Body Of Truth

by Deirdre Savoy

  NO REGRETS

  He closed the gap between them and pulled her to him. She laid her cheek against his chest. One of his hands rose to stroke her nape while the other banded around her waist, holding her closer. “Don’t cry, sweetheart,” he whispered against her ear. “Not one person caught up in this is worth any of your tears.”

  Cradling her face in his palms, he tilted her face up to him. He brushed away her tears with his thumbs. “Don’t cry.” Without thinking, he brought his mouth down to hers.

  Immediately her arms closed around him and she kissed him back with a fierceness he had yet to see in her. It was as if she channeled all her emotions into that one kiss. He understood that, too—the need to sublimate that which you couldn’t change.

  Her fingers went to his shirt, pulling it from his waistband and over his head before he had the time or the will to stop her. He couldn’t help the groan that rumbled up from somewhere deep as her lips touched down on the center of his chest. Damn, he wanted her, but he didn’t want any replays of the previous night. He didn’t want her to come to her senses sometime later and regret whatever happened between them.

  He tilted her chin up to see her face. “Seems we’ve hit this spot in the road before.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “What’s your point?”

  “There might not be any backfires to raise an alert. No last minute saves.” She looked at him more confused than before. He may as well ask her straight out. “Do you want to be with me, Dana?”

  She averted her gaze to his chest, where her fingers made a lazy exploration of his bare flesh. He held his breath waiting for her answer.

  When she looked at him again, it was with a sideways glance and a smile he didn’t at first comprehend. “Only if you do me a favor.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Take me upstairs.”

  Body of Truth

  Deirdre Savoy

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

  http://www.kensingtonbooks.com

  All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.

  Table of Contents

  NO REGRETS

  Title Page

  Dedication

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Prologue

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-one

  Twenty-two

  Twenty-three

  Twenty-four

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Copyright Page

  For all my buddies at P.S. 178,

  and to all the children I’ve taught,

  who have enriched my life

  more than they imagine.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Thanks to my sister, Elyse Savoy, R.N., for letting me borrow her life. Thanks to Arthur Brown, Deputy Inspector, Ret., NYPD, for pointing me in all the right directions. Special thanks to Wally Lind and all the folks at crimescenewriter@yahoogroups.com for their excellent advice, camaraderie and willingness to share.

  Prologue

  Twenty-five years ago

  God helps those who help themselves.

  Father Malone had drummed that saying into heads so often he could hear it in his sleep. As they stood in the burning light of the growing fire, he wondered if Father regretted teaching them those words.

  They looked at each other, their faces carefully blank, not knowing what to feel, what to say to one another. They had taken Father Malone’s advice. They’d come here to help themselves to a share of the skim Father and his cronies were said to be taking off the top of the development fund to rebuild Vyse Avenue. But the old man claimed not to know what they were talking about, and Mouse, always Mouse, with his temper . . .

  He turned back to the fire, wondering if anyone could see it—like the dancing glow of the fire—on their faces, the guilt, the onus for the tragedy they only suspected had occurred. They stood there, pinpoints in a crowd, staring—equally repulsed and fascinated by the flames consuming St. Jude’s.

  God helps those who help themselves. But would He forgive them?

  One

  Nobody bothered The Nurse.

  Nobody noticed as she picked her way across the street, over empty crack vials, spent condoms, used hypodermics, broken bottles and whatever other waste, sometimes human, the residents of this neighborhood in the South Bronx had strewn in her path.

  Nobody bothered The Nurse, because they knew why she was here. She came to the bedridden, the chronically ill or the injured, the mothers, wives, aunts, and children of the men and women who let her pass on the street, unnoticed and unmolested.

  Or, perhaps one day, she would come for them.

  So her car went unvandalized, nobody rushed up to her in dark corners intent on robbery or worse. No catcalls followed her as she entered the four story walk-up on Highland Avenue, no cries of “Yo Baby, Mira Mami, Hey Honey,” or a thousand other variations, no propositions or promises of masculine prowess. Well, not many.

  But then the only time she ventured into this alien territory was after eight o’clock in the morning, when most of the real predators that ravaged the neighborhood had finally gone to bed, and before three, when they went back on the prowl.

  Every day she spent in this place preceded a night when she thanked God for her own humble home in Mount Vernon, a northern suburb of New York City. And now she had something else to look forward to. In exactly one day, she would board a plane to Paradise Island to take the first real vacation she’d had in years. She owed herself that vacation for all the years she’d spent looking after her ailing mother while she was alive, and raising her younger brother after she had passed away.

  She’d promised herself that after Tim graduated from high school, she’d treat herself to somewhere nice and warm and sunny, even if it were for only a few days. The trip hadn’t become real to her until this past Thursday, when she’d attended St. Matthew’s Commencement Ceremony to watch her brother receive his diploma. Now anticipation flooded her nervous system, as well as anxiety that something would happen to make her cancel her trip.

  She walked the three flights of stairs to her client’s apartment and knocked on the door. The bell had long since expired, and, like everything else that broke in this apartment building, it went unfixed.

  “Who?” a masculine voice called.

  She was tempted to answer “The goddamn Avon Lady.” Who else would be showing up in this godforsaken neighborhood at nine o’clock on a Friday morning? She decided better of it and gave her standard answer. “Dana Molloy from At-Home Health.”

  A few moments later, the door was pulled open to the extent the chain allowed. Wesley Evans, her patient’s grandson, appeared at the door. She gave him a quick up and down look through the thin opening. He wore a black do-rag on his head and a pair of jeans low enough on his hips to expose the waistband of a pair of red boxers. His bare chest sported the muscles earned from running the streets instead of running to the gym. He was tall, probably six-three or better. If it weren’t for the sour expression, he would remind her of her own brother. Wesley sucked his teeth. “Hold on.”

  As he shut the door to take the chain off, she caught the flash of a dull black object in his hand. Some sort of handgun, she assumed—just the fashion accessory every young thug needed.

  Dana shifted the strap of the bag that housed the heavy laptop provided by the company. On it, she would record
patient information obtained from this and her other visits. The only reason she carried it was that if it were stolen and not on her person at the time, At-Home Health would deduct the cost of it from her salary. And even the junkies knew not to bother. The laptop could only be programmed to record medical information. There wasn’t even a game or two on the damn thing to make it worth stealing.

  When Wesley pulled the door open, an oversize football jersey had been added to his ensemble, and the gun was nowhere in sight. Rather than hold the door for her, he let it swing closed so that she had to either dash inside or let the door hit her to keep from getting closed out.

  Dana settled for the latter, muttering under her breath, watching as he sauntered toward the decrepit couch at the center of the living room. He propped his feet up on the scarred and chipped coffee table. “Granny’s in back.”

  No shit. Considering that Granny was a bed-ridden diabetic, there weren’t many places Granny might be. Dana stepped out of the way, letting the door close behind her. Despite the foolhardiness of antagonizing a teenager with a firearm, she said, “Shouldn’t you be in school?”

  His eyes narrowed and his mouth drew into a tight line. “I would be if that home care lady had shown up today.” He implied that the other woman’s absence was Dana’s fault. In a way it was, because as the nurse on her grandmother’s case, it was her responsibility to coordinate all services, which included making sure the home health aide arrived on time and didn’t take anything.

  To her knowledge, the aide assigned to Wesley’s grandmother was a conscientious woman, but there were enough who weren’t to give the profession a bad name. Then again, how much could you expect from people doing a demanding job that paid barely more than minimum wage? To Dana’s thinking, it was a set-up that could only lead to failure.

  “I’ll speak to the aide about being here every day.”

  “Yeah, you go ’head and do dat.” He turned up the sound on the large screen TV that sat against the wall next to her.

  With a sigh of resignation, she headed toward the back of the apartment. The smell of fetid flesh reached Dana’s nostrils before she reached the open door. Nadine Evans, though nearly seventy and morbidly obese, had once been a handsome woman. It was evident in the old woman’s lined and wrinkled face and the framed photographs scattered around the cluttered room.

  “Hi, Nadine,” Dana said, trying to inject a note of cheer into her voice.

  “Dana. Come in.” Nadine waved her forward with a meaty arm. “It’s so good to see you.”

  Like with many of Dana’s homebound patients, the visit from the nurse was the only one they could count on. “How are you doing today?”

  “More of the same.”

  Dana got the chair from the corner of the room and placed it by the foot of the bed. “I’ll change your dressing first, then I’ll test your blood sugar.”

  “However you want, honey. I’m not going anywhere.”

  After rolling on a pair of surgical gloves, Dana rolled back the covers to expose Nadine’s right foot. Dry gangrene claimed the smallest toe. The stench of it was worse than wet garbage rotting in the can for a week during an August heat wave. The smell got in Dana’s nose and stayed all day. Dana suffered through it only minutes at a time, but how did Nadine stand it hour after hour? If it were Dana, she’d tell the doctor to cut the damn thing off rather than waiting for nature to take its own course.

  Then again, Dana wouldn’t complicate her own medical condition by refusing to follow the diet prescribed for her by her doctor, either.

  Dana gently unwrapped the toe and removed the old gauze, damp with thin, straw-colored mucous. The toe was black and crusty, resembling a Brazil nut more than a human digit. One day soon she’d probably find the toe in the bandage as well, but she was glad today was not that day.

  “How’s she healing?” Nadine asked.

  “She isn’t.” Nadine chose to believe that all this fuss was about making her toe better, the same way she chose to believe that eating Ho-Hos for dinner wouldn’t affect her blood sugar level. Dana rewrapped it in sterile gauze, and secured it with paper tape. “How have you been doing with your diet?”

  “Real good. No sweets.”

  Dana cast the old woman a skeptical look. “How long ago did you last eat?”

  “I had a couple of eggs around seven.”

  “Good.” Two hours after eating was optimum time for checking blood sugar. By then whatever had been consumed had made its way into the blood stream. Dana moved the chair to the side of the bed next to Nadine. She got a lancet, a test strip and an alcohol swab from her bag. “Come on,” she urged.

  “I hate them little needles,” Nadine protested, but she stuck out her hand.

  “I don’t blame you.” She swabbed the pad of Nadine’s thumb, pricked it with the lancet and caught the droplet of blood that appeared on the test strip. She fed it into the blood glucose monitor Nadine kept on her ancient nightstand. They would have the verdict in a moment. In the meantime, Dana asked, “How is Wesley treating you?”

  “He’s a good boy. In his heart he’s a good boy.”

  Dana didn’t comment. In the nine months Nadine Evans had been her patient, the old lady had filled her ears with stories of her grandson. Stories about a sweet young boy whose mother lost herself in crack and the arms of the wrong man. Nadine hadn’t heard from her daughter in years, and didn’t expect to. She was grateful that he remained in school and somehow managed to maintain an A average while dealing crack and without studying.

  Although she knew about his activities, she was powerless to stop him. Not only did she lack the influence, but the money that bought the food and the big screen TV and the medical supplies Medicaid did not cover came from drugs. It wasn’t an unusual arrangement, but it galled Dana to see a young man with such potential sucked up into what this neighborhood could do to a person, rob them of any life other than perpetuating what had gone before.

  She glanced down at the monitor, then over at Nadine. Normal blood sugar level was between 70 and 120. “Two sixty-five. Tell me you didn’t wash down those eggs with a glass of juice.”

  Nadine huffed. “Just a little.”

  “Even a little is too much. Come on, Nadine, you know the drill. No cake, no cookies, no pudding, no pie, no juice.”

  “No fun.”

  “And losing your baby toe is a real laugh?” Annoyed, Dana threw the test strip in the trash and snapped off her gloves. Sometimes it wore on her that many of her patients refused to follow medical advice yet somehow expected to improve. Kids, she could understand, but a sixty-nine-year-old woman ought to know better. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” she told Nadine.

  Out in the living room, she paused by the TV. Wesley sat sprawled in the same position she’d left him. “I need to talk to you about your grandmother.”

  Wesley stared straight ahead, his focus on the screen. “So talk.”

  She stepped in front of the picture. “Someone has to do a better job of monitoring your grandmother’s sugar intake.”

  He shrugged and continued watching, as if she weren’t there. “She’s an old lady. She should be able to eat what she wants.”

  “She might live a while longer if you didn’t indulge her sweet tooth.”

  He fastened a cold, menacing stare on her. “Why do you care so much, anyway?”

  “Because it’s my job,” she answered, but it was also in her nature to care, to nurture. Most of the time, she considered it a blessing, but sometimes, like now, it was a curse, since she directed her regard toward people who would not help themselves.

  “One a these days I’ma get tired of you bein’ all up in my face.”

  If she had a dollar for every time she pissed someone off by asking a question they didn’t want to answer she could retire. “Being all up in people’s faces” was often part of the job, especially with clients or relatives that refused to follow the plan of treatment prescribed for them.

  Dana glared at him
, refusing to back down. “Do what you’re supposed to and you won’t hear a word out of me.”

  Dana let herself out of the apartment and descended the stairs to the first floor. She pulled open the front door of the building. As she stepped out into the brilliant June sunlight, she noticed a tall white woman, perhaps the only true blonde for miles, getting into the passenger side of a dark sedan parked by the curb. Dressed in a white blouse, black pants and high-heeled black pumps, she had a black and white scarf tied around the strap of her shoulder bag.

  Dana snorted. Probably a social worker or some other do gooder who hadn’t figured out you don’t wear your Bergdorf’s Best in the neighborhood if you didn’t plan on getting mugged. At least she was smart enough to catch a ride out of this place.

  As the woman pulled the door closed, Dana caught a glimpse of the dark-haired man in a short-sleeved black shirt behind the steering wheel. Oh goodie, matching yuppies.

  Dana turned in the direction of her car to see a man in filthy, tattered clothes urinating against the side of the building.

  She shook her head contemplating the dichotomy of rich and poor in the neighborhood and walked back to her car. “One more day,” she told herself. “One more day.”

  At two thirty, Dana walked into the offices of At-Home Healthcare. Her supervisor, Joanna Haynes, also happened to be her best friend. Joanna was almost nine months pregnant with her first child by her new husband, Ray Haynes. As Dana entered her office, Joanna waddled from the file cabinet to the chair and sat down, bringing a smile to both women’s faces. “It’s a good thing I don’t have much longer to go, or I wouldn’t make it.”

  “Seems like you’re going on leave just in time.”

  “I know. Speaking of which, where is everybody? I wanted to say good bye to some of the girls.”

  Dana shrugged. “Maybe it’s been one of those rough days where no one gets out of the field before four.” Dana nodded toward the bag of presents leaning against the other side of the desk, a few token gifts, given so that Joanna wouldn’t get suspicious. “Who’s picking you up today?” Joanna had given up driving in her seventh month, since she no longer fit behind the steering wheel.