“Then what were the needle marks on your arm from?”
“One IV for fluids and nutrients and one for drugs, good thing the nurse fouled up and put an IV for fluids and nutrients in each arm or I’d still be in Maui General.”
“You don’t have to sneak out of hospitals. They can’t keep you there against your will,” Cyrus said. A tone of wariness laced through his words. A pretty face in trouble always made him suspicious.
“I know that, I’m a nurse. But I knew my Dad had all the hospital staff paid off, including security. Once I came to, I pulled the IVs out and looked around for my clothes-no luck. My father must have taken them. So I made my way to the nurse’s lockers. I stole a uniform and slipped out.”
“So how did you get to Santa Barbara without ID or any money?”
“I found a library about ten blocks from the hospital. I used the computer there to buy an e-ticket for a one-way flight to Santa Barbara and retrieve a copy of my driver’s license; I have a Nevada driver’s license and a California license. I walked three miles in these shower shoes to the airport. It made removing my shoes for security pretty easy. I stank the whole way. I wished I had been able to find a clean uniform to steal in that locker room. I know the poor guy sitting next to me on that flight to Santa Barbara wishes I had as well.”
“Didn’t we all.” Cyrus said, scrunching up his nose and backing away a little.
“I got your address out of the phone book website then ran it on Map Quest. So now after twenty-four hours of no food and very little sleep here I am.”
Mrs. Leighton put her book down and stood up, “I’ll go to the kitchen and see what I can fix for you, Kelsey. Cyrus, do we still have the leftovers from last night’s meal?”
“Yes, Mrs. Leighton, I haven’t been home all day, so I am sure they are still there.”
“Do you like roast pork, green beans, and mash potatoes?”
“Oh, yes, that sounds great, thanks Mrs. Leighton.”
“How about you, Cyrus?”
“Yes, I’ll take a plate, thanks.” Cyrus got up from beside the couch and walked across the room and stood next to the entertainment center. He put a DVD into the player and turned on the television.
“Was I boring you?”
“No, you’re not boring me-yet. I am just anxious to record this special FrontPage program about the WTO riots in Seattle in 1999. I was there you know.”
He crouched down in front of the DVD player and punching buttons in order to set up the timer.
“FrontPage, don’t you mean Frontline on PBS?” Kelsey said.
“No, I ordered it from FrontPage Magazine; PBS would never air a TV show that was fair to the police or anyone associated with law enforcement. To those people we’re always the bad guys.”
“Oh,” Kelsey said.
He stood up from the DVD player and turned around to face her, “You know, those Anarchist creeps would heave full coke cans at us and then run back into the crowd of innocent tourists. They learned that tactic from their terrorist friends in Iraq. Human shields are the coward’s weapon of choice.”
He turned around and tweaked the volume knob on the DVD player until the theme music was inaudible. “We can still talk,” he said facing her again; “I don’t need to turn up the sound to record.”
Kelsey leaned back against the arm of the couch and sighed. She reached over to a bowl of fruit on the night stand beside her and took an apple.
“So why did you choose to visit me?” Cyrus said.
“Well, I’ve been kidnapped.” She replied and then took a bite of her apple. Between chews she continued, “You’re a cop, so I thought if I told you, you would do something about it.”
“If you want to file kidnapping charges against your father you need to go down to the station. Besides, I’m a homicide detective. I don’t do kidnappings.”
Cyrus sat down beside her on the couch. Kelsey put her apple down and for several silent moments they watched the TV screen. Throngs of protestors carrying large white signs and wearing gas masks covered the smoke filled streets.
“So when are you going to tell me why you’re here?” Cyrus said.
“What are you talking about?”
“You didn’t come all this way and go through all you went through, just to tell me your Father’s kidnapped you, did you? You could have gone down to the station and filed a complaint or just gone back to your apartment and forgot the whole thing. You didn’t need to see me about that. There’s something else, isn’t there?”
“I can prove Dana is innocent.” She raised her head, looked into Cyrus’s eyes, and continued, “And what’s more, I want you to find my brother’s real killer.”
“Dana confessed to killing your brother, I don’t see-”
“My father tricked him into taking that plea. Dana said you’d help us. He helped you didn’t he?”
“Yes he did. I feel bad about it. He saved my life and the life of my partner, and to show how grateful I am, I put him in jail.” Cyrus said. “But I can’t work miracles, Kelsey. It’s very difficult to overturn convictions of suspects who confess to the crime they commit.”
“I read in the paper that you had a lot of evidence against Dana.”
“That’s right,” Cyrus said, “We had means, motive, and opportunity. Hackneyed expressions, but nonetheless true-as our captain likes to remind us.”
“The souvenir bat was the means, right?”
“That’s right, it had Dana’s fingerprints all over it and …” Cyrus caught himself and stopped.
“Mike’s blood, right?”
“Right. Look Miss Tanner I know you have been through a lot and you need to get something to eat and then maybe you should talk to-”
“I had the bat.” Kelsey said with an even tone of voice, as if she were telling someone the time of day. “Dana couldn’t have killed Mike.”
Cyrus’s facial expression stilled. He studied her face and held her gaze for several moments.
“Why would I lie about that?” Kelsey said, “I am incriminating myself, aren’t I?”
Cyrus got up, walked over to the coat rack and got his notebook and pen out of his jacket pocket and then sat back down next to her.
“So Dana gave you a blue souvenir bat with a black handle, big deal,” Cyrus said, “There are hundreds of bats like that all over Southern California.”
“Not with the initials DM hearts KT carved in the knob.”
“Wait a minute.” Cyrus walked back over to the coat rack by his stereo and got out his cell phone. He dialed in the number to the bailiff and when he answered Cyrus said, “Thurston I need you to verify something for me- it’s important.”
“What? I am getting ready to go home,” Thurston replied.
“I need you to look at the murder weapon for the Mathers case. Check the end of the bat handle and tell me what is inscribed there.”
“Fine.”
After several minutes Thurston said, “It has a heart and there are initials. K, T, and O, M.”
Cyrus hung up. “How’d that bat end up at Rincon Beach?”
“I don’t know for sure. That’s why I came to see you. I am a nurse, not a detective.”
“Right. So why were you in possession of the bat?”
“Dana gave it to me for protection a couple of weeks ago.”
“Did anyone else see him give it to you?”
“No, don’t you believe me?”
“You’re not exactly an impartial witness. For all I know you’re making up this whole story. Why’d you need protection?”
“I was worried about getting mugged walking through the hospital parking lot at night. Dana tossed the bat into the back seat of my car. The next day I bought some pepper spray. Men are so stupid. I wasn’t going to walk around the hospital carrying a bat.”
“So if you had the bat, and if you didn’t kill your brother, and it ended up at the beach, you must have given it to someone.”
Kelsey shook her head and fell
silent. They sat and watched the TV screen for several minutes before she answered him.
“Two days after Dana gave me the bat,” Kelsey said, "Mike took my car up to Half Moon to have it smogged at my Dad’s repair shop-we get a special break because of my Dad. That was the last I saw of it. When he brought the car back the bat was gone.”
“What was the name of the repair shop?”
“Auto MD, it’s listed in the phone book.”
“Where were you the morning your brother was killed?”
Kelsey took the last bite from her apple. She took her time chewing it; when she was finished she tossed the core back into the bowl. She sat up, sniffed her arm pit, and made a face. Looking as though she didn’t consider him worthy of her attention, she turned toward him and said, “Why would I want to kill my brother, Fleming, I loved him?”
She brushed back her hair with her hand. Her eyes reddened and tears flowed from their corners. Her face paled. After a few silent moments the muscles in her face stiffened. She threw back her shoulders and said, “Your witness said she saw a tall blonde hide the baseball bat. I read it in the paper. Do I look like a tall blonde to you?”
"No, but you had the bat. Which means Dana still had access to it. Maybe you made up this whole story about him lending it to you for protection. Maybe you miss Dana and want to get him out of jail and marry him. After all, if you marry Dana, you inherit TANOCO. And Mike’s no longer around to stop you.” Cyrus was sure she was telling the truth. But he’d been sure before with pretty women and been very wrong. It wasn’t her he distrusted, it was himself.
“My father told you about the will, I suppose,” she said. “Mike couldn’t have stopped me from marrying Dana. You’re not only rude, you’re stupid. What’s more he didn’t need to stop me to get TANOCO. I renounced my portion of the will a day before Mike was killed. It was a deal I made with him to get him to leave Dana and me alone. Dana didn’t know about the money, or TANOCO, or my father, until after Mike was dead. He thought I was a nurse, and a poor one at that.”
“You still have not answered the question: where were you that morning when Mike was killed?”
“I was at work.”
“We checked with your co-workers and none of them could vouch for your whereabouts.” Cyrus looked down at his pad and jotted down notes as he spoke.
“They were probably busy with a patient. Nurses aren’t like cops, we have to do more than drive around in a squad car, eat doughnuts, and bother people with ridiculous questions.” She laid her head on the arm of the sofa, her eyes were half closed. Cyrus assumed it was the after effects of the sedative. Her breathing grew louder.
“So you don’t have an alibi that someone can verify?”
“We have to use badges to get in and out of ICU. I always swipe my badge when I leave; it’s logged on the hospital computer automatically.”
Cyrus felt something warm touch his shoulder. He looked around to see Mrs. Leighton standing over him with a worried look on her face.
“Cyrus, dear, I think you need to stop. It’s time for Kelsey and you to get something to eat. It’s getting late and I need to get some rest as well. After we finish eating, I will see Kelsey off to bed. She’s staying here, of course. That’s not a request. Then I am going to the den and lie down on the couch.”
“O.K. Mrs. Leighton, I was finished anyway,” Cyrus said.
After they had eaten, Mrs. Leighton went to her house next door and brought back a pair of clean jeans and shirt for Kelsey. Kelsey got up, took the clothes, and walked off toward the bathroom without a word. Mrs. Leighton followed behind. Cyrus sat back in his chair. He felt the pain from the car wreck rifling through the fog of his beer buzz and wreak havoc on his head and shoulders.
He stood up, got his notepad out of his coat pocket and made a note to have the hospital computer log checked. He got a bottle of aspirin and a glass of water from the kitchen, walked over to the TV, and turned it off without even looking at the screen. The recording was finished, but he didn’t much feel like watching anything. He took a couple of aspirin, sat back down in his chair, and fell asleep as soon as he shut his eyes.
The next morning, Cyrus woke up with a stiff neck. He picked up the remote and turned on the TV so he could see what he had recorded. He fast forwarded past the introduction and began normal play when he got to the images of black hooded men ripping a newspaper kiosk from the sidewalk. Carrying it to the front of a bank window, they heaved it and laughed when the large, steel box punched through the Plexiglas and set off the alarm. Through the dense smoke surrounding everyone, the camera zoomed in on the image of one of the black hooded protestors. Only her eyes and a small portion of her nose were visible, the rest of her face was covered with a translucent face mask. “And what is it that your group, Black Bloc, hopes to achieve?” The reporter on the TV asked her.
Her skin was caramel and she spoke with a Jamaican accent, “We oppose the war pigs and their plans to exploit indigenous peoples. We oppose the mass murder of innocent animals,” she said and then raised her fist in the air. Cyrus stared at the screen with his mouth opened. He’d seen those eyes before- shimmering, toffee colored, disks. But he couldn’t remember where.
Kelsey slept on the couch, snoring lightly. Cyrus scanned back to the beginning and replayed the scene. Before it was over, Kelsey woke up, threw off her blanket, and sat up. She raised her arms, yawned, arched her back, blinked her eyes at the TV a few times, and then she pointed to the screen and said “Who’s that?”
“She’s a member of Black Bloc, a violent anarchist group. They were responsible for a lot of damage during the 99 WTO riots. They made all the peaceful protestors look pretty bad.” Cyrus got up from his chair and turned off the DVD player. Picking up his pad from the end table next to his easy chair he sat back down. Time to go back to work.
“Did anyone else have access to your car?”
Kelsey leaned back and let out a long sigh. “I already told you, Mike took the car to the garage for me to get it smogged.”
“We checked the bat for fingerprints. Yours must be the ones we couldn’t identify. The eyewitness’s fingerprints didn’t match, not even close.”
“You wrong, I never touched the bat. You may also have my fingerprints.”
“I’ll arrange it with Thurston. Tomorrow good?”
“Fine, besides, Mike wasn’t the only one who had access to my car.”
“Who else?”
“My father, that’s who else, Mike drove the Volksy to Half Moon near Big Sur to see Dad that same evening. I let him use it since I was working all night. He had just as much of an opportunity to take Dana’s bat as Mike. My car is a convertible and Mike usually put the top down when he drove it.”
Kelsey’s green eyes welled up with tears as she spoke. She put her trembling hands on either side of her head and sighed, “My brother is dead,” she said, “Dana is in jail, and my father held me in a hospital by force.” She sobbed quietly, tears streamed down her face. Kelsey stopped crying and looked up at Cyrus with narrowed red eyes, “Who told you about the will?”
Cyrus shrugged his shoulders, “No one told me, I guessed. There’s always a will.”
Mrs. Leighton came into the living room from the kitchen and announced that coffee was ready.
“Thank you Mrs. Leighton, we’re just finishing.” Cyrus figured she had been listening to them for several minutes now. Once she liked someone, she became their guardian. Mrs. Leighton turned away and retreated back into the kitchen. Cyrus was certain she was listening and waiting for a chance to return and save Kelsey. Mrs. Leighton confirmed Cyrus’s opinion of Kelsey as good and loyal person. Not many people could impress her.
Kelsey looked over toward Cyrus and said, “Does she always dote on you like this?”
“Yes, she’s like a second mother.”
“Ha!” Kelsey said, “No wonder you have trouble with your weight. Two mothers and the doughnuts. It’s not healthy you know.”
Cyrus’s bit his lip and waited for anger to subside. Because of all she’d been through he’d let her insult him, but more than one fat joke a day was all he could take. “Just for the record,” he said, “I never eat doughnuts, just danish.”
“Dana told me about your jaunt up the stairs at Rincon Beach that night,” she continued. “He said he had to wait at least ten minutes for you to hobble up the stairs.”
“I am not unhealthy,” Cyrus said, slapping at his notebook with his pen. “I am a lot older than Dana. And if you think I am going to feel bad about being beaten by a professional athlete in a footrace up a flight of stairs you’re crazy. Anyway, what’s your point?”
“No point, really, I just think it’s a shame that you let yourself go. You’re not a bad looking guy and Dana’s no athlete either, you know. His left leg is still lame. He can’t bend it very far and he still out paced you up the stairs.”
Cyrus had never been complimented and insulted at the same time before. And the compliment was pretty weak-not bad looking. He didn’t know what to say back so he shut up and went over his notes. He just never liked running or even walking fast. Besides she was comparing him to one of the world’s top athletes. Dana Mathers could out run a lot of people, even in his lame condition. He looked down at his pad. “Say that again.” he said, his pen hand trembled as he spoke.
“I didn’t mean to insult you,” she put her finger to her chin and continued, “Come to think of it, I did. But Detective I shouldn’t have-”
“No, no, go ahead. It’s all right. What did you say about Dana being lame?”
“Yes, his left leg, it’s his knee. The nerves that control the movement of his left knee never fully healed.”
Cyrus stared at a blank page in his pad. He replayed that night when he saw Dana hopping up the stairs at Rincon Beach in his mind. Cyrus remembered how he couldn’t bend that knee more than a couple of inches. That means Briana was wrong, or lying, and Dana may be telling the truth, he said to himself. She had told him she saw a blonde-haired man with a scar on the back of his neck run toward the driftwood to hide the bat and then run up a flight of stairs. She distinctly and emphatically said the word run-twice even. She should have noticed if he had a limp or game leg. He couldn’t understand why Briana would lie about it unless she really was part of a plot to frame Dana. And what about the tape? The dark-skinned girl with the golden eyes. Was that Briana parading around with Black Bloc? Yes, of course, that was her. If she still was a member of Black Bloc, maybe she had a motive for killing Mike Tanner and framing Dana. One thing was certain; Dana Mathers wasn’t the blonde Briana saw standing over Mike Tanner.
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