by TG Wolff
When his name was called, Cruz ran through the status of his cases, all except DeMusa. That was for Montoya’s ears only.
“That’s all you’ve gotten accomplished this week?” Montoya shook his head. “Expected more from you, Cruzie.”
He shrugged away the sardonic jab. “I was covering for your green-tinged ass. I can solve murders or do your job. Not both.”
Montoya grinned proudly. “Told you, I make this look easy.”
A private meeting followed the public one. He briefed Montoya on the plea agreement with Val Hannigan, aka P.J. Mayfield.
“You’re good with this?” Montoya asked.
Cruz shrugged. “Learned a long time ago to take care of what I can and leave the rest to others.” He sighed when his commander just waited. “Do I think the kid is a threat to others? Yes and no. I don’t seem him walking into a concert and shooting it up. He seemed rattled by the lawyers and the threat of jail time, but we’ve seen it before. Once someone does a little time, the threat isn’t as big. Been there, done that, can do it again. What will the kid do the next time something of his is threatened? This time it was his mother’s house. What if it’s his own? Or his wife and kids? We’ll need to keep an eye on him.”
“Are you expecting anything criminal on these recordings?”
“I’d be surprised. Posey’s slick. I don’t see him—hold on, Kurt.” His phone rang, the first three digits were owned by University Hospitals. “De La Cruz.”
“This is Dr. Adam McCarthy at University Hospitals. Sophie DeMusa is awake.”
His gaze snapped to Montoya’s, who had heard the news and gave a resounding thumbs-up. “I’ll be right there.”
Thirty minutes later, Cruz stepped into a circus. Sophie’s room overflowed. The female-dominated population ran the underside of thirty years old. Carly Montemayor from Three Witches was the clear voice over the tumult. “Give Sophie some space. Everyone take two steps back.”
The crowd listened, and the nearest set of shoulders backed into him. No apology.
“This is a hospital, not a party center.” The scolding came from behind him. “If you’re not immediate family, out. No more than three visitors at a time.” With the efficiency of a nun with a ruler, the nurse cleared the room.
Cruz held up his badge. “I’m staying.”
The three witches filed past him as did apartment residents Chloe Capstone and Christa Moseby. No less than twelve Alpha Theta Nu sisters paraded out wearing buttons with a flower and Sophie’s initials.
The woman of the hour sat propped up in bed, pale, her head resting on a thin pillow. Her eyes were wide and bright. Jonathan Fisher sat in the armchair next to the bed, holding her hand. Bollier leaned against the window seat reviewing something on a tablet.
“Good news travels fast. Welcome back, Ms. DeMusa. I’m Detective Jesus De La Cruz, Cleveland police, homicide.”
The dark brows lifted, her lips an amused moue. “I’m not dead.”
“That’s what he said.” Bollier set the tablet down with the inside reference to that first day. “Sophie is indeed not dead. We have the tests to prove it.”
“I passed the swallow test. A big accomplishment.” She pointed with her eyes to the big cup with the bendable blue straw.
Jonathan obliged her, holding it while she took several long sips. “Hopefully, you’ll do as brilliantly on the other tests, but you will need time. You have to rebuild your strength.”
Cruz noted she hadn’t moved her legs since he’d come in. She used her arms and hands minimally. After two weeks in a bed, living off liquid calories, he knew the road to normal was long and hard. “Do you feel strong enough to answer a few questions, Ms. DeMusa? To tell me what happened that night?”
She nodded. “Call me Sophie.”
“My friends call me Cruz.” He brought the chair on wheels to the side of her bed. “There are questions I need to ask. If you’re tired or need a break, say so. I can come back. Good?” He waited for her nod. “Tell me the last thing you remember before waking up here.”
“Eating a can of soup and wishing it was my mother’s. Reading a book.” Her hands moved protectively over her belly.
“I’ve been looking into the hours and days before you came to the hospital. I know things you may not be comfortable with me knowing, but I needed to know them in order to investigate.”
Her gaze went to her hands.
“Yes, I know you’re pregnant.”
“It’s a good thing he knows,” Jonathan said. “He ensured you had the right medical care.”
Eventually, she nodded. “Thank you.”
“Let’s try this. I’ll tell you a story,” Cruz said. “If something feels wrong, say so. Can you do that?”
“I’ll try.” She braced herself, focusing her attention on him.
“Friday night, you were scheduled to work at six.” In simple sentences, he told her story as he knew it. The argument with Hennessy. Feeling ill. If she was able, he hoped she could confirm Hannigan’s story. If he had lied, Cruz would put a stop to the plea agreement, even if he had to pull D’Arcy out of court.
“I just wanted to be alone,” she said. “P.J. said I was sick and needed help. He thought I had the flu and knew what to do. Did you say I had wine? That’s not right.”
“What about the pills? You had enough in you to overdose.”
She began to shake her head. “He gave me pills. I overdosed?” She looked to Bollier. “My baby?”
“The heartbeat is strong, Sophie. She’s a fighter, just like you.”
“Of course, she is.” Jonathan brought her hand to his heart, while his gaze went to Cruz. “You’ll arrest him now, P.J. Mayfield? Charge him with attempted murder?”
Sophie cringed at the harsh words. “Why would he do that? He wanted to go out on a date.”
“Do you remember Andrew Posey?”
She flinched; Jonathan snapped out in reaction. “Do not say his name here. She has enough to contend without that felon-at-large being brought into this.”
“His name is in this. The investigation into what happened between you two, Sophie, caused him problems. P.J. Mayfield, whose real name is Percival Hannigan, had a problem. His mother’s house was being demolished to make room for a development. This was a problem Posey could solve.”
Fisher came to his feet. “You’re saying Posey ordered this Mayfield-Hannigan person to kill Sophie?”
“I am not. I am saying we suspect Hannigan acted to garner favor from Posey so that in return, Posey would save his mother’s house.”
“He would trade a house for a life?” Jonathan clenched his fists in righteous outrage. Bollier stepped forward, blocking the path, pinning him in the corner. When there was no way around, Jonathan glared at Cruz. “Tell me you have this Hannigan in a dark, cold cell.”
Cruz looked to Sophie. “A plea bargain has been negotiated.” The two stared at each other while a tumult of curses and accusations rained down. Eventually, Bollier physically removed Jonathan from the room. The bookseller proved the expanse of his vocabulary as his opinions carried down the hallway. “He cares about you.”
“Vociferously.” Sophie smiled when the subject gave no reason for happiness. “He’s a good man. They are rare.”
With her experiences, likely that was the way the world appeared. “There’s more I need to tell you. There was a second attempt on your life. Hannigan has an alibi, but it was made to look like he did it.” He told her about the man tampering with her IV and the nurse whose timing saved her life.
“Is this what I get for wanting Posey held accountable for raping me? Is this what happens to women who try to stand up for themselves?” The heart rate blips increased. “How is it that someone can violate me in the most intimate way possible and the solution is to have me dead? Isn’t it enough I can’t stand to be touched? Isn’t it enough I will never look back on the night my baby was conceived and know I was loved?”
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br /> Question after question increased his own feeling of impotence. For her, he represented the law and the ideal it applied to all people equally.
Laws might be blind to wealth, position, color, etc., but the application of them wasn’t. Rich men paid fines while poor men went to jail. There wasn’t a time or a country where that wasn’t the truth.
And then there were the victims, left to pick up the pieces.
He sat on the edge of her bed, wanting to give comfort and hope to the young woman with so much life ahead of her. “You know how in the spring, each day seems to inch a little more toward summer? First, it’s fifty, then fifty-five. The daffodils and tulips start pushing through even though there’s still the threat of snow. Then the trees bud and soon it’s sixty, sixty-five degrees. Three months later, we arrive in summer. Change happens so slow, you almost don’t notice. But in late July and August, the humidity is so high we can drink the air. No worrying about a forest fire here. We can’t even light a match. Then, a thunderstorm rolls through. A storm so fierce, tornados spawn punishing everything in its path. Ice is hurled from it, damaging homes and vehicles. But on the back side of the storm, it’s sunny and comfortable. The bite of the heat is gone, taking the smothering humidity with it.
“You’re like August, tipping the balance. When the violence of the storm swirls around you, recognize it for what it is—the winds of change reshaping the landscape. The question is…is it the change you want?”
She nodded, slowly at first and faster as her expression changed before his eyes, self-pity transforming to determination. “Now is not the time to give up.”
He patted her hand, a small salute. “We have a guard outside your room. He can’t do his job if there are thirty people in here, so we need to set limits. Anyone makes you feel threatened or worried, you call the guard. That goes for friends and visitors and for medical staff. Trust your instincts, Sophie.”
“I will. I do.” She reached out to him. “I like the idea of being August.”
Late in the day, Cruz sat in the AA circle with familiar faces. One of the guys, Jim, had a tough week. His identity had been stolen. The thief had charged thousands of dollars on his credit cards and compromised his online accounts. “When I was a younger man, this is exactly the kind of week I would have forgotten about with the help of Jim Beam. Sober like I am, there’s nothing to do but feel old and out-of-touch.”
“Age has nothing to do with it,” a woman named Maddie said. “These guys are slick, and they have no conscious. They tried to scam my sister when her husband was killed, claimed they were trying to help her settle his accounts.”
Most of them knew what he did for a living, but in this place, he was just Cruz, the recovering alcoholic. No one looked to him for the answers. In this group, answers didn’t come from cops. They came from collective experience.
The phone in his pocket buzzed. He checked the screen in the event it was an emergency. D’Arcy Whitsome. He’d call her back later, choosing Jim and dealing with crises without the numbing effect of alcohol.
Ten minutes later, his pocket buzzed again. D’Arcy again. He sent it to voicemail. His phone gave the short buzz of a message. He ignored it.
It buzzed again, in case he missed it the first time.
“Do these people have no conscience?” Maddie asked. With the rest of the group, he murmured the obvious answer.
Then curiosity got the better of him. He read the translation.
Hi cruise its darling. I received a call from sara apples gate. She cant find valium. He didn’t go to her office as planned. She talked with his girlfriend as sheets worried. Calmly when you get this message.
She can’t find valium? She can’t find Val Hannigan.
Fuck.
Cruz excused himself, stuffing his arms into his winter coat as the number he dialed rang. Protecting Sophie was his priority. Two attempts had been made on her life. He wasn’t going to be naïve and not take measures against number three.
His next call was to Aurora, explaining the reason he wouldn’t be sleeping in their bed tonight. He asked her to throw together an overnight bag, make sure it was ready for him to drive by. Minutes later, he was on the road with the bag and a green protein shake that tasted better than it looked.
As he maneuvered through eastbound traffic, he placed the third call. “D’Arcy. It’s Cruz.”
“If that little fucker played me, I’m going to string him up by his balls and play Yankee-fucking-Doodle on this head.”
“Nice visual. They teach that in law school?”
“No.” She laughed at the ridiculous idea. “Did I mention my father is a football coach?”
“Explains a lot.” He laughed then and she joined in.
“Okay, I’m shitting bricks. I went to the boss and told him I locked in the deal. This was the first plea I’d negotiated on my own here. He was all over me for not holding Hannigan over the weekend. I told him not to worry, I was solid with Applegate.”
“What does Applegate have to say?”
“She claims he’s MIA on her, too. They were supposed to meet this morning to go over the details of the agreement and prepare copies of the recordings for delivery by EOB.”
“I’ll send someone to visit to his mother, grandmother, and girlfriend. It’s possible he just has cold feet. The way I read him, it never entered his imagination he could get caught.”
“Maybe. Yeah, I can see that. He’s not a street kid. Solid middle class, he heard of people getting arrested, going to jail, but it was always at arm’s length. Never something real. While the Cleveland police were searching for P.J. Mayfield, Val Hannigan was a world away, at least in his own mind.”
He navigated the curves of Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard appreciating the way D’Arcy’s mind worked. “He’ll surface, sooner or later.” When and where was the question. People want to be unpredictable, but, under stress, they tend to default. What was Hannigan’s default? “He’s not going to be able to stay away from the women in his life. We need to convince them the best thing for Val is to come in, stand by the agreement he made.” The more he thought about it, the more convinced he was. The three women were their best chance at bringing Hannigan in quickly. “Let me call a friend of mine. He’s got a way with people.”
“Great,” she said, sarcasm dripping like icicles. “I’m glad somebody does.”
“D’Arcy, you can’t let it eat at you. You use your best judgement and go with it. You’ll drive yourself to a dark place if you live life expecting people to be their worst.”
“I hear you.” She blew out a long breath. “I’m going to open a bottle of wine and tell my brain to turn off.”
How innocently it can all start. “You got someone in your life? A warm body beats the hell out of a chilled glass.”
“Are you volunteering? Hold that thought, I’ve got a call coming in.” She put him on hold.
The woman was a flirt. It stroked his ego to have her work her wiles on him. D’Arcy Whitsome was an attractive woman, educated, sharp tongued. But she was a seven to Aurora’s eleven. Everything about her fit in perfectly with the criminal justice culture. Perfect for a work colleague. Perfectly wrong for all other parts of his life.
He ended the call, avoiding the awkwardness that would happen when he didn’t flirt back. Pulling into a slot in the hospital’s parking garage, he called Yablonski. “Have a job that demands your particular skills.”
“After the day I had, I could use a win. What do you need?”
He gave him the rundown on the vanishing Val Hannigan and the keys to his return. “If he doesn’t walk in her door tomorrow, Whitsome is going to hang him by his toenails. Convince these ladies he needs to come in.”
“I’ll break out the Polish razzle-dazzle. They’ll never know what hit them. Call you when I know something.”
Inside the quiet hospital wing, Cruz met Lieutenant James Peabody once again. The man had taken a personal inte
rest in the safety of Sophie DeMusa, coming in on his off night after the call from his man. “You really think this Hannigan is going to try for her?”
“There’s a link missing. Hannigan went for Sophie as a quid pro quo for Posey. Attempt number two came from an unknown suspect for an unknown reason. Was it to provide an alibi for Hannigan? Was it to stop Sophie from speaking out? I don’t know how Hannigan is connected to the unknown suspect. I am certain whatever was supposed to be accomplished by Sophie’s death isn’t done. As long as Hannigan is off the grid, Sophie is at risk.”
Peabody nodded. “I’ll come relieve you at two. You can catch a few winks in one of the empty beds. I’ll be glad for the extra hands in the morning when the circus starts.”
“Her friends are a handful. Carly alone makes the noise of ten.”
“I’m talking about the media. You know she gave an interview to the local news crew, right?”
It took a moment and a breath for Cruz to absorb the information. Did no one value privacy these days? “No. I guess I wasn’t invited to the briefing.”
The guard outside Sophie’s room didn’t like the stand-down order. He begrudgingly left, turning his post over to the detective, and relocating to the control room to monitor the security cameras.
Sophie sat up in bed, makeup hiding the tired that lingered under her eyes. “Hello, Cruz. I wasn’t expecting you to come back.”
“There’s been a development. Val Hannigan, that is P.J. Mayfield, has run. I came to stay with you tonight in case he’s foolish enough to strike out against you. Then I hear you’re making you television debut. You want to tell me what’s going on?”
Her chin came up, fire lit her eyes. “Jonathan read the article to me. Everything in it was a twisted version of the truth. Andrew Posey turned it inside-out, perverting the facts until he’s the poor victim and I’m the desperate, confused, lunatic sexpot. I tried taking the high road the first time, doing what I could to make things right, privately. Jonathan was right. People like Posey have no conscience. All they care about is what affects their personal bottom line. I worked with him for months ahead of the fundraiser. Andrew Posey cares about his status and the fringe benefits he gets from it.”