23

THE FIGURE IN the hooded raincoat teetered on the edge of the well, peering in.

“No,” Susan yelled, running toward her and tripping as the dog bounded in the way. Oh Christ, I’ll never get there in time.

From the other direction, Parkhurst pounded up through the falling snow, tearing off his jacket. He shoved the raincoated woman aside. She stumbled back and fell on her rear. He threw his jacket down and started climbing into the well.

“Parkhurst!” Susan shouted.

The hood of the raincoat slipped back when the woman scrambled to her knees, crawled toward that black hole. The dog barked, raced toward her, then toward Susan. With a flying leap, Susan launched herself, hit broadside and knocked the woman down again. Using her own weight to keep the woman pinned, Susan grabbed at flailing arms and kicking legs.

“The dark angel.” Fists battered against Susan’s shoulders.

“Stop it!”

“Have to go with her.” The tossing head caught Susan on the jaw, hard enough to make her teeth clack and her vision blur.

The dog pranced around them, barking, darting forward, then backing off. The woman fought like a captured cat and Susan felt her grip slipping. She eyed the flashlight in the snow a couple feet away. If I could reach it, would a good bash on the head knock her out? Suddenly all resistance ceased.

Susan tensed. Not a quiver. Warily easing up from the heaving chest, she gripped a wrist in each hand. “What’s your name?” She pulled the limp form to a sitting position.

The fighting cat now sat like a doll, lifeless. Oh Jesus, what’s this? “Can you tell me your name?”

Still holding both wrists, Susan stood and helped the woman to her feet. Docile compliance. Seemed content to keep any position she was pushed into. Yanking the belt from the rumpled raincoat, Susan pressed down on unresisting shoulders until the woman was sitting and propped her against a tree. Hurriedly, Susan tied the cold hands, then pulled her own belt loose and tied the ankles. It wouldn’t hold for more than a few minutes if there was a serious attempt to get free.

“Don’t move,” she patted an arm. Grabbing the flashlight, Susan shined it into the well. “Parkhurst!”

Nothing moved in the cold black water. Oh shit. I’ve got four people here, possibly dead or dying. Where the hell is the back up? Ripping off her trench coat, she flung it aside, jammed the flashlight through the top rung and put her foot on the second.

I don’t want to do this. Placing her feet cautiously, she lowered herself down one rusty slippery rung and then another.

Just below, there was a great deal of splashing and Parkhurst’s head popped up. He gulped in air and shook water from his face. One gloved hand held onto a metal rung and the other clutched Edie’s hair. He pulled her face from the water.

“Hold onto her,” he said through chattering teeth.

Susan lowered one more rung, held tight and reached down to grab Edie’s coat.

Parkhurst draped Edie over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry. “Move.”

Susan clambered out, snatched the flashlight and held it so he could see better. He labored up one rung at a time. When he reached the top, she stuck the flash upright in the snow and grabbed Edie’s shoulders, helped as much as she could as he staggered out and fell to his knees. They straightened Edie on the ground. He rocked back on his heels, shaking uncontrollably.

Scared and desperate, Susan wrapped his coat around him and started for the Bronco. Within seconds, she heard the siren. Thank God. Hurry up, guys.

She saw blue lights glimmer through the falling snow and ran to meet them. “Ambulance,” she yelled, “then get over here.”

When flashlights started bobbing in her direction, she went back to Parkhurst and knelt in front of him.

“I’m okay,” he barely managed through chattering teeth.

“The hell you are.” She stood up. “Yancy,” she said to one uniformed officer. “Get him dry and warm. Right now. You radio for an ambulance?”

Yancy nodded, bent over Parkhurst and helped him to his feet.

“Car keys,” she said.

Parkhurst tried to get them, but his hand was shaking so badly he couldn’t get it in his pants pocket. Yancy fished out the keys and tossed them to her.

“Demarco, get that coat over Edie.” Susan swung the flashlight over her own trenchcoat crumpled by the well and then over Edie lying with her slack face exposed to the falling snow. Edie didn’t look good. Susan was very afraid Edie was not breathing. “CPR?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Get with it.”

The woman she’d left propped against the tree hadn’t moved. Susan shined the light in her face, strong resemblance to Carena Egersund. Except for blinking her eyes, she gave no indication of awareness. Should the belts be removed? Get her on her feet so she wasn’t sitting in snow? Susan decided not. She didn’t want to risk one more person disappearing into that hellhole.

The dog, crouched beside the blanket-wrapped body on the sled, shot to her feet when Susan approached. Susan spoke softly. The dog whimpered anxiously as Susan struggled with the cord, but didn’t snarl or attempt to bite. Susan peeled back the blanket from Carena Egersund’s face; eyes closed, deathly pallor, dark bruise on one cheek. Leaning an ear close to the cold lips, Susan felt a faint whisper of breath.

An eternity passed before she heard another siren, then paramedics were swarming around. With deliberate care, they placed Edie on a narrow wooden backboard, secured her head and neck with a cervical collar and covered her with the padded blankets used for hypothermia victims. The trail of IV tubes meant she was still alive.

Susan forced herself to stay out of the way; inactivity didn’t sit well and it took conscious effort. The paramedics used the same maddening slowness and same procedures to get Egersund on a backboard and carried her with great gentleness toward the ambulance. The dog got frantic and Susan almost strangled the poor thing hanging onto her.

Chilled to the bone, Susan watched a paramedic speak to the woman in the raincoat, get no response, then untie her, wrap her in a blanket and lead her docilely away.

Susan loaded the dog in Parkhurst’s Bronco and drove to Brookvale Hospital. An empty ambulance, door still open and red lights flashing, sat at the emergency entrance. The hospital doors slid silently back as she walked up. She went in search of the doctor and waited for what seemed like hours sitting on a black-vinyl and chrome chair in a dim hallway.

Finally the doctor came through swinging doors at the end of the hallway and spoke with a nurse who nodded at Susan. Susan stood up.

“Chief Wren? Dr. Kyle.” He led her along the corridor into a small conference room and slumped into one of the plastic chairs around a table. She sat down across from him.

“The Vogel woman didn’t make it,” he said. “We worked on her, but— I’m sorry.”

“What about Parkhurst?”

“I clapped him in bed with my direst threats.” Dr. Kyle smiled wearily. “He didn’t seem too impressed. He’ll be fine. We’re treating him for hypothermia. Probably release him tomorrow.”

She felt an easing of tension in her shoulders. “The catatonic woman?”

“Physically, she seems all right. Showing some effects of exposure. Mentally—” He shook his head. “That’s not my field. You have any idea who she is?”

“No. She looks a lot like Carena Egersund. Maybe a sister. How is Egersund?”

“Concussion. Abrasions and contusions that are minor. Also effects of exposure. Just what went on out there anyway?”

Macabre scenes that would live on in nightmares. “Will she be all right?”

“Should be. Barring complications. I need to run some more tests. She’s conscious now. That’s a good sign.”

“May I see her?”

He hesitated. “You can’t subject her to questions.”

“Okay.”

“Just listen to what she says and then leave.”

“Okay.”

He rubbed his tired face and putting both hands on the table for leverage pushed himself to his feet. “She’s been asking for you. Might be better for her to get rid of whatever’s on her mind. You can have three minutes. If she gets agitated, I’ll yank you.”

Susan simply nodded and followed him into an elevator and along another corridor.

“Three minutes,” he warned.

Lying in the bed with monitors and IV tubes, Carena Egersund looked very bad to Susan. Her face was almost as pale as the sheets, except for the dark bruise on one cheek. Her eyes, fixed on Susan, seemed too bright as they sometimes were with the seriously ill. Susan hoped the doctor knew what he was talking about.

“I have to tell you about Edie. She killed Lynnelle. She—” Those bright eyes filled with tears.

“I know,” Susan said gently. “You don’t have to tell me now.”

“Audrey fired her. And Edie hit her with a stool, some kind of child’s chair.”

Susan recalled the square stepping block sitting by Edie’s coffee table. “This can wait until you’re feeling better.”

“I don’t remember much. Sort of a dream. Cold and being dragged along, and dark.”

“Edie was pulling you on a sled.” Susan yanked tissues from a box on the bedside table and handed them to her.

“I’ve been so worried—so—” Carena Egersund blotted at her face. “Caitlin is missing and—”

“Caitlin is your sister?”

“Yes. She’s—she was— Lynnelle was her child, but she—Nobody knows where Caitlin is. I’m afraid—”

“She’s here in the hospital. She’s—,” Susan started to say just fine, then changed it to, “not hurt.”

“Here?” Much of the anxiety eased from Carena Egersund’s face, leaving it slack and even more pale and corpse-like. “Oh thank God. I was afraid she’d hurt herself and—” The tears kept coming.

Susan thought it was time to leave. “I’ll let you sleep now, but I do need to know where Caitlin lives, who to contact.”

“Her husband. Phil Avery.” Her voice now breathless, she gave Susan an address and phone number.

“I’ll talk with you more later. Try not to think too much and just concentrate on getting well.”

Worry came back to cloud her eyes.

“Is there anything you need?” Susan asked.

“The dog—Lynnelle’s dog. She’s in the house. She’ll starve. She—”

“I’ll take care of her. Don’t worry.”

Susan stopped at the nurses’ station to ask where Parkhurst was, then took the elevator down a floor and paused in the open doorway. Parkhurst lay on his side with his eyes closed; face gray, dark circles under his eyes, dark stubble of beard.

She came in quietly and sat in the chair by the bed. Almost immediately, his eyes opened, gazed at her unknowing and then focused.

“Hi,” she said softly. “How are you?”

“Fine.” He flopped onto his back and doubled the pillow behind his head. “Edie?”

“She didn’t make it.”

He closed his eyes, took a breath and blew it out. “You know, Susan, we didn’t exactly shine through any of this.”

“True.” They were almost too slow for Carena Egersund and would have been if it wasn’t for the dog. Caitlin was in a padded room staring at the wall. Edie was dead. Her parents had lost a daughter, her daughter had lost a mother. Susan stood and hitched the strap of her handbag higher on her shoulder. “I’ll try to spring you out of here tomorrow.”

*   *   *

For a week, the Herald ran lurid headlines along the lines of “Creighton Well Claims Next Victim,” “Tragedy Strikes Twice,” “Is There a Curse On The Creighton Place?”

On the following Sunday morning when Susan scooped up the newspaper from the driveway, she noticed crocuses poking up green shoots through snowy slush and smiled at them ridiculously. Snapping off the rubber band, she unfolded the paper and glanced at the headline. UNSEASONABLE WEATHER.

The sun, so warm the air smelled sweet, sparkled through the trees with the bright light of premature spring. A pair of cardinals dipped and swooped like scarlet kites through the blue sky. After she took the dog back, she had the whole day free, and Daniel’s clothes waited in the closet.