A long moment passed. Then, still toying with his wine glass, McClain offered her a remorseful smile. “You know, Beverly,” he said sadly, “you’re a much better lawyer today than you were seventeen years ago. If I’d of had a lawyer that good back then, I doubt very much that we’d be sitting here having this conversation tonight.”
Chapter Forty-Five
Leaving Doyle still lying on the floor behind me, I left the building immediately, pausing only long enough to grab my suit coat from my office and lock the door.
I knew that I was going to be in deep shit for punching out Doyle—almost certainly I was facing a suspension and disciplinary action. I deeply regretted the former, and could only hope that whatever punishment I’d face would at least be delayed until after the McClain case was resolved. But I did not for a moment regret reacting as I had in response to Doyle’s crude remark. The bastard had gotten exactly what he deserved, and no matter the consequences, I’d never apologize for giving it to him.
I sat in my car for a couple of minutes, taking deep breaths in an effort to get my emotions back under control. Then I started the car and drove over to the florist’s shop, arriving only minutes before they closed. I’d placed an order for a dozen yellow roses, and the shop had created a beautiful arrangement. I paid the bill gratefully and continued on to the nursing home.
Given the holiday, the place was a bit more active than it usually was at this time of night. I nodded at a couple of familiar faces, went through the doors and on up to the second floor. The receptionist on duty smiled with a hint of sadness and said, “That’s a very nice arrangement, Detective.”
I thanked her and continued on down the hall to Julie’s room. Someone had left the overhead lights on and the room was almost painfully bright. Julie lay on the bed, dressed in a long blue gown, covered only by a thin white sheet that was folded back just above her waist. As they did every day, one of the nurses had carefully brushed Julie’s hair, which was parted in the middle and arranged down over her shoulders, framing her face.
In this light, I was always struck by how pale she’d become. Julie had always been very active and had spent a great deal of time outdoors, running, hiking, and golfing. Although she used sunscreen religiously, for as long as I had known her she’d always had a fairly deep tan. But in the months since the accident, her tan had gradually faded and had given way to the complexion I now imagined that she’d possessed as a young girl in Minnesota.
I turned off the overhead lights and set the roses on the dresser at the foot of the bed. I kissed Julie’s cheek, quietly wished her a happy Valentine’s Day, and then settled into the chair next to the bed. I sat there for the next hour, softly stroking Julie’s hand and thinking about the holidays we’d spent together in happier times.
I was lost in my reverie when the overhead light suddenly snapped on again. I turned, blinking my eyes against the harsh light, and saw my mother-in-law standing in the doorway, conservatively dressed and meticulously made up as always, with a floral arrangement of her own—carnations again.
“I didn’t see your car in the lot,” she said in the tone of voice she seemed to reserve exclusively for me. “I didn’t know if you were coming up today or not.”
I gently laid Julie’s hand back on the bed, dropped my head into my hands, and massaged my eyes. Then I turned back to Elizabeth and said, “You didn’t know if I was coming up today or not? Jesus Christ, Elizabeth, I’ve been here at some point every day for the last eighteen months. Why in the hell would you think that I would ever miss a day—especially this day?”
“Well, I know that you’re very busy with your investigations and all. I have no idea what your schedule is like these days.”
“Elizabeth, you know damn good and well that no matter how full my schedule might be, it would never prevent me from being here.”
“Well, I wouldn’t know about that,” she replied stiffly. “I only know that if you had your way, you wouldn’t have to come here at all.”
Several months ago, when she’d first made a remark of that sort, I’d come very close to punching her lights out. But I realized that as satisfying as it might have been to do so on some primitive level, it would have solved nothing. And I also realized that there was no point in rising to her bait. I stood from the chair and said, “Elizabeth, you’re welcome to your pathetic delusions, but I refuse to fight with you in front of Julie.”
I turned back to the bed, kissed Julie’s cheek, then straightened and turned to leave. But Elizabeth stood in the door, effectively blocking my path. “I’d prefer not to have to fight with you in front of my daughter either,” she said. “And on that note, I have something that I wanted to discuss with you—something that I’ve been thinking about for the last several weeks.”
“And what would that be?”
She paused for a long moment and then steeled her eyes on mine. “I’d like to move Julie to a facility back home in Minnesota.”
I was thunderstruck. As audacious and combative as the woman had been in the last eighteen months, nothing that she’d done or said could possibly have prepared me for this. Shaking my head, I returned her stare and said, “Elizabeth, I’ll say this very slowly and clearly, so that even you can understand it. No. Fucking. Way.”
She sighed impatiently and shook her head. “Honestly, Sean, you surprise me.”
Gesturing toward the machine that was “feeding” Julie, she said, “You’re so anxious to end all of this that I would think you’d welcome the idea. The responsibility would be lifted from your shoulders. You wouldn’t have to feel obligated to come in here every day, and Julie would receive much better care at home than she could ever get here.”
“Elizabeth, you are so full of crap that I don’t even know how to begin to reply. You know perfectly well that the only reason I want to ‘end all of this’ is because that’s what Julie would have wanted. And if you’d spent any time at all with your daughter in the last five years, you would also understand that. As hard as it might be, I am determined to honor her wishes. And if you were any kind of a mother, you’d drop this stupid lawsuit, which you know you’ll never win, and honor her wishes as well.
“Even so, if I thought for a moment that there was even the smallest chance that Julie would be better cared for in Minnesota—or anywhere else, for that matter—I would move her there in a heartbeat. But that is not the case and I won’t even consider the idea, let alone consent to it.”
She pursed her lips and nodded. “Well, Sean, I’m sorry you feel that way, but you may not have a choice in the matter.”
Struggling to maintain control, I took a deep breath and said, “I have every choice in the matter, Elizabeth. No matter how much you might hate the idea, I am still Julie’s husband, and no court in Arizona will ever allow you to move her without my consent.”
“Perhaps not,” she admitted. “But how long will you be able to afford to keep Julie in this facility if her family withdraws its financial support? And when you can’t afford to do so, where will she go—to a ward in some county facility, where she’ll be tended—or more likely, largely ignored—by a staff that’s barely trained, underpaid, and completely unmotivated? Is that where you want to see her end up?”
“Look, Elizabeth,” I sighed. “As I’ve said repeatedly, in spite of all our other differences, I am truly grateful for the assistance that you and John have provided in that regard. That said, none of this would be necessary if you had not ignored Julie’s clearly expressed wishes about living under these conditions. Beyond that, I have to say that I honestly cannot believe that a woman who is as devoted as you are to her social standing would ever allow her daughter to languish in circumstances like the ones you’ve just described. Christ, what would all the society matrons back in Minneapolis ever think about you if you did?
“However, if you wish to withdraw your financial support, so be it. I’ll sell the house. I’ll borrow money. I’ll do whatever it takes to see that Julie is cared for
in circumstances that are as dignified and as comfortable as possible until the courts finish stuffing this ridiculous lawsuit up your tight, bony ass and Julie can finally rest in peace.”
Elizabeth’s mouth dropped open and she struggled to formulate a response. But before she could, I stepped around her and left the room without another word.
Chapter Forty-Six
It was seven minutes after midnight when Natasha Williamson stepped into the elevator on the third floor of the Hayden Memorial Hospital. Natasha hated working the three-to-eleven-o’clock shift, and she hated it even more when she had to put in an extra hour of overtime because the nurse who was supposed to relieve her showed up late for the second time in the last two weeks.
The woman always had an excuse at the ready—her babysitter didn’t get there on time, her car wouldn’t start, or some other damned thing. But Natasha was fairly certain that the attractive young woman had more than likely just been an hour late getting out of some brother’s bed again.
Natasha hadn’t been decently laid herself in longer than she cared to remember. And even the fact that she got time and a half for working the overtime wasn’t compensation enough to offset the fact that she had to spend an extra hour on her tired, aching feet so that some horny little girl could spend an extra hour on her back somewhere.
Natasha leaned heavily against the side wall of the elevator and pushed P. The doors were nearly closed when a man stuck his hand in between them, tripping the sensor and forcing the doors to open again. He slipped into the elevator, gave Natasha a slight smile, and said, “Thanks.”
The man was around six feet tall and fairly well muscled, wearing jeans, running shoes, and a navy blue T-shirt. He settled against the back wall of the elevator and made no move toward the control panel, simply watching as Natasha pressed P for the second time.
The elevator doors closed with a soft hiss, and Natasha turned to face the front of the car. Keenly aware of the man’s presence behind her, she watched the indicator above the doors as the elevator dropped slowly from the third floor down through the second and then through the first before settling to a stop in the parking garage in the basement of the building.
Natasha stepped out of the elevator, clutching her purse in front of her. The man waited a couple of seconds and then stepped off behind her. The elevator doors hissed closed again, and the two of them were alone in the half-empty garage.
The floor of the garage was littered with fast food bags, coffee cups, cigarette butts, and other assorted debris that people apparently couldn’t hang on to long enough to deposit in the trash can near the elevator doors, and the low ceiling and the dim yellow lights made the subterranean structure feel decidedly claustrophobic. Quickening her pace a bit, Natasha turned left toward the employees’ parking area, where she’d left her battered Ford. Over her shoulder, she saw the man turn to follow her.
Her heart racing, Natasha looked left and right, trying to appear casual about it, but she couldn’t see anyone else in the garage. A hundred feet ahead of her, the security guard’s post stood dark and empty, another casualty of the hospital’s ongoing budget crisis.
Seventeen years ago, when Natasha was called for jury duty, she’d been a twenty-four-year-old welfare mother with no legitimate excuse for failing to report. Fearful that she might lose her benefits if she didn’t show up, she’d spent two days sitting in the jury pool at the courthouse before being selected to serve in the murder trial of Carl McClain.
Natasha had never seen a dead person before, except for going to her grandma’s funeral, and the crime-scene photos of Gloria Kelly, the clothesline still tight around her throat, her eyes bugging out, and her face contorted in horror, had made Natasha physically ill. She’d had no problem whatsoever voting to convict McClain, and for years after the trial, the face of that poor dead woman had haunted her sleep.
All of that was behind her now, or so she’d thought until detectives Riggins and Doyle had interrupted her in the middle of her shift on Tuesday. They’d shown her a photo and some artist’s sketches and warned her to be careful. And now, barely twenty-four hours later, a man looking a lot like the one in the sketches was matching her pace, step for step, through the empty parking garage.
On the street above the garage, a vehicle squealed by. Natasha begged God that a car would drive down the ramp ahead of her or that someone else would appear from the bank of elevators behind her. Thirty-five feet away from her car and still holding the large purse in front of her body, she opened the purse and began fumbling for her keys.
Twenty feet short of the Ford, she chanced a look over her shoulder and saw that the man was moving faster now, closing the distance between them. Her heart racing, she found the keys and broke into a trot. From behind her, she heard the man say, “Excuse me, ma’am?”
Panicked, Natasha dropped the keys back into the bottom of the purse and wrapped her hand around the grip of the small .22-caliber revolver that she carried because it made her feel safer when she had to drive home alone at this hour of the night. Her hand shaking, she somehow managed to cock the gun and draw it out of the purse.
The man was less than five feet behind her when Natasha turned and shot him twice in the abdomen.
Chapter Forty-Seven
The lieutenant woke me out of a fitful sleep just after one A.M. to tell me that a man tentatively identified as Carl McClain had been shot and was in the emergency room at Hayden Memorial. I dressed quickly, slammed the bubble light onto the dashboard of my Chevy, and raced to the hospital. Fifteen minutes after getting the call, I left my car in a no-parking zone near the ambulance entrance to the emergency room and ran inside.
The victim was still in surgery. The nurse at the desk could tell me nothing about his condition and had no idea how long the surgery might last. Two hospital security guards were on duty at the door to the room where the victim was being treated. I instructed them not to leave the post under any circumstances, except that one of them should come and find me the instant there was any news about the patient’s condition.
The city patrolman who’d originally responded to the call had isolated the shooter in a room on the first floor. “A doctor and a nurse are in there with her,” he said, pointing at the closed door. “She was pretty shook-up.”
“What the hell happened?”
“I’m not for sure myself. The lady was basically incoherent when I talked to her. She’s a nurse who’d just gotten off of work. A couple of minutes after she left, she came running back into the building, screaming that Carl McClain had followed her down the elevator and into the parking garage and that she’d shot him. She still had the gun in her hand. She gave it to the ER security guard, and he called nine-one-one. I was the first to respond, and the guard gave the gun to me. I called for backup. Two more squads arrived and sealed the scene down in the parking garage.”
“Where’s the gun now?”
“Here,” he said, handing me a white paper bag that might once have contained somebody’s lunch. “I didn’t touch the gun myself. I dropped it into the bag using a pen in the barrel. But the stupid security guard had his paws all over it before I could tell him not to. Sorry.”
“Not your fault,” I said, shaking my head. “Don’t leave this spot until I tell you to do so.”
The patrolman nodded and I tapped once on the door, then opened it and walked into a conventional hospital room with two twin beds and the usual accompanying furniture. A black woman wearing blue nurse’s scrubs lay on the bed closest to the door. She was fortyish, a little overweight, and shaking as if she were freezing to death. A nurse sat on the far side of the bed, using a soothing voice in an effort to calm the woman.
A young man in green hospital scrubs, whom I assumed to be a resident, was taking the woman’s pulse. He finished, laid her arm down on the bed, and walked over to the door. I showed him my badge and said, “Doctor, what’s her condition?”
“She’s terrified, but otherwise unhurt. She seems to b
e calming down a bit, but I may have to give her a sedative. The patrolman asked me to hold off until a detective could arrive, but I need to stay here and monitor her condition while you talk to her. If she gets too upset, I’ll have to insist on sedating her.”
I nodded and walked over to the bed. The woman watched my approach with wide eyes and gripped the hand of the nurse who was sitting beside her. The woman was still wearing her employee’s badge, and using my most sympathetic voice, I said, “Can you tell me what happened tonight, Ms. Williamson?”
Tears began rolling down her cheeks. She looked at me, swallowed hard, and said, “I served on the jury that convicted Carl McClain. When I got off work tonight, he followed me down into the garage. I tried to get into my car to get away, but he was too fast. I didn’t have time. All I could do was shoot him.”
She began crying harder. I waited for a moment and then said, “How did you know it was McClain, Ms. Williamson?”
The woman sniffled, blinking her eyes to stem the tears. “Two detectives came by yesterday and showed me a picture and some drawings. I recognized him off of one of the drawings.”
“You say he followed you into the garage. Did he have a weapon?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know…Not that I could see.”
“What did he say—did he threaten you?”
Again she shook her head and then nodded yes. “He followed me out of the elevator toward my car. When I tried to walk faster, he walked faster too, getting closer to me. When I got to my car, he tried to stop me.”
“Stop you how, ma’am?”
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