opened his pack and saw on his GPS receiver that the black BMW was leaving the airport lot in Charlotte. Thirty- seven minutes later, it pulled into the garage. Two months earlier, Watcher had duct- taped a GPS transmitter to the big car's frame near the gas tanks, and had placed a second unit inside the engine compartment in the Lexus SUV Dr. McCarty drove. He could see at a glance where the pair was at any given time.
Watcher was a shadow, a bad situation that would grow and grow until Ward and Natasha McCarty were as doomed as hooked fish cast up onto a grassy, sun- baked slope. Watcher was a reckoning. Watcher's patience was a rapidly emptying hourglass.
Toy Boy-a fitting, albeit whimsical, nickname he had selected for his quarry-was a man hanging onto his life by a rope that had been fraying steadily since the day his son died. In three days the McCartys would endure the first anniversary of their son's death, and, Watcher would ensure, their last day on earth.
SEVEN
Alice Palmer had called her boyfriend twenty times and had left five increasingly angry messages from the time she arrived back home from the flight from Las Vegas until eleven that night. Either Earl was high, his phone's battery was dead, he'd left it somewhere, or he was punishing her for visiting her dad. “Fuck you,” was the final message she left, but added, “It's your baby doll. I love you. Call me as soon as you get this… asshole.”
She and her mother had argued all the way from the airport. Upon arriving at their home in Dillworth, her mother had come into the house with her, tossed her keys on the kitchen counter, and said, “Put your dirty laundry in the chute, and make your own dinner when you get hungry. I'm going to lie down. I have a splitting headache and I have to show four houses to some damned impossible- to- please Yankee couple in the morning. And clean up your room. The maid's off this week. And brush your teeth. Your breath smells like shit.” After saying that, she'd gone into her bedroom and closed the door. Only the sound of her TV filtering under her door evidenced her presence in the house. Alice knew her mother was never going to be up for Mother of the Year.
Alice opened her carry bag to take out her Game Boy and saw the blue toy car she'd taken. She studied the portrait the man drew against her mirror. It wasn't at all bad, and she wished she could draw people as well as he did. The name embossed on the card was Ward McCarty RGI, Inc. The address was one she wasn't familiar with. It wasn't close to school or home.
She pushed the model car around on her sheets, making motor noises. She'd lied about her mother being a race fan. Earl often talked about NASCAR drivers, and the obscene amounts of money they made. Her mother didn't like anything but the “look at all the pretty houses” channel on TV which she watched religiously in high-def like a cult member. Alice and her mother's relationship was based on mutual animosity and their conversations were hardly ever more than a swapping of sharp barbs and insults punctuated by long silences.
The remarkably heavy toy was maybe six inches long and three wide, and the rubber wheels rolled easily. Growing bored, she placed the car on her dresser beside the large pickle jar filled to the rim with pennies.
She undressed, and gazed at her body in the mirror. The raised but faded scars that crisscrossed her thighs were the result of cuts she'd made. A single- edge razor blade when she was younger and solidly in her Goth period had left the marks. On her stomach, the tattoo of a butterfly with its wings removed and lying beside its bleeding body was another reminder of that period. She hated it, and couldn't wait to have it removed. Her mother had offered to pay to have it taken off, but Alice had refused on principle.
She fought an urge to get into her car, a beater Toyota, and go find Earl. He'd come around in a day or two, with his head up his ass, give her excuses, and she'd forgive him. He depended on the money her mother gave her, or she stole, for his subsistence. She doled it out as she saw fit. It was the only control she exerted on him, and was a very effective rein.
Her mother was like some kind of parrot, cawing the same words constantly about Earl being dirty, unattractive, stupid, worthless, and a bad influence on her daughter. Okay, Earl had his faults, but he alone needed, understood, and cared about her. She took out a picture of herself and Earl taken in a dollar photo booth at the mall and smiled at his image. In the shot he was wearing a T-shirt with “Fuck you very much” on it. His eyes were crossed comically and his long fingers were making a gang sign, funny because what gang would want Earl?
Alice thought about the man she'd sat beside on the flight and wondered if he could draw Earl from a picture. She took up her Game Boy, smiling as she imagined him opening his little briefcase and discovering the toy was gone.
EIGHT
At six A.M. on Monday Natasha was at the hospital in her scrubs. She had just finished ster ilizing her hands for a hernia operation on a nine- year-old girl. As her surgical nurse was slipping on Dr. McCarty's left glove, Natasha's hands began to tremble gently almost imperceptibly. Panic filled her as her nurse, Gloria Ready, fixed her with a look of concern.
“Are you all right, Dr. McCarty?” Gloria asked her.
Natasha managed to smile reassuringly. “I'm fine, Gloria.”
“Your hands are shaking.”
“ Pre- op jitters,” Natasha told her.
Natasha heard something behind her and turned to see that Dr. George Walls, the senior partner in her practice, had entered the room. There was a snap as he pulled off his glove. “Hello, Natasha, Nurse Ready.”
“Good morning, Dr. Walls,” Gloria said, looking down.
Walls stared at Natasha, scrutinizing her. She dropped her hands to her sides.
“I'll be in the OR,” Gloria said, leaving.
“Natasha, is everything all right?” George asked, frowning with concern.
“Fine, George.”
“Hold out your hands for me.”
“My hands are fine,” Natasha said, feeling fear and embarrassment well up inside her.
“Please, humor an old friend,” he insisted.
She held out her hands and her fingers trembled slightly.
“Your hands are uncertain,” he said firmly.
“I don't know what this is about,” she said, on the verge of tears.
“I'm sure you are perfectly fine, but not to perform surgery.”
Natasha said, weakly, “It's probably nothing but pre- op jitters. I didn't sleep very well last night.”
Walls smiled reassuringly. “Let's do this as a precaution, Natasha. Let me take this one and you can assist. If that's all right?”
“Of course. Thank you.” Natasha could have argued the point. She was sure the trembling would pass as it always had. During the last operation her hands had been certain. Being replaced was humiliating.
“Has this happened before?” he asked. “These tremors?”
“No. Well, not during surgery. And it passed in a few minutes. I would never…” She exhaled loudly. “I should see someone. I'm sure… I've been under a lot of stress lately.”
“Why don't you schedule something with Walter Edmonds? It never hurts to be certain.”
Dr. Edmonds was a neurologist.
A neurologist can diagnose neurological diseases.
A neurologist can end a career with the truth.
“I will do that today,” Natasha said weakly.
“I don't see where it could hurt a thing,” Dr. Walls said, smiling kindly. He turned to the sink and began to wash his hands meticulously.
