Summer of the Dead

by Julia Keller

  “What’s going on?”

  A familiar voice. Bell turned. The question had come from Sharon Henner, who emerged into the corridor from the same door out of which Fugate had appeared moments ago. Sharon wore a bright pink suit and black heels. Had the governor’s daughter been here all day? Ever since her mysterious arrival this morning? Behind her were Bradley Portis, the hospital CEO, and the older security guard from Riley Jessup’s estate.

  “Oh, it’s just a very unfortunate circumstance,” Fugate said, looking anxiously at Sharon. “Regretfully,” she went on, gesturing toward Bell, “I’ve had to inform Mrs. Elkins here that someone she knew passed away this evening. Rather unexpectedly, I’m afraid. But there are limits to what medical science can do. And as I’ve been trying to explain, it’s important at this point to move past our grief and come to terms with—”

  “Bullshit,” Bell declared.

  Fugate was startled—her eyes bugged out, as if to demonstrate it—but she quickly recovered her equilibrium. “I know the deceased was a friend of yours, Mrs. Elkins,” she said. Her tone was suffused with gentleness. “Once you’ve had a chance to get some closure, I’m sure this unwarranted hostility will dissipate.” She looked more intently at Bell. “That’s a nasty cut on the side of your head. Do you need some medical attention yourself?”

  “Lay a finger on me,” Bell said coldly, “and I’ll break your arm. That’s a promise.”

  “My goodness!” Fugate, hand splayed on her chest, blinked and frowned a pert little frown.

  Bell switched her attention to Bradley Portis. She had to look up; he was a very tall man in a very nice suit, his thick hair swept back from a high lined forehead. He had watched her exchange with Fugate—his dark eyes moving back and forth, while his body remained still—with that lofty indifference Bell had observed in other powerful men, that sleek reserve that signaled a staggering load of self-regard. Nothing so small and absurd as the likes of her could faze him. “Mr. Portis,” she said, “I’m hereby informing you that I’ll have a warrant here in half an hour to search your offices for the medical records pertaining to Lindy Crabtree’s treatment. There are significant questions about her care in this facility.” She added, with as much authority as she could muster as she fought through a monumental exhaustion, “Until then, neither you nor your staff will touch a thing—not so much as a Post-it note.”

  For a brief interval no one spoke. Bell was acutely aware of the way the two sides had arranged themselves, the opposing forces gathered like a scene in one of Nick Fogelsong’s history books recounting pivotal battles from Troy to Normandy to Basra. This might have been a white-tiled corridor with pale green walls and institutional lighting, not a sunstruck rampart seething with soldiers and machines of war, but the line separating the combatants was clear: Portis, Fugate, Sharon, and the security guard on one side. On the other, Bell and Jason.

  Jason.

  She looked around. No Jason. The kid had a definite flair for disappearing at crucial moments. This time, though, Bell was grateful for it. He had understood her wordless message.

  Portis was speaking to her. His voice had the blustery baritone of a man accustomed to being in charge. And there was, in the haughty lift of his chin, a definite edge of contempt, a sense that he really should not have to bother himself with people of her ilk. “Mrs. Elkins,” he said, “you’re overreacting. There’s no need for all this grandstanding. I can see that you’ve been through some kind of physical ordeal—and now you have to somehow process the tragic death of an acquaintance. May I suggest that you sit down and rest for a moment? Mrs. Fugate will escort you to a private area and a representative from our grief counseling staff will be happy to—”

  “Twenty-nine,” Bell said.

  “Pardon me?”

  “Twenty-nine minutes. That’s the time you have left before the warrant gets here. Give or take. Oh—and just so you can prepare your staff, I want a record of every medication given and every procedure done to Lindy Crabtree from the moment she was brought here. Don’t skip anything—not even an aspirin. And I’ll be requesting a complete autopsy by an independent medical authority.”

  Portis hesitated. He seemed to be making up his mind about whether or not she was bluffing. He changed tactics. “You know, Mrs. Elkins,” he said, voice buttery with condescension, “this facility has always enjoyed an excellent relationship with local law enforcement authorities. I would think you’d be reluctant to jeopardize that because of a needless dispute over—”

  “Brad.” Gently, Sharon interrupted him. Placed a hand on his forearm. Patted it twice. “Brad, let me.”

  She took a step closer to Bell. “I think I know what you’re going through. I’ve been in the same position. So many times, I’ve watched my son almost die. He’s been so terribly ill over the years—and it just doesn’t make any sense.” Her voice was thoughtful. “The young are supposed to live. Supposed to have rich, full lives. It’s the old who are supposed to die, after a long life. When the young are taken from us, it’s the worst. It’s tragic and unbearably sad, but it’s also—unnatural, somehow. It feels as if the entire universe has been turned upside down. As if the young are somehow suffering because of what we did. They’re not to blame. They can’t be. It’s us. And so we feel such guilt along with our grief. Isn’t that right?”

  Bell was weary and sore; she was stunned by the death of Lindy Crabtree. And Sharon’s voice was soothing, its emotional logic smooth and impeccable. Maybe she was right. Maybe Lindy’s fate only seemed suspicious in the moment because Bell was so distraught over everything else that had happened. Maybe Perry Crum had miscalculated and hit Lindy too hard, just as he’d miscalculated with Charlie Frank.

  And maybe she was fighting for nothing. Fighting because—well, because fighting was her default response of late.

  Hell. It had been her default response her whole life.

  Bell nodded. It felt good—for once—to nod. To agree, instead of being the contrarian. The hard-ass. And Sharon nodded back. She does understand, Bell thought. She really does.

  One question still troubled her. She’d lost the thread of it in the hot maze of the night’s confusion but remembered now. “Why are you here?” Bell asked.

  “Drove over early this morning for a conference with Brad and his staff,” Sharon said. “We’re setting up the terms and conditions of my father’s gift. The MRI machine.”

  Made sense. Bell rubbed her forehead. God, she was tired. Her head throbbed. The muscles in her legs ached every time she moved. Or even thought about moving.

  “So we’re all okay here?” Portis said.

  Bell shrugged. Her way of agreeing. She realized that the one thing she wanted more than anything else in the world right now—even more than a hot bath and a handful of Advils and a beer to wash it all down with, and then about a thousand years of sleep—was a conversation with Nick Fogelsong. She wanted to sit down and talk to him for a long, long time, telling him everything about this night, about Perry Crum’s bitter sacrifice for his sister and the crimes it inspired, about Lindy’s love for her father—a love that would, it now seemed, be her legacy.

  “I’m so glad everything worked out,” Sharon said, in a soft, earnest voice. “And I hope you find some peace with all of this, Mrs. Elkins.”

  Bell turned, ready to return to the lobby to track down Jason and then get the hell out of here. She hadn’t known Lindy well, but she would mourn her for a long time. She thought about the stacks of books in that disheveled little house, about the hours that Lindy must’ve spent reading and dreaming. None of it mattered anymore. None of it mattered a damn. Behind her, Bell heard the security man speaking to Sharon: “Better go. They’re ready for us in the room now, Maybelle.”

  Bell turned back around. “What did he call you?”

  Sharon smiled a wistful smile. “Oh, that’s my real name. It was my grandmother’s. You can blame my father for saddling me with that. Wanted to honor his mother, he always said. Wel
l, I hated that name from the get-go. Easy to see why, right? Legally changed it once I was out of the house. But Leo here has been with the family so long that I’ll always be Maybelle to him. Right, Leo?”

  Bell had an instant recollection of the letters she’d skimmed, the letters from Margaret Crabtree’s childhood friend. The name Maybelle scrawled at the bottom. And as Bell pictured those letters, certain elements began to line up in her mind, fitting together with a crisp snap. I don’t understand all of it, Bell thought, but I understand a hell of a lot more than I did just a few seconds ago. She cursed herself for being so stupid and slow and trusting, for not making the connection faster.

  Bell showed no outward reaction. Not now, she told herself. Not here. She nodded at Sharon’s explanation, as if it satisfied her, and continued her progress toward the lobby. She was hoping like hell that her instincts were right and that Jason was a fighter, a rebel, a rule-breaker. Still young enough to defy gravity. And that his disappearance meant he was off doing what she herself should have done, before she’d let herself be sidetracked by weariness and pretty words and phony sympathy: getting to the bottom of Lindy Crabtree’s fate.

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  Out in the shadow-webbed, rain-slick parking lot, Bell was relieved to see Rhonda Lovejoy’s blue Subaru come to a wobbly, half-hydroplaning halt alongside the Explorer. They conferred briefly, and then moved their vehicles to the side lot, where hospital employees on the night shift routinely parked; their cars would be less conspicuous here.

  Rhonda hauled herself out of her Subaru. She frowned at the constant spritzing of the rain, knowing full well what the moisture would do to her buoyant hairstyle, an elaborate structure buttressed with sparkly barrettes.

  She took a closer look at Bell’s bruised face—by this time the swelling was more pronounced—and her head reared back. “Oh, my goodness. What in the world—?”

  “Forget it. We have to hurry.”

  On Bell’s way out of the hospital she had found no trace of Jason in the lobby—only the receptionist, still miffed, who gave her a poisonous glare, and a hospital security guard who watched with meticulous care as Bell exited the building.

  “Okay,” Rhonda said, dubious but dutiful. She held up a piece of paper, rolled up in a tight scroll like a message recently extricated from a bottle, and then stowed it in her pocket again to shield it from the rain. “Found the one judge you haven’t pissed off lately—Tolliver—and went by his house. He signed the warrant.” She was teasing; Judge Tolliver was fond of Bell. More important, he was fond of justice, and generally tolerant of whatever methods had to be employed in order to seek it. Even the unorthodox ones.

  “First things first,” Bell said. “What kind of shoes are you wearing?”

  “Shoes?”

  “Yeah. Shoes.” Bell peered at Rhonda’s frilly black skirt, then let her gaze drop on down to her feet. She was pleased to see sneakers.

  “I was just finishing up my aerobics class over at the Y in Blythesburg when you called,” Rhonda said. “No time to change. Pulled on a skirt over my tights.”

  “Good. Kind of worried you might be wearing those ridiculous high heels of yours. Can’t run or climb in ’em.”

  “Well.” Rhonda looked hurt, then miffed. “To each her own.”

  “Fine. Come on.”

  “Where are we—?”

  “Just come on. I’ll fill you in while we go.”

  Abetted by the rain and the darkness, they slipped across the closely mown grass to the side of the building, pressing themselves flat against the brick, careful to avoid the stubborn blank-eyed stare of the security cameras rigged to each corner of the roof. The grass was wet and slickly treacherous; at one point Bell faltered, and Rhonda grabbed her arm. Thanks, Bell mouthed to her; she’d wanted to cry out from the pain of Rhonda’s grip on her bruised arm but managed to stifle it. Rhonda tried to ask a question but Bell double-tapped a vertical finger to her own lips, utilizing the universal signal for Shut up—I’ll explain everything later.

  They stopped at a humming quartet of giant square compressors next to the southwest corner of the building. Bell located an unmarked side entrance, a thick metal door with a ventilation panel across the top.

  “It’s locked, Belfa,” Rhonda whispered, and her tone had a definite Duh at the back of it. She was still smarting from the crack about her footgear.

  “Of course it is.”

  “Then how do you expect us to—?”

  The door swung open and Jason’s face popped out. He peered around cautiously, after which he used a splayed hand to hold the door open a bit wider, enabling Bell and Rhonda to angle themselves inside.

  “Jason texted me right before you got here,” Bell told Rhonda in a low voice, “and told me which door to go to.” The dimly lit corridor in which they found themselves was the building’s power plant; the signs sporting dire warnings about restricted access and high voltage and serious danger were the tipoff.

  “But if it’s locked, why’d it open from the inside?” Rhonda persisted.

  “Fire regulations,” Bell said. “Can’t have doors in public buildings locked from the inside. Gotta give people a way to get out if there’s an emergency. Okay, Jason, what’d you find out?”

  She looked at him. She realized all at once how young he was, and how high her expectations were for him. Maybe too high. He was still a kid, after all. Jason’s face was greasy from repeated veneers of sweat. His eyes were wide. His big hands dangled and twitched at his sides, as if he wasn’t altogether certain what to do with them, and the backward baseball cap was propped even farther back on his head, a scruffy testament to the number of times he’d wiped the bangs off his forehead and nudged the cap back while doing so. His broad, bovine face gave him the look of a tenth-grader blowing off last period to go four-wheeling.

  “Not much,” he said. “Weird shit goin’ on, that’s all I can say. And I’m telling you—Lindy ain’t dead. No freakin’ way.”

  Before Bell could ask him another question, Rhonda touched her shoulder. “Hey,” she said. “I don’t mean to get all technical here, but we’ve just broken into a medical facility after hours. The warrant authorizes a records search, not an illegal entry. Frankly, I’m a little leery of going much further without knowing what’s going on. We’re not deputy sheriffs. We’re prosecutors. And it’s not really our job to—”

  Bell’s expression caused Rhonda to stop talking. She knew that look. It could knock down a steel door if need be. Or at least make a decent dent in it.

  “Okay,” Bell said, speaking quickly but forthrightly, her head whipping around, making sure no one else was entering the corridor. “We don’t have much time here, Rhonda, so I’ll be brief. The truth? You’re right. I don’t know what the hell’s going on. But something’s wrong. Really, really wrong. I left Lindy Crabtree a few hours ago and she was fine. Now they say she’s dead. Let me quote our friend Jason here: No freakin’ way.” Her voice, she knew, was hoarse and strained. Not commanding. Well, it was what it was. “Sharon Henner has to be involved somehow—I don’t know how or why, but I know it’s so. Listen. Sheriff Fogelsong’s on his way. I texted him, too. If I thought this could wait until he gets here, I’d be happy to go sit in the car with the radio on. But it won’t. So I can’t.” She took a deep breath, having used up a lot of oxygen in the headlong address. “Rhonda, if you’re worried about getting into trouble—and I sure as hell can’t guarantee that it won’t happen—you ought to leave. Just go. Go. I’m pretty nervous about this myself. If it backfires, I’ll have a lot of explaining to do—and probably a disciplinary hearing and then a recall vote to face. Okay? So no hard feelings. Really. I’m not talking as your boss right now. Please—take off. Last chance. Door’s right back there.”

  Rhonda allowed herself a few seconds of contemplation. Then she squared her shoulders and tucked a saucy curl behind her left ear and smoothed down the front and back and sides of her frilly skirt, rumpled from a hasty i
mprovisational scoot along the brick flank of a building.

  “Let’s go to work,” she said.

  * * *

  They threaded their way carefully along the corridor, not quite certain what they would do or how they would do it, knowing only that it felt good to be in motion, to be doing something, to be heading somewhere. Jason was in the lead—he knew the way, having raced through this hall in the other direction just minutes ago to let them in—and then came Bell, then Rhonda. From behind closed doors labeled STAFF ONLY they could hear the heavy vibrations of the medical center’s HVAC system, the steady rumble from the workings of the power grid required to keep it all going twenty-four hours a day.

  “I’m thinking they stuck her somewhere,” Jason said, in a raspy whisper delivered out of the side of his mouth, “and we gotta find her.” He gave them a brief rundown of what he’d done after ducking out of the corridor while Bell talked to Sally Fugate. “Could tell they were giving us the runaround,” he said, “and figured I could do a hell of a lot more good poking around on my own, trying to figure out what these bastards have done with Lindy.” And so poke he did, he said, moseying across the long halls, their lights turned down to a muted glow because of the late hour. Nobody noticed him. When a guard seemed to take undue interest, Jason said, he found a broom and used it—not with enthusiasm, but lackadaisically. “That did the trick,” Jason reported, proud of his evasive maneuvers. “They knew I must be on staff. ’Cause I was a lazy bastard.”

  Then he caught a break. He ran into Jimmy Dillon, a friend of his brother Eddie’s, who really was on the custodial staff, working the overnight shift. Jason showed him a cell phone picture of Lindy, asked for guidance in finding her. Jimmy told him about the hospital morgue.

  “Don’t tell me,” Bell said, filled with dread, “that you broke into the mor—”

  “No way. Jimmy said I’d never get near the place. But he could—just close enough, anyway, to look at the logbook. Came back and told me that Lindy’s name ain’t there. Like I said, Mrs. Elkins—she ain’t dead. No way.”