I hung around the bakery, idly reading the reports of economic recession and human depravity until eleven o’clock, then headed over to St. Teresa’s to pick up Tommy. Mass was letting out when I got there, so I pulled into the driveway behind the church and slipped into the undercroft where Tommy spent the service “helping” Mrs. Polanski in the childcare room. I figured I’d slip out with him and avoid uncomfortable conversations with the faithful, but he insisted on finding our mother to show her a caterpillar he’d made out of an egg carton.
In the course of looking for her, we ran across Father Griesmaier, who took the chance to slyly mention that it was good to see me at church but it was too bad he hadn’t seen me in the pews. He was in charge of all the religious mumbo jumbo, but I liked him anyway. A pudgy fellow with an Austrian accent, Father Griesmaier didn’t have a mean bone in his body. He and his congregation looked after my mother and my brother, so I was deeply appreciative of their works, if not their faith. I gave him my best sheepish smile and promised that once things settled down at the business, I’d have more time for spiritual matters. He raised a dubious eyebrow. I managed to escape when Tommy pulled me toward our mother on the other side of the entryway.
“Mom, look at my caterpillar,” Tommy announced, shoving the craft project toward her.
“That’s wonderful, Tommy. Say, I’ll bet Mrs. Nagy would love to see it. Why don’t you show it to her?” Mrs. Nagy’s son, Karsa, went to the adult daycare that looked after Tommy. The two of them were great pals. Karsa had eaten some rat poison when he was a toddler, and he’d not been quite right ever since. He’d been in the hospital the last couple of weeks—a regular happening in his life—and Tommy had missed him. So Tommy was delighted to share his creation with Mrs. Nagy, knowing that she’d tell Karsa all about it.
“Riley,” said my mother, taking me aside. “What happened yesterday at the park?”
“Nothing much. Just a little tussle with some bullies.”
“Tommy said you hit them and made one of them bleed. He couldn’t stop talking about it this morning at breakfast.”
“It was no big deal. A few punks were hassling Tommy and I stepped in.”
“By beating them up?”
“Things got a little rough when they wouldn’t leave. Nobody got hurt enough to worry about. You know how Tommy can exaggerate when he’s excited.”
“You’re a good big brother, Riley. But he’s so vulnerable. Please be careful with him, okay?”
“You know I will. Are you still on for lunch with the ladies?” I asked, hoping to change the conversation. “I have a plan for Tommy and me.” She sighed and clenched her woolen coat. My mother was cold even on what passed for a warm day in San Francisco. “Come on now,” I reassured her, “I’ll stick close to Tommy.” I took her coat and helped her into it. “We’re just going to grab some lunch and then take in a free concert at Golden Gate Park.”
“You’ll eat something decent and have him home by midafternoon? With all the excitement, he’ll do best with a nap.”
I assured her that everything would be fine, and she left with her group of friends, who were busy critiquing Father Griesmaier’s sermon and chattering about church politics.
At the park, Tommy and I grabbed some hot dogs with everything from a stand run by a cheery old man with a thick German accent, who seemed to think there was nothing better on earth than layering sauerkraut, pickle relish, onions, mustard, and ketchup on a bun. I gave Tommy an apple from my coat pocket to go with his hot dog, so that he had something of a decent lunch.
The concert was in the monumental amphitheater at the end of the mall between the art and science museums. We shared a bench under one of the trees near the orchestra. I couldn’t sustain my dark mood. The sky was a bleached blue. The sparrows worked the crowd for crumbs. A ship’s horn moaned in the distance. Even the music was a pleasant surprise. I’d read in the paper that they were going to play some of Philip Glass’s minimalist compositions, so I didn’t have high hopes. It was discordant, but not as bad as I’d expected. Tommy loved the repetitions, nodding and rocking like he was entranced. Edo de Waart conducted the ensemble, which made sense given his proclivity for contemporary music.
My mother could usually entice my father to attend the open-air concerts at Golden Gate Park. But after sitting and grumbling through a couple of performances conducted by Seiji Ozawa, my father refused to attend anything involving de Waart’s Japanese predecessor. Nor would he walk through the park’s Japanese Tea Gardens with her after the concert. He’d sit resolutely but patiently on a bench and read the paper or have a cigarette while she strolled through the gardens with Tommy.
After the concert Tommy and I meandered through the tea gardens behind the amphitheater. His lurching gait was less pronounced when he walked slowly, and he drew less attention from gawkers. Out of respect for my father, I had avoided the gardens for a year or so, but Tommy was so soothed by the sculpted plantings, tumbling waterfalls, and tranquil ponds that I ended up taking him regularly. I bought him some fish food, and he knelt down and slowly tossed one piece at a time into the water, watching the enormous white, gold, and calico koi rise to the surface.
I sat on a nearby bench, closed my eyes, listened for the plunking and soft splashing of Tommy’s fish feeding, and recalled my father’s explanation for why he refused to enter the tea gardens: “We Americans forgive too easily and forget too quickly.” It wasn’t that he hated the Japanese people, but he couldn’t get past the things he’d seen during the war. He believed that people should be held responsible for their acts. The Japanese could start over, but only if they paid for what they’d done. It stuck in his craw that the Japanese imperial family avoided prosecution in the war crimes trials. The worst were executed, but the royalty was spared. And for my father, sometimes the dues that must be paid were death. He understood the samurai’s view that it was better to die with honor than to live with shame—and he thought the Japanese should have lived up to their own ideal.
After all the years under English rule, an Irishman could appreciate that a man dying on his feet was preferable to living on his knees. And after all the killing he’d witnessed, he didn’t find anything inherently bad about dying, only about dying badly. When I was under siege after killing Jamal, my father told me that he didn’t see any difference between the death penalty on the streets or in the courts—as long as the killing was just. Cops had to make their judgments with less time to deliberate. “Why,” he asked, “would I oppose capital punishment, when a man dying for his crime might be the only thing the fellow got right in his life? Don’t take away a man’s last chance to face responsibility.”
I opened my eyes and watched Tommy throwing the last kibbles to the fish. He looked up and I gestured for him to join me on the path. The gravel crunched under my feet and his gait added a syncopated rhythm as we headed to the pagoda at the exit. I drove him back to my mother’s house and spent the afternoon at the shop going over inventory and ordering supplies. I figured this could be a long week without much chance to keep up at work, so I wanted to leave things in good shape for Carol and the guys. I stuck with it until dark, then went home to reheat and relish the leftover lamb stew that my mother had given me when I’d dropped off Tommy. I tossed the dirty dishes in the sink and walked out into the chill of the night. I started up my truck and headed across the Bay to see what I could learn about a dead kid.
CHAPTER 20
Highland Hospital looked like a hospital should. Imposing white buildings in Spanish architecture with ornate touches and red tile roofs, all laid out in a grand geometric design reminiscent of a military complex. The stairway leading up the hill was flanked by towering trees, and the landscaping was meticulously clipped, trimmed, and mowed. The bucolic spell was broken the moment I pushed through the doors into the emergency department, which was basically a very long hallway packed with machines on carts and patients on gurneys. I worked my way down the medical obstacle course to the admissio
ns desk.
Beth had her back to me, and it was still quite the backside. Her hair was tucked under her cap, but the starched whites couldn’t hide her figure. But then a nurse’s uniform had always done something for me. She sensed my movement and turned with the professional demeanor of someone expecting to be greeted with a spurting artery or a trembling junkie.
“Hey, stranger!” she said with evident relief, walking across to the counter and leaning over to give me a peck on the cheek.
“That’s some nice first aid. But I think I may be more injured than you’re assuming. Maybe we could sneak into one of the exam rooms for old times’ sake?”
“Riley, you’re incorrigible. Cute but hopeless.”
“Ah, the curse of the Irish,” I replied in my best brogue. “We’re always dreaming of that pot o’ gold,” I leered.
“Stop it, or you’ll get me in trouble.” Another nurse sitting at the admissions desk was grinning and pretending not to overhear us.
“With who?”
“I’ve met somebody. A resident in orthopedics. He’s handsome, kind, sensitive . . .”
“And rich?”
“Not yet. But he’s got his act together, which is more than you can say for most doctors.”
“Or cops. I’m happy for you. Really, you deserve a decent guy.” She smiled, came around the counter, and took my arm.
“Let’s go for a walk and catch up. Cindy, take me off the board for a half hour. Things are pretty slow.” We headed out to the hospital grounds. “So, what’s happening in your life these days?” she asked softly.
“Nothing by way of romance, if that’s what you mean. A waitress at O’Donnell’s and I were an item for a while, but she dropped me for a guy with a Corvette and a fat wallet.” I liked how she held onto my arm. There was no chance of picking up where we’d left off, but the touch of a woman is a fine thing in any case. Beth let her head fall against my shoulder, and we walked quietly for a ways. “So, how’s the job? I figured that with your seniority, you’d be able to get out of weekend duty.”
She laughed. “Ah, there’s value in knowing how the world of violence and perversion works. Sunday nights are usually a cushy shift. Most people manage to get themselves stabbed or shot earlier in the weekend.”
“You were always a smart cookie.” The night’s cool dampness wrapped itself around us, so I slipped off my coat and draped it over her shoulders.
“And you’ve always been a gentleman, at least in public.” She gave my arm a playful squeeze. “In the end you couldn’t give me what I needed, but you were never cruel.” We fell into quiet again, until the path divided, forcing a choice. “We should start heading back, and I’m assuming you came out here for something other than a lovely walk with an old girlfriend.” I’d been enjoying the warmth of Beth’s hands on my arm, but it was time to get to work.
“I’m looking into some matters for a friend.”
“You’re investigating a case without a license.”
“You say potayto, I say potahto. Here’s the deal. A little Mexican girl came into the ER on Friday night.”
“Yeah, I had two nurses out, so I had to work the asylum shift. I remember her.”
“Good, so I can cut to the chase. What killed her?”
Beth paused, and I knew she was violating confidentiality. But I also knew that she trusted me to never put a source at risk. “She came in with the classic symptoms of insecticide poisoning. Her mother reported vomiting and diarrhea, which she first thought was a bad case of the stomach flu. But when the girl started twitching, the mother understandably panicked. By the time we got to her, the poor thing was sweating and salivating excessively. Her pupils were constricted to pinpoints.”
“Sounds bad.”
“It was. While I was taking her history, her heartbeat became erratic and she started struggling to breathe. Given that she was Hispanic, the doctor figured this was a classic case of organophosphate intoxication.”
“How so?”
“Farm workers’ kids come into contact with their parents’ contaminated clothing. We don’t usually see such acute symptoms, but children are much more susceptible than adults due to their small bodies.” Beth had begun to sound like a nursing school professor, which quashed any lingering sense of romance. Just as well.
“There’s an antidote, right? At least that’s what they tell us in the pesticide applicator’s licensing course.”
“Sure, but her mother insisted that the girl hadn’t been in contact with clothing or anything else from a farm. Her husband is a custodian, not a picker. So we didn’t administer atropine until we had ruled out other poisons. If you give atropine to a person who’s not suffering from one of the nerve toxins, the cure can be deadly.” We’d reached the double glass doors into the emergency department. She let go of my arm and slipped my coat off her shoulders.
“But you figure it was a neurotoxin?”
“I suspect so, but there’re a lot of chemicals out there. And some infections can cause symptoms like hers.”
“So why figure she was poisoned?”
“That’s where things pointed. She started having seizures and her vital signs were crashing, so the doctor gave her a dose of atropine. Her heart rate responded and she seemed to be improving for a few minutes. But then she stopped breathing. We bagged her and gave her another dose, but it was too late.”
“I hate that this is why I came to see you. But thanks for helping me out.”
“It’s like when we were together, Riley. By the time we shared our screwed-up days, there was never a chance to talk about us.” She kissed me on the cheek and plunged into the glare of the fluorescent lights and white walls. I put on my coat and savored her lingering warmth.
Across the street and down a block, I found Emiliano’s Bar & Grill. I didn’t know the place, but there were a handful of patrons that looked like a mix of off-duty hospital staff and locals. I ordered a Jameson, stared at the rows of liquor lined up against a mirror behind the bar, and tried to make sense of what Beth had told me.
I imagined that the struggle to save Marissa had been like what the doctors and nurses had done for Tommy years earlier. There’s a price we pay for having poisons in the world, just like there’s a cost to bullets and bombs. As for pesticides, unless we want to feed our crops to cutworms and cede our homes to cockroaches, accidents will be a part of life. But how did Marissa come across a deadly chemical? The timeframe suggested that she’d been poisoned while in the Odums’ house. But given Paul Odum’s sensitivity, they never would’ve tolerated having a pesticide around. Unless.
I threw back the rest of my drink and headed for the pay phone in the back. The bartender grunted that it was next to the men’s room. I didn’t need further directions. Even in the dimly lit interior, I could’ve found it by heading toward the bouquet of ammonia and industrial cleanser. I dialed Laurie Odum and she answered after a dozen rings.
“Hello?” she said groggily.
“It’s Riley. Sorry to wake you, but I need to ask you a question.”
“Now?”
“Yes, now. Did you finish doing Paul’s laundry?”
“No, it’s still in the basement by the washing machine. I did a load of sheets and towels today. I was going to take care of his things tomorrow. Riley, why are you calling in the middle of the night to ask about laundry?”
“I have an idea about what might’ve happened to Paul.”
“Oh God, what? Tell me.” Her voice was no longer gravelly but clear and demanding.
“I don’t know for sure. It’s still mostly speculation, and it won’t do either of us any good for me to share my half-baked theory. Just don’t wash Paul’s clothes.”
“Should I do anything with them?”
“No. Don’t touch them. I’ll be over tomorrow morning.”
“Okay.” Her voice was tired again.
I hung up and walked back to where I’d parked. On the way back to San Francisco, I turned KDFC on low, and a
program of Schubert’s piano sonatas provided a perfect background for churning my way through everything I knew. So far, I had a few dozen dead flies, a dead university professor, and a dead kid. None of which I could explain, all of which might be somehow linked—or not. As for the humans, their last minutes were not dissimilar. And the only connection was Paul Odum’s clothing. I doubted that he’d somehow contaminated his clothes with an organophosphate insecticide while at a professional meeting in a hotel. But perhaps some other toxin was involved. Like Beth said, poisonings are difficult to diagnose. I drifted from what I knew into the realm of imagination.
My theory left open the question of how a poison got onto Odum’s clothing. It might’ve happened while he was at the meeting, given that hotels use all sorts of pesticides, solvents, and cleaning solutions. However, he hadn’t exhibited any symptoms during the day, so it seemed more likely that the chemical was in his room. The hotel maids and Howard were possible sources, but they seemed like long shots in terms of an accident, given that they knew of Odum’s sensitivity. And as killers, they had no motive. Maybe Odum had finally gotten tired of being sick and poisoned himself to provide his wife with a nice insurance windfall, but that seemed unlikely given his enthusiasm for his work and the conference.
There was another possibility worth mulling. The only other person in Odum’s hotel room was Howard’s passionate lover, Sarah. However, I couldn’t come up with either a plausible motive or an accidental scenario involving her. Without more information, my speculations were going nowhere.
There was nothing more to do until morning. But I was wired from playing out the possibilities. I changed and swung by Marty’s Gym. A light was on, so I pounded on the door. Marty opened and I asked if I could work the heavy bag for a half hour or so. He shrugged, shifted an unlit cigar to the other side of his mouth, and said sure, as he was up late working on the books. He told me to have at it and shuffled to his office in the back of the warehouse. I knew the dull thud of leather on leather soothed the old codger, like Schubert’s sonatas did for me. I pounded the bag in the dim glow coming from the light in Marty’s office mixed with the streetlight that filtered through the grimy, grate-covered windows. Once I was dripping and panting, I headed back up the hill to my house. The night’s chill had just worked its way through my sweatshirt by the time I got to my porch.
Poisoned Justice Page 12