She tried to extricate herself from where she'd been lying, gripping the steering wheel and the back of the driver's seat, then hoisting herself up while pushing with her feet. It felt like climbing out of a pit.
"Thomas! Help!"
Lightning split the sky, and in a flash she saw above her the driver's-side door, its glass starred with cracks but intact, the windshield on her right equally fragmented yet also in place, and she remembered something that shouldn't have been.
The right side of her head throbbed, not the front.
Crawling higher, she strained to look around, saw only darkness, and the steady sound of water streaming around her smashed vehicle became louder. But the effort left her dizzy, so much so she sank back into the passenger compartment.
Where the hell had they crashed?
She wished for yet another lightning burst to give her a chance to get a bearing.
None obliged.
My cellular, she thought, hands diving into her coat pockets. I can call for help.
Empty.
It must have fallen out as the car rolled.
She felt around for it in the darkness.
Still nothing.
Struggling again to reach the door, her fingers gripped the far edge of the driver's seat, and she pulled herself to her knees. This time her head spun so severely she thought she'd pass out. She nevertheless persisted and felt around for the handle.
Her fingers scraped over the jagged metal edges where it had been snapped off. Nothing else budged. The door was jammed shut.
Had Thomas crawled out the roof? Gone for help?
She flapped her hands behind her, touched the taut surface of the leather and explored it with her fingers. It was intact.
He must have been thrown out the door after all, but the rollover had swung it shut again. And she'd definitely landed in water. Her side of the car rested in a shallow pool.
Her brain spun through a few high-speed revolutions, and she sank back to her knees.
God, she must have really hit her head.
She couldn't recall past Thomas starting up the access road to the darkened expressway. Retrograde amnesia, they called it. Meant she'd given her noggin a good enough whump to knock off her memory for events leading up to the accident. Neurologists considered it a sign of significant head trauma.
No kidding. The throbbing that ran from her temple to her ear could have told her that. Again something concerned her about where she hurt.
She once more mustered her strength, pulled herself up, and tried to force the driver's-side door open.
It remained stuck. She couldn't even release the locks.
Nor could she unclip the front of the retractable roof from the windshield frame. The mechanism must have been twisted or jammed with the crash.
She'd nothing sharp enough to cut the leather, so she tried to rip it with her hands and punch through it with her fists, but the material proved to be too tough. She even lay back and thrust at it a few times with her legs, hoping to poke a tear.
No luck. She didn't have the strength, and the effort left her increasingly lightheaded.
She twisted to try to smash out the driver's-side window, though her swollen belly would probably be an impossible squeeze through it.
She'd struck it with her shoe just as the inside of her brain revved all the way up to a death spiral. Oh, God, what's happening? she thought, feeling her heart start to race as she collapsed back into the passenger compartment.
And something clicked.
Dizzy, a fast pulse, and in labor.
Pain could cause it, but at the moment she'd no contractions.
Not a hemorrhage, she prayed, reaching inside her skirt to check.
From the waist down she'd been soaking wet in cold water. But between her legs the fluid felt warm to her fingers.
Oh, God, no!
She fought back a surge of panic, trying to tell herself it might not be blood.
Yet she now dreaded the next lightning flash for fear of what it would show.
Once more a sickening spin filled her skull, and she clutched blindly at wherever she could for support.
The dark sky detonated into a searing light, making it possible to see.
Swirls of crimson curled away from her through black water like fronds of seaweed, and small currents where the stream flowed through the car swept them away.
In an instant darkness returned, more impenetrable than ever, her eyes no longer adjusted to it.
Seconds later another contraction hit.
Wednesday, July 18, 11:31 p.m.
There'd still been no word from Janet.
And her cellular remained off.
He'd repeatedly phoned the hospital and asked them to page her.
No response.
He'd asked them to page Thomas.
The same result.
When he'd tried to call the man at home, in case Janet had dropped him off, he reached a recording inviting the caller to try St. Paul's. The man's cell phone number produced a full minute of intermittent buzzing, until the same answering machine clicked in.
"Shit!" Earl yelled, tossing the phone into the passenger seat and gliding his van through yet another small lake that had formed across the road. Everyone else he knew justified owning a four-wheel-drive beast for family trips, luggage, kids, a nanny, or the family dog. His reason? On a bad night, he could power through anything.
Thomas's car remained parked in front of their house. Nevertheless, he dared to hope the familiar sight of Janet's green Mazda would greet him when he opened the automatic garage door.
Empty.
At least they still had power. The rest of the suburbs he'd passed through were riddled with blackouts where wires had gone down.
He stepped over Muffy as she lay inside the front entranceway, stooping to give her ears a perfunctory rub. She must have been out for a walk, because her coat, softened by the rain, had the sweet aroma of wet wool and felt young again. She raised her head and slipped her tongue out for a quick comfort lick of his hand.
The dog probably sensed his fear.
He strode through the living room and headed straight for his study, where he found Annie still busy at the computer.
"Hi, Doc," she said, not looking up from a screen filled with swat soldiers and a scoreboard displaying an impressive number of kills.
"Sorry, Annie, but can you hang around? I may have to go out again."
This announcement won him a glance, and her face fell. "What's happened? You look spooked."
"I'll explain later. Right now I need my computer." He wouldn't frighten her about Janet just yet.
She vacated the chair and bustled out of the room. "I'll put on a pot of tea."
She'd a great talent for knowing when to make herself scarce.
He clicked up the cluster program and, as the machine erratically hummed to retrieve it, thought about Sadie Locke's calendar marked with crosses.
The tiny memorials, when he first saw them, had occupied about a quarter of the squares demarcating days. Not systematically one in four- he would have picked up something so recognizable on the spot- but in a distribution close enough to it that those crosses popped to mind after Susanne mentioned residents being on one in four nights. In other words, could the murders correspond to a resident's schedule? And if J.S. had been on duty in ER for 80 percent of the kills, plus seemed to be protecting someone, the obvious question became, How often had the man she most liked to work with been there?
He typed in DR. T. BIGGS.
The computer digested the command and proceeded to download the R-3 duty roster, a lengthy process that let Earl stand there and battle nausea as Janet's being overdue grew more ominous by the minute.