TWENTY-ONE
Terri had her head down on her folded arms. She was at Curt's bedside. He had been sleeping when she entered the room. An hour earlier, she had been with Darlene Stone in the emergency room. Except for emotional trauma and exhaustion, the woman was well enough to go home. Terri arranged for her to have some sedation and told her to just go home and rest. She would talk to her in the morning.
"Don't we have to speak to the police?" she asked.
"I'll take care of all that, Darlene. Just rest," Terri told her. Darlene's mother and her mother's live-in boyfriend came to pick her up. Terri did need a half dozen stitches. The bandage made the wound look much more serious than it was. Exhausted herself, she somehow garnered enough energy to go up to see Curt. First, she would assure him she was fine and then she would tell him the story, she thought. Finding him asleep, she made the mistake of lowering her head and closing her eyes.
A gentle nudge on her shoulder awoke her. For a long moment, she forgot where she was. Then it all came rushing back. She turned and looked up at Will Dennis. Instantly, her heart began to pound.
"Let's go down the hall and talk," he said. "There's an empty room two doors down."
She hesitated and gazed at Curt, who was still asleep.
"I promise. I'll tell you everything now," Dennis said. "Nothing more is going to happen to anyone. It's all right," he added.
She rose slowly.
"It's all right? Funny way to describe the events of the day," she told him. He turned and walked to the door. The highway patrolman who had been with the ambulance was standing in the hallway speaking softly with another highway patrolman. The two stopped to look her way.
"I found your vehicle, Doctor," the patrolman said. "It was in the parking lot here. The keys are in the ignition."
"Yes, well, it won't start," she said looking at Dennis.
"Take care of it, will you, Paul?" Will Dennis told the patrolman. He nodded and left with his partner. "Right over here," Dennis said leading her to the empty room.
She entered behind him and he pulled the one chair out for her to sit. She did so and looked up at him.
"Let me begin by telling you he's dead," he said.
"Who? Dr. Stanley or his creation?"
"His creation. That's the more important matter."
"That's a matter of debate. In my opinion Dr. Frankenstein was as bad as the monster he created. Do you know what he intended to do to us, Darlene Stone and myself? Do you know why he took us down that dirt road to that deserted tourist house?"
"I've passed all that on to his superiors," Will Dennis said.
"His superiors?" She laughed. "That's like telling Hitler what Goebbels did."
"Whatever. It's out of my hands now and I'm not terribly upset about that." She narrowed her eyes and sat up firmly.
"Why should I believe anything you say, Will? You lied to me about all this, and if I didn't happen to have Garret Stanley's cell phone, I doubt I would have known."
"Probably not," he candidly admitted.
She brought her eyebrows together.
"What was your involvement here?"
"I'm sorry. I told you as much as I thought you could know without being in any danger yourself. I didn't know what was going on until late in the situation myself, Terri," he said. "After Kristin Martin died and was diagnosed, I was contacted by people pretty high up the ladder. They told me basically to cooperate with Dr. Stanley, that he was the lead man in this pursuit of this unusual perpetrator. I wasn't given great detail, just that someone very dangerous was on the loose and if the whole story got out, it would create even more havoc in our small community than we already had. I was on a need-toknow basis and prohibited from telling anyone else what I had been told.
"When you called me about Paula Gilbert that night, I was in a real panic myself and that was when Dr. Stanley was forced to meet directly with me. I told him you didn't know all that much more than I did, but he convinced me he could ask you and any witness or any person in contact with the perpetrator questions that would give him essential information."
"Why didn't you or someone from your office accompany the madman?" Terri asked.
"I was hoping not to have to reveal to anyone, even you, what I was told, what I knew, and it was obvious no one else on the outside would be permitted to know anything, be part of any of this. It's very tightly contained.
"And," he added, looking penitent, "I had no idea how far Garret Stanley would go. He became somewhat of a desperate man after Paula Gilbert's death. I should have realized that. I'm sorry.
"The bottom line is he has taken care of the situation. It's over."
"Is it? He'll continue his work, won't he?"
"That's beyond us, Terri. Believe me, that's beyond our control and if either you or I went public with this, nothing would change except we would both be destroyed professionally. There are forces at work here, very powerful forces. I'm here to apologize to you for what you've been through and to assure you it's over for us. We'll have no more victims in our community. You should go back to your practice. I'll find a way to compensate Darlene Stone, get her a better job, perhaps. In time she'll put it behind her, too."
"What about the Thorndykes, the Martin relatives, the Gilberts, and who knows how many others?" Terri asked him.
"It's not in our power to do anything for them, Terri. If I could, I would. Believe me."
"People are still going to want to know how these women died of gross vitamin deficiencies, Will. You can't cover up what has already been revealed. You can't unring a bell."
He shrugged.
"It will be a mystery and as long as it is over, it will be one of those mysteries that drift off in time and is eventually forgotten."
"And you're satisfied with that?"
"I have no choice," he said. "And neither do you. If you go public with anything, I won't support you. What are you going to say, Terri, that a secret research organization created a vitamin vampire? Just imagine what you would do to your own and Hyman's reputations. Who would want to go to either of you for medical concerns? They have ways of coloring you in the media. You'll come off being some sort of a kook, like someone who believes extraterrestrials kidnapped her to study her body and then let her free.
"No," he said shaking his head. "Let it go. Take Curt home. Help him recuperate. Get married and have a wonderful life."
"Is that what you're going to do, Will? Have a wonderful life?"
"I'm going to try," he said smiling.
"You should reread the Tragedy of Dr. Faustus," she said, "unless you never read it. Then read it. You've made a similar deal with the devil, Will. There is no wonderful life after that."
He stopped smiling.
"I've given you my best advice. Do what you think you should," he said. He nodded, turned, and left her sitting there staring after him. As long as there are political animals like that left in charge of the public welfare, we'll never be safe, she concluded, but she also concluded that he was right: there was little she could do about it now.
She rose slowly. Her head was throbbing and not just from the wound. One thing was for sure, she thought. She and Curt both needed time off. He was awake when she returned to his room.
"What happened to you?" he asked as soon as he saw the bandage on her head.
"I'm going to tell you," she said, "but you won't believe me." She sat and took his hand into hers.
"I'm all ears," he said sitting up.
"Once upon a time," she began, "mankind decided it had to improve on God's work."