knew she was never coming back here to Baltimore. Her old life was gone forever, and she couldn’t stand leaving it this way.
The clerk at the front desk didn’t bother looking up as she emerged from the hotel, turned left and walked rapidly two blocks up toward the Maryland General Hospital on Madison Street, where she caught a cab back to Union Station. Early afternoon traffic was in full swing and the snow had not let up. If anything it had increased again. The cabbie was playing Christmas music on the radio, and despite her resolve she felt tears slipping down her cheeks for all the years that were now lost. Her father had never told her in so many words that he would like to have grandchildren, but she could tell he had thought about it.
On weekends she would often come to visit, helping out in the surgery during the day, and talking until all hours of the night over dinner and a bottle or two of wine. Her father was her best friend. She told him about her work, about her day-to-day life, and about her loves… or lack of them. Always he had listened with keen interest, but never with criticism, though when she’d asked for his advice he would never hesitate to give it. Always thoughtful, always kind. She was going to miss him very badly.
She wasn’t going to leave him this way. Take care of yourself I’ll be all right. I know you will be, father.
They were among the last words they had spoken to each other. There would be no more. After the cabbie dropped her off she lingered inside Union Station for another ten minutes, watching the passengers coming and going, listening to the occasional rumble below as a train arrived or departed, studying the train schedules, looking at the people in the coffee shop.
Mac had ordered her to remain in the hotel. “It’s too dangerous for you to be out on the streets now.” Can’t you see, my darling, that this is something I must do? she cried inside.
The big clock on the back wall of the main departures hall read 1 one-thirty as she finally left the station and hurried on foot up Front Street. It was very dangerous coming here like this, but nothing seemed to have changed in the few hours since she and Mac had been here. There were no police cars out front, no crowds of curious onlookers wondering what was going on, nobody waiting at the front door with a dog or a cat needing the doctor.
Her father’s station wagon was still parked in the back when she mounted the steps. The newspaper boy had brought the early afternoon edition of the paper already. It was lying on the porch in the snow. She picked it up and let herself into the house, passing through the vestibule into the stairhall where she laid the paper on the table.
The house was quiet. Mac had let the two dogs out of their cages and had opened the back door for them. Outside they’d at least have a chance for survival. Here was… only death. She went to the waiting room door and stopped. For the moment her legs would carry her no farther. She could see the blood that had seeped under the surgery door and lay now in a black, crusty patch on the tile. Her stomach turned over, and she thought she was going to be sick. Insanity. All of it was insane, including her coming back here. She forced herself across the waiting room to the surgery door, took a deep breath and opened it, her legs instantly turning to rubber. “Oh, Father,” she whispered.
She’d not really seen him the first time. A haze had filled her eyes, as it threatened to do now. But she made herself look at him, study his body, study the destruction that had been wreaked on him.
Russians, Mac had said. Animals.
Even now she had the crazy thought that her father was going tosit up at any moment and laugh. “It’s a joke, Stephanie,” he would say. But she pushed that macabre thought aside and went the rest of the way into the surgery where she got a pair of shears from one of the drawers and concentrating only on what her hands were doing, cut the tape that held her father’s arms and legs together beneath the table.
His body was cold but surprisingly loose. Bile rose up at the back of her throat as she lifted his legs up onto the steel table, and then his arms, folding his hands together over his chest.
She hurried upstairs, tears blinding her eyes, where she got a clean bedsheet from the linen closet and brought it back to the surgery. She draped it over her father’s body.
“I’m sorry, father,” she said staring at the bulge in the sheet where the scalpel handle stuck out of his eye. All the rest she had been able to do. That one thing was impossible.
She backed to the surgery door then hurried across the waiting room to the stairhall where she raced to the downstairs bathroom and was violently ill in the toilet.
The body in the surgery was her father’s, but it wasn’t him, she kept telling herself. The thing was flesh and bone, and fluids. Her father had been a bright, alive human being; a personality, someone who gave sage advice and warm comfort. The body in the surgery was not capable of such things.
“Father!” she screamed rising up suddenly and swiveling on her heel.
At the door she had to hold onto the wall for support lest she collapse. She was going to have to go on. There was no other possibility. Mac was everything now. There was nothing… absolutely nothing else in her life.
She staggered out into the stairhall. She could see through the front windows that the snow had intensified and that the wind had begun to rise. They were in for a full-fledged storm. She shook her head. Would it ever end? Could it ever end?
At the vestibule door she turned and looked back toward the waiting room, a sudden panic rising up in her breast. Her father was alone. He would lie there until someone came to investigate. Strangers would come, handle his body, and take him away. How could she stand it?
She took a step back when her eye fell on the newspaper lying on the table. It was folded into a plastic bag, Mac’s photograph staring up at her. With shaking hands she picked up the newspaper, pulled the plastic wrapping off and opened it to the front page. Hers and Mac’s photographs stared up at her beneath the headlines:
MASSACRE AT COLLEGE PARK SUSPECTS SOUGHT IN MULTIPLE SLAYINGS
Chapter 23
McAllister waited outside the baggage pickup area at the BaltimoreWashington Airport for the next available taxi. The airport was much busyer now than it had been earlier this morning. Some flights had already been canceled or delayed because of the deteriorating weather, and the disappointed passengers were irritable, pushing and jostling for transportation back into the city.
If this kept up, he and Stephanie would have to take the train to New York. With luck they still would be able to get a flight out to the West Coast first thing in the morning.
He glanced over at a man dressed in a business suit, an overnight bag and attache case at his feet as he got a newspaper from one of the machines lined up by the doors. For just a split second McAllister caught a glimpse of the front page and he stepped back, stunned.
The businessman folded the newspaper without looking at it, picked up his bags and came over to where McAllister was standing. “They canceled my flight, what about yours?” the man asked. “I’m waiting for someone,” McAllister mumbled, and he turned and went back into the terminal, the man staring after him.
He took the escalators back up to the main departures hall, his heart racing. His and Stephanie’s photographs had been plastered all over the front page of the newspaper. He hadn’t caught the headlines, but they were big.
The message had been sent two days ago with a false description of him. What had happened in the meantime to change all of that? He approached one of the magazine and smoke shops where he could see several newspapers. All of them carried the same photographs beneath similar headlines: MASSACRE IN COLLEGE PARK. The clerk behind the counter was reading a newspaper. McAllister backed away without going in, turned and hurried across the terminal to thefront doors where cabs and buses were drawing up dropping off anxious people still hoping to catch a flight out.
Massacre-the word kept running through his head. Massacre of whom, and when? On the way up they’d heard a lot of sirens: Had that something to do with this?
He dug some coins out of his pocket, and before he caught one of the departing cabs, bought a newspaper
