Troubled Waters

by Carolyn Wheat

  “As soon as she is finished with the scan and we have her stabilized, you may enter the room for a maximum of ten minutes. Then you must let her rest.”

  Dr. Singh murmured something about time being the great healer. I wanted to tell him to drop the Deepak Chopra act, but Ron and Zack nodded as if he’d said something profound.

  I tried in vain to take it all in. Three days ago, I had no idea whether Jan Gebhardt was alive or dead. Then she reappeared, turned herself in, and claimed she’d been betrayed and set up in 1982. Now she was near death and married to my brother.

  “When?” I asked, turning to him. “When did you marry her?”

  “Summer of ’82. Father Jerry.”

  The doctor left and the state trooper approached, notebook and pen in hand. “You two were with the victim earlier this evening, is that right?”

  I nodded. “We came to see her at Our Lady of Guadalupe.”

  “And who else was present on this occasion?”

  My lawyer antennae went up. Jan might be a victim, but she was also a defendant, and so was Ron. I didn’t want to risk saying anything that could jeopardize his position.

  “What happened to Jan?” I asked. I wanted the information and I also wanted time to think.

  “You sat in that courtroom this morning,” Ron cut in. “You heard what she said at the cottage. She was going to find out who sold us out and killed Kenny. Somebody obviously didn’t like that idea, so they tried to kill her.”

  So much for keeping secrets from the cops. “Maybe someone broke in to steal—” I stopped myself when I remembered. There was nothing, literally nothing, in the cabin worth stealing.

  “Who are these people you’re talking about, sir?” the cop asked. I considered reading my brother his rights, then decided telling the police who was in the backyard with Jan wouldn’t hurt him. It might hurt one of them—Wes came to mind—but they were neither my clients nor my brother. So I sat silent while Ron spelled all the names for the cop. I gave him points for not blinking when he heard that former governor and present senatorial candidate John Wesley Tannock was among those in attendance.

  “How did it happen?” I asked when Ron’s recitation was complete.

  “She was hit on the head six or seven times with a heavy, blunt object. A baseball bat would fit the bill.”

  “God. My God.” A baseball bat, hitting a human skull with full force six or seven times. Suddenly the attack became real. Suddenly I could picture Jan’s frail body bending under the blows. I could hear the sickening thud as hard wood hit bone. My stomach rebelled; I swallowed sour bile and prayed that I wouldn’t vomit on the state trooper’s shoes.

  “There must have been blood all over that room.”

  “There was, ma’am. There was.” He snapped his notebook shut and gave me a card. “Call me if you need anything.”

  As the trooper walked toward the double doors, which whooshed open as he approached, it hit me that Ron would probably have been at the top of his suspect list if he hadn’t been in a wheelchair.

  Ted Havlicek, hair disarranged and shirt mussed as if he’d fallen asleep on the couch, raced through the automatic doors.

  “How is she?” he asked.

  “How did you know she was here?”

  He answered without looking at me. “Scanner.”

  Ron started to fill him in. I interrupted. “What are you doing here?” I demanded. “Are you after a story or are you here as a friend?”

  “Both. Jan’s news, whether you like it or not.”

  “You said once that being a reporter was like having a free ticket to life,” I reminded him. “Well, this isn’t a show. Take your free ticket and get out of here.”

  “Actually, I see myself as a designated observer,” he said in a tone that contained no resentment. “When people go out on a boat, there’s one person who’s supposed to keep an eye on anybody who goes overboard. Whatever else happens, that person has to focus attention on the guy in the water, no matter what else is going on. And that’s what reporters do—we keep our eyes on the stuff everyone else gets distracted from.”

  “What does that have to do with Jan?” My anger was far out of proportion to Ted’s presence. I was more upset than I wanted to admit about the attack on Jan. Especially since I’d refused to talk to her privately. I might never know what it was she’d wanted to tell me.

  “This attack is already on the wires, so any minute now a couple more reporters are going to walk through those doors and start asking questions. You can refuse to answer them, you can refuse to talk to me, but they’re going to get answers from somebody. Who do you want telling your story, Ron,” he asked, transferring his gaze to my brother, “you or the cops?”

  Ron gave a decisive nod. “Okay. They’re saying Jan was attacked with a baseball bat.”

  “You think one of us did it, don’t you?” Ted demanded.

  Another nod. “Yeah. I don’t like it, but I don’t see who else had a motive.”

  I recalled standing on the sidewalk outside the courthouse waiting for Zack to bring Ron’s van. First Dana and then Rap had made remarks that might be considered threats.

  But would either of them actually bludgeon a woman to death to keep a secret that was almost thirty years old?

  Yes, if that secret involved murder. And Jan claimed that someone in our little group murdered Kenny.

  Time to play devil’s advocate. “What about the family of that dead DEA agent? What about the FBI? If Jan was really going to reveal someone as an agent provocateur, maybe they tried to kill her to keep that secret. There are any number of people who might have wanted her dead.”

  As the words left my mouth, I realized that Jan was vulnerable to attack precisely because she’d been released on bail into Father Jerry’s custody instead of spending the night in jail. Had someone inside the government engineered that release? Had former governor Wes pulled political strings attached to Judge LaMont Noble? And how paranoid was I getting?

  Ted ignored me, addressing his remarks to Ron. He was crouched on the floor, eye to eye with my brother, talking as if they were the only two people present. I resented his ignoring me, but I respected it too. Ron was the one who mattered here. He was the one who really cared about Jan.

  “I’ll start finding out where everyone was when Jan was attacked,” Ted said. “From what I heard on the scanner, someone interrupted the attacker. Came to the cabin and heard noises, then knocked and heard moans. Opened the door and there was Jan, bleeding from the head. The cops think the assailant fled out the back door.”

  “So if the attack hadn’t been interrupted, Jan would probably be dead,” Ron said slowly.

  I refrained from pointing out that she might be dead even as we spoke, or that she might not make it through the night.

  Ted stood up and stretched his arms and legs, yawning so broadly that I could see the silver in his back teeth. “I’m going to see if one of the troopers will talk to me.”

  A nurse in a blue smock stepped up. She handed me a plastic bag and said, “This is the jewelry she was wearing. I thought I should give it to her family; it might not be safe in the locker.”

  A nurse should know better. I looked her in the eye and said, “My brother is her husband. You can give it to him.”

  The woman looked around at our little group, then handed the bag to Zack. She fled before I had a chance to correct her mistake. Apparently the man in the wheelchair was her last choice as the patient’s husband.

  Zack grimaced and laid the bag on Ron’s lap. “Sorry,” he muttered.

  Ron shook his head. “No problem,” he said. “Happens all the time.” He raised his hands slowly and reached for the bag. It was an oversized plastic job with a ziplock top. Zack reached over and opened the bag without a word, then stepped back to let Ron fish the pendant out of the bottom.

  It was a silver butterfly, wings unfurled, hanging from an intricately knotted chain.

  “I gave her that,” Ron said. “On
her first anniversary.”

  “Your wedding anniversary?” I asked, trying not to let the words stick in my throat. The idea of my brother having a wedding without me there hurt so much.

  “No, her first anniversary of getting sober,” Ron explained. “The butterfly symbolizes her new life, her emergence from the cocoon.”

  He held the delicate thing in his twisted fingers and bowed his head. A single tear hit the silver butterfly; he wiped it on his shirt with a slow, clumsy movement, then dropped the pendant back into the plastic bag.

  The next arrival through the automatic doors was Father Jerry. He wore his full priestly regalia and he carried a small black leather case. He stepped up to Ron, placed a hand on his shoulder, and gave it a squeeze. Then he walked over to the nurse’s desk and spoke to her in a low voice.

  Zack interpreted these events for Ron and me. “He’s here to give the last rites,” he whispered. “He’s trying to find out whether he can see Jan.”

  The nurse shook her head. Father Jerry strode back toward us, the black skirt of his cossack swirling around his long legs. “She’s still having the CAT scan,” he told us. “They said I could go in as soon as she’s finished.”

  Ron nodded. Although last rites was not part of our Presbyterian upbringing, he seemed to accept the fact that Jan would want a priest in what might well be her last moments of life.

  “Ted said something about the attacker’s being interrupted,” I said. “Do you know anything about that, Father?”

  The priest nodded. “I knocked at her door at three o’clock,” he replied. “I heard noises. I didn’t like what I heard, so I used my key to open the door. I found Jan bleeding and moaning.”

  It occurred to me that this story might raise an eyebrow or two. A priest who had the key to a single woman’s bedroom, who was knocking at her door in the middle of the night.

  “Pardon me, Father, but what were you doing at Jan’s door at three a.m.?”

  A small smile crossed Father Jerry’s ascetic face. “You’re not Catholic, are you?”

  I shook my head.

  “She was saying the hours,” the priest explained. “In the Middle Ages, the monks used to pray every three hours. They’d wake from sleep and say prayers at certain times. Compline, lauds, matins. Three o’clock in the morning is known as terce. I was going to pray with her.”

  This was beginning to sound familiar. “Like Brother Cadfael,” I said, referring to the medieval monk-detective created by the late Ellis Peters. “I love those books. But,” I went on, “Jan wasn’t a monk. Or a nun. Why would she be saying prayers at three a.m.?”

  “It’s a kind of discipline. It was also done by squires in the Middle Ages on the night before they were to be knighted. It was part of the vigil they kept before their ordeal.”

  Like the knights of old, Jan was facing an ordeal. It made sense that she’d prepare herself in some way.

  I had a sudden vision of her in that spare, spartan room with the rosary over the bed. Kneeling on the bare floor with her prayerbook, waiting for her priest. Praying for strength to go through with what she’d promised to do.

  Jan had come so far, she had so much life ahead of her, and now—

  Now she might be dying. Dying before she could work her Ninth Step, before she could tell her truth.

  It wasn’t fair.

  When we’d first come into the waiting room, I’d entertained the unworthy thought that if Jan died, the case would die too and I could go home to Brooklyn and forget the past. It was only a fleeting thought, and one that I’d suppressed at once. But the desire to let the dead past bury its dead was so strong that I’d let it overpower me for a brief moment.

  Now that moment haunted me. The nurse came and said Jan was in the ICU and we could see her. Zack pushed the chair and Father Jerry and I walked alongside it, following her down the silent corridors.

  The Intensive Care Unit was in a sealed-off section of the hospital. Those allowed to enter the room were required to don surgical masks and paper hats and gowns. The nurse gave a set to Father Jerry, who put them on with the ease of long practice. Zack helped dress Ron. They were the only two who would be allowed behind the thick glass partition.

  I stepped over to the glass, shaded my eyes from the glaring fluorescent light of the corridor, and peered in.

  It was hard to find Jan. The room was a maze of wires and cables, of tubes and IVs, of machines whose green numbers gave off an eerie glow. I had a momentary impulse to laugh. It was so sci-fi, so Robin Cook. Maybe they’d already harvested her kidneys and sold them to a rich maharajah on the tenth floor. Maybe she was dead and the machines were there to give the illusion that she lived. Maybe—

  Father Jerry stepped into the room, looking like a space creature in his blue garb. He pushed the chair toward the bed from which the tubes and wires emanated. He opened the black leather case and took out little vials. He slipped his hand into his pocket and pulled out a long purple scarf. He raised it to his lips, kissed it, then placed it around his neck.

  I shifted my attention to Ron. He raised his limp hand and moved it with excruciating slowness, toward one of Jan’s motionless hands. Finally he managed to touch her. It seemed to me he tried to lift her hand, but with the electrodes weighing her down, he couldn’t manage it. So he stroked her pale fingers with his.

  I dropped my eyes. These rituals were not for me to spy upon. But one thing was certain: I wouldn’t be going home to Brooklyn until Jan’s attacker was brought to justice. I owed my brother that much.

  The words of a Tom Paxton song floated into my brain. “Axe you going away with no word of farewell? Will there be not a trace left behind? I could have loved you better, didn’t mean to be unkind. You know that was the last thing on my mind.”

  I made a silent apology to the woman in the green-glowing room. Sorry, Jan. It was the last thing on my mind.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  July 16, 1982

  There was no one else in the elevator. No stares, no self-conscious, wooden attempts to ignore the man in the chair. Jan pushed the button for the Spitzer Building’s mezzanine; if she’d been alone, she’d have dashed up the stairs. Maybe even taken them two at a time. Amazing how people took the ability to walk up a flight of stairs for granted.

  Harve Sobel’s office was behind a frosted-glass door straight out of a forties private eye movie. Jan strode ahead and rapped on the window, then opened the door wide and propped it with her rear end. Before she could pull the wheelchair inside, Father Jerry Kujawa appeared at her side and took over.

  Father Jerry wore a navy golf shirt instead of his Roman collar. He greeted Jan with a platonic hug, and grasped Ron’s shoulder as he settled the chair next to Harve’s desk. Jan sat in one of the deep-seated leather client chairs.

  “I thought we should all meet together,” Harve explained. He stayed seated, a big man wearing a rumpled white shirt and a badly knotted, too-wide seventies tie with a hand-painted hibiscus on a bright blue background. “Saves me saying the same thing twice.”

  “What about Dana and Rap?” Jan asked. “Shouldn’t they be here too?” Even the mention of their names gave her voice an edge she couldn’t suppress. If they were here, would she be able to keep herself from accusing them, loudly and messily, of selling them out?

  “Walt Koeppler would love that,” Harve retorted. “The way it stands now, he has no proof that they were anywhere near the scene of your arrest. But if they’re observed attending meetings with you and your lawyer, Koeppler will conclude they had something to do with what went down at Crane Creek.”

  “Observed,” Jan repeated. “You mean you think he’s watching us.”

  “I think,” Harve replied, leaning so far back in his swivel chair that Jan was certain he was about to land on his butt, “that the feds would probably draw the line at bugging a lawyer’s office. But anything short of that, we can and should expect. They probably got some nice photos of you two walking across Madison Street just n
ow.”

  Jan shivered. When she’d been a frightened little Catholic schoolgirl, she’d believed quite literally that God was everywhere, that the nuns could see her every move. And that every little sin was marked down in a book from which God would punish her come Judgment Day.

  Now Walt Koeppler was God: omniscient, ever-present, all-knowing. Had he seen her touch Ron’s hair? Did he know how much Ron meant to her? Did he know what they did together after dark in the motel room, with Andrew the attendant having a discreet drink at the motel bar?

  “What are we going to do, Harve?” Ron asked. “How serious are the charges, and what’s our defense?”

  Harve gestured at an open lawbook on his desk. “You’ll probably be indicted under Title 8, section 1324 of the United States Code. I’m not sure whether they’ll go for the felony or settle for a misdemeanor. They didn’t look good out there, shooting an unarmed man. On the other hand,” he went on, his bloodhound face solemn, “whenever the cops screw something up royally, they tend to take it out on everyone else. So they might throw the proverbial book at you. I have a call in to Cathy Sawicki at the U.S. attorney’s office, but she hasn’t returned it. My guess is that she wants to talk it over with her boss before committing herself.”

  “Those are the charges,” Ron said. “Now what about the defenses?”

  Harve inclined his huge buffalo head. “I talked to a few people in Tucson,” he said. “They’ve got a very active sanctuary movement down there. This lawyer named Travis something is sending me briefs. We ought to be able to use some of their arguments up here.”

  “Successful arguments, I hope,” Ron murmured.

  “Nobody knows,” Harve replied. “That’s what makes this an exciting case. The clergy in Tucson is high on the sanctuary defense, on the theory that if you declare a church a sanctuary, the civil authorities can’t touch you. Personally, I think that’s a nice press angle, but it won’t fly in court.”

  “So what will?” Ron’s hand gripped the arm of his chair. “I mean,” he went on, “we knew we were running a risk, but I thought we had some hope of winning at trial if we got arrested.”