True Evil

one can protect you from that kind of hit. But most important is the question of food and drink. You shouldn't eat or drink at home for a while. Not even bottled water. Nothing bought or prepared by your wife.'

'You're kidding, right?'

'I realize that might be difficult, but we'll work it out. To tell you the truth, I think we have some working room, as far as time is concerned. Your wife just consulted this lawyer, and this kind of murder takes meticulous planning.'

Chris heard a note of hysteria in his laughter. 'That's a huge comfort, Agent Morse. Seriously. I feel so much better now.'

'Does your wife have plans to be out of town anytime soon?'

He shook his head.

'Good. That's a good sign.' Morse picked up her handbag. 'You'd better write me that prescription now.'

'What?'

'The Levaquin.'

'Oh, right.' He took a pad from his pocket and scribbled a prescription for a dozen antibiotic pills. 'You think of everything, don't you?'

'No one thinks of everything. And be glad for it. That's the way we catch most criminals. Stupid mistakes. Even the best of us make them.'

'You haven't given me a card or anything,' Chris said. 'No references I can check. All you did was show me an ID that I wouldn't know was fake or not. I want a phone number. Something.'

Agent Morse shook her head. 'You can't call anyone at the Bureau, Doctor. You can't do anything that could possibly tip off your killer. Your phones may be tapped, and that includes your cell phone. That's the easiest one to monitor.'

Chris stared at her for a long time. He wanted to ask about the scars. 'You said everybody makes mistakes, Agent Morse. What's the worst you ever made?'

The woman's hand rose slowly to her right cheek, as though of its own volition. 'I didn't look before I leaped,' she said softly. 'And somebody died because of it.'

'I'm sorry. Who was it?'

She hitched her handbag over her shoulder. 'Not your problem, Doctor. But you do have a problem. I'm sorry to be the one to turn your life upside down. I really am. But if I hadn't, you might have gone to sleep one night thinking you were happy and never woken up.'

Morse took the prescription from Chris's hand, then gave him her taut smile. 'I'll contact you again soon. Try not to freak out. And whatever you do, don't ask your wife if she's trying to kill you.'

Chris gaped after Morse as she walked down the corridor toward the waiting-room door. Her stride was measured and assured, the walk of an athlete.

'So?' Holly said from behind him, startling him. 'What's her story?'

'Cystitis,' he mumbled. 'Honeymoon syndrome.'

'Too much bumping monkey, huh? I didn't see no wedding ring on her finger.'

Chris shook his head at Holly's wiseass tone, then walked down the hall to his private office and closed the door.

He had a waiting room filled with patients, but as sick as some of them were, they seemed secondary now. He shoved aside a stack of charts and looked at Thora's picture on his desk. Thora was the antithesis of Agent Alex Morse. She was blond-naturally blond, unlike 98 percent of the golden-haired women you saw on the street-and of Danish descent, which was unusual in the South. Her eyes were grayish blue-sea blue, if you wanted to get poetic about it, which he had, on occasion. But though she might be mistaken for a Viking princess on the basis of appearance, Thora had no pretensions of superiority. She had spent four years married to Red Simmons, a down- to-earth country boy who'd made good by trusting his instincts and who'd treated people well after he made his pile. Chris believed Red's instincts about women were as good as his hunches about oil. Yes, Thora had become rich when Red died, but where was the fault in that? When a rich man died, someone always profited. That was the way of the world. And Red Simmons wasn't the type to demand a prenuptial agreement. He'd had a loving young wife who'd shared his life for better or worse-with quite a bit of worse in that last year-and she deserved everything he had, come hell or high water. That's the way Red would have put it. And the more Chris reflected on what Agent Morse had said in Exam Room 4, the angrier he got.

He picked up the phone and called his front desk.

'Yes?' drawled Jane Henry, his peppery receptionist. The yes finally terminated after two long syllables-maybe two and a half.

'Jane, I had a fraternity brother in college named Darryl Foster. That's D-A-R-R-Y-L.'

'Uh-huh. And?'

'I think he's an FBI agent now. I don't know where. He was originally from Memphis, but the last I heard, he was working in the Chicago field office.'

'And?'

'I need you to find him for me. His phone number, I mean. My old fraternity is trying to add on to the house up at Ole Miss, and they want to hit up everybody for contributions.'

'And just how do you suggest I find this supercop?'

'Get on the Internet, I guess. You spend enough time on there playing poker and shopping eBay. The least you can do is locate one old classmate for me.'

Jane harrumphed loudly. 'I'll give it a try, I guess.'

'Don't strain yourself.'

She hung up without a word, but Chris knew she would have the number in less than an hour.

Don't change your routine, Agent Morse had said. Don't do anything that might tip off your killer….

'My killer,' Chris said aloud. 'This has got to be bullshit.'

He picked up his stethoscope and walked to the door, but Jane's buzz brought him back to his desk. He grabbed his phone. 'You found Foster already?'

'Not yet. Your wife's on the phone.'

Chris felt another wave of numbness. Thora rarely called his office; she knew he was too busy to spend time on the phone. He looked down at her picture, waiting for a spark of instinct about what to do. But what he saw before him wasn't his wife, but Special Agent Alex Morse, regarding him coolly from behind her scars.

Stupid mistakes, Morse had said. Even the best of us make them.

'Tell Thora I'm with a patient, Jane.'

'What?' asked the receptionist, clearly surprised.

'I'm way behind already. Just do it. I'll call her back in a little while.'

'Whatever you say. You sign my checks.'

Chris started to hang up, but at the last second he said, 'Find Foster's number for me, okay? Stat.'

The playfulness went out of Jane's voice; she knew when her boss meant business.

'You got it, Doc.'

CHAPTER 3

Andrew Rusk was afraid.

He stood at the window of his law office and gazed out over the jigsaw skyline of Jackson, Mississippi. Not an impressive vista as cityscapes went, but Rusk did have the corner office on the sixteenth floor. Looking north, he could see all the way to the forested plains where white flight was expanding once-sleepy counties into bustling enclaves for twenty-first-century yuppies. Farther on, the new Nissan plant was bringing relative wealth to the state's struggling blue-collar workers. They commuted up to a hundred miles a day, both ways, from the tiny towns surrounding the state capital.

Behind him-out of sight to the west-lived the uneducated blacks who had been dragging the city down for the