Diehl, William - Show of Evil (13 page)

Vail sat next to Jane Venable in the ICU. The entire right side of
her face was swathed in bandages. IVs protruded from both arms, the
narrow tubes, like snakes, curling up to bottles attached to the back
of her head. Behind her, machines beeped and hummed as they measured
her life signs. An oxygen mask covered her mouth and nose. Her limp
hand, which he clutched between both of his, seemed cold and lifeless.

He watched the clock on the wall. It was nearly 2:30 A.M. Stenner
had been in surgery for more than four hours. An hour earlier, one of
the doctors had stepped briefly into the hall.

'We're doing everything we can,' the weary surgeon had told Vail.
'He's a lucky man. The point of that knife missed his heart by a
quarter of an inch. If it had nicked the aorta he would have bled to
death before the medics got to him.'

'But he's going to make it, right?' Vail said, almost pleadingly.

'It's touch and go. He's still opened up, we're having to do a lot
of microsurgery. But he's strong, in excellent physical condition,
that's going to help.'

Since then the tortured minutes had crawled by.

Outside the ICU the entire staff had gathered at the hospital,
monitoring phone calls in a small office Mrs Wilonski had hastily
cleared out for them. But in the outside world there was nothing but
silence. Stampler had simply vanished into the night. Was he holed up
somewhere in the city? Had he stolen another car? Vail was overwhelmed
with anxiety, guilt, and hatred towards the man who had so successfully
conned them all and was now on a madhouse killing spree.

He felt a slight pressure from Jane's hand and looked over at her.
Her lips moved under the oxygen mask.

'Take it off,' her lips said.

'Can't do that, Janie.'

'Just a minute,' the lips said.

'Okay, just for a minute.' Vail reached over and slid the face mask
down to her chin. She squeezed his hand again.

'Hi,' Vail said.

'Abel?' she asked, her speech blurred by drugs.

'He's carved up pretty badly, but they think he's going to make it.'

'Sav'd m'life, Marty.'

'And you saved his.'

'D'you catch Stampler?'

'Not yet. Just a matter of time. I can't stay long. I'm not even
supposed to be in here.'

'Pull rank, you're th' DA

An exhausted young surgeon walked out of operating room three. He
was surprisingly young, a tall, lean man with his long black hair
tucked up under his green surgical cap. His surgical gown and shoe
mittens were blood-spattered. His eyes were bloodshot. He pulled off
his mask and breathed a sigh of relief. Vail approached him.

'Doctor? I'm Martin Vail. Any news?'

The young doctor smiled and held out a large hand with
long, delicate fingers. 'It's a pleasure, Mr Vail. I'm Alex Rosenbloom.
Your man Stenner is one tough cookie.'

'He's going to make it, then?'

Rosenbloom nodded. 'But an hour ago I wouldn't have bet on it. We
almost lost him twice.'

The chopper swung over the low ridge and dropped down closer to the
road. Snow flurries splattered against the windshield. Below them the
two-lane blacktop was still discernible although the snow was beginning
to cover it. They had seen only three cars in the last twenty minutes.
Hawk's gaze jumped from window to windshield as he roared two hundred
feet over the rugged terrain. Beside him, Vail was navigating from a
roadmap. They were following the state road that led to Crikside.
Behind them, St Claire and Flaherty also scanned the road, Flaherty
with a pair of binoculars. Hawk glanced at the clock.

Nine-twenty-two.

'How am I doing?' he yelled.

'We're about ten miles from the place. It's just over the next
ridge.'

'I can't even see the next ridge,' Hawk said.

'It's eight or nine miles ahead of us. He can't be far ahead of us,
not with the road conditions the way they are.'

'I thought we'd pick him up before this,' Hawk answered. 'He must be
driving like a madman -
if
he's coming here.'

'He's coming here,' Vail answered with finality. 'He just stopped
off in Winthrop long enough to satisfy his blood lust, claim another
victim.'

'I think we missed him,' Hawk said.

'We ain't missed him,' said St Claire. 'Marty's right, been right
all along.'

'You having one of your nudges?' Flaherty asked without taking his
eyes off the road.

'This ain't a nudge, it's a reality,' Vail said, imitating St
Claire's gruff voice. Their laughter eased the tension.

Flaherty leaned forward, the binoculars tapping the side window. 'I
got some tracks,' he said.

'Where?' the others asked, almost in unison.

'Right under us. They're blowing off the road, but there's a car
somewhere in front of us. Can we get lower?'

'This thing don't do well underground,' Hawk answered. But he
dropped down another fifty feet.

'See anything?' Flaherty asked Vail.

'I can't see that far up the road. I'm not sure how close we are to
that ridge. Maybe we ought to gain a little altitude. I can't tell
exactly where we are on this map.'

'There it is,' said Flaherty.

They peered down in front of the chopper. Through the rushing
snowflakes a car was visible racing through the storm.

Flaherty said, 'It's black

The mixed aromas of ether, antiseptics, and disinfectant permeated
the silent hallways of the hospital. Doctors and nurses consulted in
hushed conversation at doorways. Visitors wandered from rooms, some
smiling and encouraged, other teary-eyed and wan as they struggled to
comprehend bad news. Elation and melancholy walked hand-in-hand, and
the atmosphere was charged with emotion. Nothing seemed commonplace in
these corridors where strangers were drawn together by the common bonds
of disease, misfortune, and mishap.

Vail avoided everyone, speaking briefly when he could not avoid it,
usually merely nodding to those he recognized as regulars or staff. He
rushed to the hospital at the end of each day, first checking on Jane
and Abel, then eating tasteless food in the cafeteria or standing
outside the emergency door to grab a smoke.

Martin Vail had always detested hospitals because they reminded him
of the blackest and most agonizing days of his past. They evoked
images, in sharp and painful focus, of his mother as they put her in an
ambulance and carried her out of his life forever, the intensive care
unit where his father lay dead from a coronary, the pale blue room in
which he said farewell to Ma Cat, the grandmother who had raised him,
as she lay dying of cancer. Ironically, those images now had been
replaced by relief and thanksgiving and by the sheer joy of knowing
that Jane Venable and Able Stenner had been saved by the surgeons,
nurses, and attendants in the emergency room at Chicago General.

A few days after the demise of Stampler, Jack Yancey died as the
result of his stroke, and Vail officially became the district attorney.
Dr Samuel Woodward, under fire for his role in the release of Stampler,
held a press conference and, bolstered by half a dozen colleagues,
weasled out of the situation with long-winded psychobabble.

During the weeks that followed, Vail kept a nightly vigil between
the hospital rooms of Jane Venable and Abel Stenner, sleeping in the
chair in Venable's room and going home
only to shower and change clothes on his way to work. Sometimes he sat
beside Jane's bed, holding her hand for an hour at a time, convinced
that he was to blame for her pain and suffering, as well as Stenner's.
After all, he would reason to himself, he had been the instrument of
Stampler's bloody revenge, having provided in his plea bargain during
Stampler's trial the method that was used ten years later to free the
monster. Stenner was making a remarkable recovery. By the end of the
third week he would be taking short walks down the halls with the help
of a walker. Jane, who faced several weeks of torturous facial
reconstruction, seemed in constant good spirits despite the painful
injuries and the loss of her eye. Weak but ebullient, her face swathed
in bandages from her forehead to her jaw and bruises tainting her nose
and throat, she was indomitable. Aaron Stampler dominated their talks.
Ironically, it was Jane who bolstered Vail's spirits during the long
nights in the hospital as he fought with his conscience.

'Boy,' she said one night, 'I'll bet Aaron Stampler's sitting down
in hell, laughing his buns off about now.'