Bitter Medicine

by Sara Paretsky

  The whine from the gun vibrated in the room. The smell filled the place, burnt gunpowder and blood. Maybe our noses are too blunted to smell blood anymore. But we could see it. See it. A bright crimson splash against the desktop. The white shards are bone. And the darker soft mass seeping out beyond the hair is the brain.

  “You can’t faint now, Ms. W. We got work to do.”

  A strong black hand seized my head and forced me to bend over, to tuck my head between my legs. The buzzing faded from my ears. The nausea rising in my throat receded. I stood up slowly, avoiding the desk. Murray had gone to the window where he stood with his back to the room, his big shoulders hunched over. Humphries got uncertainly to his feet.

  “Poor Peter. He couldn’t forgive himself for not saving that poor girl’s life. He’s been talking wildly for some time now—we’ve been very concerned about him. No offense to you, Miss Warshawski, but I didn’t think it was sensible for him to see so much of you—it kept him brooding about the girl and the baby and Dr. Herschel’s problems in a very unhealthy way.”

  He looked at his wrist. “I don’t want to seem callous, but I’d better get back to the hospital—see what I can do to break the news to the staff, see if we can get someone to cover Peter’s patients for the next few weeks.”

  Rawlings moved to the door, blocking the exit. “Seems to me you’re the one talking a little wildly, Mr. Humphries. We need to go into Chicago together for a chat.”

  Humphries’s brown eyebrows went up to his carefully combed hairline. “If you need a statement from me, Officer, I’ll dictate one this afternoon and send it to my attorney. With Peter killing himself, we’re going to be under tremendous pressure. I need to talk to my secretary—the two of us will probably have to work the weekend.”

  Rawlings sighed softly and pulled out a pair of handcuffs. “You don’t understand, Mr. Humphries. I’m arresting you for conspiring to murder Malcolm Tregiere and for the murder of Fabiano Hernandez. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used in court. You have the right to talk to a lawyer for advice before we ask you any questions and to have him with you during questioning. You have the right—”

  Humphries, who’d been struggling while Rawlings cuffed his hands behind him, bellowed, “You’ll regret this, Officer. I’ll have your commander bust you out of the force.”

  Rawlings looked at Murray. “You taking notes, Ryerson? I’d like a verbatim record of everything Mr. Humphries has to say. I think the charges are now going to include threatening a police officer in the discharge of his duty.

  “I guess we’d better notify the local people that there’s a dead man out here, let them come and talk to us before we go back to town.”

  Humphries continued to rail for a few minutes. Rawlings ignored him, going over to the desk to phone his watch commander in Chicago. When the administrator tried to walk out while Rawlings was at the desk, Murray and I blocked the door.

  “I just want to find another phone,” Humphries said haughtily. “I presume I’m allowed to call my lawyer?”

  “Wait until the detective is through,” I said. “And by the way, he’ll probably be happier if you start calling him ‘Detective’ or ‘Sergeant’ instead of ‘Officer.’ Insulting the man isn’t going to help your case.”

  “Look, Miss Warshawski,” Humphries said urgently, “you saw a lot of Burgoyne the last few weeks. You know he wasn’t himself—”

  “I don’t know,” I interrupted. “I don’t know what you think he was supposed to be like.”

  “But all of this crap he was spewing—about me and some Mexican—what did he call him? Sergio?—it’d be worth a great deal to me if you’d be willing to testify to his delusional state. It’s a pity I never got around to asking our psychiatric guy to do a formal evaluation. Although he probably observed some changes at staff meetings. But think about it seriously, Miss Warshawski. After all, you’re the person who probably saw the most of him the last few weeks.”

  “Gee, I don’t know, Mr. Humphries. I wonder what a great deal means to you—the V. I. Warshawski wing out here at Friendship? Or Peter’s profit sharing for the year? What do you think, Murray?”

  “Think about what?” That was Rawlings, very sharp.

  “Oh, Mr. Humphries is going to dedicate a wing at the hospital to me if I testify that Dr. Burgoyne was off his head the last few weeks.”

  “That so? Pity you’re only a private eye, Ms. W., or we’d be able to add attempted bribery to the charge sheet.”

  We moved into the living room to wait for the local people. Rawlings told Humphries he could call his lawyer when he’d been booked in Chicago. The administrator took that with good humor, keeping up a steady stream of cajolery. He’d decided, apparently, that sweet-talking would work better than threats, but Rawlings was impervious to both.

  The local force showed up with three cars all flashing red, sirens howling. Five officers came running up the drive. Peppy took exception to the alarms and the uniforms; she chased them to the house, barking madly. I opened the door and held her collar while they came in.

  “Good girl,” I murmured into her soft ear after they’d gone inside. “You’re a good dog. But what are you going to do now? Your boy is dead, you know. Who’s going to feed you and play fetch with you?”

  I sat outside with her, holding her against me, feeling the long, luxurious hair with my fingers. Made nervous by the flashing lights and uniformed men, she moved uneasily against me.

  After about ten minutes an ambulance came squealing up. I directed the attendants into the house, remaining with the dog. A short time later they came out with Peter’s body in a black bag. As soon as they reappeared, Peppy began trembling and whimpering. She strained against my hands, finally breaking free as the ambulance pulled away. She charged after it, barking frantically, a high, pained bark. She followed them down the drive and up the road. When they were out of sight, she came back slowly, her head and tail lowered, her sides heaving. She plopped herself in the driveway where it met the road, her head against the ground.

  When Rawlings finally came out with Humphries and the local men, she lifted her head hopefully, but dropped it again when she saw Peter wasn’t with them. We all got into cars—Murray and me together to go back to the hospital for Max and Lotty, one of the local men with Rawlings to escort Humphries to Chicago. We drove carefully around the dog. As we turned a bend in the road I could see her still lying there, her head against the blacktop.

  Murray barely stopped long enough for me to get out of the car at Friendship before racing off to the city. Max and Lotty were waiting in the cafeteria. Lotty, annoyed at being left to cool her heels for two hours, switched rapidly to sympathy after a look at my face.

  I told them briefly what had happened. “Let me drive you home now. I need to get over to the Sixth Area to make my statement.”

  Lotty took my arm and guided me gently to my car. We didn’t talk much during the drive. At one point Max asked if I thought they’d be able to make charges against Humphries stick.

  “I don’t know,” I said wearily. “His current line is that Peter was mad, that all the stuff about hiring Sergio to kill Malcolm was a delusion. It all depends, I suppose, on which way Sergio decides to jump.”

  I left them both at Lotty’s apartment and drove on to the Sixth Area Headquarters. Before getting out of the car I locked my gun in the glove compartment—the police don’t like outsiders carrying weapons into their stations. As I started up the station steps, a Mercedes sports car pulled up to the curb with a squeal of brakes. I turned and waited. My ex-husband came flying up the walk.

  “Hi, Dick,” I said sociably. “Glad to see Humphries got hold of you—he was really digging a pit for himself out in Barrington: threats, attempted bribery, the whole works.”

  “You!” Dick’s face turned crimson. “Goddamn it, I might have guessed you were behind this!”

  I held the door for him. “For once you’re right: I figured it
out practically all by myself. If not for me, your client would probably go to the grave without doing a minute’s time for Malcolm Tregiere’s death. I don’t care so much about Fabiano Hernandez, but the state takes a dim view of murder no matter who’s been killed.”

  Dick strode past me. I followed him into the building. He was trying to maintain an air of dignified outrage while covertly figuring out where to go—his typical clients don’t bring him to the police station.

  “Desk sergeant straight ahead,” I said helpfully.

  He strode purposefully to the desk. I hovered in his wake.

  “I’m Richard Yarborough. My client, Alan Humphries, is being held here—I need to see him.”

  When the desk sergeant asked for identification, then told him he had to be searched, Dick got angry.

  “Officer, my client was denied the right to call counsel for well over an hour after his arrest. Now, am I to be humiliated as well simply because I want to restore his legal rights to him?”

  “Dick,” I murmured, “it’s the way things are done around here. They don’t know you’re pure beyond belief—there have been cases of lawyers less scrupulous than you smuggling weapons in to their clients…. Sorry, Sergeant—Mr. Yarborough’s usual venue is La Salle Street.”

  Dick stood rigid with anger while he was searched. Letting the sergeant assume I was his entourage, I opened my handbag and was patted down myself. We got our visitors’ passes and moved on.

  “You really should have brought Freeman with you,” I told him as we walked up the stairs. “He knows his way around these police stations. You can’t antagonize the desk sergeant; he’s your key for any information—charge sheets, how your client’s doing, where he is.”

  Dick ignored me majestically until we got to the room where they were holding Humphries. Then he put on his heaviest face for me.

  “I don’t know what you did to make the police think Alan Humphries was guilty of murder. But you have created a very serious legal situation for yourself, Vic. Very serious. Whether we will bring slander charges depends on how forgiving my client feels.”

  “And how long he’s put away for,” I said brightly. “You know, Dick, Lotty Herschel keeps asking me how come I ever married you. And damned if I can see why. You couldn’t have been this big an asshole when we were in law school together, could you?”

  He turned on his heel hard enough to make the leather smoke and knocked on the door. A uniformed man looked out to see who it was. Dick showed him his pass and was admitted to the room.

  After a couple of minutes Rawlings came out to talk to me. “You get the doc home okay? I’m going to need her to be an expert witness on this medical testimony. I’ve got a police doctor in there, but he doesn’t know shit about birthing babies.”

  “I’m sure Lotty’ll do it. She’d do damned near anything to clear up Malcolm’s death. You’re not trying to hold him on that, are you? What about Fabiano—that’s cut and dried—he shot the guy.”

  Rawlings grimaced. “On Burgoyne’s testimony. And Burgoyne is dead. I was hoping to get no bond, but now that slick piece of goods who represents him is here, I’m not so sure. He’s looking to argue it was Burgoyne who bought and fired the gun. Of course we can check that, but not before the preliminary hearing, and this Yarborough looks like the kind who wines and dines the bench—just my luck some good old boy will be handling night court today. We need more of a case. Don’t you have any evidence? I mean anything concrete?”

  “You could bring in Coulter, the guy from the state Human Resources Department. But that would just get you collusion on the perinatal cover-up. How about Sergio?”

  Rawlings shook his head. “I’ve got a warrant out for him. But that could cut both ways, you know. For a big enough chunk of change, Sergio’ll say he never laid eyes on Humphries.”

  I thought about it. “Yeah. You got a problem. Let me make my statement and get out of here. Maybe I can come up with something.”

  “Warshawski! If you—” He broke off. “Never mind. If you’ve got an idea, I don’t want to know about it until after you’ve executed it. I’ll be happier.”

  I smiled at him sweetly. “See? I’m easy to work with, once you’ve figured out how.”

  34

  Preliminary Hearing

  I drove several blocks from the police station before stopping to find a pay phone. The nervous woman answered on the fifth ring, her baby crying again in the background.

  “Mrs. Rodriguez? I called two nights ago. For Sergio. Is he there?”

  “He—no. No, he’s not home. I don’t know where he is.”

  I paused a second and thought I heard an extension stealthily lifted. “It’s like this, Mrs. Rodriguez: Alan Humphries is in jail. Right now. Over at the Sixth Area Headquarters. You could call and check it out if you wanted to. They’re going to give him immunity—you know what that is?—immunity from prosecution. That means he won’t go to jail. As long as he tells them that Sergio is the one who really killed Malcolm Tregiere and Fabiano Hernandez. Make sure Sergio gets that message, Mrs. Rodriguez. Good-bye.”

  I waited on the line after she hung up. Sure enough, a second click followed. I smiled grimly to myself, got back into my car, and returned to sit behind the police station.

  By now networks had gotten hold of the story. Channel 13 and Channel 5 both had mobile vans parked out front.

  Around four-thirty there was a flurry of activity. The mobile units sprang to life as a crowd of uniformed men, surrounding a barely visible Humphries, came out the side entrance. They put him into a transport van, brought out three other handcuffed men for the van, and locked them all in. The networks made a great show of running footage of Humphries’s removal. This would look like news at ten tonight: Mary Sherrod in front of the police van speculating on what might be going on.

  Dick came out a few minutes later. He pulled the Mercedes away from the curb with a great flourish of gear shifting. I started my Chevy and followed more leisurely, down Western Avenue toward Twenty-sixth and California where the criminal courts sit. Since the van could flash blue lights at the intersections, I quickly fell behind. I’ve spent enough time at criminal court that I wasn’t worried about finding it. I was more interested in looking for any other escorts we might have picked up, but Dick’s was the only car trailing the van; no one was following me.

  The criminal-court building was put up in the 1920s. Its decorated ceilings, beautifully carved doors, and in-laid marble floors make a curious contrast to the crimes discussed there. At the entrance I was stopped for a thorough search—handbag emptied onto a counter-top, including a bedraggled tampon, a fistful of miscellaneous receipts, and an earring I thought I’d lost on the beach. The bailiff remembered me from my trial days; we chatted about her grandchildren for a few minutes before I headed for the third floor where night court was held.

  Humphries’s preliminary hearing showed Dick at his finest. Pearl gray suit jacket buttoned, his light hair combed as carefully as though he’d just left his dryer, he was the very picture of affluent power. Humphries, at his side, looked sober and puzzled, a law-abiding man caught in events he didn’t understand, but doing his best to help straighten things out.

  The state’s attorney, Jane LeMarchand, had been well briefed. She was a senior prosecutor, fluent and able, but the plea for no bond was denied, given the fact that the evidence of murder was all hearsay from a man now dead. The judge ruled that the state had probable cause to try Humphries, bond was set for one hundred fifty thousand, and the case was entered in the computer for assignment to a trial judge. Dick gracefully wrote out a check for ten percent of that, and he and Humphries exited to the chorus of popping flashbulbs. In a fit of pique I gave the reporters Dick’s home phone number and address. Petty, but I hated to see him getting away with no inconvenience whatsoever.

  Rawlings caught up with me at the courtroom exit. “We’re going to have to build a mighty careful case, Ms. W., for when we come to trial.”

>   “You mean for the first motion for continuance,” I said bitterly. “This thing will come to trial in five years. Want to put money on it?”

  He rubbed thick fingers tiredly across his forehead. “Forget it. We tried to get the judge to agree we could hold the dude for twenty-four hours for questioning—I’d like to see him spend at least one night in jail, but your old man—ex-old man—was too slick for us. You want to get a drink someplace? Something to eat?”

  I was surprised. “I’d like to—rain check, maybe? I have some stuff to do tonight. Might help the case.” Or might destroy it, I added to myself.

  He narrowed his eyes. “You’ve had a long day, Warshawski. Think maybe you’ve done enough for the time being?”

  I laughed but didn’t say anything. We pushed our way through the crowds of cameras at the front entrance. Dick was standing with one hand lightly resting on Humphries’s shoulder. He must have taken a course in television presence—he was at the top of the stairs for full dramatic effect.

  “My client has had a long and trying day. I believe Ms. Warshawski, while a well-meaning investigator, probably got carried away by her emotional involvement with the doctor who unfortunately took his own life earlier today.”

  A mist covered my eyes. I felt the blood drumming in my head as I shouldered my way past the cameras to Dick. When he saw me, he stiffened and pulled Humphries closer to him. I found a mike under my nose and mustered all my willpower to grin instead of grabbing it to bash Dick’s brains out.

  “I’m the emotional Ms. Warshawski,” I said as lightly as I could. “Since Mr. Yarborough had to leave a golf game to race to the courtroom here, he unfortunately didn’t have time for a full review of the facts. When he sees tomorrow’s paper, and learns of the collusion between the State of Illinois and his client, he may wish he’d stayed on the links.”

  There was a ripple of laughter from the crowd. I ducked away on a tide of questions, glanced over my shoulder to see Dick fighting for self-control, and headed back for my car. I looked around for Rawlings, but he’d disappeared in the confusion.