“Where?”
“My butt, left side. Made it difficult to direct the suturing. I made them rig up two mirrors.”
“They didn’t mind doing that?”
“I didn’t say that.”
The hospital docs wanted to admit me. Not because the scans and images showed damage but simply due to the fact that I had fallen almost thirty feet, and I should have been hurt worse than I was. I refused. I had been very, very lucky.
Marilena had brought clothes for me from the condo. The residual pain and bruising in multiple places did thwart my plan to jump out of the hospital bed and pull on the clothes without assistance. I got un-requested girlfriend help getting dressed. Although I was moving a little slower than normal, nobody besides Marilena seemed to notice, and I was allowed to walk out of the place after signing multiple documents releasing the hospital from liability, real or imagined.
Marilena had also arranged for April to be released after a night of examination, minor repair, and observation. She helped April sign out and wheeled her to the curb where I was waiting. April gave me a brave smile, and I returned one of my own.
Ricardo had been again summoned by Marilena and provided the ride to Central Park West. After arriving, we had to undergo the doorman circus. Antonio made it clear that he was posting a guard at the door, and we would be accompanied wherever we went, as we couldn’t be trusted without adult supervision. I was relieved when I finally dropped onto the couch in the living room. Marilena walked April into the guest room and helped her into bed.
“You need to get some sleep,” I said as she returned and sat down beside me. She should have gone to the bedroom.
“I intend to,” she replied and promptly leaned back on the couch and then over against me. I looked down at her. She smiled up at me, squeezed my arm, closed her eyes and in less than twenty seconds was out.
I had been up all night as well, and even though I had a lot to think about, sleep was not far off for me either. The big question was whether or not it was all over? I hoped it was. I was sure that Canfield had killed Ron and that Townsend had been involved in some way. I still had some open switches to consider. The biggest issue in my mind was if there were others in league with them? Right behind this question was accepting that Canfield’s dislike for Ron was strong enough to be a motive for murder? Even as interesting was why Townsend had helped, what was behind her relationship with Canfield and what had her involvement been? I believed that when both Canfield and Townsend had been fully investigated, answers to these questions would come out. Between now and then, I would be limited to speculation and that was really of little value.
I slid Marilena down so that her head was in my lap, pulled the sofa quilt over her, leaned back, and closed my eyes.
INTROSPECTION
Three days had passed since my impromptu flight off the rooftop with Sylvia Canfield. Marilena wanted some downtime to spend with April, who remained our houseguest, and she got it. At first, their time together was quiet and behind closed doors. Since yesterday afternoon, however, April had reemerged with a cautiously happy disposition and had even become comfortable, well a little more comfortable, around me. Marilena had worked her magic. The three of us were sitting on the couch, April between us — another dinner delivered by Antonio and company. Tonight it was Chinese.
“Thanks again for coming after me the way you did. Marilena told me how you raced to the apartment dragging everyone out of the restaurant. I remember you on the roof standing up to that evil crazy woman. You made her believe that you would shoot her in the head. I believed it too! It made her let me go. And then, when you jumped off the building, I didn’t know what to think! Either you could fly, or you know something about gravity that I don’t! Remember, she had me at the edge of the roof and was going to push me off. I was terrified! But you, you didn’t even hesitate — you just jumped! Anyway, after that, I just closed my eyes and tried not to think about anything. I’m really glad you’re OK.”
“You wouldn’t have been in that situation at all if it weren’t for your relationship with the Briggs brothers. I’m sorry — again.” As she listened to me, Marilena smiled softly looking across at April.
April began to speak again. “Don’t be. I’d go through worse to have Ron back.” She meant it. I was seeing the person that Ron thought was worth saving. She continued, “Ron was right about you, though.”
“Yeah, how’s that?” I asked.
April thought for a minute, and I knew I was in for another stream-of-consciousness jag like she had the day I met her, and she defended Ron to me. I braced myself not to take what she was about to say too seriously.
“He talked about you a lot. It was almost always about your career and the crazy military stuff you did. He was proud, really proud, of what you had become, you know, doctor and all, but he was more amazed by the other stuff. What he was right about, like I was saying, was that you are two different guys in the same body. There’s you, Mr. Civilized Doctor, and then there is some completely different guy who only comes out when it gets dangerous. One time, it was only once, after he had talked to you on the phone, he got kind of thoughtful, and he told me about when you guys were together and some other men tried to get tough and mess with you. He said it was in Florida. He told me that you grabbed a guy off of a motorcycle and threw him into a brick wall and then left his two buddies in a pile, knocked out cold with broken bones. He said that you handled it real calm, like you were bored and totally without any emotion, and that you wouldn’t talk about it later, kind of pretending it didn’t even happen. I know what he was talking about now. There is another you; I’ve seen him.”
Marilena had listened intently during April’s little discourse. She looked at April and carefully said, “April, because of his work in the military, Thomas, even more so than the average soldier, lives in a violent world. What Ron knew, what I know, and what you must also know is that for Thomas to survive that world, he must divorce himself from normal sensitivities, seeming to you and to me to become cold and detached. Sometimes it can be disconcerting to watch, but you shouldn’t be afraid.”
“I’m not. Well, not anymore.” April looked at me and smiled. “You didn’t scare Ron, you don’t scare Marilena, so I won’t let you scare me.” She leaned over to me and put her arms around me. “Just, well, thanks again.”
“The two of you are way too deep for me!” I said trying to make light of the situation and get out of the psychoanalysis session.
“And, just like before with Ron, you don’t want to talk about it,” April said without letting go. “I’m just glad that you’re on my side!” I got a quick kiss on the cheek.
*
Later that night after April had turned in, Marilena and I were alone for the first time today, side by side and facing each other in bed. Since returning to the condo three days ago, we had been together just about twenty-four hours a day with the only exception being the time she had spent alone with April. She had not brought up the subject of my leap off the roof to get to Canfield. I had not been on the receiving end of any lecture about my foolish disregard for my personal safety and how getting hurt would hurt her and so on. She was living up to her end of the deal and had not harassed me about the dangerous things I do and that I had to consider her and us and grow up. Maybe she was the third option.
“Someday, you need to tell me about what happened in Florida,” she said quietly.
“OK. Someday.”
“I meant what I said,” she whispered.
“What’s that?”
“I know who you are.” She closed her eyes.
I hoped she did. Someday, maybe she would tell me.
*
I called Billy Sanchez on his sat phone. Billy was still at Yokosuka, and my call arrived at around 2:30 AM his time. Regardless of the late hour, I knew he would answer the phone. It wasn’t his choice; it was his department sat phone.
“What? Who is this?”
“Is that a
ny way to answer your sat phone? I could have been General F.” I said.
“Who the hell is this?” he said, still waking up. “Is that you Briggs? Where the hell are you? Why are you calling me in the middle of the night?” He was coming to and, as usual, full of himself.
“I’m on the other side of the world.”
Becoming even more awake and remembering my current circumstance, he put aside his normal, full-time acerbic wit, paused for a moment and then asked, “Hey Tom, you OK?”
“Yeah. I’m dealing.”
“Is Marilena with you?” he asked, proving again that as cool as she and I had been, no secret could be kept in our small group.
“She’s here.”
“Good, good. What do you need?” His gruffness gone, a pro and a friend stood ready, as I knew he would. As I would have done for him.
“I need a lesson in geophysics.”
“Hey, I’m not a miracle worker. I mean you’re a Marine after all!”
“Use small words.”
“OK. What do you need to know about geophysics?”
“Volcano eruptions. I need to know about sulfuric acid formation and how an eruption reduces the Earth’s temperature. I thought that all the carbon gas an eruption put into the atmosphere would enhance greenhouse effects.”
“It’s not the carbon dioxide, even though a volcano can spit out a ton of the shit, it’s the sulfur dioxide gas that causes the cooling. You get a lot of it.”
“What does the sulfur dioxide do?” Ron’s work talked about sulfuric acid, not sulfur dioxide.
“Well, first the ash column must be high enough to get above the troposphere and into the stratosphere. In the stratosphere, the sulfur dioxide from the volcano becomes sulfuric acid. It exists as a sulfate aerosol and raises the Earth’s albedo.” He knew that I had been in enough chemistry classes that he didn’t need to diagram the chemical transformation from sulfur dioxide to sulfuric acid. All he needed to do was tell me the compounds.
“What’s with the albedo?”
“The reflectivity of the Earth. It’s whiteness, like you white boy, and unlike me, a properly pigmented Hispanic gentlemen. You have a higher albedo than me. A high albedo causes the Sun’s radiation to reflect back into space. More reflectivity means less photons absorbed, less heat. A volcanic eruption, again if it’s big enough to get the sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere, will shield the planet from a lot of the sun’s heat.”
I thought about this for a moment. I was at a place in Ron’s writings where he was describing CID’s triggering event. Like the genetic basis for the disease, it was linked to a volcanic eruption. I had been surprised that an eruption could cool the planet, not add to the greenhouse effect. I needed to know the mechanics. Ron believed, however, that it wasn’t the cooling of the planet that triggered CID, but the effect of the sulfuric acid on some part of the population in Eastern Europe that trigged CID. I needed Billy to explain how that happened.
“Does the sulfuric acid get back to the ground?”
“Sure does. It drifts all the way down, and if along the way it comes in contact with condensing water, you get acid rain. What’s this all about, Tom?” His use of my first name another indication that he was trying to be a friend.
“My brother was working on a theory about the genesis of a neurological disease, and the trigger was volcano dispersal of sulfuric acid.”
“The big one for sulfur dioxide was Mount Tambora in the early 1800s. Although, one of the concerns about Mount Pinatubo, the one that just uncorked in the Philippines, was that it was a big sulfur generator, and the plume made it way up into the Stratosphere. We don’t know the effects yet on people, but it’s not good.”
*
Marilena had spoken several times with the local police. We went through the statement thing again. And again, she provided direction. We signed forms, and a uniform picked them up. I faxed a copy to Jason Inch. He was apoplectic when he called and pleaded with me to stay out of trouble.
We were visited by Jim O’Dale on the fourth day of our confinement. He had been interceding on our behalf, even though the event had occurred outside of his precinct. I was pretty sure that the district attorney’s lack of interest in me was due to Jim and Marilena.
After we were seated around the dining room table, he said, “You guys don’t look any worse for the wear!” He laughed as he said to me, “Although I did hear that you got jabbed in a delicate area.”
“My ass hurts,” I said.
“Has anyone told you yet how dumb it was to jump off that building after Canfield?”
“We are doing very well, Captain. Thank you for your concern.” Marilena had answered him, answering him as if she hadn’t heard his question. April just smiled.
“Well then, let me fill you in on a couple of things we have learned about Canfield and Townsend. It is becoming clear that they were responsible for your brother’s death. We have learned enough about each of them to establish motive, not only for Ron’s death but also for the attacks on the three of you. We have not discovered anyone else aligned with them and think that your ordeal is over.”
“That’s good news!” This from April. Marilena was quiet, and I definitely wanted to hear more before totally buying into this.
“First let me tell you about Townsend. It seems that in her previous job at the PE firm in Boston and in her position at the CID Society, no one bothered to do a background check before hiring her. My guys did some digging into her past and discovered that Townsend had something to hide. Something pretty big. About twenty-five years ago, she was living in the Washington, D.C. suburbs where she had a baby out of wedlock. She abused the infant, and it died. Even worse, she tried to hide the corpse in a freezer at her home. She delayed a felony conviction by accepting institutionalization at a mental health facility. After being there for less than a week, there was a fire at the hospital, and she escaped by walking right out the front door. In the resulting chaos, her case was not returned to the court system. If she were exposed today, the district attorney would have reopened the case. And this is where Sylvia Canfield enters the picture.
“Canfield apparently is pretty good at digging into people’s pasts. She would routinely check out a potential donor to uncover the asset picture and anything personal that she could use to get a contribution to the society. She sounded like a real arm-twister, and I wouldn’t be surprised if some of her donors were the victims of extortion. At some point, and for some reason we don’t know, she decided to check out Townsend and discovered her secret. You can actually get an Internet hit on Townsend as a patient missing after the fire at the mental institution. It’s a link to a newspaper article that was digitized and put up on a web server about five years ago. Running down the reason for her incarceration takes a couple of phone calls. My detective, Sento, called the hospital and got the names of the administrator at the time of the fire. I sent him to Maryland to interview the guy. He remembered Townsend, why she was at the hospital, and even remarked that a woman had called him about two years ago asking the same questions. He thought she was still a fugitive. We’re sure that Canfield held this over Townsend to get her to do whatever she wanted.”
“So, it was Canfield who called the shots?” I asked.
“I think so. We have interviewed just about everyone at the society a second time. Other than one outburst at a staff meeting where Canfield blasted your brother for not supporting her fund raising efforts and wanting him gone, there were no overt or obvious actions or statements on her part about Ron. With some careful questioning, however, we pieced together a genuine hatred that she held for Ron. She had an upcoming event with some serious potential donors where Ron was scheduled to deliver the status on the search for a cure. In Canfield’s office, we found an agendum for the event with one of Ron’s subordinates slated to give the pitch instead of Ron. This was news to everyone, and it would have only happened if Ron couldn’t make it. The subordinate, from what we have learned, was more
amenable to selling the story the way Canfield wanted it. There was even a memo in his personnel file from Ron reprimanding him and directing him to be conservative and tell only the facts in any public or private forum about CID. The clincher for us was the bonus plan that Canfield was paid on. She was close to meeting a fundraising threshold that would have paid her a significant bonus. We think she needed the money. When we searched her apartment we discovered evidence supporting a serious drug habit. She was into Oxycontin and Vicodin in a big way. She may have even been blackmailing Townsend for money for all I know.”
Marilena had been quiet, taking in the information and in her own way, categorizing and assigning importance to each piece. I’d get her take on all of this later in private. She asked Jim, “How did Canfield find out where April was hiding?”
Jim paused for a moment and said, “I got to be honest with you, I don’t know. We don’t have all the pieces tied up yet. We know she was looking for April. It may have been through someone where April went to school or where she worked, just like they way you did it. We may never know.”
“So who tried to run Marilena and me down? Who came up with the cab?” I asked.
“We are pretty sure it was Townsend. Canfield was in Denver, and Townsend was unaccounted for when you were attacked. Getting a beater car, in this case an old cab, from a junkyard would not have been difficult. We think that Canfield sent Townsend to kill you in Boston as well.”
“When I was holding onto Canfield, before the pipe broke and we fell, she tried very hard to convince me that she didn’t kill Ron — that it was Townsend. From what we discovered, Townsend was out of the building when Ron died. What do you make of that?”
He answered, “I’d like a nickel for every criminal who has lied about their crime right up to the last minute. I wouldn’t give her denial much weight.” I had thought as much, but still, it bothered me. Well, it didn’t matter anymore. Her lies were just a small part of a disturbing life.
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