Life Support

by Tess Gerritsen

  The first kiss was too brief, merely a brushing of each other’s lips. A timid first meeting. His arm wrapped around behind her back, drawing her closer. She gave a murmur of pleasure as their lips met again, and then again. She swayed backward, and her hips bumped against the desk. He kept kissing her, matching her whimpers with murmurs of his own. She tipped backward, falling onto the desk, pulling him down with her. Papers scattered everywhere. He trapped her face in his hands, his mouth seeking hers in deeper exploration. She reached out to grasp his waist and instead knocked something away.

  Glass shattered.

  They both gave a start and looked at each other, their breathing hard and fast. Their faces flushed at the same time. He pulled away, helping her back to her feet.

  The photo of Dvorak’s son had landed facedown on the floor.

  “Oh no,” murmured Toby, looking at the broken glass. “I’m sorry, Dan.”

  “No problem. All it needs is a new frame.” Kneeling down, he gathered up the pieces of glass and dropped them in the rubbish can. He stood up, and his face flushed again as he looked at her. “Toby, I . . . didn’t expect. . .”

  “I didn’t, either—”

  “But I’m not sorry it happened.”

  “You’re not?”

  He paused, as though reconsidering the truth of that last statement. He said again, firmly: “I’m not sorry at all.”

  They stared at each other for a moment.

  Then she smiled and pressed her lips to his. “You know what?” she whispered. “Neither am I.”

  They held hands as they walked back across Albany Street to the hospital. Toby was moving in a daze, her bruises and scrapes now forgotten, her attention focused instead on the man holding her hand. In the elevator they kissed again, were still kissing when the door slid open.

  They stepped out just as a crash cart rattled by, wheeled by a panicked-looking nurse.

  Now what? thought Toby.

  The nurse with the cart rounded the corner and vanished into the next hallway. An announcement crackled over the public address system:

  “Code Blue, room three eleven. . .”

  Toby and Dvorak glanced at each other in alarm.

  “Isn’t that Molly’s room?” she asked.

  “I don’t remember—”

  He was in the lead as they chased the nurse around the corner. Toby, her knees stiff from the bandages, couldn’t keep up with him. He halted outside one of the rooms and stared into the doorway. “It’s not Molly,” he said as Toby caught up. “It’s the patient next door.”

  Toby glanced past him and caught a glimpse of chaos.

  Dr. Marx was performing CPR. A scrub-suited resident barked out orders as a nurse scuffled through the drawers of the crash cart. The patient was almost lost from view in the press of personnel; all Toby could see through the crowd was one gaunt foot, anonymous, sexless, lying exposed on the sheet.

  “They don’t need us,” murmured Dvorak.

  Toby nodded. She turned to Molly’s room. Knocking softly, she opened the door.

  Inside, the lights were on. The bed was empty.

  Her gaze shot to the bathroom, also empty. She looked at the bed again and suddenly realized the IV pole was there, the plastic tube dangling free, the end still attached to the intravenous catheter. A small pool of dextrose and water glistened on the floor.

  “Where is she?” said Dvorak.

  Toby crossed to the closet and opened the door. Molly’s clothes were gone.

  She ran back into the hall and poked her head into Room 311, where the code was still in progress.

  “Molly Picker’s left the hospital!” said Toby.

  The charge nurse glanced up, obviously overwhelmed. “I can’t leave now! Call Security.”

  Dvorak pulled Toby out of the room. “Let’s check the lobby.”

  They ran back to the elevator.

  Downstairs, they found a security guard manning the front entrance.

  “We’re looking for a girl,” said Dvorak. “About sixteen— long brown hair, wearing a raincoat. Did you see her leave?”

  “I think she walked out a few minutes ago.”

  “Which way did she head?”

  “I don’t know. She just walked out that front door. I didn’t watch where she was going.”

  Toby stepped out the lobby entrance, and rain gusted at her face. The wet pavement stretched like a glistening ribbon.

  “It’s only been a few minutes,” said Dvorak. “She can’t have gotten very far.”

  “Let’s take my car,” said Toby. “I’ve got a phone in there.”

  Their first swing around the block turned up no glimpse of Molly. They drove without speaking, both of them scanning the sidewalks as the windshield wipers squeaked back and forth.

  On their second circle around the block, Dvorak said, “We should call the police.”

  “They’ll scare her off. If she sees a cop, she’ll run.”

  “She’s already running.”

  “Are you surprised? She’s afraid of that Romy guy. She was a sitting duck in the hospital.”

  “We could’ve arranged for police protection.”

  “She doesn’t trust the police, Dan.”

  Toby circled the block one more time then decided to widen the search. Slowly she drove northeast along Harrison Street. If the girl was seeking the safety of crowds, this was the direction she’d take—toward the busy streets of Chinatown.

  Twenty minutes later, she finally pulled over to the curb. “This isn’t working. The girl doesn’t want to be found.”

  “I think it’s time to call the police,” said Dvorak.

  “To arrest her?”

  “You’d agree she’s a danger to herself, wouldn’t you?”

  After a pause, Toby nodded. “With that blood pressure, she could have another seizure. A stroke.”

  “Enough said.” Dvorak picked up the car phone.

  As he made the call, Toby stared out the window and thought about the misery of trudging through that rain, icy water seeping into your shoes, trickling under your collar. She thought about her own relative comfort here in the car. Leather seats. Warm air whispering out of the heater.

  Sixteen. Could I have survived the streets at sixteen?

  And the girl was pregnant, with a blood pressure lethal as a time bomb.

  Outside, the rain began to fall harder.

  19

  Four blocks away, in an alley behind an Indian restaurant, Molly Picker huddled inside a cardboard box. Every so often, she caught a whiff of cooking smells—strange, spicy scents she could not identify but that made her mouth water. Then the wind would shift and she’d smell the nearby Dumpster instead and would gag on the stench of rotting food.

  Her stomach veering between hunger and nausea, she hugged herself tighter. Rain had seeped into the box, and it was beginning to sag, collapsing onto her shoulders in a mantle of soggy cardboard.

  The back door of the Indian restaurant opened and Molly blinked as light spilled into the alley. A man with a turban came out, lugging two trash bags, which he carried to the Dumpster. He lifted the metal lid, tossed the trash inside, and let the lid slam back down again.

  Molly sneezed.

  She knew from his abrupt silence that the man had heard her. Slowly his silhouette appeared at the box opening, the turbaned head frighteningly enormous. He stared at her and she at him.

  “I’m hungry,” she said.

  She saw him glance toward the kitchen, then he nodded.

  “You wait,” he said, and went back inside.

  A moment later he reemerged with a warm napkin-wrapped bundle. Inside was bread, fragrant and soft as a pillow.

  “You go now,” he said, but not unkindly. Rather than a command, it was a gentle suggestion. “You cannot stay here.”

  “I don’t have anywhere to go.”

  “You wish me to call someone?”

  “There’s nobody to call.”

  He glanced up at the s
ky. The rain had eased to a slow drizzle, and his brown face gleamed with moisture. “I cannot bring you inside,” he said. “There is a church three blocks from here. They have beds for people when it is cold.”

  “Which church?”

  He shrugged, as if one Christian church was the same as another. “You go on that street. You will see it.”

  Shivering, her limbs stiff from the box, she rose to her feet. “Thank you,” she murmured.

  He didn’t answer. Before she’d even made it out of the alley, she heard the door shut as he went back into the restaurant.

  It began to rain again.

  She headed in the direction the man had told her to go, devouring the bread as she walked. She could not remember tasting bread so wonderful; it was like eating clouds. Someday, she thought, someday, I’ll pay him back for being nice to me. She always remembered the people who’d been nice to her; she kept a list in her head. The woman at the liquor store who’d given her a day-old hot dog. The man in the turban. And that Dr. Harper. None of them had a reason to be nice to Molly Picker, but they had been. They were her personal saints, her angels.

  She thought of how nice it would be someday to have money. To slip a bundle of cash in an envelope and hand it to that man in the turban. Maybe he would be old by then. She would stick a note inside: Thanks for the bread. He would not remember her, of course. But she would remember him.

  I won’t forget. I’ll never forget.

  She came to a halt, her gaze focused on the building across the street. Beneath the large white cross were the words: MISSION SHELTER. WELCOME. Over the doorway a light shone, warm and inviting.

  Molly stood momentarily transfixed by the vision of that light glowing in the drizzle, beckoning her to come out of the darkness. She felt a strange sense of happiness as she stepped off the curb and started across the street.

  A voice called out: “Molly?”

  She froze. Her panicked gaze darted toward the sound. It was a woman’s voice, and it came from a van parked near the church.

  “Molly Picker?” the woman called. “I want to help you.”

  Molly took a step backward, on the verge of fleeing.

  “Come here. I can take you to a warm place. A safe place. Won’t you get in the van?”

  Molly shook her head. Slowly she backed away, her attention focused so completely on the woman that she didn’t hear the footsteps closing in behind her.

  A hand clapped over her mouth, muffling her scream, yanking her head back with such force her neck felt as if it would snap. She smelled him, then—Romy, his aftershave gaggingly sweet.

  “Guess who, Molly Wolly?” he murmured. “I been chasing after you all fucking afternoon.”

  Squirming, fighting, she was dragged across the street. The van door slid open and another pair of hands hauled her inside and shoved her to the floor, where her wrists and ankles were quickly bound with tape.

  The van lurched forward, screeching away from the curb. As they passed under a streetlight, Molly caught a glimpse of the woman sitting a few feet away—a small woman with quick eyes and short dark hair. She lay her hand on Molly’s swollen abdomen and gave a soft sigh of satisfaction, her smile like the rictus of a corpse.

  “We should go back,” said Dvorak. “We’re not going to find her.”

  They had been driving in circles for an hour, had scanned every street in the neighborhood at least twice. Now they sat in her parked car, too weary to converse, their breath fogging the windows. Outside, the rain had finally stopped and puddles glistened in the road. I hope she’s safe, thought Toby. I hope she’s somewhere warm and dry.

  “She knows the streets,” said Dvorak. “She’ll know enough to find shelter.” He reached over and squeezed her hand. They studied each other in the dark, both of them tired, but neither one quite ready to end the night.

  He leaned toward her and had just touched his lips to hers when his pager went off.

  “That could be about Molly,” she said.

  He picked up her car phone. A moment later he hung up and sighed. “It’s not about Molly. But it does put an end to our evening.”

  “Is it back to work for you?”

  “Unfortunately. Could you drop me off? I need to get to an address right up this street.”

  “What about your car?”

  “I’ll catch a ride back in the morgue van.”

  She started the engine. They drove north, toward Chinatown, along streets wet and shimmering with the multicolored reflections of city lights.

  Dvorak said: “There—it’s up ahead.”

  She’d already spotted the flashing lights. Three Boston police cruisers were parked at haphazard angles by the curb outside a Chinese restaurant. A white morgue van with COMMONWEALTH OF MASSACHUSETTS stenciled on the side was backing into Knapp Street.

  She pulled to a stop behind one of the cruisers, and Dvorak stepped out.

  “If you hear any news about Molly, will you call me?” she said.

  “I will.” He gave her a smile, a wave, and walked toward the barrier of crime tape. A patrolman recognized him and waved him through.

  Toby reached for the gearshift but then left it in park and sat back for a moment, watching the crowd that had gathered on the street. Even at midnight, the ranks of the curious had assembled. There was a bizarre frivolity in the air, two men slapping palms, women laughing. Only the cops looked grim.

  Dvorak was standing just beyond the crime tape, conversing with a man in plainclothes. A detective. The man pointed toward an alley, then flipped through a notebook as he talked. Dvorak nodded, his gaze scanning the ground. Now the detective said something that made Dvorak glance up with a look of surprise. At that moment he seemed to notice that Toby was still parked. The detective stared as Dvorak abruptly walked away from him, ducked under the tape, and crossed back to Toby’s car.

  She rolled down the window. “I just wanted to watch for a moment,” she said. “I guess I’m as morbidly curious as the rest of these people. It’s a strange crowd.”

  “Yeah, it’s always a strange crowd.”

  “What happened in the alley?”

  He leaned into the window. Quietly he said, “They found a body. The ID says his name’s Romulus Bell.”

  She responded with a blank look.

  “He goes by the name of Romy,” said Dvorak. “It’s Molly Picker’s pimp.”

  The body was sprawled on the pavement, almost hidden behind a parked blue Taurus. The left arm was bent under the body, the right was flung out, as if pointing toward the restaurant at the end of the alley. An execution, thought Dvorak, eyeing the bullet’s entry wound in the corpse’s right temple.

  “No witnesses,” said Detective Scarpino. One of the older cops, close to retirement, he was famous for his bad hairpieces. Tonight, the pelt looked as if it had been slapped on backward in haste. “Body was spotted about eleven-thirty by a couple coming out of that Chinese restaurant. That’s their car.” Scarpino pointed to the blue Taurus. “The upstairs tenant came into the alley to toss out some trash around ten o’clock or so, didn’t see the body, so we’re guessing it happened after ten. ID was in the victim’s wallet. One of the patrolmen recognized the name. He’d talked to the victim yesterday, when he asked him about that girl you were looking for.”

  “Bell was seen at Boston City Hospital around nine o’clock tonight.”

  “Who saw him there?”

  “The girl, Molly Picker. He came into her hospital room.” Dvorak pulled on a pair of latex gloves and bent down for a closer look at the corpse. The victim was in his early thirties, a slim man with straight black hair pomaded into an Elvis helmet. His skin was still warm; the arm that lay stretched out was tanned and muscular.

  “If you’ll excuse me for saying so, Doc, it just doesn’t look right.”

  “What doesn’t?”

  “You driving around with that doctor.”

  Dvorak straightened and turned to face Scarpino. “Excuse me?”

&nbs
p; “She’s under active investigation. The word I hear is, her mother’s not going to make it.”

  “What else have you heard?”

  Scarpino paused, glancing up the alley at the crowd. “That there’s new evidence being developed. Alpren’s guys are checking pharmacies around town. He’s chasing something solid. If the mother dies, it goes to Homicide, and that makes this look real awkward. You and her, driving up to a crime scene together.”

  Dvorak stripped off his gloves, suddenly furious at Scarpino. The hours he’d just spent with Toby Harper made him doubt she was capable of violence, much less violence against her own mother.

  “Shit, there are reporters standing right over there,” said Scarpino. “They all recognize you. And soon they’ll know Dr. Harper’s face as well. They’ll remember seeing you two together and pow! Fucking front page.”

  He’s right, thought Dvorak. Which made him only angrier.

  “It just doesn’t look right,” Scarpino said, emphasizing every word.

  “She hasn’t been charged with a crime.”

  “Not yet. You talk to Alpren.”

  “Look, can we focus on this case?”

  “Yeah, sure.” Scarpino threw a disgusted look at the corpse of Romulus Bell. “I just thought I’d pass on a little advice, Doc. Guy like you doesn’t need that kind of trouble. A woman who beats up on her own mother—”

  “Scarpino, do me a favor.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Mind your own fucking business.”

  Toby slept in Ellen’s bed that night. After driving home from that garish scene in Chinatown, she’d walked into her house and felt she was entering an airless, silent chamber. She felt walled away. Buried.

  In her own bedroom, she turned on the radio to a late-night classical station, playing it loudly enough to hear even in the shower. She desperately needed music, voices—anything.

  By the time she came out of the bathroom, drying her wet hair with a towel, the music had sputtered to static. She turned it off. In the abrupt silence, she felt Ellen’s absence as acutely as a physical pain.

  She went down the hall, to her mother’s room.