Suffering Fools

by Ed Gaffney

  “Yeah. I thought he answered that amazingly clearly. Well, amazingly clearly for Babe.”

  “Exactly. But did you notice that when she asked how they met, he gave her some stupid answer? And then she changed the question, and asked him whether Tedesco started working there before he did. I think she assumed that they first met each other at work, but I think she’s wrong. I get the feeling that Babe was afraid of answering how he met Tedesco.”

  “So what do you think?” asked Terry. “Babe knew Tedesco beforehand, and got him the job? So what?”

  “I don’t know,” Zack answered. “But if you were Babe, and you were constantly worried that anything you might say could get you in trouble, why would you hide the origins of your friendship with somebody?”

  Terry shrugged. “What’s there in Babe’s past to be ashamed of? I mean, besides being Babe.”

  Zack nodded. “Exactly. Which is why I think we need to talk to Mrs. Gardiner.”

  FOURTEEN

  Ketoacidosis is a condition that arises when the body’s normal mechanism for obtaining glucose in order to produce energy fails. In the case of diabetes, this occurs when a patient, for example, fails to take his insulin….

  Early warning signs of ketoacidosis include extreme fatigue and weakness, dry tongue, leg cramps, abdominal pain, nausea…

  Ketoacidosis is a very serious condition that can quickly become life-threatening. Although early symptoms can be slow in developing, late symptoms, often initiated by vomiting and/or difficulty in breathing, indicate a severe chemical imbalance that can rapidly lead to coma, and then death.

  (Everything You Never Wanted to Know About Diabetes, pages 34–35)

  Hostage

  SHE WOKE UP CONFUSED, WITH A SERIOUS PAIN in her stomach. Woke up? How could she possibly have fallen asleep tied to a chair?

  And then, the memory of her kidnapper coming into the room hit her like a cold slap in the face.

  He hadn’t been wearing the ski mask. He wasn’t afraid of her identifying him, because he was going to kill her before she’d get the chance.

  She had to escape. Right now.

  God, her eyelids felt so heavy. Her headache was no better. And was she ever thirsty. On top of that, her bladder was about to burst. Her tongue felt like it was twice its normal size. And talk about dry. She swallowed, hoping that would help.

  She really needed her shot.

  Wait a minute. Her shot. She needed her insulin shot.

  She was a diabetic.

  The realization shot through her fuzzy brain like a laser beam through a fog.

  She had no idea what time it was, or how long it had been since she’d given herself her last shot. In fact, she still couldn’t remember anything except these annoying little voices that occasionally delivered snippets of information, and the image of that crowbar swinging toward her. But she knew that she had been through enough close calls to recognize the early symptoms of ketoacidosis.

  Stomachache. Dry mouth. Fatigue.

  Oh my God. If she didn’t find a way out of here in a matter of hours, she’d go into a coma from the lack of insulin, and die. The ketoacidosis was already serious enough to have knocked her out after only a few minutes of trying to move her chair around to get the knife off the card table across the room. How was she going to do this?

  Another pain ripped through her stomach.

  She had to move. She struggled against her bonds, then stopped abruptly. She was being poisoned by the ketones in her bloodstream, and she was going to run out of energy soon. It was going to do no good to uselessly struggle against the tape that held her to the chair. She had to think.

  Her kidnapper had taken her only means of escape out of her reach. He had then returned to the other room to watch television and get drunk. Or drunker.

  The last thing she remembered was trying to listen to the television. That’s when she must have fallen asleep. Which was awfully scary. The fatigue must have come upon her in a real hurry.

  She listened again for the television. But instead of the drone of music and laugh tracks and intense voices trying to sell useless things to people, the noises from the other room were rhythmic. And rumbling. As if there were some kind of machine in there.

  And the sound—whatever it was—was not nearly as muffled as when the TV was on. It was as if the door were open, or at least ajar.

  She listened again, and suddenly, she knew.

  He was snoring.

  Snoring. Her captor was asleep! Or passed out.

  It was her chance.

  She was still for a moment, just to be sure, and the snoring continued, steady. There was no doubt about it—he was in a deep sleep.

  She wanted to see behind her, where the sound was coming from. She wanted to know if the door was open. To turn around, she would have to move her chair. So she tipped forward a bit, and then, as she did earlier, she lifted herself up onto her toes.

  But she pushed too hard, and the upper part of her body moved too quickly. A sudden wave of vertigo hit her, and she was immediately in danger of falling right on her face. Her ankles were taped to the legs of the chair, and she couldn’t regain her balance. She was tilting forward too fast. She was going to fall.

  In a desperate effort to keep herself upright, she tried to shuffle her feet and propel her body and chair ahead, to pull her center of gravity back where it belonged.

  But the table was in her path, and she was still tipping and stumbling forward. She was either going to hit the table with her face or land on the floor nose-first, unless she caught her balance with one last surge ahead.

  With all of her remaining energy she pushed forward, but it wasn’t enough to right herself. She merely smashed loudly right into the card table with her chest and the front of her right shoulder, shoving it with all of her uncontrolled momentum against the opposite wall, creating yet another brain-shaking and ear-ringing crash.

  There was an eternity of silence, and then, as if her incredible clumsiness hadn’t generated quite enough noise already, an empty beer can lazily rolled off the table and landed right on a couple of others already lying on the floor, with a final, hollow clatter.

  For a second, she was frozen there on her toes, taped to a chair, pinning the card table to the wall. But then the chair tipped somewhat pathetically back so that all four legs landed on the floor with a thump, sending another blast of pain shooting through her head.

  She steeled herself for her captor’s return. There was no way he didn’t hear that racket. He was going to come in here, and then he was going to do something that would make it impossible for her to escape. Or maybe he’d just kill her. She was going to have to hope he wanted to keep her alive and find a way to tell him she needed insulin, or else she was just going to pass out and never…

  But wait a minute. Something didn’t make sense. Where was he? She hadn’t heard him come into the room. Was he behind her, standing there, crowbar raised, silently approaching?

  It was hard to hear anything but her own ragged breathing. She tried to control herself so she could listen.

  And there it was.

  The sound of snoring.

  He hadn’t awakened. She had all but set off a bomb twelve feet from his head, and he hadn’t even flickered to the dimmest form of consciousness. He was still breathing in and out, in and out, steady as a good clock, completely oblivious to what was going on in the next room.

  She swallowed as best she could—God, her mouth was dry—and tried to take stock of her situation. Her head was killing her. Her lack of memory might well have been caused by the injury from the crowbar. But she was thinking a little more clearly now.

  It’s good to focus on the positive. The picture always comes out better that way.

  Thanks, mystery voices, whoever you are. Not the most useful memories, but at least she recalled that she had diabetes.

  She was still short of breath, and her pulse was racing. It was hard to know if that was her blood chemistry, or the
fact that ten seconds ago she thought she had lost her last chance to escape.

  Unfortunately, no matter how positive her focus, the only real change in her personal picture was that the impact with the table had bruised her badly across the top of her chest and on her right bicep near the shoulder. What was depressingly constant was that her hands were still tied behind her and her ankles were still tightly bound to the legs of the chair.

  The empty beer cans and other garbage that had been lying on the table were now mostly spilled all over the floor. But there had been nothing on the table worth trying to grab, anyway. She sighed, and as she exhaled, she looked up.

  Then she looked over her right shoulder.

  And suddenly, she knew how she was going to escape.

  August 17, 2004

  Three weeks before the Babe Gardiner trial

  WHEN VERA RETURNED TO THE STATION HOUSE, she picked up her messages from the front desk. The only interesting one was a call from Detective John Morrison.

  Nothing had come of the investigation into Morrison’s alleged mistreatment of that guy Ulf who had beat up his girlfriend. Vera had filed her report, and just yesterday she’d received notice that the file was being closed without any further action.

  It was the best anybody could expect. And Vera was happy to learn of it. The whole thing had made her pretty uncomfortable, and—

  “Hey! Vera! You got a minute?” Wow. Speak of the devil. The very handsome devil. Morrison was coming out of the coffee room, holding a couple of mugs and looking as good as ever. “You want a cup? Black, right? Guaranteed fresh brewed only five and a half hours ago.”

  He motioned her toward the conference room. His smile was warm and, as always, Hollywood gorgeous. He had loosened his tie and rolled up the sleeves on his blue-and-white striped shirt. It was a look that tended to make other men look sloppy, but on John Morrison, it just emphasized his aura of casual confidence.

  Whatever awkwardness Vera had felt when she was dealing with Morrison as a result of that investigation seemed to melt away into something entirely different as she stood there, probably looking like an idiot, smiling back.

  “Sure,” she said, following him in.

  They sat down across from each other at the utilitarian table and sipped their coffees.

  “So,” Morrison said, “I don’t know if you got the word, but the review board is going to let that complaint against me drop.”

  Vera took another sip of the hot liquid. It had been a long day, and even the burned flavor of the brew tasted good. “I got a copy of the decision. You must be really happy that’s over. I know I am. Congratulations.”

  “Yeah, thanks,” Morrison said, turning on the thousand-watt smile again. “It wasn’t that big a deal, but I hate those kind of things hanging over me, you know what I mean? They just leave a bad taste in my mouth.”

  No kidding. Vera was all for doing her duty, but it had been real tough being a part of the investigation of a hero cop, however relaxed he had been about the whole thing. She had already asked Lieutenant Carasquillo to be removed from that detail. She’d really love to avoid another one of those interrogations if she could.

  “So, there’s another reason I’m glad that decision came out so soon,” Morrison said, “because there’s something I’d been hoping to ask you, and it wouldn’t have been right while the case against me was still, you know, open.”

  It was funny, but right before her eyes, Morrison underwent a very subtle shift in attitude. Gone was the friendly self-assurance, and in its place there appeared something a little more vulnerable, a little less certain. It was like the little boy in him was peering out at her through those dark brown eyes.

  “I don’t like to beat around the bush, if you know what I mean.” He fiddled with his cup and then looked up at her. His eyelashes were really something else. “So I just wanted you to know that if you aren’t seeing somebody right now, I’d like to ask you out sometime. You know, for a bite to eat or something. I didn’t see a ring, so I figured you weren’t married or engaged, but you never know with these things, and I guess I just wanted to find out if the, you know, if the field is clear.” He took a breath. “And if you’re up for dating somebody on the job.” The smile reappeared. “I think I’ll stop babbling now, if that’s okay with you.”

  Vera was stunned. The tiny note of doubt that had crept into his voice just added to an already extremely charming package. Was going out with John Morrison okay with Vera? Oh yeah. “Sure,” she said, hoping she sounded as cool as she didn’t feel. “I’d love to have dinner with you. That would be nice.”

  TERRY WAS DRIVING AGAIN. GOOD THING HE liked spending time in his awesome car, or he’d be pissed. To do the kind of criminal defense work he and Zack did required a shitload of investigating.

  Since Sean was riding along with them, it actually made sense to take the BMW. Zack’s car, a pathetic little Honda, wouldn’t have been nearly big enough for all three of them. Right now, Zack was looking at some notes that Sean had made of their meeting with that detective and Babe.

  Damn, he had to admit it. That woman was smokin’ hot. Something about her smile, or her eyes—he didn’t even know what it was. She wasn’t tall, she didn’t have red hair, and he didn’t even have a good handle on her body yet.

  The whole thing was irritating. He really didn’t need to be thinking about her all the time. He was going to have to do something about this. It was starting to feel like he needed a girlfriend. And that never went well. Crap.

  “These are really good,” Zack said, handing the papers back to Sean. For some reason, the kid had become fascinated with the Gardiner case. Not only had he helped them prepare the pretrial memorandum, which officially notified the Commonwealth that they might raise an alibi defense—good luck to all of them on that hopeless waste of time—but he was spending an incredible amount of energy reading old transcripts and police reports, going over witness statements, and doing the tons of other things normally necessary to prepare for a trial.

  Terry and Zack were doing the same things, but with a lot less enthusiasm. Babe was 100 percent screwed. If he didn’t rob and kill that guy, the inevitable guilty verdict he was facing was just going to add a layer of tragedy onto this mess that really shouldn’t have excited anyone. There was no reason at all to be enthusiastic.

  In their continuing quest to uncover and exhaust last-ditch efforts, they were on their way to meet Babe’s mother. She worked at the mall, and had a break for dinner from six-thirty to seven. They were going to join her at the food court, God help them.

  Zack had it in his head that in the interview with Detective Hottie, Babe had been hiding some kind of connection that he had with Roger Tedesco, the guy with the goatee. Naturally, asking Babe had been an exercise in futility, so they decided to approach the one person who actually seemed to have Babe’s best interests at heart.

  In the very unlikely event that Babe’s mom would shed any light on this missing Tedesco guy at all, there remained the very real possibility that none of it mattered. So what if Babe knew Tedesco before he worked there? Swell. Now Babe knew two people who didn’t show up for work after that weekend.

  Somehow, that didn’t seem like it was going to help the cause.

  But when Zack was on last-ditch-effort patrol, he was relentless. No lead was too small, or too speculative, if there was time. And there was still time. Not much—trial started in about twenty days. But when that gavel hit that bench, Zack and Terry would know that they had done absolutely everything they could for their client. If they were going down, there would be no bullets left in their guns.

  Terry turned left and headed for the mall parking lot. But just as he got to the entrance, he noticed a crowd of people surrounding a pair of police cars and an ambulance parked there, emergency lights flashing.

  “What the heck is going on here?” Zack asked as they pulled up.

  “Got me,” Terry replied as a cop directed him down a parking lane before
he got close enough to the entrance to see.

  He pulled to the right, and stopped the car as a couple of paramedics emerged from the mall entrance with a woman strapped to a stretcher. The EMTs made their way to the back of the ambulance, and as they positioned themselves to lift the stretcher into the car, the woman turned her head, giving them a clear look at her face.

  It was Katerina Gardiner. Babe’s mom.

  They lifted her into the ambulance, closed the door, and drove away.

  “Guess the meeting’s off,” Terry said.

  FIFTEEN

  The Commonwealth points to Commonwealth v. Tippett as an example of how recent decisions on this issue have, instead of setting out a manageable, predictable set of procedures for ensuring constitutionally valid guilty pleas, distorted the holdings of prior cases into a confusing judicial directive to employ an entirely unnecessary and cumbersome litany now followed, with mixed results, by lower courts.

  Accordingly, it is the ruling of this court that from this time forward, a guilty plea shall be seen as constitutionally valid if the following takes place at the guilty plea hearing:

  1. the defendant states that he is mentally competent and understands the rights he is waiving by pleading guilty;

  2. the defendant states that his attorney has explained the charges and allegations against him;

  3. the defendant states that he is guilty of the charges and allegations; and

  4. the judge states that he believes the defendant.

  (Excerpt of Commonwealth v. Wilkerson, 445 Mass. 2d, Pages 304–305

  [2004])

  August 31, 2004

  One week before the Babe Gardiner trial

  WELL, AT LEAST F.X. WOULD BE HAPPY ABOUT this.

  Louis finished reading the new decision from the Supreme Judicial Court on guilty pleas, and sighed. The Tippett case had everyone so upset that the highest court in Massachusetts had gone out of its way to dumb down the requirements for constitutionally valid guilty pleas. They figured that if Tippett hadn’t been able to overturn his original guilty plea in the first place, he never would have gotten off. So the courts decided to make it much easier for defendants to plead guilty, and much harder for them to later undo their decision.