Murder 101

by Maggie Barbieri

  There was a knock at the door, and Wyatt reached back around him and opened it. A young man, whom I vaguely recognized, stood in the doorway, his blue NYPD uniform throwing me off momentarily. When my head cleared, I recognized him as the skateboarder who called me “ma’am” at the Starbucks a few weeks earlier. I did a double take, and he smiled sheepishly at me.

  “Ma’am,” he said, and gave me a little salute.

  “You’re a cop?”

  He gave a little shrug. “Yes, ma’am.”

  Wyatt laughed. “Derek was on your tail for a few days. Good undercover work, huh?”

  I continued to stare at him. With the uniform on, he looked slightly older than the eighteen years I had given him when we first met, but not much. “Excellent undercover work.”

  Derek cleared his throat. “Detective? We need you.”

  We left Connie’s office and went back into the main area. Max was standing by Dottie’s desk, her arms folded across her chest, chewing the inside of her mouth nervously. When she saw me, she ran down the length of the office and threw her arms around me. “What the . . . ?” she yelled, at a loss for words. She was so loud that the officers in the room stopped and looked at her. “Are you OK?”

  “I’m fine, Max,” I said. Never forgetting my manners, even in times of extreme stress, I turned to Wyatt. “You remember my friend, Max Rayfield?” I forgot that they had spent some time together the night before.

  He was back to normal. He peered down at Max from behind his glasses. “Who could forget you, Ms. Rayfield?” he said, rather charmingly and without any sarcasm.

  She blushed, something I had never seen Max do. Blushing was my department. “Call me Max.”

  He held out his hand. “Call me Fred.”

  “Is that your real name or just what you want me to call you?” Max said, smiling.

  “Real name.”

  I cleared my throat. Apparently, I had become invisible. “I’d like to go to the hospital, Detective.”

  Max reminded me that she had her car. “I’ll drive you. I’ve canceled my dinner plans, obviously,” she said. She took a business card out of the wallet inside her pocketbook and jotted down her cell-phone number with a pen that she walked over to Dottie’s desk to get. “If you’re ever in Tribeca, Detective, please give me a call.” She handed him the card, which he accepted, read, and then put in his pants pocket.

  Max exchanged a last look with Wyatt, fraught with some kind of meaning lost on me.

  Wyatt smiled and called a uniformed officer over. “Get them to their car.” The officer nodded and opened the blood-spattered office door for us with rubber-gloved hands.

  The officer walked us to Max’s car, which was parked in the dorm parking lot, behind my building. We got in, and Max locked the doors with a thunk, nearly scaring me half to death. I grabbed my throat. “I’m a little jumpy.”

  “I’ll say,” Max replied, and started the car. “What happened in there?”

  I told her about going to look for Fiona and our debate over the paper and how she finally revealed to me that she, not Vince or Ray, had killed Kathy.

  “Did she threaten you?” Max asked, maneuvering the car up the main drive and off campus.

  “No.” I felt my eyes well up again. “But God knows she’s in enough trouble now to ruin her life forever.”

  We pulled up to the hospital entrance, and Max told me to get out while she looked for a parking space. I went inside and waited a few minutes; Kevin arrived, holding a small leather bag and wearing his black shirt, collar, black pants, and black shoes. No more Stoner Priest. We stood in the bright lights of the hospital admissions area, his arms around me. When I was done crying, he went up to the nurses’ station and spoke to a woman at the admissions desk. After a brief conversation, he motioned to me, “Come on.”

  We walked down the hall and got into the elevator, which was empty. He pushed the button for the fourth floor and turned to me. “You’re covered in blood,” he said.

  I looked down and saw that my neck, arms, and dress were covered in dried, russet-colored blood. Kevin touched my jaw. “There, too.”

  The door opened on the fourth floor. Several uniformed police officers were clustered together in front of the nurses’ station; they all turned when the doors opened. I recognized Simons from the day before. He came over and took Kevin by the arm, leading him down the hall wordlessly. When they were a safe distance away, Simons told Kevin something, and Kevin nodded like he understood. He returned.

  “He’s in surgery and will be for another hour or so. The shoulder wound isn’t too bad, but the other wound was close to the heart and nicked an artery. The doctor is also concerned about infection, so the next twenty-four hours are critical.” He looked at me, his eyes huge behind his Coke-bottle lenses. “They want me to stay. Do you want to stay or go home and get some rest?”

  “I’ll stay.”

  “You want coffee?” he asked, as we walked to a bank of plastic chairs against the wall.

  I shrugged. I didn’t care.

  He put his bag down on the chair. “No fooling around with the holy chrism,” he admonished, shaking his finger in my face. When I didn’t laugh, he turned and went to find coffee.

  A tall cop, about fifty, in knee-high leather boots, jodhpurs, and a leather bomber jacket approached me and knelt next to me. He held a round helmet with a visor under his arm that had “Motorcycle One” printed on it. “Are you the professor?”

  I nodded.

  “Jack Panebianco. Motorcycle.” He held out his hand.

  “Cannoli rider?” I took his hand, which was rough around mine.

  He looked puzzled for a moment and then laughed. “Cannoli rider,” he confirmed.

  “We never got to eat them. They’re still in my refrigerator,” I said, and sobbed.

  He looked uncomfortable. Of all of the cops I had met in the last several weeks, none could handle tears. Crying Witnesses 101 needed to be added to the cop school curriculum, too. “You can eat them when he gets out.”

  I shrugged. “I guess.”

  “He’s tough.”

  “I know.”

  He looked around. “I just wanted to say hello. I wouldn’t cart cannolis around on a motorcycle for just anyone.” He walked back to the nurses’ station and leaned against it, turning to talk to one of the nurses.

  Kevin came back with two cups of coffee and handed one to me and the other to Max, whom he had met up with in the elevator. “I spoke with one of the nurses, and she said that you could clean up in the bathroom behind the nurses’ station if you want,” he said.

  I didn’t answer.

  “Do you want to?”

  I shook my head. “I’ll do it when I get home.” The three of us sat in silence for two hours, Max and I sipping coffee that tasted like battery acid. I decided that whatever they taught Kevin about silence in the seminary was well learned; he didn’t feel the need to fill the space with chatter. Even Max had adopted the code of silence and sat quietly, just holding my hand.

  Well into our second hour of silence, I spoke. “He has kids. Twin daughters.”

  Kevin nodded. He knew.

  Wyatt showed up an hour later, looking drained. He fell into the plastic chair next to Kevin. “How we doing?” he asked.

  Kevin answered. “Don’t know. We’re waiting for him to get out of surgery.”

  Wyatt nodded. “When he gets out, go in and do whatever it is you Catholics do to sick people. It’ll make him feel better even if he doesn’t know.”

  Kevin smiled. “You’re not Catholic, Detective?” he asked.

  “I’m half-Samoan. We send our dead out on surfboards to the great beyond,” he said, almost serious. “My grandmother is probably in Antarctica by now.”

  I shot Max a look and whispered in her ear, “Your kids will be a quarter Samoan.”

  The four of us sat in the plastic chairs, an odd quartet: a blood-covered woman, a priest, a sexy sprite, and a half-Samoan, half-someth
ing-else detective. Every time the elevator opened, we tensed, looking for the stretcher that would hold Crawford’s body. Finally, after fourteen or fifteen false alarms, the doors opened and he was back from surgery.

  I started to get up, but Wyatt took my arm. “Sit down,” he commanded, and for some reason, I did. “Wait until they get him settled. I’ll ask the doctor if we can go in.”

  I sat back down.

  “Besides, the nurses here eat college professors for breakfast. If you break the rules, they’ll toss you out and you won’t be coming back.”

  “I get it,” I said impatiently.

  Wyatt got up and loped down the hall slowly, his long arms swinging back and forth. He stopped outside the door to Crawford’s room and turned back, giving me his version of the sad face.

  The doctor came out, a short Asian woman with waist-long black hair. She had on blue scrubs and plastic baggies covering her clogs. She looked up at Wyatt, her head bent back at an uncomfortable angle. I saw her hold up one finger and give directions, and then all five fingers. She walked away a minute later, leaving Wyatt standing in front of Crawford’s room.

  Wyatt whistled. “Padre!” he called to Kevin.

  Kevin leapt up and flew down the hallway, the leather bag clasped in his hand. He entered the room while Wyatt waited outside.

  I got up and joined Wyatt in front of the window outside the room. Kevin was standing over Crawford, who was shirtless and had oxygen tubes up his nose and a jumble of tubes going into his right arm. A thin white sheet was pulled up to his waist, and the wound was covered in a thick pad of gauze that was taped down. He was unconscious. Kevin leaned over, his lips moving, and put his thumb into a small, open canister of holy chrism. He put his thumb to Crawford’s forehead and drew a small cross as he performed the anointing of the sick.

  Wyatt turned to me. “She said you can go in. For five minutes. That’s it. Got it?”

  “I get it.”

  “No lap dances.”

  “You’re an asshole, you know that?” I asked him. It figured he would pick today to be funny and personable, but I wasn’t in the mood.

  He smiled. “I know. I work really hard at it.”

  Kevin finished up and put everything back into his leather bag. “I’m done, Detective. If you need me, please call me.” He looked at me. “Same for you.” He put his arms around me and kissed me on the forehead.

  Wyatt held his hand out, showing me the way to the door. “Five minutes.”

  “He’s unconscious, Detective. I don’t think I need that long.”

  “You’re welcome, Your Pissiness.”

  I went into the room and stood at the foot of the bed. A nurse tucked the sheet in tight around his body and picked up his limp wrist, holding her finger against it while looking at her watch. “Wife?” she asked.

  I shook my head. “Friend.”

  She dropped his wrist and went to the bottom of the bed to take the chart off the hook on the bed frame. She noted his vital statistics. “Five minutes,” she said.

  “Do you think he’ll recover?” I asked.

  “Don’t know,” she said noncommittally. “The first twenty-four hours after an injury like this and surgery are really critical.”

  “So I’ve heard,” I whispered.

  She surprised me and put her hand on my shoulder before she left. “He’s got kids,” she said. “Clean up before they get here. I’ll give you scrubs.”

  I nodded to her back; she was already out of the room before I understood what she meant. I turned back to the bed.

  His skin had a ghostly pallor except for the ring of yellow around his shoulder and chest. I turned and looked out the window of the room, but Wyatt had turned his back to the room. I inched closer to the top of the bed. I put my hand on his forehead; it was hot to the touch. His eyelids fluttered slightly, but his eyes didn’t open. I wondered if I would ever see his eyes open again.

  I leaned over, kissed his cheek, and laid a hand on his hair. “I’ll see you later. I’m going for a ride in a cruiser.” No response. “You were right about one thing: they do cut your pants off.”

  I thought I saw his eyes move slightly under his closed lids, but they never opened.

  “But I protected you from the emergency tracheotomy.”

  I moved my hand to his cheek and kept it there, leaning down to kiss him after a few minutes.

  I left the room; Wyatt was a few feet down the hall talking to Max. Like the little doctor, she had her neck craned at an uncomfortable angle, staring up at him. They both stopped talking when I joined them.

  “I’m ready to go.”

  Max took my hand and interlaced her fingers into mine.

  Wyatt looked down at her and then at me. “I’ll call you if anything . . .” He paused. “. . . changes.”

  I nodded and took Max’s hand, walking past the sober-faced cops clustered in front of the elevator. We got on and she pushed G to get us to the ground floor.

  “I’m so sorry, Alison,” she said, and put her arm around my waist, pulling me close. “He’s going to be fine.”

  “I hope so, Max.”

  “Those big Irish ones have good genes. You can’t take them out that easily.”

  “And you would know this how?” I asked, running a finger under each eye to wipe away runny makeup.

  “He didn’t come into your life to leave this quickly.”

  I hoped she was right.

  Twenty-five

  The phone rang off the hook most of the day, but no calls from Wyatt. Sister Mary, the Journal News, the Daily News, Max, the president of the college. Kevin McManus. Not a word from Ray.

  After going through the day in a semistupor, I decided to take off my clothes and get back into bed at four in the afternoon, wearing only my underpants and the huge NYPD T-shirt that Crawford had given me. I held the bottom of it to my nose, hoping for a whiff of the clean-laundry scent, but all I could smell was eau de cranky cop. I drifted off into a restless unconsciousness and was awakened at six in the evening by the ringing of the phone next to my bed. I picked it up, groggy and still mostly asleep.

  It was Wyatt. “He’s awake.”

  My breath caught in my throat.

  “But he’s got a hundred and three temperature, so he’s isolated. He wanted me to call you.”

  I started crying. “Thank you, Detective.”

  “Call me Fred,” he said.

  I used Max’s line. “Is that your name or just what you want me to call you?”

  “Has anyone ever told you what a funny lady you are?”

  I wiped my nose on his T-shirt and thought for a moment. “As a matter of fact, yes.”

  “They’ve got visitation restricted to immediate family, but when you get to the main admissions area, tell them that Dr. Chin has given you clearance.”

  “Thank you, Fred,” I said. He paused for a moment, and I didn’t know whether or not we were done. “Fred?”

  He let out a breath. I waited. “Bye,” he finally said, and hung up.

  Max had dropped me off the night before and left her car, calling a car service to pick her up and take her home. “You may need transportation,” she said, as we stood at the bottom of my stairs, waiting for the car to pick her up. She put the keys in my hand.

  I jumped out of bed and into the shower. When I was awake and clean, I put on jeans, a T-shirt, and a sweater. I pulled on sneakers and ran a comb through my wet hair before I headed out the front door.

  The trip to Mercy took thirty minutes. I went through the main entrance and gave them Crawford’s name. An older woman, wearing a pink smock and a badge that said, “June, Volunteer,” sized me up as she peered at the computer screen that listed all the patients’ names and room numbers. She got to Crawford’s name. “Immediate family?”

  “Dr. Chin has given me clearance.” I looked around, tapping my foot nervously on the floor.

  Behind her bifocals, her eyes narrowed. “There’re already three up there.”


  I smiled, hoping to disarm her.

  She let out a long breath. “All right. Five minutes.” I started off. “Wait!” she called after me. She handed me a badge to clip to my sweater. “You have to wear this.”

  I clipped it on. “Thanks, June.”

  I ran down the hall and found the bank of elevators, pushing “4” when I entered. The door opened on the floor, and it was a different scene from the night before, with no cops in sight. I guess word had gotten out that he was going to survive; no vigils necessary. I headed in the same direction toward the room he had been in the night before.

  A nurse behind the desk stopped me. “Crawford?” she asked.

  I nodded.

  “He’s in isolation.” She pointed to her left. “That way. You can only look through the window. There’re two in there already.”

  I started down the hall, my badge jostling against my chest. I looked in every window until I saw him. He was in a room, plastic curtains around all four sides of the bed, with two young girls next to him on the outside of the bubble. He was still shirtless, and the wound was covered in the same thick gauze from the night before. His arm was in a sling.

  The girls were on the side of the bed that faced the window to the hallway; one was standing and one was sitting. They were in full scrubs with masks, their hair covered. The one who was standing had Crawford’s face and build—she was six feet if she was an inch. The other one must have looked like her mother, because she had brown eyes and judging from the wisp of hair falling out of the side of the cap, black hair.

  He looked up when he saw me and waved weakly, a strange look passing across his pale face.

  I put my hand to the glass and pressed it there, smiling. He turned to the girls and said something. The one that looked like him looked at me and smiled, while the other one kept her full attention on him. He pointed at the tall one and mouthed “Meaghan,” and then to the short one: “Erin.”

  A bank of chairs faced the room. I sat down, waiting to see if one or both of them would emerge from the room. I exceeded my June-imposed five minutes and sat for twenty.