Talk (The Alexandra Chronicles Book 4) Read online

  "And then Dirk was going to find you and be the hero of the hour," Agent Cole finished. "And since he was a DBS employee, maybe he'd keep only half the reward and make some grand gesture like giving the rest to charity—If

  "How much was the reward?" "I didn't tell you?" Will asked her. "Five million. And then Jackson was thinking about raising it."

  "Hmm," Jessica said, considering this. Then she shook her head, as if to clear it. "Wait a minute, though—What I don't get is, when Denton got me out of there in the Con Ed truck, where was Leopold?"

  "Watching," Hepplewhite said. "And waiting for his moment." The way he said this made her blood run cold. "Did he know I was going to be kidnapped?" "We don't know," Agent Cole said. "He's not talking yet."

  "He kept saying that he had saved me," Jessica offered.

  "I'm sure that's what he thinks," Agent Cole said.

  "When we found the truck that Denton used to get you away from Rockefeller Center," Hepplewhite said, "we also found bloodstains in the parking lot near it. As Will may have told you, at first we freaked out because we thought it was your blood. Happily, it wasn't. And now we know the blood was Calvin Denton's. And so we're assuming that that was where Plattener overpowered him."

  "But I saw Hurt Guy there," Jessica said. "We drove there, he took me to the bathroom and then he made me take some sleeping pills. And then I climbed into the back of the truck, on a stretcher. You know, like an ambulance stretcher on wheels."

  "It was after that, we think," Hepplewhite said, "after you were sleeping, that Plattener overpowered Denton."

  "Yeah, but—" Jessica frowned, trying to remember.

  "You didn't go anywhere else m the Con Edison truck," Agent Cole explained to her. "That truck was left m the lot. Oh, we have your diamond earring, by the way."

  "Oh. Good, thanks."

  "And that stretcher you mentioned," Hepplewhite said, "was not m the Con Ed truck. That's how Plattener moved you from the Con Ed truck to his van, and then later into the old hospital and up the elevator and down the halls."

  "What about Hurt Guy? Where was he during all this?"

  "We found a bloody tarp m Plattener's van upstate. We're assuming he just rolled Denton up m it and dumped him on the floor of the van he moved you into, and then brought him along to Buffalo to dump the body m the room next to yours."

  She tried to remember. She did remember tripping over something at one point. "When we stopped m the country—"

  "That was Plattener who took you out and walked you to the springs."

  "I remember tripping over something m the van," Jessica said. "There was a big pile of something. A carpet I thought."

  "That was Denton."

  Jessica mulled over this for a moment. "So Leopold kidnapped the kidnapper." "Yes," Agent Cole said. "And Hurt Guy can't tell you that Dirk was responsible

  for kidnapping me in the first place."

  Looking grim, Hepplewhite nodded. "Unless he regains consciousness."

  Reading the detective's expression, Jessica said, "Hurt Guy's dying, isn't he?"

  The detective nodded again.

  Agent Cole spoke up. "It's a miracle he's lived as long as he has."

  "Three kids," Jessica murmured, looking down and absently smoothing her sheets. "What a waste. What a stupid waste of so many lives." She looked at Will. "What's Hurt Guy's family supposed to do?" She looked to Agent Cole. "And Leopold's not talking?"

  "No."

  "And you're not going to screw this up and let him off on some insanity charge, are you?" She shook her head. "No. He won't be getting out." "Good." Suddenly Jessica felt very tired. So dead tired she could scarcely keep her head up. The tears started to come then, and she tried to stop them but couldn't. "I'm sorry," she managed to say.

  "It's all right, we shouldn't have stayed so long," Hepplewhite said, quickly standing up. "We've exhausted you."

  "You must get him," Jessica said quietly. "That son of a bitch Lawson, you have to get him."

  "We will," Hepplewhite promised.

  "You can't let him get away with this," she said with new urgency.

  "They will, Jess," Will hushed. "It's okay."

  "It's not okay," she said, agonized. Will held her tight as she tried to choke back her sobs. "Look at what he's done to me, Will. He's made me a coward. I'm such a mess. I'm so scared of everything now."

  "No, darling, shh," Will soothed, rocking her. "No, not for lang."

  "Should I call the doctor?" Slim asked from the doorway.

  Will nodded and Jessica's head came whipping up. "No!"

  "But, Jessica—"

  "No!" she insisted. "I know what I have to do." And then she pushed Will away and threw back the bedcovers. "Oh, get me unhooked from this thing!" she demanded, irritably swatting at the traction device.

  28

  The intensive care unit of Lennox Hill Hospital was under heavy guard. Jessica took Detective Hepplewhite's arm as they entered the glassed-in area where Calvin Denton lay. Jessica stood there a moment, assessing the situation, and then drew a chair up next to the bed.

  "Hi, Hurt Guy," she said softly. "It's me, Jessica. Can you hear me?" No response, just the beep, beep, beep of a heart monitor.

  "I know you're very weak right now, so you don't have to try and communicate, okay? I just stopped by to see how you're doing." She frowned and spoke more loudly. "And it seems to me you should certainly be doing better than this. After all, now you're spoiled—.you've got all these fancy doctors and medicines and everything, and before you didn't have anything except me and a couple of lousy aspirin." She chuckled. "I suppose you've figured out by now that I was never a nurse. I did know first aid, though—well, sort of. But we did get through it, though, didn't we?"

  She leaned forward, letting a low, knowing, rumbling laugh roll out. "Remember when Leopold was coming for dinner that night? Remember? When I think back—it was kind of cool, wasn't it? How we snuck you in from next door and he didn't have a clue! And they say he's supposed to be some kind of genius. Well, he's a friggin' psycho, that's what he is. We both know that, don't we, Hurt Guy?"

  She sat back, crossing her legs. "So anyway, he's in the slammer now. They've brought him down here to New York, in fact. The feds get him, you know, for the kidnapping_" She stopped here. The feds would be getting Hurt Guy, too, if he lived.

  "So listen, Hurt Guy," she said, starting again, "I didn't come here just to see how you're doing. I mean, I did, but, urn, I wanted to talk to you about something. The police and the FBI and everybody have been telling me a lot about you—Oh, and by the way, I've told everyone what a nice guy you were. You know, about how polite and courteous and thoughtful you were when you, um—Well, you know, when you picked me up at Rockefeller Center.”

  Beep, beep, beep of the heart monitor.

  "Anyway, what I'm trying to say is, they've been telling me about your daughter's condition, and what a financial bind you got into. They seem to think this is how Lawson got to you—you know, to be part of his scheme. Anyway—" she leaned forward "—I just wanted you to know that we're going to watch out for your daughter. Actually, your whole family. I know you've been through a lot, and they have, too, and the point is, you shouldn't worry about anything except getting better. Because your kids need you. They'll understand why you got mixed up in all this. But they're still going to need you, even if they can't be with you all the time. And sometime they will be with you again, but in the meantime, you have to do father-like things, like boss them around and tell them you love them and stuff."

  She paused, looking around at all the medical equipment. "You really have to get better. This is just not your scene. They tell me you were a CIA operative once. So you can't let some wimpy psycho like Leopold get the best of you. I mean, how will it look? The guy is the absolute worst. Mr. Mama's Boy, the sheik of freak." She frowned. "Hey, are you listening to me?" She stood up to hang her face over his. "Are you? Hurt Guy? Is that one eye I see opening? Is it? Can you open
it for me like you used to?”

  The eye parted and Jessica beamed, clapping her hands in joy. "I knew you were in there!" "Easy, easy, Ms. Wright, please," the ICU nurse said as the beat on the heart monitor grew uneven.

  "Oops, sorry," she whispered. Then Jessica reached for that little patch of unhurt skin on Hurt Guy's face and touched it with her forefinger. "You're on the mend. And that makes me very happy. If it wasn't for you, you know, I don't think I would have gotten through everything. You gave me something to do, something to think about, a reason to act. And you were good company. I always did prefer people who didn't talk much." She leaned closer and whispered, "I meant that about looking after your family. You just worry about getting better, we'll take care of the rest. And I'll be back, Hurt Guy, to see how you're doing. So rest easy and get some sleep now."

  She stood over him a moment more and, sure the eye had closed, she smiled slightly and moved away. At the door, she saw a woman standing by the nurses' station. She was a few years older than Jessica and looked in far worse shape. The woman's eyes were full of fear and Jessica intuitively knew who this was and she walked straight over to her. "It's okay," she murmured, holding her hand out.

  "Oh, God," the woman said in a southern drawl, nearly grabbing Jessica's hand. "I just don't know what to say."

  "I bear him no ill will."

  "They told me you saved my husband's life, even though he—They said you hid him and kept him alive."

  "We kind of looked out for each other," Jessica said, smiling. In a moment, Mrs. Denton was sobbing on her shoulder, saying over and over, "I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry."

  29

  '

  “You don't have to do this," Will whispered to Jessica. "We can just leave right now." "Tell him to shut up, will you?" she asked Agent Kunsa. "Or he's going to talk me out of it."

  "Please shut up," Kunsa begged.

  "Now, tell me again, what do you want me to get him to say?" "Anything," Kunsa said. "But he may well do exactly what he's done thus far, which is to just sit there."

  "Not with me he won't," Jessica promised. She took a nervous intake of breath and let it out slowly. "50 who else will be in there?"

  "We'll all be just on the other side of the glass." "Cool, like the movies." She took another sharp breath. "Okay, let's do it."

  Agent Kunsa led her down a green corridor that smelled like Lysol. They stopped at a heavy metal door with a window. He looked in and then opened the door, holding it open for Jessica. As they had agreed, Jessica came in with no introduction, simply breezing past Kunsa to stand in front of James Plattener, aka Leopold.

  He had a bandage on his head and the green prison fatigues made him look clammier than she remembered. Otherwise he looked much the same, neat and tidy and fastidious to a fault. Upon her entrance, however, his eyes had widened and his head had kicked back in blatant surprise.

  "Hi, Leopold," Jessica said in one of her more alluring tones of voice. "It's a wig," she explained, touching her hair. "But it's not bad, is it? Until mine grows back?" And then Jessica smiled, for Leopold's eyes broke away from her to look at the wall behind her. And so she knew she still had a bead on him.

  "I came to see how you were doing," she said, pulling out a chair and sitting down. She held up her bandaged hand. "They say it's going to be all right. I'm having surgery again next week."

  Leopold swallowed, eyes still behind her.

  "I saw Hurt Guy yesterday," she continued. "You know, the kidnapper you saved me from. I think he's going to live. They don't, but I do. And so you won't have that murder charge to contend with. And it's not like you really kidnapped me, is it?"

  His eyes came skittering back to look at the wig again, at her face briefly, before skittering back to the wall.

  "I told them that you were, you know, courting me. That you saved me, and then were keeping me safe. And we were getting to know each other while I was there." She looked down to her lap and said almost shyly, "They told me you had gotten your house ready for me."

  Now he looked at her.

  "Is that true, Leopold?" she asked gently. "Did you have a room ready for me if I wanted to come live with you? A room with all your mother's lovely things?"

  He hesitated and then nodded, his eyes moving back to the wall.

  "That was sweet, thank you," she said. She gestured conversationally. "But I've got to tell you, though, Leopold, you've got a ton of trouble on your hands about that woman's body in the storage locker." She looked at him. "I told them I didn't know anything about it and I was sure you didn't, either."

  Leopold looked down at the table in front of him, his hand starting to jerk

  "I said that the only time you ever hurt anybody it was because that person was hurting me and you were protecting me."

  Still looking down at the table, he nodded.

  "You don't know who that woman is, do you? The body they found?" He didn't answer; he didn't look up. "Are you embarrassed because you don't want me to know that I'm not the only woman you ever loved?"

  No reaction.

  "I didn't really expect you to have not been with anyone else," she said. "You know, you being an eligible bachelor and all. And you're very smart and you make a good living and you were very good to your mother and everything. I figured there had been lots of girls who liked you before I ever came along."

  His eyes skittered up. And then down. And then back up. "Y-y-y-you did?"

  "They say she was very attractive, Leopold."

  He shrugged, noncommittal, eyes falling back to the table again.

  "Well, anyway, I just wanted to tip you off that that's going to be the problem for you, that woman's body they found. But I told them somebody else probably put it there. I didn't think you had anything to do with it."

  They sat there in silence a while.

  "They are still running reruns of your show," Leopold said quietly.

  Jessica looked at him incredulously. "You get to watch TV in this place?"

  He nodded, daring to look at her for a moment. "When will you be back on?"

  She arched her eyebrows. "But I'm not going back on TV, Leopold. I'm not doing the show anymore."

  His eyes widened and he looked at her with a panicked expression. "Wha-wha-wha-"

  "What?" she said for him.

  "What do you mean?" he sputtered.

  "I mean I'm not going on television anymore."

  "Bu-bu-bu-bu-bu-"

  "But—“

  "—Yu-you have to!" He held his hands out, jerked back by the chains on them. "You have to, Jessica!"

  "Why?"

  "Because!" He looked at her, cringing. "How am I going to see you?"

  "Mother of God," Will said through clenched teeth in the observation room. "You've got to get her out of there."

  "I know it's hard," Kunsa said, holding him by the arm. "Let her do what's she doing. She's knows this guy better than we do."

  "Well, let's see," Jessica said. "Maybe I could come and visit you once in a while."

  He jumped up and did his facing-the-wall trick, keeping his back to her. "W-w-would you really come?"

  "What the hell is he doing?" Hepplewhite wondered out loud.

  "He's got a hard-on probably," Kunsa said. "And he doesn't want her to see it. Our shrink says it has something to do with his mother."

  "Come on, you guys, get her out of there," Will pleaded.

  "The thing is," Jessica was saying, "they're not going to let me see you, Leopold, until you come clean with them. And we clear you with that body they found. And then there's poor Bea. You and I know how she was hurting me, but you haven't told them your side yet."

  "She was a whore," he said to the wall.

  Jessica leaned forward. "Excuse me?"

  "She was a whore. And she was hurting you, Jessica. She would do anything for money."

  "They think you paid her ten thousand dollars to help you stalk me," Jessica said.

  "I never stalked you," he said quietly.
r />   "Right. But this is what they think, Leopold. They think you paid Bea ten thousand dollars to help you get into West End."

  "She let me set some things up. Like the magnetic field in the control room so I could leave you my present."

  Jessica smiled. "That really was pretty terrific, Leopold, I've got to say. Nobody could figure that one out. Did she put the letter on the chair on my set for you? Do you remember? That letter left for me on the set?"

  "I never put a letter on the set. I would never break your concentration before a show." He looked over his shoulder. "You know what notes I wrote."

  "Yes. I do. But they don't really get it yet, I'm afraid. I mean, they'd like to think someone forged your name on some of those notes, and that someone else masterminded the kidnapping, but right now, Leopold, with Hurt Guy so banged up, they don't have witnesses and they don't have any hard evidence. So right now they're going to try and hang it all on you. And that's why, if we don't sort this out, Leopold, I don't think they'll ever let me visit you again."

  "They are so stupid," Leopold told the wall. "You'd be dead if I had not saved you, Jessica."

  "They think you just used Bea and then killed her," Jessica continued. "But I don't believe that, Leopold. I believe she must have done something very bad to provoke you. Was it because Bea was selling items about me to the tabloids?"

  Leopold wheeled around, furious.

  "Look, he does have an erection," Hepplewhite said.

  "Oh, this is sick, get her out of there," Will said.

  "No, wait, wait, wait," Kunsa said, blocking his way.

  "I paid her ten thousand dollars."

  "But, Leopold, they say she threatened to turn you in, and that's why you killed her." Leopold shouted. "I did not kill Bea Blakely!"

  Jessica blinked. "You didn't?”

  "No!"

  "Well, if you didn't kill her, Leopold, who did?"

  "The man posing as me. Her boyfriend."

  "Her boyfriend? What boyfriend?"

  "Her boyfriend. Her lover. She had one at West End. I used to hear them in your office."