Third Degree Read online

  “I told you someone was messing with your head,” she said softly. “Kyle had no idea what I was talking about. Do you believe me now?”

  “You’ve got some kind of code!” Warren shouted. “Something you say if I’m around. Or something you don’t say. That’s it, isn’t it?”

  A Kafkaesque dread descended in her soul. “Warren . . . the kids. Please keep your voice down.” She took a deep breath, then spoke with utter sincerity. “If you don’t believe what you heard with your own ears, I don’t know what I can do. The only place I’ve ever cheated on you is inside your head.”

  “Are these in my head?” he cried, snatching up a bundle of bearer bonds.

  “I can’t explain those,” she said with conviction. “But I’m not involved with Kyle Auster in any way. I’ll take a lie detector test, if you want.”

  Warren was staring at the bonds, not at her.

  “Think,” she said. “Use that big brain of yours. Who could have told you where to find this stuff except the person who put it there?”

  “Maybe that’s how it is,” he said slowly. “Maybe when Kyle dumped you, you kept his money for revenge. Maybe he’s trying to get back at you like this.”

  “That’s crazy!” she cried, causing the lock to jerk taut against her throat. “Think of the risks. And he’d never get his money back.”

  “Maybe it’s his wife, then. E-mailing me, I mean. She’d damn sure have a reason to get back at him.”

  “You think Kyle would tell his wife about hidden money? Come on.”

  “I don’t know. But I guess you do.”

  “I’m just guessing, for God’s sake. Just like you. All I care about are those two children upstairs. They’re going to know something’s wrong pretty soon, if they don’t already.”

  Warren gave her the same odd smile as before. “You don’t have enough faith in them. They’re fine. Whatever I tell them, they’ll believe. They trust me, Laurel. They know who protects them.”

  They know who takes care of them, she thought. “You’re right about one thing today. There’s something bad going on around you. But you’re wrong about me being part of it. Look how Kyle reacted just then. I offered the man a blow job, and he said no. Does that sound like Kyle Auster to you?”

  Warren picked up the red ledger. He seemed to be trying to stare a hole through it.

  Laurel said, “You need to forget about who’s screwing who and ask Kyle about this financial stuff. Before something really bad happens.”

  She heard a bump upstairs. Then another. The kids were still up there.

  “Maybe I will,” Warren said, staring at the other phone. “Maybe I will.”

  • • •

  Auster was swigging from the Diaka bottle again when his office door opened and Vida swept in the way his mother used to when he’d misbehaved as a boy. She shut the door behind her, then stood before his desk with a look so harsh that all his glib opening lines fled his brain.

  “Are you drunk?” she asked.

  “Vida . . . we’re in trouble. Bad trouble.”

  Her expression didn’t change. “You just figured that out, Sherlock?”

  Auster studied the bleach-blond harpy standing with her arms crossed over her chest and wondered why he’d ever gotten involved with her. He could hardly bear to look at her anymore, much less give her what she wanted after hours. Worse, he sensed that she didn’t even want the sex herself; it was simply a tool in her campaign to protect herself from a world that had always been less than kind to her.

  “What’s happened now?” she asked.

  “I got a phone call while you were gone.”

  “From who? Biegler again?”

  “No. Evans, up at the capital.”

  “And?”

  Auster blew out a lungful of air. “He said Paul Biegler’s driving down from Jackson to padlock the office. Now. As we speak.”

  This shook Vida from her pose. Shock pinned her painted eyelids back for several seconds, but then her features went hard again. “Let me guess. When you had Biegler on the phone, you got up on your hind legs and roared like a drunk frat boy. You can’t keep that ego reined in, can you? I bet he’s ready to put you under the jail.”

  Auster nodded in despair. “And I don’t see what we can do besides sic him on Warren and hope he’s content with that.”

  Vida gaped as though Auster had suggested driving into a brick wall at sixty miles per hour. “Listen to me, Doctor. You’re as crooked as a barrel of fishhooks, but when it comes to actually committing a crime, you’re about as smart as a barrel of hair. The mystery is how you made it through medical school. They must have had a lot of lady professors up there, that’s all I can figure—”

  “Vida—”

  “Damn it, Kyle. Blaming Shields depended on a low-key investigation and things falling just right. On sanitizing this office of anything and everything that could contradict our version of things. Losing a lot of records. And most of all, on our special patients keeping their goddamn mouths shut. But we’re not near ready yet.” She dug a cigarette out of her back pocket, lit it, and began puffing furiously.

  “I wish you wouldn’t do that.”

  “Shut the fuck up, Kyle. I’m thinking. The only way we could dump this thing in Shields’s lap now is if he shot himself in the head with the evidence in his house. Then we’d be the only ones left to tell what happened, other than the patients. They’d be expensive, but—”

  “What about the records?”

  “Shut up! I’m trying to keep your ass out of jail.”

  He reached into his bottom drawer for the vodka.

  Vida watched him take a slug with obvious contempt. Then she blew out a long stream of smoke and said, “I know what you’re up to, mister. You’ve got some high-toned slut on the side, stashed and waiting for you to bug out with her. I don’t know who she is, but I will in about twenty seconds, because you’re going to tell me.”

  Auster reached for the bottle again, but Vida lashed out with her hand and knocked it off his desk. The precious fluid gurgled onto the carpet.

  “Don’t sit there gasping like a landed fish. Tell me who she is.”

  “Vida, I wouldn’t cheat on you.”

  “Jesus wept. Whoever she is, the slut is out of your life as of this moment. In exchange, I’m going to save you the indignity of nightly anal sex in Parchman Farm, where you most definitely would not be the top.”

  “Shannon Jensen,” Auster whispered with the sound of a deflating balloon.

  Vida’s eyes flashed with fury and disbelief. “The drug rep from Jackson?”

  He nodded.

  “She’s only twenty-three!”

  Before Auster could reply, Vida said, “Of course she’s only twenty-three. Young enough to buy into your bullshit and throw her life away before it’s begun. God, you’re a prick. That smug little sorority princess prancing up these halls with a corncob up her butt . . . Jesus.”

  Vida was turning pale; primal anger was threatening to take over her higher brain functions. Before she could wind up again, Auster said, “I’m sorry, I’m an idiot. She’s history. Just tell me what to do.”

  Vida flattened both hands on his desk and leaned over the charts lying there. “I’ve got half a mind to let Biegler clean your clock for you. I could turn state’s evidence, send you to Parchman for twenty years, and walk away rich. They give rewards for that kind of evidence now. Monetary rewards. I’d be getting a massage in Cabo, while you’d be doing research on whether size really does matter or not.”

  Auster felt dizzy. “Vida, don’t lose sight of what’s—”

  “I could do that,” she went on, as though he hadn’t spoken. “But I’m not. I don’t want Nell getting in any kind of trouble.”

  “How can you prevent that?”

  “By getting us all out clean.” Her eyes drilled into him like twin X-ray beams. “I just need to know two things, bub.”

  “What?”

  “One, that you’re done
with that sorority slut.”

  Auster nodded eagerly. “And?”

  “Make the call, Kyle.”

  “What call? To Shannon?”

  “Who else?”

  “But Biegler’s on the way!”

  “I can’t think of a better time. Make it short and not so sweet.”

  Auster took out his cell phone and speed-dialed Shannon Jensen. She answered with a husky tone, “Mmm, I wasn’t expecting this. I’m on the road between Oxford and Tupelo, and it’s lonely.”

  Auster banished phone sex from his mind. “Shannon, I need to tell you something.”

  “What?” Her alert business voice had come online.

  “I have some bad news, honey. It’s . . . it’s not going to work out like we thought. It’s just too complicated here. My marriage, I mean. I have to end it. You and me, I mean.” Shannon gasped, but he pushed on before she could gather herself. “You deserve a lot better than me, you know that. I know you’ll bounce back like nothing ever happened.” The girl was screaming now, and sobbing, but the only word he could make out was “Why?” He started to embellish his excuse, but Vida leaned closer and gave him his cue line.

  “You’re in love with someone else,” she whispered.

  Auster closed his eyes.

  “Say it,” Vida commanded.

  “I’m in love with someone else, Shannon.”

  “Oh my God,” Shannon cried. “Someone besides your wife?”

  “That’s right.”

  “I don’t believe you!”

  “Tell her who,” Vida ordered.

  “It’s Vida,” he said in desolation. “From up front. She’s always been the one.”

  “Even when we were together,” Vida whispered.

  Auster grimaced, but he had no alternative. “Even when we were together, I was with her.”

  The line was dead. He prayed Shannon had hung up before she heard the last of it.

  “There,” Vida said with supreme satisfaction. “Doesn’t that feel better?”

  He forced himself to nod. “I was telling the truth. You have always been the one. I just . . . you know me. She made it so easy, and—”

  “You’re embarrassing yourself.” Vida leaned back and put her hands on her hips like a drill sergeant. “Are you ready to do what you have to do to save us?”

  He nodded.

  “Can you grow a freaking backbone for five minutes?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Okay. I want you to drive over to Dr. Shields’s house and get the stuff you planted there.”

  This stunned him. “What do you mean, get it?”

  “Retrieve it. Take it out of the safe room and drive it to where I tell you.”

  “But why?”

  “We need it to disappear. Forget blaming Warren. We need everything in that house to disappear. The second set of books, the coded records, everything. Most of all, the bonds. Biegler may have frozen your business accounts by now. Maybe even the personals.”

  “Jesus!”

  “Do you understand?”

  “Yes, but what if Warren’s at home? He didn’t come in today, which is pretty strange, and . . . oh, God.”

  “What?” Vida asked, her eyes narrowed.

  “What if Warren is working with Biegler?”

  Vida thought about this for a few seconds, then dismissed the idea with a shake of her head. “No. He’d never admit to the things he’s done, not even for a big reward. His reputation means everything to him.”

  “He might do it to stay out of jail.”

  “I don’t think he’s at risk of going to jail. Not really. Even if they threw the book at him, he could plead out. We’re the ones who could go to jail. But I’ll tell you, there’s something weird going on with our Warren. For five years, he’s a Boy Scout. Then he walks in and says he needs money. Big money. And he starts breaking rules left and right. It doesn’t add up. There’s something fishy about that life insurance he got last year, too. I don’t know what, but I know Warren’s not about to start cooperating with the Feds. He hates the government. And in his eyes, he’s got more to lose than any of us.”

  “Okay,” Auster said, calming a little. “But if he’s at home, I can’t just waltz into his safe room and start carting stuff out. He’ll freak out.”

  “Screw him, okay? This is life or death, Kyle. If you have to, go in with your key, grab the stuff, and get out. You know the code. Whatever he says or does, humor him, but get that shit out of there. Tell him the FBI planted it there. Or just ignore him. Shields won’t hit you or anything. He’s not the type. Not unless you were fucking his wife or something.” Vida froze, her eyes boring into Auster’s. “You’re not, are you?”

  “Hell, no!”

  She returned his gaze without the slightest bit of faith. “If you’re not, it’s only because she wouldn’t touch you with three sets of gloves on.”

  That’s what you think. “You know Laurel, all right.”

  Vida chuckled. “Yes, I do. Way too much class for you.”

  He was surprised by how deeply this assertion stung. “What will you be doing while I’m at Warren’s?”

  Vida sat on the edge of his desk and looked at him with a strange light in her eyes. “Burning this office to the ground.”

  A bolt of terror went through him. “What? Burning . . . ?”

  “You heard me. It’s the only way, Kyle. And we’ve only got a few minutes to do it. Biegler and his guys are probably driving ninety miles an hour from Jackson, which makes it about an eighty-five-minute trip.”

  Auster felt sick. “But—”

  “They’ve probably got somebody watching the office, too, to make sure we don’t try to cart the files and computers out of here.”

  “They’ll follow me when I leave,” he thought aloud.

  She nodded. “They will, if they recognize you.”

  “How could they not?”

  She smiled. “Wait here.”

  Sixty seconds later, Vida walked in with some threadbare pants, a polyester work shirt, and a green John Deere cap.

  “Where’d you get those?” he asked.

  “Mr. Chaney. He’s lying on the X-ray table in a paper gown. I think he’s getting a good trade myself, and so will he. Your pants and button-down together probably cost three hundred bucks.” She tossed the clothes into Auster’s lap. “I doubt they’d take these rags at the Goodwill.”

  A reek of BO rose from his lap. “They stink!”

  “Life’s rough. Get changed, Doc.”

  “Do I take my own car?”

  “Sure you do, chunkhead.” Vida dug into her jeans and brought out a jingling key ring. “Mr. Chaney drives a black Chevy pickup. It’ll be in the front lot. If we’re lucky, Biegler’s spy will be watching your Jag in the employees’ lot. Change clothes, damn it!”

  Auster removed his butter-soft Charles Tyrwhitt pinpoint and folded it carefully on his desk. Then he raised the stained work shirt and slid an arm into it. “Ugh,” he grunted, wrinkling his nose. “Is this the only way?”

  Vida gave him a blue steel stare. “You’d better believe it.”

  “Don’t you dare give Chaney the keys to my Jag.”

  “Forget the Jag, and forget your cell phone. Don’t use it for anything, unless I tell you to. That’s why I didn’t answer your call before.”

  Auster’s mind filled with images of his office burning, a black column of smoke bringing all the doctors and nurses out of the hospital three blocks away.

  “I’ll tell you one thing, buster,” Vida said. “You’re gonna owe me after this. For a very long time.”

  Auster nodded in surrender, but he knew Vida wouldn’t buy it. Her father had been a pathological liar, and she saw all men as reflections of him. Sometimes he wondered if she was far wrong.

  CHAPTER

  12

  Nell sat at the reception desk and tried to look like a normal person, but inside she was a wreck. In the last few minutes the office had gone crazy. Vida was
acting like some sort of secret agent, and a few minutes ago a strange man had shambled past in the hall, coming from the direction of Dr. Auster’s office. Then an old man in X-ray had started yelling that someone had stolen his clothes. JaNel was looking for Dr. Auster and couldn’t find him, and Vida had told Nell to hold down the front while she took care of some necessities. When Nell asked what was going on, Vida had leaned close and whispered, “Give me five minutes, hon. Then I’ll tell you what to do.” That was five minutes longer than Nell could stand, but she’d gritted her teeth and tried to look calm.

  Then Dr. Shields called, and her legs turned to jelly. “I need to speak with Kyle,” he said in a stiff voice.

  “I don’t think he’s here, Dr. Shields,” Nell said nervously.

  “What kind of answer is that? Either he is or he isn’t.”

  “Um . . . that’s all I know at this point.”

  “Listen, if that son of a bitch is trying to avoid me, you tell him I said to get his ass on the phone.”

  Nell sat blinking in the wake of Dr. Shields’s profanity. From Warren Shields, a curse word in the office was like an explosion. “Dr. Shields?” she ventured tentatively.

  “Yes?”

  “Can I tell you something?”

  “What?”

  She lowered her voice to a whisper. “I’m the one who’s been e-mailing you.”

  Silence.

  Nell was suddenly sure she’d made a mistake, but then Dr. Shields said, “You e-mailed me to look in my safe room?”

  “That’s right.”

  “But . . . how did you know what was in there?”

  “I didn’t. I still don’t. But I knew it was dangerous. My sister told me about it. I was trying to help you. I mean, I am trying to.”

  “You did help me, Nell. Look, do you know anything about a letter? A love letter written in green ink?”

  She thought back over all the papers she had seen in the past few days. “No, sir. Nothing like that.”