EMBRYO 5: SILVER GIRL (EMBRYO: A Raney & Levine Thriller)

by J. A. Schneider

  She’d seen David once in the whole time she’d been back. He’d hugged her as he hurried in for surgery on the woman who’d delivered in the EMS truck. When was that? Two hours ago? Three?

  Now he was struggling with another awful case. Jill pulled in a deep breath, scrubbing at her eyes again. Too damned much sadness in this world.

  “Any minute, he’ll be out.” Ramu patted her hand again. “Then, both of you should sleep. You should have slept last night, when you weren’t on call-”

  “But went instead to Jody’s.” Charlie winced and drew air in under his teeth. “Poor kid…”

  Both of them had looked sad all night. They had adored Jody. Grinning, she used to bring Charlie egg rolls and tea to Ramu. Darjeeling, his favorite.

  Stop it, Jill thought, as they started sorrowfully reminiscing about the egg rolls and the Darjeeling - and suddenly David was there. Coming in rumpled scrubs from the scrub room next to the OR with his head down, looking drained.

  “How’d it go?” Charlie asked.

  “She died,” David exhaled, his mouth grim. “We did everything. Thought we had her back and then, she just…went.”

  Went. The simple word of such heartbreaking finality hung over them like a pall. Faces dropped. David’s eyes were bloodshot.

  Jill rose and leaned her into him, squeezing his hand.

  “Sleep, you two,” Ramu urged again. “We did last night. Plus there’s Trish and Gary almost done with that delivery, and Mackey’s on call and the interns.”

  “Yeah, we’re fine,” Charlie said. “This thing has made you crazy. Go home, please? Sleep.”

  They thanked, and did. Hurried the block to their apartment a block away with David’s arm around Jill, pulling her to him. Can one person be like a tranquilizer to another? David was. She could breathe again tucked into his warmth, his patient, careful listening as she spewed her rage, her sorrow, talked a mile a minute about her morgue visit and the cops’ frustration.

  “They’re nowhere. Have nothing on anybody! They have no case! Alex still likes Reid for this, but there’s only circumstantial on him. And that dagger, my God, you should have seen it – I told you the M.E. used paraffin? I can’t get it out of my mind, I feel so sick. Celie’s wounds were unspeakable. Jody and Celie, the two most horrible ways to die-”

  “Okay, slow down,” David said gently, his hand going up to tug at Jill’s ponytail, then coming back down to squeeze her again. “You’re firing away too fast. Gotta save some bullets.”

  He was thinking hard, she saw. Taking it in. She kept glancing at him, and recognized his quiet frown of concentration, the tight look of his jaw.

  “They’ll get the bastard,” he said.

  “There were sixty guests at that party carrying Jody-grudges!”

  “How many have been interviewed?”

  “Most of them.” Jill gulped air. “Cops got nothing. Everyone’s oh so horrified and pained…”

  “No forced entry. It was someone closer to Jody than just party guests.”

  They crossed at the light and entered their building. In the elevator, Jill described CSU’s findings of Jody’s glass in her sink - “rinsed, just diluted drops of chocolate milk” - and Kerri’s request that both of them “work” Deborah Wylie. The Wylies had given their one interview and were done talking to the police.

  “I’ll be nice. Seem helpful if she calls. You too?”

  “Up to a point.” David still wore his slight frown; seemed to be concentrating intensely.

  “I don’t want to seem nosy, sound alarms.”

  “Right. They know we help the cops.”

  “But she gave me her card first. Pleaded, ‘help us get the guy who did this.’”

  “Us sounds like Reid too.”

  “We’re safe for them,” Jill said as they approached their door. “They know anything said to us and repeated is just hearsay.”

  “Still tread carefully.” David threw open the door, held it, and steered Jill in under his arm.

  They fell into bed at 12:50. Tossed at first, with Jill unable to stop obsessing and also missing Jesse. At 1:05, she rolled over and checked their baby app on her phone.

  “Still sleeping?” David asked sweetly. “Like the other three times you checked?”

  “Yes. Clutching Fawzie. Don’t be mean.”

  “Mean? Me?”

  “Sorry, I just need sleep.” Jill tossed and fidgeted more, and finally settled back under his arm. “Alarm goes off at six-thirty,” she whispered, staring at the clock.

  David said nothing. Started to breathe more heavily.

  “That’s only five and a half hours from now.”

  “Mmpf.”

  David rolled onto his back. Pulled in a deep sigh, muttered something that sounded like “have an idea,” and then was asleep.

  On her side, Jill stared at her clock. It was old, with a round, lit face, real hands, and a pointy second hand. They’d found it in a curio store. David had a digital clock on his side, but she liked this one. Second hands were important. They needed them on their watches, too.

  The second hand swept round and round. The world dipped and turned. Sirens squealed, entering the ambulance bay a block away. Jill told the clock’s lit face, “You’re supposed to triumph over darkness,” but the pointy second hand became a dagger, leaped up and chased fleeing Celie who screamed and screamed, alone in Jody’s mangrove swamp under swaying moss. Jill had to turn away and bury her face in the ivy, because she didn’t know how to shoot. She really should have learned-

  And woke with a jolt, sweating and trembling.

  She cried, shaking, for long minutes with her face in her pillow. Her nerves felt as tight as piano wire. She thrashed. Struggled to get to sleep again.

  In another apartment, many blocks away, a figure also awoke with a cry. By the light of a small lamp, the little dog at her side raised its head and rounded its eyes.

  “Oh Misty,” wept the frail voice, the bony hand reaching out. “I had the most terrible dream. I saw that man again!” Edna pointed jerkily to the dark window, the iron stairs beyond.

  “There, Misty. I saw him there just like the other night. He was coming down and it was horrible!”

  Misty whimpered, her milked-over eyes tragic with empathy. She crept closer on her haunches, right up to Edna’s warm old chiffon gown and into the crook of her arm. That helped a little, but Edna still wept and trembled, her lace hankie retrieved from her bedside pressed to her face.

  “I saw him, Misty. I mean this time I saw him better, and he was different, but oh, what was different?” The bony hand clutched the hanky. “I must try to remember. Must try to sleep so I can remember. Maybe in the morning…”

  22

  Trudge, trudge…

  By 7:15 they were showered, in new scrubs, and back on the OB/GYN floor. Happy moms, healthy new babies. OB rounds before GYN rounds. Nothing new or terrible, medically speaking.

  Just the nightmare murders pressing on their hearts, and blazing from the doctors’ lounge TV and in the hall from patients’ TVs and every computer open and online on alert laps. One new mom pointed on her screen to the giant Times Square news ticker, streaming no leads in the Merrill/Jarrett murders.

  “Think the police slept?” David whispered between patients.

  “Less than we did,” Jill said low. “Think they’re going to call?”

  “Count on it.”

  An hour later a call did come, but not from the police.

  “Some lawyer,” Willard Simpson said, the Chief of Department sounding – a first – mystified, and calling directly instead of some assistant. “From that big law firm representing Jody Merrill. They’d like us to come.”

  “Us meaning you too?” David frowned. He’d just left the last patient’s room with his rounds group. Jill listened in as usual. She was so tired; laid her cheek on his shoulder.

  “Yes, us.” Simpson sounded more mystified. “You and Jill, Graham and me.” Howard Graham was the hospita
l administration director. “Apparently Jody’s will is going to be read. We’re, ah, in it. Bequests to us and the hospital, it sounds like. Wasn’t clear, the guy just talked lawyer-speak. I don’t understand lawyers. I try not to go near them.”

  David’s eyes met Jill’s. They were both surprised.

  “He asked if four o’clock was okay,” Simpson continued. “That okay for you?”

  “Sure, we’re not going anywhere.”

  “Arrange coverage. No, I’ll arrange coverage. Gotta get after George Mackey for not switching enough with the others.”

  Simpson gave the law firm’s address. “It’s one of those swank midtown glass and steel buildings,” he said, sounding annoyed at having to leave his hermetic study-cave. “With guards in the lobby you have to ID yourself to before they let you go up. Nice, huh? Hospitals, any lunatic can walk in. Well, see you there.”

  Jill and David traded edgy glances, and got back to work. Both joined others in the morning clinic, then at noon grabbed eats-to-go and ran up to see Jesse, who ate half a tuna sandwich and loved it. Between one and three-thirty, they did two deliveries and helped Tricia stop premature labor in a woman just six months along.

  By 3:45, in their scrubs, parkas, and Nike running shoes, with no time to change and what for, they were out on First Avenue hailing a cab.

  There were reporters yelling and crowding them on the sidewalk, and their stomachs fell away in the rocket ship elevator, the super fast twenty-fifth to fortieth floor express.

  “Whoa,” Jill said, grabbing the rail lining three sides of the car. She’d been bitching about how she disliked lawyers. Was cranky and bristled with apprehension at having to be here.

  “I’ve decided a joke is in order to ease my stress,” she announced.

  “Okay,” David snickered. They were alone in the car. He was on the floor re-tying a floppy shoelace.

  “If you give a lawyer a penny, what do you get back?”

  “Dunno.”

  “Change.” Jill’s laugh verged on hysterical.

  “Easy cowgirl. Don’t go off the deep end.” David stood. “That joke sounds old.”

  “Old as water, ha. Back in my mean mom the prosecutor days, I used to hear it all the time. Didn’t you know any law students?”

  “Nah. Just bio-chem geeks.”

  “You missed a great bunch. Colorful and modest. Full of self-deprecating humor.”

  “Now you’re worrying me. Cripes, we’re there.”

  “Oh, gag.”

  The polished doors slid open. They exited onto the thirty-sixth floor and into the firm’s plush foyer. BARTH, ROSEN AND TUNNELL proclaimed grand brass letters, which went with the thick burgundy carpet, the old paintings, and the fine sofas in which nobody sat. A dark-suited man ahead of them – “dark pants!” Jill whispered - was looking for the Corporate section. The receptionist smiled and directed him, then cast her locked-in-place smile to them.

  “Yes?”

  Glasses Tricia would pine for over a cashmere sweater set and an impossibly perfect manicure. David asked for the Entertainment Division as Jill looked around at hurrying lawyers and junior associates dressed in dark conservative: a tight-faced, self-important busyness of Brooks Brothers and J.Crew. She almost wished she and David hadn’t just thrown their parkas over their navy scrubs, and then thought, Oh, bleep them.

  The receptionist was saying, “Two floors up. Go through those glass doors, turn right, follow the hall all the way to the interior staircase. Lovely view of the skyline as you go up.” She smiled efficiently and reached for a phone.

  The Entertainment Division was one of the smaller ones in the firm, said a sad assistant emoting about Jody who led them through more halls. They passed open doors and emotional stares and phones ringing everywhere. “Here you go,” she said, offering to take their parkas. No thanks. They kept them on. She ushered them into an office where a brown-haired, dark-suited, flower-tied lawyer of about forty stepped from behind his desk.

  “Hello, I’m Jay Arender, sorry to meet under these circumstances,” he said solemnly.

  Duh! They looked at each other: Jay Arender? This is him?

  But no time to talk because he was introducing them to – oh boy – the rogues gallery of Jody’s troubled relationships: Eric Rennie, looking tense in his chair; Reid Wylie, looking smooth, getting up; and Bruno Shepard, grand poobah TV producer, who glared his little piggy eyes at their running shoes.

  It took just seconds, the introductions, but Jill’s mind took a screenshot.

  Rennie, in designer jeans and artiste black T-shirt under a blazer, stood and shook grimly with a cold hand. Muttered something like “heard a lot about you,” and sat again with his fist to his mouth.

  Bruno Shepard gave them a gruff, “Pleasure,” barely getting up.

  Reid Wylie, in a dark suit and tie, seemed unaccountably pleased to see them. “We’ve met,” he told Arender as if they were buddies. Jill saw David eye him as they shook. Reid smiled and his dark eyes slid away. He retook his seat, pulled an empty chair closer – for Deborah? - and got busy with papers in his lap.

  Chairs were offered. Arender stood behind his desk, riffling papers and talking to the others. Jill and David, trading glances, slid their chairs to where they could watch them all better.

  Eric Rennie and Bruno Shepard were studiously avoiding eye contact.

  Arender flicked a glance at Reid. “Deborah coming?”

  “In a minute. She had to take a call.”

  “She had to take a pill,” Rennie muttered.

  “Admit it, she’s run outta the building,” Bruno rasped without taking his hand from his mouth.

  “Stifle, both of you,” Reid said pleasantly. So cool. Who me? Prime suspect in a media-frenzy double murder?

  Jay Arender was good-looking in a bland way, not ruggedly handsome like Reid. The part in his dark brown hair was neat, and he seemed to like remaining standing, pushing files and folders and papers around while the others were seated. He was above everyone, in control. Behind him, framing him, was the usual vanity wall of diplomas, photos of him with showbiz clients, and a photo of a schooner with its sails full on tropical seas.

  He and Jody had disliked each other, Deborah Wylie had said. Maybe even hated each other.

  Jill stared at him.

  Then Deborah came in, wearing a dark blue dress. She looked a little out of it. Robin Abel trailed in after her in a gray silk blouse and gray skirt.

  “Sorry,” Deborah said faintly. “Mr. G wouldn’t let me off the phone.” She sat carefully, as if it hurt, in the chair Reid had saved for her. Smiled wanly at him, leaned her pale face on her hand.

  Jill saw David watching her. Subtly, as Robin was talking and pulling up a chair, Jill leaned to him and whispered, “too much Xanax?”

  He nodded, whispered, “Oh, yeah.”

  It was nine past four. Arender glanced to them and asked, a bit tightly, “Doctor Simpson and Mr. Graham?”

  “They’re coming,” David said; then shifted his gaze to behind Arender. “That’s a nice boat.”

  Eyes looked up from the floor to the photo of the schooner.

  “Ah, that beauty’s my dream,” Arender said, turning to look at it, then turning back and allowing himself a smile. His face lit too much. “It’s why I’m killing myself here so I can retire, sail the world.”

  Reid Wylie said dryly, “Photo’s new, isn’t it?”

  “New here. Had it at home but wanted to cheer myself.”

  “You needed cheering?” Jill asked.

  “We’re all devastated.” Arender turned solemn again and got busy with his papers. His hands shook. He adjusted a shirt cuff.

  How quickly he had switched expressions. Like an actor.

  “I’d go nuts stuck on a boat,” Bruno Shepard growled.

  “Need a boat boy?” Eric Rennie said sarcastically, getting up and wandering to peer at the photo, crowding Arender’s space and annoying him. He was brown-haired and muscular under his bl
azer, with large, brooding eyes and a small mouth. He stood with his back turned to the others, pretending great interest in the photo.

  Until Willard Simpson and silver-haired Howard Graham bustled in, stressed and apologizing for their lateness and groaning about midtown gridlock. Arender greeted them with an undertaker’s face, giving them another, so-sincere, “sorry to meet under these circumstances.”

  Jill glared at him. Under what other circumstances would you meet Willard Simpson?

  Graham, also a lawyer, was dressed conservatively too, but Simpson, like Jill and David, had just thrown a coat over his oversized dark scrubs. He was seriously overweight. His thinning, windblown hair was reddish, his round face florid, and his wire-rims kept sliding down his tiny nose. He huffed into his seat next to David, and Graham sat next to him, last in the widened half-circle facing Arender.

  Eight people, all assembled. Four from the hospital, four from showbiz - the oddest group ever, Jill thought, watching Eric Rennie return to his chair and lean arrogantly back, his legs stretched out before him, his fist to his mouth.

  “Okay, I guess we can get down to it,” Jay Arender announced, sitting and exhaling with fake heaviness. He opened a sealed folder and pulled out papers. Glanced at the top page, flipped to a second, and looked up.

  “As most of you know, Jody had a fear of dying young. She updated her will last August, after her big contractual raise” – a glance to Bruno – “and then again last February, when she made changes and updated again with new bequests.”

  Jill’s heart clenched. Jody, we’re going to hear you speak.

  Arender read formal language mixed with Jody’s words, what she had felt and the degree of her feelings.

  To Deborah and Reid Wylie she left ten thousand dollars “either to you or the charity of your choice. I’m so grateful to you both, and sorry for any pain I may have caused. I hope you’ll remember me with love.”

  To Eric, in recognition of “the journey we traveled,” she left her pair of antique Chinese elephants, “to lift you into more crazy trips.”