Free Abel Baker Charley by John R. Maxim Page A

hand. He hoped that he looked more rested than he felt.
    There was a rest room near the elevator bank. Baker wet his face with cold water, dried it, then straightened his hair with his fingers. Not too bad, he thought, except for the strips of singed and dirty tape wrapped around his knuckles. Tina can do without seeing that.
    Baker peeled away the bandage and dropped it into a trash bin. Next he washed the hand, rubbing off the thin lines of adhesive with his fingertips. The hand looked fine, he thought. Very fine, considering how ugly it was three days ago. There remained only a faded bruise across two knuckles.
    Baker stepped back into the corridor and found an eleva tor waiting. He entered it and pressed the fourth-floor but ton. As the doors slid closed, he saw Meister in the gift shop examining an embroidered pillow.
    “What are you doing here?” Tina was alert now. She raised her upper body on both elbows.
    ”I have a son here.” The old man's voice was flat.
    “No, you don't. This is my room.”
    “He's above you.” The man lifted his eyes to the ceiling. “Intensive Care. If you listen hard, even here you can hear him screaming.” His eyes met hers again. “How is it that you don't scream?” he asked.
    Tina looked toward the door. There was no sound out there. Not even nurses walking past. She felt herself becom ing frightened.
    “Listen, would you please not stand there? I'm sorry that your son is hurt, but I think you should be with him and not here. Anyway, I told you my father is coming.”
    “It was an accident, you know. My son would never have harmed that woman.” The man seemed to be talking to no one in particular.
    “What woman?” Tina's color began to rise. She was afraid that she knew what woman.
    “But what your father did”—these words were to her— “that was no accident.” The man in the black suit stepped toward Tina's bed and lifted the sheet that covered her tented leg. Tina braced her hands and jerked her body backward, gasping at the bolt of pain that shot to her hip.
    “You get out of here!” she cried out.
    “Now!” Baker's voice hissed from the doorway.
    “Daddy!” Tina called, but her father did not look at her. His eyes bored into the older man from a face that seemed on fire, and the sight of them caused him to stagger back ward. Baker's hands opened and the bags they carried fell.
    “You!” the old man whispered, the word dripping with hatred.
    Baker saw his hand reach forward. For a heartbeat, it seemed to have a life of its own. He knew that it was reach ing for the old man's throat and that it was flexed to tear the throat away from the retreating body. Baker knew the man. It was the devil he'd seen through the bars of his cell. He willed the hand down. It was his own hand again when it clamped down on Judge Bellafonte's arm and nearly lifted the old man's body from the floor. Baker half-dragged him toward the corridor.
    Outrage at being handled replaced fear, and the judge found his voice. “Get your butcher's hands off of me,” he choked as he flailed at Baker, slapping him hard across the face. Baker blinked back a tear from his smarting right eye, but he did not break his stride.
    Heads appeared in doorways. The sounds of grunts and scuffling feet reached the duty nurse, who rose from her sta tion and padded toward them. “Judge Bellafonte!” she called, horrified.
    “Stop this animal,” the old man shouted, his feet splaying now across the slippery floor.
    Arms waving, the nurse fell in behind Baker as he danced the judge toward the elevator bank. Baker stopped and pressed a button. Once again, Bellafonte swung at his face. Baker caught the hand and twisted it, spinning the judge so that his chest was forced against the wall, then locked both the older man's wrists behind him.
    Baker turned to the nurse. “You know this man?” The tone of his voice made her back away.
    “It's ... Judge Bellafonte,” she stammered.
    “It's the father of the