New Tricks ac-7

by David Rosenfelt

  It’s only when we get off the phone that I realize exactly what she said. If I cost her the assignment, then the bureau’s task force is still in existence, even after Timmerman’s death, because I obviously got involved well after the murder.

  It’s not that the bureau “was” investigating Walter Timmerman. It’s that the bureau “is” investigating Walter Timmerman.

  The question is why.

  AT FIVE O’CLOCK the nurse comes in to speak to me.

  It’s really just an update; she doesn’t have any new information to share. She reaffirms the doctor’s comments that the shorter the coma lasts, the better the prognosis is for future recovery, though she won’t come close to committing to specific time frames.

  What’s encouraging to me is her focus on Laurie’s chances for recovery, rather than survival. As the doctor said, one step at a time.

  Richard Wallace calls me to express his concern for Laurie, whom he knows fairly well. He apologizes for not having called earlier, but he was in court all day.

  “Andy, if you need to ask for a continuance on Timmerman, I certainly won’t contest it. Take all the time you need.”

  “Thanks, Richard. I appreciate that. Right now Kevin’s working on it while I figure things out.”

  “Kevin’s a great lawyer. Much better than you,” he says, trying to lighten the mood.

  “Right,” is my clever retort. While Laurie is down the hall in a coma, I am resistant to any mood lightening. “By the way, Richard, why is the FBI on Timmerman?”

  “What does that mean?”

  “They have a goddamn task force investigating Timmerman.”

  He is silent for a few moments. “I didn’t know that.”

  This doesn’t seem possible. “No idea?”

  “No idea, Andy. Are you sure about this?”

  “I’m sure, though please do not reveal where you heard it. Do you have a guess as to why they might care about him?”

  “You’ve got all the information I’ve got, Andy. Nothing has come up that should interest the feds.”

  Coming from certain other prosecutors, I would suspect that they were dissembling, or outright lying. Coming from Richard, I’m sure that he really is in the dark. I’m also sure that he must be pissed off about it.

  I call Willie Miller to make sure that Tara and Waggy are okay, and he assures me that they are. He also wants to help in the search for Laurie’s assailant, but when I tell him that Marcus is on the case, he backs off some. Willie knows that Marcus is usually sufficient, in the same way that a marine battalion is usually sufficient.

  I go down to the hospital cafeteria to have dinner, after telling virtually every employee of the hospital where I’ll be should there be any change in Laurie’s condition.

  The food is set up in self-serve-buffet style, and I choose what appears to be either very dark-colored chicken or very light-colored meat loaf. The first few bites don’t shed much light on the question, so I decide just to shovel it in quickly and get back upstairs.

  I’m almost finished when I look up and see Pete Stanton, who was just upstairs looking for me and inquiring about Laurie’s condition. “You up for talking about the case?” he asks.

  “Sure,” I say, somewhat reluctantly. I desperately want the shooter to be caught and punished, but I also have this need for my mind to be focused on Laurie’s recovery. It’s stupid, I know, but it feels like if I relax my concentration on her and her condition, she could suffer for it. I know better, but I feel on some level as if my power of thought is helpful to her.

  “Our feeling is that the shooter was a pro,” Pete says. “He used a Luger thirty-eight, not exactly your gangbanger’s weapon of choice. And he only took one shot, which means he was confident it was all he’d need.”

  “But he pretty much missed,” I say. “He couldn’t have wanted to shoot her in the leg. If it hadn’t hit an artery, she’d be out jogging by now.”

  “Right. But your neighbor said that just before the shot, she was kneeling down in front of one of the dogs, petting it. The neighbor called to her and she stood up, just as the shot was fired. It could be that the shooter was aiming low, and missed because she stood up.”

  It’s certainly possible, though at this point unknowable. “So if it was a pro, then it wasn’t random, and it wasn’t cheap. Whoever was gunning for Laurie had the money to hire help.”

  “Right,” he says. “You got any idea who that might be?”

  “She’s a chief of police, Pete. She could have made a lot of enemies.”

  “I called her second in command in Findlay, a Captain Blair. He says that the whole town is praying for Laurie; they’ve organized a candlelight vigil.”

  “Did he say she’s a fighter?” I ask.

  “Yeah… how’d you know that?”

  “Never mind.”

  “He’s going through all the files and talking to everybody in the department, but he doubts the shooter had anything to do with Findlay. I tend to think he’s right.”

  “Why?”

  “It doesn’t make sense. Why come here to do it, when they could have done it there, probably easier? It wasn’t like she was leaving there forever; she had a job, so they would know she’d be back.”

  “She was also a cop here, Pete. And an investigator after that. That should give you a long list of possibilities.”

  He nods. “And we’re checking them out. I was just wondering if it could be a result of any case she worked on for you.”

  “Off the top of my head, no. But I’ll give it some thought.”

  “Good,” he says, standing up. “You feel like coming down to Charlie’s for a beer? Might do you good, and they’ll call you if there’s any news.”

  I shake my head. “I’d rather stay here.”

  He nods. “Vince said you’d say that. You speak to him?”

  “This morning,” I say.

  “I’ve never seen him this upset. He got his paper to offer a reward.”

  “He’s a better guy than he lets on,” I say.

  Pete grins. “I won’t tell him you said that.”

  A NURSE WAKES ME at three o’clock in the morning.

  I experience an instant wave of panic, which is just as quickly relieved by the fact that the nurse looks excited and pleased. “Mr. Carpenter, come with me. Your wife is responding to stimuli.”

  I throw off the covers and rush out into the hall before the laughing nurse makes me realize that I’m in my underwear. I go back to the room and put on my pants, since the last thing I need is a floorful of sexually aroused nurses, ogling me. I’m still zipping up as I go back into the hall.

  They let me in Laurie’s room for the first time, and I am disappointed to see that she is still unconscious. The head nurse is there, and she tells me that they put patients like Laurie through a regimen of stimuli four times a day, things like pressing a sharp item onto her feet, legs, and arms. For the first time since she’s been there, she has had a slight reaction.

  “Talk to her,” the nurse says. “Take her hand and talk to her. If she’s going to respond to verbal stimuli, it will most likely be a voice she knows.”

  I take Laurie’s left hand. It feels warm but lifeless, and I have to fight off a need to cry. That’s been happening to me a lot lately, if I’m not careful I could forfeit my membership in Macho Men International.

  “Laurie, it’s me, Andy. Laurie can you hear me? Squeeze my hand if you can hear me.”

  She doesn’t squeeze my hand, doesn’t react at all. I try it again, and again there’s nothing. I squeeze her hand, gently, as if I’m showing her how to do it.

  Nothing.

  I talk to her until about four thirty. I talk about Findlay, and Paterson, and movies, and baseball, and politics, and anything else I can think of. I keep asking her to squeeze my hand, and she keeps refusing.

  I doze off until about a quarter to six, then wake up and start the process again. I’ve given a lot of closing arguments, and tried to convi
nce a lot of juries, but I’ve never wanted to get through to anyone as much as I want to get through to Laurie right now.

  “Laurie, squeeze my hand. Please. It’s me, Andy. I love you, and I want you to squeeze my hand.”

  And she does. At least I think she does; it’s slight and almost imperceptible, so slight that I almost can’t tell if it’s me squeezing or her. So I try it again, and this time I know for sure.

  Laurie can hear me.

  I run out in the hall yelling to the nurses, and three of them come running. I get Laurie to repeat her performance for them, and they confirm for me that it’s real. And that it’s a damn good sign.

  They send me out so that they can run some tests, and I head back to the room, my feet barely touching the floor. For the first time since this began, I’m feeling some optimism.

  I take a shower, dress, and check back with the nurses. Laurie is still upstairs, so I go back to my room. Kevin has arrived and is of course thrilled to hear about Laurie’s progress.

  “That is fantastic,” he says. “Beyond fantastic.”

  “She’s a fighter,” I say.

  Kevin brings me up to date on his meeting with Steven Timmerman. Steven is understanding and sympathetic to a point; he expressed his concern for Laurie and me, and will accept whatever decision I reach. He just wants it to be fast. He wants his trial to take place as quickly as possible. It’s a reasonable position for him to take.

  Dr. Norville comes in for the daily update on Laurie’s condition. I basically understand about every fifth word he says, but the gist of it is that the brain scans they performed do not show damage, but that I shouldn’t take too much encouragement from that, because they are notoriously unreliable at this early stage.

  He is pleased by her responses to the stimuli, but again cautions me in doctor-talk not to read too much into it. Laurie is not out of the woods, and won’t be until she wakes up. Ever willing to grasp on to straws with both hands, I like the fact that he doesn’t say “if ” she wakes up.

  Kevin, whose favorite place in the entire world is a hospital, seizes upon the occasion to ask Dr. Norville about his own “unresponsive congestion.”

  “How long have you been experiencing it?” Norville asks.

  “About three weeks,” says Kevin.

  “Do you have an internist?”

  “Of course,” says Kevin, slightly miffed. You name the type of doctor, and Kevin has one.

  “You might want to see him,” Dr. Norville says, and extricates himself from the conversation and the room.

  Kevin is obviously not pleased with the interaction. “Does he really think it’s possible I haven’t consulted with my internist about this?”

  I shake my head in feigned sympathy. “What planet is that guy living on?”

  Sam Willis drops by to ask if I want an update on his progress in digging into the now concluded life of Walter Timmerman. The truth is that I don’t, but he’s worked hard and quickly on it, so I agree.

  It is truly amazing how much of a person’s life is available on computers if you know where to look, have the expertise to do so, and are willing to skirt all applicable federal and local laws. Sam fits the bill on all those counts, and he brings me a treasure trove of information on Timmerman, he says-far too much to go through now. And he’ll have much more later on, when he really has time to get into it.

  “Can you give me an overview?” I ask.

  “Well, the guy was as rich as the media reports made him out to be; I would estimate his net worth at between four hundred and four hundred fifty million. And he didn’t spend much of it; he had the nice house, spent a lot on jewelry for the current wife…”

  “Was Steven’s mother his first wife?”

  Sam nods. “Yes. Died about six years ago. Cancer.”

  “No recent unusual transactions?” I ask.

  “Could be; I’m not sure. At this point I was more into gathering the information than analyzing it,” he says. “I’ve also got copies of the e-mails he sent and received for the last three months from his private and business addresses, but I didn’t read most of them.”

  “How did you get that?” I ask.

  “You don’t want to know,” he says, and he’s right about that. “By the way, I did happen to see one strange e-mail.”

  “What was that?”

  Rather than tell me about it, he searches through the reams of paper and finds a copy of it. It is from Robert Jacoby, whose e-mail sign-off identifies him as the director of laboratory operations at the Crescent Hills Forensics Laboratory.

  The e-mail conveys what seems to be an annoyance on Jacoby’s part with Timmerman, though it is expressed rather gently:

  Walter

  I’ve chosen to report back to you in this informal way because of the unusual results we have gotten on the sample you submitted. As you no doubt are aware, the DNA from the sample is your own, as it is a perfect match from a previous sample of yours we have on file.

  Did this represent something of a test you felt we needed to pass? That would surprise me, and the fact that you requested the results on a priority basis only adds to my puzzlement. Can you enlighten me?

  All my best to you and Diana. Looking forward to getting you back on the golf course.

  Robert

  I won’t be able to place this in any kind of context until I go through everything Sam has brought, though he says he didn’t see a reply to Jacoby’s questions. Certainly the fact that a man who was soon to be a murder victim was experimenting in any way with his own DNA is at least curious, and something for me to look into carefully if I stay on the case.

  But a nurse comes in and asks me to quickly come to Laurie’s room, so right now everything else is going to have to wait.

  “ANDY.”

  Laurie says it as I walk in the door. She sort of mumbles it, and it’s hard to make it out, but it is without a doubt the most beautiful rendition of my name that I have ever heard.

  There is a searing pain in my throat as I fight back the need to cry. I don’t want her to see me cry, not now, because I don’t want her to misinterpret it. She might think I am upset about her condition, when I have actually never been happier than I am at this moment.

  I walk to her side. “I’m here, Laurie. God, you look beautiful.”

  I take her hand, and she seems to be struggling to speak. It looks as if one side of her face is unmoving and a little distorted. “Andy… don’t know what happened… to me.”

  The doctor mentioned that she might have short-term memory loss, so I’m not surprised by this. I decided that I would tell her the truth, and I see no reason to change that decision now. “Someone shot you in the leg when you were in front of my house. You lost a lot of blood, but you’re going to be fine now.”

  “Who?” she manages.

  “We don’t know that yet, but we will. Believe me, we will.”

  Tears start to stream down her face, but I see that they are only coming out of her right eye. It scares me, but I try not to show it. I assume she is crying at the fact that another human being would do this to her, but that’s just a guess. I don’t know what perfectly healthy women are thinking, and I doubt my abilities in this area are any better when the woman has a brain injury and is just coming out of a coma.

  She doesn’t answer, just closes her eyes. I call the nurse over, and she takes Laurie’s hand and holds it, probably feeling her pulse. “She’s asleep,” the nurse says. “She needs to regain her strength.”

  “Is Dr. Norville here?”

  She nods. “He’s finishing up a procedure, and then he’ll be down.”

  The “procedure” must require a lot of finishing, because it’s almost two hours before Dr. Norville comes down. He spends about ten minutes examining the sleeping Laurie, though she opens her eyes a few times during the process. She doesn’t say anything; just closes them again.

  After he finishes, he looks at her chart for a few minutes, and makes some notations. I’m beyo
nd anxious, and the process feels like it’s taking a week. If he doesn’t stop and tell me what the hell is going on, he’s going to wind up in a bed in the next room, with tubes stuck in his nose.

  He finally puts the chart down and turns to me. “Making excellent progress,” he says.

  “Any chance you could be more specific?”

  He goes on to tell me that Laurie is recovering extraordinarily well, but is suffering the effects of lack of blood, and therefore lack of oxygen, to the brain. It is as if she suffered a minor stroke. Speech will be slightly difficult for a while, and she’ll have some loss of movement on her left side.

  “But she’ll be okay?” I ask.

  “With some therapy and hard work, she should return to normal, or near normal. If all goes well.”

  “Where can that therapy take place? At home?”

  He doesn’t see why not, though it will be expensive to bring in therapists, and insurance will not cover a good portion of it. That is not exactly a daunting problem for me, and he tells me that the hospital therapist will provide names. If Laurie continues her current progress, and if the proper arrangements are made, he expects she can go home within the week.

  I can’t wait.

  They tell me I have to leave the room so Laurie “can rest,” though I’m not quite sure why my being there prevents her from resting. We haven’t exactly been doing any dancing, or playing one-on-one basketball. When I resist, they bring over the head ICU nurse to enforce the ruling that I must depart.

  The woman is intimidating and physically imposing to the point that she might be able to take Marcus two out of three in arm wrestling. Suffice it to say that I am out of there and in my own room in short order.

  A sniffling Kevin is waiting for me when I get back, and he informs me that we have received notice from the court that Charles Robinson has filed suit regarding the custody of Waggy. He has taken an interesting approach: Rather than pursuing custody himself, he is seeking to replace me as custodian. It would have the same practical effect as his winning custody, but it might ultimately be more palatable to the court.