'Thank you. Thank you very much.'
'I'm glad she's all right, ' Dr. Lee Jordan said. It was after five by the time Jared arrived home. Medicated and obviously affected by her anesthesia, Kate had managed only to squeeze his hand and acknowledge that she knew he was in her hospital room. Even so, Dr. Jordan had warned him that she would, in all likelihood, remember nothing of the first five or six hours postop. Roscoe was another story. As soon as Jared arrived at the veterinarian's, the dog was up and hopping about his cage, mindless of his plaster cast and showing no residual effects from the anesthesia that had allowed a metal plate to be screwed in place across the fracture in his leg. After seeing Kate with half a dozen tubes running into and out of her body, the sight of the battered and broken animal was the last straw. Zimmermann would pay. Whatever it took, Jared vowed, the man would pay dearly. Exhausted from the day and, in fact, from almost thirty-six hours without sleep, Jared brought a bottle of Lowenbrau Dark to the bedroom, finished half of it in two long draughts, and then stripped to his underwear and stretched out on the bed. There was little sense, the nurses had told him, in returning to the hospital before morning. So be it. He would rest and read and say a dozen prayers of thanks for Kate's life and for Roscoe's, and for Jocelyn Trent, and for being allowed to learn the sad truth about his father before it was too late. He had bunched up two pillows and was looking through the magazines on the bedside table when he noticed their telephone answering machine It had been on since Kate left for her run, and there were a number of messages. The first three were from Jared himself, another was from Ellen, and still another was from one of the firm's VIP clients, who had apparently been assured that Winfield's son wouldn't mind in the least being called at home. The final message was for Kate from a man named Arlen Paquette. 'Kate Bennett, this is Arlen Paquette from Redding, ' the man said in a rushed, anxious tone. 'I won't be alone for more than a few seconds. I have answers for you. Many answers. Come to the subbasement of the Omnicenter at precisely eight-thirty tonight. Bring help. There may be trouble. Please, trust me. I know what we've done to you, but please trust me. He's coming.
I've got to go. Good-bye.'
Jared raced for pen and paper, then he played the message over and wrote it down verbatim. Answers. At last someone was promising answers. He scrambled into a pair of jeans, a work shirt, and a sweater. It was already after seven. There would barely be time to get to Metro by eight-thirty, let alone to try and pick up police help on the way. He would have to hurry to the subbasement of the Omnicenter and rely on himself. The Omnicenter. He threw on his parka and rushed to Kate's Volvo. That was Zimmermann's place. The man would be there. He felt certain of it. 'I'm coming for you, you fucker, ' he panted as he skidded out of the drive and down Salt Marsh Road.
Friday 21 December
Like so many works of greatness, the formulas derived by William Zimmermann's father were elegant in their simplicity. Even without Zimmermann's help in translating the explanatory notes from the German, Arlen Paquette suspected he should have been able to follow the steps involved in the synthesis of the hormone Estronate 25 especially in the subbasement Omnicenter 7 laboratory, which was specifically equipped for the job. The message to call Cyrus Redding had been waiting at the front desk when Paquette returned to the Ritz from surreptitiously recording a conversation with Norton Reese during which the gloating administrator had incriminated himself and a technician named Pierce a number of times. The compact recorder still hooked to his belt, Paquette had entered the elevator to his floor. 'I was beginning to think you had run away, ' a man's voice said from behind. Startled, the chemist whirled.
It was Redding's bodyguard, a wiry, seemingly emotionless man whom Paquette had never heard called any name other than Nunes. 'Why, hello,
' Paquette said, wishing he had stayed at the tavern on the way back for a third drink. 'I just picked up a message from Mr. Redding, but it says to call him at the Darlington number. Is he-?'
'He's there, ' Nunes said, showing nothing to dispel Paquette's image of a gunman whose loyalty to the pharmaceutical magnate had no limits.
'He's waiting for your call.'
From that moment on, Paquette had barely been out of Nunes's sight. Now, in the bright fluorescence of the subbasement laboratory, Paquette glanced first at Zimmermann and then at Nunes and prayed that the forty-five minutes until eight-thirty would pass without incident. A deal had been struck between Redding and Zimmermann-money in exchange for a set of formulas. Redding had let him in on that much. However, the presence of the taciturn thug suggested that Redding anticipated trouble, or perhaps he had no intention of honoring his end of the bargain-quite possibly both. 'Okay, that's seven minutes, ' Zimmermann said, seconds before the mechanical timer rang out. 'There's a shortcut my father used at this juncture, but I never did completely understand it. Dr. Paquette, I suggest you just go on to the next page and continue the steps in order. He performed these next reactions over in that corner, and he checked the purity of the distillate with that spectrophotometer.'
Paquette nodded and moved around the slate work-bench to the area Zimmermann had indicated. The Omnicenter director was. neither biochemist nor genius, but he had observed his father at work enough to be able to oversee each step of the synthesis. And oversee he had-each maneuver and each microdrop of the way. The laboratory was quite remarkable. Hidden behind a virtually invisible, electronically controlled door, it had no less than three sophisticated spectrophotometers, each programmed to assess the consistency of the hormone at various stages of its synthesis and, through feedback mechanisms, to adjust automatically the chemical reaction where needed.
It was a small area, perhaps fifteen feet by thirty, but its designer had paid meticulous attention to the maximum use of space.
'Did your father design all this? ' Paquette asked. 'Be careful, Doctor, your reagent is beginning to overheat,' Zimmermann said, ignoring the question as he had most others about his father. 'Excuse me, but are you timing a reaction I don't know about?'
'No, why?'
'That's the third time you've looked at your watch in the past ten minutes. 'Oh, that.' Paquette hoped his laugh did not sound too nervous.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Nunes, seated on a tall stool at the end of the lab bench, adjust his position to hear better. 'A habit dating back to high school, perhaps beyond, that's all.'
He had made up his mind that there was no way he would complete the Estronate synthesis and turn the three notebooks over to Nunes.
That act, he suspected, would be his last. He and Zimmermann were not scripted to leave the laboratory alive. The more the evening had worn on, the more certain he had become of that. He glanced at the metal hand plate to the right of the entrance. Though unmarked, it had to be the means of opening the door. There were less than thirty minutes to go. If Kate Bennett had gotten his message, and if she had taken it seriously, she would be waiting, with help, in the storage area outside the laboratory. Paquette's plan was simple. At eight thirty-five, allowing five minutes for any delay on Bennett's part, he would announce the need to use the men's room. They had passed one a floor above on their way in. With surprise on their side, whatever muscle Bennett had brought with her should have a decent chance at overpowering Nunes. If there was no one in the storage room when the door slid open, he would have to improvise. There was one thing of which he was sure, once outside the laboratory, he was not going back in. God, but he wished he had a drink.
Traffic into the city was inordinately light for a Friday evening, and it was clear to Jared that barring any monstrous delays, he would make it to Metro with time to spare. Still, he used his horn and high beams to clear his way down Route 1. Risks. Bring help. There may be trouble.
With each mile, Arlen Paquette's warning grew in his thoughts. He had made a mistake in not ca! ling the Boston police before he left Essex.
He could see that now. Still, what would he have said? How lengthy an explanation would have been required? His father, he knew, could pick up the phone and with no explanation whatsoever have half a dozen officers waiting for him at the front door to the Omnicenter. Answers. Paquette had promised answers. Perhaps for Kate's sake it was worth swallowing his pride and anger and calling Winfield. Then he realized that the issue went
