The Book of Elements Read online

  "You don’t look so well. Are you feeling sick?" Kent asked politely.

  "No, I’m not sick. I just haven’t been eating and sleeping well, and it is finally catching up with me. I’ll be all right in a few minutes, as soon as this spell passes." Caeli did not mention the numbness or the dizziness.

  "Is there anything I can do?"

  "That’s nice of you, but really, I'm fine. You have other places to be and business to tend, I'm sure. No need to wait on me."

  Caeli got an odd impression from the way he looked at her, like a lion ready to pounce, that made her suddenly uncomfortable. It must be in her head, because when she glanced up, the look was gone. She tried to stand up once more to see him out the door, but must have tried to rise too quickly and upset her equilibrium. Caeli fell back onto the couch.

  Kent was at her side again.

  "Maybe I should drive you to the emergency room," he suggested. His words sounded genuine, but his mannerisms were detached, and the lion returned.

  "No, but I would appreciate if you could get me a glass of water and a wet cloth from the kitchen. I think that will do the trick." Caeli wanted to get him out of the room, away from her for a minute. There was a phone on the table at the end of the couch, and she wanted to call Salma for help. Salma lived only a few miles away and could get there quickly if Caeli could reach her.

  Caeli thought she heard a thud as if something hit the floor in the other room. Maybe Kent knocked over a chair or dropped a cup, but it was difficult to figure out what it may have been because it sounded so distant to her increasingly befuddled mind. Whatever it was, hopefully, it would slow him down.

  As soon as Kent left the room, Caeli grabbed the phone with her right hand and pressed the speed dial number for her friend. One ring, two rings, and the answering machine picked up. She hung up quickly and tried Salma’s cell phone number, but also got transferred to her voicemail. She left a quick message and hung up. Caeli intended to call 911 when she spotted the edge of a piece of paper that wiggled its way out from underneath the base of the phone where she left it the night before.

  Caeli sat the portable phone unit down on the couch beside her so that she could retrieve the card with her right hand, which thankfully was not yet numb like the left. She placed the business card on her lap and snatched up the handset again. With trembling fingers, she quickly dialed the number written on the back.

  A man’s voice answered cheerfully, "Hello."

  "Captain Erickson? This is Mrs. Harding. I think I need your help. Ssomething’s wrong. I’m home and the guy…the check guy is here too," she whispered in an almost babbling manner, noticing with a fright the slur and confusion in her own words. Her thoughts got jumbled as she tried to explain her situation to the captain. "Insurance money. I feel heavy, can’t feel my leg, and he isss creepy, and I don’t feel not ssso well. Ssomethin’s not right." She heard her own words slowing down and it was difficult to make them come out correctly. He must think she'd been drinking.

  "Don’t worry, Lass. I’ll have someone over there in a few minutes. You just hang on until then, ok?"

  "Ok." Caeli hung up the phone without considering if he might have wanted her to stay on the line. Just then, the room started to spin within her blurred vision, and Caeli felt a heaviness pressing in on her body. What has happening to her?

  Kent came strolling into the room with a glass of water in one hand and a wet dish towel in the other, not noticing the trail of dirt that Caeli saw him leave across the floor. He must have bumped into one of the plant stands and spilled the dirt out of it. The moist soil clung loosely to his shoes and left a trail behind as he returned to the living room.

  Caeli reached for the wet dish towel, but it slipped from her numb fingers as she tried to grasp it. Kent offered her the water glass, but she waved it away, trying to thank him and insisting that he should leave. All she needed was a little rest. But Kent stood nearby and watched her for few minutes with a self-satisfied smirk on his face.

  Kent drew himself up to the side of the couch again and leaned close to her. By now, Caeli could barely move.

  "Well, well. It looks like you're in a bit of a predicament. You don’t seem to be able to move very well. Are you finding it hard to breathe yet?" He could tell that the toxin had taken effect, though not as quickly or as thoroughly as he expected. She should have been unconscious by now. Kent was impressed. She must have a lot of will power to fight it this long.

  "Ah, there now, don’t look so worried. I’m not going to hurt you if you cooperate. I just need the answers to a few simple questions, and then I have this sweet little concoction that will let us pretend like this entire, ugly mess never happened. What do you say? That doesn’t sound so bad does it?"

  Kent lifted her now limp and unresisting body, and carried her over one shoulder toward the front door. He noticed out of the corner of his eye that a small piece of paper fell from her hand as it hung useless behind his back. Just as he cracked the front door open and started to step out, he heard sirens. Kent could see flashing lights pulling into the driveway, and he knew what Caeli had done.

  "Damn! You clever little vixen. Did you call the police while I was out of the room?" Kent cursed at her, but could not help admiring her determination.

  "Well, I guess our chat is going to have to wait. If I take off with you now, there will be no end to the interruptions. No matter; we still have a little time."

  Kent closed and bolted the front door. Walking back to the couch, he laid Caeli down and positioned her as if she might have fallen asleep. They would never be able to tell any different. By the morning, when she would finally wake, the toxin would have metabolized in her system, and Caeli would not remember anything from the prior forty eight hours.

  He left her there and walked toward the crudely repaired back door. Before he could step out into the evening air, Kent seemed to vanish. He did not need a car. He employed another method of travel, taught to him by his mentor. Kent used it rarely, though, because it was incredibly difficult for him to perform. He ensured that the police would find the same black van in which he arrived parked on the side of the road near her driveway, just outside the gate. If they did assume anything criminal happened, they would mistakenly believe that it had been perpetrated by the escaped felon returning to the scene of the crime; perhaps making another failed kidnapping attempt.

  CHAPTER 16

  The first officer to arrive on the scene was none other than Ben's partner, Officer Caldwell, who assisted with Caeli's interview the night before. The front door was locked and there was no response to his pounding. For some reason, he remembered that the door had two deadbolts, so he did not attempt to force it open. He moved rapidly to the window to see if he could tell what might be happening inside.

  Through the white, sheer panels that covered each pane on the front windows, Caldwell could see the lady lying on the couch. He could not tell if she was injured. He could not see anyone else in the room, but that didn’t mean anything. Caldwell worked his way around to the back door, which he knew was damaged in the first abduction attempt. He forced his way inside through the temporarily rigged barricade.

  Once inside, Officer Caldwell drew his sidearm and began a search of the house, starting in the living room, where he paused long enough to make sure the lady was alive and not in immediate distress. He went from room to room, looking for any sign of an intruder, but found nothing. The rest of the house was empty. He used the hand radio attached to the shoulder of his uniform to alert the officers arriving in the second patrol car.

  Caldwell opened the front door and spoke briefly with two men dressed in similar uniforms. While they spoke, another car sped up the driveway, skidded to a halt beside the police cars, and a woman jumped out. With her hands in the air and her rich, black hair flowing behind her as she rushed toward the door, she identified herself to the two officers blocking her entry as a doctor and a good friend of the lady inside.

  "Ma'am, we canno
t let you inside," one of the officers responded to her pleadings to be permitted to check on her friend.

  Salma saw a third officer inside, checking on Caeli's condition. He did not see any obvious injuries, but he was not able to rouse her. Her breathing seemed steady but sounded labored. She did not appear to be in any other pain or distress. The officer returned to the door and questioned the agitated lady waiting out front.

  "Ma'am, can you tell me what you're doing here?"

  "I told them already! My name is Dr. Salma Yamanu, and Caeli is my friend. She called me, said she needed my help. I’m the one who called you guys. Please! Tell me if she’s ok. What has happened? I’m a doctor. Please, you must let me check on her," Salma insisted.

  Salma’s questions were bordering on frantic. When she heard the message Caeli left on her voicemail, Salma raced to her car, jumped in, and rushed to aid her friend. She was already worried about Caeli’s state of mind in the wake of everything else that happened recently. When Salma arrived earlier that morning and accompanied Caeli to the police station, she had barely recognized her usually happy friend.

  In route, Salma called the police and reported a possible home invasion, telling the dispatcher that her friend said someone was in her house. She was not aware that Caeli succeeded in reaching the cops, too. Now Salma was annoyed that she was not permitted to help Caeli, who lay unmoving no more than fifteen feet away.

  Salma had been on the other side of town visiting a patient when she got the oddest interruption. She heard water running in the patient’s kitchen, where she left her purse on the table. Salma left the man’s bedside and went to investigate, only to find a stream of water flowing from the kitchen faucet into the sink. Looking closer, Salma saw the cold water handle was pulled forward, slightly opening the valve that permitted the water to run freely. She reached to turn it off.

  At that very moment, Salma's cell phone began to vibrate as if receiving an incoming call. It shook so hard that her handbag began to skitter across the table. That was odd, but what was even more strange was that she had turned her cell phone off before she entered the house. Its signal might have disrupted the electrical signals of the equipment currently sustaining her patient on his deathbed. Salma even double checked to be certain it was powered down.

  Sure, she heard stories of pressure buildup in pipes causing faucets to work loose and turn themselves on, but never a cell phone; so she decided she must not have turned it off after all. Salma reached into her pocketbook and noticed on the screen that she had a new voicemail message and that she missed a call from Caeli. She decided to listen to the message before finishing up and taking her leave of the patient. She stepped outside to play the message.

  Caeli’s faltering voice alarmed Salma, and the brief description made it worse. The hesitation in her words and slurring of her speech sounded like symptoms of a stroke, but Caeli had no medical history of anything like that. Caeli also said that someone was in the house with her, but she could not understand the name. Maybe she had been drugged. That, too, might explain the way Caeli sounded and the symptoms she described. Either way, Caeli needed her help. Given that it was exceedingly rare for Caeli to ask for assistance, Salma did not intend to let her down now.

  Salma stood her ground on the front steps of Caeli’s house trying to convince the dimwitted officers that she was not an intruder. After all, they saw her arrive and verified her ID. They made it clear to Salma that Caeli was unconscious and could not be roused. Any reasonable person would have erred on the side of caution and allowed a doctor to help, but it was pointless to continue trying to make these lemmings understand.

  While she waited, the officer in the house returned to Caeli's side, looking back and forth between her and the front door where Salma stood. She answered his repeated questions exactly the same each time and tried again to slip passed the fools who barred her access to the interior. None of them saw the man approach from the driveway and walk up to the front door until he was nearly on top of them.

  "Caldwell, what’s going on here?"

  Salma recognized the captain's authoritative voice. When she and Caeli returned from the police station earlier that morning, Captain Erickson insisted on escorting them back to the house and making sure it was secure before he left. They talked briefly in the study while Caeli took care of some business with her insurance agent.

  "Captain, I’m glad to see you. Your men will not let me inside to check on Caeli, and she needs my help."

  The senior officer did not hesitate. He ordered the men to stand aside and let the doctor do her work. Salma rushed to the couch where Caeli lay with the captain following close on her heels.

  "She’s still breathing. There don’t appear to be any physical wounds." Salma tried unsuccessfully to wake Caeli. Remembering the symptoms described in the phone message, she grabbed a small penlight out of her medical kit, which she always carried with her. Salma raised Caeli’s eyelids one after the other and flashed the light into each, looking for clues.

  "Captain, we need to get a blood sample right away. I think she might have been drugged. There is a discoloration in the fluid of her eyes that worries me. Hand me a syringe and a sterilizing wipe out of my bag please." Salma’s years of experience kicked in, and she quickly performed the procedure with practiced skill. Once filled, Salma capped and sealed the vial of blood for transport.

  "If I’m right, then this will probably be out of her system within twenty four hours. Unfortunately, there isn’t anything more we can do to help her until we confirm which particular drug is causing her symptoms. We should get her to the hospital as quickly as possible so that we can be ready to give her the proper medication as soon as we have the test results."

  "I called for an ambulance right after I got off the phone with Officer Caldwell, who I knew could get here faster than anyone else. It should be here any time now, and we’ll get her out of here. Can we possibly get her into a private room at the hospital? I'd like to officially place her in protective custody with guards outside her door around the clock. This time, I won’t take no for an answer. I should have trusted my instincts last time, but I let her talk me out of it, and look where that got her."

  "Don’t beat yourself up over it. You couldn't have known about this. We don’t know exactly what did happen, do we?" Salma tried to assuage some of the captain's guilt. He obviously believed he somehow failed Caeli. Salma liked the noble character she saw in this man.

  "But I did know! Not the specifics, of course, but I knew something was off regarding that first attempt. My instincts told me that would not be the end of it. When she said someone was in the house with her, I knew I messed up."

  "Wait a minute, Captain. Are you saying that you spoke to Caeli? She tried to reach me, too, but I wasn't able to answer. It was the strangest call, but it was her voicemail message that got me here so quickly. She mentioned a person in the house, but I couldn’t understand the name."

  "That confirms it then. If Mrs. Harding had the presence of mind to call both of us, then she knew she was in trouble. I think once you run your tests, you’ll find that this is more than a run-of-the-mill medical problem."

  Salma could only nod in response. She had known it the minute she saw Caeli lying there in such a composed manner. For starters, Salma had been her physician and close friend for many years. She knew Caeli's medical history very well. Caeli didn’t have any history or indicators for heart attack or stroke or other such conditions. She was a very healthy person. Furthermore, if Caeli suffered some sudden onset of such a condition, she would not have ended up in such a serene position on the couch. Caeli looked as if she had been deliberately placed there to give the appearance that she fell asleep peacefully. Neither of those more serious conditions would have allowed her that dignity, and she was definitely not sleeping. Salma and Captain Erickson reached the same conclusion.

  As the captain stood straight and stepped a few feet away so the doctor could continue to monitor Caeli’s
condition, he called for his partner.

  "Yes sir?"

  "Caldwell, did you happen to notice these dirt smudges on the floor? What do you make of those?" Captain Erickson asked, not because he didn’t know the answer, but because he wanted to know if it was already too late for them to be of any use.

  "Not exactly, Sir. I noticed the dirt on the floor as I cleared the house, and tried to avoid stepping in it, but I have not yet had time to start reviewing the scene. What do you think happened? Is this a crime scene or an accident?"

  "Oh, this is most definitely a crime scene. I want you to begin securing and documenting it, and then make sure the lab techs pay special attention to that dirt. I think it may have been tracked by the intruder. Look for footprints. The trail begins outside the kitchen, leads to the couch, moves to the front door, and then toward the back."

  Caldwell sent one of the officers to search the perimeter, and he set the other to keep watch at the front door. The captain gave orders not to let anyone else inside except the paramedics. Finally, young Caldwell took out his notebook and ink pen and began writing as he moved through the ground level of the house trying to figure out what might have happened.

  By the time the EMTs placed Caeli on a stretcher with special instructions from Dr. Yamanu, who was going to ride along with her, the captain finished making arrangements to secure the premises and have officers meet the ambulance at the hospital to begin an immediate protective detail. He put on a pair of thick, latex gloves retrieved from a forensic kit he kept in his jeep. The captain went back inside the house to take another look at the scene himself.

  He bent down to place a yellow numbered evidence marker beside his business card, which lay on the floor near the front door. He then circled the couch, locating the wet dish towel and the glass of water on the end table. By each of these he placed additional numbered plastic cards.

  On the way to the kitchen, Ben saw where a small planter box had been knocked off its stand and landed on its side, splattering dirt all the way across the walkway between the kitchen and the living room. Its position seemed odd. The stand did not look like it would have been easy to trip over or bump into. It was not near the walkway at all. The guy would have gone several steps out of his way to turn it over. Captain Erickson didn't remember it being turned over during the break in the night before, but he would double check his notes to be certain. Either way, the perp stepped through the soil leaving a clear trail of his movements. He must have left in quite a hurry or he surely would have done a better job concealing such an obvious piece of evidence.