found one, Luke.” She smiled faintly. “And you’ve found Eve. Yeah, I’m like you, Joe.” She moved toward the clerk. “And you’re right, if necessary I’ll use the fact that men can be persuaded to give me what I want just on the chance they might get a chance to jump me. So let’s get that information and call Eve back.”
Providence, Georgia
THE SUN WAS GOING DOWN over the great canyon in a burst of glory. Light and beauty were all around Danner, but he could see only blackness.
Despair was washing over him in a great wave. He had come rushing back from seeing Father Barnabas to assure himself that he could still be saved; but even in this place, there was no solace. The darkness was creeping toward him, over hills, through the trees, blocking out the light.
He stiffened and whirled toward the hillside.
The little girl in the Bugs Bunny T-shirt, her red hair blazing in the failing light, stood there staring at him.
“No!” He whirled and ran away from her, stumbling, falling, picking himself up, and running again. His heart was beating so hard it was hurting him. He had to get away from her.
Why had she come? To torment him? To tell him that there were more demons for him to fight?
She was following him.
He wouldn’t look at her. “Go away.” His voice cracked as he tried to control it. “I’ll do what you want. Give you anything. Just go
He knew she was speaking, but he closed her out as he ran through the hills.
Get away from her. Get away from the darkness.
Go back to the world and do her bidding.
Go back to the priest and force him to find out what he needed to know.
Go back and kill the demons.
CHAPTER 8
“HERE IT IS, JOE.” CATHERINE pulled up the file on the hospital computer. “Theodore Danner.” She checked the date of entry and date of last treatment. “He was a patient here for a number of years. First, for his spinal injury, then follow-up rehabilitation. Eve said he was almost crippled when she met him. His surgery must have been very successful.”
“Apparently,” Joe said. “He was moving like a young man when we saw him at the bayou. Who was his surgeon?”
Catherine back-clicked. “Dr. Kevin Donnelly.” Then she frowned. “No, that’s not right.” She clicked back another page. “Dr. Michael Worzak did the spinal surgery. It was a brilliant success, total recovery. But it was the last mention of Worzak. All of these other pages are appointments with Kevin Donnelly.”
“Rehab?”
“No, there are notations of appointments with Donnelly even before the spinal surgery. They sent him to Donnelly on the recommendation of his doctor at the VA hospital in Milwaukee.” She frowned in puzzlement. “Maybe Donnelly wasn’t a surgeon and only did the preliminary. I’ll try to go back to the letter of recommendation and see why Donnelly was assigned as Danner’s physician. Danner must have been in tremendous pain. There’s a list of medications here administered to Danner that would choke a horse.” Her gaze traveled down the list. She stiffened. “Shit.”
“What is it?”
“Thorazine. I remember that drug. Hu Chang used it occasionally as a base for some of his potions.”
“Your resident Hong Kong witch doctor?”
“That’s not funny. Hu Chang is brilliant.”
“And lethal.”
“Sometimes.” More often than not. She and Hu Chang had worked together when she was a teenager in Hong Kong on less-than-legal endeavors. He was amazingly creative when a poison or drug was needed. “But he’s my friend, so keep quiet, Joe. Thorazine, dammit.” She was checking the other medications. She recognized a few, and they were all leading in one direction. She flipped back to the beginning of Danner’s file. It was the letter of recommendation from a Dr. Herbert Nils from the VA hospital in Milwaukee. She started to read.
She inhaled sharply. “My God…”
“I WANT TO TALK TO GALLO,” Catherine said when she called Eve ten minutes later. “You listen, too, Eve. Put me on speaker.”
“You found out something?”
“Yeah, something I should have suspected. Are you there, Gallo?”
“He’s here.” Eve turned to Gallo and handed him her phone. “Talk to her.”
“Yes, talk to me, Gallo,” Catherine said. “I’m a bit pissed about your trying to avoid me. I didn’t deserve it, and you’re an ass for doing it. Though I don’t know why I should care.”
“Neither do I, Catherine.” He paused. “What do you want to say to me?”
“I don’t want to say anything to you. I want to ask you a question. What do you know about a Dr. Herbert Nils?”
“Nothing.” He frowned. “What should I know?”
“He was your uncle’s doctor at the VA hospital in Milwaukee. You were with him when he was undergoing treatment up there, right? You and your uncle shared an apartment?”
“That’s right. But for the last year before we moved down here, I was traveling the country with a couple buddies. When I came back, he told me that his doctor had recommended he go to a specialist in Atlanta.”
“Dr. Nils suggested it?”
Gallo frowned. “I think that was the name.”
“And did you ever meet him? Did he ask you to come in to discuss your uncle’s condition?”
“No. My uncle was always intensely private. Particularly when he came back after his discharge. He’d always been so strong, and I think it embarrassed him that he wasn’t the man he once was.”
“And did you meet his doctor in Atlanta?”
“I was only in Atlanta about six weeks before I went to basic training.”
“And you were obviously suffering a pretty intense distraction when you got down there.”
Gallo glanced at Eve. “You could say that.”
“Why are you asking these questions, Catherine?” Eve asked impatiently. “What difference does it make whether Gallo knew his doctor?”
“It makes a difference to me,” Catherine said. “I had to know if Gallo knew about Danner. Gallo’s not stupid. I couldn’t see why he would be so damned shocked, and I didn’t want to think he was a liar and pretending.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Gallo asked roughly. “I don’t lie, Catherine.”
“I couldn’t be sure. You’ve been behaving pretty weird since your uncle showed up on the scene.”
“Why would I lie about knowing Nils?”
“Thorazine.”
“What?”
“It’s one of the meds your uncle was taking. You told me once that he was once addicted to prescription drugs. It doesn’t surprise me. The amount of drugs he was given at the hospital in Atlanta was staggering. I imagine they kept him pretty well out of it in that VA hospital in Milwaukee, too.”
“He was in pain.”
“Maybe. But that wasn’t the main reason he was given drugs.”
“What is this Thorazine? And why would that have made you think I was lying to you?”
“Thorazine is a very powerful drug, and it was prescribed by both Nils and your uncle’s doctor in Atlanta. I
