Eleventh Hour f-7

by Catherine Coulter

  “Can you hear me, sir? See me?”

  “Yes, I can see you. Who are you?”

  “I’m Special Agent Dane Carver, FBI.”

  Slowly, very slowly, the old man lifted his trembling, deeply veined hand, and he saluted.

  Dane was charmed. He saluted him back. Then he gently wrapped his hand around the old man’s and slowly lowered it. “You fell out of your chair?”

  “Oh no, Special Agent,” he said in a voice that sounded otherworldly it was so whispery thin. “He was here again and I told him I wouldn’t keep quiet anymore, and he hit me.”

  “Who, Captain? Who hit you?”

  “My son.”

  “Hey! What happened here?”

  A nurse fell to her knees beside Captain DeLoach, feeling his pulse, cupping her hand around his ancient face. “Captain, it’s Carla. You fell out of your chair again, didn’t you?”

  The old man groaned.

  “All right. Now, let me clean the blood off your face, see how bad it is. You’ve got to be more careful, you know that. If you want to run around the room, just call one of us and we’ll steer you. We’ll even hold races if that’s what you’d like. Now, just lie still, Captain, and I’ll take care of everything.”

  Captain DeLoach’s eyes closed. Dane couldn’t rouse him.

  His son?

  Weldon DeLoach had hit his father and knocked him out of his chair? But Velvet had said Weldon hadn’t been around for a week. She also said that the old man usually didn’t know his own name. Dane held the old man’s hand until Carla came back into the room. An orderly, a big Filipino man, lifted him in his arms and carried him to the bed. The old man looked like a bunch of old bones barely knit together, his pale, veined flesh wrapped in a bright blue flannel shirt and baggy pants. There were thick socks on his feet, and only one bedroom slipper. The other slipper was lying near the TV. The orderly laid him on his back, very gently straightening all those old limbs.

  “All right, I understand from Velvet that you’re FBI agents,” Nurse Carla said, not looking at either of them. “Would you mind telling me what’s going on? What do you want with Captain DeLoach?”

  Dane said, “We came to the door, heard moans, and I immediately opened the door and came into the room. Captain DeLoach was lying on the floor, just as you saw.”

  “He’s always falling out of the chair, knocking it over,” she said. “But this is the first time he’s hurt himself. Nasty cut on his head, but it won’t need stitches. I hope he doesn’t have a concussion. That could really take his brain right out of commission.”

  Dane and Nick watched her wash out the cut, then apply an antibiotic and a bandage. Nick patted her own Band-Aid that covered the graze made by the bullet and flopped her hair back over it.

  Carla said, “Captain DeLoach? Can you hear me? Open your eyes.”

  The old man didn’t answer her, just lay there, occasionally moaning.

  “He spoke to me,” Dane said. “He was quite lucid. He said that someone hit him. Is it possible that that cut isn’t from his fall?”

  Carla snorted. “Not likely. His only visitor is his son, and Weldon was here last week. Weldon’s like clockwork, never more than two weeks go by before he comes to visit.” She frowned up at Dane. “You say he was lucid? How could that be? He hasn’t been lucid in days now.”

  “He was. Excuse me a moment, I’m going to have a look around.”

  “Suit yourself,” Carla said. She looked over at Nick. “Did you hear him speak lucidly?”

  “No. When I saw him on the floor, bleeding, I came to get you.”

  “Well, this is all very interesting. Captain DeLoach? Come on now, open your eyes.” She lightly slapped the old man’s cheeks, once, twice, yet again.

  He opened his eyes, blinked.

  “Do you hurt?”

  He moaned again, closed his eyes.

  Carla sighed. “It’s really hard when their minds go. Hey, what are you doing?”

  Nick said, “I was just checking the chair; it’s really sturdy. How does the captain manage to turn it over? It’s quite heavy.”

  “Good question, but he’s done it before. No one’s seen him actually topple over, just the aftermath. Okay, I’ve got this wound bandaged. When the doctor comes around I’ll have him look at it. Let me give the captain a sedative to help him rest.”

  “He looks pretty quiet to me right now,” Nick said, inching a bit closer to look at the old man’s pale face.

  Carla said, arms crossed over her chest, eyes suspicious, “You don’t know anything about it, do you, so your opinion doesn’t count. Now, tell me why two Federal agents are here to see Captain DeLoach.”

  “Sorry,” Nick said, “it’s on a need-to-know basis and you’re not in the loop.”

  Nurse Carla harrumphed and laid the palm of her hand on Captain DeLoach’s forehead, nodded, pulled a small notebook out of her pocket, and scribbled something down. She didn’t say anything else.

  Nick wished Dane would come back. She knew he was looking to see if there was any sign of an intruder, any sign that Weldon DeLoach had been there.

  Ten minutes later, they were in Mr. Latterley’s office with its long glass windows looking onto Bear Lake. He’d just returned, and was still breathing hard.

  “Have you seen Weldon DeLoach recently, Mr. Latterley?”

  “No. I understand he visited a week or so ago, but I didn’t personally see him. He’s very dependable, as I’m sure everyone’s told you. Once every couple of weeks, he’s here to see his father, make sure he’s got everything he needs. Sometimes Weldon comes more often.”

  Dane sat forward. “Have you seen anyone, any stranger, around lately? Today, to be specific?”

  Mr. Latterley shook his head. “Well, I was in town for a couple of hours, so you’ll have to ask the staff. But I’ll tell you, Agent Carver, there’s no reason for someone to come here. Oh, we get an occasional hiker in the summer or a tourist who takes a wrong turn, but today? Not that I know of.”

  Nick said, “The glass doors in Captain DeLoach’s room weren’t locked, Mr. Latterley. Someone could have simply opened them and walked in.”

  “Well, yes, they could, but why? You don’t think that someone actually came in and struck Captain DeLoach, do you? He’s a very old man, agents. Why would anyone seek to hurt him?”

  “I asked him who hit him and he told me it was his son.”

  Mr. Latterley blinked. “You must have misunderstood him,” he said. “Or the old man was just weaving in and out and that was what came out of his mouth. No, not Weldon. That’s ridiculous.”

  He was shaking his head, an interesting head, Nick thought, staring. Shiny, bald, and pointed. She’d never seen a bald head quite so pointed before.

  “No,” he said again, more forcefully this time. “Impossible. You didn’t see any sign of anyone, did you, Agent Carver?”

  “I can’t be certain. We would like to speak to all the staff who work near Captain DeLoach’s room.”

  Dane spent the next hour doing just that. To a person, they shook their heads and looked bewildered by his questions.

  Nick sat beside Captain DeLoach’s bed, holding his hand, speaking quietly to him, hoping for a sensible response, but he didn’t speak. She said to Dane when he came in, “He did open his eyes a couple of times, but he looked right through me, didn’t respond at all. I’ve been speaking to him, about lots of silly things, but he hasn’t answered me.”

  Just before they left, the doctor came out to say, “I examined Captain DeLoach’s head wound. He seems to be all right. To be perfectly honest, I can’t tell if it happened because he hit his head when he fell or if someone indeed struck him. But on the face of it, it seems strange to even consider that some miscreant from the outside would come into the old man’s room and smack him around.”

  Dane said as he walked beside Nick toward their car, “Captain DeLoach said that he told his son he wouldn’t keep quiet anymore and his son hit him. I wonder what he
meant by that?”

  “I’m beginning to think we should try the Oracle at Delphi.”

  He laughed. “Not a bad idea.”

  “I just realized, I’m really hungry. Do you think we could stop at a Mexican place on the way back to LA?”

  “Sure can.”

  Dane walked into Nick’s connecting room at the nicely updated Holiday Inn, not far from Premier Studios on Pico.

  She was on the phone. She hadn’t heard him, she was so intent on the call.

  He stopped cold. Who was she speaking to?

  “Listen,” he heard her say, “I’m calling from the Los Angeles Times. My editor asked me to check out for sure whether he was traveling west. Does his schedule include either San Francisco or Los Angeles?”

  She sensed him, there was no other word for it, and whipped around. She met his eyes, and quietly eased the phone back into the cradle.

  “I can get the number from the hotel clerk, but it would be easier if you just broke down and told me what’s going on.”

  Nick felt a corrosive fear leap to life. She wanted to cover up with a dozen blankets or run as fast as she could.

  “Go away.”

  He sat down beside her on the queen-size bed, picked up her hands, and held them between his. She had nice hands, short nails, no rings. The skin was smooth again. Her hair was half-dry and she was wearing a bit of lip gloss. Nice mouth, too. No, he wouldn’t go there. He said, looking at her straight in the face, “Listen to me, there’s a lot going on here, and on top of it all, here you are scared out of your mind about-whatever. Why won’t you let me help you? My brain can handle more than one thing at a time. I can multitask as well as a woman. Come on, trust me, Nick.”

  She suddenly looked very tired, and flattened, yes, defeated. She looked desperately alone.

  Very slowly, he pulled her against him. He felt the panic rise in her, but he didn’t do anything at all but hold her, give her what comfort he could. He said against her damp hair, which smelled just like his, since they both had used the hotel shampoo, which had a girlie-girl smell, floral and soft, “You’ve seen firsthand that there’s lots of bad stuff and bad people in the world. But you know what? Some of it we can actually do something about. We’re going to catch the man who killed all those people, my brother included.” He stopped. If and when she was ready to tell him about herself, then she would. Maybe it was all a matter of trust. So be it. No more pushing. He said only, “I’m here for you, Nick.”

  “Yes, and so is the murderer, and he’s already tried to have me killed. I want to leave, Dane. You don’t need me anymore.”

  “It’s too late, Nick.” He raised his finger and lightly touched it to the Band-Aid that covered the bullet graze. “That’s the whole point. Milton failed so the guy who hired him will try again, count on it. You need me, if for nothing else, as a bodyguard.”

  “Everything is rotten,” she said. “All of it, just plain rotten.”

  “I know. But we’ll take care of things. Trust me on that. Hey, rotten is my stock-in-trade. I get a paycheck because of rotten. It gives me motivation.”

  She fell silent. She didn’t move either, just let him pull her close and hold her. She felt the core of steadiness in him, felt how solid he was, physically, and his heart, that was solid, too. She knew he was a rock, that once this man gave his word, you could bet the bank on it.

  She thought of Father Michael Joseph, his face identical to Dane’s, but he was dead now. She knew Dane was alone with that and she knew he was battling each hour, each day, just to get through. Here she was leaning on him, and he was comforting her. Who did he lean on?

  “I’m all right,” she said, slowly pulling away from him. She looked at him then and lightly laid her palm against his cheek. “You are an estimable man, Dane. I am so very sorry about your brother.”

  He closed down, and his face went blank, because he had to hold himself together.

  “I would appreciate it,” she said, standing, straightening the sweater he’d picked out for her the previous Friday, a lovely V-necked sweater, deep red, that she was wearing over a white blouse, “if you wouldn’t try to find out who I was speaking to.”

  She saw in his eyes that he wasn’t going to ask the front desk. At least he was still willing to give her some leeway. He said, “I will find out sooner or later, Nick.”

  “Later,” she said.

  He said nothing to that, just shrugged back at her. “Are you ready? We’re all meeting for dinner to exchange information.”

  “I’m ready,” she said, and picked up the wool coat he’d bought her. He’d done too much for her, far too much, and he was offering to do more. It was hard to bear. She ran her hands over the soft wool. It felt wonderful. She kept stroking it even as she said over her shoulder, “I was always scared. I’d lie in one of the small cots on the second floor of the shelter, the allotted one blanket pulled to my ears, and I’d listen to people moving about downstairs. Sometimes there’d be yelling, fighting, screaming, and always, I huddled down and was afraid because violence seemed to be part of the despair, and the two always went together. Sometimes they’d bring their fights upstairs and they’d throw stuff or hit each other until some of the shelter staff managed to get things back under control.

  “There were drug users, alcoholics, people who were mentally ill, people just ground down by circumstance, all mixed together. There was so much despair, it was pervasive, but the thing was-everyone wanted to survive.”

  “And then there was you.”

  “Yes, but I suppose you could say I was one of those who’d been ground down by circumstance.”

  She stopped, looked down at her left hand, still stroking her wool coat. “The alcoholics and the addicts-they were self-destructive. It’s not that I didn’t feel sorry for them, but they were different from the other homeless people because they’d brought their misery on themselves. And they never seemed to blame themselves for what they’d become. It was the strangest thing. One of the shelter counselors said it was because if they ever had to face what they really were in the mirror, they wouldn’t be able to bear it. Everyone there had so little. But they were the ones responsible for what had become of them, responsible for where they were. And because they wouldn’t face the truth, there was no hope for them.

  “The mentally ill people-they were the worst off. I truly can’t understand how we as a society allow people who are so ill they can’t even remember to take their medications or even know that they need medication, to just roam the streets. They suffer the most because they’re the most helpless.”

  Dane said, “I remember when one of the New York mayors wanted to get the sick people off the streets and into safe houses, but the ACLU went nuts.”

  Nick said, “I remember. The ACLU cleaned up this poor woman, dressed her like a normal person, fed her meds so she could pass muster, and they won. Except that poor woman lost. Within days she was back on the street, off her meds, cursing and spitting at people, vulnerable and helpless. I wonder if any of the lawyers at the ACLU lost a bit of sleep over that.”

  “Who are you, Nick?”

  She grew very still, didn’t move, just stood there when he opened the door to the Grand Am. She said, “My name is Nick, short for Nicola. I don’t want to tell you my real last name. All right?”

  “You mean, if you tell me your real name I would have heard of it?”

  “No. It means that you have a computer and access to information.”

  So there was something on her, something to be found, something other than just who she was. What had happened to her?

  When he was seated in the driver’s seat, the key in the ignition, he turned to her and said, “I want to know who you are, not just your name.”

  She looked straight ahead, saying nothing, until he pulled out of the Holiday Inn parking lot onto the street.

  She said, “I’m a woman who could be dead before the first day of spring.”

  His hands tightened around
the steering wheel. “Bullshit. You’re just being dramatic, and you’re wrong. I think by the first of spring, you’ll be doing what you were doing last month. What were you doing in December, Nick?”

  “I was teaching medieval history.” She didn’t know why she said that. Well, he already knew she had a Ph.D., this much more wouldn’t tell him anything.

  “Are you by any chance Dr. Nick?”

  “Yes, but you already guessed that. You know that your brother loved history.”

  “My brother was an impressive man, he was a very good man,” Dane said, and shut up, really fast. He could feel himself breaking apart, deep inside, where his brother’s blood and Dane’s own pain flowed together. He remembered Archbishop Lugano at Michael’s service, his hand on Dane’s shoulder, telling him to take it just one day at a time.

  He concentrated on driving. He was momentarily distracted by a girl on roller skates, wearing shorts that showed half her butt cheeks, and she was waving to him, grinning and blowing him kisses over her shoulder. He waved back, grinned a bit, and said, “That’s some presentation.”

  “Yes indeed, you’re right,” Nick said. “I agree, she does skate very well.”

  Dane jerked around, surprised. “That was funny, Nick.”

  She smiled. It was a small smile, but a smile nonetheless.

  “Where are we going?”

  “We’re all meeting at The Green Apple, over on Melrose.”

  Nick sighed. “Doesn’t sound like they’ll have tacos, does it?”

  “I just hope they don’t serve fried green apples. I’m an American, I love fat, but you know-my belly rebels fast if I eat even two pieces of KFC. It’s a bummer.”

  “Don’t whine. It means you won’t ever have to worry about your weight.”

  He smiled at her, then said, “I sure hope someone has found out something useful. The bottom line is that what you and I found out just leads to more questions.”

  As it turned out, Sherlock and Savich had struck gold.

  TWENTY-ONE

  Sherlock said between bites of a carrot stick, “We dug up a guy who’s a real good friend of Weldon DeLoach’s. His name is Kurt Grinder. He’s a porn star. Yeah, yeah, I know-the name. I just couldn’t help myself so I asked him. He said it was, actually, his real name. He’s known Weldon for some eight years, ever since he came to LA. He said he saw Weldon DeLoach two and a half weeks ago at the Gameland Bowling Alley in North Hollywood. Said he and Weldon went bowling together every week, on Thursday night, said Weldon told him that bowling always relaxes him. He was getting worried because Weldon hadn’t called him and he couldn’t get an answer at Weldon’s apartment.”