that the popular young artist, whose works are permanently on display in the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, the Smithsonian, and the Museum of Modern Art in New York, had been working at a very demanding pace to finish the final paintings for this show and that she simply fainted. Charlie's paintings commonly sell for upward of a hundred thousand dollars and there is a waiting list to view and bid on her finished work. This show had been scheduled to benefit the local AIDS foundation and—"

Wade's mouth twisted as the portable rang in his hand.

"Hey, Wade, what is it?"

"What's the matter, Kat, did I interrupt your golf game?"

The Japanese-American surgeon answered with a rich chuckle. "Of course you did."

"Kat, I want you to call the family of Charlie Saunders… they're in one of the beach cities in Orange County, I think… Newport or one of those… and get her into our clinic for evaluation."

"Charlie Saunders." He could hear wheels turning in Kat's deliberate response, then a slight gasp. "The little girl who paints?"

"That's the one. She fainted at a benefit show, and unless I miss my guess, she needs us."

To his gratification, Katsume jumped to the same conclusion he had. "Pediatric tumor?"

"I think so. It wouldn't hurt to put her through the program."

Kat let out a low whistle. "Will do, Wade. But if you're wrong…."

"If I'm wrong, I'll buy you a new set of graphites. And find someone to pay the lab bills."

"That's a deal, buddy. Talk to you tomorrow."

Wade put the phone down. Though the television screen had now moved away to other scenes in other lands, his mind's eye stayed fixed to the image, seeing the girl-woman again, dressed in a strapless ball gown, her pale skin and shoulders emphasized by its darkness. He again saw the faint spasm in her face before she grew even paler and her eyes rolled back. He would need every bit of his training if his suspicions were correct, for excising the problem would be one thing, and doing it without affecting her genius would be quite another.

He put the remote down and looked at his hands, palms up, then palms down. He would need skill and providence on his side.

The art world was stunned today when Federico Valdor announced that Charlotte Saunders, known as Charlie to fans and collectors, has retired from painting.

The controversial prodigy made news just a few short months ago, surviving neurosurgery to remove a benign but potentially deadly tumor. Although her health was rumored to have been precarious for days following the surgery, she began to make a rapid recovery and left the hospital for physical therapy and to return to her home sooner than expected.

Speculations on her ability to paint at all immediately rose at Valdor's announcement, but he refused to comment further, saying only that Charlie continued to improve and was expected to make a full recovery. This statement came on the heels of tabloid reports that she had suffered partial paralysis of the right side, making it nearly impossible for her ever to paint again. Those same tabloid papers reported there was suspicion that she had not been the purported artist of any of her works and that her entire career had been a fraud.

Valdor and her family refused to answer those allegations, saying only that Charlie had been through a lot and deserved to have a childhood while one still remained for her. Privately, he was said to have expressed the opinion that Charlie would return to painting in the future as soon as inspiration moved her, as "she was a talented and unique young lady."