Snakes and Ladders Page 6

  “Good job, Mitchell,” he said. “I’ve got you now. Let’s get out of here.”

  By that time, three men in uniform had arrived, evidently from the courthouse, and one was performing CPR on Brashear. The second was speaking into a radio. The third noticed Mitchell.

  “He okay?” he asked Millard.

  “Yeah, he’ll be okay. Just the shock of seeing something like that,” replied Millard.

  The man nodded and turned back to Brashear.

  “Can you walk?” Millard whispered to Pieda. “The less attention we attract, the better.”

  Pieda nodded, but stumbled on his first step. Evidently Mortensen hadn’t adjusted the dosage very much.

  “Damn,” Millard muttered under his breath. “Okay,” he said to Mitchell, “let’s sit you down and I’ll bring the car. That’ll attract less attention than us stumbling around.”

  Millard maneuvered Mitchell over to a short flight of steps at the side of the courthouse and eased him down.

  “You wait right here. If someone asks you what’s wrong, just say you’re upset, that you don’t need any help. All right?”

  Mitchell nodded.

  “I’ll be back fast, Mitchell. Hang tight.”

  He jogged the short distance to the parking lot, slipped into the car, and started the engine. He paused only long enough to tap out a text.

  All taken care of

  15

  Owen was partway through a turkey and provolone sandwich and glass of milk when his phone buzzed and his brother’s name appeared on the caller ID.

  He hit Accept. “Hey, what’s up?”

  “Owen, I have Ruby on the call.” Andy’s voice was uncharacteristically tense.

  Owen set aside his sandwich. “Hello, Ruby.”

  “Hello, Dr. McNally.” The Ballards’ former housekeeper was equally, although not uncharacteristically, terse.

  “What’s up?”

  “I’ll let your brother tell you,” said Ruby.

  “Is Lizzy there?” asked Andy.

  “No, she’s at yoga class.” Owen glanced at his watch. “She’s usually home by now. What’s going on?” He pushed himself up from the table and went to the large front windows that overlooked the street.

  “Did you see the news?” asked Andy.

  “Andy, tell me what happened!”

  “It’s all over the Philly stations,” said Andy. “Russell Brashear, the state attorney general, just collapsed as he was announcing an investigation into Vivantem. He was talking about claims by clients that Vivantem manipulated treatments, that there were disturbing symptoms in the children. They took Brashear to Jefferson, where he died. They’re speculating it was a stroke.”

  “Jesus Christ,” breathed Owen. He scanned the street, seeing no sign of Lizzy.

  “Yeah. And Louise Mortensen was there. Hold on, I’m sending you a link to the video.”

  Owen tapped out a text to Lizzy—where are you?—and returned to the kitchen table. He put the phone on speaker, then clicked on the link.

  “As soon as I saw it,” Andy continued, “I called Ruby to make sure she was all right.”

  “I’m at my sister and brother-in-law’s house now,” said Ruby.

  Owen watched the video: Louise Mortensen arriving at the courthouse with a young man—he caught only a glimpse of him as the camera zoomed in on Mortensen—who stayed outside at the news conference after Mortensen went into the building. After Brashear fell, the video caught the young man, from the back, leaning over the AG.

  Owen tapped out another text to Lizzy—lizzy where are you?—then, with the sound muted, replayed the video.

  “Maybe that guy caused it,” said Andy. “Maybe this means that there are other Vivantem kids—or adults—out there with Lizzy’s ability.”

  “Yeah, maybe,” said Owen.

  “Do you recognize him?”

  “No, but the video doesn’t show him that clearly,” said Owen. “Plus, I hardly ran in the same circles as Gerard Bonnay and Louise Mortensen.”

  All three of them were silent while Owen finished watching the video.

  When it was done, Owen said, “If Gerard Bonnay’s widow has an ally who can cause strokes, and she’s out there looking to get even with people who caused problems for her or her husband, then the two of you need to be careful.”

  “Yeah,” replied Andy, “although I never met her, just Bonnay.”

  “But it’s likely he would have told her about you helping us get Lizzy out of the hospital,” said Owen.

  “I suppose so. How about you, Ruby?” asked Andy. “Did you have much to do with Mortensen?”

  “No, mainly just Mr. Bonnay,” she replied. “And I don’t have any reason to believe that they knew what I did to help you.” She paused. “If Dr. Mortensen is on the warpath, Dr. McNally, then you and Lizzy have more to worry about than we do. Do you think she knows where you are?”

  “I haven’t seen anything, or anyone, suspicious.”

  “At least we know who we need to be watching out for,” said Andy. “The guy in the video.”

  “Unless there are more we haven’t seen yet,” said Owen.

  “Don’t forget George Millard,” said Ruby.

  “Three of them, four of us,” said Andy. “Odds are in our favor!” His usual cheer sounded forced.

  Owen sighed. “I wish we weren’t talking about odds at all.”

  At that moment, he heard the clatter of a bike being dumped in the driveway and then footsteps running up the outside stairs. The door banged open and Lizzy stood in the doorway.

  “Did you hear?” he asked.

  “Yes,” she said, her color high with emotion. “They made another one of me.”

  They had ended the call with Andy and Ruby with promises of increased vigilance on all sides. Now Owen and Lizzy sat at the dining room table.

  “I was worried about you,” said Owen. “You usually get home from yoga class sooner.”

  “I was having tea with someone from class.”

  “Oh? Who was that?”

  “Some guy named Eric.”

  “Eric?” Owen was evidently not effective at hiding his surprise at the name.

  “Yes, Uncle Owen,” said Lizzy, her voice veering toward anger. “An actual guy.”

  “I didn’t mean it like that …” he began, then sighed. “Just took me by surprise, I guess.”

  “We were going to go hiking at Cathedral Rock.” Her voice was unsteady. “I guess we won’t be doing that now.”

  Owen had a sudden, heart-breaking vision of what life might have been like it if hadn’t been for Gerard Bonnay and Louise Mortensen: Patrick and Charlotte, flanking their daughter Lizzy and her date for the prom or homecoming or whatever dress-up dances kids went to these days, the proud parents beaming, the teenagers self-conscious and anxious to be on their way, himself snapping pictures. Lizzy would have been graduating from high school soon, would probably already know what college she would be going to. Her biggest concern might have been the well-being of a dog—now a venerable ten-year-old—that her parents would no doubt have surprised her with on her seventh birthday.

  Her body wouldn’t have been scarred by the bullets fired at her by the man she had ended up killing, and her mind wouldn’t have been scarred by her guilt at the deaths she had, directly or indirectly, caused: her mother, Lucia Hazlitt, her father, Anton Rossi, Gerard Bonnay.

  “Oh, sweetheart,” he said, his hand going to hers where it lay on the table.

  She pulled her hand back and stood up from the table. “I’m tired. I’m going to bed.”

  And without looking back at him, she disappeared into her room and closed the door behind her.

  16

  That night Lizzy lay awake, sweaty and uncomfortable in an uncharacteristically humid Arizona night, the windows open to the occasional sound of a car passing the house and the more frequent sound of the barks and howls of coyotes. When she finally fell into a fitful sleep, it was dogged by nightmares.
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  She was in a train car—she could tell it was a train by the screech of wheels on rails—but it was so narrow that she could have reached her hands out and touched each side. Her father was next to her, whispering frantically that they had to get out. He had her hand in his and was pulling her—she tried to follow but the floor of the car was soft and uneven and it was hard to keep her balance. Her feet got tangled in something and she tripped and fell. She was grateful for the softness of the floor, a softness of wool and fur.

  Then she realized that what was beneath her hands was a coat and that the coat covered a body and that the aisle of the train car, which now stretched out of sight ahead of her and behind, was filled with bodies, each enveloped in the same mink-collared coat, and that what had tripped her was the leather handle of a Prada handbag—the handbag Lucia Hazlitt had been carrying on the train that was supposed to take Lizzy and her dad to New York City to see the Christmas sights. And she realized that the screech that was drilling itself into her ears wasn’t the metal-on-metal of train wheels on track, but the keening wail building behind the clenched teeth of every one of those bodies she was desperately trying to climb over.

  She woke with her breath whistling in her throat and tears filling her eyes.

  Sleepless hours later, when the red numbers of the digital clock on her bedside table flipped to 5:00 am, Lizzy picked up her phone and tapped out a text: Can I call you? Not an emergency. With the two hour time difference, Lizzy guessed that Ruby DiMano was probably already puttering around her Overbrook apartment.

  Yes came back the immediate response.

  Lizzy hit the speed dial for Ruby.

  “Is everything okay?” asked Ruby by way of a greeting.

  “Yes,” said Lizzy. “As much as it can be, I guess.”

  “Yes.”

  “I had a dream. I was on a train, and Lucia Hazlitt was there.” She hesitated. “On the floor. Actually, there were a lot of bodies just like her on the floor, and they were all making the same noise she did when … you know.”

  “Yes. I know.”

  “My dad was there, too. Trying to get me away. Just like in real life.”

  Neither of them spoke for a few moments, then Lizzy said, “I don’t know what to do.”

  “You don’t need to do anything.”

  Her hand went to the Zuni bear pendant. “I feel responsible.”

  “For what?”

  “For what happened to Mr. Brashear.”

  “You’re not responsible,” said Ruby briskly. “You didn’t have anything to do with the investigation he started, and you’re not responsible for someone else trying to stop him. But if you lay low, maybe someone else in his office will finish up what he started and let everyone know what they’re up to at Vivantem.”

  “But what if they look into the Vivantem client files and come after me?”

  “That’s why it’s better for you to be in Arizona with Dr. McNally. Harder for them to get to you.”

  “Maybe you can come out here and stay with us.”

  “I can’t. My brother-in-law is doing poorly and I need to stay here to help my sister.”

  “I’m sorry to hear about your brother-in-law.”

  “Thank you.”

  Lizzy kicked the sheet back where it had gotten wrapped around her foot. “I should never have gone after Mr. Bonnay.”

  “Lizzy, you and I hashed through all this. We both thought it was the only way you were going to get out from under his thumb. And we were both pretty sure he had your dad killed. But now you don’t need to worry about Gerard Bonnay anymore. You just need to stay out of the way and let the authorities take care of Dr. Mortensen and Vivantem.”

  Lizzy rolled on her side and looked out the bedroom window at a bank of moonlit clouds hovering over the blackness of the mesas. “They’re going to run tests on Mr. Brashear and find out that he had a stroke.”

  After a pause, Ruby replied. “Yes, I suspect they will.”

  “And they’ll look back over records of other people who died of a stroke and find Lucia Hazlitt. And Anton Rossi.” She thought back to the altercation with the lecherous Rossi in the library of Gerard and Louise’s house. They had claimed that putting Lizzy in the same room as Rossi was a mix-up, and that the locked door had been her own mistake, but she was sure that they had chosen Rossi as the means of testing Lizzy’s ability. And from the point of view of Gerard and Louise, she had passed that test with flying colors. Rossi’s body, its brain riddled with bleeds, had turned up in the alley behind his Philadelphia row house the next morning.

  “It’s going to be tough for the authorities to tie Anton Rossi to Lucia Hazlitt,” said Ruby. “And lots of people have strokes.”

  “Not when they’re middle-aged and healthy.”

  Ruby said nothing.

  “They all had strokes,” continued Lizzy, “and you know what they had in common? They all had the bad luck to piss me off.” She pulled a tissue from the box on the bedside table and wiped her nose.

  “Lizzy, the situation with Lucia Hazlitt was bad luck—bad luck for her, bad luck for you—but if she hadn’t been acting like a first-class b—” Ruby cleared her throat. “—jerk, she would have gone on her merry way getting on all those trashy news shows and complaining about how everyone had it in for whatever thug she was defending at the moment. You didn’t mean to do what you did to her—we all know that. And as for Mr. Bonnay and Anton—well, in my opinion, they had it coming.” She paused. “Lizzy, I know you feel guilty, but I’m just as guilty in all this as you are. Actually, I’m more guilty, because I was helping Gerard Bonnay.”

  “He didn’t give you any choice.”

  “He didn’t give you any choice, either. He didn’t give you a choice, he didn’t give your mother a choice, and he certainly didn’t give your father a choice.”

  Lizzy hiccupped back a sob. Her father had gone to the Philadelphia police to keep them away from Lizzy after Lucia Hazlitt’s death, and had ended up dead himself—very likely at the hands of George Millard—just steps from the police station.

  “Oh, Lizzy, I’m sorry,” said Ruby, her voice as soft as it ever got. “I just wish you would realize that none of this is your fault.”

  Lizzy wiped her eyes again and tossed the sodden tissue in the direction of the wastepaper basket. “It’s so frustrating to be here and know something’s going on in Philadelphia and not be able to do anything about it.”

  “It would be worse to be in Philadelphia where it’s all going on and not be able to do anything about it.”

  “You’re in Philadelphia,” said Lizzy.

  “Yes, and I know I can’t do anything about it. I’m just laying low and minding my own business.”

  “Well, what’s happening there is my business,” replied Lizzy, taking a deep breath. “I’m going to figure out what I need to do to be able to come back to Pennsylvania, and when I do, I am going to do something about it.”

  17

  The medical examiner picked a microscopic piece of lint off his pant leg while he waited for his call to be answered.

  “Chief Holland’s office.”

  “Hello, Molly, this is Roger Stanislas—how are you doing?”

  “Hey, Roger! I’m fine. You?”

  “Quite well, thank you. Is the Chief available? I have some interesting news for him related to the Lucia Hazlitt and Russell Brashear deaths.”

  “Let me check, hold on one sec.” In a moment, Molly was back. “He says to put you through.”

  Molly’s voice was replaced by that of Philadelphia’s Police Chief, Carl Holland.

  “Stanislas,” he boomed out, “what have you got for me? Molly said developments on Hazlitt and Brashear—I didn’t know you were looking into those deaths.”

  “Not officially,” said Stanislas, “but I got curious about them. Two relatively young people—and in this case, local celebrities—with no history of hypertension or other propensity for stroke dying like they did. I did some searches i
n our database and found another anomalous death.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “Homeless man. He was found a little over a week ago near the Basilica on Logan Square.”

  “And this homeless guy’s death is somehow related to Lucia Hazlitt, every cop’s least favorite lawyer, and Russell Brashear, top cop of PA?” the Chief asked, obviously dubious.

  “Possibly. You recall the results of the autopsies of Ms. Hazlitt and AG Brashear, of course—significant cerebral hemorrhages that caused death within minutes.”

  “Yeah.”

  “The homeless man had also suffered a cerebral hemorrhage, but one so massive that I have no doubt he died almost instantly.”

  There was silence on the line.

  “A homeless man suffering a normal stroke would hardly have merited mention,” continued Stanislas, “but this is unlike any stroke I’ve ever seen. It’s less like he had a stroke than that he got shot in the head without the inconvenience of entrance or exit wounds.”

  “What the hell,” muttered Holland. “What could the three of them possibly have in common?”

  “Brashear was about to launch an investigation into Vivantem about alleged unethical experimentation, Hazlitt was about to launch into a defense of Dollar Slash on drug charges. Maybe someone’s decided to take the law into his or her own hands.”

  There was silence for a few seconds, then Holland said, “That makes no sense. If it was some pro-law vigilante, he might knock off Hazlitt, but not Brashear. If it was some anti-law extremist, he’d go for Brashear but leave Hazlitt alone.”

  “Just a thought,” said Roger.

  “Plus,” continued Holland, “what’s the tie-in to the homeless guy?”

  “Maybe a trial run. They take out Hazlitt, then they plan to take out Brashear and want to practice first because it’s going to be so public.”

  “The Amtrak Keystone is pretty public.”

  “But not captured by a whole gaggle of news crews.”

  Roger could hear a repeated thump thump over the line. Having had the pleasure of in-person meetings with the Chief in the past, he could picture the big man knocking the toe of his shoe against the metal filing cabinet next to his desk.