The Crush Read online

  The Crush

  Sandra Brown

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  Prologue

  Dr. Lee Howell’s home telephone rang at 2:07 A.M.

  His wife, Myrna, who was sleeping beside him, grumbled into her pillow. “Who’s that? You’re not on call tonight.”

  The Howells had been in bed barely an hour. Their poolside party had broken up around midnight. By the time they’d gathered up the debris and empty margarita glasses, stored the perishable leftovers in the fridge, and visited their sleeping son’s room to give him a good-night kiss, it was nearing one o’clock.

  As they undressed they had congratulated themselves on hosting a successful get-together. The grilled steaks had been only a little tough, and the new electric mosquito zapper had sizzled all evening, keeping the insect population to a minimum. All things considered, a good party.

  The Howells had felt mellow but agreed that they were too exhausted even to think about having sex, so they’d kissed each other good night, then turned to their respective sides of the bed and gone to sleep.

  Despite the shortness of time Dr. Howell had been asleep, his slumber, assisted by several margaritas, had been deep and dreamless. Yet when the telephone rang he was instantly awake, alert, and responsive, as years of conditioning had trained him to be. He reached for the phone. “Sorry, hon. A patient may have taken a bad turn.”

  She nodded grudging assent into her pillow. Her husband’s reputation as an excellent surgeon wasn’t based solely on his operating-room skills. He was dedicated to his patients and interested in their well-being before, during, and after their surgeries.

  Although it was unusual for him to be telephoned at home in the middle of the night when he wasn’t the doctor on call, it wasn’t altogether rare. This inconvenience was one of the small prices Mrs. Howell was willing to pay for the privilege of being married to the man she loved who also happened to be in demand and well respected in his field.

  “Hello?”

  He listened for several moments, then kicked off the covers and swung his feet to the floor. “How many?” Then, “Jesus. Okay, all right. I’m on my way.” He hung up and left the bed.

  “What?”

  “I’ve gotta go.” He didn’t turn on the lamp as he moved toward the chair where he’d left the pair of Dockers he’d been wearing earlier in the evening. “Everybody on staff has been called in.”

  Mrs. Howell came up on one elbow. “What’s happened?”

  Serving a busy metropolitan area, Tarrant General Hospital was constantly on alert to handle major disasters. The staff had been trained to provide immediate emergency treatment to victims of airplane crashes, tornadoes, terrorist attacks. By comparison this night’s emergency was mundane.

  “Big pileup in the mix-master. Several vehicles involved.” Howell shoved his bare feet into a pair of Dock-Siders, which he loved and his missus despised. He had owned those shoes for as long as she had known him and refused to part with them, saying the leather was just now molding to his feet and becoming comfortable.

  “A real mess. A tanker trailer overturned and it’s burning,” he said as he pulled his golf shirt over his head. “Dozens of casualties, and most are being sent to our emergency room.”

  He strapped on his wristwatch and clipped his pager to the waistband of his slacks, then leaned down to kiss her. Missing her mouth, he caught her between nose and cheek. “If I’m still there at breakfast time, I’ll call and update you. Go back to sleep.”

  As her head resettled into the pillow, she murmured, “Be careful.”

  “Always am.”

  Before he got downstairs, she had already fallen back to sleep.

  * * *

  Malcomb Lutey finished reading Chapter 3 of his newest science-fiction thriller. It was about an airborne virus that within hours of being inhaled turned the internal organs of human beings into a black, oily goo.

  As he read about the unaware yet doomed blond Parisian hooker, he picked at the pimple on his cheek, which his mother had admonished him to leave alone. “That only makes it worse, Malcomb. Until you start picking at it, it’s not even noticeable.”

  Yeah, right. The pimple was way beyond “noticeable.” It was the current peak on the ever-evolving, knobby red mountain range that comprised his face. This severe, scar-producing acne had ushered in Malcomb’s adolescence and for the past fifteen years had defied every treatment, topical or oral, either prescribed or purchased over the counter.

  His mother blamed this chronic condition on poor diet, poor hygiene, and poor sleep habits. On more than one occasion she had hinted that masturbation might be the cause. Whatever her current hypothesis, it invariably suggested that Malcomb was somehow responsible.

  The frustrated dermatologist who had valiantly but unsuccessfully treated him had offered up different, but as many, theories on why Malcomb was cursed with the facial topography of a Halloween mask. Bottom line: Nobody knew.

  As if the acne weren’t enough to keep his self-esteem at gutter level, Malcomb’s physique was another misfortune. He was pencil thin. Supermodels who were paid to look undernourished would envy his metabolism, which seemed to have a profound aversion to calories.

  Last but no less genetically dire was his kinky, carrot-colored hair. The fiery thatch had the density and texture of steel wool and had been the bane of his existence long before the onset of acute acne.

  Malcomb’s odd appearance, and the shyness it had bred, made him feel a misfit.

  Except at his job. It was night work. And it was solitary. Darkness and solitude were his two favorite things. Darkness dulled his vibrant coloring to a more normal hue and helped to obscure his acne. Solitude was part and parcel of being a security guard.

  His mother didn’t approve of his career choice. She constantly nagged him to consider making a change. “Out there all by yourself night after night,” she often said, tsking and shaking her head. “If you work alone, how’re you ever going to meet anybody?”

  Duh, Mother. That’s the point. This was Malcomb’s standard comeback—although he lacked the courage to say it out loud.

  Working the graveyard shift meant fewer times he had to conduct a conversation with someone who was trying hard not to stare at his face. Working through the night also allowed him to sleep during most of the hated daylight hours when his hair took on the brilliance of a Day-Glo orange Magic Marker. He dreaded the two nights a week he was off, when he had to endure his mother’s harping about his being his own worst enemy. The recurring theme of her lectures was that if he were more open to people he would have more friends.

  “You’ve got a lot to offer, Malcomb. Why don’t you go out like other people your age? If you were friendlier, you might even meet a nice young lady.”

  Sure he would.

  Mother scoffed at him for reading science fiction but she was the one living in a dream world.

  His post at Tarrant General Hospital was the doctors’ parking lot. To the other guards it was the least desirable post, but Malcomb preferred it. There wasn’t a lot of activity at night. Business didn’t pick up, so to speak, until early morning when the doctors began to trickle in. Most hadn’t even arrived when he clocked out at seven in the
morning.

  However, this being a Friday night, there were more cars in the lot than on a weeknight. Invariably the weekend increased the traffic in the emergency room, so doctors came and went at all hours. Just a few minutes ago Dr. Howell had driven up to the gate and disengaged the arm with the transmitter he kept clipped to his sun visor.

  Dr. Howell was okay. He never looked past Malcomb as though he weren’t there, and sometimes he even waved at him as he passed the guard shack. Howell didn’t get all bent out of shape if the arm failed to disengage and Malcomb had to release it manually from inside the shack. Dr. Howell seemed like a regular guy, not snotty at all. Not like some of those rich assholes who acted so hoity-toity as they drummed their fingers on their padded steering wheels, impatiently waiting for the arm of the gate to rise so they could speed through as though they had someplace to be and something to do that was real important.

  Malcomb read the first page of Chapter 4. As expected, the Parisian blond hooker succumbed mid-coitus. She died in the throes of agony and grotesque vomiting, but Malcomb’s sympathies were with her hapless customer. Talk about a major bummer.

  He turned the book facedown on the counter, straightened and stretched his spine, and sought a more comfortable position on his stool. As he did, he happened to catch his reflection in the window glass. The pimple was growing by the second. Already it was a monument of pus. Disgusted by his image, he focused his eyes on the parking lot beyond.

  Mercury-vapor lights were strategically spaced so that most of the lot was well lighted. The shadows were deep only beneath the landscaping that formed its perimeter. Nothing had changed since the last time Malcomb had looked out, except for the addition of Dr. Howell’s silver Beemer—third row, second car. He could see the gleaming roof of it. Dr. Howell kept his car in showroom condition. Malcomb would too if he could afford a set of wheels like that.

  He returned to his novel but had only read a couple of paragraphs when something odd occurred to him. He looked toward Dr. Howell’s Beemer again. His pale eyebrows furrowed with puzzlement. How had he missed Dr. Howell when he had walked past the shack?

  In order to reach the sidewalk that led to the nearest employee entrance, one had to come within yards of the shack. It had become second nature for Malcomb to note when someone came past, either heading toward the building or returning to his car. There was a correlation. One either left the building and then shortly drove away in his car, or drove into the parking lot and then shortly passed the shack on his way into the building. Malcomb subconsciously kept track.

  Curious, he marked his page and set the book beneath the counter next to the sack lunch his mother had packed for him. He tugged the brim of his uniform hat a little lower. If he were forced to talk to someone, even someone as easygoing as Dr. Howell, he didn’t want to subject him to his unsightly face any more than necessary. The brim of his hat provided an extra layer of concealing shadow.

  As he stepped from the shack’s air-conditioned interior he didn’t notice any decrease in the outdoor temperature since making his last rounds. August in Texas. Almost as hot in the wee hours as at high noon. Heat from the asphalt came up through the rubber soles of his shoes, which made virtually no sound as he walked past the first row of cars, then the second. At the end of the third row, he paused.

  For the first time since taking this job almost five years ago, he felt a prickle of apprehension. Nothing untoward had ever taken place on his shift. A couple months ago a guard in the main building had had to subdue a man who was threatening a nurse with a butcher knife. Last New Year’s Eve a guard had been summoned to break up a fistfight between fathers over which of their newborns had been the first baby of the new year and therefore winner of several prizes.

  Thankfully, Malcomb hadn’t been involved in either incident. Reportedly they had drawn crowds. He would have been mortified by the attention. The only crisis he’d ever experienced while on duty was a dressing-down from a neurosurgeon who had returned to his Jag to discover that it had a flat tire. For reasons still unknown to Malcomb, the surgeon had held him responsible.

  So far, his shifts had been luckily uneventful. He couldn’t account for his uneasiness now. Suddenly his good friend Darkness no longer seemed as benevolent. He glanced around warily, even looking back behind him the way he’d just come.

  The parking lot was as silent and still as a tomb—which at the moment wasn’t a comforting analogy. Nothing moved, not even the leaves on the surrounding trees. Nothing appeared out of the ordinary.

  Nevertheless, Malcomb’s voice quavered slightly as he called out, “Dr. Howell?”

  He didn’t want to sneak up on the man. In a well-lighted room crowded with people, his face was startling to the point of being downright scary. If he were to come upon someone unexpectedly in the dark the poor guy might die of fright.

  “Dr. Howell? Are you there?”

  Receiving no answer, Malcomb figured it was safe to step around the first car in the row and check out Dr. Howell’s Beemer, just to put his own mind at ease. He had missed him; it was as simple as that. When the doctor walked past he must’ve been concentrating a little too hard on what the blond hooker was doing to her john before she went into paroxysms of pain and started puking black gunk all over the guy. Or maybe he’d been distracted by the newest volcanic formation on his cheek. Or maybe Dr. Howell hadn’t taken the paved path and instead had slipped through the shrubbery. He was a tall but slight fellow. He was slender enough to have squeezed through the hedge without creating much of a disturbance.

  Whatever, Dr. Howell had slipped past him in the dark, is all.

  Before rounding the first car in the row, just for good measure, Malcomb switched on his flashlight.

  It was discovered later beneath the first car in the row where it had come to rest after rolling several feet. The glass was shattered, the casing dented. But the batteries would have done that annoying pink bunny proud. The bulb was still burning.

  What was spotlighted in the beam of Malcomb’s flashlight had frightened him more than anything he’d ever read in a science-fiction thriller. It wasn’t as grotesque, bloody, or bizarre. But it was real.

  Chapter 1

  “Nice place you’ve got here.”

  “I like it.” Ignoring the snide and trite remark, Wick dumped the pot of boiled shrimp into a colander that had never seen the inside of a Williams-Sonoma store. It was white plastic, stained brown. He didn’t remember how he’d come by it, but he figured it had been left behind by a previous occupant of the rental house, which his friend obviously found lacking.

  After the hot water had drained through, he set the colander in the center of the table, grabbed a roll of paper towels, and offered his guest another beer. He uncapped two bottles of Red Stripe, straddled the chair across the table from Oren Wesley, and said, “Dig in.”

  Oren conscientiously ripped a paper towel from the roll and spread it over his lap. Wick was on his third shrimp before Oren got around to selecting one. They peeled and ate in silence, sharing a bowl of cocktail sauce for dipping. Oren was careful not to get his white French cuffs in the horseradish-laced red stuff. Wick slurped carelessly and licked his fingers, fully aware that his sloppy table manners annoyed his fastidious friend.

  They dropped the shrimp shells onto the newspaper that Wick had spread over the table, not to protect its hopelessly scarred surface but to keep cleanup to a minimum. The ceiling fan fluttered the corners of this makeshift tablecloth and stirred the spicy aroma of the shrimp boil into the sultry coastal air.

  After a time, Oren remarked, “Pretty good.”

  Wick shrugged. “A no-brainer.”

  “Local shrimp?”

  “Buy it fresh off the boat soon as it docks. The skipper gives me a discount.”

  “Decent of him.”

  “Not at all. We made a deal.”

  “What’s your end of it?”

  “To stay away from his sister.”

  Wick noshed into ano
ther plump shrimp and tossed the shell onto the growing heap. He grinned across at Oren, knowing that his friend was trying to decide whether or not he was telling the truth. He was a bullshit artist of renown, and even his best friend couldn’t always distinguish his truth from his fiction.

  He tore a paper towel from the roll and wiped his hands and mouth. “Is that all you can think of to talk about, Oren? The price of shrimp? You drove all the way down here for that?”

  Oren avoided looking at him as he belched silently behind his fist. “Let me help you clean up.”

  “Leave it. Bring your beer.”

  A dirty table wasn’t going to make much difference to the condition of Wick’s house—which barely qualified as such. It was a three-room shack that looked like it would succumb to any Gulf breeze above five knots. It was shelter from the elements—barely. The roof leaked when it rained. The air conditioner was a window unit that was so insufficient Wick rarely bothered turning it on. He rented the place by the week, paid in advance. So far he’d written the slumlord sixty-one checks.

  The screen door squeaked on its corroded hinges as they moved through it onto the rear deck. Nothing fancy—the plank surface was rough, wide enough only to accommodate two metal lawn chairs of vintage fifties style. Salt air had eaten through numerous coats of paint, the last being a sickly pea green. Wick took the glider. Oren looked dubiously at the rusty seat of the stationary chair.

  “It won’t bite,” Wick said. “Might stain your suit britches, but I promise that the view’ll be worth a dry-cleaning bill.”

  Oren sat down gingerly, and in a few minutes Wick’s promise was fulfilled. The western horizon became striated with vivid color ranging from bloodred to brilliant orange. Purple thunderheads on the horizon looked like rolling hills rimmed with gold.

  “Something, isn’t it?” Wick said. “Now tell me who’s crazy.”

  “I never thought you were crazy, Wick.”

  “Just a little nutty for shucking it all and moving down here.”