by Linda Barnes
“You have to remember how hard it was for me,” she said finally. “I was taking pills, medicine. Did I say that?”
“Yes.”
“It’s about the last day, her last day.”
“Did she die at home?” She flinched when I said the word.
“At the hospital,” she said, staring directly into my eyes, holding them with her gaze. “It was her regular chemotherapy session. The doctors had been, well, noncommittal. But encouraging, very encouraging. She was handling everything well …”
“Yes?”
Her eyes were blue, an icy bottomless lake. “I have this picture in my head. The last day. It went wrong so fast. I was sitting near her, in a beige chair, on the right side of the bed, so close I could stroke her forehead. We were in the regular room, the one with the blue wallpaper. Blue wallpaper, with a white lattice pattern and flowers, yellow-and-gold flowers. Zinnias. I used to stare at the wallpaper when I couldn’t stand watching the pain in Becca’s face. Only for a moment; otherwise, I felt like I was deserting her. But there were times when I’d stare till there were only yellow and blue blotches. It was quiet. The regular nurse was present. She hadn’t had any trouble inserting the IV. Everything was ordinary—if horrible things, if your child’s pain, can ever be ordinary. And then there was a man in white, a man I hadn’t seen before, but he must have been a doctor. Bursting in like that. Yelling. And he pushed me out of the room, shoved me. And through a tiny window, I saw the mask over her face, over Becca’s face. He jammed it over her mouth, her nose. The noise she made, I hear it in my sleep—”
“It’s okay, Emily,” Keith Donovan said quietly. “It’s okay. It’s okay.”
Her silence was more unnerving than her sobs. She sat motionless, staring inward, seeing her child’s last moments with the intensity of a fever dream.
“Where was your daughter treated?” I asked.
“JHHI.”
The Jonas Hand/Helping Institute, created when the small Jonas Hand Hospital and the even smaller James Helping Institute merged in the late seventies, is housed in a dilapidated building in an area that swings between urban renewal and urban decay, teetering back and forth on the pendulum of local politics, never quite making it into the respectable zone. For years, there’ve been rumors of JHHI closing, or moving, but they’ve always proved false. JHHI endures, the major reason the neighborhood never quite succumbs to gang violence, racism, or sheer neglect. Said to be one of the nation’s top medical centers, it draws patients from as far away as Cairo and Santiago.
The locals bless the hospital for the police presence it commands. Most of them call the place Helping Hand, and believe it was named for some anonymous Good Samaritan. It’s no fly-by-night miracle-cure center, no south-of-the-border laetrile clinic.
Mrs. Woodrow rubbed her temples. “We took her there because of Muir, of course. Because of his reputation.”
I didn’t respond to the name. She looked at me as if I’d missed a cue.
“Dr. Jerome D. Muir,” Emily Woodrow insisted. The name did have a certain familiarity, like a name I might have read once in a newspaper.
“Wouldn’t Children’s Hospital have been the place to go?” I inquired. “Better known?” I’d certainly heard more about Children’s than I’d read about Muir.
“No. No,” Mrs. Woodrow said earnestly. “We checked very carefully. My husband does know doctors. He talked to them. We were afraid of a teaching hospital, of some enormous place where you never know who’s actually doing what. I mean, I realize medical students need to learn, and I know they need to learn on living people with real illnesses, but I thought, no, not on my daughter. So we chose JHHI. Because of Dr. Muir.”
Donovan said, “He’s the best man in the area, maybe in the country.” The woman seemed comforted by his assurance.
I asked, “Was Muir your daughter’s primary physician?”
“Yes.”
“Do you think an error was made in your daughter’s medical care?” I asked Mrs. Woodrow.
“I don’t know.”
“Sounds to me like you want a malpractice attorney.”
“I don’t,” she said vehemently. “I can’t and I don’t. My husband is an attorney who works closely with doctors, setting up corporations, partnerships, that kind of thing. I can’t risk his livelihood by starting up a lawsuit based on shadows. I don’t know anything for sure. Maybe I dreamed it. Maybe the drugs I took afterward … maybe they altered my perceptions.…”
“You must have asked your daughter’s doctor what happened.”
“He explained. He explains, but it doesn’t make sense. He uses words I don’t understand, words with twenty syllables, and the next time I ask, after I’ve looked things up, he uses a different word and says I must have misunderstood him. And lately, he’s always out—on rounds or whatever. And the nurses, they don’t even bother to hide it anymore. They just whisper to each other. ‘It’s her again, the crazy woman.’”
A lawyer once told me that more doctors get sued because of rude receptionists than rotten care.
“You lost your daughter,” I said. “That’s enough to make anyone crazy for a while.”
I wondered what Keith Donovan thought about the nontechnical term, crazy.
“Becca looked like me, but she wasn’t like me,” the woman said fiercely. Her jagged nail snagged a beige stocking. She tore it loose, ripping a hole. Didn’t notice. “She was matter-of-fact. She accepted what was. Whatever they did to her, whatever those doctors and nurses did to her, she simply assumed they were doing their best. Even when she was so weak she could hardly talk, she never blamed me. She never blamed anyone. She cried when she couldn’t go to her friend Jessie’s birthday party, but she didn’t cry because she had leukemia. She just wanted them to make her well again. So her hair would grow back, and she could jump rope on the playground. And they said they would, and they didn’t.”
Children died. Parents lived. It broke your heart. Before I could open my mouth to tell her I couldn’t help her, she sped on.
“I want you to tell me, assure me, that nothing, absolutely nothing unusual or odd or wrong went on. I owe that much to Becca. To Becca and myself. I need to hear someone say it, before I can go on.”
“You want me to talk to her doctor?”
She licked her lips, spoke rapidly, softly. “I need to know that everything that could have been done was done, and done right. That no one could have done more. I don’t want to sue anybody. I don’t need money. I have money.”
“I’m not a whiz at medical terminology,” I said.
“I could help with that,” Donovan volunteered.
I turned on him. “Do you think this is necessary? Or wise?”
“You mean, do I think it will help Mrs. Woodrow?”
“Yes,” I snapped, surprised to find myself angry. I didn’t need any psychiatrist to tell me what I meant.
He paused, considering his words. “I think it may help to close off this area, wall up the past. So she can move forward.”
“Move forward,” Emily Woodrow repeated, shaking her head slowly. She kept moving her head back and forth as if she’d forgotten how to stop.
I sucked in a deep breath, tried to find another way to say what I needed to say. Couldn’t. This is what came out: “Mrs. Woodrow, I’m sorry, but I have to say this. Your daughter is dead. What Dr. Donovan means when he says ‘move forward,’ what he means is that no matter what I discover, no matter what I learn, your daughter will still be dead.”
Her eyes closed and she flinched as if I’d hit her. I glanced at Donovan. He inclined his head slightly as if I’d said the right thing, but it didn’t make me feel any better.
She wanted to write out a check immediately. I persuaded her to take a day to look over my standard contract, suggest any changes. I assured her that she could mail me the check.
I don’t usually go out of my way to avoid prompt payment. Usually I demand it, but there was something about this case—prob
ably the woman’s visible pain—that made me want to stall. And what was the hurry? I asked myself. It wasn’t like the events had occurred yesterday.
She teetered on her heels when she stood to leave. Since she had her doctor along, I didn’t feel required to see her out.
When she reappeared in the doorway, clad in her Burberry, her index finger to her lips, I was surprised. Surefooted now, she glided across the room till she was well within whispering range.
“He thinks I’m looking for my glove,” she murmured. “Tell me quickly: Do you own any stocks? Do you speculate?”
“No.” I thought she was probably mad but I answered. It was something in her eyes. An intensity, a brilliance.
“Do you work for yourself?”
“Yes.”
“For anyone else?”
“I drive a cab.”
“What company?”
“Green and White.”
“I can check on them. Do you own a gun?”
“Yes.”
“Can you use it?”
“Yes.”
“Have you?”
“Have I what?”
“Used it. Killed with it.”
“Yes.”
“Would you do it again?”
“If I had to.”
“What does Cee Co mean to you?”
“Seiko? The watch people?”
She handed me a slim envelope. “This is for you. Keep it. And stay here for me. On hold. Don’t take any other client. You’ll get something in the mail or by messenger. Keep it safe. Keep it for me.”
“Wait. Wait just a minute. Hire a safety deposit box.”
“No. It has to be this way. Please. You have to.” For a moment, her fierce gaze faltered.
“What is Cee Co?” I asked.
She ignored the question.
“Are you in danger?” I asked, louder this time.
“I don’t think so.”
“Why ask about guns? Do you need protection? Are you afraid?”
“Afraid? Afraid of what? There’s nothing to be afraid of now. When you’ve lost everything, there’s nothing left.”
She swiveled her head, as if she’d heard a noise, footsteps. All was quiet.
“No,” she murmured softly, turning to stare at me again. “No, I take that back. You’re right: I am afraid. I’m afraid I’ll forget her someday.” Her voice was a choked whisper, and the words came faster and faster. “Forget the feel of her hair. Forget the moment I named her. Forget the creases under her eyes when she smiled—”
“Did you find it?” Donovan hovered at the door. Instinctively I slid the slim envelope under my blotter, out of sight.
Emily Woodrow, her gait unsteady, yanked a glove from beneath the rocking chair. I hadn’t seen her plant it.
“Here it is,” she said automatically, the mask almost back in place. “Sorry to have troubled you.”
“I’ll be in touch,” I said.
She shot me a warning glance. “This is something I won’t discuss on the telephone. I cannot discuss it over the phone.”
“Still—”
“If you’ll do as I’ve asked,” she said mildly, her fierce eyes hooded, “everything will be fine.”
Sure, I thought.
“Ms. Carlyle,” she said, turning back as she reached the doorway.
“Yes.”
“Your little sister—”
“Yes?”
Her voice faltered. She bit her lip and took a deep breath before she could go on. “She’s very beautiful.”
5
This time I closed and bolted the door behind them. I peered through the peephole as Donovan guided Emily Woodrow down the three steps. Then I hurried back to the living room.
The white envelope, while of lesser quality than the stiff blue ones, was not cheap. I slit it with a letter opener and eased out the contents. Two items: a folded sheet of paper and a powder-blue check. The paper was a photocopy of a death certificate. Rebecca Elizabeth Woodrow’s. The date of death was the same as the one on the photograph.
Emily Woodrow’s daughter had died. That much of her initial story was true.
The check was big enough to earn an involuntary whistle. And all I had to do to earn it was wait.
I tapped my fingers on my desk. My blunt-cut nails made no noise. Waiting is not what I do best. Nor is it my natural inclination.
I peered into the envelope, dissatisfied with its contents. My eye caught a flash of silver at the bottom. I yanked the sides of the envelope apart and shook until something fell onto my blotter.
I got a stinging paper cut for my effort, and a shiny bit of foil-like paper, about one inch square. When I held it to the light, it seemed to change color. One edge was slightly bent, another looked as if it had been snipped with a nail scissors, separated from a larger item.
What that item might be, I couldn’t guess.
My stomach rumbled, so I made breakfast, swallowing the rest of the carton of orange juice, then frying up four slices of bacon and two eggs in a cast-iron skillet.
Ah, the joy of bacon! I’d never tasted its crisp fattiness till I was eighteen: No pig products allowed in my mother’s kosher home. As an adult I’ve found that eating such defiantly treyf fare gives me the warm glow of disobedience, as good a fuel as any for trying to pump information out of often-reluctant sources.
I deserted the dishes in the sink, where Roz might or might not notice them, and returned to the living room. Emily Woodrow’s check, drawn on a BayBank in Marlborough, had her name and address printed neatly on the upper-left-hand corner. Her own name, not her husband’s. I dialed a 1–800 number, asked to speak to Patsy, and sipped my first Pepsi of the day while stuck on hold. Somebody played saccharine-stringed Beatles Muzak in my ear.
Patsy Ronetti’s Bronx blare woke me up.
I met her when I was a cop. She’s a prize. Took a job right out of high school, a trainee with Equifax, one of those high-profile information-gathering corporations. Spent four years as an insurance investigator, and now she knows it all: data-base access, public-document searches, credit reporting. I send her a bottle of Johnnie Walker Black Label every Christmas. Most of the investigators in town probably do the same. She could run a liquor store on the side, but mostly she reports credit.
I ran Emily Woodrow past her, gave her Harold’s name as well, assuming he had the same last name as his wife and child, read her the Winchester address on the check. Then we talked money and time. Her rates are not cheap, but she’s fast. I could hear her punching keys on her terminal as we bartered.
I wanted both a credit report and an employment search, and was arguing in favor of a two-for-one deal.
“You hooked yourself a live one,” she said.
“Yeah.”
“I’m backed up here to Tuesday, Carlotta. Half the country’s checking on the other half. I’m not gonna do any rush job on this, understand? But here’s a teaser for you. He’s a lawyer—”
“I already knew that.”
“You also know he pulls down six large? Maybe you can afford the car.”
“Huh?”
“You’re buying a car, right? Or leasing?”
“Not that I know of,” I said while imaginary warning bells pealed in my ears.
“Wait a minute. Carlyle, right?” She spelled it out.
“Yeah.”
“I got a call, must be three days ago. Car dealer, I coulda sworn.”
“Got the paper on it?”
“Geez, I dunno. I think it was a phone deal.”
“Patsy, can you pull my file and see who exactly was doing the asking? Because I’m not buying any car.”
“Hang on.”
Muzak drowned out the furious clatter of keystrokes.
I gulped Pepsi and brooded. I don’t mind using electronic data banks. It’s just I hate the thought that somebody else can use one to find out about me.
Her voice was smug. “Stoneham Lincoln-Mercury. What did I tell ya? Memory like a tr
ap.”
“Hang on.” My phone doesn’t feature Muzak on hold. She had to listen to the sound of my lower-left-hand drawer opening and closing. I found the Yellow Pages tucked behind a sheaf of files. I balanced it on my lap, riffled the pages.
“There’s no such place,” I said.
“Gee, he sounded nice, too,” she offered.
“A man.”
“Yeah.”
“You must have had a phone number or something, so you could tell the guy I was a bum risk.”
“Gotta go,” Patsy said. “Later.”
I was getting used to her abrupt disconnections. Her bosses at E–Z Electronic, a far-smaller outfit than Equifax, didn’t know about her freelance career. Nor would they have approved.
I waited five minutes, but she didn’t call back. No telling when she would.
Somebody steals my garbage. Somebody checks my credit. And I hadn’t even applied to work for the FBI.
I drummed my fingers on my desk for five more minutes, then I picked up the receiver and dialed Mooney.
When I was a cop, I worked for Mooney, and most of the time he made it seem as though I worked with him, not for him. Green as I was, just out of U.–Mass. and the police academy, I didn’t fully appreciate the camaraderie. I thought it was the way all cops worked.
He’s a lieutenant now—homicide—and I don’t think he’ll rise any higher because he’s too good at what he does. Too busy closing cases to play politics.
I mentally composed a recorded message because he’s out of his office a lot. When he answered on the second ring, I was caught flat-footed.
When Mooney starts sounding good to me, I worry. Not that he doesn’t have a nice voice; he does. Not that he’s bad-looking. Tall, well-muscled, round-faced—I jokingly tell him he’s too white-bread for my taste. He—disapproving of Sam Gianelli—tells me I’m attracted to outlaws, not cops. When Mooney starts sounding good, it makes me wonder how things are really going with Sam and me.
“Moon, hello.”
“Hi, there.”
“How’re you doing?”
“Fine, Carlotta.”
“Busy?”
“Usual.”
“Somebody’s in your office.”