“Kathy”—Carter put a hand on hers—“please let us visit with her and see if there’s anything we can find out. We won’t cause any trouble.”
She hesitated a moment, then sighed. “Come on, then.”
They followed Kathleen O’Meara through a set of double doors. The temperature on the inside of the hallway was at least fifteen degrees hotter than it was in the waiting area. Georgia had forgotten that burn victims have no skin to help them maintain their body heat. She swallowed back a sudden, metallic taste in her mouth and searched for a comfortable way to hold her hands. To her relief, she noticed that even Carter got quiet. Maybe no one really became accustomed to seeing people horrifically burned.
In a large room to their left, Georgia could hear screaming and moaning above the white noise of a pounding shower. An ear-piercing shriek echoed above the thrumming of water, followed by whimpers that didn’t sound human at all—more like cats in heat. Kathleen must have seen the discomfort in Georgia’s face.
“The tank,” she said evenly, answering Georgia’s unspoken question.
“The tank?”
“Nurses have to scrub off a burn patient’s dead skin so that infection doesn’t set in and the doctors can do skin grafts,” Kathleen explained. “The scrubbing’s done under a high-pressure shower. It makes removing the skin a little easier, but it’s hard on the nerve endings.” She smiled sadly. “The patients’—and the nurses’,” she added.
Georgia heard the unmistakable cries now of a young child and winced. “Can’t they give him morphine to make the pain go away?”
“Oh, we do,” said Kathleen. “Those cries? That’s with morphine. If the nurses give that child any more, they’ll kill him.”
A male nurse doing the morning rounds nodded to Kathleen, then tousled the nappy hair of a black boy of about three, wearing a diaper, his legs encased in gauze bandages. The boy clutched a metal walker to help him get around, like an old man in a nursing home. His large, soulful eyes looked far too old for his years.
“How are you doing, E.J.?” said Kathleen, giving the child a big smile. The boy did not smile back. They were at the other end of the hall before Kathleen spoke.
“E.J.’s mother got mad because he wet his bed. So she gave him a bath—in one-hundred-and-forty-degree water.”
“Is he going to recover?” Georgia asked.
“Physically? Yes,” said Kathleen. “Emotionally? How do you ever get over something like that? We get a lot of children through these doors. Some are just unlucky, but a lot of them are either burned intentionally or left alone for hours, even days. They get into matches or try to cook something to eat and next thing you know, they’re here. Or dead.”
Kathleen pointed to a glass door at the end of the hallway. The three-bed intensive-care unit. She opened the glass door and led Georgia and Carter to the nurses’ station. There was a printout on the desk, and Kathleen picked it up and read it.
“This is interesting,” she said. “The hospital did a toxicology screen on Dr. Rosen when she was admitted. The lab results just came back. They found no alcohol or drugs in her system. Even her carbon monoxide readings aren’t exceptionally high.”
Georgia raised an eyebrow in Carter’s direction. He’d been right about Rosen not being a drunk. But that only made her injuries more perplexing. If she hadn’t been drugged or drunk or near death from CO poisoning, thought Georgia, what had kept her in that bedroom for so long?
Kathleen led them past the nurses’ station now and into intensive care. Along one entire wall, machines encased in black plastic and stainless steel beeped and whirred and whooshed like a NASA space station. In the center of all this gadgetry, a bloated figure lay motionless, swathed in gauze bandages. The sickly sweet odor of burned hair and flesh permeated the room.
Louise Rosen was unrecognizable by age, race or gender. She was hooked up to at least two dozen tubes and wires. Feeding tubes. Breathing tubes. Cardiac and blood-pressure monitors. A morphine drip. Antibiotics. Electrolyte fluids. But her eyes were open. She was awake and alert.
“Can she tell we’re here?” asked Georgia.
“She sees you,” Kathleen explained. “But she’s been given drugs to paralyze her because she’s on a ventilator. She’s suffered tissue damage to her lungs, and the doctors don’t want her to move and make them worse. She’s on sedatives, too, so she won’t panic about being temporarily paralyzed.”
Georgia willed herself to step close to the bed. Her eyes settled on Louise Rosen and she swallowed hard. A burn—even a very severe one—often doesn’t look that bad when it first happens. The body may be all red or charred or even milky white. The person is often in shock and doesn’t feel much pain. Sometimes they’re walking and talking. But a few hours later, it’s an entirely different story. Like taking the peel off a banana and then watching it rot.
Louise Rosen looked as if she’d gained a hundred pounds from the pictures Georgia had seen of her in her apartment. Her eyes were nothing but two slits in a face as plump and red as a tomato. Her nose was black, and blood seeped from her lips. Her right arm, which Georgia hadn’t noticed before, lay unbandaged. A deep gash ran the length of the blackened skin, exposing bloody, pulpy tissue and muscle. The gash wasn’t a trauma—it was a surgical incision, an escharotomy, performed by surgeons on severely burned tissue to ensure that the swelling didn’t cut off blood flow and invite gangrene.
Georgia cleared her throat and tried to appear relaxed, though she felt as if she were about to pass out in the overly heated room. “Dr. Rosen? My name is Georgia Skeehan and this is my partner, Randy Carter. We’re with the fire department, we’re marshals and we’d really like to talk to you.” She spoke to Rosen the same way she interviewed children and older people—burying her title and authority in an effort to humanize the encounter. This was particularly necessary for a fire marshal because, unlike police officers, fire marshals have the legal power to take sworn affidavits—admissible in court—on the spot. This upped the stakes on interviews because a well-prepared witness statement could make or break a case.
“May we sit down?” asked Carter, dropping his voice an octave, turning it softer and more southern. It was a rhetorical question; Louise Rosen could neither invite them to sit nor prevent them from doing so. But the politeness of it was all part of what made Randy Carter so effective. People wanted to tell him things—even criminals tended to confess in his presence.
Georgia pulled up two chairs by her bedside. The ventilator pumped out a rhythmic whoosh while other machines hummed and beeped their white noise. It was like listening to the engines in the bowels of a huge ship. A phone rang at the nurses’ station, and Kathleen walked back to answer it. Georgia took a deep breath.
“Dr. Rosen?” she began. “We want to find out what happened to you. We know you can’t talk, but if you can blink your eyes, we can help. Can you do that? Blink your eyes? Show me a blink, Dr. Rosen.”
Rosen’s eyes looked tight and fearful. Georgia had a sense the woman knew she was going to die. She was a doctor, after all. Still, very deliberately, the woman shut her eyes tight, held them a moment, then opened them. Georgia smiled.
“That’s great, Dr. Rosen. Now, I’m going to ask you some questions. Blink once for yes, twice for no—got it?”
Rosen blinked once again.
“Y’all doing real good, ma’am,” Carter offered.
“Were you smoking when this fire broke out?” asked Georgia.
Two blinks—no.
“Were you alone in your apartment?”
Kathleen O’Meara interrupted their session. “I’m sorry,” she said. “You’re going to have to leave.”
“But why?” asked Georgia.
“I just got a call from my director,” said Kathleen. “Those two detectives lodged a complaint about not being able to interview Dr. Rosen. My director said we could be in legal trouble if we allow one law-enforcement branch to interview a patient, but not another. She said we have to let ev
eryone in, or no one. I’m sorry. The interview is over.”
Georgia looked over at Louise Rosen. Rosen blinked twice. No.
No. Don’t go.
“Two more questions—just two more questions,” Georgia pleaded.
“I’m sorry, Marshal. I could lose my job if I let you stay.” Georgia looked over at Louise Rosen’s bloody, pulpy face and saw her blink twice again. Georgia tried to manage an encouraging smile.
“You rest up, Dr. Rosen,” she said. “We’ll do this another time.” But the woman didn’t blink. She knew as well as Georgia: there would be no other time.
6
“We had her—she was ours,” fumed Georgia as they left New York Hospital. “And Arzuti and Willard blew it for us.”
It was almost noon when Carter began the drive back to the bureau’s base in lower Manhattan. Georgia rolled down her window. She wasn’t in the mood for air-conditioning today. She wanted to feel the breeze on her face and rejoice in being alive. Along the avenues, Asian and Latino men stood at the top of cellar hatch doors to restaurants, fanning themselves in the heat. There was music from passing cars and open windows. There were the smells of the city: urine and sweat, garlic and soy sauce, diesel and garbage, all rolled into a thick, gritty paste that settled like flour on her skin.
“It’s no use writing out a subpoena, either,” said Carter. “The hospital can stop us from talking to Rosen just by saying we’re putting her life in jeopardy. We haven’t got a legal leg to stand on.” He hit the steering wheel in frustration. “This bomb stuff’s out of left field. Louise Rosen was a doctor. There was nothing in that apartment to suggest she knew about bombs or was the target of one. What would make Arzuti and Willard ask about such a thing?”
“They’ll never tell us. That’s for sure,” said Georgia.
“And our guys don’t know, or we’d have heard by now,” said Carter.
“There is another way,” said Georgia. She fished out her cell phone from a black hip bag around her waist.
“Who are you calling?”
“Only person I trust at A and E.” She punched in the numbers from memory and heard Connie Ruiz’s voice come on the line. Georgia didn’t identify herself. She didn’t have to.
“You don’t have to do this,” she said by way of greeting.
“Uh-oh. Should I hang up now?” Connie teased. She had the kind of bright, breathy voice that would’ve made her a great radio announcer. Georgia had heard of cops who called A and E’s squad room just to hear her voice.
“We’re working a case that Willard and Arzuti are working on, too,” said Georgia. “We’re hearing some strange rumors on your end. Have you heard anything?”
“Jesus, don’t tell me,” muttered Connie. The lightness left her voice. “Step back on this one,” she said tightly. “It’s bad.”
“How bad?”
There was a pause on the line. “She’s dead, you know,” said Connie. “Died about fifteen minutes ago. I just took a message from the hospital for Arzuti. He and Willard are out.”
“Aw, man.” Georgia felt the air leave her body. She cupped a hand over the receiver and broke the news to Carter. He clenched his fists as if he wanted to hit something.
“Can you talk?” asked Georgia.
“Not here.”
“Can we meet for lunch?”
They ruled out meeting at a downtown deli—too many chances of running into cops Connie knew. Ditto for the Chinese restaurants, hot dog stands and pizza joints.
“There’s a great Indian dive on East Sixth Street that’s strictly vegetarian,” Connie suggested. The odds of running into a cop or firefighter chowing down sprouts were about the same as finding one at a foreign-film fest during the Super Bowl.
“Vegetarian Indian it is,” said Georgia. Randy Carter groaned from the driver’s seat. His concept of ethnic food was a slice of pizza and an egg roll.
The New Delhi Delight was in the semi-basement of a brownstone on East Sixth Street. Sitar music played over the speakers and peppery incense filled the air. A waiter put two dishes of yogurt and chutney in front of Carter, and he stirred them with a fork as if looking for something that would—once and for all—convince him to forgo the meal.
Connie arrived late. With the exception of her job, she was always late. Georgia expected Carter to tap his watch and frown when she arrived. But he just stood and grinned like a schoolboy at the tall, buxom, butterscotch-colored woman in the brown silk pants suit. Clothes hung on Georgia. On Connie, they cleaved, and she knew it. It was rare for Connie not to walk into a room and leave a trail of men wanting her phone number.
“Hey, girlfriend!” Connie called out. She gave Georgia a hug which, given Connie’s seven-inch height advantage, caused Georgia to be dinged in the chin with a shoulder bag large enough to carry the GNP of a small Caribbean nation.
“You’re looking mighty fine, Detective,” Carter offered shyly. He held out a chair for Connie, something he never did for Georgia. Not that she wanted it, but what the hell?
Georgia looked down at Connie’s open-toed Ferragamo pumps. The color of desert sand, they were shiny and faceted like the skin of a lizard. They were among Connie’s favorites. Georgia couldn’t resist a dig.
“What is it with you A and E cops?” she ribbed, feeling very short and pale and ordinary, as always, in her best friend’s presence. “You wear shoes like you’re walking a fashion runway instead of working an arson beat.”
“These?” Connie took a seat and pointed her toes so that the small gold shoe buttons above her Day-Glo orange toenails caught the light. “You’ve seen them before. Besides, the only place I’m going after lunch is up to Rodman’s Neck. I don’t need combat boots for that.”
Rodman’s Neck was a jetty of land off the tip of the East Bronx. The NYPD’s firing range was up there. It was also where the police bomb squad disposed of illegal fireworks and explosives—a fact not lost on Georgia.
“You confiscate some M-eighties today?” Georgia asked, hooking her own thick black work shoes around the legs of a chair. They were still filthy from the morning’s predawn romp through Louise Rosen’s apartment.
“And a whole lotta stuff besides,” said Connie.
The waiter came, and Connie ordered for all of them. Although she never cooked—even microwaving was beyond her—she was an adventurous eater, and she relished explaining the dishes. When the waiter left, Georgia laid out the morning’s events—the fire in Louise Rosen’s apartment, Arzuti and Willard’s unexpected change of heart about the case and the rumor about the bomb. She said nothing, however, about Rosen’s connections to the FDNY, her negative tox screen or the boxes of medical records Carter had taken from her apartment. Nor did Connie pump her for information. They were both cops. They knew the ground rules here: The Rosen fire wasn’t Connie’s case, so technically, she couldn’t compromise it. But it was Georgia’s, so anything Georgia shared was a definite breach of confidentiality.
Fifteen minutes into their discussion, the waiter brought over a tray of food. Carter frowned at the white cubes of goat cheese floating in a curried broth of broccoli rabe, chickpeas and curry.
“It’s supposed to look like this?” he asked the waiter. He poked a fork at the goat cheese as if it were alive.
“Yessir. It’s very good, sir.”
Connie shrugged off her jacket and shook her head at Carter as the waiter left. “There’s life outside of barbecue, you know, Randy,” she teased him. She took a few bites of her eggplant dish and nodded with satisfaction. Then she put down her fork and leaned forward.
“Willard and Arzuti don’t talk to me, so what I know, I just overheard,” explained Connie. “Seems after Willard and Arzuti left on the initial call, word came down that the mayor’s office had received a tape in the mail—from someone threatening to blow up the Empire Pipeline.”
They all took a moment with the news. Mention fuel pipelines to average New Yorkers, and they’ll picture miles of steel snaking across
the Alaskan tundra or fanning out over dry, dusty plains in Texas and Oklahoma. They can’t conceive that the same line of liquid fire could gush just a yard beneath their feet.
But it could. And Georgia—like every firefighter and cop in A and E—knew this and was trained in it. Empire carried two fuels over its lines—gasoline, and something even hotter and more tenacious: JP4. Jet fuel. A highly refined form of kerosene. As a firefighter, Georgia had sat through endless drills about how to stop a pipeline leak and fight a flare-up. You could never be too prepared when it came to a river of gasoline or jet fuel that could take out an entire city block on the embers of a cigarette.
Connie finally said what they were all thinking. “Man, that’s always been one of our worst fears at A and E. That pipeline’s a disaster waiting to happen.”
“Are they taking the threat seriously?” asked Georgia.
“From what I can tell, yes,” said Connie. “Lots of meetings between our commander, Lieutenant Sandowsky, and the mayor’s office. Lots of conferences with pipeline engineers.”
“But I still don’t get it,” said Georgia. “What’s this threat against the pipeline got to do with Dr. Rosen?”
“I think the blackmailer said something like ‘Ask Dr. Rosen about me.’”
“Could be any Dr. Rosen,” noted Carter.
“I know,” said Connie. “There must be at least a hundred in New York. I think Willard and Arzuti are spending the afternoon tracking them down. But when this Dr. Rosen turned up badly burned, it kinda gave them pause.”
“How are they figuring her?” asked Georgia. “As the target? Or part of the plot?”
“I don’t think they’ve gotten that far yet,” said Connie. “All I know is, nobody wants to take any chances in the city these days.”
They all went silent. No one touched the food.
“I wish we knew if Louise Rosen was the ‘Dr. Rosen’ from that bomb threat,” Georgia said finally. “If we could’ve talked to her before she died, maybe we could’ve narrowed down the possibilities. She’s retired, so it’s not even like we could check with her patients or colleagues…”
Flashover Page 4