The Price of Innocence

by Lisa Black

  He put a hand on her shoulder, and she felt such intense comfort from it that her eyes welled up again. She could trust him, of course. But she had promised David. Better to say nothing for now. Besides, if Lily and Ken’s deaths had nothing to do with their past, then David and his family troubles were irrelevant. ‘So you think it could be some kind of killer meth? But Ken didn’t kill himself – did he?’

  ‘No, an apparent OD. I only want to make sure, or we might have meth addicts dropping like flies – look out!’

  A tractor-trailer materialized in front of them. Theresa screamed and jerked the wheel to her left, cutting off a small Volkswagen. Its driver tooted the horn in protest.

  It took a moment to return her car to steady travel, as her heart pounded hard enough to make her ribs ache. Frank clutched the dashboard and she laughed at him. ‘Do you believe how people behave on these roads?’

  ‘What is the matter with you? You never drive like this!’

  ‘But we’re in a hurry.’

  ‘Theresa MacLean, what the hell is the matter with you?’

  ‘I mean, to be found by a dumpster. What a life. Somebody must have cared about him once, encouraged him once. He went to college, or tried. Isn’t that sad?’

  ‘Pull over.’

  ‘What?’ This bizarre question roused her from melancholy over Ken Bilecki’s death. ‘What?’

  ‘Listen to me carefully. Take your foot off the gas. Move into the right lane – there’s no one coming, go ahead. Now go on to the shoulder.’

  ‘But we’re not there yet.’ Hell, they hadn’t even passed the old Mead sign.

  ‘On to the shoulder, now. Slow-ly. There’s plenty of room here. Come on.’

  She protested past 117th Street, where the houses break off into deep woods, the landscape too undulating to build on. But he nagged, slowly and steadily, until she slid the car off the pavement and on to the rough shoulder and stamped on the brakes hard enough to make the car jerk. ‘What? Why are we stopping when we have to get to the crime scene?’

  ‘Look at me, Tess. Stop, and turn, and look at me.’

  Her cousin had pulled out a tiny flashlight and now pointed it at her face, which she found really irritating. ‘What?’

  ‘I want you to follow my pen with your eyes.’ The smooth and phoney way he spoke only added to her annoyance, as if he were talking to a child or a rabid dog. She knew what he was doing. This was called DRE or something like that, wasn’t it? To test for—

  ‘That’s it, just look at my pen. What did you do tonight, Tess?’

  Kiss David Madison, she started to say, then bit it back. ‘Nothing.’

  Cars zoomed by; each one that came close made the Ford quaver a bit. ‘Before you came to pick me up, what were you doing?’

  This she could answer with confidence. ‘Sleeping.’

  ‘Did you feel all right all evening?’

  Depending upon the exact moment, better than all right. ‘Yes.’

  ‘You’re not sick? You didn’t take any medications?’

  ‘No. Will you get that light out of my face?’

  ‘You’re sure there’s nothing you want to tell me about?’

  Yes, she thought – David Madison. What am I doing? How much baggage is too much baggage? How much does our past determine our future? Am I merely infatuated? Should I take a more objective look at him? How can I, when objective is the last thing I feel capable of being every time I’m with him?

  Receiving no answer, her cousin went on without her, ‘Because right now, my dear cousin, you are higher than the Goodyear blimp. I’m getting out and you’re going to slide into the passenger seat. I’m taking you to the hospital.’

  THIRTY-ONE

  Theresa’s second visit to the Metro General emergency room in twelve hours proved even more unpleasant than the first, as this time it became her turn to be poked, stripped and made to give up her bodily fluids. All the while, her mind raced and her mouth tried to keep up.

  ‘I have to take a little more blood,’ the nurse said, her black skin glowing with youth and a touch of sunburn. After a long Cleveland winter, sunny spring days could prove impossible to resist.

  Theresa protested with what she felt was reason. ‘You’ve already taken three tubes, or four, I lost count. When you get up to a pint you have to stop, right? They only take a pint when you’re donating blood. I like the curtains here, between the beds. I suppose blue is supposed to be soothing.’

  ‘Yes,’ the nurse agreed. She had apparently discovered, during the past trying hour, that agreeing with Theresa made the process smoother. At least then the chatter stayed at comfortable decibels. Silly, of course. Theresa had not been shouting, no matter what Frank said.

  ‘I read a book on the great influenza epidemic of 1918 – it took forever to get through but it was really interesting – and that’s when they started putting curtains in between patients, not for privacy but to try to keep infection down. People would catch it from sick people coughing on them. They caught it from everywhere, really, so the curtains didn’t do much in the long run. I’m glad we have them now, though.’

  ‘Me too,’ the nurse agreed. She had a deft touch; Theresa didn’t even feel the needle sliding into her arm. Still, why couldn’t they get everything they needed at once and stop putting holes in her skin? She had passed her fortieth birthday and her skin needed all the TLC it could get.

  ‘How could this stuff have gotten into your system, Theresa?’ Frank asked for the fourth time. Beside him stood the homicide division chief, a tall black lieutenant in jeans and a rumpled sweatshirt. Frank had called him in on Theresa’s insistence. Frank could not be seen to have covered up or glossed over a relative’s drug use. Her mind really was working quite well. ‘Did you smoke anything last night?’

  ‘I don’t smoke! You know that. I gave that up before Rachael was born.’

  ‘Around anyone who smoked?’ the lieutenant intoned.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Injected anything?’

  ‘Hardly. I couldn’t prick myself to learn blood typing in a college lab; you think I could put a needle into myself?’

  ‘We’re just trying to help,’ Frank told her, hulking uncomfortably by the curtain. The blue color had not soothed him. ‘Calm down.’

  ‘Francis,’ she said through gritted teeth, ‘I don’t know how and I don’t know why, but apparently I’m up to my eyeballs in stimulants. The one thing I can’t do is calm down!’

  ‘OK, OK.’

  ‘And I can’t figure out where it came from either. It’s not like I have drugs sitting around my house.’

  ‘She really doesn’t,’ Frank confirmed for the lieutenant, who nodded with less than complete conviction. ‘Can methamphetamine be ingested?’ he asked Theresa.

  She thought. ‘I don’t know. Drugs really aren’t my field. It’s not the usual route … but then you can make brownies with pot and people who smuggle cocaine in their stomachs will OD if the bag breaks, so I suppose so. We have to ask Oliver. We have to talk to Oliver anyway – he has to test my blood.’

  ‘They can do that here.’

  ‘But the hospital lab might not know what it’s looking for. Oliver has already seen the extra compounds that killed Lily Simpson. Get my Nextel, his number is in the contacts – it’s clipped to my belt. I think they put the clothes in that bag there. There.’

  ‘I’ve got it.’

  ‘What did you ingest last night, then?’ the lieutenant asked. ‘And where did you get it?’

  ‘Nothing, that’s the point. I had some lunch about one, and that was it. I hadn’t yet made dinner when they called to tell me Frank got blown up, and when I got home after that I went straight to bed.’ She could feel some comfort in clearing David Madison – he had given her nothing and they had not had either food or drink together, except for a spot of tea, and she had made that herself. ‘I did have a pop at Subway, when I talked to Ken Bilecki.’

  The men stared. She expected Frank to be put
out by her questioning one of his witnesses, though Bilecki wasn’t, really, he hadn’t witnessed anything about Marty’s murder, so she couldn’t understand why the lieutenant looked – oh, yes. Ken had died tonight. No wonder they were interested.

  ‘You interviewed our victim—’ the lieutenant began.

  ‘You talked to – when? Where?’ Frank demanded. ‘Why?’

  This could get sticky. She could explain the twenty-five-year-old case without mentioning David Madison, but if Frank really began to look into it, he still might come up. ‘That’s kind of a long story. Is it cold in here, or is it just me? I felt so hot all this time but now I’m getting a cold flash. It raises your body temperature, you know. Meth.’

  ‘Tess—’

  ‘Is there another blanket?’

  ‘Tell us about your meeting with Ken Bilecki,’ the lieutenant said, in a tone which brooked no argument, stalling or confabulation. So she did. But only in general terms, leaving out any part about David Madison.

  ‘Why the big interest in such an old case?’ Frank asked her.

  ‘Idle curiosity?’

  He gave her that narrowed-eye look that let her know he did not believe her, but did not know enough to call her on it.

  ‘Because I found the box of evidence in the basement of the Bingham building, which also exploded, so I got to thinking …’

  ‘Could Bilecki have put something in your drink?’ the lieutenant asked.

  ‘I don’t see how. I bought them, and I never walked away or turned my back on the table.’ She had gotten him that refill, but she’d been done with her cup by then, hadn’t she?

  ‘What did you order?’

  ‘He drank Coke, I drank Diet.’

  The lieutenant exchanged a glance with her cousin. ‘Maybe the guy behind the counter is Bilecki’s source, and he mixed the drinks up. We’ll have to check out that Subway.’

  ‘But would it have taken that long to take effect?’ Frank asked.

  ‘Don’t know. Maybe ingesting instead of smoking takes longer. I’m going to go out and talk to the Vice guys. They might have some insights.’

  After he left, Frank said to her, ‘Did you have anything else to eat or drink last night? And would you cover your legs in front of other people, please?’

  ‘Why?’ she asked. ‘What’s wrong with them?’ But she let him fold the bed sheet over her lap and ticked off her beverages – tea she had made herself, water from the tap, coffee at the lab, coffee at the site, and water from a water bottle she had refilled herself.

  ‘And you felt perfectly fine when you went to bed last night.’

  ‘Uh-huh.’ Physically, yes. Emotionally she’d been a little perturbed.

  ‘Is there any way someone could have tampered with your water bottle?’

  She had carried it all over the city today, at the site, at the lab, in her car. She had left it in her car while talking to Ken Bilecki. Ditto for her trip to the hospital to see Frank. Then she had added more water and left it in her refrigerator, while she let a man she barely know bunk in her daughter’s room. ‘Well—’

  ‘Could someone have broken in? I’ve been telling you to replace those French doors for months now. A school kid could get those open.’

  ‘No – yes! I did hear – or thought I heard – someone in my kitchen, shortly before you called. I brushed it off as house creaks, but maybe it wasn’t.’ And David’s door had been closed when she came out of her room and she had not heard him come back up the stairs. The risers had too many noisy spots for anyone, particularly a man of his size, to get up them without announcing it to the whole house. Not even Rachael had mastered that, and not for lack of trying. She should call Rachael. She hoped the girl was studying, especially her calculus. And that the bomber hadn’t moved on to the state capital, less than three miles from her daughter’s dorm.

  But wait. Wouldn’t that would mean two unexpected visitors had been in her house during the same night? It stretched credibility. But she’d rather stretch than believe that the man she had gone more than a little crazy for had tried to poison her.

  ‘Don’t start crying again,’ Frank said. ‘I need you to focus.’

  ‘But why would someone want to kill me over a twenty-five-year-old meth lab? I mean, that’s ridiculous.’

  ‘I agree. I think it’s more likely someone would kill you over a three-day-old murder of a police officer. The whole city knows that you were there. Maybe the shooter worried that you saw him. We went after Terry Beltran, and the chief just told me they found some scribbled notes about that Georgian splinter group in the rubble of Beltran’s room. They’ve got to be somehow connected to the Bingham explosion, which makes this bigger than even a cop killing. But he might think we showed up at Beltran’s place because you saw him at Marty Davis’ murder site. So to be safe this partner took out Beltran, and now he needs to get rid of you.’

  Hardly a comfortable line of thought. ‘But why not a bomb in my house? Why something more subtle like a meth overdose?’

  ‘Because he doesn’t want your death connected to Beltran’s. And we don’t even know if it is meth in your system. It could be something else entirely.’

  Theresa hoped so. She did not want to have ingested the same stuff that had killed Lily Simpson and maybe Ken Bilecki. ‘Call Oliver. Either he can tell the hospital lab what to look for, or you’ll have to run a tube of my blood out to him.’

  He shook his head and flipped open the Nextel. ‘It’s five a.m. He’s not going to appreciate this.’

  ‘He’ll be up. He doesn’t have a life outside his job – isn’t that sad?’

  ‘Yeah, sad.’ But correct. The man in question picked up, and Frank elucidated the situation as best he could, what with Theresa interrupting every two seconds to add some detail that Oliver might need to know. Every detail except David Madison. Every time she thought of him, her nerve endings shot off tiny flaming arrows. But every time she thought of keeping a secret – possibly quite a relevant secret – from Frank, she started sweating again.

  ‘Oliver says yes, it can be ingested,’ Frank said to her, covering the phone, then listened some more. ‘He says he has to have your blood sample, that the equipment in most hospital labs is not remotely able to reach his standards for precision or accuracy.’

  ‘Ignore him on that. Oliver’s a terrible snob,’ Theresa said for the sake of the nurse, lest she take offense, but the nurse had apparently left the room at some point.

  ‘He also said to tell you he analyzed the swab you took from a ring?’

  Ring, ring – the caduceus ring from the old meth lab case. ‘Yes?’

  ‘He says it has residue from nitrogen triiodide on it. What does that mean?’ he asked into the phone. ‘I know, but – well, you don’t have to get so uppity with me, I just asked – fine, I’ll get her blood out to you.’ He hung up. ‘Man, that guy’s a bastard. I don’t know how you work with him. Tess – what’s the matter?’

  The twenty-five-year-old meth lab explosion also involved nitrogen triiodide. This fact splashed into the pool of facts in Theresa’s mind like a baseball smashing into an electric scoreboard, sending out a shower of brilliant, blinding sparks.

  Her circles – Lily, Marty, David, Ken and the meth lab, and Marty, Terry Beltran and the Bingham destruction – now intersected at more than the one point of Marty Davis. They also intersected at a second point, the explosive used. What were the odds of that?

  She didn’t have two circles, she had one. One spanning twenty-five years.

  Twenty-five years ago someone had learned – perhaps accidentally – about the destructive capabilities of nitrogen triiodide. They did not forget the lesson. Fast-forward to the present, as terrorism became a burgeoning industry. Someone brushed off their old chemistry notebooks and went back to work. Someone who was not Marty, Lily, Ken or the presumably dead Doc. That left DaVinci.

  And Bean.

  Theresa collapsed down on to the bed, pulling the tangled sheets and blankets
up to her chin. The world needed to forget her, because someone this stupid could be of no possible use to it.

  ‘I’ll get this to Oliver,’ Frank said, holding her red-taped tube of blood.

  She managed a nod. They had to know if the same altered meth that Lily Simpson had smoked now coursed through Theresa’s veins, ready to plunge her into the same black hole of despair. She already felt it coming but not because of the drug – she should feel this bad. She deserved to feel this bad.

  How much worse would it get? Would the nurse come back? Would anyone keep an eye on her, keep sharp objects away? Could one hang oneself with the IV tubing? What about Rachael—

  ‘Frank!’ Her hand shot toward him as he began to turn away. ‘Don’t leave me.’

  He stopped, looking down at her with a surprised expression. Then he took the outstretched hand, curling her fingers into his palm with a gentle squeeze and an even gentler smile which terrified her since gentle had never been the adjective for him. ‘I wasn’t even going to think about it, cuz.’

  THIRTY-TWO

  Noise came and went around them, mostly came. The emergency room at Metro never stopped. ‘Saturdays,’ the nurse had said to Theresa, probably trying to distract her from the sewer-pipe-sized IV needle as it entered her vein. ‘Weekday mornings we get the car accidents, people driving to work. Saturdays we get the home repair projects. Guys fall off ladders, kids swallow paint. A lady just came in, sliced her hand open with a carpet knife. Thirty-two stitches. I’ll keep my apartment. Houses can kill you.’

  Theresa remained in the emergency room, napping in between sirens and blood draws. The hospital did not plan to admit her, assuming she’d be ready to leave once her bloodwork reached acceptable levels. Besides, should this embarrassing little incident ever come to the attention of a defense attorney against whose client Theresa was testifying, ‘treated and released’ would look much better than ‘hospitalized’. Besides, Theresa thought, nothing would be gained by wasting the next twenty-four hours staring at white walls and daytime TV.

  Not that she knew what else to do.

  The IV dripped, dripped, dripped, supposedly washing out the meth and adding serotonin and other feel-good things to her bloodstream, but Theresa did not feel the effects. Besides, if drugs like Xanax and Valium worked in a way similar to meth, by stimulating the release of neurotransmitters which had already been released, weren’t these additional drugs simply trying to draw water from a dry well? She should ask the nurse about that, but couldn’t summon up the energy.