The Lies We Tell

by Theresa Schwegel

  I say, “God damn it,” once more, because this can’t be good for her, or for me.

  I tuck my gun and turn and push, all my weight against the door. I angle in and pull her nightgown down from where it’s bunched around her and I find her wrist and check for a pulse.

  Her face is turned away and I don’t need to see it to know she’s gone but I step over her body anyway, and I look.

  Blood-tinged fluid has run from her mouth. It must be vomit; she can’t have been dead long enough for the body’s natural death-purge. Maybe she choked. Or maybe she was on the toilet and started to cough, and then vomited, and then passed out and fell. Or maybe she passed out and fell and then vomited and then choked—

  I feel like I’m going to pass out. Vomit. Choke.

  I step out and use Walter’s girlfriend’s shirt to wipe the door handle and then I feel like a fool: Do I think I’m getting out of here undetected? If this gets considered a crime scene, I’ve been all over it.

  I feel like my body could separate: my head, so light, could float away; my leg could fill with all my blood and coagulate and slow the rest of me to a stop.

  Then I realize I can feel the urine through my socks. I can feel my feet. I can feel my fucking feet! I can’t give up now.

  I squish down the hall to her bedroom. I close the door and flip on the light. In here, the drawers are labeled, too—makes it easy to find the SOCKS. Apparently, Kay preferred thin knee-highs, the old-lady kind that are more like tights, not at all cushioned. I take off the no-slips and bag them in a pair of the thin ones, put on a pair and pull another over my left hand like a glove, which I use to wipe down the bureau handles.

  In my periphery, the Lifeline base still blinks green. Green seems good; I assume it would make a noise or display a more ominous color if someone had been alerted.

  I probably shouldn’t assume. I probably should get the fuck out of here.

  I’m about to cover my tracks, a pair of huge old-lady underwear from that drawer as my rag, when I see another drawer at the vanity labeled MONEY. It may as well be blinking green, too.

  Inside, files are alphabetized: Bridgeview, Champion, Complete Care, Legacy, Liberty Mutual, Sacred Heart—a catalog of her financial players. I pull the one for Legacy. I find the trust.

  It’s just as Weiss described: Johnny is the beneficiary, Legacy Investment and Management is the trustee. What Weiss didn’t mention was the fact that Legacy’s address is in Wyoming. Which wouldn’t be worth mentioning if he didn’t know that Complete Care’s address is in Wyoming. And also because we are nowhere near Wyoming.

  And, if I put those companies side by side? The money circle that starts with Sacred Heart is complete.

  I can’t take the file; doing so would never provide evidence of anything except that I’m a thief. I do, however, want to provide Kay with the opportunity no one else would in her last days, and that was to make her own decisions.

  I find a pen in the top drawer and make a few addendums to the trust. Then I tuck the file back in the drawer, wipe down the vanity, and backtrack.

  At the door I hit the lights and wait a second so my eyes can adjust to the dark. What I don’t adjust to is the fact that there’s now light coming from the other side of the door.

  I pull my gun. I open the door real slow, using it as a shield. When no one comes in I climb over the bed and make like I’m in a bunker. When no one comes in again I low-crawl, on elbows, to get a look, boot-level. There’s nobody in the doorway.

  And no sound, either.

  I get up and go to the door. I clear it and then, gun trained, I step into the hall.

  Robyn is outside the bathroom. She clearly doesn’t register I’m there. She looks suspended, standing there, silk shawl caught at her elbows, one side hanging in the urine.

  She looks out of breath. She looks ashamed.

  I probably don’t look so innocent.

  Makes us a pair.

  “Robyn,” I say, “you’re a little late.”

  She doesn’t look at me. “I came as quickly as I could.”

  “In time to write yourself one last check?”

  “I should call someone.” I can barely hear her.

  I see the phone in her hand and so on approach I make sure she sees the gun in mine. I point it at her face.

  “Someone who will cover this up, is that what you mean? You killed her, didn’t you?”

  “I don’t know what happened.” When she does look at me, her eyes are vacant. She starts to shake.

  I don’t give a shit. I take her by the back of the neck. I say, “I’m guessing it was an overdose.” And then I push the door open and make her look. “What’s your guess?”

  “Oh my god.” Her knees buckle.

  “Was it Dr. Adkins who supplied the juice? Or did you mix up her meds, so you can say she took the wrong dose again?”

  She pushes back against me, trying to get out. She’s not that strong but I’m pretty weak, so it’s an even fight. She says, “She’d been complaining about stomach pain—”

  “I don’t know why you’re acting so surprised.” I hold her, I keep her there. “You basically admitted you’d be glad she was gone—”

  “Her grandson is sick. A stomach virus. Her immune system was compromised—”

  “You aren’t going to blame a child for this—”

  “She said she was feeling better when she went to bed—”

  “This is not better. This is dead.”

  “I didn’t do it,” she says, pushing back with all her strength this time, and I can’t hold her. We fall back and wind up on the floor, in the urine. We struggle to get away from each other but once we’re apart, we don’t get up. We just sit there, me with my gun, which I’m not going to fire; her with her phone, which she’s not going to dial.

  I want to cry my leg hurts so bad, like my heart is down there, throbbing, ready to explode.

  Robyn cries instead, and they’re real tears.

  Still. I say, “Don’t.”

  “I tried to make her life better.”

  “You were here for the money.”

  “I was paid to take care of her.” She isn’t argumentative. “I cared for her.”

  “You kept her sick.”

  “I tried to keep her comfortable. She was not going to get better. The disease was destroying her.” Snot runs from her nose. She doesn’t wipe it.

  “She would have lived a lot longer without you in the picture.”

  “Who else would fight to get her to eat, or change clothes, or take her pills? Who else would try to protect her?”

  “Oh, right, from big bad Johnny.”

  “She was a fighter. When she had to be subdued, I was told to report her son.”

  “So the black eye, the broken ankle—you did those things?”

  “No. I never did anything to hurt her. Injury was not part of the plan.”

  I’d fall over if I hadn’t already. Did she just admit to a plan? “I’m sorry, what plan is that?”

  She looks down at the floor. “The care plan.”

  I make sure she sees my gun. “Keep talking.”

  “My job was to care for her until her death.”

  “Did that include writing yourself checks?”

  She looks at me, cold. “We had a private arrangement.”

  “I guess you’ll get away with that, too, since nobody believed her when she actually could cry for help.”

  Robyn looks back at the door. “I did not want her to die.”

  “Tell that to the jury,” I say, “along with your story about the deadly three-year-old.”

  “Am I under arrest?”

  “For what?”

  She double takes; she thought I had her. She finally wipes her nose. “You don’t know anything.”

  “Well, I think I know a little something. I think I know the care plan, as you call it, started with Kay’s first trip to Sacred Heart. She was admitted, and once the doctors—maybe your boyfriend Larry?—real
ized she suffered from Alzheimer’s, they privately diagnosed her with an inability to keep track of her big bank account. They gave her tests to confirm that profitable condition, and medications to keep her opinion irrelevant, and then they sent her home with you. It was your job to ‘make her comfortable,’ as you say, while they worked out how to strip her finances—and that’s where Legacy came in. And Mr. Heltman. Of course, there were a few bumps along the way—Kay’s family’s protests, and her cries for help, but if things got too messy, well, you’d just send her back to Sacred Heart and the rest of us on the hunt for Johnny. The hospital would admit her and the doctors would order more tests and give her more drugs and they’d send her home again with more supposed reason to keep you around. Her family was pushed away, and there was nothing she could do—nothing she would do—because you convinced her you were her ally. And you were: I mean, like you said—who else would get her to eat? Get her to change clothes? Help her with her medication, and help her sign her name—to checks, and what else? Mortgage documents, medical forms, trust addendums … does any of that sound right to you?”

  She doesn’t answer, but I know some of it must sound exactly right because she’s got both hands over her mouth. While I was talking, I watched shock turn to grief. Her cheeks flushed, and then drained, and now she’s so pale I wonder if I should tell her to take a breath. But. Fuck it.

  “I guess none of that matters anymore. The papers are signed and Kay is dead. Christina is totally fucked and you know she doesn’t have the financial means to fight. Johnny’s looking at maybe ten cents on the dollar after Legacy’s trustee fees; sadly, he’ll be none the wiser, because he can’t be—”

  At this, Robyn straightens up. “I am sorry for Kay, but I don’t give a good god damn about her children. I wasn’t lying when I said Johnny would kill her. He nearly killed me, when I tried to help him—”

  “Help him? You just told me you sold him out.”

  “He came here, after you chased him from the hospital. He wanted to stay here, but I told him he had to leave for Mrs. Kay’s safety. He refused. He held me here. And then he saw you bring Kay home.”

  “You knew I was police.”

  “He knew you were. You actually … saved me. You gave me a story.”

  “Stay away and mama is okay.”

  “Yes.”

  “What about Christina? What story did you tell her?”

  “I didn’t tell her anything. She’d have just as soon let her mother die. She wasn’t kind to Kay a day in her life. She didn’t care that Kay was sick; she never called to talk, or came by to help; the only thing she wanted was the money. When Kay believed you were CeCe, I almost didn’t correct her, because I thought she could have at least one moment when she believed her daughter had been decent to her. I rescued Kay from those two. Johnny couldn’t love her, and Christina simply didn’t—”

  “You think that earns you the money?”

  “You’re right about a lot of things, but you’re wrong about me. When I started working for Complete Care, they took on clients who were dying. I was hired to care for people who had no one else—no family, no support. I had nothing to do with the financial arrangements, but after death I was paid—compensated, really—for my work. And I did earn that money.”

  “You may have earned it, but you can’t be paid with stolen money.”

  “The money wasn’t stolen. It was meaningfully invested.”

  “That’s bullshit.”

  “The clients didn’t think so. They found peace through the process.”

  “But you know it’s bullshit.”

  “I thought it was fair. Why should the money be left to next of kin, a windfall for sharing a bloodline, when they shared nothing else in life?”

  “Oh, I don’t know, because it’s the fucking law?”

  “I find it hard to believe you would make the same argument with regard to child custody.” The look on her face? Now she thinks she’s got me.

  Fuck. That.

  I get up and use my gun to force her down, facedown. She tries to curl up in defense, but I press my knee into her back—my bad leg, which comes down like an anvil. Her legs splay and rip her dress since there wasn’t much dress to begin with. I press down, into her spine, and she goes flat, more reflex than surrender.

  I say, “If you want to find peace through this process, tell me where my little girl is.”

  “I don’t know. I was only trying to make you understand that the law isn’t always fair—”

  “So you think you don’t have to be fair, either. You manipulate clients and their families. You break them down and turn them against each other. You make sick people believe they have nobody else, and you make them crazy. That’s what you did to Kay—”

  “No. I took care of her—”

  “Oh, please. You’re nothing but a shill for Complete Care’s long con.”

  “I loved her—” She sobs, so I put the gun to her cheek and I push until I feel bone. It shuts her up real quick.

  “You tell me where to find Isabel, or I’m going to make sure you understand that I don’t give a fuck about the law, or about your love, either.”

  She starts to shake. “Last I was told, your brother had her. He was supposed to start work today, but—”

  “Working where?”

  “A client owns a trucking company—”

  “You set George up with a job?”

  “You just said they manipulate clients and their families. When you started investigating Kay, they decided they needed leverage. Your brother was approached—”

  “You conned my brother?”

  “Not me. Lidia. She was assigned to you.”

  I lay off her and sit back, the realizations coming in, cracking: George defensive about finding a job. Lidia there. George scrambling to prove his innocence about Isabel’s fall. Lidia there. And before that, when I was in the hospital. The tests they did with my supposedly signed consent. The snowing. And the home care, a seeming condition of my release. “I was conned, too.”

  She rolls to her side, touches her face. “They do it to everyone.”

  “I don’t understand why you keep saying they. You’re just as guilty—”

  “They do it to everyone,” she says again.

  Just then, the burner buzzes in my back pocket. I reach for it and find a text from Walter:

  Lawrence Adkins 1539 W Jackson Blvd

  The Benz. It’s registered to Dr. Adkins, who lives on a quiet tree-lined stretch of million-dollar homes in the way-west Loop.

  I turn off the display. I’ll play along. “What did they do to you?”

  “When I was given the job, I didn’t have my license. They said it was no problem, and that I could complete the certification—it was only eight hours of coursework—during my first assignment. They said I was a natural, and it seemed so—I had six clients back-to-back before I got around to starting the class.”

  She starts to push herself up, looks to me to see if I’ll let her. I do.

  “Right around that time,” she says, “they started taking patients who were facing mental decline. My first one was a stroke victim. He was completely insane. I was with him less than a month when he attacked me. He tried to rape me. I was totally shook—I wanted to quit—quit the client, and the job also—but they just moved me. Here, in fact. I was a week in when I was informed the stroke victim’s son was having me investigated for abusive sexual contact. I went from being a top employee to being an unlicensed caregiver accused of trying to engage my client in sex acts for money. Complete Care protected me: they got me a fake license, fake resume. They also made it clear that the truth was theirs to use against me if I ever left.”

  “About the license?”

  “Yes. And, about my previous profession.” She tries to pull her dress down, but it rips some more. “Before I started there, I was a call girl. I did engage clients in sex acts for money. They knew it. They used it. They got me.”

  I wake the bur
ner’s screen and look at Adkins’s address. “If they’ve got you,” I say, “why do you have Dr. Adkins’s Benz?”

  She looks down at her dress, and at herself, exposed. “I guess I’m still a call girl.”

  I get up. I put my gun away. I look down at her. I say, “The way it looks now, you’re going to have a wrongful death charge to add to your resume. Unless you’re willing to really screw your employer, and pin Adkins for this.”

  “I can’t.” She looks at the bathroom door. She says, “Lawrence isn’t the one who brought Kay in.” She looks at me. “It was Kuro Kitasaki.”

  29

  Kitasaki’s place is not a million-dollar home on a quiet tree-lined street. It’s one in a bank of cheap apartments on Lake Street under the L tracks. Makes me think the address is just a shell, like Complete Care.

  I’ve pulled into a parallel spot a half-block away when Weiss calls the burner. It’s going on two A.M. and I’m not sure I should answer.

  I can’t help it.

  “You’re up,” he says.

  “I’m up.”

  “I thought you’d be interested to know what happened at Heltman’s.”

  “I’m interested.”

  “I went in prepared to bullshit about a new lead in Sanchez’s case—I figured I had to have something pressing for the Captain like that, to show up so late. But when I got there, Sanchez answered. In tears. Said Heltman was out on his boat. So I decided to make a case against him instead. I used the brunette and her boob job.”

  “Good call.”

  “It was the perfect call,” Weiss says. “She told me everything. Said Heltman gave her the black eye. They fought about the brunette—literally—”

  “Do you hear that?” I ask when I hear the not-so-far-off rumble of an L train—a train that will be passing directly overhead in about thirty seconds.

  “Hear what?”

  I think about telling him the nurse just came in, but I’m afraid she won’t be a good enough reason to hang up so I say, “This phone keeps beeping. I think the battery is dying—”