First Thrills - Lee Child [137]
John’s study was slightly different from the converted garage space they had made for him back in Decatur. No flimsy pine paneling buckled off the walls, and the antique leather-lined desk was a far cry from the two saw horses and the piece of plywood that had held his computer for all those years.
He was lying on a hospital bed in the back of the room, facing the large windows that overlooked the fountain in the courtyard. The glass doors were open here, too, and the water was more soothing, now that Cindy had stopped flipping her idiotic shoes. A ray of light beamed down from the heavens, showering the bed in warmth. Pam would not have been surprised if he had hired a chorus of angels to sing beside him, but no, there was just the usual apparatus of lingering death: an oxygen tank, a heart monitor, and the requisite plastic pitcher on the table beside his bed.
“Honey?” Cindy asked, her shrill voice cutting into the soft hiss of the oxygen tank. “Pam is here.”
A frail voice echoed, “Pam?”
“I’ve got to go fill up more bags,” Cindy said, then left, more like an overworked nurse announcing a visitor than a lover. The girl couldn’t be older than nineteen, Pam thought. The fact that John was dying must be something she took as a personal affront rather than a fact of life.
And dying he was. As Pam walked toward the bed, she could smell death, the same odor that had clung to her mother as she rotted away from breast cancer several years ago. John’s skin was yellow and his beard was completely white. He had always had a full head of hair, but most of it was gone now. Some of it had obviously been shaved by a doctor—she could see the healing scar where a surgeon had cut into his head—some probably chased away by what ever medications they were giving him to keep him alive for a few more days.
As if he could read her mind, he moved away the oxygen mask and said, “It won’t be long.”
She was facing him now, seeing an older version of John, the face of his father, his grandfather. Would Zack have looked like this if he had managed to survive that accident? Would her son have aged this badly if the first, second, third, millionth time Pam had told John that she thought Zack had a drinking problem, instead of saying, “He’s just a boy,” he had said, “Yes, you’re right. Let’s do something to help him.”
Would Zack be alive if for just once in her life Pam had stood up to her husband and said, “No”?
There was a large cooler beside John’s bed, and she could not help but shudder at the sight of it. Were they going to chop him up and throw him in the van?
“Open it,” he told her, and despite her better judgment, she did. What had she been expecting to find? A head-sized thermos? A steaming vat of liquid nitrogen? Certainly not the little baggies of ice she found.
“To preserve me while they . . .” his finger made a dragging motion across his neck.
“What?” But Pam understood. She could see where his finger had traced across his throat, a cut that would be real soon enough.
“Of course . . . the procedure is . . . illegal,” he managed, his breath raspy so that he had to put the mask back over his face.
“What do you mean?” she demanded. When he did not answer, she found herself staring at the bags of cubed ice as if they were tea leaves and she a wise old gypsy.
“In California,” he finally gasped. “It’s illegal to cut off . . .” He took another breath of oxygen. “The law considers it mutilating . . . a dead body.”
“Well, it is mutilation,” she said, letting the cooler lid slam back into place. Of course it was illegal to cut the head off a dead body—even in this Godforsaken loony bin of a state. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
He laughed, the old John bringing a sparkle into his eyes.
“You’re absolutely insane,” she told him, but she laughed, too. My God, over twenty years with this man. A house, a home, a son, a life. Twenty years of