the nests off from under the eaves of our house and running like hell after about a dozen blasts until the nest finally fell and I could toss some gasoline on it to finish the job.
The vivid, painful memories of being stung replayed themselves now with an amazingly clear image of how a sting grew into perfectly round red welt with a little hole surrounded by white skin at the very center. With this memory vivid in mind, I closed the door and stood there uncertainly. I wanted something to eat, I wanted to talk to Jasmine. I didn't want to look at my e-mail, but I did, all 307 new messages.
My head spun bright and dizzy with travel fatigue and sleep deprivation. I didn't want to deal with the spam, so I went into the cramped little bathroom, stripped, and took a shower instead. Afterward, I put on the least- wrinkled blue, oxford-cloth, button-down shirt, tucked it into a clean pair of khakis, and sat down to deal with the e-mail vomit fouling my in-box.
Not needing to add a full cup size to my breasts and being comfortable with the size of my penis, I deleted large stretches of spam, including those from Tiffany, Brianna, and others who promised me a good time and had attached explicit photos. I quickly winnowed things dawn to about a dozen that really mattered, then focused on two from Jeff Flowers.
Flowers's first e-mail told me Camilla had not changed significantly. He had enclosed the links and account access information for me to access EEG scans on one of Pacific Hills' Web servers. In the second e-mail, sent about four hours later, he said her EEGs had taken a turn toward the bizarre, which had prompted them to conduct a PET scan. He enclosed another set of links for those files.
I leaned back in the chair and let out my breath in a loud, heavy rush. Again guilt wrestled with feelings of relief. I did not want to look at the EEGs and scans. I really wanted to let Camilla's condition take its course without any further intervention. But my heart told me that if she simply slipped away without me doing all I could, I'd never get rid of the guilt. Regrets were always for the living.
So I launched Firefox, double-clicked on the links Flowers had sent, and logged in to the server using the user name and password he had sent. The EEG scans would download okay on this connection in half an hour or so, but the PET scan files were huge, multigigabyte monsters. I realized I needed to make contact with someone at the Greenwood Hospital who would allow me to use their connection.
I stood up, looked at my watch, and found the time creeping up on 1:00 P.M. Jasmine's failure to return my calls nagged at me, but I decided I had left enough voice mails. I pulled out the small notebook I always carried with me and scribbled in it the necessary information from Flowers's e-mails and shut down my laptop.
Next, I pulled two small Targus motion detectors from my laptop bag and locked one to the laptop and the other to the security cable where it attached to the wall. Then I pulled out a laminated Day-Glo orange placard in English and Spanish warning people not to touch or the alarms would go off. I armed the laptop's motion alarms, made sure their blinking red LEDs were immediately visible to anyone who might enter, and left a light on so the warning note was clearly visible.
CHAPTER 36
In the far corner of the EZ-Sleep Suites' parking lot, hidden among the cable vans, Jael St. Clair sat behind the wheel of her white rented SUV, took a deep hit off a fresh cigarette, and watched the door to Brad Stone's room open. He walked out, emptyhanded, closed the door, then headed toward the stairs.
St. Clair smiled as Stone turned back to check the door, then got into his truck and drove away.
'Surprise, asshole,' she said quietly, thinking about how nice it would be to watch the reception she had arranged for him and his black beauty. But there was work to be done. St. Clair opened her door, stood up, and took another drag on the cigarette. Then she ground it out on the pavement with her shoe and made her way to Stone's room, pulling on a pair of latex gloves as she walked. At his door, she wiggled a plastic shim in the lock; the door opened in the blink of an eye. Jael closed the door behind her and turned on the lights. The multiple flashing lights on Stone's laptop drew her attention.
Her anger rose as she examined the cables and alarms. She'd need cutters and a way to muffle the alarms. The heavy, braided steel cable meant a bolt cutter wouldn't work. She'd need a Dremel with an abrasive cutoff disk.
And fast-setting acoustic foam for the alarms. What a mess.
'You pig-fucking shit-bird.'
She walked to the bathroom, where her frown softened as her eyes fell on the short, graying-brown hairs gathered at the drain. St. Clair gathered the strands and put them in one of the Ziploc snack bags she had brought just for this. Running her hand across the cigarette-scarred fake-marble counter, she found another half dozen hairs.
Then she left.
CHAPTER 37
About a mile northwest of my hotel, Highway 82 crossed a wide stretch of railroad tracks. Moments later, I turned right on Strong Avenue and caught sight of the hospital in which I had been born. According to Mama, lightning from a passing thunderstorm had hit the building pretty near to the time I had been born.
The hospital was a pale yellow brick affair towering over the street and the green, green levee that ran behind it along the Yazoo River. Suddenly, I looked through a sevenyear-old's eyes at my grandmother, Mamie, the Judge's wife, lying in one of the hospital's darkened rooms under a plastic oxygen tent that looked pieced together from dry-cleaner suit bags. A cerebral hemorrhage had nailed her like a stroke of lightning and sent her there to drift out of our lives for a terminal day or so. Mamie slept so peacefully to my young eyes.
This vision washed over me like muddy floodwaters from a breached levee. Something like this happened every time I visited Mississippi, home no matter how long I lived elsewhere. I shook my head and tried to focus on my mission. I decided to start with the emergency room, which always had sharp people able to deal with the unexpected- such as some California doctor coming and asking to use their computer system. I put the truck in gear and pulled into sparse eastbound traffic.
As I neared the emergency room entrance, I spotted a prominent sign at the road's edge for Giles Claiborne, M.D., and the past lurched in front of me again. Claiborne had to be as old as the hills because he had been my family physician in Itta Bena not long after Uncle Doc had died. Uncle Doc was the husband of Mamie's sister and took care of everyone regardless of color or their ability to pay. I remembered shots, stitches, and the back entrance that led to a separate waiting room for Negroes Only. I do remember getting entirely unsatisfactory answers about this from Al Thompson and Mama.
As I parked next to Claiborne's office, my cell phone rang.
'Where you at, boy?' I recognized Rex's voice.
'Greenwood. Camilla's in a really bad way. I'm at the hospital seeing if there's a way to have them pull up her scans'
'Y'mama said a prayer for her every damned day. I'da said some myself, but God'n me, we don't get along.'
I wanted to laugh, but Camilla's shadow chilled my heart.
'Okay, look. I've been doing some checking,' Rex said. 'Nothing for sure. I just wanted to say you better watch your back. I-'
My phone beeped a 'no service' tone. I tried to call Rex back, but got nothing. 'Nuts.' I got out and made my way into the clinic. A young woman with intensely dark skin in a white uniform sat behind the receptionist's desk and gave me a smile filled with brilliant, even teeth set in gums the color of blueberries. I introduced myself and asked for Dr. Claiborne.
'Across the street in the little broom closet he calls an office,' she said. 'I'll call him'
As soon as she finished punching in the numbers, she looked up at me. 'You one of his old patients?'
'I think maybe his father's.' I smiled. 'A long time ago!'
