Текст книги "Heartless"

Автор книги: Patrick T. Phelps

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Текущая страница: 10 (всего у книги 17 страниц)

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Her hair needed to be colored again, or at least she thought so. Her husband would say that she looked beautiful no matter how successful those pesky gray hairs were in their mission to take over as much territory as possible. But she wanted always to look her best for him. Especially now. Especially with everything that he was dealing with. She knew she wouldn’t be able to visit the resort’s fitness center but could balance things out during their stay at the resort by eating a little less. He deserved her looking her best.

She was standing in front of the mirror in the bathroom just off from the bedroom of their two-room suite. Standing there, separating strands of hair to more closely inspect her roots.

“Darn gray roots,” she whispered, careful not to disturb her resting husband.

He was sleeping, still tired from the impromptu car ride the other day. She knew that him feeling tired was all part of his disease, and she knew that more horrible side effects would soon become an even larger part of his everyday life.

The lethargy was okay. Easy to put up with. A few naps each day handled those well. The pain in his abdomen, though mild now, would soon be presenting a different level of interruption. He would have to take more oxy to keep it under control which meant more cloudy thinking and even more naps.

As she quietly completed the root inspection, she finished getting dressed then walked into the darkened bedroom, listening to hear the slight snoring sounds he was still making.

“Good,” she thought. “He needs more rest.”

Silently, she walked out of the bedroom and into the living room of their suite. From there, she poured herself a vodka tonic (heavy on the vodka), and walked outside and onto the small balcony that overlooked the Saint Lawrence River.

She sat, checked her cell phone and, once seeing that she had missed another call, placed it back on the small glass table beside her after removing the battery.

“Not now,” she said. “I’m not ready just yet.”

It was only then, only after knowing that her husband was sleeping comfortably, that Michelle Mix allowed herself to cry.

She had married Stanley Mix nineteen years ago and had what many friends and family considered to be the perfect marriage. Though she was unable to get pregnant, the volunteer work she had time for thanks to Stanley’s income filled the need that not having her own children created.

She met Stanley when she was working with William Straus in that “awful place” that she never liked to talk about. It wasn’t long after meeting him that she reluctantly began to allow herself to fully heal after losing her first husband.

Stanley was wonderful. He was patient and understanding. He never pushed her to do, say, or feel anything that she wasn’t ready to do, say, or feel. Michelle often told people that falling in love with Stanley was something about which she had no decision.

He loved her more than she thought possible, and she grew to love him back with an equal intensity. She felt her fears and resistance to falling in love again melting away with each passing day. She tried her best to ward off the feelings but was unable to maintain her defenses for very long. And when Stanley told her that she didn’t have to work another second longer at Hilburn, her defenses collapsed.

It was almost exactly two years after they had met that day at Hilburn that they were married. A small ceremony, with only a handful of friends, Stanley’s mother, and a Catholic Priest were there to witness the marriage. But everyone that they met after being married was witness to the love they shared.

Stanley’s skills as a surgeon afforded them a lifestyle that many might envy. A beautiful home overlooking Lake Ontario. Cars, never older than two years, in their garage. Yearly three-week vacations to their condo outside of Lahaina on Maui.

All that was nice. Wonderful, in fact. But both Michelle and Stanley would have given it all up if doing so would allow them to stay together for a few more years. Everything; the house, Mercedes, the condo, the expensive art hanging on their living room walls, the forty-foot Sea Ray; all of it would have been gone in a second if there was trade offered.

“Everything you have in exchange for the cancer being gone. Deal or no deal?” she wished someone offered.

But no one ever made the offer. No one ever could. All that was offered was a grim prognosis.

“I’m sorry. We’ll treat the cancer as aggressively as your body can tolerate, but we can’t cure it. All we can do is to extend the time you have left.”

Though they tried to figure out what caused his stomach cancer to explode into existence, having no history of cancer or digestive diseases in his family’s history, Michelle always knew the cause. She knew that her husband was one of the “good guys.” The type that would never intentionally harm anyone, and someone who would always go out of his way to lend a hand.

Michelle knew that it was the guilt of what Stanley had willingly become a part of that created the acidic environment that allowed the cancer to flourish. She knew that what Stanley, Mark Rinaldo, Henry Zudak, and the bastards at Hilburn did to the O’Connell family and to Alexander was the cause of Stanley’s cancer.

When she learned that Mark, Henry, Peter, and Jacob had been killed by, supposedly Alexander Black, she knew that Alexander would be looking for her husband. She had no interest in her husband being the next person whose name got crossed off. There was no way that anyone would take her husband away from her a second before his time was up.

No way.

When she heard from that police chief that her husband’s name was on some list and that they needed to get protection until the suspect was apprehended, she knew that what she did six months ago had come back to haunt her. But learning about Stanley being on the list pissed her off. After all, wasn’t it her call that made everything possible in the first place? Wasn’t it she who let Ken O’Connell know what happened over two decades ago? Sure, she made the contact out of her own guilt and to remove whatever traces of guilt that were still creating the environment for cancer to grow in her husband’s body; but it was she and no one else who did what should have been done that day Alexander O’Connell was born.

As she pulled the final sip from her glass, Michelle listened again for any sounds coming from the bedroom. All was quiet except for the wonderful slight sounds of her husband’s breathing.

She remembered clearly the day she contacted Ken O’Connell. As clearly as she remembered the day she and Stanley were married, and as clearly as the day Stanley told her that he had inoperable and terminal cancer.

It wasn’t a rushed call, one made with a mindset of bargaining  with God for her husband’s life. It was a call she had wanted to make for years. She just couldn’t risk what would happen to her husband if the O’Connells took legal action. And she knew they would. Ken O’Connell told her so when she did finally make the call.

“I will make damn sure that everyone of you bastards are put in jail for the rest of your pathetic lives,” he screamed at her. “How the hell could you keep this from us?”

She had no answers for him. No excuses for what the doctors at Saint Stevens had done, nor for herself keeping quiet for over twenty years. She didn’t even try to explain why William Straus never alerted anyone. She didn’t care how the O’Connells decided to deal with him. She didn’t care about defending Brian Lucietta or Jacob Curtis in the least. To her, Straus and his entire team were criminals with doctorate degrees.

She never told Stanley that she had told Ken O’Connell. Nor did she tell Stanley that Ken told her that they would make Stanley and all the doctors pay for what they had done. And she never told Stanley that only he, Brian Lucietta, and William Straus were still alive.

Michelle was surprised that Ken O’Connell didn’t do anything that even remotely seemed like what he promised he would do after she told him the whole story. No one ever called from any police department. No one from any medical ethics board every paid a visit. No governmental oversight committee member ever sent an email requesting clarification on a matter of particular importance.

Nothing happened.

Though Michelle truly didn’t care what actions Ken decided to take, she was surprised when nothing seemed to happen. So surprised, in fact, that two months after her first call to Ken O’Connell, she called again.

“I know what everyone did was awful. Unforgiveable. And I honestly feel that everyone should pay for what we did to your son. But, Mr. O’Connell, whatever actions you are planning, I ask that you leave my husband alone. He’s sick. Very sick. He doesn’t have much time left, and I know that whatever you may have planned to do won’t be nearly as bad as what his guilt is doing to him already.”

“I’m afraid, Michelle Mix, that your logic is flawed. But take heart,” Ken O’Connell said, “based on what I’ve learned through my personal research, you played only a reluctant role in the doctor’s evil scheme. I have no issue with you. However, I’m afraid that your husband was too involved for me to just ignore. Maybe he will die before I’ve decided exactly what I will do. If so, I will regret how long it took me to execute my plan. But knowing that, as you say, his guilt is what is killing him, I will take comfort in that belief.”

For Michelle, what had happened to the other doctors was nothing more than the way  O’Connell chose to take out his anger and hatred. She didn’t feel guilty about what happened. She knew that once she told the truth that her only focus in life would be to protect Stanley and to make his final weeks of life filled with as much love and as little pain as was possible.

While she never heard from Ken O’Connell and had no concrete proof that he was somehow behind the murders, she knew in her heart that he was involved. She also knew that a man of Ken O’Connell’s resources would be able to know if her husband were still alive, and he probably could access those same resources to find where she and Stanley were hiding.

But Stanley wasn’t hiding. He had no idea why his wife packed the car with enough clothes for a week. He didn’t understand why she told him that they were going away for a surprise vacation. He knew that he had chemo treatments scheduled and going away would mean that those treatments would be missed. He began to think that Michelle had a conversation with one of his doctors and learned that the treatments were not working, and that putting him through the misery of additional treatments would serve no purpose. Stanley didn’t know that he was hiding at all but thought instead that his wife didn’t know how to tell him that he didn’t have much time left.

But he knew. He knew the second the diagnosis was given to him, and he knew without any doubt the second after the first CAT scan showed his cancer had spread. He knew that he chose the aggressive treatment option for Michelle’s sake. She had already lost one husband to a tragedy, and Stanley was willing to do whatever he could to delay her losing her second husband to another tragedy.

He had fallen in love with Michelle the second he saw her standing next to William Straus in that urine-smelling institution. He felt that he had to overcome his fears of getting hurt and had to let her know, somehow, how he felt about her. And when he learned that she felt the same for him, his life became complete.

He often wondered how it was possible that his being a willing participant in everything that happened with the O’Connell baby had resulted in delivering the greatest thing in his life. He never forget about what he and his fellow doctors did with that baby, though once Michelle had left Hilburn, they never talked about it. He felt that talking about the baby would somehow destroy everything good in his life. The memories of those days haunted him, but he vowed to himself to never mention Alexander Black ever again. Especially not to Michelle.

He hoped that somehow Michelle had very selective amnesia and had forgotten that it was he who had delivered the heartless baby to Hilburn. He feared that if he mentioned those first days to her, that her amnesia might evaporate, and she would realize what a monster of a person she had married.

He kept everything buried deep inside, and though the memories often tried to escape, he was resolute in his convictions to keep what he had been a part of hidden.

The only time that Alexander Black was mentioned after Michelle left Hilburn was the night after he told her that he had cancer.

“Maybe my disease is my punishment,” he told her.

When Ralph Fox called Michelle and told her about the murders, she didn’t react the way Ralph probably expected her to react. The fact that people she knew had been murdered and that her husband’s name was on a list of probable victims just increased her determination to keep Stanley safe. She knew that ignoring the repeated calls from Ralph Fox and from the number her caller ID told her was coming from the New York State Police, was probably making them suspicious about Stanley and her. Yet she didn’t care what anyone thought.

When she read about Mark Rinaldo and Henry Zudak being found dead, she didn’t care. They were distant memories for her, and while they were close with Stanley, he didn’t need to know that they had been murdered. He didn’t need to know anything that was going on around him.

Each morning since receiving that first call from Ralph Fox, Michelle would replace the battery in her phone, certain to leave it in for only the time it took to check for messages. Then the battery was pulled so that no one could trace where she and Stanley were. She paid for the resort room and every purchase she made using cash,

Leave no clues.

She thought about contacting Ken O’Connell and pleading with him to leave her husband alone.

“He doesn’t have much time left,” she would tell him. “Killing him won’t give you any feeling of revenge. He’s dying because of what he did to your son. Isn’t that enough?”

But she never called. Calling wouldn’t stop anything. Her husband was going to die. Soon. And there was nothing she could do about it except choose the cause of his death.

She thought for a fleeting moment that perhaps Alexander Black killing her husband would allow him to avoid the pain that would certainly be coming. But that thought was banished. Though she knew she couldn’t prevent his cancer from killing him, Michelle knew that she could prevent Stanley from being murdered.

And that was exactly what she intended to prevent.

As she heard him stir in the bedroom, she wiped her eyes clean of the few tears that had formed, adjusted her hair and clothes, and prepared the smile that would greet her husband to this new day.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

“If he didn’t get on the plane, then his wife is in on whatever it is he’s been doing,” Derek said, still shocked.

“And maybe their son, your client,” Smith said. “Though I have a feeling that this is all Ken O’Connell’s plan, and his wife is just going along with things to keep him happy. His son is probably in the dark.”

“Y’all have any idea where Doctor William Straus is?” Ralph asked.

“No idea. Derek?” Smith asked, nodding at Derek.

“No idea. But if he’s not involved in assisting the O’Connells, he is probably hiding somewhere and isn’t likely to reveal his position anytime soon. Have you been able to contact Stanley or Michelle Mix?”

“Called the cell phone registered in their name. No answer. I checked with their service provider, and they told me that their phones haven’t pinged any towers since the day after the bodies were discovered here. Either they have pulled the batteries or have disabled network data and location services. Or, they’ve been visited by our suspects, and their bodies just haven’t been discovered yet.”

Derek glanced again at his iPhone and saw that he had received another text from his client. It read “have you called my father yet???”

“I assume that you want me to call Mr. O’Connell now?” Derek asked Smith as he sent a message back to his client stating that he was about to make the requested call.

“Not yet,” Smith said. “We first need to get things set up so we can get a location on O’Connell’s cell. I’ll need to borrow your phone for a few minutes. When you do call, you just need to do and say exactly what I tell you to say. If he asks you a question that we haven’t prepared an answer for, look at me, and I will write out what you need to say. Do not even think of going freelance on his, Cole. I know that freelancing is your thing, but it will not be tolerated. I hope you understand.”

Nothing was making sense to Derek. In every one of his previous cases, there was a line that needed to be followed. Every line had a starting point and an end point. The starting point was created when someone did something which made someone else upset, concerned, or downright pissed off. End point was providing the client a satisfactory resolution. Connect the two points with as straight of a line as possible, get paid, and move on.

But with this case, Derek didn’t know what or where the starting point was nor what ending would be considered a desired resolution. While he did work closely with police departments in many of his cases, this case had now found him under the control of the authorities. He was expected to do exactly what Captain Smith wanted him to do and to suppress his own instincts.

As Smith stood, arms crossed, waiting for him to comply, Derek decided to do what Smith expected. Then, as soon as possible, he would get as far away from Piseco Lake as possible and run his case the way he knew the case should be run.

“So,” Derek said, “how long till I can make that call?”

“Twenty minutes,” Smith said.

Smith left Derek and Ralph alone in the entry room. There, the two men sat in absolute quiet. Both were processing the information that they had just learned from Smith, and both were wondering how Ken O’Connell came to learn about Alexander Black.

“We seem to still have some pieces missing to this jigsaw puzzle,” Ralph said, breaking the silence that had lasted several minutes. “But this new information also some pieces together nicely.”

“Like what?” Derek asked.

“Seems to me that Straus isn’t running because he is helping Alexander Black, but because he must’ve seen what Black did here and didn’t want to have his body added to the pile. And wherever he did run off to is somewhere that he feels will be as far away from Black as possible. To me, this new info rules out everyone but the father from the list of suspected accomplices. You see things any different?”

“Not sure yet,” Derek said. “I mean, until we know if or how the father may have found out about Black, we can’t assume to understand his reasons for not flying off to the sunny Bahamas. He may have stayed back to make sure his son – my client – is safe or to talk him into flying to the Bahamas with him. We don’t know. Way too many options. And until I know his reason for staying and exactly where he is, Straus is still a suspect. Maybe he got tired of hiding Black and made a deal with Ken O’Connell. ‘Everything you ever wanted to know about that day you thought your son died but were afraid to ask’ sort of deal. Maybe Lucietta is involved somehow. I don’t know. But what I do know is that I need to find William Straus. Now more than ever.”

“You think your client knows what his daddy has been up to?”

“Something tells me that he has no idea. Not sure why I feel that, but I do.”

“Didn’t you tell me that his daddy suggested that your client hire you?”

“He did. According to my client.”

“Then why would your client’s daddy suggest that you get on the case if he’s the one you’re looking for?”

“I don’t know. Maybe he thought that we wouldn’t find out that he never left town or maybe he wants me involved for another reason. I don’t know.”

“Well, you’re about to find out,” Smith said to Derek as he walked back into the lodge’s entry room.

After spending ten minutes telling Derek exactly what to say and what not to say, Smith handed Derek his phone back.

“Remember, you need to keep him on the call for at least ninety seconds and, whatever you do, don’t tell him that you’re with any police agency and make damn sure that you act like you believe he is on some beach in the Bahamas. Clear?”

“Clear.”

The phone rang twice before being answered.

“Ken O’Connell.”

“Mr. O’Connell,” Derek said. “This is Derek Cole. Your son asked me to give you a call about the case I was hired to assist with.”

“Took you damn long enough to call me,” Ken barked. “I trust that you understand that while my son contacted you, the money you’ve received came from me. That makes me your client, and if I want something from you or need you to do something, I expect your full compliance. Is that understood?”

“Understood. How can I help you?”

“Where are you right now?” Ken asked.

“Sitting in my car down the street from Doctor William Straus’s lodge in Piseco Lake New York,” Derek delivered his instructed response.

“Have you contacted or are you working with any of the local police?”

“I’ve met Chief Ralph Fox but am not working with him. He’d prefer that I just stay out of his way.”

“And that’s what I want you to do as well,” Ken said, his voice sounding somewhat relieved. “I don’t know why the hell you felt it was important to be up in that area in the first place, but I am not going to tell you how to run your investigation. I am, however, going to tell you what I need you to find out from this point forward.”

“And that would be?” Derek asked.

“Find William Straus, Brian Lucietta, and Stanley Mix. I need you to find them and keep them safe. I want to punish those assholes for what they did to my family. Not that I wouldn’t be glad if they were killed, but I want to make them suffer in the a court of law and in prison.”

“I understand. Do you have any suggestions as to where Straus and Mix may be holding up?”

“If I knew that I wouldn’t need you, would I?”

“Just trying to save you some money, Mr. O’Connell. The longer I spend on this case, the higher your bill.”

“Don’t worry about my bill. In fact, I’ve arranged to have another payment transferred to your account tomorrow.”

“Much appreciated,” Derek said.

“I want you to call me twice a day, every day with updates. Call me at 8:00 a.m. and 8:00 p.m. Understood?”

“Absolutely. How long do you plan to stay in the Bahamas?”

“I’m not in the Bahamas, Mr. Cole. Never got on that plane. Never intended to. My wife is down there, and my son believes that I am with her, and I need you to assure me that you will not tell anyone that I am not where everyone thinks I am.”

“Where are you?” Derek asked.

“Chicago.”