Lightning Read Free Page B

respond to none of Markwell's questions. He lay on the bed, staring at the ceiling, so intent on his thoughts that he seldom moved.
    As the doctor sobered, a throbbing headache began to torment him. As usual his hangover was an excuse for even greater self-pity than that which had driven him to drink.
    Eventually the intruder looked at his wristwatch. "Eleven-thirty. I'll be going now." He got off the bed, came to the chair, and again drew the knife from beneath his coat.
    Markwell tensed.
    "I'm going to saw partway through your ropes, Doctor. If you struggle with them for half an hour or so, you'll be able to free yourself. Which gives me time enough to get out of here."
    As the man stooped behind the chair and set to work, Markwell expected to feel the blade slip between his ribs.
    But in less than a minute the stranger put the knife away and went to the bedroom door. "You do have a chance to redeem yourself, Doctor. I think you're too weak to do it, but I hope I'm wrong."
    Then he walked out.
    For ten minutes, as Markwell struggled to free himself, he heard occasional noises downstairs. Evidently the intruder was searching for valuables. Although he had seemed mysterious, perhaps he was nothing but a burglar with a singularly odd modus operandi.
    Markwell finally broke loose at twenty-five past midnight. His wrists were severely abraded, bleeding.
    Though he had not heard a sound from the first floor in half an hour, he took his pistol from the nightstand drawer and descended the stairs with caution. He went to his office in the professional wing, where he expected to find drugs missing from his medical supplies; neither of the two tall, white cabinets had been touched.
    He hurried into his study, convinced that the flimsy wall safe had been opened. The safe was unbreached.
    Baffled, turning to leave, he saw empty whiskey, gin, tequila, and vodka bottles piled in the bar sink. The intruder had paused only to locate the liquor supply and pour it down the drain.
    A note was taped to the bar mirror. The intruder had printed his message in neat block letters:
    IF YOU DON'T STOP DRINKING, IF YOU DON'T LEARN TO ACCEPT LENNY'S DEATH,
 YOU WILL PUT A GUN IN YOUR MOUTH AND BLOW YOUR BRAINS OUT WITHIN
ONE YEAR. THIS IS NOT A PREDICTION. THIS IS A FACT.
    Clutching the note and the gun, Markwell looked around the empty room, as if the stranger was still there, unseen, a ghost that could choose at will between visibility and invisibility. "Who are you?" he demanded. "Who the
hell
are you?"
    Only the wind at the window answered him, and its mournful moan had no meaning that he could discern.

    At eleven o'clock the next morning, after an early meeting with the funeral director regarding Janet's body, Bob Shane returned to the county hospital to see his newborn daughter. After he donned a cotton gown, a cap, and a surgical mask, and after thoroughly scrubbing his hands under a nurse's direction, he was permitted into the nursery, where he gently lifted Laura from her cradle.
    Nine other newborns shared the room. All of them were cute in one way or another, but Bob did not believe he was unduly prejudiced in his judgment that Laura Jean was the cutest of the crop. Although the popular image of an angel required blue eyes and blond hair, and though Laura had brown eyes and hair, she was nevertheless angelic in appearance. During the ten minutes that he held her, she did not cry; she blinked, squinted, rolled her eyes, yawned. She looked pensive, too, as if perhaps she knew that she was motherless and that she and her father had only each other in a cold, difficult world.
    A viewing window, through which relatives could see the newborns, filled one wall. Five people were gathered at the glass. Four were smiling, pointing, and making funny faces to entertain the babies.
    The fifth was a blond man wearing a navy peacoat and standing with his hands in his pockets. He did not smile or point or make faces. He was staring at Laura.
    After a few