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“Immediately. Paramedics were there within minutes.”
“How did you explain her condition?”
“I have a circular staircase in my apartment. I told them she’d gone up to use the powder room and had fallen on her way down.”
“And they believed that?”
“Probably not. But they left it to the ER staff to summon a policeman. He didn’t believe the staircase story either and urged Marcia to identify her attacker by writing down his name. She refused.”
With limited strength, Marcia squeezed Griff’s hand. He leaned down over her again and gently lifted a strand of hair away from a patch of her scalp that had been shaved to allow for sutures. “Who was it, Marcia? Who were you seeing after me?”
Barely moving, she shook her head. She applied more pressure to his hand, and he realized she wanted him to lean in close enough to hear her speak. He bent low, placing his ear just above her lips.
When he heard the single word she whispered, he jerked his head up and looked down into the single eye she could hold open. She closed it for several seconds, letting him know that he’d heard correctly.
“This was about me?”
She nodded.
Rage surged through him. His veins swelled and pulsed with it. But his voice remained remarkably calm. “He’s going to die.” He said it as a fact, meaning it unequivocally, telling her that she could bank on it. “Stanley Rodarte is going to die.”
Now he understood why she had refused to call the police. Rodarte would have made it understood that accusing him would bring on a reprisal even worse than the beating he’d already given her.
Most sickening was knowing that the only reason Rodarte had victimized Marcia was to send a message to Griff. In that, he’d succeeded. Griff read the message loud and clear. Rodarte wasn’t finished with him yet.
Well, guess what, cocksucker, Griff thought. I’ve only begun with you.
“I’ll make him pay for this,” he vowed to Marcia in a whisper. “I swear to you.”
She pressed his hand. He bent down to her lips again. The garbled sounds came from the back of her throat, but she managed to make her warning understood. “Be careful of him.”
CHAPTER
9
THE CALL CAME EARLY ON A MONDAY MORNING, JUST AS HE was waking up, but before he’d got out of bed. He rolled over, sleepily groped for his new cell phone on the nightstand, and flipped it open. “Hello?”
“Mr. Burkett?”
That woke him up. “Yeah. Here.”
She didn’t identify herself. She didn’t have to. “Would one o’clock today be convenient for you?”
“One o’clock?” Like he had to think about it. Like he might have a conflict. Like he had something else to do. “One o’clock’s fine.”
“Here’s the address.” She gave him a number on Windsor Street. “Got it?”
“Got it.”
She hung up. Griff snapped his phone shut, then lay there clutching it, clutching the fact that they were really going through with it. Then he sat bolt upright. The hitch in his back protested loudly enough to cause him to catch his breath. He threw off the sheet, got out of bed, and, buck naked, went clambering through his apartment until he found a pen and paper to write down the address. He was certain he’d committed it to memory, but he was taking no chances.
He went into the bathroom. Standing at the toilet, he looked down at himself and muttered, “Don’t even think about getting stage fright.”
As expected, he’d passed the physical exam with flying colors. The nurse had come through for him in only two days. The report showed his EKG to be normal, his lungs clear. He had low blood pressure, low cholesterol, and a low PSA—he thought that had something to do with his prostate. His sperm count, by contrast, was high. Excellent.
He’d put the report, along with his cell phone number, in the addressed and stamped envelope Speakman had given him for this purpose, and dropped it into the nearest mailbox.
That had been two weeks ago. Since then, he’d moved to another apartment and acquired a tan.
