Ricochet

by Paula Gosling

  ‘What?’ Liz finally asked in a rather weak voice.

  ‘All fixed,’ Tos went on. ‘I explained everything.’

  ‘Everything?’ Liz prompted.

  ‘Well, about how brave you were and all, protecting Kate, here.’

  ‘I wasn’t protecting Kate,’ Liz protested. ‘I was trying to catch a madman.’

  ‘I can look after myself,’ Kate also protested, her last feeble words of defiance falling on deaf ears.

  Tos gave a huge Italian shrug, hands wide. ‘It amounts to the same thing.’ He came further into the room, pulled over a chair and straddled it. ‘You remember Machiavelli?’

  ‘I taught him all he knows,’ Liz said.

  He ignored that. ‘Mama is a sucker for a sick person,’ Tos said. ‘And a brave sick person is even better. She will cook for you, look after you when I am at work and she will naturally grow to love you because who could resist?’ He grinned. ‘Not me.’

  ‘Oh my God,’ Liz groaned. ‘I don’t believe this.’

  ‘It will be easy. All you have to do is show an interest in recipes and agree to learn Italian,’ Tos said, full of enthusiasm.

  ‘I don’t like cooking,’ Liz interrupted.

  ‘Pretend,’ Tos continued. ‘Look on it as domestic chemistry. Also some interest in the afternoon soap operas would help. Get on her wavelength, break her down.’

  ‘And your sister?’ Liz asked.

  ‘Elvis,’ Tos said.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘Ask about Elvis Presley – listen to a few CDs . . . that’s all you have to do.’

  ‘All?’ Liz’s voice was a bit strangled.

  Tos looked a little uncertain. ‘It’s the best thing I can think of,’ he said. ‘Best for you and best for us. See, when she knows you . . . becomes used to you . . . getting married will be easy. Mind you, you might gain a few pounds, but what the hell.’

  Liz and Kate exchanged a glance.

  ‘I think you’ve just been proposed to,’ Kate said.

  ‘Just what I always wanted,’ Liz said. ‘Two useless arms and an elliptical proposal in front of my best friend.’ But her eyes were shining.

  Kate stood up. ‘I think it’s time I left.’

  ‘See you, Sundance,’ said Liz, but her attention was all on Tos.

  Kate walked slowly out of the room and down the corridor. It had been three days since the excitement, and during that time she and Jack had hardly exchanged ten words. He had been busy dealing with Sherwin’s arrest and arraignment, and she had been wandering from campus to home and back in a kind of daze.

  What a fool she had been. She and Jack had an unlisted number. There had been nobody living in her flat. So, because Torrance had always called her at the university she had considered it her business and hers alone. She had to cope with it herself, in her own cack-handed way, being the big strong person at the centre of it all.

  Suddenly she realized how Jack felt – wanting to be a cop. He had been trained, physically and mentally, to deal with everything from murder to vicious phone callers. She hadn’t. He knew what he was doing. She didn’t. She had been proceeding on emotion, not logic or experience. She was the worst of both worlds – both amateur and pig-headed. More than that, she also finally understood the fascination of it – why Jack did what he did, why he was loath to give it up. When she had been pressing ahead with the Big Chase for the Bad Man – it had been an adventure. It had been fun. She had felt in control, sure of herself, sure she was right.

  Without a legal leg to stand on, she had turned vigilante.

  Oh Jack, she thought. No wonder I drive you crazy.

  ‘It’s the damnedest thing,’ Dan said to David and Abbi, as he came back from the phone and plumped himself down on the piano bench.

  ‘What?’ David asked. Abbi just looked at her much-loved brother-in-law with huge, sad eyes.

  Dan grinned. ‘I’m clear.’ He laughed at the expression on their faces – hope mixed with confusion. ‘I’m clear!’

  ‘But how can that be – you said he injected you with blood from that guy who died of AIDS,’ David said, putting aside the pillow he had been hugging as if it were a life preserver.

  Dan was looking a little stunned himself. ‘But that’s just it – he didn’t die of AIDS,’ he said in a voice filled with awe. ‘They never do. It’s Auto-Immune Deficiency Syndrome, remember? It means they have no resistance to infection. Mostly it’s pneumonia they die of, or heart failure. A dozen things. But the HIV virus stays alive as long as the body is warm, so he was drawing blood from the cadaver to test against previous samples.’ He took a deep breath. ‘And there was no HIV present in the dead man’s blood.’

  They stared at him. Abbi laughed, gasped, laughed again. ‘I don’t understand,’ she said. ‘He was an AIDS patient. He must have been filled with HIV.’

  ‘Uh-huh,’ Dan agreed. ‘He was when they brought him in. They checked the records – the results were clear, he was infected with HIV when admitted a month ago, but he was free of it when his heart gave out.’

  David sank back into the sofa, staring at his brother.

  ‘My God,’ he breathed. ‘You mean it worked? Sherwin’s treatment actually worked?’

  ‘We don’t know that,’ Dan said carefully, but he still looked stunned. ‘Not for sure. All we know is that there should have been clear traces of HIV in the dead guy’s blood and there were none. There were none in mine, either. They’ve gathered up all the patient’s notes and all Sherwin’s notes. They even found that ampoule that got kicked around in the basement. They’re putting together what they can, but the research and experimental notes are in some kind of personal code and Sherwin is not exactly in a state to explain them. It could be a fluke and of course, they’ll have to keep checking me, but . . .’ He looked at them, a mixture of bafflement and amazement in his eyes. ‘It could take years,’ he said. ‘To be sure of what he did, what in his treatment made the difference, how it was processed . . .’

  ‘Meanwhile he’s going on trial for murdering Ricky Sanchez,’ Abbi said softly.

  ‘There might not even be a trial,’ Dan said, turning his back and playing a few random keys on the piano. ‘He’s confessed, he’ll plead guilty.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘You tell me,’ Dan said, facing them again. ‘If it were up to me, I’d slap him in a jail with a really big laboratory attached and let him get on with it. But it’s not up to me. And you know how the bureaucrats in the justice system mess things up. They’ll never trust him. He’ll probably be put in a psychiatric hospital and made to do jigsaws all day. Barney will go through his notes, other people will go through them and maybe they’ll figure it out, but without Sherwin . . .’ He raised and lowered his shoulders.

  ‘Jigsaws,’ David said with disgust. ‘Doing jigsaws.’

  ‘Isn’t everything?’ asked Abbi softly.

  The cemetery was quiet. A light fall of snow covered the ground, put little shrouds on the gravestones. Ned Pinsky left the path and walked across the snow, leaving wet, dark footprints in the grass. He stopped before a new marker. The ground had not yet begun to settle over the fresh grave and it seemed as if there were a warm blanket mounded over the person within. Eventually a headstone would be erected there. Pinsky would make sure of that.

  He stood, looking down, then bent and put a bunch of flowers by the marker. ‘I didn’t get him for you, Ricky,’ he said quietly. ‘I’m sorry. I wanted to be the one, I thought I owed you that. But he won’t kill again. At least you achieved that and you should be proud.’

  It had been galling to know two amateurs had caught the killer he had so wanted to arrest. He knew Stryker had been right to insist he leave Ricky’s murder alone. He knew that his mind was clouded by emotion, that he might have been unable to reason coherently and could have botched it. But he had worked met
hodically, carefully, doing a good job and getting there.

  Instead, the Waxman brothers had rushed in. When he thought of how much danger they had been in he felt quite weak. He was a cop, he expected to be in danger, it was what he was trained for, paid for. It could have gone so wrong. And maybe it had. He would call the hospital later to see how Dan Waxman was. If he died from AIDS eventually, Pinsky would have to add that to his burden of guilt and regret. And it was already very heavy.

  He stood there for a while, looking at the bright colours of the flowers against the white of the snow. There were still two Sanchez children left. He would do his best to help their mother when she needed support. He would watch over them, as Ricky had watched over them. He promised this to Ricky.

  Then he walked away.

  When Stryker came home that night, Kate was ready for him. She knew he had the next two days off, that he would need rest, but she needed to straighten things out between them. Now more than ever. She had been doing a lot of thinking, a lot of looking at herself in a cold, clear light. She’d been ten kinds of a fool and nearly got herself killed. She hadn’t trusted Jack, when trusting him had been the most important thing all along.

  She gave him his favourite meal, then waited until he had stretched out on the sofa.

  She came to sit at the other end, taking off his shoes and rubbing his feet. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, plucking at the toe of his sock.

  ‘What about?’ His eyes were closed.

  ‘Everything. Going off on my own, acting so stupidly, getting so angry . . . ’

  He managed a smile. ‘You sure were that.’ He opened his eyes. ‘What will happen to Professor Torrance?’

  Kate shrugged. ‘He’ll be retired without fuss and probably sent to a clinic to get help. The university has been pretty generous about it. Since neither Liz nor I are going to press charges, they can just deal with it quietly. The Dean tracked down Michael Deeds, got the true story out of him. He said Torrance’s judgement was affected by grief. One way of looking at it, I guess. There’s a good medical plan, he’ll get what he needs.’

  ‘Which was not being confronted by two angry women,’ Stryker said wryly.

  She started to bridle, then had the grace to smile. ‘True.’

  They sat companionably together, and after a while Stryker reached for her hand and held it. ‘How do you feel now?’

  She sighed. ‘Exhausted. But Jack . . .’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I think I understand, now, about your wanting to be a cop. About how it matters to get things straightened out, even to face danger doing it.’

  ‘Really?’ He sounded unconvinced.

  ‘I . . . loved it,’ she said in a small voice. ‘Catching him. I loved it.’

  He regarded her thoughtfully. ‘I don’t do it for fun,’ he said quietly.

  ‘No, I know that. I understand that too. It’s to get things settled, to stop the wickedness, to make peace.’

  ‘Powerful wampum,’ he said, teasing her, but pleased that she was trying hard, obviously very hard, to understand his point of view. ‘It’s all of that. And sometimes exciting, I won’t deny that. But Pinsky . . .’

  ‘He got emotionally involved, like I did,’ Kate said. ‘Is he very upset that he didn’t get the killer himself?’

  ‘He’ll get over it,’ Stryker said. Pinsky had returned to find Muller using his desk. There had been words. Muller was now at a desk by himself in the corner. But Stryker had seen the look on his baby face and he realized there were some fun times ahead. Whereas Pinsky knew how to handle Neilson, Muller had found the chinks in Neilson’s ego and could now rile him with a look or a comment. What’s more, he obviously was made for mischief. There was a lot more to the boy than even he had suspected, and finding the right partner for him was going to be a ride and a half. But it seemed to him that Muller would be worth the effort.

  More silence. Peaceful silence at last between them.

  ‘It really was all connected, wasn’t it?’ Kate finally asked.

  ‘It’s like the man said – life is just one damn thing after another,’ Stryker commented. ‘All the violence had a common starting point, but we had no way of seeing it until it was too late.’

  He held up a hand and counted off on his fingers. ‘If Torrance hadn’t called Elise Mayhew once too often, Mayhew would have taught her next day’s class as usual. But Lois McKittrick was with her when he made his last call. She was begging for the attention she desperately craved, which Elise Mayhew was too exhausted to give. Lois took the phone and Torrance said God knows what to her, making her cry. When she saw those tears, Elise snapped, went for the gun to kill Torrance. It was an emotional moment, but Lois had enough sense to wrestle her for the gun, to try and stop her doing something so foolish. In the struggle, Elise Mayhew was shot.’

  ‘Like Liz got shot,’ Kate mused. ‘Because of me.’

  Stryker sighed, remembering Lois McKittrick as he had last seen her, broken, sobbing, temporarily beyond retrieval. Dr Maclaine had taken charge, worked with the DA, made it her business to see Lois was looked after properly.

  He went on. ‘Not quite. In a struggle, yes, but not for the same reasons. Anyway, as a result of Mayhew’s death, her classes were cancelled. Without a class to attend Ricky decided to work an extra shift at the hospital the next night. Some time during that extra shift he followed Sherwin to French Street, saw what he was doing and saying to his “patients”, confronted him.’ He smiled slightly. ‘From what I’ve learned about Ricky Sanchez from Ned, I don’t imagine he was very sympathetic to Sherwin and let him know in no uncertain terms what he thought of him. Sherwin lost control and killed him to shut him up.’

  ‘So it really started with Torrance?’ Kate asked.

  Stryker sighed, sat up and put his arm round Kate. ‘I suppose you could say that. It’s all been a matter of normally sane people losing control, one way or another. Speaking of which, how’s David’s hand?’

  ‘Abbi says he’ll play piano again, but it will take a couple of months of physio first. She also said David is quite proud of having broken three bones fighting for what he thought was his dying brother. And there’s wonderful news there, too.’ She told him about Dan and the strange, puzzling but splendid test results. Abbi had called her that afternoon to relay the details.

  Stryker smiled with relief. It had been preying on his mind. It was bad enough to kill bad men – but to be the reason good men die was untenable.

  When they had reached the hospital after a race from the Torrance house the Waxman Boys – as they would for ever be called in his mind – were the centre of attention in the ER, sitting on adjacent gurneys, getting treatment.

  Stryker had opened his mouth to speak, but Dan interrupted, his voice strained. One of his rebroken ribs had grazed a lung, and he was still under the impression he was a man destined to die of AIDS. Shock had undermined but not totally unnerved him. ‘It was my own fault,’ he said. ‘Ann-Catherine told me not to do it. She told me to wait until she called Sergeant Pinsky. But I was feeling like a hero. I caught Sherwin in the morgue and said more than I should have. I made my choice. I’ll have to live with it.’

  Now Stryker thanked God Dan had apparently been spared.

  ‘They’re quite a pair, those Waxman brothers.’ Stryker grinned. ‘They’re hardly the first ones to spring to mind when it comes to bringing down a killer. A musician and a healer. And yet they did our job for us. We should never have dismissed Ricky’s murder as a street crime. Fineman . . .’

  ‘Do you mind?’ Kate was amused.

  ‘No. But Pinsky does. He wanted to catch Ricky’s killer, you know. He wanted to deal out justice for the boy because he felt he had failed him by not paying more attention to what Ricky was worrying about. It became an obsession, made him risk his badge and his job. I think it will take him a while to settle it within him
self.’

  ‘I think we have some settling to do between ourselves as well,’ Kate said. ‘Things like who’s in charge, when and why. I think we might have to start taking turns on that.’

  ‘What – on alternate Wednesdays I have my way and all the rest of the time you have yours?’ he asked with a grin.

  ‘Maybe.’ She got up and went across the room to her desk. She came back slowly. ‘I’ve finally found out part of the reason I acted so emotionally; why I’ve been so moody and short-tempered.’

  ‘PMT?’ Stryker asked with a manly display of understanding.

  ‘Not quite,’ Kate said and produced a small white stick from behind her back. She held it out. ‘I’m pregnant.’ She smiled.

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  Paula Gosling

  Paula Gosling was born in Detroit and moved to England in 1964, where she has lived ever since. She worked as a copywriter and a freelance copy consultant before becoming a full time writer in 1979. Since then she has published close to twenty novels and has served as the Crime Writers’ Association Chairman. Her debut novel, A Running Duck, won the John Creasey Award and has been adapted into the films Cobra, starring Sylvester Stallone, and Fair Game, starring Cindy Crawford. The first novel in her popular Jack Stryker Series, A Monkey Puzzle, also won the Golden Dagger award for the best crime novel of 1985.

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