A Deadly Business (A Mia Quinn Mystery)

by Lis Wiehl

  Had he overheard them? Mia had to tread carefully. She didn’t want Gabe to know about Betty.

  “There’s some stuff about your dad’s old business that I need to clear up.”

  He nodded, but she wondered if he believed her.

  “Can you get your sister up? I want to make sure she has enough time to eat.” Brooke was a dawdler.

  “Sure.” He looked at the clock on the stove. “Maybe you can even eat with us today?”

  Something squeezed her heart. How many fourteen-year-old boys would ask their mom that? And how many studies showed that a family sitting down to eat together was better for kids? These days Mia ate most of her meals on her feet as she tried to keep one step ahead of the chaos.

  “I’d love to.”

  Mia was one of the first people into work. When she opened the door to her office, she smelled the flower arrangement before she saw it. Surrounded by a cloud of pink cellophane, it sat in the middle of her small conference table. Pink roses and mini carnations provided the backdrop for showy stargazer lilies. Each pastel petal was outlined in white and dappled with red.

  What was wrong with Mia that when she leaned over to sniff and saw the red dots, the first thought she had was of blood splatter?

  She opened the card. It was signed by Judge Rivas, as well as everyone who had been working in the courtroom yesterday, including Rolf Dockins, Young’s defense attorney. They all wished her well, praised her for being a trouper, and complimented her on her strength. The lid on the box where she had put the experience threatened to pop off, but she pushed it back down. Someday she would have time to process what had happened, but not now.

  Knuckles rapped on her open door. She turned to see Frank.

  “I heard about what happened yesterday, Mia. I wish you would have told me. Should you even be here today?” His brown eyes were filled with concern.

  Still, she was sure that right above those eyes his brain was busy calculating what her taking off a day or two would do to the shopping cart case. Frank knew her home and cell phone numbers. If he had really wanted her to stay home, he would have called.

  “I’m okay. Just a little banged up. It all happened so fast, I didn’t really have time to be scared.” She pushed her memories of screaming in terror, barely pausing to draw breath, out of her head and back into storage.

  How was she going to have the energy to work today and then teach? Fake it until you make it, she told herself. She was an actress playing Mia. The Mia everyone needed her to be.

  CHAPTER 18

  In a glass-walled ICU room, Tamsin Merritt lay surrounded by a tangle of tubes, wires, and machines. Mia stepped lightly across the threshold, unconsciously holding her breath, as if she might waken her. In part she had come here to escape the parade of concerned co-workers, but now that she was here she found herself even more off balance.

  Tamsin’s face was swollen and discolored, her eyes shallow, purple slits. White gauze was wrapped around the top of her head. The edges of the gauze were marked with a brownish ooze of bloody fluid. The air smelled of disinfectant mingled with other, deeper scents that Mia couldn’t name.

  A narrow foam pad was wrapped around the back of Tamsin’s neck, cushioning her from the tie that held in place the flexible white breathing tube inserted into the hollow of her throat. Two more large flexible tubes were joined to it, one white and one blue, and they were connected to an accordion-like pump on a stand by the bed. The room was filled with the sound of its rhythmic wheezing. The machine’s pace was much slower than normal breathing, so it seemed to Mia as if Tamsin were holding each breath. The long pause before the air was released in a whoosh heightened Mia’s anxiety.

  From a pole, three IV bags dripped into Tamsin’s arm. At the far end of the bed hung another bag half filled with pale urine. Above her head, a monitor showed various numbers and graphs that constantly changed. The woman at the center of it all, the one being kept alive by the beeping and whooshing machines, lay as still as if she were already in her grave.

  When Mia thought of the two boys who had done this, her heart hardened. Anyone who was capable of inflicting this kind of terrible injury certainly deserved to be punished to the fullest extent of the law.

  She stepped closer. Tamsin was covered by a doubled sheet. A folded blue blanket, splotched with dried blood, rested under her head and on top of the pillow. Half her dark hair had been shaved, and the remnants were matted together with more blood. Large black stitches ran across her forehead and then back along the stubbled part of her skull.

  A doctor entered the room. He was in his midthirties, with a muscular physique that loose blue scrubs couldn’t hide. A stethoscope was draped over his neck, and under his blue cloth cap his head was shaved. He frowned at her. “Are you a family member?”

  “I’m from the King County prosecutor’s office,” Mia said. “We’ll be handling her case.”

  “You do know she can’t talk to you?” he asked as he leaned over to check Tamsin’s IVs.

  “I just wanted to see her for myself. So I can fully understand what they did to her.”

  He turned toward Mia and his upper lip curled back. “They dropped a shopping cart on her from four stories up. And why? For fun? Even animals don’t do that to each other.”

  Mia didn’t say anything, but she wondered if the doctor was right. When she was growing up, their cat, Applesauce, had liked to play with his prey. He would let a mouse run off a few inches, squeaking desperately, then pounce on it again and idly bat it about or carry it in his mouth for a few yards. Then he would drop the mouse and start the game all over again, turning with a hiss on any human who tried to intervene. And when the poor thing was finally dead, half the time he wouldn’t even eat it.

  Mia gathered up her courage and stepped closer to Tamsin. It was hard to look at her and think of the woman she had been only a few days ago. Just heading to the store with her son to do some shopping. How many times had Mia been in her shoes? Now she was a seemingly lifeless body on a bed.

  “So that’s where the shopping cart hit her?” Mia said in a near whisper, pointing at the stitches.

  “There?” the doctor answered, making no effort to keep his voice down. “Yes, but we also had to remove a piece of her skull.” Mia must have made a face, because he said, “If your brain starts to swell, it has no place to go. So we do what’s called a hemicraniectomy. We removed a portion of her skull to allow her brain to swell beyond the confines of the bone without causing further elevations in brain pressure.” One of the numbers on the monitor went higher, to ninety-five.

  It wasn’t so long ago that Mia had nursed Brooke, watched her heartbeat pulsing on the soft spot of her skull. But eventually her fontanel had knit together, as it was designed to do. How could you go out into the world with only a stretch of skin protecting your brain?

  Mia shivered. “So she’s always going to be missing part of her skull?”

  He shook his head. “No, no. We froze it. Once the swelling has resolved, we can suture it back onto its original place.”

  She had no desire to learn how you sewed bone to bone. “And she’s still in a coma?”

  “Yes, but remember we put her in it. So it’s a medically induced coma, not one caused by the trauma to her brain. We did it to slow things down. While she’s in the coma, her brain doesn’t need as much energy. So hopefully it’s less likely that parts of it will die.” He sighed. “Still, even if she recovers, anyone surviving a cranial injury of this magnitude should expect to contend with some degree of permanent disability. There could be memory problems, difficulty with solving problems or planning actions, changes in personality, physical impairment—it’s a wide range, and hard to predict. She’s going to need extensive physical therapy at a minimum, and probably some type of long-term care.”

  Mia wondered if they should be talking about Tamsin like this right in front of her. Wasn’t it true that hearing was the last sense to go?

  The doctor was lookin
g up at something, and Mia followed his gaze. The numbers on the monitor kept going up even as she watched: 99, 102, 108, 115. An alarm began to sound. He reached up to turn it down and then leaned over Tamsin. “I don’t like this tachycardia. It can cause blood clots, and she could have a heart attack or a stroke. I need you to leave. Now.”

  Mia hurried out of the room as a half dozen people in scrubs ran toward it.

  CHAPTER 19

  Why didn’t you tell me?” Charlie demanded as soon as Mia climbed into his car. Part of him wanted to throttle her. They were going to meet with Tamsin’s husband, Wade, and their son, Luke, but right now his focus was only on Mia. “Someone tries to cut your throat with a razor blade in court yesterday and you don’t even think to mention it?”

  When another detective asked Charlie this morning if he had heard what happened to Mia, everything had stopped for him. He hadn’t been able to move or even think until he learned that (a) she was unhurt and (b) the attack had occurred the day before.

  “A few other things happened after that. As you might remember.” Mia managed a faint smile, but her face was so pale her skin appeared nearly translucent. “It didn’t come up.”

  “Were you hurt at all?” Charlie’s hands tightened on the steering wheel.

  “Just a few bruises, but I think most of them came from everybody piling on, trying to get that guy off me. Trevor Gosden knocked the razor blade out of his hand before he could do any damage. I just don’t know where it came from.”

  “It’s possible to tuck a razor blade between your cheek and gum.” Charlie poked his tongue into his cheek.

  “Like chewing tobacco?”

  “Only more deadly. Then you just put your hand up to your mouth, like you’re coughing, and spit it out.” If Trevor hadn’t been there, Young might have slit Mia’s throat from ear to ear. Charlie made a mental note to buy the guy a beer.

  “The only good thing about yesterday was it was all so stressful,” Mia said. “I couldn’t really take any one part of it in. There was no time to think about what had just happened because something new and equally bad was happening. In a way, maybe that was actually better.” She scrubbed her face with her hands. “I did have a lot of nightmares last night. Only they were all about Scott. He was drowning in the ocean. And I tried and tried, but I couldn’t save him.”

  If Charlie had been in her dream, he would have thrown that jerk a cement block.

  “When I was a kid, some nights I couldn’t go to sleep for thinking about what it would be like to drown.” Mia looked over at him. “Did you know that parts of the ocean are over seven miles deep? I used to lie in bed thinking about sinking down, down, down.” One hand touched her neck. “And no air.”

  “The atmospheric pressure would kill you long before you reached the bottom. And around here, even if you floated, you’d die from hypothermia in an hour or two.”

  She rolled her eyes. “You know, Charlie, that doesn’t actually make me feel better.”

  “Sorry,” he said. Sometimes being around Mia severed the connection between his brain and his mouth. “Anyway, I called Puyallup County this morning, asked them to reopen Scott’s case. I told them about the Suburban’s brake line being cut.”

  Mia bit her lip. “Did you tell them about what we found in the basement?”

  “I mostly said they should look at the medical evidence again. Between that and the brake line, I think that’s more than enough for them to start with.” Charlie had begun by contacting the traffic division, but they hadn’t been very responsive. He had finally asked to be transferred to the sheriff, who had listened without much comment. He had promised to look into it himself and get back to Charlie.

  “Before we get to her house, you should know that I went to see Tamsin today,” Mia said.

  “What? Why?” Charlie asked. “Is she conscious?” Mia couldn’t conduct interviews on her own, because she couldn’t put herself on the stand to testify about what she had learned.

  “I just wanted to see her for myself. And I also wanted to get out of the office. I couldn’t get any work done. Everyone wanted to talk about what happened yesterday, and right now I don’t want to think about it.” She pressed her lips together. “But looking at Tamsin was hard. Her head’s all stitched up, her face is puffed up, and they had to take out part of her skull until the swelling goes down. They ended up kicking me out of the room because her heart started beating too fast.” She sighed. “When I think about Gabe, I know that kids make mistakes. But when I think about Tamsin in that hospital bed, I feel like these boys deserve the maximum.”

  When Charlie saw the Merritts’ house, he let out a low whistle. Although if this was called a house, then what Charlie lived in would be considered a hovel. A cardboard box.

  It was four thousand square feet, easy. Charlie’s house could have fit inside twice, with room to spare. But in this neighborhood, which he was pretty sure had once been a Seattle Street of Dreams project, the sprawling two-story house with its four-car garage was not even the biggest house in the development.

  When he pressed the doorbell, it played a snatch of something classical. He and Mia looked at each other, eyebrows raised, and then the door opened. He was half expecting a maid in a starched black dress and white apron, but instead it was a tall man Charlie assumed must be Tamsin’s husband. On the rare times Charlie was home, he was usually dressed in gray sweatpants and a T-shirt, but this guy was wearing a navy-blue suit cut close to his athletic body.

  Mia had said Wade worked in investments, and although she hadn’t been sure what that meant, to Charlie it was clear: lots and lots of money.

  “Charlie Carlson,” Charlie said, putting out his hand. “Seattle police.” He left out “homicide.” No need to spike the guy’s worry about his wife.

  “Wade Merritt.” His grip was a little too firm.

  “And I’m Mia Quinn with the King County prosecutor.”

  Charlie noticed that Mia didn’t wince when Wade shook her hand, so he had either taken it down a notch or she was good at hiding pain.

  They followed him into the living room, which had a gleaming pale wood floor and floor-to-ceiling windows. In the middle of the space, two brown leather couches flanked a matching love seat and ottoman. It took Charlie a second to figure out what was missing. Instead of a big-screen TV, the furniture was grouped in front of a stone fireplace.

  Unlike Charlie’s house, the space was totally uncluttered by half-read magazines and newspapers, dirty dishes, teetering piles of mail, takeout boxes, or discarded clothes. But it also didn’t seem to be a place where people actually lived.

  “You have a beautiful home,” Mia told Wade as he sat down on one couch and they took the other.

  “Thank you.” He sighed and nodded. “All Tamsin’s doing.”

  “Is she a homemaker?” Mia asked. The word sounded so old-fashioned, but in this case it certainly fit. Something this beautiful could not have happened by itself.

  “She’s that, but a lot more.” Wade’s breathing hitched for a second. “She’s also something of a philanthropist. She’s very passionate about her causes. Health care for the homeless, low-income housing, helping single moms go back to school, cheering up kids with cancer . . .” He squeezed the bridge of his nose and was silent for a long moment while he blinked rapidly. “She says we’ve been given so much that we have to give back. She has a soft heart.”

  “Your wife sounds like a very generous person,” Charlie said.

  “She is.” He leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees. “Not only with money, but with time. You want someone on your board, it’s Tamsin. And I’m not just talking about schmoozing with folks like us. No, she’ll plan the event, arrange the venue, write the newsletter, photocopy it, fold it, and stick the copies in the envelopes.” He took a long, shaky breath. “She’s helped so many people, and then those two punks go and drop a shopping cart on her.”

  Mia leaned forward. “The reason that we’re here, Wade,
is I’m the prosecutor assigned to your wife’s case. We anticipate that the boys who did it will be arrested in the next day or two. After they are, I’ll need to decide whether to charge them as adults or juveniles.”

  “They’re not boys,” Wade said. “They’re not kids.”

  “They’re not?” Charlie echoed mildly.

  “They’re animals.” The word exploded out of his mouth.

  Mia sat back in her chair, as if to put some distance between them. “I’ll need to do some investigation to understand their frame of mind,” she said as if he hadn’t spoken. “What they were thinking. How well they understood the consequences of their actions.”

  “What is there to understand?” Wade’s face was red. “Animals like that aren’t capable of thinking. They just wanted to hurt someone. Wanted to destroy. They didn’t care what damage they did. They dropped nearly fifty pounds of metal onto my wife’s skull from four stories up. Even an idiot, even an animal, would know what that would do.”

  “The law hinges greatly on intent,” Mia said carefully. “A person who means to run someone over is treated very differently from a drunk who hits someone accidentally.”

  “But either way, my wife is still lying in a hospital bed with part of her skull in a freezer. At my company we make decisions based on the bottom line. The intention doesn’t mean squat. The only thing that matters is the results. And the result of their actions is that my wife is in a coma in intensive care.”

  “We understand that this is devastating, Wade,” Mia said.

  Charlie nodded. If it were his wife, he would feel the same.

  “It’s a lot more than that.” Wade took a ragged breath. “It’s my duty to speak for Tamsin now. So I will say what she would not be able to, because of her soft heart. I want them tried as adults and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Those punks destroyed my beautiful wife. Even if she lives, she’ll never be the same.”