by CJ Lyons
Emily beamed and nodded. “Sure. I can do that. Then we can both count to infinity and beyond!” She zipped her hands like Buzz Lightyear.
Such a big brain in such a little girl, who, no matter how smart she was, was still only six, Leah reminded herself. Would that make it harder for Emily to cope with what happened? Leah was a grown woman and was having a difficult time—she’d barely stopped herself from blocking the elevator doors from shutting, half expecting Ian to rush through them and take his place at their side. Every time she spotted movement out the corner of her eye, the constant tightness in her chest uncoiled, relaxing, knowing it was Ian—until it wasn’t, and Leah’s world came crashing down all over again.
But what scared her most was the knowledge that soon this feeling would vanish, erased by time—and she wouldn’t instinctively expect Ian to be there at all. She’d need to make an effort to remember him because he’d no longer be a constant in their life.
Then she’d truly be alone, she and Emily.
Twenty-Five
As soon as Luka hung up from Leah, he called Good Sam’s security. Last night when he’d offered to post a uniformed officer outside Emily’s room the hospital administrators had refused, something about liability issues, and had insisted on using their own people. Probably so they could triple-bill Leah’s insurance company, he’d thought at the time.
Which left the poor slob who answered the phone now on the receiving end of a tirade where Luka vented all his frustrations about this case. After a few choice comments about incompetence, possible civil action, and even hinting at criminal negligence, “After all, your department’s actions—or inaction—led to the endangerment of a child,” he felt no better. It’d been his job to secure his witnesses’ safety and he’d failed. “I want a man at her room preserving the crime scene—tell him not to go in or touch anything. Pull all the video from the pediatric floor as well as outside the gift shop. I’ll be there in ten.”
His next call was to Harper. “How far out from Good Sam are you?”
“We’re over the bridge, up the mountain coming from the Smith compound.” A sprawling family of neo-Nazis who dabbled in the manufacture of meth to finance their political endeavors. “About fifteen, twenty minutes. What happened?”
“Did you find the motorcycle and the rider?”
“We thought we had a lead when two of the Victories came back registered to the Smiths.” Krichek’s voice sounded through the speaker phone. “Both with records. Should’ve seen their faces when Harper came knocking.”
“Yeah, but then Krichek did some bonding over dog breeding—”
“Anyway, they both have solid alibis. So that’s it for our list of offenders, guess we’re back to square one.”
“I need you both at Good Sam. Leah Wright just called. Someone left a bouquet of roses with a threatening note in her daughter’s room. I’m on my way there now. Krichek, you go over the security video—they’re pulling it for you. Harper, collect the evidence from the room, get it to forensics, then call me. I’ve got another job for you.”
“Any chance Wright sent the flowers to herself?” Harper asked. “And what about the mistress, Balanchuk?”
“I just came from interviewing her.”
“You did?”
Luka had forgotten that he’d told Harper they could tackle the Balanchuk interview together. But she needed to learn, a case like this, you had to go where the evidence sent you and prioritize your time. Right now finding the motorcycle was their top priority—along with protecting their victims. “Balanchuk said she saw a man in black motorcycle leathers following Ian Wright on campus four days ago. She was too far away to see his face, but I have campus security pulling any video footage from the time frame.”
“Let’s hope they’re more competent than Good Sam’s security,” Krichek said.
“Balanchuk could have said that to throw us off,” Harper put in. “If she and motorcycle guy were working together—”
“I’m here,” Luka told them as he pulled into the hospital’s garage. He hung up. Harper made a good point, but right now his main concern was Leah and Emily’s safety. A text pinged his phone: Leah saying there was a change of plans, she and Emily were now in the clinic administrator’s office.
Cursing the ER doctor’s inability to follow orders, but relieved they were somewhere safe and out of the main hospital building, so hopefully beyond the killer’s ability to surveil, Luka decided to take two minutes to check with the staff on peds. Harper and Krichek would follow up, but Harper’s comment about Leah potentially smuggling the roses into Emily’s room herself rankled—he hadn’t even thought of that. Could he really trust Leah? He wanted to, his gut instinct told him he could, but his job was to explore facts not feelings.
When he arrived on the pediatrics floor there was a hospital security guard conspicuously posted outside the room.
“Anyone been inside?” he asked.
“No. I was told not to disturb any potential evidence.”
Luka went inside the room. There was a patient bed, covers pulled aside, pillow still dented from a child-size head. Beside it stood a table with a lunch tray, the food undisturbed. And a trash can with a bouquet of roses wrapped in green florist paper. Given the boxes of gloves scattered throughout the hospital, the actor would have to be a fool to have left any fingerprints. The card was on the nightstand, exactly as Leah had described.
Blowing his breath out in frustration, he didn’t touch anything, but left the room and went to the nursing station. The clerk’s desk had an unobstructed view of Emily’s room.
“Did you see any floral deliveries for Emily Wright?” Luka asked the clerk after explaining the situation.
The man, Arthur Nguyen, shook his head. Luka waited. Nguyen swallowed hard, then found his voice. “No. I didn’t see anyone go into Emily’s room—but it was right after lunch, a busy time for meds and labs and patient transport. I might have missed something.”
Luka glanced at the ceiling. “You have cameras monitoring the floor?”
“No—no, sir. Only at the elevators and stairs. Because of protecting the kids’ privacy. There was a guard here, but he left for lunch when Dr. Wright took her daughter down for her interview. She and Emily got back before the guard did.”
Of course they did. “Okay. My people are on their way. They’ll want to talk to everyone who was on the floor and who might have seen anything. Make a list and try to help them coordinate that, okay?”
“I’ll ask the charge nurse to help.”
The security guard at Emily’s door got a phone call and nodded to Luka. “There’s some woman downstairs, keeps trying to come up. Insists she’s Dr. Wright’s mother. You want to talk to her? Apparently she’s been at it all morning, even tried sneaking up with another family.”
“I’m on my way.” Luka traveled back down to the security office where the man at the front desk cringed when he appeared. Good to know someone was taking Luka seriously. If this woman was Leah’s mother, why hadn’t she called Leah directly? If they were estranged, it might be interesting to see Leah’s response. Anything to force her to drop her mask of composure, expose what was really going on behind it.
The guard at the front desk hit a button and a moment later a door in the back opened and another guard, this one older with sergeant stripes on his uniform, appeared along with a middle-aged redhead dressed in swaths of color and layers of jangly jewelry. She looked like a flower child, but her tone of voice as she protested her treatment was anything but floral. Lashing, harsh as a whip, was more like it.
“Are you the officer in charge?” She strode forward to stand toe-to-toe with Luka. “I demand to see my daughter and granddaughter. Right now.”
The security guy shrugged, with the hint of a smirk, gesturing with his hands to say, “She’s all yours.”
“Ma’am, I need to see some identification.” Luka kept his voice steady despite his urge to rush over to the clinic where Leah and Emily wa
ited. If this woman was Leah’s mother, he had to play this carefully. “Please,” he added, and was rewarded by a softening of her glare.
“Already showed it to these bozos.” She handed him a driver’s license along with a collection of photos of Leah Wright as a little girl. None past Leah at around age twelve, no high school graduation or college photos. “And here.” She held up her phone, scrolling through a variety of snapshots of her with Emily, along with Emily and Ian. Interestingly, Leah was not in any of these more recent photos.
“Ruby Quinn Jackson,” he read from the license. The address was just across the river, only a few miles from the farm. It was a gamble, but one with little downside. And he needed something in this case to break—even if he had to force a confrontation between Leah and her mother. “Come with me.”
Twenty-Six
They arrived at the clinic’s administrative floor. Leah had never been up here. When she volunteered, she saw patients down in the urgent care center on the first floor. Brody waved at the volunteer on the front desk with casual familiarity then led them past the waiting area to Jessica Kern’s office. Emily lagged behind, eyes focused on the glass-walled playroom across from it. One of Jessica’s first projects when she took over the clinic had been to provide a play area—in fact, the play area was the reason behind the fundraiser where Leah had first met Jessica last year.
“Mommy, look,” Emily whispered loudly. “Can I go play? Please?”
The playroom was empty apart from staff, and easily visible from Jessica’ office, the reception desk, and the waiting area—designed that way to allay parents’ fears, no doubt.
“I can watch her while I wait for Charlie,” Brody volunteered.
Leah didn’t want to let Emily go, wanted to hold onto her so tight that no force of nature could tear them apart. What would Ian do? Finally, Leah nodded her assent. As Emily excitedly entered the playroom, Leah turned around to see Jessica standing in her office doorway, smiling fondly as she watched Emily explore.
“Brody, would you mind asking Mary to call down for lunch for our guests?”
“No problem, doc.” He ambled across the waiting area back to the reception desk, the volunteer, a woman in her late sixties, beaming as he approached.
“He seems to know everyone,” Leah said. “Said his son’s here a lot. Cystic fibrosis?”
Jessica sighed. “Poor Charlie. What that child’s been through. But you and Emily—I’m so sorry to hear things are getting worse. Please, come in, enjoy some peace and quiet.”
Leah followed Jessica into her office. It was small, but quiet. The walls held bookcases and a variety of artwork obviously done by patients. There were no diplomas or certificates, although there were several photos: Jessica and a man receiving an award, each holding a prosthetic arm raised victoriously and surrounded by men in military uniforms; a candid shot of Jessica in a well-equipped, high tech lab with an Air Force pilot, a drone flying beyond them and no controls in sight; and one of a young soldier in a military uniform, a black ribbon across the upper corner. A flag framed in a triangular wooden case stood on the shelf beside it.
Leah stepped back from the memorial, feeling as if she’d intruded. Jessica said she’d lost her husband, but her son as well? She glanced at the older woman, who was sliding an armchair away from the wall to join the one already sitting in front of the desk, angling them so that they faced each other but also provided a clear view out the door to the playroom. Jessica smiled at Leah, sat down in the chair she’d moved into more intimate proximity and gestured for Leah to take the other.
“Thanks,” Leah said as she sank down, the vinyl upholstery sighing. Her phone vibrated—it had been going off nonstop. She slid it from her pocket, frowned at the Facebook message, hoping it was Ian’s parents, miraculously able to make it past the storm. It wasn’t. She held it out for Jessica to read.
“It won’t stop,” Leah said. “Not only reporters or people who know Ian, but strangers texting, commenting. The things they say, about me, about Ian, about Emily. Go ahead, scroll down. It’s awful.”
“Trolls.”
“This is more than heckling—some of these are so… perverted. And the details. It’s terrifying. Now people are sending me links to videos accusing me of mistreating patients, racism, horrible things.” Leah glanced across the hall to the playroom. Emily was eating with Brody, out of earshot. “Jessica, she was there, asleep, right there in the room. They laid the flowers beside her on the pillow. Anything could have—” Fear throttled her words.
“You called the police?”
“As soon as I got Emily out of there, yes. They’re sending someone.” Frustration bled into her tone—she no longer trusted Luka Jericho and the police to protect Emily. Which meant it all fell to Leah.
“Maybe the flowers weren’t sent by the killer? But by someone else wanting to take advantage of your vulnerability?”
“No,” Leah said without thinking. “How would they know to write that on the card?”
“You said Ian bought his bouquet from the gift shop. If someone worked at Good Sam—”
“They’d know how to find Emily’s room.” Leah glanced around the office, her gaze ricocheting from Jessica’s artwork to the variety of textbooks lined up on her bookshelves to the flag in its memorial case and back again. “That would mean… someone I know, maybe someone I work with…” She couldn’t bring herself to finish the thought.
Jessica rested a hand on Leah’s arm. “It doesn’t mean they hurt Ian. Could be as simple as someone you pissed off taking advantage of a chance to elicit pain. So many of these trolls are like that—they don’t actually want to hurt anyone, they just want to be heard, their emotions, pain acknowledged.”
Leah shook her head as if the movement might erase the idea that she’d hurt someone so badly that they chose this moment to punish her. To twist the knife while she was already reeling from Ian’s death. “No. They threatened Emily. They can say anything they want to me, about me—but they cannot threaten Emily. Not while she’s already been through so much.”
“With more to come, I’m afraid.” Jessica squeezed Leah’s arm before releasing it. She gestured with Leah’s phone. “A lot of victims of domestic violence come through here. I have a stash of prepaid phones—we can give the police yours, let them deal with the trolls.” She slid her chair back behind the desk and pulled a phone from a drawer. “They’re not fancy, not many apps or anything, just a basic phone, but—”
Leah took the new phone like it was a lifeline. It would only take a minute to transfer her contacts and her photos were saved in their cloud storage—she didn’t really care about anything else. Ian had drilled a distrust of apps that required personal info like banking details, so abandoning her phone was no great loss—not compared to being able to escape the media and the strangers who now demanded access to her life, as if her suffering was some warped form of entertainment.
“When you don’t need it anymore, return it and we’ll pass it on to the next person who needs it.”
“Jessica, thank you. Seriously, this is so thoughtful.”
Jessica shook away the praise. “I’m just sorry you need it at all.”
Leah turned the phone on and quickly set it up, her first text to Ian’s parents so they would have her new temporary number. Then she followed Jessica’s eyes out through the open door. Emily sat at the playroom’s large drawing table with Brody, who’d somehow managed to fold himself into the small chair opposite. He still wore his knit cap, reminding Leah of that old comic book character, Jughead.
As the silence lengthened, Leah’s gaze drifted back to Jessica’s bookshelf with its photos. “You and your husband worked together?” she asked, anxious to change the topic to anything that didn’t involve killers or stalkers. “With injured veterans?”
“A new form of prosthetics,” Jessica said proudly. “Artificial limbs controlled entirely with the patient’s thoughts.” She paused and the bright look in her eyes faded.
“Our work. Mine and Gordie’s. Back when I still worked in research. No time for that now. Ever since Gordie… research seems so unimportant compared to patients I can see, feel, touch, help. Know what I mean?”
Leah nodded. “What was it like, working with your husband?”
“We had our ups and downs, like any partnership. What kept us going was Jonathan—our son.” Her gaze traveled past Leah to the photo of the young man in dress uniform. “His unit was training Afghan police in counterterrorism tactics. One day someone tossed an IED inside his classroom, locked the door, walked away. Killed them all, men trying to help him and his people. No one ever suspected they had a traitor right there beside them.” She closed her eyes, a sigh escaping her. Leah sat still, not sure what to say. Sorry was such a small empty word, she’d learned already.
“Anyway,” Jessica opened her eyes and continued, “Gordie and I, we switched gears from civilians to working with soldiers. Gordie was an engineering genius but couldn’t always see the bigger picture like I could as far as real-world applications. Maybe if he had, we could have saved Jonathan—”
“How?”
“Our enhanced EEG—the one I used with Emily. It’s better than even functional MRI as far as detecting lies, deception, intent. With it, I can tell exactly what areas of the brain are being activated. It’s lightweight, portable, perfect for field interrogations. Or will be, once I get the prototype perfected. Gordie didn’t want to pursue that line of research, said it could be abused too easily.”
Her gaze morphed from wistful to sorrowful. “That last day, right before he… we were fighting about it… and then he was gone and I was all alone. My whole world shattered into nothing.” Jessica shook herself as if waking from a daydream. “I’m so sorry. You don’t want to hear all that, not when your own loss is so fresh. How can I help?”