9 Hell on Wheels

by Sue Ann Jaffarian

  “Good idea. Leave both our numbers.”

  I jotted out the note and stuck it on a short nail in the middle of the door, one probably used for hanging a wreath at Christmas time.

  Greg and I were heading down the walk, ready to head off to our separate jobs, when a car came down the street and turned into the driveway. It was Lance. He got out of the car and crossed the grass to meet us. He looked like crap. He was a couple of years younger than Rocky and not as buffed in the shoulders. His blond hair was longer and looked greasy and uncombed. Stubble sprouted on his face like tiny weeds.

  “We came because we’re worried about Rocky,” Greg told him. “He called me last night with a really odd message, but I didn’t get it until this morning. Is he okay?”

  Before answering, Lanced rubbed his eyes. They were red. Under them, dark circles clung like leeches. “No, he’s not. He’s at Hoag Hospital. I’ve been there all night with him.”

  “What’s happened?” I asked with alarm.

  “Rocky tried to kill himself last night,” Lance explained in a wet, rough voice. “And he nearly succeeded. I came home last night and found him unconscious.”

  “Oh, no,” I gasped. “First Miranda—now him. I’m so very sorry, Lance. Is Rocky going to be okay?”

  He shrugged. “He’s in a coma. No change at all from last night.”

  “How can we help?” I offered.

  “Thanks,” he answered, “but I called our folks this morning from the hospital. They live in Florida and are catching the first plane they can out here. They were going to come for Miranda’s funeral, but now they’ll come sooner.”

  “I know Miranda’s mother died about two years ago,” I said. “But what about her father?”

  He shook his head. “He’s been out of the picture since Miranda was about ten.” He took a deep breath. “You’ll have to excuse me, but I have to get to work. I just started a new job, and my boss isn’t too keen on family emergencies. I already took Monday off to help Rocky when he was arrested. I can’t miss today too, no matter how shitty I feel.”

  We watched him go into the house, not even stopping to take our note off the front door. As soon as he was inside, Greg’s phone rang. It was Dev Frye.

  “Hey, Dev,” Greg said, answering. “Yeah, we just heard about Rocky from his brother. We’re at Lance’s house now.” He listened, then said, “Sure, we’d like that. Be right there.”

  When he finished the call, Greg said to me, “Come on, we’re going to the hospital. That was Dev calling to let us know about Rocky. He said if we get there soon, he can get us in to see him. Otherwise we won’t be able to because it’s restricted to family.”

  “I’m right behind you,” I said, heading for my car.

  Hoag Hospital was three miles from Lance’s house. Greg and I made it there in just a few minutes and found good parking for both of our vehicles. We rode the elevator up to the floor Dev had indicated to find the detective waiting for us in an area just outside of the ICU.

  “Your friend’s in pretty bad shape,” he announced. “He may not make it.”

  “Why are you here?” I asked.

  “I saw his name on a report this morning and recognized it. We investigate all suicide attempts, Odelia. You know that.”

  I nodded in response. I did know that. I’d met both Greg and Dev when Sophie London, one of my good friends, had shot herself years ago.

  Greg explained to Dev about the call and why we were at Lance’s. “According to my phone, the call came in just after eleven thirty.” He pulled out his phone and played the voice mail for Dev. “We were already asleep and didn’t hear it.”

  “The brother called the paramedics shortly before twelve thirty,” Dev told us.

  “How, Dev?” I asked. “Was it pills? On the message he sounds like he’s drugged or half in the bag.”

  “He had a pretty high blood alcohol level, but it was the gunshot to his gut that did the real damage. He almost bled out.” Dev turned to Greg. “Isn’t your pal a quadriplegic?”

  “Yes, he is,” Greg answered. “He has pretty good use of his hands, especially his left one, but certainly not a good grip.”

  Dev wrote the information down on a small pad he always carried with him. “The paramedics recovered the gun, and we’re processing it right now. It belonged to his brother.”

  I grabbed Dev’s upper arm. “You don’t think Lance tried to murder him, do you?”

  Dev didn’t remove my hand but covered it with one of his meaty paws in a gesture of comfort. “We won’t know that, Odelia, until we check out the gun and everything else. We’ve already questioned Lance Henderson extensively at the hospital. The gunshot could have been self-inflicted. Your friend could have been aiming for his chest or even his head, but with his impairment caught his stomach instead.”

  In a nervous gesture, Greg rolled his chair forward and back several times. “Are you working Miranda’s case, Dev?”

  The big detective shook his head. “Not my jurisdiction, but I’m sure we’ll be exchanging information. I’ve already called Bill Martinez about this. He’s working both Tanaka and the Henderson woman since they’re probably related.”

  Dev put away his notepad. “Come on. I knew if you two showed up here they’d turn you away, and I wanted to give you a chance to see him while he’s still alive.”

  Now it was Greg’s turn to grab Dev’s arm. “Thanks, Dev. We owe you.”

  “You owe me. Steele owes me.” Dev snorted. “I’ve got IOUs coming out my backside these days.”

  When we entered the ICU, Dev flashed his badge at a nurse manning the central station.

  “Just ten minutes, Detective, not a minute more.”

  Dev grunted and kept walking, entering one of the glass-walled rooms. We followed.

  In the bed was a pale, shrunken man hooked up to tubes and machines. It didn’t look like Rocky Henderson, but a poor facsimile of him—a copy of a copy of a copy—a grainy, faded image of the man who just days before was commanding his troop of wheelchair athletes down a hardwood floor in search of a victory. That was just three short days ago.

  I covered my face with my hands and sobbed. Greg slipped an arm around my waist and buried his face into my side.

  Ten

  It was difficult for us to drag ourselves away from Rocky, not knowing if we’d ever see him alive again, but the nurse was adamant about the ten minutes. Once we were back in the waiting room, Dev gave us his standard lecture, which was really just a rerun of Clark’s comments the night before.

  Don’t get involved, but I know I’m talking to myself here. Blah. Blah. Blah.

  It’s not that we don’t appreciate how people are worried for us and care so much about us; we do. But we also care about our friends, and Rocky and Miranda are friends, and friends don’t let friend’s deaths go unresolved.

  It had also been difficult to say goodbye to Greg at the hospital and head to work. He was my rock, and I wanted to cling to him like suffocating moss lest anything befall him. Seeing Rocky in that hospital bed and knowing Miranda was dead made me paranoid about my own better half. If Rocky had tried to kill himself, had it been over grief in losing Miranda or had it been about what Tanaka had said and how he and Miranda had last parted? You hear stories all the time about the guilt people feel when a loved one dies and their last words to each other were harsh and in anger. Sensing my fears, Greg had wiped the tears from my eyes and kissed me gently before saying goodbye.

  “We’re going to get to the bottom of this,” he promised.

  Words failed me. I could only nod and climb into my car with my husband’s comforting touch and words of confidence as security. I clung to them like a child clutches a teddy bear.

  When I got to the office, Jill rolled her eyes—not at me but in general—as she announced, “Steele’s been going nuts trying to reach you.”

  “I know, I know,” I said as I passed her desk and headed to my office. “My cell phone was going ballistic, so
I turned it off. I was at Hoag and couldn’t talk to him.”

  At the mention of the local hospital, Jill got up from her desk and followed me into my office. “Everything okay? It’s not your mother, is it?”

  “No. Mom’s good. In fact, she’s on her way to Arizona with Clark as we speak.” I sat down in my chair and put my purse in my lower desk drawer. “Remember our friend who was found dead in the van?”

  She nodded, her mouth pursed with concern. “The woman suspected of killing that quad rugby player?”

  “Yes. Well, her husband is in a coma at Hoag. They don’t know if he tried to shoot himself or if someone else did it and tried to make it look like he did it to himself.”

  Jill gasped and dropped into my visitor’s chair with a solid thud. “Oh my God!” She ran a hand through her short-cropped brown hair, forming shallow furrows like freshly plowed rows with her fingers.

  “They also don’t know if he’s going to make it or not. Greg and I dropped by Rocky’s brother’s house this morning to check on him and ran into his brother, who was returning from the hospital. He found Rocky last night when he got home.”

  Jill put a hand to her mouth a moment, then said, “Odelia, I’m so very sorry. What can I do to help?”

  I leaned back in my chair. “Thanks, Jill; nothing right now. Greg and I are going to check with some of our other friends in the rugby league and see what’s going on. He’s going to call several of them today while I try not to lose my mind and kill Steele.”

  “If you want me to lie to Steele and say you never came in, I’ll do it.”

  I studied Jill. Lying was not something she did lightly or well. She hated it when Steele wanted her to lie about his whereabouts and usually managed to get around it with evasiveness. I’m sure it was one of the reasons Steele didn’t want her to know the truth about his injuries.

  “Thanks, Jill, but for now, Greg and I just have to think everything through and piece it together.” I paused before tacking on as an afterthought, “And stay out of the way of the police.”

  “Is Detective Frye on this case?”

  “Yeah, at least on the part concerning Rocky, and he knows the detective working Miranda’s death and Peter Tanaka’s.”

  “He’s a good man, that Dev Frye.”

  “The best,” I agreed. “He’s already told us to keep out of it.”

  In spite of the gravity of the situation, Jill let out a short snort. “Sorry. I couldn’t help myself.” She got up and headed back to her desk. “You know if you need Sally and me to do anything for you, you just need to ask.”

  Sally Kipman was Jill’s partner. She and I had gone to high school together when the Grand Canyon was just a wheel rut in a dirt road. Sally had also chummed along with me several times when I’d stuck my nose where it didn’t belong. Unlike Jill, she didn’t have scruples about lying and subterfuge when it was called upon.

  “Thanks, Jill. That’s much appreciated, but for now I’ll deal with Steele myself and see what Greg comes up with.” That had been the decision between Greg and me. He would call his buddies in the wheelchair athlete community and I would find whatever I could on Peter Tanaka. We had also agreed to let Steele do some of our research, knowing if we didn’t, he’d never leave us alone.

  “I’m going to call Steele right now,” I announced. “Anything you want me to tell him?”

  Jill got up to leave. “Nah. Just do me a favor and mention my name as little as possible.”

  Before I could make the call, Jolene McHugh showed up at my office door. Jolene was an attorney who had migrated over to T&T with Steele from Woobie, officially known as Wallace, Boer, Brown, and Yates, our last law firm. Jolene had started with Woobie fresh out of law school. Now she was a seasoned veteran and a senior associate on partner track with T&T.

  “Got a minute, Odelia?” she asked.

  “Sure, Jolene, but do you?”

  We both laughed, knowing I was referencing her advanced state of pregnancy. It was her first child, and she planned on working right up until the moment the baby, a boy, popped into the world. After the birth, Jolene would be on maternity leave for two months. With some difficulty, she lowered her swollen body into the chair Jill had just vacated and blew out a breath of relief that fluttered her copper bangs.

  She started to speak, then laid a hand on her belly. Her pale face blanched to an even brighter white, making her freckles look like an advanced case of measles. “Wow,” she said once she caught her breath, “that was a good kick.”

  My forehead bunched, worried that Jolene was going to drop the kid in my office. Like Prissy in Gone with the Wind, I don’t know nuthin’ ’bout birthin’ babies. My right hand instinctively went to my cell phone, ready to hit the preprogrammed 9-1-1 should the need present itself.

  Jolene took a deep breath. “I have a lot of stuff for you to take to Steele when you go over there today. He isn’t due until next week, but I don’t think Bubba is going to last that long.”

  Bubba was the nickname Jolene and her husband had given the fetus as soon as they’d learned it was a boy. They were keeping mum on the real name they had chosen for the baby. I tightened my grip on my phone. Jolene noticed.

  “Relax, Odelia,” she said with a short laugh. “Bubba may come soon, but I don’t think it will be today, and certainly not this minute.”

  “Looks to me like Bubba’s not going to last until lunch.”

  Jolene shifted in the chair, her discomfort obvious. “The sooner the better at this point.”

  I smiled at her. I really enjoyed working with Jolene and watching her grow from a raw, fresh-faced law school graduate into the brilliant attorney she was today. She and Steele didn’t always get along, but she’d learned to hold her own with him, and he respected her for it and found her work and support nearly flawless. Whenever he was out for any extended time, like vacation or now, Jolene was in charge of the office. When she’d announced her pregnancy, Steele had smiled and given her hearty public congratulations. Alone with me behind closed doors, he’d nearly started banging his head against the wall, worried in advance about the effect her maternity leave would have on the firm and, more importantly, on him. If Bubba came now, with Steele laid up, Steele just might overdose on pain pills.

  “I hadn’t planned on seeing Steele today,” I told Jolene. “I was there last night.”

  “Oh.” She adjusted her bulk in the chair again, trying to find some degree of comfort. She was losing the battle. “I spoke to him about thirty minutes ago and he said you were dropping by tonight with a pouch of office stuff.”

  “Not that I know of,” I told her, “but I was about to call him myself.” I hesitated, studying Jolene. Her belly looked like it was rippling and expanding before my very eyes. I half expected Bubba to pop out doing a Fred Astaire impersonation, including top hat and tails. Or maybe he’d enter the world like The Rock, with bulging muscles and a fierce attitude. Either way, he was an active little sucker. “Um, does Steele know that you might not make it until your due date?”

  “I didn’t tell him,” Jolene admitted. “He has enough to worry about without this. Besides, he’ll be back next week, won’t he?”

  “I believe that’s the plan.”

  “Even if Bubba comes today, it will only be a few days without one of us here. I’m sure any of the other attorneys would be able to take the reins for that short time.” She grabbed the arms of the chair and slowly hoisted herself to her feet.

  “Are you sure you should be here?” I asked.

  “Except for feeling like a hippo with swollen ankles, I’m fine.” She shot me a smile that morphed into a grimace as her belly took another kick. “But I promise, if things change, I’ll head for Hoag.”

  The mention of the local hospital brought me back to my morning visit with Rocky, changing my own smile.

  “You okay, Odelia? Your face just dropped.”

  “I’m fine,” I assured her. “It’s just that Greg and I were at Hoag this morning
, visiting a friend who is in a coma.”

  “I’m so very sorry.” She waddled to the door and paused. “Steele didn’t say much about his injuries, but I could tell something was wrong with his mouth.” She fixed me with narrowed eyes. “Gossip around the firm is that he really had plastic surgery and is only saying he was in a car accident.”

  Forgetting Rocky for a moment, I let out a loud guffaw, which really did sound like guffaw. “I can assure you, Jolene, Steele did not have cosmetic surgery, although if his injuries had been any worse, he might have needed it.”

  “Is that handsome face of his messed up?”

  “He looks like he took a good beating.” I love it when I can tell the truth and people think it means something else.

  “A friend of mine went face-first into an air bag last summer,” she said with a nod of understanding. “It saved her life, but it wasn’t pretty.”

  As soon as Jolene left, I got up, closed my door, and called Steele. “Hey,” I said as soon as he answered.

  “ ‘Hey’? That’s all you have to say?” His voice was still slurred, but it wasn’t as bad as yesterday. “I’ve been calling you all morning.”

  “I was at Hoag.”

  “Is Grace okay?”

  I love how instantly everyone was concerned about my aged mother. It made me feel warm and fuzzy that people were interested in my family, even though the old bird would probably outlive us all.

  “No, it’s not Mom. It’s Rocky Henderson.” I filled Steele in on what had happened and our plans.

  When I finished, he asked, “Did you read the information I sent you about cyanide?”

  “Sorry, I haven’t had a chance. Clark dropped by last night, and this morning we were dealing with the Rocky situation.”

  “Then let me give you the Cliff’s Notes—it’s quite interesting. Cyanide kills in minutes on an empty stomach but can take several hours on a full one.”

  I thought about the time frame of Peter Tanaka’s death. He’d seemed fine one minute but went downhill fast after the time-out. “I’d say there’s a good chance he hadn’t eaten anything or much of anything before he died. It happened so quickly—almost in the blink of an eye.”