Angel Interrupted

by Chaz McGee

  “Those aren’t good for you,” I said, nodding at the chips.

  She shrugged. “Neither is chemo, but I’m doing it anyway.” And with that, she followed me in hopping from color to color down the hall for a few moments, then disappeared through two swinging doors, labeled PEDIATRIC ONCOLOGY.

  The girl had been real.

  It’s things like this that mess with your head when you’re dead.

  Maggie was taking the long way out of the hospital, as if she was lost. Perhaps she should have followed the colored lines. Unless . . . I noted with a flash of jealousy that she was heading out through the emergency room exit doors, looking around as she did so. But the fantastic Dr. Fletcher was nowhere to be found. Most of the staff was clustered by a double-wide entrance door, ushering in stretchers of people covered in blood. A car accident, I suspected. Their agony engulfed me, and I fled the building, thinking, It’s not death that people ought to fear, it’s life. Life hurts way more than death.

  I can get across town in minutes if I need to, but I like to ride shotgun with Maggie and pretend that we’re partners. It’s difficult to do that if Calvano is along for the ride, of course. There’s no way in hell I’m sitting on his lap, but today we had her car to ourselves. Maggie doesn’t play music when she drives. She hums. Not very well, either, but I like to think everyone is allowed a few imperfections.

  Maggie hums because she is thinking. Her tuneless melodies form the soundtrack to her mind and she was burning synapses that day as she sorted through the case she had been given. She had an amazing ability to compartmentalize her thoughts. I knew she had put the issue of the missing boy aside while she concentrated on the dead nurse. She cared about the boy—everyone did: there were AMBER Alerts and volunteer search teams and media blanketing our town—but Maggie had been given the nurse’s banner to carry into battle, and that was where her allegiance lay.

  I tried to read her thoughts. There was a connection building between Maggie and the nurse. I did not know if I had simply gotten better at reading Maggie’s emotions and this was a connection she forged with all victims, or if she felt an unexpected kinship with the nurse because they had their solitary lives in common. Whatever the cause, Maggie went through sadness, regret, fear, and a little bit of fury. I found that flicker of anger interesting. Fury at someone unknown who had killed the nurse—or fury at someone in her own life who had loved her and left her? But who could ever do such a thing? Who would leave someone like Maggie?

  We reached the station at the same time as my old lady friend, Noni Bates. She was not alone. A well-dressed man in his early forties was gallantly helping her from a late model Lexus. He held a briefcase and wore expensive shoes. Dollars to doughnuts he was a lawyer, maybe even a good one. He was definitely a well-paid one. I had expected Noni to bring a fussy, old, retired lawyer to Robert Michael Martin’s rescue, perhaps one with bushy, white eyebrows and hair sprouting from his ears. But, of course, she had been a teacher and probably had a network of professionals from here to Shanghai she’d once taught and could forever call on.

  It would take the two of them a while to get past the front desk sergeant, Freddy, who was in a bad mood because his wife was cheating on him with his brother. I knew this because one of the perks of being dead is that you know everyone’s secrets.

  “But they may be questioning him right now,” Noni was telling Freddy.

  “Not if he asked for a lawyer, they aren’t,” Freddy said politely, recognizing the steel in her voice and not wanting to antagonize her.

  “He’s much too . . .” Noni paused. “He probably did not insist on one.”

  Freddy shrugged. “I can’t help you there, ma’am. There’s no crime in being stupid.”

  And stupid Robert Michael Martin was. Despite Noni’s warning, he had agreed to be questioned by Adrian Calvano without counsel present, believing his innocence would protect him.

  I could have joined the interrogation and amused myself by making faces behind Calvano’s back, but I felt high-powered energy emanating from the observation room next door, and when Maggie headed for it, I drifted in behind her.

  Gonzales shivered. “There’s a draft in here. Can you shut the door? I’ve got to get the air conditioning fixed.” Not a draft, my friend, just little old me.

  “Anything shake loose?” Maggie asked.

  Gonzales shook his head. “It’s the usual disaster.” He seemed to remember that a couple of department lawyers were standing behind him and amended his remarks. “I don’t think there is anything to shake out of him.”

  We all peered through the one-way glass. Robert Michael Martin sat, perplexed, in a straight-back chair across from Calvano—who was hammering on the table between them with his fist. It seemed a little early in the performance to be pounding on tabletops, but that was Adrian Calvano for you: no finesse.

  “So, you are admitting that you actually go by the park every single morning to watch the children?” Calvano shouted at him.

  Martin looked like he was going to cry. I felt his fear, but something else, too. I concentrated on it until I had it: the more Calvano screamed, the more Martin seemed comfortable with it. Not only was he accustomed to being yelled at and ridiculed, he expected it. I felt even sadder for him. His mother must have been a real joy.

  “I told you,” Martin said, his voice cracking. “I volunteer for KinderWatch. Ask Colonel Vitek. He’ll tell you. He’s the founder of the group. I’m his best volunteer.”

  “You’ve said that,” Calvano said with disgust. “Several times.” He sat back in his chair and crossed his arms. “You like watching the little kids every day?”

  “Come on,” Maggie said to Gonzales. “This is unproductive and beneath us. And there’s a lawyer downstairs coming up to represent Martin any minute. Let me talk to him and see what I can get before he shuts down. Maybe he saw something in the park that would help.” I felt a spark from her as she made one of the connections only Maggie can make. Her voice grew more excited. “Sir, let me ask him who was in the park yesterday. He may have seen whoever killed Fiona Harker.”

  Gonzales turned to her, interested, but a knock interrupted their exchange. I was sure it was Martin’s lawyer, there to call off the dogs, but it was Peggy Calhoun from the lab. She held up a small, clear evidence bag holding a plastic dinosaur. “We got something from the park. Not much, but something.”

  Gonzales and Maggie eyed the small green toy. “Are we sure it’s the boy’s?”

  Peggy shrugged. “The officers that brought it in say some other kids at the playground identified it as belonging to Tyler Matthews. Its name is Rocky.”

  “The dinosaur’s name is Rocky?” Gonzales asked dubiously.

  “That’s what the other kids say he called it,” Peggy explained.

  “Can you get anything off Rocky?” Gonzales said drily.

  “Maybe a print. And if we’re lucky, not the kid’s.” Peggy didn’t sound too sure.

  “See what you can do,” Gonzales told her absently. Calvano’s voice had risen to a roar and we were all distracted by his histrionics.

  Peggy looked appalled at the scene unfolding behind the one-way mirror. “Sir,” she said firmly, staring at Calvano.

  “What is it?” he asked, annoyed that she hadn’t left.

  “There’s a rookie patrolman outside who wants to speak to you. I really think you’d better talk to him.”

  “Go talk to him,” Gonzales ordered Maggie, not paying much attention. He was watching Calvano as one might watch a lab specimen, studying his behavior and trying to figure out the cause, cataloging Calvano’s triggers so that he might use that behavior for his own purposes one day. To my real dying day, and that could be a long time coming, I would never quite get Gonzales.

  Maggie left to speak to the rookie patrolman and I, naturally, followed. It was Denny, the cop who had disturbed the crime scene a few hours before. He turned purple when he saw Maggie coming at him.

  “Ma’am, I woul
d just like to say again how sorry I am that—”

  “What is it?” Maggie interrupted. She didn’t like groveling, but she didn’t like incompetence, either, so he was not getting off the hook entirely.

  The poor kid was so nervous that he almost stuttered. Maggie took pity on him. “Take a deep breath,” she told him. “Now order your thoughts like you’re writing an essay. Get you facts in order. One, two, three . . . ready?”

  He nodded.

  “Now tell me,” Maggie said calmly.

  “I talked to an old lady who is a neighbor of the man being questioned. She was there when we searched his house. A friend of his mother’s, I believe she said.”

  “Very good,” Maggie told him. “Keep going.”

  “She says Martin came to get her this morning, very excited about a man in the park who was watching the children. He was quite concerned the man might do something.”

  “And this was before we found the nurse or the kid was taken?”

  “Yes, definitely before.” Denny looked at Maggie. “That’s important, right? It means he didn’t just make it up after he was a suspect.”

  “Yes,” Maggie said. “It’s important. Was the neighbor telling you the truth?”

  “The old lady?” Denny looked startled. “Ma’am, I don’t think she’s capable of not telling the truth.”

  Maggie smiled. “I’ve known a few people like that myself.”

  “There was one other thing. The old lady knew the nurse. She says Calvano interviewed her about it.”

  “Yes?” Maggie asked, trying to pull it out of him.

  “She says the nurse would never have killed herself, that she was a Catholic.”

  “We know she didn’t kill herself,” Maggie assured him. “Thank you. I’ll let the commander know.”

  Denny scurried away and Peggy, who had been watching Maggie from a spot against the wall, spoke. “What is it? You look troubled.”

  “Just one Catholic girl looking after another,” Maggie said. “That could have been me, you know. Seriously.”

  “Except you’re the best shot in the department,” Peggy offered. “It wouldn’t have been you lying on that carpet.”

  Maggie looked at her friend. “Peggy, when I was in the house, I felt . . .” She hesitated.

  “What?” Peggy asked. “Go with it.”

  “I felt this sense of betrayal,” Maggie said. “It sounds silly, I know.”

  Yes, I exulted. She had picked up on it, too. Or maybe she had picked up on me. Maybe I had helped.

  “It’s not silly,” Peggy said firmly. “I felt it, too.”

  “Like someone she loved had betrayed her?”

  “Exactly,” Peggy said.

  “Like someone who loved her had killed her,” Maggie said sadly.

  “Ah, Maggie.” Peggy was her senior by three decades.

  “When you get as old as I am, you will know one thing for sure: people kill the people they love all the time.”

  “You’re right,” Maggie acknowledged. “And, god knows, I know that.”

  Peggy was staring at her oddly.

  “What?” Maggie said. “Spit it out.”

  “Hypnosis,” Peggy said firmly.

  “Hypnosis?”

  “If that poor schmuck in there actually saw something, I’d put him under and get it out of him quickly, before Calvano buries everything under a mountain of fear.”

  “You really think that will work?”

  “We used it a lot during the eighties when there was a spate of carjackings around here. We got better descriptions and a few license plates. It helped with a murder in ’97 and a couple of rapes the same year. A few other times, too.”

  “Why not recently?” Maggie asked.

  “Gonzales thinks of it as hocus-pocus, and evidence gathered through hypnosis is not necessarily admissible in court. But the woman we worked with still lives in town. She’s good. She has a private therapy practice and is a certified forensic hypnosis specialist. Plus, she helped me quit smoking.” Peggy smiled and there it was again: her signature smear of orange lipstick on her teeth. I had come to love that smear.

  Maggie shrugged. “I can give it a try.”

  “I’d do it before the feds get here if I was you,” Peggy suggested. “You won’t have a say in it after that.”

  “How did this place ever run without you?” Maggie asked.

  “It’s never had to,” Peggy admitted with a laugh.

  Maggie stared at the green dinosaur in Peggy’s hands. “Do you really think you’ll get something off it?”

  “I have to,” Peggy said simply. “Calvano’s getting nowhere.”

  And with that, she left Maggie to clean up Calvano’s mess, disappearing down the hall toward her lab, where evidence was orderly and answers were logical and whole new worlds awaited her beneath the lens of her beloved microscope.

  Maggie reached Gonzales at the exact same time that Martin’s lawyer finally made it to the interrogation room. She reentered the observation area just in time to see the lawyer say to Calvano, “This interrogation is over.”

  Gonzales sighed.

  “He wasn’t getting anywhere anyway, sir,” Maggie offered in consolation.

  Gonzales looked at her intently. “Give me good news.” “I think this guy is legit,” Maggie said, nodding toward Martin. The poor slob had started to sweat like a seal in a sauna, but he also looked completely dumbfounded at his good fortune: he had a lawyer, a real one, who had rescued him just as he realized he had truly screwed the pooch by not listening to Noni’s advice. There was conferring, cards were passed, hands shook. Calvano was pouting, as usual.

  “He was sounding the alarm about some guy in the park before any of this took place,” Maggie told Gonzales. “He might have seen something important. Not just about the missing kid, but maybe the nurse, too.”

  Gonzales looked interested. “What are you suggesting?”

  Maggie took a deep breath. “Hypnosis.”

  His smile disappeared.

  “Sir, the department has used it before, and there’s a very good, certified specialist here in town. Her testimony has been accepted in court before. I’m not looking for that, though. We just need something, anything, from this Martin guy to narrow it down. Maybe with some help he can give us a good description—or, just as important, a more objective description—of the man he saw. It might tell us whether the man in the park was a real threat. Or maybe Martin saw a car, or a license plate that leads us somewhere. I’d take anything. I don’t have a clue, literally, and neither does Calvano.”

  “I’m not a believer, Gunn,” was all Gonzales said. He turned his back on her and stared wistfully through the observation glass. Martin was being hoisted upright by his lawyer, who was angry at Calvano and giving him a lecture about Fifth Amendment rights for any cameras that might be rolling.

  Gonzales was distracted, or he would never have thought he’d get away with saying no to Maggie. It was like waving a red flag at a bull.

  “I’ll make you a deal,” she said sweetly, which told me she was up to something, even if Gonzales missed it.

  He turned to look at her. She held his gaze.

  Gonzales gave up first. “Let’s hear the deal.”

  “I’ll swap you a polygraph for hypnosis.”

  “Pardon?” Gonzales looked amused.

  “I know you like your polygraphs,” Maggie explained. “If I can convince that poor schlep in there to take one, and if he passes, will you consent to one hypnosis session? I’m offering you one quasi-scientific method for another.”

  “All right, Gunn,” Gonzales said. He always called her “Gunn” in front of others. “You’re on. But good luck convincing the suit his client should take a polygraph.”

  “No worries, sir,” Maggie said confidently. “I can do that.”

  And she did. She started by humiliating Calvano the moment she entered the interrogation room. Only slightly, mind you, and not nearly enough for me, but enou
gh for Robert Michael Martin and his lawyer to feel a little vindicated.

  “I’m taking over,” she announced to Calvano, turning her back on him dismissively. I was close enough to catch the wink she gave her partner. Calvano saw it, too, but he was such a dumbass, it took him a few seconds to process it. Once he did, he mumbled, “Fine,” and stalked from the room.

  “Sorry about that,” Maggie said to Martin, throwing him her hundred-watt smile. “Everyone gets on edge when a little kid goes missing.”

  “Well, of course,” Martin stammered. “It’s the worst possible thing that could happen.” He stared at Maggie, worried about where she was going with the whole thing. He did not look as worried as his lawyer, though. Maggie read the mood in the room and changed directions.

  “Here’s the deal,” Maggie said, ignoring the lawyer and talking directly to Martin. “I believe you, and I need your help.”

  “You need my help?” Martin asked eagerly.

  “Yes. I’m working the case of the murdered nurse and my partner . . .”—she dropped her voice to make it clear she thought her partner was an idiot, which probably wasn’t hard—“well, he’s in change of the missing boy case.”

  The lawyer looked scandalized at the thought of Calvano being in charge of anything. I guess word about Calvano had gotten out in the legal community.

  “Until,” Maggie added.

  “Until what?” the lawyer demanded.

  “Until later tonight went the feds arrive and take over and all hell breaks loose.”

  Martin looked alarmed. So did his lawyer. “As in the FBI?” Martin asked.

  “At the very least. They’ll be taking over the missing boy case. It’ll be out of our hands at that point.”

  “What are you suggesting?” the lawyer asked.

  “He takes a polygraph,” Maggie said quickly, “for screening purposes only. Nothing will be used in court, you have my word.”

  “Screening for what?” the lawyer asked. Martin looked mystified.

  “If he passes the poly, I want to bring in a hypnotist.”