“Hello, Dan.”
Urban was shocked. “What? You!” He tried to put the encounter out of his mind. There was too much at stake here. He barely felt the sensation of a prick on his left thigh.
The adulation continued and was exhilarating, but he needed to push through the crowd and talk to the mayor. What was his impression? How would the council vote on the proposal? He couldn’t seem to move through the well-wishers and his head began to feel numb. A wave of nausea welled up in his chest. He felt his knees buckle. He hit the floor. Faces peered down at him, filling his blurred vision.
The voices changed abruptly to alarm.
“Heart attack?”
“Someone! Call for help!”
“His lips are blue!”
“My God! He’s foaming at the—”
And the voices faded to nothing.
~ * ~
The well attended hearing had afforded few empty seats. Eddie found a place to stand along the wall, but near the dais. Joey’s dad finished his talk to exuberant applause, and immediately stepped down to accept congratulations from those in the front row and others from the dais. Perhaps a dozen people crowded around him.
Eddie looked at his watch. He had the 2 to 10 shift today. Better get going. Tonight, he’d surprise Marly with the marriage license.
He began to make his way to the rear of the hall, but not before a commotion broke out near the dais. Someone had apparently fallen to the floor. It was impossible to see much with the people crowded around the individual. Then someone shouted, “Call nine-one-one!”
Eddie saw a few people reach for cell phones then noticed Dr. Campbell nearby. “Dr. Campbell!” he called, catching the man’s eye. “He’s a doctor! Dr. Campbell!”
Campbell reacted, pushing people aside to get to the victim. “I’m a doctor! Give me some room!”
Respectfully, would-be helpers and the curious parted, allowing Eddie to see the injured person. Joey’s dad! He watched as Campbell seemed to be checking the man’s vital signs, then turn the victim on his side. A foamy mucus spilled from his parted lips. He looked awful.
“Get an ambulance here, and now!” Campbell called. “And clear the area, please. Give the man some room to breathe.”
Eddie complied. There was nothing he could do. He left for work.
Thirty-seven
As it happened, the arrest team didn’t wait long at Urban’s house. Patrol cars, their lights on and flashing, lined the circular driveway. With a constable, Andy approached the front door and rang. Urban’s housekeeper answered the door. Andy got her name, then explained the presence of the police at her door. Behind the woman who identified herself as Sophia Pearl, a wide-eyed boy stood watching, then darted away.
“The constable and I will wait inside for Mr. Urban’s return from the Civic Centre,” Andy instructed her. “Please don’t attempt to contact him before then.”
Mrs. Pearl assured Andy she was not inclined to do any such thing. “I have no idea how long he’ll be,” the older woman said. “He might stay in town to have lunch if his presentation goes well.”
Andy looked at the time. Almost noon. It was Roberts’ idea to wait. So be it. She found a place for the two of them in the living room overlooking the flashing lights in the front yard.
From the corner of her eye, she saw the boy peeking around the doorway.
“Hi!” the constable called to him. “I’m Jerry. What’s your name?”
His cheery greeting was successful in drawing the boy’s entire form into view, but he did not come closer.
“It’s Joey, isn’t it?” Andy said.
He nodded his head, just slightly.
“I’m a friend of Marly’s.”
He grinned. “Marly loves Eddie!”
Andy and Jerry the constable laughed at that. Joey beamed, disappeared and returned with a book, showing it to both officers. Horizons in Beginning Algebra.
“N…not mine. Eddie’s.”
“Did he give you that?” Andy asked.
Another bob of the head. “Finished it. Give it back.” He offered it to Andy.
Andy took the book and thumbed through it. Beginning or not, toward the end of the text, the subject matter was formidable: quadratic equations, binomial theorem. Gads! She’d forgotten how to do this stuff.
“Have you read this?”
“Finished. Th…is is Eddie’s.
“Sure. If I see Marly or Eddie, I’ll return it.”
The constable’s radio crackled. He listened for a good thirty seconds before saying, “Somethings happened to Urban!”
~ * ~
“He’s alive,” the ER doctor said, “but just barely. We’ve got him stabilized for now.”
Terry and Andy had arrived at the hospital to find Joe Riccia already there.
“What’s the diagnosis?” Riccia said.
“We took blood samples. Haven’t got them back, but I’ve seen too many opioid overdoses not to recognize this one.”
“You sure?” Terry said.
The doctor held out fingers and enumerated, “Respiratory arrest, nervous system shutdown, lack of muscle control, frothy spittle, blue lips…he had ‘em all.”
Wait!” Andy interrupted. “I understand he’d just given a forty-five-minute presentation in front of a roomful of onlookers. How can that be?”
“Good question,” the doctor said. “Unless he popped a pill—something really strong—right after his presentation, it would be impossible to have a reaction that suddenly.” His name was paged, and he hurried off.
“Foul play?” Terry mused.
Riccia polished his glasses with an immaculate handkerchief he drew from his inside coat pocket. “The proceedings of the city council are taped. If someone slipped him a mickey, we’d see it.”
Terry said, “Christ! One of our council members? Or the mayor?”
Andy laughed. “I can see one of them killing another member, but not—”
“Still,” Riccia continued, “I think we ought to run the tape.”
Andy said, “There’s nothing to do here until Urban comes around. Is there a guard on his door?”
“Yes, but he’s not going anywhere in his condition,” Riccia said.
“I wasn’t concerned with that as much as someone who might have drugged him coming back to finish the job.”
Terry made a move for the ER exit. “Let’s take a look at Giuseppe’s tapes.”
~ * ~
Social worker Margaret Bryant and a lady from the Children’s Aid Society were diligent in recognizing Mrs. Pearl was not equipped, nor did she desire, to assume the full-time care of Dale Urban’s child.
Sophia Pearl had a suitcase packed for the boy five minutes after receiving a call from Bryant. Joey was told his father was ill, and he needed to stay somewhere else for a while.
“Yyy…yeah! With Eddie ‘n Marly!”
The two women made no comment, but bundled Joey, his car collection, and his suitcase into their van and were off.
The Community Foster Care home off Huron St. just south of Steelton could be any other 85-year-old house in the neighborhood, save for its multi-car parking lot in the side lot that gave away the institutional nature of the place.
“Th…is isn’t Eddie’s house!” Joey said. He clutched at his car collection in its plastic carrying case.
“Wait and see, Joey You’ll love this place.”
“I don’t like it! It’s brown!”
“You don’t know until you see your room.”
“I-don’t-like-it!”
Reluctantly, Joey, flanked by the two women, trudged up the steps to the front door of the old building. The door opened unbidden. A cheerful-looking matron said, “Hello, young man! Welcome home!”
Joey stepped inside and froze. “It s…tinks here! Wh…ere’s Eddie? I wanna go!” He turned to leave, and Mrs. Bryant caught him.
“No!” Joey wrenched free, but the woman from the house got him by the shirt.
“Jo
ey, this is your—”
“No-no-no-no-no! Eddie ‘n Marly!”
All three women had him pinioned. He continued to scream. “Ba…ad smell, bad house!”
“Wayne!” the matron called. From somewhere in the rear a man in his late twenties or early thirties emerged. “Help us here!”
“What’s the problem, chum?” The man, dressed in chinos, running shoes and white tee knelt and held Joey gently by the shoulders, but the boy was inconsolable.
After a few minutes they gave up trying. Joey was taken to an attractive, newly decorated room, and told to stay there while they found something for him to eat. The tantrum continued. He began slamming the closet door chanting a sing-song nonsense syllable interspersed with “Bad smell” and “Want Eddie! Want Marly!”
He was still storming fifteen minutes later when Wayne, a full-time children’s social worker returned with a sandwich and milk.
The milk was enough to calm him somewhat. Twenty minutes of screaming can give anyone a thirst, but the sandwich threw him. It was whole wheat bread cut diagonally in half. The resulting sharp corners revolted him, and he said, “I hate it!” which kicked off another rant.
Wayne said, “Okay, chum. I think I know what your problem is.” He picked up the sandwich and left, quietly closing the door.
~ * ~
Marly had been successful in getting shifts at the diner in order to coincide with Eddie’s schedule. They were both at home when the call came in.
“It’s Dr. Campbell,” Eddie said, holding the landline receiver. “Wants to talk to you.”
She put down the textbook for her night class, saving the page. “Dr. Campbell?”
“Marly. I’m glad you’re there. Something has come up.”
She listened while he described an urgent call he’d received from Mrs. Bryant of Social Services. Joey had been removed from the Urban home to a temporary foster facility in the city. Apparently, things had gone badly. He gave her as much detail as he knew.
“Wait. I’ve got to tell Eddie.” She repeated what she’d heard, and Eddie was predictably upset.
Campbell wasn’t finished. “Marly, Joey needs a stable, loving home right now. I need to speak frankly. You and Eddie could provide Joey the kind of love he needs, but you aren’t in a position to do so. I know I’ve said this before, but no judge will find your present relationship stable enough, nor is your financial situation. I’m repeating this because I feel you’d foster him if you could.”
“Yeah, I would. I think Eddie would, too.”
“So, here’s why I asked to talk to you. I’d like your permission to ask your mom and step-dad if they’d be interested in fostering Joey until you and Eddie get a better footing. It could be as short as a year, maybe two.”
Although she and Eddie hadn’t discussed it, she had had thoughts about what it might be like to have Joey around permanently. She’d concluded essentially what Dr. Campbell had said. “Let me talk this over with Eddie, okay?”
“Sure. The thing is, though, Joey is very unhappy right now. You know how certain odors and other circumstances set him off. I sure he won’t be able to stay where he is, and his father will likely not be getting him back.”
They ended the call. Marly saw Eddie waiting impatiently with hands thrust in his pockets.
“You’re not going to believe this!”
Thirty-eight
The bank of monitors gave a view of every entrance. These were dedicated monitors, while some could be switched from one room in the Civic Centre to another. A forty-eight-hour loop was run on the closed-circuit TV in every room of the building.
Terry, Riccia and Andy watched, for the second time, the footage of the last ten minutes of Urban’s presentation through his collapse on the floor in front of the dais and arrival of the paramedics.
There was nothing to suggest he had ingested anything at all, certainly nothing toxic. Urban had seemed coherent in his remarks and even so for the first minute or so accepting congratulations. What caused him to fall?
Something, someone, in the gaggle of people around him was the only possible explanation, but they could see nothing that may have caused such a precipitous collapse. They gave up on finding anything on the tapes.
~ * ~
Joe Riccia had a need to return to Sault PD headquarters. Terry had picked him up in his Buick, meeting Andy at the Civic Centre. Andy opted to return in her own car to the hospital to check on the wellbeing of Dale Urban/Daniel Champion. She was told his condition was still classified as “grave.”
“Have they determined a cause for the seizure?” she asked the nurse at the desk.
“I believe so,” she said. “Let me get someone to fill you in.”
While she waited, Andy retrieved her cell from her bag and did something she’d been meaning to do since reading the file on the events at the University of Alberta. The name Kevin Campbell came as a shock at first, but it occurred to her Campbell was a common name, especially in Canada. She’d done a cursory check of the online phone book for most Canadian cities and found that Kevin Campbells were represented in all of them.
There was another place to look, and she searched the faculty profiles for Laurentian University Faculty of Medicine.
Dr. Kevin G. Campbell’s profile listed him as Professor of Public Health and Preventative Medicine, citing his medical degree from the University of Alberta!
The citation hung there on her cell phone screen, daring her to deny it. The most stunning thing was how blindsided she had been. How could this charming, apparently giving person be the same Kevin Campbell who got away with selling stolen drugs while an intern?
She felt stupid; her fault, not his.
“Detective?” A man in white lab coat and hospital ID stood in front of her chair in the hall. “I’m Gene Davis from the lab. Here’s a copy of his bloods.”
Andy was still in a funk. “Summarize them, will you?”
“Sure. Massive dose of opioid. Almost definitely fentanyl.”
“How was it ingested?”
“Ingested? He was poked with a syringe. A nurse found the prick mark in his thigh.”
Of course! “Tell me, how long would it take for him to be affected after the injection.”
“Maybe ten, twenty seconds.”
She reached for her bag, thanked the man and almost ran for the car park and her Jeep.
~ * ~
Marly was surprised to see her mother’s name on the display of her phone. She’d given her cell phone number and added her mother’s to her own contacts.
“Mom. Hello!”
“That nice Doctor Campbell called me. We talked for a long time. I didn’t make a commitment, but I’m driving back to the Sault with Tim. I’d like to spend a day or two with young Joey before making a decision about being a temporary foster for the boy.”
“With Tim!” Marly felt a tinge of excitement mixed with guilt.
“Yes. I think Tim, more than anyone, will assess our ability to help.”
They ended the call with Marly wondering how she would be with Tim after all those years. Events were coming at her rapidly. She hoped she could handle them.
~ * ~
It was after five and Andy hoped the same security staff was on duty at the Civic Centre. That would save a lot of explaining. It was a relief to see the same two people in place at the monitors.
“I’d like one last look at today’s footage of this morning’s presentation, if you don’t mind.”
They didn’t. “This job’s only bearable when something’s actually happening,” the female guard said. “Take your time.”
Now that she thought she knew who she was looking for, she asked to see footage for the entrances.
“All of them?”
“The ones where the public would enter.”
Three reels were taken from active duty and replaced with clean tapes. “This one is the main door. The other two doors are more rarely used, but access is allowed.”
; “Start with the main door an hour before the presentation.”
The tape ran at 2X speed, slow enough to recognize faces, but allowing for time to elapse faster. It wasn’t long before Andy saw a familiar face; Eddie Hoyne! Is he involved? He was wearing a kelly-green sweater and denims. Why would he want to kill Urban? Andy knew he’d had contact with Savos and had visited Urban’s house; probably had access to opioids.
But his hadn’t been the face she sought and she continued watching the tape while she pondered Eddie’s presence there that morning. From a tape of a less frequently used entrance, there it was!
“Slow it down to real time, please.”
Campbell was dressed in a business suit, dark brown, barely distinguishable from others entering the building. But there was no doubt it was Campbell at the Centre, for one reason or another.
“Let me see the scene at the dais one last time.”
Yet another iteration of Urban stepping off the dais into the crowd, followed by the tsunami of well-wishers. Andy concentrated on the seconds immediately after Urban stepped into that crowd, remembering the lab guy’s words. Maybe ten, twenty seconds after the injection.
This time, after seeing Eddie Hoyne on the entrance camera, she noticed him at the corner of the dais in his distinctive sweater, several feet from Urban where the crowd continued to increase.
Yes, there was someone near Urban who could be Campbell, but his face was hidden. Then that person turned and walked away from the camera. He had hair that could be Campbell’s, but she wasn’t positive.
Just as the lab man said, Urban fell after taking a step or two back toward the dais. Then she saw something odd. Eddie was frantically waving his hands in the air. The man that looked like Campbell was returning, head down, to the distressed Dale Urban. He was pushing through the crowd. It looked like he was ministering to the downed man. They’d seen this before but had not associated the activity as being anything but normal.
“Hold these, please. They’re evidence in a possible murder.”
Steel Town Page 18
