Part 50 (2/2)
She clicked off and stared at the road. The George Was.h.i.+ngton Bridge was just ahead. If she broke the speed limit once she hit the West Side Highway, and caught the lights right, she might even beat Stone there.
Chapter 20
_Wednesday, April 8
12:34 P.M.
_
”W.B., we've got a problem,” Karl Van de Vliet said into the microphone. He was in his private office, on the scrambled videophone.
”Kristen's mother showed up just before noon with a pistol, demanding to know where she was. When I tried to take the gun away from her, she accidentally shot herself through the side. Fortunately, it was only a flesh wound, but it took us almost an hour to stabilize her.”
”Christ! Even Kristy thinks she's crazy. Why did she--?”
”Kristen smuggled her a letter somehow. And she came looking for her.”
He thought about how they shouldn't be having this conversation on any kind of phone, even one that was supposedly scrambled. But there was no choice. ”It gets worse. I just called Eight-Eighty Park and they checked her room and Kristen's not there. She was there when Roxanne brought up her breakfast at nine, but n.o.body's seen her since. They a.s.sumed she'd gone back to sleep. n.o.body there has any idea where she went.”
”s.h.i.+t. What am I paying them for? The staff is there for the sole purpose of making sure something like this didn't happen.”
”Well, W.B., that's your part of the show. I'm just trying to practice medicine. In any case, she slipped out somehow. So the thing now is, where did she go?”
”Well, she didn't come here. Or at least she hasn't yet. Depending on how much she can still remember, she might have gone to her old place down in the Village. Maybe she still has a homing instinct. That's probably the first location we ought to check. Jesus, if she gets recognized and starts acting crazy and then Cambridge Pharmaceuticals finds out--”
”W.B., the bigger problem now could be her mother, Katherine. You know her. She's unbalanced but she also still remembers how it all started.
She was actually here a couple of times. If she sees Kristen, then G.o.d help us.”
”Karl, I've got everything--and I do mean everything-- riding on this.
What happened with that Hampton woman? You've got to get started with her. Is she on board yet or what?”
”She was here this morning, but she got temporarily spooked by the gun and the craziness. She'll be back, though.”
”When?”
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