One Last Breath

by Lisa Jackson

  “Yes.”

  “What is your daughter’s date of birth?” He was standing at the computer monitor that swung from an arm attached to a pole placed near the hospital bed. On the screen Rory read her daughter’s name.

  As Charlotte was transferred to the bed, Rory told him Charlotte’s birth date, the most wonderful day of her life, she thought.

  “Got it.” He double-checked a small ID bracelet that he wrapped over Charlotte’s tiny wrist, then started taking her vital signs while Rory silently watched and mentally climbed the walls. Please let her be okay, she prayed.

  “Hey, Charlotte, can you hear me, honey?” the nurse said, bending over her. Dear Lord, she appeared so little. So frail.

  Talking softly, explaining what he was doing, he started the exam as Charlotte lay on the bed. The curtain whispered, billowing as another patient was admitted to a nearby stall.

  “Char-baby?” Rory said. “Sweetheart? We’re at the hospital now. This is Nurse Tom. Honey?”

  Charlotte’s eyelids fluttered and she mewled, “Mommy?”

  “Right here, sweetheart. I’m right here.” She clasped Charlotte’s little hand, wanting to cry for joy that her daughter was coming round.

  “Hey, Charlotte. How’re ya feeling?” he asked as the little girl regarded him warily. He plucked a chart of faces from the wall. “See these? This is about pain. The smiling face, she doesn’t feel any pain at all, but these other guys—” He touched each successive visage where the expressions turned a little grimmer and more pained with each representation.

  “That one,” she said, indicating the last grimacing face with a teardrop sliding down its flat countenance. “That one.” Rory hoped not.

  “Okay.” He made another note on the computer. “Just sit tight. The doctor will be right here,” he said briskly as a horrid racking cough erupted from the other side of the curtain.

  “Wait a minute. What do you think it is?” Rory asked as Nurse Tom started for the exit.

  “Dr. McMannis can make that determination.”

  “Is it the flu, or . . . ?”

  At that moment the doctor arrived, sweeping the curtain back as she stepped toward Charlotte. She wore silver-framed glasses and her hair was in a messy bun. Her face was long with a very prominent nose, but her eyes were sharp with intelligence. “You the mother?”

  “Yes.”

  “There’s a little more paperwork to fill out at the front desk.”

  What? No! In her mind’s eye she saw the police, en masse, weapons drawn, waiting for her on the other side of those formidable double doors. Her heart started to pound. “I’ve got papers to fill out in my purse.”

  “Ah. Did they give you the HIPAA form?”

  Rory was already searching through the papers. “I don’t see it.”

  “Mommy, don’t go.”

  “I’m right here, baby,” she said as the nurse gave a quick report about Charlotte’s vitals, then after a quick bevy of questions, left. Dr. McMannis was holding a stethoscope to Charlotte’s chest. The little girl’s eyes had closed again, her breathing shallow. She looked so sick. So damned sick. Rory’s throat closed. She said to the doctor, “She just started throwing up. And now she’s . . . asleep, again, or . . . unconscious . . .”

  “Was the vomiting the first symptom?”

  “No . . . she’s been fighting this for a few days.”

  The doctor turned her attention on Rory. Sharp eyes narrowed a bit behind her lenses. “I thought it was the flu, I guess.” Rory felt put on the spot.

  “We’ll run tests. I want to make sure this isn’t bacterial.”

  Bacterial . . . Rory didn’t like the sound of that. “You mean like . . . meningitis?” she asked faintly.

  “And strep throat, among others. But it could be viral. Could be influenza. We’ll give her a swab test, but I’m going to admit her.”

  She regarded Charlotte once more, her face tight. “I’m going to admit her. Keep her under observation for a while. You need to fill out the HIPAA.”

  That thought stopped her cold. Overnight? Charlotte was that bad. “I don’t want to leave her.”

  “I’ll have it brought to you.”

  Then she was gone in a whoosh of curtains and Rory sat in the plastic chair beside Charlotte’s bed, only letting go of her hand to finish filling out the forms she’d been given. She wanted to believe this was nothing more than a bad case of the flu, and that Charlotte was going to be her bouncy self by morning.

  She looked at Charlotte, alarmed at her face that was now, after being wan and pale as she’d thrown up, red. Hot-looking.

  The Asian woman who had helped her at the admissions desk threw back the curtains and shot Rory a brief smile as she brought her the HIPAA form and collected the other pages Rory had filled out. Rory got as far as Aur when she caught herself up short. What trick of the brain had caused her to almost write her real name? She quickly scribbled out those letters and wrote Heather Johnson on the HIPAA form, then exhaled slowly as the woman swept the page up, adding it to the others as she disappeared back through the curtain.

  Holy moley. It was as if being in the Portland area, so near the Bastians, had scrambled her brain.

  A few minutes later Nurse Tom was back with Charlotte, giving her a nose swab.

  “Do you think it’s flu?” Rory asked anxiously.

  “We’ll know in about thirty minutes.”

  “Okay.”

  Dr. McMannis returned as Nurse Tom left with the swab. The doctor stared down at Charlotte who was unresponsive again. After a few minutes, McMannis said, “We’re going to take her to the ICU.”

  An icicle of fear stabbed Rory’s heart. “What?” she asked faintly.

  “We’ve had a particularly bad strain of influenza going around. I just want to see her through these next few hours.”

  “Okay . . .”

  Charlotte was whisked away and Rory followed after her in a daze. Charlotte was taken into the ICU and Rory was asked to remain behind while she was being initially admitted. A gaggle of different nurses and doctors kept passing through and Rory stood outside the doors, numb with fear. She walked over to an alcove with two chairs and a small table with several dog-eared magazines, but she couldn’t read. Was unable to concentrate on the two-month-old woman’s magazine she picked up and flipped through. Words swam in front of her vision. The celebrity interviews, diet secrets, “summer” recipes, and guaranteed ways to sexually satisfy your man, held no interest. She saw a word puzzle, something she used to do. With shaking hands, she searched in her purse for a pen to try and work the crossword puzzle. But her brain was disengaged and she had to open every compartment within her bag. That’s when she saw the packet. A thick envelope she didn’t remember stashing in a zippered pocket. She pulled it out and slipped open the flap to spy dozens of hundred-dollar bills, some U.S., some Canadian. There had to be five thousand dollars in the packet, maybe more.

  Her heart nearly stopped.

  How in the world . . .

  Uncle Kent. And probably Maude, too. They had always been her support from the moment Charlotte had arrived, and they’d paid all of her maternity bills. Tears suddenly swam in her eyes and she stuffed the thick envelope back into her purse, then looked up and saw that no one in the waiting area appeared to be watching her.

  But then she’d thought she’d been safe in Point Roberts, and look how that had turned out.

  Not that it mattered. Nothing did. Nothing but Charlotte. The whisper of a thought glided through her brain and it cut deep.

  You should tell Liam about Charlotte. He’s her father. He deserves to know. What if the unthinkable happens? You have to call him.

  Opening her bag again, she intended to reach inside and pluck out her phone, dial Liam, and tell him to hurry to Laurelton General.

  But then sanity took hold and she dropped the burner phone back into the depths of her purse.

  Not yet.

  She bit her lip.

  May
be not ever.

  * * *

  Mick was just calling it a day, standing up from his desk, stretching the kinks from his back and wondering how his partner, Gabe Hernandez, was doing on that divorce case he was working on. Hernandez had damn near gotten smacked in the head by a cast-iron skillet thrown by his client’s wife, the last Mick had heard.

  He twisted his neck and heard a satisfying pop as the tension that had gathered all day released. He was about to grab his jacket when the door to his office burst open and Shanice came blasting inside, all skinny jeans and fury. Her eyes were wild, about twice their normal size, and she was holding her cell phone away from her as if it were poisoned.

  “What?” Mick asked sharply, rounding the desk, ready for battle. He didn’t know where it was coming from, but something was definitely wrong and he wasn’t a man to wait like a sitting duck while it unfolded.

  “That was my friend Jenny at Seattle PD,” she said in a strangled voice, then threw up her hands in despair. “I can’t believe it. I just . . . can’t believe it!” She was beyond upset. Waaay beyond.

  “What?”

  “Jesus, Mick . . .” She struggled for a moment. Stared at the ceiling tiles and shook her head for a long second, then calmed slightly, leveled her gaze on him. “Pete DeGrere is dead.”

  “What? No.” He thought he hadn’t heard right, but her expression said it all.

  “Dead? How?”

  “Murdered! Someone got to him first.” Her fist balled and he thought she might punch the desk, the window, or him.

  “Who?”

  “Don’t know. He went to a strip club, The Nile—it’s a strip club not far from Sea-Tac. He must’ve gone straight there, as soon as he was out. I thought he might do that, but didn’t know where he would land.” She was punishing herself, angry that she hadn’t followed him from the prison; Mickelson could read it in her eyes. “Anyway, he had a few drinks, watched the show, then he went outside for a smoke or to relieve himself behind the building and there, with his damned pants down, literally, somebody took him out. Slit his throat. The owner found him when he went out for a smoke. Body was still warm.”

  Mick returned to the far side of his desk to sink back into his chair, the springs shrieking in protest under his weight.

  “He couldn’t have been out more than a few hours.” He could see she was having a hell of a time processing as she shoved her cell into the pocket of her gray jacket, a favorite she’d tossed over a black T-shirt.

  “Jesus.” Mick thought about it. “Was he rolled? Someone thought he had money?”

  “Jenny didn’t say. Probably hasn’t figured that out yet. Maybe he spent everything he had on Boopsy, or Ginger, or whoever the hell was hugging that damned strip pole.”

  Mick’s cop sense was kicking in—that, and logic. He answered his own question. “No, they were waiting for him. Somebody didn’t want him talking.”

  “But he talks all the time. That’s what he does . . . did. He doesn’t know enough to keep his mouth shut . . . didn’t know . . . aww, shit.” She finally dropped into her favorite chair facing his desk, and some of the color had returned to her face. “I shoulda planted myself outside that gate today. Got to Pete first. I knew it. Damn. But, you know, I thought I had time to catch up with him.”

  “I know. At his sister’s.”

  She threw herself to her feet and walked to the window to stare through the dirty panes at the building next door.

  “Don’t beat yourself up. I agreed. And believe me, I wanted to nail his ass so bad I could taste it.” That was true. He’d been savoring the thought of grilling Pete “Mr. Big Talk” DeGrere. Now it was too late. He scratched at his chin and thought. He couldn’t just kick himself; he had to find another way to get the information he needed. “No asking him about the assault on the Bastian wedding anymore.”

  “Damn.”

  Mick opened his bottom drawer and dug out the information he’d copied from the police files on the Bastian case. Not strictly by the rules, but he’d done it anyway. He never planned to quit trying to solve the crime, so he’d taken his notes on the case with him when he’d left the force. “We need to grill everyone in DeGrere’s cell block; see what they know. Pete could have given up more info than we’ve already learned.”

  “Most of it BS.”

  “We’ll have to sift through it.” It would have been so much easier and more interesting to interrogate DeGrere, to find out how much was boast or bravado and how much was just plain bullshit. “Somebody knows something. Not all information began and ended with DeGrere.”

  “Okay. Right. It’s not as good as the horse’s mouth, but I’m gonna check with his cell mate again and Frankie Rubino. He said he knew something before, then shut down in the interview.”

  “Rubino,” he repeated, recalling the lifer. “Fuck-face.”

  “The very same.”

  “I don’t know. It’s hard to trust a guy with a nickname like that.” The con wasn’t known to be accurate, not all the time. “He just likes to dick around with the police.”

  “I hate to tell ya, but we’re not cops anymore.”

  He nodded. Glancing over at the dying African violet located on a file cabinet near the window—a gift from a potential girlfriend who hadn’t panned out—he studied its withering leaves. Like this case, he thought, dying no matter how many times he tossed the dregs of his coffee on the damned thing.

  He didn’t have much faith that Shanice would learn anything more than the last time the man with the horrible scars was interviewed, but he said anyway, “What the hell. Give it a try. Pete did love to talk, and Rubino always has his ears open. If Pete didn’t confide in him, maybe Frankie overheard him bragging to another con.” Mick gave Shanice a slight smile. “And Frankie does like the ladies. Maybe you can pry something close to the truth out of him.”

  She snorted.

  “Somebody on the inside must know if he shot up the wedding and killed Aaron Stemple. Pete couldn’t keep that to himself.”

  “If?” she asked, catching the small admission as she turned away from the ugly view to face him. “If he shot up the wedding?”

  “I think he’s good for it, but we still haven’t established any kind of motive. But I’m willing to bet my favorite dog that somebody knows how Pete was involved, why he was in the area. Pete was always after other people’s money, so it’s a good bet he struck up a deal with somebody else, the man behind the man.”

  “So it comes down to who was the target. The bride? Aaron? Liam Bastian? Maybe all three.” She gave him a sidelong look. “Think Harold Stemple had anything to do with this?”

  Mick didn’t immediately respond. When he’d first been dogging DeGrere, he’d thought there was something in the fact that Pete and Stemple had wound up in the same prison. Mick had floated the idea that DeGrere’s life could be at risk because Harold Stemple might want to avenge his son Aaron’s death, and Pete was certainly a suspect in the killing. But there had never been a trace of animosity between the two men, as far as was reported, so more credence was added to the theory that DeGrere was not the shooter, that he’d just been around the wrong area at the wrong time, a theory Mick had dismissed. He wanted DeGrere to be the doer, hated the braggart, and it would have just made things easier. As for Harold Stemple? He was a penny ante crook whose foray into home invasion was a complete bungle, costing him twenty years. His gun had gone off and taken a chunk out of the woman of the house’s thigh, and the husband had gotten the drop on him. There was talk that Stemple had come with another man who’d never entered the house or been seen—speculation running high that the second man was his son Everett—but that had never been proven. Neither Stemple nor DeGrere was the brightest bulb in the fixture, but Harold had managed to keep his mouth shut about his accomplice, if there was one, a trick Pete DeGrere had never managed.

  “Seattle PD’ll be talking to Stemple,” Mick said. “If Stemple had Pete killed because of Aaron, they’ll figure it out.” T
hat bugged him more than a little. He still thought of the Bastian wedding assault as his case.

  “Who would Stemple hire to get that done?” She was walking now, back to her chair and thinking aloud. “His surviving son? Everett?”

  Mick grunted an assent. His thoughts touched on Aurora Abernathy Bastian, visualizing Everett Stemple’s stepsister, the runaway bride with the lush red hair and lovely smile. He’d only seen her in pictures, ones he’d gotten off the Internet and from the Bastian family while he was still with the department. Still, he understood the attraction, all right. The girl just had a face that made you want to know her, a beauty that was more about character than facial structure.

  Shanice said, “We need to know if Stemple’s involved and this is about Aaron, or if it’s something else entirely. It’s not random that Pete DeGrere’s dead on his first day out of prison. I won’t believe that.”

  “Even Pete didn’t have that bad of luck.”

  “If he killed Aaron . . .”

  She didn’t finish the thought, just tightened her lips. She’d always taken Aaron Stemple’s death hard, a personal connection she’d never quite explained to him. Mick said, “You can bet whoever killed Pete did it to keep the truth from coming out or for revenge, or both. Bastian and his son Liam are lucky to be alive. Maybe one of them was the target, or both of them, and maybe they’re holding a grudge.”

  “Or maybe the target was someone else, someone who was missed.” She was resting a jean-clad hip against the corner of his desk.

  “Maybe, but let’s stick with the three that were in the bullets’ first trajectory. They were all in the aisle.”

  “So were Derek Bastian and the officiant. And Aurora should have been there.”