The man's sour expression became unctuous. "Sure, Doc. And sorry for the crack. The boys are really stressed out tonight, with the storm and all. There's transformers blown from Cleveland to the Falls."

Earl stayed silent a moment, long enough that the smart ones in the bunch would also start to worry. Maybe the chief of ER at the Saint could hold a grudge. When he figured he'd put them all sufficiently on notice that it would be in their interest to give him a call should useful information about a green Mazda come their way, he nodded again and returned to the van.

"Good luck in finding her," one of the other men called after him.

"Don't worry, we'll keep an eye out," added another. "We expect to have the lights back on before dawn."

"And you be careful too," their boss added. He gestured toward the faint luminous shine on the horizon that marked Earl's part of town, where the lights still blazed. "Between here and there we found live wires draped across trees, the free ends dangling in midair, some not too far off the ground. Watch it in case we missed a few."

A mile farther he entered the largest expanse of parkland he'd have to check, three hundred acres of protected green spaces near the university. By now the sheets of water pouring down his windows made it impossible to see much of the asphalt in front of him, let alone the embankments on either side. He turned on his flashers and pulled over to the shoulder, parking at an angle to direct the harsh glare of his headlamps toward the meadow and its undergrowth below.

But the deluge cloaked the range. The cones of white light penetrated a few hundred feet, then got swallowed up in the dark.

Putting on the parking brake and leaving the motor running so as not to run down the battery, he picked up his flashlight and once more set out on foot.

The rain pelted his face and, having already soaked through his clothing several outings before, ran in cold rivulets down his back, chest, and stomach, pooled briefly at the waistband of his trousers, then streamed the length of his legs to end up sloshing about in his shoes. He squished with every step and slipped repeatedly on the wet grass as he descended the slope, his leather soles not at all conducive to a cross-country hike in a storm.

The air had cooled enough that his breath steamed white and luminescent in the glow outside the beam of his torch. But he didn't feel cold. The exertion quickly took care of that.

If necessary, he'd park and do this every three hundred yards, until he had walked the whole damn grounds, all the way up to where they ended at Ellicott Creek.

Chapter 19

I knelt in the darkness, watching.

Not that I could see much.

I more listened and waited.

The rain tingled my skin, heightening my senses.

If I could just get through this, I'd be in the clear. The idea left me incredulous, heady with relief. The obsession that had infested half my life would be lifted, the chasm it created filled, the hunger sated. It had seemed so overwhelming for so long, been so entwined in my psyche like a malignant tumor, I couldn't quite believe I'd finally excised it. But by hoisting Stewart Deloram into the noose and standing him on the brink, ruined and sentenced to death by hanging, I had accomplished exactly that, and more. Because unlike Jerome, who had faced doom with a determined courage, Deloram had screamed and sobbed for pity. Had he also uttered Jerome's name and begged forgiveness in all his garbled talk? I wanted to think so. That would have amounted to a confession- an unexpected bonus- and made his execution all the more perfect.

I started to tremble, not from cold, but at the freshness of the memory.

My plan had initially been to let Deloram endure the agony of a destroyed reputation for weeks, perhaps months, maybe even take his own life, just as Jerome had. But then I realized that I couldn't afford to wait, not with that damn cluster study in the works. Still, the justice of quietly stealing up the stairs and leaving that simpering coward to die a prolonged death alone in the darkness had filled me with exactly the tranquillity I'd hoped for. It reached back through all the scars and deep into the fissure I'd felt open on that November night in 1989, and salved it closed. At this instant of healing, the spectacle of him teetering on his toes, crying and struggling to draw breath, became an epiphany, one that I knew would displace the corrosive nightmares of the past fourteen years.

I also thought of the farmhouse surrounded with gardens and green hills where the shattered woman who'd never recovered from her loss of Jerome spent most of her days, self-confined with the blinds drawn, while my aunt cared for her.

Perhaps she would finally find solace as well, now that I had ended her long wait for vengeance. But she would still insist I feed her "all the tiny details" to let her "smell, taste, see, hear, and touch" how I'd destroyed his killer. She'd always claimed her catharsis wouldn't be complete unless she experienced every stage of that retribution herself, even if through my telling of it.

I'd little time to savor the possibility. Glancing in the direction of Janet's car, even above the storm I could hear faint traces of her screams. Definitely in labor now. And the heparin would be making her bleed. I'd injected it intravenously at the site of an abrasion where no one would notice the puncture wound. Nor would anyone have reason to do toxicology studies. They'd find her bled out, the consequence of a tragic miscarriage caused by accidental trauma. Of course I'd be there to manipulate everyone's interpretation in this direction.

I fingered the tire iron that I'd removed from the trunk of the car and used to break the door handle, jam the lock, and bend the roof latch so it wouldn't release, making sure she wouldn't be going anywhere. But Garnet should soon come looking for her. Take-charge Earl wasn't one to sit at home and wait for bad news. I'd counted on it, having no option but to silence him as well. He had a talent, more than anyone, for figuring everything out, and no way would he buy that Janet died here accidentally.

It wouldn't be easy to kill him.

I raised the tire iron in my right hand and sliced down with it. A menacing whoosh cut through the rain. That would be the force of the blow it would take.

I looked up in the direction of the highway and scanned a landscape I couldn't see, imagining the slope leading down from it. Occasionally a car or truck glided by, the sound of tires and motor drowned out by the hiss of the downpour, but the running lights, floating through the night like UFOs, gave me a sense of the terrain.

No way could a man slip and kill himself here. So I'd need to stage yet another credible accident, one that would make everyone think poor Earl had died of massive head trauma while trying to save Janet. At the moment I hadn't a clue what that mishap might be.

I would also have to take Garnet by surprise.

There I had an edge.

He wouldn't arrive the cool, rational, man in control who normally commanded ER with such a heads-up, steady-handed calm. Instead he'd be frantic to find Janet and not at all cautious.

I looked toward the tree where the car first hit and could barely make it out in the darkness. Neither could I see the ground around it. Earl, however, would probably have a light. If so, he'd spot his favorite resident lying there, and he'd stop and check me. Finding me alive but unresponsive, he'd rush on down toward the car to look for Janet. It should be easy to come up behind him with the tire iron.

But then what?

After I knocked him out, how to kill him and explain it?

I still had no idea.

I looked again toward the road.