Hostile Witness

by Leigh Adams

  “Oh.”

  “Anyway,” Betsy Hare said, “my father, before he died, you know, he had that Alzheimer’s disease. I’m not saying your father has Alzheimer’s disease, I’m just saying that it looks an awful lot like that and he doesn’t seem to know where he is. And, you know, with things like that, especially in the beginning—”

  “Yes,” Kate said. She wanted this woman to stop talking.

  “Well, I thought I’d call you. I don’t know where you are or what you’re doing, you’re probably at work, but I think you might need to pick him up. And it’s like I said, when they get spells like this, especially early on, well, there’s no way to tell how long they’ll last or what will happen. I did try to see if I could talk him into going home, but he keeps calling me Alice and wanting to know what I’ve done with his fishing rod.”

  “Right,” Kate said.

  “I know it’s very difficult to take time off from work, and I know you have some kind of important job. But if you could just see your way to—”

  “Yes,” Kate said. She seemed to be saying the same things over and over again. “Thank you for calling. I’ll be right down. I’m—it’s going to take me about half an hour, I’m afraid. I’m quite a ways out.”

  “Well, you be careful. It won’t do any of us much good if you have an accident getting here. But thank you very much. I don’t think he’s going to be much of a problem, you know, but then you never do know, do you? I think it would be so much better—”

  “Yes,” Kate said. “I’ll be there. I’m going for my car right now.”

  “Well, good,” Betsy Hare said.

  Kate hung up.

  It was only then that she realized that Tom had been sitting across the table all this time, staying silent, listening.

  “Well,” she said.

  “I heard,” he said. “Give me a couple of minutes to pay for this and I’ll help. And I guarantee you it won’t take half an hour to get you where you need to go.”

  Kate would have protested, but Tom had already left the table and was on his way to the cashier.

  ***

  There were things police officers could do that no one else could, like drive a car very fast without fear of being pulled over. Tom didn’t give Kate time to wonder if she wanted to be driven very fast. He just got out his cell phone and made a call.

  “I was just thinking of a patrol car,” he said as Kate gathered up her things and got ready to go. “An escort might be a little . . . yes . . . yes . . . I understand that, but it might—okay . . . yes . . . okay . . . all right. We’ll do it your way. I’m parked in the . . . okay . . . We’ll see you there in five minutes. Might be less.”

  Tom shoved his cell phone back into his jacket pocket. “Let’s get moving. They’ll be waiting when we get there.”

  “I don’t understand what’s going on.”

  “We’re going in my car, and we’re going to have a police escort. That way, we can drive very fast and get through traffic without getting stuck.”

  Kate tried to think. “But isn’t that illegal? You can’t use police escorts just like that without it being police business or something, and it’s just my father, it’s not—”

  “There’ll be nothing wrong with the police escort. The police can do that any time they think there’s an emergency, which includes women about to give birth or matters of life and death. We may have to come up with a good story about life and death.”

  “It isn’t life and death.”

  Tom was all ready to go. “There may be something illegal about using my car,” he said, “so I’ll have to make you a consultant or something like that. I’ll think of something.”

  “What’s illegal about your car?”

  “It’s my unmarked. It doesn’t actually belong to me.”

  Kate wanted to ask questions, but she didn’t have time. It wasn’t only cars the police could make go very fast. She was out of that diner and on her way before she knew what had happened to her. Tom’s unmarked car was in a small lot on a side street that contained almost nothing but black-and-whites.

  Tom stuffed her into the passenger-side seat of a silver sedan, got in behind the wheel, and took the radio handset from under the dashboard.

  “Ready to go,” he said as he turned on the car.

  The car pulled out of its space and headed for the street.

  “You’d better not put the sirens on until we hit the highway,” Tom said into the radio.

  The radio said something back. It sounded to Kate like static squawking.

  “This is where I say ‘fasten your seat belts,’” Tom said, “but I’m not joking around. Make sure that belt is on tight. Once we get started, you’re going to need it.”

  Kate tugged at the thing to show him it was on and functioning, and Tom got the car out onto the street.

  For the first few minutes, Kate felt as if the whole thing had been just hyperbole and exaggeration. They were driving perfectly normally. They were going neither fast nor slow.

  And then they pulled onto an on-ramp and headed for the highway.

  Kate had been an observer of police escorts like this, but she was fairly sure she had never seen such an escort be this fast. Even the ones that accompanied ambulances had never seemed to be going so fast. This was absolutely crazy, and it was not fun. And the police sirens wailing continuously didn’t help.

  She tried closing her eyes and found that it was worse.

  Were they going to drive with their sirens screaming and lights blaring right up to the Rappahannock Pie Hole? Right into the parking lot? They’d be a public spectacle from one end of town to the other.

  But the off-ramp was coming up, and not only were they slowing down, but the sirens were petering out. The transition was very smooth. Tom didn’t slam on the brakes. He just slowed the car effortlessly, as if it were a ball rolled across the carpet coming to rest.

  The radio crackled. Tom got on. He said, “Gotcha,” and turned right at the end of the ramp.

  “I’m going to need your keys when we stop,” he said.

  “My keys?” Kate said.

  “Your car keys,” Tom said. “You’d better keep your house keys. You’re going to need them when you get home. How long can you get by without your car?”

  Kate could see the backlit plastic sign of the Rappahannock Pie Hole only a few yards away. There were no cars in the lot.

  Tom pulled to a stop. Three patrol cars pulled in a line beside him.

  “Car keys,” he said. “How long can you be without your car?”

  Kate got the keys out of her purse and tried to think. “I don’t know,” she said. “I think it depends on what’s happening, if he has to go to the hospital, if he needs something I have to go out and get.”

  “If he needs something you have to go out and get, I’ll get it for you,” Tom said. “And if he needs to go to the hospital, I can drive you or you can call an ambulance. Never mind. I’ll tell them it has to be sooner rather than later.”

  “What has to be sooner?”

  “Getting your car back to you. Relax. I have this all planned. It’s going to be fine.”

  “Right.”

  There seemed to be a million uniformed officers in the parking lot. They were all milling around aimlessly.

  She started to open her door to get out, but Tom stopped her.

  “There’s one more thing. It’s very important. If anybody asks, tell them you’re giving me information on computer security for help in the Massalt case.”

  “The Massalt case? What’s the Massalt case?”

  “It’s a cold case murder I work on when I have some downtime,” Tom said. “You don’t have to know what the Massalt case is. In fact, it’s probably better if you don’t. You just have to know that I asked you to give me expert testimony on computer security for the case.”

  “Are we doing something to break the law again?” Kate asked weakly.

  “Not until tomorrow,” Tom said. “Now I think
we’d better go. I think that’s probably the woman who called you.”

  ***

  The woman who had appeared at the front door of the Rappahannock Pie Hole was indeed Betsy Hare. Kate thought she looked exactly like her voice had sounded on the phone. She was short and round to the point of being squat, but she was also bouncy. She kept bopping up and down on the balls of her feet, making the violently pink apron she was wearing bop along with her. She had a violently pink bow in her hair, perched a little sideways on her violently red hair. She came rushing out to Kate as soon as she saw her.

  “Oh, thank goodness,” she said. “Suddenly there were all these cars, and I don’t mind business, let me tell you, but we don’t get much in the middle of a weekday, and now here are all these people, and I was hoping you’d get here before we got any more customers, just in case—”

  “Is something wrong?” Kate cut in. “Has he caused any trouble or is he ill or—?”

  “No, no, no,” Betsey Hare said. “He’s been a complete lamb. He’s a lovely man, Ms. Ford, he really is. It’s just what I told you on the phone. With Alzheimer’s disease, you can never tell.”

  “Is he still in the restaurant?” Kate asked. “Is he alone?”

  “He’s still sitting at his same table,” Betsy Hare said, “and my sister Julie is in there with him, talking about fishing. It’s a marvel how . . .”

  Kate wasn’t listening any more.

  She pushed past Betsy Hare and through the door that had been made up to look like a farmhouse door from some thirties movie. When she got inside, she had to go through a little foyer area with the cash register to one side and a long bench on the other before she could see the tables. When she could see the tables, the effect was almost as surreal as that ride she had just taken.

  Her father was sitting at one of them, looking as calm and relaxed as if he were sitting in the living room at home. A short, squat, Betsy Hare–type woman was standing next to the table, her hands in the pockets of her apron, chatting away with a bright look on her face. Her apron and her bow were powder blue. Her hair was as black as tar. It was blacker than the multiple layers of mascara she wore.

  Frank looked at her as she walked in, but he gave no sign that he recognized her.

  The little powder-blue woman came rushing forward. “Oh, you must be Ms. Ford,” she said. Her voice sounded exactly like her sister’s. “I’m really very glad to meet you,” she said. “I’m Julie Dumont. I’ve just been having a lovely talk with your father about fishing.” She turned to Frank. “I was just telling your daughter that you know a lot about fishing.”

  “You must have me mixed up with somebody else,” Frank said. “This isn’t my daughter. I don’t have a daughter. I don’t have any children. I wanted to have children, but my wife wouldn’t have it.”

  Kate sat down at the table across from Frank. He smiled at her, very politely, but said nothing.

  Kate hadn’t the faintest idea of what to do next.

  “Daddy?” she tried. “Daddy, it’s time to go home now. We’ve got things to do.”

  “I’ve always got things to do,” Frank said. “It’s like I’ve been telling Katie here. You’re useless if you don’t tie your own flies. The ones you can buy in the stores are all made by machines. Machines don’t know anything. You just ask Katie. I told her.”

  “My name isn’t Katie,” Julie Dumont said. “It’s Julie. Don’t you remember?”

  “If I had a daughter, I was going to name her Kate. I always thought Kate was the best name for a girl.”

  Tears streamed out of Kate’s eyes and down her cheeks and neck. She could feel the wetness seeping into the collar of her shirt.

  Then Tom sat down next to her and said, “I’ve got a lot of things to do, too, Mr. Ford. But Kate’s right. It’s time to get moving.”

  “I’m not Mr. Ford,” Frank said. “Mr. Ford makes cars. I go fishing.”

  “If you’re not Mr. Ford, who are you?” Kate asked him. It sounded like a demand.

  Frank smiled.

  If I got up and walked out of this room this very moment, he wouldn’t know that I was gone. He wouldn’t know that I had ever been here. He wouldn’t know that I even existed.

  The next thing she knew, Tom was holding her under the elbow. Frank was getting up, too.

  “The kids coming in just don’t have the dedication we had,” Frank was saying. “They don’t have the commitment. They don’t have the sense of belonging to something greater than themselves. It’s going to have an effect on the quality of the work. You just see if it doesn’t.”

  “He thinks I’m a buddy of his from the army,” Tom said calmly in a whisper in Kate’s ear. “We’re going to walk out of here right now, and I’ll get you two home.”

  “He doesn’t know I ever existed,” Kate said. “It’s not that he doesn’t recognize me. He doesn’t know that there was ever any me to recognize.”

  “And you’re going to stop thinking like that,” Tom said. “Immediately.”

  Nine

  Frank was better in the morning. He was so much better that it was as if the incident had never happened. In fact, it was almost better than that. After Kate had gotten him home, he’d announced that he needed a nap and gone off and taken one. It was only while he was asleep that Kate let herself acknowledge what had happened.

  Two uniformed officers drove up to the townhouse just as Jack was getting home from school. One of them was driving Kate’s car. That one got out and came to the door to give Kate her keys. He mumbled something about how he hoped Kate’s father was doing better, then turned around and got in the passenger side of the patrol car that had the other uniformed officer in it. Kate couldn’t stop herself from thinking that she’d just cost the county untold thousands of dollars that she would have to pay back.

  Jack waited until the two uniformed officers pulled out of their driveway and said, “Did you have another episode?”

  “No,” Kate said. She let him go without saying anything, waiting for Frank to wake up.

  “Can’t remember a thing about it,” Frank told Kate sheepishly when dinner was done and Jack had gone silently up to his room. “I don’t like the way this is going.”

  Kate waited until she was sure Jack must be asleep before she told Frank what had happened. She couldn’t bring herself to tell him all of it.

  Frank took it all much more calmly than Kate had expected him to.

  “I think the first thing,” he said, “is that I should withdraw from the substitute list. What if this had happened tomorrow, when Jack was there to see it?”

  “We haven’t talked about it,” Kate said.

  “It would have been a lot worse if I had shown up tomorrow and been as out of it as you say I was,” Frank said. “We can’t just pretend this isn’t happening.”

  “I don’t know what that means—‘We can’t pretend it isn’t happening,’” Kate said. “Do I quit work to stay home with you? Do you go to live in one of those assisted facilities, or a nursing home, or—?”

  “I don’t think I could handle a nursing home,” Frank said. “Not yet. Not while I’m still spending most of my time in my right mind.”

  “Exactly,” Kate said.

  But nothing had been decided.

  They all went to bed and woke up the next morning as if nothing had changed for any of them.

  So she reverted to normal. She made breakfast for Jack and Frank and had coffee herself. She got Jack out the door without an argument, mostly because he was as reluctant to discuss the problem as she was.

  Then she sat down at the kitchen table and waited for an idea to come to her. None did. Frank went off to use the computer. Kate made more coffee.

  She was sitting over a cold cup of the stuff when she heard a car pull into her driveway. She got up to look out the window in the foyer to see who it was. She wasn’t surprised when she saw Tom emerge from the silver unmarked he had been driving the day before.

  Kate opened the front do
or and walked out. Tom waved. Then Frank followed and stood beside Kate.

  Tom stepped forward and held out his hand. “How do you do, Mr. Ford? We met yesterday.”

  Frank looked Tom over. He had that expression on his face that said he was not about to cut anybody any slack.

  Frank sighed. “As I understand it, there’s a lot I don’t remember about yesterday. And that’s not a good sign.”

  “I want to take Kate out to look at something this morning,” Tom said. “I hope she can help me think.”

  “She’s always been pretty good at thinking,” Frank said dryly.

  “It’s just the Ozgo trial,” Kate said.

  “I’m not taking you to the courthouse today,” Tom said.

  Frank gave Tom another appraising look and said, “You been in the military?”

  “Four years, US Army,” Tom said.

  “Officer or enlisted?”

  “ROTC to first lieutenant.”

  “ROTC,” Frank said. “College boy.”

  ***

  Sitting out in Tom’s car less than three minutes later, Kate felt as if her head was going to explode.

  “I should stay,” she was still protesting. “He’s my father. He’s my responsibility.”

  “Listen,” Tom said. “Alzheimer’s is a heavy-duty disease. Family can’t handle it, especially once the disease becomes advanced. I take it you have consulted an actual doctor and gotten an actual diagnosis?”

  “Yes,” Kate said. “About a year ago. And, of course, he goes back every month or so to get checked out. And we tried some pills, but they gave him side effects. I think we’ve tried everything. But it doesn’t seem right that so many people have this thing and there isn’t anything anybody can do about it.”

  “Medicine isn’t magic, Kate,” Tom said.

  “You’re a very cynical person,” Kate said.

  “I could say that I’m not cynical, just realistic, but that’s what you’d expect me to say. Let’s just say that I have a touch of cop’s disease: I tend to think that all of humanity is scum. That’s because most of the humanity I run into is scum.”