“How did you find out?”
“From her neighbor. Where she was calling from. She said a cab picked her up a little while ago to take her there. She’s getting a bus to New York.”
Matthew’s shrieking persisted.
“Goddamn it!” Sturgess said. “I can’t think with all that screaming!”
Gaynor made a fist and struck it against the top of the steering wheel.
“Shut up! What the fuck would you like me to do? Rosemary is dead! Do you remember? My wife is fucking dead! Sarita took off! I’m his fucking father! What would you like me to do?” He raised his eyebrows, as if inviting a response. “Chuck him out the window? Leave him on a church doorstep? If you’ve got an idea I’d like to hear it!”
Sturgess said nothing, stared straight ahead. Matthew continued to wail.
“Nothing? Maybe you’ve got another needle? Want to stick it in him? Is that what’s going on in your head?”
“Just get us to the bus station,” Sturgess said. “The sooner we find Sarita the sooner you can go home and look after your son.”
Gaynor, slowly depressurizing, said, “I never should have listened to you.”
“What?”
“I never . . . never should have gone along with you on this.”
Sturgess sighed. It was not the first time Gaynor had made such a complaint. “Well, Bill, there’s no turning back the clock. You did what you did. We made a deal. Now we’re dealing with the fallout.”
“Fallout?” Gaynor shot the doctor a look. “Is that what you call my wife getting killed?”
Sturgess returned the look. “We don’t really know what happened there.”
Gaynor’s chin quivered. “I got a call, before you asked me to pick you up. They arrested her.”
“Marla?”
Gaynor nodded. “They’re picking her up right about now.”
“Must have happened after I spoke to Agnes,” the doctor said. “She’ll be devastated. Marla, too, of course.”
“Everything points to her,” Gaynor said.
“I suppose it does.”
“But we know she didn’t do it,” Gaynor said. “I mean, we know she didn’t take Matthew. Right?”
“There are things we know, and things we don’t know. But what we do know is where we’re vulnerable, and that’s where we have to act. Take this turn; it’ll get us there faster.”
Matthew’s shrieking began to subside.
“I think he’s crying himself to sleep,” Gaynor said.
“At last, something to be thankful for. Okay, it’s just up here. We go in; we split up; we try to find her. Any buses waiting to go, we poke our heads in, see if she’s on one of them.”
“I can’t leave Matthew in the car. Not here. It was okay in the woods, but not here.”
Sturgess closed his eyes briefly, let out a long breath. Maybe an injection was the way to go. For both of them. There might be enough in the other syringe.
“There’s no place to park.”
“For Christ’s sake, park anywhere. I’ll go into the terminal while you get the kid out.”
“Okay, but— Hey!”
“What?”
“They just went the other way!”
“What? In a car?”
“Sarita was in it!”
“What?”
“I’m sure of it. I caught a glimpse of her in the front seat. I’m sure it was her.”
Gaynor hit the brakes, looked for an opening in the traffic so he could do a U-turn. “An old Taurus. I’m sure it was her.”
“Who was driving?”
“I think it was that guy.”
“What guy?”
“Harwood. The one who was at the house with the woman and Matthew.”
“Shit,” Sturgess said. “Turn around. Go. Go.”
“There’s cars com—”
“Cut the fuck in!”
Matthew resumed crying.
Gaynor cut off someone in an Explorer, endured a blaring horn and an extended middle finger. He hit the gas. The Taurus was two cars ahead.
“If I catch up to them, then what?” Gaynor asked.
“Follow them for a while. It’s too busy here. Too many people.”
“Too many people for what?”
“Just stay on them, see where they go.”
“What if they’re headed to the police?” Gaynor asked.
The doctor didn’t have an immediate response to that. Instead he reached down toward the floor, where a small leather bag sat between his feet. He opened it, took out a syringe and a small glass vial.
“Jack,” Gaynor said warily.
“We’ll have to get very close to them, of course. Engage them in conversation. I need to bring him down first. Once he’s been done, it’ll be easier to do the nanny.”
“Christ, Jack, what’s happened to you? You already killed one man.”
The doctor shot him a look. “I seem to remember you were there. I seem to remember you digging a hole for his body. I seem to remember us putting him in there together and covering him up. Do you remember those events differently?”
“This is crazy. We’re not . . . we’re not these kinds of people.”
“Maybe we weren’t,” Sturgess said. “But we are now. If we want to survive.” He turned away, looked out the passenger window.
“This has to end,” the doctor said.
FIFTY-NINE