by Keene, Susan
“I agree.”
“Good. I’ll be back here at three. I’ll have everything we need to get to the bottom of this. Tell me you don’t have any new clients today.”
“Actually, we don’t. Amy and I have some billing to do, and then she wanted the afternoon off. Jake is going to call at two, appears they need to straighten out a tiff they had before he left.”
“I’m relieved you’ll be reasonably safe until I get back. I’ll leave Davis and Kline here. They’re my best. Stay close to them.”
“Will do.” He reached over and kissed me on the lips. I didn’t resist. I kissed him back.
Amy and I balanced our books. We still didn’t know who to send the rent check to, and I had a twinge in my stomach that the new owner might have something to do with last night. I kept my thoughts to myself and hoped I was wrong.
The morning flew by. I went to Central and borrowed every file I could on the Jump Club fire. I even shared my hunches with Roger who agreed it was as good a place to start as any. I wanted to sit in a room and go through every step, thought, and reaction from that night six years ago. It might be the catalyst to all of this. Too many people died that night and had died since of their injuries and maybe murder.
I didn’t wait for Ryan. I didn’t know how long he had been standing at the doorway of my office when I finally looked up and saw him.
“Hi,” he said.
“Hi,” I answered.
He took a step into the room. “How’s it progressing?”
I looked in his eyes. “Slowly.”
“Can I help?” he asked.
“Can you?” I answered.
He seemed subdued. “I think so. I was there too and I’ll have different memories. Where do you want to work on this?”
“At my apartment, where no one can shoot at us or get to us without scaling a sixty-foot wall.” I hoped he wouldn’t argue.
He reached over and began helping me gather my things. “Sounds good to me. Let’s go by a grocery store on the way. I am tired of eating out. Cooking is cathartic, and I’m quite good at it.”
I walked through to make sure the lights were off and the back door was locked.
“I’ll send Davis and Kline on over to your place to check it out,” he said. “Fanning and Johns are with me. They can stick with us.”
“Do you think we need them?” I asked.
“Better safe than sorry.”
We stopped by a Schnuck’s store in the county. They had an excellent deli and a produce department to rival the biggest farmer’s market. Ryan filled the cart with anything and everything that looked good. I picked out three bottles of wine--a Robert Mondovi Merlot, a Pinot Gorgio, and a Cabernet Sauvignon.
I sat on the counter in the kitchen and talked to Ryan while he fixed spaghetti and meatballs, constructed a micro greens salad, and made garlic bread. I helped by opening the wine. It felt good, almost natural, to have him there. Take a deep breath, Kate. It might be the circumstances and not the man.
“What’s the first thing you remember about that night?” I asked.
He didn’t look up from his cooking. “How incredibly hot it was in there.”
I nodded. “Me, too, then someone screamed and the world exploded.”
He cocked his head, and his eyes looked up to the left, as if searching for a memory. “I remember grabbing for your hand and running for the exit. Had we been farther from the door we would have been trampled like some of the others.”
I shook my head. “Like Lori?”
He picked up his wine glass and drank half of it in one swallow. “Yes, like Lori.”
“When did you first see Michael, outside the club?” I asked.
He finished the wine and held out his glass for a refill. “It was late. He was in the bathroom when it all started and so he stayed there. There was a small window above each of the three stalls. He and two other men broke the glass in them and the twenty or so guys in there soaked their shirts in water and stuffed them around the door to keep the smoke and heat at bay. They took turns sticking their heads out the tiny windows to get a breath of fresh air.
While he talked, I began to take notes. “How about Roomy, Andy, and Lizzy?”
“I didn’t see Roomy, Andy, or Lizzy until hours later. Roomy said he didn’t know how he got out. He said there was a wave of people making their way to the door, and he rode the wave. He said the key was to stay on your feet. Roomy was a big guy. Most of those who got smashed were girls and small men.”
I got up to pace. “Lizzy was up on the dance floor. Andy saw her and took her to the back of the stage where they ran into a chained door. They hid behind the stage until someone, a firefighter, broke through the door with some sort of tool. It sounded to me as if they survived because they were lucky and for no other reason. Because the stage was raised, the smoke stayed above them.”
“I can understand why someone would want to kill me,” he said. “The Meade trust owned the building, but the idiotic manager had a five-year lease. He said he chained all the doors shut but the front one because the place got too crowded, and he didn’t want the police to shut him down on the most profitable night he’d ever had.
I stared at him. “You didn’t run the club. Why would anyone want to kill you?”
He had drained another glass of wine but walked to the sink, rinsed it out, and filled it with water, then turned around. “I know, but people always want to blame the rich guy. If you have a lawsuit, you want to go after the man with the most money. There were eighty-seven litigations against the club. I was a defendant in all of them. What saved me was that the city did the inspections, and Shawn White, the manager and owner of the club, personally chained the exits. Shawn White is doing twenty-five-to-life on seven or eight different charges. When it was all over, I had the building torn down and a park built in its place.” He drained the pasta. “What about Lori’s family? Did they cause Michael any trouble, or did they sue the club owner?”
I shook my head. “No. Lori was an only child. Her dad died when she was young, and her mom died before anything went to court. Michael said her mom died of a broken heart. There was a time I didn’t think that was possible.” My head felt heavy and I let it rest in the palms of my hands for a moment.
“Dinner’s ready. Grab a plate.”
We ate in silence, each of us in our own little world. The food was delicious and warm, the wine cool and refreshing.
I broke the spell by offering to refill Ryan’s glass.
“So my guess is that someone got hurt that night and died recently,” he said. “A loved one is seeking revenge. Or someone is out to kill all of the survivors. That would be a daunting task since there were hundreds of people in the club that night. My questions are, why wait so long to start killing people? Why kill Michael, Roomy, and Andy over something that happened six years ago, and where is Lizzy?”
“Those are great questions, and I don’t have the answers. We know what all of the numbers are but the twenty-six. What could that be?” I hated things I couldn’t figure out.
“I don’t know. Also, why would someone know your badge number?” he asked.
We were both helping ourselves to more pasta.
“Because I was in and out of there a dozen times, looking for the others and trying to help. Each time I went in, I held my shield up as if it was a beacon so no one would stop me.” I answered.
Ryan nodded and continued his interrogation. “Did anyone stop you or ask for help, or does anything stand out about any individual victim?”
“No--yes, wait! There was a girl. She was under one of the tables. Her legs were a tangled mess, and I was sure the weight of the table was the only thing keeping her alive because there was a metal shaft going into her, a little above the waist. I found out later it had her pinned to the floor. She begged everyone who passed by to carry her out. I thought we should wait for the paramedics. I stopped and held her hand for a while. I couldn’t budge the table. The victims wer
e dazed and in shock and just wanted to get out of the smoke and filth. I finally had to leave her to go for help. Remember, not only were there people trampled and burned but also, the roof collapsed from all of the water and fire damage. I ran into two different sets of paramedics. They both told me they would come as soon as they could. If I remember correctly, later we found out there was a nine-car pileup on Route 40, a ballgame downtown, and several other things. It was nearly two hours before they could send more help to the scene. This young woman was seriously hurt. She begged me to help her, but I couldn’t do anything. The lay people who were helping were afraid to move her. No one wanted to be responsible for killing her.”
When I looked up, Ryan had tears in his eyes, as did I.
“Do you remember her name?” he asked.
“No, but she would know mine. I don’t know if she saw the others or not. Maybe she died because I didn’t help her. I know I was there when the paramedics finally got her out of the building. I remember the medic shaking his head at me, indicating it was a hopeless situation.”
“You mean she was dying?” he asked, as if wanting to be clear about what happened that night.
“I don’t know. It could have been that she was losing her leg--or legs. So hard to remember, and my priority was you guys. I didn’t have the empathy I have now. I didn’t know what it was like to lose someone. I played by the book. I tried to show no emotion and not find out any personal details about the victims. Life was so much simpler then,” I said as memories of Michael’s body lying limp in his brother’s arms flooded my mind.
Ryan got up and went toward the living room. “Okay. Somewhere around here, I saw a list of the names of the dead and injured. It was put together later and printed as a tribute in the paper on the first anniversary of the fire.”
He found it and we scanned down the names. Forty-nine dead, twenty-six critically injured. There was our twenty-six. We could now account for all of the numbers on the fortune-cookie fortune. It sent a chill down my back, and I shuddered, looking around. I felt as if someone was watching me.
CHAPTER 18
D ew dampened the sidewalks by the time Ryan left for home. We both needed sleep. Andy’s funeral was at one p.m. Ryan wanted to get everyone out of here and back to their lives as soon as possible, even though we were pretty sure now that only those at the fire were in danger. In other words, Ryan, Lizzy--if she wasn’t already dead--and me.
I couldn’t get the girl out of my mind. Eventually, we would find out who she and the other twenty-five were.
Ryan showed up with a car and driver at noon. We were the first at the funeral home after Amber and the kids and the grandmothers. We sat in the front row. The rest of our troop sat in the second row. The room filled up quickly. I tried not to look around but I could tell Ryan had guards at every entrance and exit and several more were milling around outside as we left.
The service was beautiful, yet gut wrenching. We rode to the cemetery in silence. I hated it. It was a typical, horrible, unsettling event. There were many of Andy’s clients there, neighbors, and friends of all ages, shapes, and sizes. It took a full forty-five minutes for everyone to park and meet at the gravesite.
About half way into the graveside service, I saw a flurry of activity to my left. There was a man standing at the top of the hill watching the entire proceeding though a huge pair of field glasses. Ryan’s men converged on him and then- nothing. Either they had him or he had gotten away. I would have to wait until later to find out. My heart raced as my head pounded. I wanted all of this to be over. I wanted to know why my precious Michael lay in the cold hard ground. I wanted to avenge my friends’ deaths, and I wanted to find Lizzy Smith.
We loaded the rest of those Ryan considered family into the limo and headed for Lambert Airport. One by one, we left them at their various ticket counters with teary goodbyes and promises to keep in touch and let them know as soon as we solved the case.
I realized I had lost touch with them after Michael’s death. They seemed like a part of the life I no longer had. Partying with them and talking about old times was something I could no longer do--the pain cut too deep. Ryan, of course, would never let them go. It wouldn’t matter if they beat their wives, had affairs on their husbands, or moved to Bora Bora. They were his family. I stood back a little and observed him at each goodbye. I could tell he loved and cared for each of them.
The last rays of sunlight were visible when we got back to my apartment. We heated up the leftovers from the night before and collapsed on the couch with a glass of wine. There was no pleasure in it tonight.
Before we finished, Ryan got out the copy he had of the names and ages of the victims who survived the fire. For months after the fire, there were newspaper articles and each of them spotlighted one or two of the injured and told about their lives before the accident.
Jasmine Wu’s story was in the sixth expose I read. I recognized her from her picture. It showed her clinging to life in a hospital bed.
Twenty-six-year-old Olympic hopeful Jasmine Wu’s dreams of skiing in the 2010 winter games in Vancouver, British Columbia, ended the night of the Jump Club fire in downtown St. Louis. Miss Wu lay for hours in the wet and cold, pinned under a table and the ceiling beam that crushed her legs. A metal support from the stage, pushed across the floor during the roof collapse, impaled Miss Wu, causing her spleen to rupture and doing extensive muscle and tissue damage. Doctors said if they could have reached her sooner they might have been able to save her legs. Jasmine lost both legs above the knee. She is still at the skilled living college in Colorado Springs learning to live independently.
We tried to contact Miss Wu, but she declined an interview. We wish her the best and will revisit her another time.
I had a rush. It started in my feet and flew straight to the back of my head. From there it slammed forward and hit me in the forehead from the inside. Had I caused this? It could be sugar coated until it looked like an M&M, but the truth still hit me in the face. Not only did I cause it, but also I forgot about it. Who was I? What had happened to Kate Nash, the girl who cried at sad movies and fixed broken bird wings? I honestly didn’t know.
I am the Evil. Me, the fortune-cookie fortune was talking about me. I wanted to run out to the balcony and jump over. Ryan saw my reaction and held me tight against him.
I sobbed, yelled, and carried on like an outraged hooker who only just realized she was a whore.
I was the one who passed Jasmine Wu twenty times and gave her platitudes about waiting for the emergency workers to remove her properly. My ass should have been sitting on the floor next to her. I should have found a way to cover her up and ease her uncertainty. Oh, my god! I was a monster!
I became physically ill, broke out of Ryan’s embrace, and ran toward the bathroom where I heaved and threw up.
He walked to the bathroom door and leaned on the corner of its wood frame. “It wasn’t your fault.”
I gagged and cried at the same time. “Oh, but it was. I should have gone straight out and found somebody to move that young girl. What was wrong with me? I am evil.”
“Kate, you were trying to find your friends. They could have been dead. You got help, didn’t you? Besides, you were only twenty-seven yourself. You have grown a lot since then.”
“Yes, but I didn’t insist they go to her. They worked their way to her, and I let it happen. I feel like I was a monster,” I insisted.
“You are not a monster. You were in a tragic fire where scores of dead bodies lay around you. You were looking for your family. Anybody could understand that.” He used the same tone I heard him use with Andy’s children at the funeral.
“Not Jasmine Wu and whoever’s avenging her.” I wouldn’t let myself off the hook that easily.
He stepped closer. “We don’t know it’s about her.”
I took a step back. “Yes, we do, ’cause if it were the other way around, I would hunt her down myself and kill her.”
“No you wouldn�
�t, you’re upset. I’ll let you freshen up.”
He left the bathroom. I stayed behind and looked at myself for the longest time. Did I cause an Olympic athlete to lose her legs? Did I cause the death of Michael, Roomy, and Andy? My surroundings were fading. I thought I might pass out. I sat down on the floor for a while and then got up and washed my face. The stress of the last hour had exhausted me. I wanted to sleep. Instead, I dragged myself back to the living room and sat on an ottoman across the room from Ryan.
He began talking. “I guess our next move is to see what happened to Jasmine Wu. Is she mentioned in any more of the articles?”
We each took a pile of papers and began going through them. It was tedious and took hours.
Finally Ryan said, “Listen to this: ‘Jasmine Wu, one of the survivors of the Jump Club fire, graduated from the Kansas City Art Institute last week. She said art was her second love after skiing. Her mediums are watercolor and pen and ink. Miss Wu says her inspiration is Lizzy Smith whose work she greatly admires.’”
“Well, there you have it. Lizzy taught at the Art Institute for a while. Let me think...2011 to 2013, and I think she is a visiting professor even now. We’ve found our connection between Lizzy and Jasmine. We need to know more about Ms. Wu.” Ryan actually sounded happy.
Between the stress of the funeral, the revelation of what I had done at the Jump Club, and too much wine, I couldn’t keep my eyes open or hold the tears back.
“Go to bed.” Ryan got up to help me. “Our bodies react differently to stress. I couldn’t sleep if you paid me. I’ll be out here reading about our friend Jasmine.”
“Are you sure?” I tried not to sound as weak as I felt.
He walked over and kissed me lightly on the top of the head. “There is a sure stress reliever built into every man. Want me to demonstrate it for you?”
“No.” It was all I felt like saying.
I fell asleep immediately but, two hours later, I woke up as if I’d been in bed all weekend. Ryan was still at it. Before he noticed me, I studied his handsome face. He got better looking with age. There were maybe ten gray hairs at each temple and minute crow’s feet at the edges of his eyes. Whatever he was reading had his attention.