by Tracy Clark
Symonds shook his head, unwilling to accept what he was hearing. “You don’t know who or what you’re talking about.”
“He checks in with you, doesn’t he, for updates on your wife’s condition?” Spada would want to keep tabs, I thought. He’d want to know if he needed to proceed with his plan, or if he could afford to let nature take its course.
“He’s taken a personal interest, so what? He said Stella reminded him of his own daughter. He brings her flowers, for Christ’s sake, sits with her, talks to her.” He shook his head, beating back even the thought of something so heinous. “There’s no way he’d kill her. Just leave us alone. Get out, or I’m calling the cops.”
I stood my ground. “Go ahead. Call them. I’ll wait.”
The nurse descended the stairs and tentatively walked into the living room. She was carrying a plastic yellow pitcher, and her eyes, the color of robin’s eggs, were steady, sharp, assessing. Hers were eyes that didn’t miss much, but there was something else in them, too.
She smiled, bowed her head apologetically. “So sorry to interrupt.” She held the pitcher up, revealing long, manicured nails painted a scarlet red. “I need ice chips from the kitchen.”
She slipped quietly through the room while Symonds and I stood there, neither of us speaking. He made no effort to reach for the phone, which was encouraging. I listened to the nurse fill the pitcher with ice from the fridge, her hard-soled shoes clicking back and forth along the linoleum tiles. We were still standing, still silent, when she headed back through and climbed back up the stairs. I watched her go, her three-inch heels making no sound on the carpeted steps. My head hurt.
“The police will come,” I said gently. “But they won’t stay, because they’ll have no grounds to. Nothing’s happened yet. There won’t be an offer of around-the-clock protection because there’s not enough to arrest Spada on, not yet. There’s hardly enough to call him in for questioning.”
“You’ve got the wrong end of the stick here,” Symonds said, nearly pleading. “This just can’t be.”
“He’ll get every break, every advantage. The law works differently for those with money. That leaves you and your wife exposed. And if I’m right, and I believe I am . . .” I stopped. A hospice nurse? Manicured nails. Three-inch heels. I slid a sideways glance toward the stairs, listened for the creak of the floorboards.
Symonds grimaced. “I don’t believe you. What you’re saying’s not possible.” His panicked voice carried, the fear in it seeping into the walls, the furniture.
I held up Stella’s file. “Her doctors gave her three months at the time you signed this. She’s lived twice that long as of today. They die on time, Spada wins. They linger, he loses. He makes damned sure they don’t linger.”
Symonds’s eyes narrowed, his mouth twisted into a horrific scowl. “You’re a monster.”
I felt like one. I wanted to stop, but couldn’t. “The longer she lives, the less he pockets. He’s a businessman at the apex of his profession, the top seller, and he’s proud to say it.”
I was repeating the words Spada had spoken to me when we met. I searched Symonds’s face, hoping to see a flicker of recognition. He had to have heard him say much the same thing. Spada was nothing if not consistent.
“He’s a master of the game,” I added, “who never leaves a single piece on the board.”
When it looked like he couldn’t take any more, that Ron Symonds might just break into a million pieces, I stepped back and gave him space. “I’m here to protect your wife, whether you believe that or not. But you call the police, if you want. Like I said, I’ll wait.”
I could tell he didn’t know what to make of me or the situation. He had to know that if I were a con artist, I’d be long gone by now. But who comes to your door and tells you someone wants to kill your dying wife? His eyes darted wildly around the room. He was trapped in Hell and there was no place he could hide. The nurse, I thought, the eyes.
He ran his hands through his hair, his hands shaking. “I can’t deal with this anymore. First that new nurse, now you with this shit story about killers and accidents and dead people.”
I took a step toward him. “New nurse?”
He didn’t hear me. He was someplace else in his head.
“Mr. Symonds, what new nurse?”
“Templeton’s. Stella likes Beverly, responds to her. But this one today says Beverly called in sick. She never has before. What if Stella goes today and Bev’s not here? She should have Bev when the end comes.”
I could hear the echo of my own heartbeat pounding in my ears. “Where’s your wife now?”
He looked past me, toward the stairs. “Our room. Top of the stairs. Why?”
I raced for the stairs, taking them two at a time, my legs protesting, my brain jockeying around in my head like marbles rolling inside a spinning bowl. No nurse worth her salt has long manicured nails or works in three-inch heels.
“Hey, where do you think you’re going?” Symonds yelled. “You can’t go up there.”
“Call the police. Now!”
I reached the top, Symonds racing up behind me. A door across the hall stood ajar and I ran for it, pushing it open, rushing in. The nurse was standing at the side of a hospital bed, leaning over a frail woman, Stella Symonds. One hand in a surgical glove was pressed over Stella’s mouth and nose, suffocating her. Ron Symonds ran for the bed; I ran for the nurse. Bodychecking her, grabbing her by the shirtfront, I shoved her back.
“Stella?” Ron Symonds yelled.
I shoved the nurse away from the bed, pinning her against the wall, holding on to her as she fought to break my grip.
“Get your hands off me! She’s my patient.”
“I saw you!” Symonds yelled. “You were killing her.”
I gripped the nurse tighter, my face just inches from hers. “Spada sent you, didn’t he?”
The woman jerked and flailed, desperate now to be free. “Let go of me.” Her teeth clenched, her eyes spit fire. There it is, I thought, the something I saw downstairs. Evil. I pressed my forearm against her windpipe, wishing I could press harder.
Symonds tried desperately to rouse his wife, who lay unresponsive on the bed. I slid him a sideways glance, waiting for his report on her condition, watching nervously as he slapped her cheeks gently, trying to bring her around. The nurse kicked out at me and I slammed her back against the wall, hard enough to give her something to think about. Suddenly Stella’s eyes fluttered. She was alive.
“She’s breathing,” Ron Symonds said. “Thank God.”
“Call an ambulance,” I ordered. “Then the police.” I stared at the nurse, smiled, our eyes holding. “It would have looked like she suffocated on her own, was that the idea? You didn’t count on anyone being here to stop you.”
Symonds reached for the phone on the table next to the bed and called for help. The nurse gave me a calm, patient grin that sent shivers down my spine. “I give you nothing.”
I applied more pressure to her windpipe, but didn’t challenge her on it. It made no difference, anyway. The cops would find out who she was in due time. Realizing her time was short, the woman began to fight again, kicking desperately in hopes of knocking me off my feet. I yanked her off the wall, twisted her around, and took her down, pinning her to the floor. My knees dug into her back to keep her there. My hand automatically went to my side for cuffs, before I remembered I no longer carried them; meanwhile, the woman bucked and twisted under me like a rodeo steer. I palmed the back of her head and drove it into the floorboards, the sound her head made against the hardwood unmistakably brutal. She yelped, quieted, and the bucking stopped, but I knew I only had seconds before her head cleared and she came back at me again. It was times like these that I missed having a partner. This was definitely a two-person job. I frantically searched the room for a substitute for the cuffs, my eyes finally locking on an unused length of IV tubing. It would have to do. I leaned over, grabbed it.
“You almost got away with it,
” I said as the woman began to slowly stir. “She’s dying. It wouldn’t have taken much. It would have looked like she just passed away on her own, right? Spada’s going to be very disappointed in you.”
As the woman groaned beneath me, I wound the tubing around her wrists, prepared to tighten it, when Stella began to gag and wheeze from the bed. It was a horrible, desperate sound. I turned to see, and realized instantly that I shouldn’t have. I turned back, but it was too late. My one moment of inattention gave the nurse the chance to jerk her arm free and twist around onto her back. Before I could make the adjustment and flip her back, she hauled off and clocked me in the side of the head hard enough that I saw stars. I fell back, taking the tubing with me, watching helplessly as she scrambled to her feet and took off. I stumbled to my feet, the room spinning, and took off after her.
Down the stairs we went, the evil nurse well ahead. If she got away, I’d never find her. She hit the bottom step, raced through the front room, and then bolted out the door, bursting out onto the porch. She ran like a frigging cheetah. In heels. I wasn’t going to catch her. I burst out onto the porch just in time to see her trip on the last couple steps. I managed to gain a few strides on her, but she quickly recovered and sprinted for the Ford.
I had my gun, but couldn’t use it. She was running away from me. I couldn’t very well shoot her in the back. I had nothing else on me, except for the IV tubing, and I had to actually catch her to use that. Bolting down the porch steps, I stopped, went back, and grabbed one of the decorative geese. I got a good grip on its neck, then Frisbeed it across the lawn at the fleeing woman, the ultimate Hail Mary pass. I was aiming for her back, but the goose in the rain jacket clipped her right behind the kneecaps and she went down. She was halfway up when I tackled her. We went down in a heap and the flailing began again. Angry beyond measure now, I pinned her to the lawn and ground her face into the grass.
“Get off. You bitch.” With every word, she spit out blades of grass, which pleased me immensely.
“Sure thing,” I said, fumbling with the plastic tubing. “You wait right there.” I got her wrists tied off, then pulled hard to tighten the knots. The woman let out a bloodcurdling scream of frustration, almost as loud as the noise from the airplanes.
“I’ll kill you.”
I leaned over, patted her on the head. “Not today, you won’t.” I was still sitting on her when the first squad car pulled up. When the cops rushed over, I rolled off and stretched out on the grass, gulping in air. I slid my PI’s license out of my pocket and placed it on my chest for identification purposes. I was breathing too hard to tell the cops who I was. I lay there, on my back, my head spinning, watching the planes fly by, wondering where everybody was going.
“She tried to kill my wife!” I heard Symonds yell. I hoped he wasn’t pointing at me, but I was too spent to lift up to check.
“The nurse,” he said. At that moment, I figured I wasn’t going to jail, at least not for this, so I closed my eyes and let out a sigh of relief, fighting back the urge to throw up all over the Symondses’ lawn. And it wasn’t even noon yet.
Chapter 38
There were twenty-six messages on my phone, and when I scrolled through the log, I was not surprised to see who they were from. I sent back a group text, letting Barb, Whip, Ben, and Mrs. Vincent know that I was alive, and, though not technically well, still moving under my own steam. Then I turned the phone off to head off any angry replies.
Sitting at the Symondses’ kitchen table, out of the way, while the paramedics checked Stella, Marta’s face slowly came into focus. “You look like you need the paramedics.”
I pressed a Ziploc bag of ice cubes to my head, courtesy of Ron Symonds. “Who called you?”
She straightened. “Does it matter? What happened?”
“Ask Ron Symonds. I doubt you’d take my word for anything.”
“Getting pissy, are we?”
I shot up from the chair, and then slowly eased back down again when my head began to pound. “Yeah, I thought I might. I’ve gotten little to no cooperation from you for days, now suddenly you turn up everywhere I go, wanting information. Oh, and let’s not forget another man’s dead and there’s a woman upstairs who’s well on her way, thanks to the lunatic sitting in the back of a squad car outside. A lunatic, by the way, who has vowed to kill me.”
Dark, even eyes searched mine. “She says you flew in and took her down for no reason.”
I repositioned the ice pack, fuming. I’d had just about enough of goons, dead-eyed killers, and Marta Pena. “I’m done talking to you, Marta. If I’m under arrest, take me in. Otherwise, shove it. I’ve still got a job to do. Yours and mine, apparently.”
“You own a nine-millimeter Glock,” she said. It was not a question.
“So?”
“That’s what killed Darby.”
“You know who else owns a nine-millimeter Glock? Half of Chicago . . . oh, and Nicholas Spada.”
“And you know that how?”
I shook my head, instantly regretting it. “I’m not saying another word without my lawyer. Till then, you’re just going to have to take my word for it, or not. At this point, I couldn’t care less.”
“I’ll concede the fact that you’ve managed to get yourself in the middle of something more complicated than a drowning,” Marta said.
I stared at her, let a beat pass. “Wow, that actually looked like it hurt.”
The corners of her mouth curled up. It was almost a smile, but not quite. “The paperwork’s not enough, but you know that already. I can reach out to Spada, ask him to come in for a chat.”
“Really? He’ll just come on down for a chat? What about Stella Symonds?”
“We have the nurse outside. She’s not going anywhere.”
“But you don’t have the one who hired her.”
“I have no proof yet that someone did hire her, neither do you. She’s not talking, at least not yet. The best we can do is take her in and see what we come up with.”
I stood again, slower this time. “You do that.” I stuffed the bag of ice into my pocket. I might need it later.
Marta looked like she was about to come back with something snarky, but then a uniformed cop popped his head in. “Detective? You’re gonna want to see this.”
She flicked a look at me. “Stay here.”
She followed the cop out. I followed her out. Aggravated by my disobedience, she turned and glared, but didn’t say anything. Outside, the trunk on the nurse’s car sat open, a couple of detectives standing over it. I looked inside, and Marta did, too. Lying on her side in a fetal position was a petite Asian woman, fortyish, with a bullet hole between her eyes.
“Beverly Ocampo, RN,” one of the cops told Marta. “The hospice nurse. ID’s in her purse.”
“Jesus H. Christ,” Marta muttered. “Then who’s that in the back of the squad?”
“Good question,” he said.
Marta turned to me, all business now. This wasn’t some random slip off a boat. There was Darby’s body in a box, now an innocent woman shot to death and stuffed into the trunk of a car. “What the hell’s going on?”
* * *
The paramedics came out of the house without Stella. We watched as Ron Symonds walked toward us. He searched our faces and stopped before he got close to the car. “What is it now? What’s happened?”
We stood there, the cops, Marta, me. No one said anything; nobody wanted to. The Symondses had grown close to Ocampo. She was their nurse, the one Stella wanted when the end came, and now she was gone. I unstuck myself from the spot, headed for him. He didn’t need to see inside the trunk.
“Let’s go back inside.” I walked him toward the house. “How’s Stella?”
“Alive. They wanted to take her in, to check her out, but there wouldn’t be much point to that. What’s going on with that car? Who was that woman?”
Inside again, I asked for more ice, anything to keep him busy, his mind off the Ford.
�
�We don’t know yet. She isn’t talking.”
He searched my face. “This was Spada, like you said.”
Before I could answer, Marta walked in, all pistons firing. Her eyes were hard; her face was hard. The body in the trunk had done it; the fake nurse had knocked the brakes off the wagon, and Marta was now all in. We exchanged a look. There would be a time for Symonds to hear the news of Beverly’s death, but now wasn’t it.
Marta drew closer. “Mr. Symonds, when was the last time you saw Nick Spada?”
He looked at Marta, then me, before answering. “About a week ago. He brought roses. So you’re saying he definitely did this?”
“Can your wife communicate?” Marta asked.
Symonds eyed her cautiously. “Why?”
“I’d like to ask her a few questions.”
“She’s dying, for God’s sake. What is wrong with you people?”
Marta said nothing. What could she say?
“If she dies without telling the police what they need to know,” I said gently, “then Spada walks.”
Symonds backed away from us, giving himself some space. “She can’t speak; she blinks. One for yes, two for no. It works, if we keep it simple.”
“Then that’s what I’ll do,” Marta said. “May I go up?”
His fierce expression told us he’d protect Stella at all costs. “Not without me and not without her,” he said, pointing to me. “Stella would be dead if she hadn’t been here.”
Marta shot me a look. She didn’t like to share. I shot her one back. At this point, I didn’t much care what she didn’t like.
“Then let’s go,” Marta said, following Symonds out.
We headed up to Stella’s room, no one speaking on the stairs; but with every step, I had the greedy feeling that Nick Spada was closer to being mine.
Chapter 39
Stella’s eyes opened and quickly landed on me.
“You wanted to thank her,” Ron prompted. Stella blinked once.