Protectors

by Kris Nelscott

  Besides, that interaction with Kelly MacGivers’ mother was just plain odd. Who was rude to a hospital billing department that had an incorrect address?

  Eagle replayed the conversation in her mind. Her mother had said she would give the phone number to Kelly. Not take the number down and leave a message.

  That implied that Kelly wasn’t in the house.

  Eagle would talk to Val and Pammy, get a little perspective, and then come back, make a few more phone calls, see what she could turn up.

  Because right now, except for the strange case of Kelly MacGivers, Eagle was coming up with a whole lot of nothing.

  Of course, she wasn’t even halfway done with her list of hospitals. And then she still had the clinics and morgues.

  Whoever thought investigative work was glamorous, thought wrong. It was a lot of digging. Rather like science classes in college. Repetition, leading to the same conclusions others might draw.

  She grabbed a cloth bag, stuffed the papers inside, and found her wallet. She grabbed that as well, then went into the bathroom to check her appearance.

  She didn’t look like a woman who had gotten only few hours of sleep. She looked like a woman who never slept.

  She hoped Val and Pammy had come up with something. Because at the moment, Eagle was regretting volunteering for hospital duty.

  There had to be a better way to find the woman who got thrown into the truck.

  Eagle just didn’t know what, exactly, that better way was.

  37

  Pammy

  Pammy watched the door more than she watched her students. Which, she knew, was not the way to run a class. Particularly an exercise class filled with beginners. Beginners injured themselves when they sneezed wrong. Pammy really needed to pay attention to make certain they were moving correctly.

  Instead, she was waiting for Eagle to arrive—even though she knew that Eagle never came in the front door.

  The class remained full, which surprised her. Pammy usually lost a few after the first day, when the students realized they would have to work hard.

  Pammy recited her patter, moving the students from stretches to sit-ups (holding each other’s feet, keeping their backs straight) to push-ups to jumping rope. Some of the students from Jill’s earlier class watched for a few minutes, no doubt remembering when they had had this class, and then, one by one, they filtered out of the gym.

  Jill watched too. She hadn’t said anything about the anger she had displayed the day before. She had just shown up early, as if she and Pammy had decided on it, and reminded Pammy that there was a class to teach. Her presence allowed Pammy to go to the admissions office and have that deeply disturbing conversation.

  Pammy had thought about the conversation the entire way back, feeling unsettled. Not because of the missing students. That should have bothered her more than it did. But because of Olive, blaming her for that poor girl’s death. As if training women to defend themselves put them in harm’s way.

  As if training women to be strong was a bad thing.

  Pammy had heard those kinds of disparaging remarks from the day she proposed the gym. She had heard that from men, sometimes, and other women, often. She usually wrote it off, thinking it was fear of change. But sometimes—such as with this death and the skin under the nails—those remarks echoed for her.

  There was no way to know whether or not that girl who died had ever been to the gym, no way to know—at least at the moment—whether or not she had died defending herself. No way to know who she was either.

  And those thoughts were what had preoccupied Pammy so thoroughly that she hadn’t heard Val ask a question before class started. Pammy had looked right through Val and then realized the look had startled Val.

  Instead of reassuring Val, like she normally would have, Pammy had blown her off. But Pammy really didn’t want to talk about that meeting in the admissions office more than once. She was half embarrassed by it, and she wasn’t entirely sure why.

  Finally, she looked over the rest of the gym and saw Eagle standing near the locker room door, arms crossed. From this distance, Eagle looked frail. Pammy always thought of her as strong and solid, but she wasn’t a large woman. She was as tall as Pammy, but thinner than Pammy had realized.

  Had Eagle lost weight? Or had she always been that thin and Pammy just hadn’t noticed?

  She made herself look away from Eagle. The women in the class were red-faced and sweat-covered. Some of them were breathing hard, doubling over almost every time Pammy gave them a moment to rest.

  Pammy’s gaze met Jill’s. Pammy touched her left wrist. Jill looked at her ever-present watch, then held up her right hand, fingers splayed.

  Five minutes left.

  “Let’s cool down,” Pammy said to the class. Usually she had them do the cool down on their own, but she wanted this class over with.

  She led them in a few simple stretches. Eagle leaned her head against the wall beside the locker room, eyes closed as if she could sleep standing up. Jill walked behind the counter, which was a good plan, just in case people had questions when class was over.

  The final stretch was simple: hands over heads, palms pressed together. Then on a five-count, slowly separate the hands and bring the arms down until they were parallel with the shoulders. Hold that position for a ten-count, then on another five-count, bring the arms to the sides.

  The women were shaking as they did this. Pammy used to wonder how women got so out of shape until Opal reminded her that most girls never got into shape in the first place. All of this was brand new.

  “Great work, everyone!” Pammy made herself sound enthusiastic and pleased, although if she had to tell someone what the class had done, she wouldn’t have been able to do it. “Thank you! I hope to see you all tomorrow!”

  And then she walked away from the front of the class, even though it was clear some of the students wanted to buttonhole her with questions. The questions after this class were usually of a type she didn’t want to answer: How am I doing? Should I be exercising this heavily at my age? Am I going to do permanent damage to my arm/hip/leg/back? Are you sure average women can do this? Because it seems hard…

  Pammy smiled dismissively as she moved around the students. She tried not to make eye contact with anyone except Val. Val was talking to Joan, smiling easily. Marilyn Bakewell had joined them, and Val was making introductions.

  Pammy didn’t stick around. She walked to Eagle’s side.

  Pammy touched Eagle’s shoulder. Eagle started, then blinked. She really had fallen asleep standing up.

  Her eyes were sunken into her face, her cheekbones hollow. She looked exhausted.

  “We gonna talk?” Eagle said.

  “Yes,” Pammy said. “Will my office do?”

  Eagle frowned, staring at Jill’s back. “If we don’t get interrupted too much.”

  “I think we’ll be all right,” Pammy said.

  At that moment, Val ended her conversation with Joan and Marilyn, and glanced over at Pammy. Pammy raised her hand, beckoned Val to come with them, and Val nodded.

  Then she turned back to the women she had been talking to, maybe saying her good-byes. Pammy hoped Val wasn’t saying more.

  “Hear anything?” Eagle asked.

  Pammy frowned. Hadn’t they just said they were going to talk in the office?

  Eagle raised her eyebrows, and Pammy suddenly realized Eagle was asking about the events of the night before.

  “I didn’t tell them to contact me,” Pammy said. “I hope they don’t, honestly.”

  Eagle nodded. “I’ll put it out of my mind then.”

  Pammy was a bit surprised it was still in Eagle’s mind. Eagle had always struck her as someone who could compartmentalize easily.

  Eagle pushed off the wall. “Let’s go.”

  Pammy was about to say they needed to wait for Val. But Val had nearly reached them. She was red-faced too, her skin covered with a layer of sweat.

  “Did you want to clea
n up first?” Pammy asked. “We’ll wait.”

  Val smiled. The smile softened her face. “Do I smell that bad?”

  Pammy felt a flush rise in her own face.

  “Kidding,” Val said. “I’m okay. Are we going to the kitchen? I can rinse my face there.”

  “My office,” Pammy said.

  “Then I will rinse off and change my shirt,” Val said. “I’ll meet you there.”

  She slipped behind them into the locker room, moving much more easily than she had the day before.

  She had either had some athletic training before or she had some natural ability. Pammy had seen that before with other students. The ones who either had experience or who had some ability recovered faster than the others.

  “Let’s wait in your office,” Eagle said. “I really don’t want to answer any questions about normal aches and pains.”

  Pammy doubted that this class would ask Eagle anything. They didn’t know she was the gym’s unofficial medic. Then she noted where Eagle was looking.

  Some of the women were talking to Jill, and Jill would send anyone Eagle’s way if they had questions about their health.

  Pammy followed Eagle to the office, grabbing an extra folding chair as they walked past the pile. Normally, Pammy kept one extra chair in her office, not two.

  She unlocked the door and they slipped inside. She turned on the light, handed the chair to Eagle, then went behind the desk, tidying some of the paperwork she had left lying around. Yesterday’s paper, with its exclamation-point filled headline about the moon walk, seemed like it had come from the distant past.

  She almost offered it to Eagle as a keepsake of the major historical event, then saw Eagle’s expression. Pammy folded the paper and tossed it into the trash.

  She took a deep breath, still feeling a little off-kilter.

  “Do you know anything about Val?” she asked quietly.

  “Why?” Eagle asked. “Did she do something wrong?”

  Pammy shook her head. “It’s just—”

  The door opened, and Val entered, accompanied by the scent of fresh soap. Her face had a fresh-scrubbed look. She seemed even younger than she had when Pammy met her.

  “Sorry that took so long,” she said.

  “It didn’t take long at all,” Eagle said, taking the folding chair near the wall. She left the comfortable chair for Val.

  Pammy frowned ever so slightly. She couldn’t remember Eagle being that considerate with someone who wasn’t a patient.

  Pammy decided to ignore it. She opened one of the drawers on her desk and removed a cardboard do-not-disturb sign she had taken from a Holiday Inn years ago.

  “Put this on the door, would you?” she asked Val. “And then lock it.”

  Val opened the door slightly, hung the sign on the knob, and pulled the door closed. Then she sat down in the chair, set her purse on her lap, and opened it, removing some folded papers.

  Eagle took some out of a cloth bag she was carrying.

  Pammy took the papers she had brought back from the admissions office and set them on her desk.

  “Looks like we’ve been busy,” Val said. Her mood was oddly upbeat. She seemed more relaxed than she had before. “Who wants to go first?”

  Pammy didn’t. She still hadn’t processed the conversation with Olive yet.

  “I don’t got much,” Eagle said. “I’ve been on the phone with hospital after hospital, seeing if any of these kids have shown up in the last six months. I haven’t called any morgues yet.”

  Somehow Pammy had expected Eagle to go directly to the hospitals. Hadn’t Eagle said that was what she was going to do?

  “Only one person showed up in my search so far,” Eagle said. “It’s a girl, named Kelly MacGivers. She was beaten within an inch of her life. She had rope burns on her wrists and ankles, and damage to the skin around her mouth, from tape, the admitting physician thought. That was in March.”

  Pammy slid the paperwork closer. Pammy knew Kelly MacGivers was on it because she and Eagle and Val had been working off the same list, but for some reason, that name was ringing a bell.

  “Here’s the strange thing, though,” Eagle said. “She went to San Francisco General with the injuries. Her parents signed all the paperwork. She was going to school here, and her parents live in Daly City. There are a half dozen hospitals that are closer to her parents’ home. And there are a lot of hospitals closer to here than SFGH.”

  “She had rope burns?” Val turned slightly in her chair to face Eagle. “Was she wrapped in a blanket?”

  Pammy looked at Val in surprise. Eagle frowned.

  “Why?” Eagle asked.

  “Because,” Val said. “I happened on some strange things—”

  “Talking with Darla Newsome’s roommate?” Pammy asked.

  “That was something else,” Val said. “Last night, I couldn’t sleep, so I called police departments….”

  Eagle raised her eyebrows and looked at Pammy, not trying to hide her shock. Pammy was frowning. She actually felt some disapproval rise, but she wasn’t exactly sure why.

  “…husband, Truman,” Val was saying. She had noticed the looks, but she didn’t sound defensive. “I didn’t say who I was, but I knew that the late night staff wasn’t as picky about protocol as the daytime staff. Anyway, I found some information about a one-ton, some women, and a murder.”

  Somehow she managed to say that flatly, even though the words were dramatic.

  “Recent murder?” Eagle asked.

  Val shook her head. “That was my first question. It wasn’t the woman you saw. This body was found on July 10. It was pushed off a truck on…”

  She pulled out some paper and looked at it. Pammy almost stood so that she could see something besides Val’s neat printing, which showed up like ghostly backwards letters through the thin legal paper.

  “…not on, exactly,” she corrected herself. “Between 61st and 62nd where they intersect with Dover.”

  “The boundary between North Oakland and Berkeley,” Pammy said, immediately understanding the problem.

  “I spoke to someone in North Oakland who said the body, which was pushed from this truck bed, landed on the Berkeley side. I have the names of the BPD detectives who, so far, haven’t investigated at all. They’re claiming that no one knows where she landed, so they don’t know whose jurisdiction it’s in.”

  Now, Val’s voice had some charge to it. Pammy’s back had stiffened. She understood that charge as well.

  “That’s stupid,” Eagle said.

  “Yeah,” Val said in a tone that lead Pammy to believe she’d seen that sort of thing before, and accepted it as a routine part of police work. “But here’s the thing. This poor girl, who is, at the moment, a Jane Doe, was pushed off the truck, wrapped in a blanket, her wrists and ankles bound, and a gag over her mouth. The cop I spoke to didn’t say exactly how she died, but he led me to believe she had suffocated.”

  “Ankles and wrists,” Eagle said. “And a truck. Was it an F-350?”

  “Don’t know,” Val said. “And we don’t have the police report, even if they did know. There’s some witness, but of course I couldn’t get that.”

  “I’m surprised you got that much,” Pammy said. And she was. She wouldn’t have known how to do that.

  Val shrugged. “I was in the squad room a lot. I observed. Cops are willing to help cops.”

  “But you’re not a cop,” Pammy said.

  “I’m not,” Val said. “And before you say anything, I do know that it’s illegal to pose as a police officer. I was very careful as to how I identified myself. If they ended up thinking I was a detective, that’s not my problem.”

  Eagle barked out a laugh. Pammy looked at her in surprise. When had she last heard Eagle laugh? Had she ever heard Eagle laugh?

  Eagle saw Pammy’s look and misinterpreted it. “I did my share of pretending last night too. The phone is nice and anonymous.”

  “And people are more trusting than they should
be,” Val said. “Even the police.”

  Pammy’s shoulders relaxed slightly. Val was helping. She wasn’t getting in the way. Pammy let out a small breath. She trusted people all the time. She had to go with her instincts here. Val was proving herself.

  “I tried to reach this Kelly MacGivers this morning,” Eagle said. “I got her mother, who put up a very effective roadblock, not that I blame her. But if we can reach her, maybe we can find out if she was in the same truck.”

  “Well, I think someone was,” Val said. “Because I also spoke to a very nice detective in Walnut Creek. He has been looking for a Ford F-350 for over a month. The driver had a screaming girl in the flatbed, wrapped in a blanket. He stopped at a gas station, and the attendant called the police. It turned into some kind of altercation, and I’m not exactly sure of the events, but it ended with the truck driver picking up this 200-pound gas station attendant, tossing him across the parking lot, covering his legs with gasoline, and threatening to light a match.”

  “Holy shit,” Eagle said.

  Pammy had put a hand on her chest without a recollection of doing so. “Is he all right?”

  “Yes,” Val said, “but there was a lot of clean-up. Ever since, this Walnut Creek detective has been searching for the F-350. He has a license plate, but when he ran it, he didn’t get anything.”

  Eagle started to reach for the paper, then clenched her fist and set it down. “Did you get that plate?”

  “I did,” Val said. “You want to compare it to yours?”

  “Yes,” Eagle said.

  Pammy slid some papers on her desk, her heart pounding. “I have it here somewhere.”

  “No need to look,” Eagle said. “I know it by heart.”

  Val slid a different piece of paper over to Eagle, and pointed at something near the top. Eagle shook her head slowly.

  “It’s off by one number,” she said. “Either mine’s off or his is off.”

  “He’s the police, and he called the DMV. They said it was a made-up license,” Val said. “He’s really dogged about this. He’s afraid for the girl.”

  “I get that,” Eagle said drily. “So his number is off, not mine.”