Sullivan's Law

by Nancy Taylor Rosenberg

  When Carolyn remained silent, Paul asked her, “You have your gun, I presume?”

  “Yes,” she told him. “Guns I have in abundance.”

  Hank had given her a small arsenal of weapons. They wouldn’t have support from the Pasadena police, unless they ended up in a shootout or some other kind of crisis developed. According to the detective, the local police force spent most of their time trying to prevent the wealthy senior citizens of Pasadena, who made up the majority of the residents, from running over the college students.

  In a canvas bag in the rear of the ambulance were three additional handguns, an AK-47 assault rifle, and enough ammo to hold off an army.

  Once she’d concluded her call with Paul, Carolyn familiarized herself with the supplies the hospital had given her to care for Daniel. Inside a large plastic sack, she found bottles of Percodan, antibiotics, antiseptics, bandages, and various other medications. At the end of the week, according to the sheet of instructions they’d given her, Daniel would have to be checked by a doctor. He was still pale and weak.

  Rebecca felt sorry for him, and struck up a conversation. Dressed in a white cotton shirt and a red-and-black checked skirt, the girl wore her curly brown hair tied back in a ponytail, with a few tendrils pulled down over her forehead. “What does it feel like to be shot?”

  “Painful,” Daniel told her, lying prone on the gurney. “How’s your ankle?”

  “I can walk on it now,” she told him. “The doctor called this a walking cast. I only had to use the crutches for a few days.”

  So he would have something to wear, Paul had given Carolyn several pairs of loose-fitting sweatpants and a stack of white cotton T-shirts. She’d brought along the underwear and socks he’d purchased at Rite Aid, along with his injectable medication, on the day after the explosion.

  Rebecca kept probing. “Were you scared?”

  “You don’t have much time to be scared.”

  “I bet you hate the guy who shot you.”

  “Hate is an ugly thing,” Daniel told her. “All it does is eat you up inside.”

  “But aren’t you mad about all that time you spent in prison?” the girl asked, doodling in a spiral notebook she was balancing on her lap. “My mom says you didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “I’m lucky to be alive,” Daniel told her. “If it hadn’t been for your mother and brother, I might be dead. Your mother’s a courageous woman. John,” he said, propping himself up with his arms, “I really appreciate what you did the other day. I owe you one, guy. That was some quick thinking on your part to give Downly your mother’s office number instead of her cell phone. Most people would have caved in under that type of pressure.”

  John had his nose in a book about Richard Feynman, the Nobel Prize–winning physicist he was writing a paper on for school. He ignored Daniel’s comments and turned to his mother. “Feynman taught at Caltech. We’re going to be in Pasadena. Maybe I can get a tour of the campus.”

  Daniel spoke up again, determined to break the ice with the aloof young man. “You’re a Feynman buff, huh? Did you know one of his hobbies was cracking safes? When he was working on the Manhattan Project, he used to drive everyone nuts.”

  John’s eyes flashed with interest. “You know about Feynman?”

  “Of course,” Daniel said. “No one interested in physics could bypass Feynman. He was a giant in the field, as well as a wonderful teacher. Many people can do physics. It takes a special knack to teach it.”

  “I’m interested in nanotechnology,” John said, closing his book. “Did you ever read Feynman’s talk about swallowing the surgeon? Can you imagine what we could do if we ever get machines small enough to perform surgery inside the human body? Wouldn’t that be awesome?”

  “Unfortunately,” Daniel said, “we’ve got a long way to go in that respect. Are you thinking of entering that field?”

  “What field?”

  “The biomedical field.”

  “I’ve never really thought about it,” John told him. “I know I don’t want to build weapons of mass destruction. I’m more interested in the benefits of physics and the sciences in the practical sense.”

  The ambulance pulled up in front of a small house with wood shingles, the walls covered with climbing ivy. The driver, an undercover police officer named Stockwell, told Carolyn and her children to wait in the car while he made the necessary preparations. They watched through the front window as the officer rang the doorbell, then waited for Isobel to respond. Stockwell instructed her to open the garage door so he could back the ambulance inside.

  Once everything was in place, the officer made certain Daniel was strapped onto the gurney. Hank Sawyer had insisted that John wear a uniform to make him appear as if he was also a paramedic. An emergency vehicle such as an ambulance was always manned by two individuals, as one had to drive while the other administered to the patient in the back.

  Stockwell motioned for John to help him carry Daniel into the residence. Carolyn and Rebecca were told to remain inside until he gave them the okay to sneak into the house.

  They placed Daniel in the guest room on the first floor, near the garage. Since Isobel had worked for the professor and his family for years, she had her own room across the hallway. The two rooms shared a bathroom. The hallway that divided the rooms led past the kitchen, then into the dining room and living room.

  Three additional bedrooms were located upstairs. Rebecca found what had to be Lucy’s room, while John settled into the professor’s office. Paul had informed them that the sofa converted to a bed. John was pleased when he saw a desk with a computer, along with an X-Box, which he assumed the professor had purchased for his daughter.

  “I wonder if he’s got DSL,” the boy said, immediately booting up the computer while his mother leaned in the doorway. “He even has Windows XP.”

  “What’s does that mean?” Carolyn asked, not as up to date on computer technology as her children. They had good equipment at the courthouse, but the county didn’t have the funds to update the entire system as soon as something new was released.

  “Well,” John said, “Paul doesn’t have to worry about me messing with his personal files. Windows XP is a Microsoft operating system that allows you to set up your computer so a guest can use it without a problem. I asked you to buy this for me for Christmas last year. You said it was too expensive.”

  John tapped into the Internet and the images flashed on the screen. “It takes me forever at home with our modem. You have to get DSL, Mom. Everyone has it these days.”

  Carolyn wondered if she’d made the right decision, isolating them in another city. “If everyone has a high-speed Internet connection, they must have a thicker bank account than I do,” she told her son. “At least you’ll have something to entertain yourself with while you’re here.”

  When Stockwell left, they’d be on their own. Hank had warned her. The captain had refused to deploy manpower to a city where they had no legal jurisdiction. In addition, they needed every officer they could get to conduct their manhunt for Fast Eddie and his accomplice.

  Advising the Pasadena police of the situation hadn’t appeared prudent. The point was that no one should know where they were hiding, and because of the circumstances, anyone related to law enforcement was still considered suspect. Charles Harrison’s death had not been confirmed. Not only that, Carolyn was afraid of Warden Lackner, a man who possessed enough clout to obtain any information he wanted.

  After Officer Stockwell had brought in their boxes and the canvas bag full of weapons, he spoke to Carolyn privately in the kitchen. “I should split as soon as possible,” he said. “We want it to look like a routine transfer. Picking this particular town wasn’t such a bad idea. From what I hear, they transport elderly patients back and forth in ambulances around here all the time. There’s a lot of money in this place. The people who live here don’t end up in nursing homes. They hire someone to look after them at home. Outside of the students at the university, half
the city’s population probably consists of professional caretakers.”

  “That’s good, isn’t it?” Carolyn asked. “As long as Isobel is the one who comes and goes, we shouldn’t attract much attention.”

  “I’d keep that to a minimum as well,” Stockwell told her. “And don’t forget to keep the drapes closed. Have the housekeeper shut the garage door and lock it when I pull out. Did Professor Leighton advise his alarm company that you’d be staying here?”

  “Yes,” Carolyn said, shaking his hand. “Thanks for helping us.”

  “Glad to be of service,” the officer said politely. “Try to stash the firepower somewhere where you can get your hands on it fast. Just make certain if anything goes wrong, Downly or whoever is working with him doesn’t get to it first. When I put your stuff in the closet in the master bedroom, I found a drop-down ladder that leads to the attic. It’s your decision, but that’s where I’d put it. Just keep your service revolver by the bed.”

  Fast Eddie was not allowed to call his employer on his cell phone.

  Didn’t the stupid bitch realize that there were only a limited number of functional public phones left? In a few years, they’d be obsolete. He’d gone to six different locations. In one, the receiver had been missing. Another one, the box that held the coins had been smashed in with an industrial sized wrench. The thieves had left the wrench. Thinking it might come in handy, he’d tossed it in the trunk of the black Nissan he was presently driving. Here and there, he’d been picking up various tools as well as license plates. He’d swiped the plates from towing yards, selecting the least likely car to be claimed. Most of the towing companies subcontracted with the city. Their fees were exorbitant, quickly mounting up to the cost of the vehicle. He now had twelve clean plates.

  Because he was wanted by every law enforcement agency in the country, with bulletins listing him as armed and dangerous, Eddie changed the plate on the Nissan every four hours. When driving, he never exceeded the speed limit, never changed lanes without using his turn signals, never followed too closely, and never failed to yield the right of way. Cops couldn’t stop every black Nissan they saw, particularly without probable cause. They had to rely on license numbers. Regardless, in a day or so, the Nissan would be history.

  As to his appearance, Eddie could no longer pass himself off as a fairly clean-cut teenager, what had easily deceived Carolyn Sullivan’s son. One of his personal idols was the serial killer Ted Bundy. But even Bundy had made mistakes. He’d only killed women, and many of the women had similar features. A professional killer, like himself, knew never to establish any kind of pattern. No FBI agent would ever come up with a profile on him.

  Admittedly, he’d screwed up with Luisa Cortez. He’d given thought to trying to eliminate her, but it was too great a risk. Her testimony wasn’t important if Sullivan had told him the truth. A DNA match was impossible to beat. He opened his shirt and looked at the faint red marks on his chest. All they needed was a hair follicle, a minuscule piece of flesh, a drop of blood, saliva, or any other kind of bodily fluid.

  First, they had to catch him. After the rape, he’d made the mistake of setting up a meeting with a drug dealer at a barbecue joint where he’d bussed tables before Sullivan had stopped keeping tabs on him. Finding out the girl was alive had disturbed him and he’d wanted to get high. Anywhere he’d been before, he now had to avoid.

  After the incident at the hospital, Eddie had switched to the look made famous by the white rapper from Detroit who called himself Eminem. He wore a blue knit cap pulled down low over his ears and forehead, a long-sleeved, oversized T-shirt and loose-fitting, low-slung jeans. He scribbled song lyrics with a ballpoint pen on his palm.

  At least the lady allowed him to call collect. He dialed the number from memory. She quickly accepted the call by saying “yes” to the voice automated system.

  “I haven’t located Metroix yet,” Eddie told her. “I called the hospital, pretending I was his brother. I chatted up a nurse and she told me the police had taken Metroix somewhere in an ambulance.”

  Madeline Harrison was sitting in a comfortable beige recliner in her room at Fairview Manor. “They moved Daniel Metroix along with Carolyn Sullivan and her two children to a private residence in Pasadena.”

  “When did this happen?”

  “This morning, while you were sleeping or committing another despicable crime.”

  “Look, lady,” he said, raising his voice, “I wasn’t sleeping. My partner and I were parked on the street near Sullivan’s house before eight o’clock this morning. For guys like us, that’s pretty damn early. They must have left before we got there. After an hour, we had to take off or the cops would have spotted us. Since you seem to know everything, why didn’t you tell me in advance that they were moving them to Pasadena?”

  “Do you want to get paid?” Madeline Harrison said. “I refuse to tolerate disrespect from a disgusting worm like you. Go to Pasadena and take care of the man who killed my son. Once I have proof that he’s dead, you’ll receive a quarter of a million dollars in cash.”

  “What’s the address?”

  “I don’t have the address,” she told him. “If I knew the address, I wouldn’t need you. I’d kill the man myself.”

  “Great,” Eddie thought, slamming the receiver down on the hook.

  Madeline called her husband in Boston. “How did it go with the doctor today?”

  “Okay, I guess,” Charles Harrison said. “I’m on the list for a liver under the new identity. I would have had a better chance if I’d stayed in L.A.”

  “You’ll be fine,” she answered coolly. “Have you spoken to Boyd Chandler?”

  “Not yet,” he said. “Is Metroix dead?”

  “No,” she said. “The police moved him to an unknown location in Pasadena. I just spoke to Eddie Downly, instructing him what to do.”

  “What about the life insurance companies? Are they giving you any flack?”

  “Things are progressing smoothly. The attorney I hired, Carl Myers, called me today. The police have no evidence of foul play. He advised the insurance agent that I need the money in order to take care of my expenses here at Fairview.”

  “You’re still going to meet me once this is over?” Charles asked anxiously. “I mean, that was our plan. I don’t want to go under the knife alone in a strange city. I might never wake up.”

  Madeline sighed, pulling the lever to recline her chair. “Oh, Charles,” she said, staring at a chip in her fingernail polish, “why is everything so melodramatic with you? People have successful liver transplants every day. The chances of anything happening are minuscule. If you were so afraid of undergoing an operation, you should have stopped drinking years ago.”

  Harrison erupted, “Maybe if you’d stood beside me as my wife instead of living at the fancy place they call a hospital, I would never have developed a problem with alcohol.”

  “Your father was an alcoholic, Charles,” Madeline said. “I only asked one thing of you over all these years. All I want is that awful man to die. He stole our lives when he killed Tim. Then the prison gave him special treatment. How could you allow that to happen?”

  “I can’t control what goes on inside prison,” Charles shot out. “I kept him behind bars for twenty-three years. Whether you realize it or not, that wasn’t easy. I sprang Eddie after Boyd took off. Boyd did a decent job on the motel. He got Metroix inside and hired a demolitions expert to booby-trap the room. How did I know the Sullivan woman was going to be there to rescue him? Boyd had to leave town for a while until things died down. People know him. He used to be an officer at the Ventura PD.”

  “You have an excuse for everything,” Madeline said. “Can you get in touch with Boyd?”

  “Yeah, I’ve got a contact number for him. Are we sticking to the last plan?”

  “Yes,” she said crisply. “Once Metroix is dead, I’ll instruct Eddie where to meet Boyd for the payoff. I want that man dead. He raped an eight-year-old child.”

/>   “You want everyone dead,” Charles mumbled under his breath. He worshipped his wife, but she’d controlled his life ever since their son’s death. She lounged around at the hospital, having people wait on her hand and foot. He was certain she manipulated patients as entertainment. She used to come home for the weekend and make love to him. She’d tried to get him to have Metroix murdered at Chino. He’d made a few attempts. His position made it difficult to work within the prison system. The local jails were easier. Eddie had been brought to him by an LAPD officer he’d known for years, after arresting him in possession of a large quantity of methamphetamine. He had given Eddie the option. He could either work for him or have his probation violated and serve a year in jail. How could they have known he would rape a child? Sure, he’d been busted for a sexual offense. He’d read the original report and wasn’t even certain a crime had been committed. Eddie and his victim, the teenage girl who had lived next door, were only two years apart in age. His story that they were girlfriend and boyfriend had seemed plausible. And it had only been fondling. He hadn’t had sex with the girl. Once he’d been arrested for the rape of Luisa Cortez, Charles had no choice but to arrange his release. He couldn’t take a chance that Eddie would expose him. All he’d done in the motel job was pose as a clerk. Handing the DA a deputy chief might not have gotten him a reduced sentence, but it would have bought him something. Sean Exley, the Ventura DA, was up for reelection. A major story would have served him well.

  “I’ve already talked to Boyd,” Charles told her. “He’s prepared to take Eddie out. The price is a quarter of a million, the same number we placed on Metroix’s head. Do you have that much available in your personal account, or do we need to wait for the insurance to pay off? I paid Boyd, Eddie, and the demolitions man for the motel job. I have less than a hundred left from Tim’s trust account. I’ll have to pay for the transplant, remember? The hospital bills will be enormous, and that’s not including the surgical team. I can’t use my health insurance.”