Finally, he was back. ‘If he had this number, I must have seen him here.’ This didn’t mean anything to Sarah, but he was going on. ‘Salvatore Russo? He’d be near sixty now, right?’
‘That was him.’
‘All right.’ Finer was obviously reading his notes. ‘He came into the public clinic on his own and was referred to me. I was doing primary care. Said he’d gotten lost twice in the last couple of months, just suddenly couldn’t figure out where he was. He was worried he might have AD.’
‘AD?’
‘Alzheimer’s. So anyway, let’s see, hold on.’ She waited and heard paper flipping. ‘Yeah, I scheduled him for blood chemistry and a thyroid panel, but he didn’t show. Then he had another episode — this was four months later — and we tried it again, the blood tests.’
‘Is that how you diagnose Alzheimer’s? Blood tests?’
‘No. First you eliminate other possible causes of dementia — third-stage syphilis, for example. There isn’t any diagnostic genetic test for AD. We’re talking a whole battery of this and that until they get to imaging, and even then the diagnosis, especially at the early stage, is uncertain.’
‘But you did diagnose Sal?’
He made sure, answering slowly. ‘No. He stopped coming. We never got to the MRI. He didn’t want to know for sure, maybe he got scared.’
‘Of knowing?’
‘Some of that, I’m sure. I don’t know, maybe I made some mistakes. I’ve got a note here — he wanted to know what would happen if we got to a diagnosis.’
‘What would happen?’
‘Well, I’m mandated to report to the DMV, for example. If somebody’s got advance dementia, you don’t want—’
‘No, I see that.’
‘Also, this was him, not me, but I’ve got it here where he said he didn’t want to get to be a burden on anybody. He’d kill himself before that happened.’
‘He said that?’.
‘Yeah. But then… you know, this is hard to deal with. He didn’t want to get any closer to it, especially if he thought it would be his duty or something to kill himself if he had it. He’d rather not know about it for sure.’
‘That makes sense,’ Evans said. She tried another tack. ‘So you didn’t prescribe anything for him?’
‘No. We hadn’t gotten anywhere, really.’
‘Do you remember him at all, personally?’
A pause, then a sigh. ‘These last couple of years, I often don’t remember my name. I’m on autopilot. Supposedly it’s going to make me a better doctor someday.’
Sarah felt for the man. ‘I won’t keep you much longer, Doctor. It wasn’t you who prescribed a DNR tag for him, then?’
‘Don’t resuscitate? No. Did he finally kill himself, if he had a DNR and cancer? I thought you said somebody killed him.’
‘We think so. We’re trying to make sure. Here’s the last question: you’re a doctor and you couldn’t diagnose Alzheimer’s only a couple of years ago. Could it have progressed far enough by now that he was somehow incompetent to live alone?’
Finer gave it some thought. ‘I can’t say for sure. It could. It varies. He could be going in and out of dementia with more frequency and still live a semi-normal life if he had help. Of course there’s no cure. It just keeps getting worse. You know,’ Finer concluded, ‘if he had the DNR, that’s a pretty good argument he wanted to die.’
‘I know,’ she replied. ‘We’re trying to figure it out. Thanks for your help, Doctor. I’ll let you get back to sleep.’
* * * * *
The Hardy family was having a renaissance. They’d all eaten dinner together — an unusual occurrence over the past few months. Supposedly, that had been due to their father’s work schedule, but today he’d put in nearly as many productive hours as he usually did. This time, though, he’d made it a point to come home when he finished. After they ate, they had sprawled with popcorn on the living-room floor, playing a marathon tournament of Chinese checkers.
When he’d gone to tuck them in for the last time, both kids put their arms around him, not wanting to let go. As he came out to the kitchen, his wife did the same thing. ‘They miss you all the time. This is what they need. Once in a while I do too.’
He held her. ‘I know. I’m going to try and keep doing this. Being around.’
‘It’s a concept,’ she said. She moved closer against him. ‘Were they asleep?’
‘Asleep enough. We close the door and they won’t hear a thing.’
* * * * *
Snuggled together, they were dozing to the news. At first Hardy didn’t know if he’d dreamed or heard the name Graham Russo, but Frannie nudged him. ‘Did you know about this?’
‘What?’
But it had only been the teaser. They had to endure four commercials before the news came back on. ‘While local police still won’t comment on the apparent assisted suicide of Sal Russo ten days ago, saying only that the investigation is continuing, in Sacramento today, the chairperson of the Hemlock Society — a right-to-die group — came forward and said that Sal Russo’s son, Graham, had spoken to her just minutes before he went to his father’s apartment. For more on that story, live in Sacramento, here’s…’
Hardy was sitting all the way forward. ‘Oh, Lord, give me a break.’
Barbara Brandt, looking every inch the lobbyist, confidently met the eye of the camera. ‘He was very emotional and upset, as anyone would be when it comes to the moment. I think he just wanted some assurance. It was natural.’
Off camera the reporter asked why Graham hadn’t admitted this himself.
Brandt, understanding yet slightly disappointed in the nature of people, shook her head. ‘We argued about it last weekend on the phone. This was heroic. The public has a right to know the truth. Sal and Graham Russo together had the courage to act, but Graham doesn’t want to embody the issue. Well, it’s too late for that now. I’m going public to let Graham know that he’s not alone. The laws against assisted suicide and euthanasia must be changed.’ She stared at the camera. ‘Whatever the consequences, Graham, you did the right thing.’
Hardy hit the mute button. ‘I don’t believe this.’
Frannie, too, had come awake. ‘What don’t you believe?’ she asked. ‘That she came forward with this or what she’s saying?’
‘I don’t know. Who is she? I never heard of her. Graham never mentioned her.’ Hardy was shaking his head. ‘But I’ll tell you one thing for sure. Whoever she is, she just screwed him.’
16
At eight forty-five, Sarah opened the door to her apartment, thinking she should get herself a cat or a hamster or a goldfish — something alive to greet her when she came home.
She had stopped in at the corner grocery downstairs and bought an apple and a TV dinner that she called ‘mean cuisine,’ and now she took off her jacket, unstrapped her holster and hung it on a kitchen chair, unwrapped the food and put it in the microwave, went into the bathroom to take a quick shower.
Fifteen minutes later she had eaten and gotten dressed again in civilian clothes — blue jeans, tennis shoes, a white fisherman’s sweater. She wasn’t planning to go out, but it was too early for pajamas and her robe.
She made the conscious decision not to pursue any thoughts on the Russo case tonight. Her workday was done. Dr Finer had been the end of it. Well, almost. After that discussion she’d sat at her desk, fingering her paper scraps, conjuring her own image of who Sal had been.
Carrying her afghan in from the bedroom, she got herself settled in her chair and spent most of another hour finishing a paperback about Kat Colorado going on tour with a country singer in Nashville, saving the woman’s life, of course, winning another one for the good guys.
Sarah liked these books about women private eyes, especially the quick-witted, smart-mouthed ones. She didn’t fancy herself like them, but it was fun to live in their shoes for the space of a book, although they always got so personally involved. That wasn’t like real police work.
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She wasn’t going to think about it.
She turned the television on to pick up the end of the Giants game. They had just come back in the bottom of the ninth and beaten the Dodgers. She thought she’d call her parents and rub it in a little. But they weren’t home. She left a message, came back to her chair in front of the TV, sat down heavily. Her parents were always going out nowadays, having fun.
Three of her girlfriends and her little brother, Jerry, in Concord — three answering machines and one she woke up.
Okay, she told herself, it was just one of those nights.
But — the walls closing in, the droning television her only companion, she decided she’d go out for a walk, grab a cup of decaf at one of the places over on Clement, that’s what she’d do. By then her mom and dad might be home and she could talk to them for a few minutes and then turn in.
She considered calling her partner; but no, she saw enough of Lanier, and socially he was not her idea of company. Besides, they would wind up talking about the case.
It was eating her up.
She felt an unseen pair of hands pushing down on her, holding her in the chair. She was not going to turn out like Sal Russo, she told herself. So what if she lived alone in an apartment not too dissimilar from his? What did that mean? Half the city — hell, half the people her age in cities all over the world — lived like this. Or worse, sometimes much worse. It didn’t necessarily lead anywhere.
She wasn’t anything like Sal. She wasn’t going to wind up where he had. She was a success. By thirty-two she’d reached the peak of her profession.
The walls again. She hadn’t gotten around to hanging any art. With her work she hadn’t had time. And look, there were a couple of posters after all — the Monterey Aquarium, a saguaro cactus in a desert somewhere that reminded her of her parents — but they were both unframed, sagging from their tacks in the faded drywall.
She got up and took the five-step walk into the kitchen. It was neat enough, unlike Sal’s. (‘See?’ she said to herself.) There were no dirty dishes piled anywhere. But the linoleum was peeling up in the corners. The table and chairs were thrift store, secondhand. Nice enough, but after thirty more years, she wondered what they’d look like, what they’d feel like, at that time to someone who was her age now.
But that was silly. Of course she’d move up, into something better. Now she was young and unattached. She didn’t need any more. But Graham — damn him, coming back into her consciousness like this! — Graham’s place wasn’t at all like this, was it? It was elegant and fine. And he, too, was young and unattached.
In the door between kitchen and living room she surveyed her own place objectively, as if it were a crime scene, as if something had happened to her here, tonight, now.
The afghan had been tossed off, and lay half on the ancient wing chair, half on the woven throw rug. Everything in sight was well used: the homemade brick-and-board bookshelves with their dog-eared paperbacks and law-enforcement journals, the cassette player, the lion’s-claw coffee table, pocked with rings from hot, cold, wet glasses placed directly on the wood.
The couch was frayed and worn, its once-bright red, gold, and green brocade now lackluster, nearly sepia. The three-bulb standing lamp behind the sofa threw almost no light; two bulbs needed to be replaced.
She was going out. All right. This was just a mood. If she didn’t like her apartment, she’d change it soon. It had never bothered her before. She wasn’t stuck with it forever. She’d just turn off the television…
‘… Graham Russo, who was arrested, then released, last week for assisting at the suicide of his father…’
* * * * *
He was not home. The house was as dark as it had been the night before.
She’d parked at the bottom of the street, across from a streetlight under a canopy of trees. Now she stood leaning against the hood of her car, looking north, back toward her apartment, trying not to think.
Edgewood dropped off in a cliff. From where she stood, she could look down a hundred feet or so into the backyards and onto the roofs of the multi-story buildings below her, on Parnassus. In one of the upper windows — close enough to see clearly — two men were in a bed together, naked.
The chill had come up again, a brisk breeze out of the west, although with her fisherman’s sweater, she wasn’t cold. Still, she tightened her arms around herself. A stair street — Farnsworth — fell off steeply to her right. In the wake of the chik-chik-chik of an owl flying overhead, she heard footsteps coming up the steps.
She’d left her apartment hurriedly, unarmed. Now she backed into the shadow of the canopy as the steps came up to her, paced and rhythmic, jogging.
Suddenly certain, she stepped out into the light as Graham got to the top of the steps. Seeing her, breathing hard, he stopped. His shoulders dropped and he shook his head as if she’d finally beaten him. Gathering another breath, he spread his hands, palms out. ‘Am I under arrest?’
The thought was so far from her mind that she laughed out loud. ‘What are you doing?’
It took a minute for him to figure out what she meant. ‘Trying to stay in shape. Running off some of this’ — he gestured ambiguously, took in another lungful of air — ’all this madness.‘ He was still panting. ’Those are some serious stairs. More than a hundred, I’d bet, but who’s counting?‘ Then, focusing back on her, ’So if I’m not under arrest… ?‘
She took a half step toward him. ‘I guess I’m finally off duty. I thought you might have some of that wine left.’
They walked uphill, in the middle of the street, in silence.
Inside, he turned on the indirect track lights and opened the curtains to the view. Downtown and the East Bay shimmered down below them. ‘I was going to take a shower,’ he said, indicating the tiny booth that was his bathroom. ‘There’s no room to change in there.’
She swiveled in the chair, grabbed one of the magazines. ‘I won’t look.’
When he got out of the shower, he opened a bottle of red and poured them both a glass. They moved to opposite ends of the low leather couch. Graham was back in his uniform — barefoot, baggy running shorts, a T-shirt. Sarah, tennis shoes and all, had her legs curled under her.
Though Barbara Brandt’s announcement that she’d counseled Graham in the minutes before he’d killed his father was the immediate catalyst that had gotten her out of her own apartment and up to here, Sarah felt no inclination to raise the subject. She’d told him she was off duty, and she was. Graham evidently hadn’t yet even heard about it; he’d been out jogging to the beach and back, over an hour. The phone, she noticed, was unplugged.
She had no idea where the words came from. ‘Your father painted,’ she began, out of the blue.
The comment seemed to require an adjustment to Graham’s mind-set. He shifted on the couch, averted his eyes. ‘He did a lot of things. Are you still off duty?’
She had to smile at that. ‘Yeah.’
‘You want to talk about my father?’
She nodded. ‘Looks like. I was at his place. It got a little bit inside me. So did he.’
Graham leaned down and put his wineglass on the floor, then stood again, crossing to the bookshelves. He turned. ‘You know, when I got the letter, I hadn’t talked to him in like fifteen years. He was at my high school graduation, just came up and said hello when my mom wasn’t around. Congratulations. I had no idea what to say back. I think I just looked at him. All I really remember is it made me feel sick.’
‘And that’s the last time you saw him? I mean, before the letter?’
Graham shook his head no. ‘That’s what’s funny. When I worked for Draper, I’d see him on Fridays all the time, out in his truck behind the courthouse. I’d stand at the window and watch him out in the alley. Everybody seemed to love him.’
‘But you didn’t go down?’
‘I thought I hated him.’ Still across the room from her, he pulled a kitchen chair over and straddled it. ‘Even after the lette
r…’ He stopped.
‘I thought the letter was when you connected.’
He considered that for a beat. ‘I saw him in Vero then, once. But it wasn’t very good. I was a jerk. I think it’s my truest talent, jerkhood.’
‘I think it’s jerkitude.’ Then, realizing how that could be interpreted, she added, ‘Not your truest talent. The word.’
He shrugged. ‘Well, whatever you call it, there it was. So right after I read the letter, I decided I’d sucked it up enough. I should spill out how I felt. It would do me good. My dad had caused us all so much grief and I’d never told him how I felt about it, what he’d put us all through. So he writes me this, this beautiful letter, reaching out really, and somehow this cues me — sensitive guy that I am — that the time is right to go and beat up on the old man.’
‘Literally? You hit him?’
‘No. I might as well have. I told him he was a son of a bitch who had a hell of a nerve thinking he could make some kind of amends.’
Sarah didn’t think Graham was aware that he’d stood up and begun pacing.
‘As though he’s going to somehow make up for leaving us, just walking out. In his dreams. What’d he think I was going to do, forgive him? Take him back with open arms? Get a life, Sal but I’m not letting you back in mine! I don’t want to make you feel better. Not now, not ever. I don’t care how you feel. And we’re not going to be friends, for Christ’s sake. You think we can be friends? I hate you, man. Don’t you fucking get it? I hate your guts!’
He was yelling by the end. Now, in the small room, the silence when he stopped left a vacuum. He was breathing hard, looking back at Sarah as though in panic. ‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘I beat him up. I beat the hell out of him.’
She waited until he’d crossed to the kitchen sink and scooped a few handfuls of water into his face. ‘Sorry,’ he said.
‘So what did he do? How did he react?’
Hardy 05 - Mercy Rule, The Page 20
