by Carrie Smith
Brandon was surprised by her directness, but he was also grateful for the invitation to reveal more of himself. “I always knew,” he admitted.
“What was it like for you growing up?”
And as they painstakingly traced the provenance of each article Arthur Lane had stolen, Brandon told her about the Church of Salvation in Jackson, Michigan. Once a month, the congregants gathered in the church basement to stuff envelopes with brochures pleading for money to stop the Queer Agenda. The covers of these brochures featured tattooed men in leather and butch-looking women in men’s clothing, and the headlines asked Do you want perverts living on your street? Do you want males sharing the restroom with your teenage daughter? Every June, he told Baiba, Pastor Sutter rented two buses and the congregation rode from Jackson, Michigan, to New York City to hold up protest signs at the LGBT pride march. “I helped make those signs,” he told her. “I painted banners that said Burn in hell for your sins. And the whole time I knew I was condemning people just like me.”
When he told Baiba about his surgery plans, she didn’t say, “Oh my God, how could you do that to yourself?” She said, “You’re going to look very handsome on the beach.” And a week later—just last Wednesday—she gave him three thousand dollars to help him pay for the procedure.
Now Brandon hugged her tightly and kissed the top of her head. “Go on, Baiba. Tell me what happened. You need to tell someone.”
“It was really good that first time,” she said. “Different, but good.”
He nodded.
“And the next day he came over to my apartment with flowers and a little Tiffany bag. There was a jewelry box inside. He gave me a gold chain with a beautiful diamond pendant.”
Brandon stared out the window as her head rested against his shoulder. His jaw ached. He didn’t want to hear any of this. He wanted to be anywhere else.
“And a few days after that he called me again and, well, I couldn’t really say no. I didn’t want to say no, and this time it got a little—” She shook her head.
“A little more different?” he supplied.
“I promised myself that was the last time,” she said, “but he brought more flowers. He gave me another little Tiffany bag. He told me he had to see me or he would go crazy. And I went back.”
“And you went back again last night?”
She nodded. “He sent his car for me.”
“What happened?”
And then she told him everything she remembered, from the moment Felipe had opened the Escalade door for her in the snow until the moment when she had sipped the drink Merchant gave her and all her memories dissolved.
“He drugged you. He took advantage of you.”
Baiba stared down.
“And he choked you, too. I see the marks. Was that one of his differences? Did he like to tie you up?”
Her silence was the answer.
“I think I should take you to the hospital,” he said. “I should take you to the police.”
Baiba shook her head and gripped his arm so hard that it ached. “No! You promised. You can’t tell anyone,” she nearly shouted. “What happened was my own fault. I’m to blame for this.”
“That’s what women always say, Baiba. But you’re not.”
“Yes, I am!” She punched her legs with her fists. She gripped her skull as if it might crack open if she didn’t hold it together. “Oh, God, Brandon. Don’t you see? I went right along with it. I let him do those things to me—until last night I liked it. I enjoyed it.”
He held his breath. How much more would he have to hear?
“I know what that must sound like to you, but—”
“It’s okay,” he said weakly. “It doesn’t change how I feel about you.” But it did. Her fucking Merchant like that changed everything. He would never, he realized, be able to give her what she wanted. Rough sex. Expensive jewelry from Tiffany’s. Dinners at the Four Seasons. She would never want him.
Baiba grabbed his arm. “You won’t tell anyone, will you? I just want it to all go away. Promise me.”
“I promise. Of course.” But you couldn’t just pretend things hadn’t happened, he wanted to say. The worst events in your life had a way of carving the deepest grooves in your memory. Even dementia victims seemed to hold onto their traumas. How many times had he sat up with them at night while they tried in vain to fit fragments of haunting memories into cohesive narratives? He thought of Lucy and the things she had said. No, Daddy. No! I don’t want it. Please, Daddy. Take it away. Even Lucy had bad childhood memories. She was always talking to her daddy.
Brandon glanced down at his worn Converses. He could already predict the memories that would plague him decades from now. His father landing a hook on his jaw when he refused to wear a dress. Reverend John Sutter unzipping the fly below his tumor-like gut. Shivering on the front steps of the LGBT Community Center his first night in Manhattan when he had nowhere to go. Despite three years on Judith Greenwald’s couch, those memories were still vivid. They still got in his way sometimes. He stared into Baiba’s tropical blue eyes and softly caressed the rash on her chin where Merchant’s stubble had burned her. He understood perfectly why Merchant had wanted her. But he could never do what Merchant had done. He knew a little too well what it felt like to be the woman in that equation, to be the object of someone’s self-serving desires. For as long as he could remember, he had experienced and interpreted every human interaction through two simultaneous points of view—male and female. That was the one dubious superpower, he supposed, that came with living in the fluid nexus of genders.
“Why don’t you sleep,” he said gently, to cover his ambivalence. He didn’t want to talk to Baiba anymore. He needed to think, to sort out his feelings. “Go to sleep. I’ll stay with you for a while.”
“And then you’ll go to Park Manor, right? You promised you would go. I told Hodges you would be there tonight. I told her you would tell anyone who asks that you only gave Lucy water to drink. I don’t want to lose my job, Brandon. Please.”
He nodded reluctantly. Merchant had used her, he thought, and now she was using him.
CHAPTER 26
Codella stood on the front steps of the 171st and called Dr. Abrams again. This time the receptionist put her on hold, and a moment later Abrams came on. His gentle voice in her ear said, “You’re persistent, Detective Codella. I want you if I ever need a homicide detective—which I hope I don’t.”
“Well, I hoped I’d never need an oncologist,” she answered. “So? What’s my verdict?”
“You’re boring. Quit calling my office, and don’t come back for six months this time.”
She took a deep breath and felt her mind reconnecting with the body she had feared might fail her again. “Thank you.”
“My pleasure. Now go solve some murders.” She could hear the smile in his voice.
She opened the precinct door and went inside. Just like yesterday, Muñoz had everything precisely arranged on the table in interview room A. He slid his hands into the green nitrile gloves and took the three evidence bags she held out. “I see you went in there like a one-woman CSU team,” he said.
“Just don’t tell Banks.” She frowned. “He might try to recruit me, and sifting through garbage isn’t really my thing.”
Muñoz tested the rug fibers first. As he pinched the tube to release the test solution, they watched the liquid change to violet. “Same as last time,” said Muñoz.
Codella felt a sense of exhilaration even more intense than what she had felt after hanging up from Abrams. It was an exhilaration she knew she shouldn’t feel. She wanted Lucy Merchant’s death to be a homicide. But all detectives were guilty of hoping their instincts were correct. And you mitigated your guilt by telling yourself you were only confirming a terrible deed that had already been perpetrated. Wishing for someone’s murder after the fact was different from wishing for it before they were dead.
Muñoz unwrapped a second ampule and repeated the procedure with resid
ue from the medicine cup. Haggerty slipped into the room in time to watch the third test on the liquid from Lucy Merchant’s diazepam prescription bottle. When Muñoz was finished, three clear plastic test kit tubes lay on the table, all three containing the same violet liquid. Codella photographed the ampules. She looked at Muñoz. “How often do these test kits lie?”
He shrugged. “In my experience, they’re right more often than wrong, but it’s always possible something in the sample screws up the results. It happens.”
“We’ll voucher the evidence and send it to the lab for confirmation, but we won’t get results for weeks. And I can’t wait that long.”
“So what’s your plan?” asked Haggerty.
Codella pulled out a chair on one side of the interrogation table, and Muñoz and Haggerty sat across from her. “Let’s assume for the moment that the tests aren’t lying. If they’re not, then we just traced oxycodone from Lucy Merchant’s diazepam bottle into her medicine cup and onto her bedroom carpet. That’s fairly compelling circumstantial evidence that someone tried to drug her—considering that her only prescribed medication is diazepam—Valium—which is not an opiate like oxycodone.”
Both men agreed.
“The day nurse, Lorena Vivas, showed me Lucy Merchant’s medicine chart. All she took were some vitamins and Benefiber in the morning and a five-milligram dose of diazepam oral suspension every night to prevent her from wandering and screaming out in her sleep. That’s it. No narcotic. I have a photo of her chart. You with me so far?”
“So far,” said Haggerty.
“So the question is, how did a narcotic get in that bottle? Someone had to put it there, but who?”
“Are there closed circuit cameras to check?” asked Muñoz.
Codella shook her head. “The patrons of Park Manor like their privacy too much.”
“What is it with people and their need for privacy?” Haggerty grinned.
“So assuming our test kits are telling the truth,” continued Codella, “then someone accidentally or purposefully added a lethal opiate to Lucy Merchant’s diazepam.”
“Technically it’s an opioid,” pointed out Muñoz. “Oxy isn’t actually extracted from opium. It’s synthetic. But go on.”
Codella nodded. “Since her diazepam bottle was half empty yesterday, I’m thinking it’s unlikely the oxy was in the bottle when it came to Park Manor from the pharmacy. Someone at Park Manor must have added it to the bottle.”
“It makes sense, but you’re stringing together a lot of what ifs, aren’t you, Detective?” observed Haggerty. His tone was half teasing, half serious.
“Just follow my logic.” She leaned forward and stared at both men across the table. “If the oxycodone was added to her bottle at Park Manor, and if the dosage was strong enough to kill her, then it must have been added the day she died. Sunday. Otherwise, she would have succumbed earlier.”
“That makes sense.” Haggerty nodded.
“And that means someone went into the dispensary and poured something into the bottle in the hours between her Saturday night dose and the one that killed her.”
“Or they switched the bottles,” suggested Muñoz.
“That would certainly be easier and faster,” agreed Codella. “But that would require someone to interact with her pharmacy. I think someone added the drug, not switched the bottles.”
“So we focus on anyone who was in Park Manor in the last twenty-four hours of her life,” said Muñoz.
“The nurse on duty had the most opportunity,” pointed out Haggerty.
“Agreed,” said Codella, “and we have to check her out. But she would know all eyes would be on her.”
“The caregiver who fed her the medicine,” said Muñoz.
“We have to consider him too. But the oxy was added to the prescription bottle, and he doesn’t have access to the dispensary. Someone else put the oxy in that bottle. I’m wondering about the Nostalgia care coordinator. A woman named Baiba Lielkaja. She’s got keys to every door in there. She unlocked Lucy Merchant’s suite for Brandon Johnson yesterday morning after Lucy Merchant died. And she called in sick today. I think something’s up with her.”
Haggerty frowned. “If you’re going to go full steam ahead on this, Claire, you need to trace that oxycodone straight down her throat. You need an autopsy.”
“I know. But the daughter’s afraid to demand one, and the father doesn’t want it.”
“Get the DA involved. You need that body. Go see McGowan.”
“He’ll tell me I don’t have enough evidence. Too many what ifs, as you say.”
“Her body’s going to be embalmed if you don’t move fast.”
“Actually, cremated, which is worse.”
“So you maybe have two or three more days,” said Haggerty.
“I have an idea.”
Muñoz and Haggerty waited.
“I’m going to go see Merchant. Convince him to authorize an autopsy.”
“Good luck with that!” Haggerty shook his head. “He’s not exactly the world’s nicest guy, from what I’ve read.”
Codella shrugged. “Yeah, well, nice guys don’t run banks, I suppose. But I have no choice.” She looked into Haggerty’s blue eyes. “Can I borrow Muñoz for a couple of hours?”
“You want to borrow my detective?”
“Just to do a little research on Merchant. I don’t want to go in blind.”
“Shit, Claire. That’s not exactly standard procedure. Reilly’s not going to be thrilled if I’m running a rent-a-cop operation while he’s gone. You can’t get a Manhattan North detective to do it?”
“You know the answer to that. McGowan won’t give me shit. He wishes I was dead.”
Haggerty gave her a skeptical look.
“No, I’m serious. I didn’t tell you what he said when I came back from my scan yesterday. Once cancer shows up on your doorstep, you can’t ever really get rid of it, can you?”
“He said that?” said Haggerty.
“With a big smile on his face.”
Muñoz shook his head. “What an asshole.”
“That son of a bitch,” added Haggerty. “I’d like to throttle him.”
“Do it indirectly, Brian. Help me. I need some backup.”
Muñoz turned to Haggerty. “Reilly doesn’t need to know. No one needs to know.”
Haggerty shoved his hands in his pockets. “Shit, all right. Just to spite that bastard.”
CHAPTER 27
Constance Hodges leaned on her desk and closed her eyes. The dull throb at her temples had turned into a gnawing headache. She wanted to go home, but it wasn’t even two o’clock. She could still see that detective’s face in her mind and hear her voice as she held up the medicine cup. This is our way out. But what if it wasn’t? What if something other than diazepam showed up in the cup? I should never have signed that authorization form. Why did I allow that detective to talk me into it?
These thoughts expanded the oil spill of her panic. Her arms felt weightless. Her hands were vibrating. She could no longer keep Julia Merchant’s accusations to herself. She would have to call the Foster Health Enterprises chief of operations, Michael Berger, and tell him what had happened yesterday. Berger would recognize the potential impact of the situation on the pending offer from Eldercare Elite. He would probably call a senior management team meeting with the corporate communications VP and the legal counsel, and she would be summoned to headquarters to give a full account. She would have to sit at the FHE conference room table with six Ivy League MBAs and summarize her conversations with the Merchants. She would be forced to tell them about Julia Merchant’s surveillance video, and unless she could think of a very creative excuse, they would rake her over the coals for waiting twenty-four hours to give them a heads-up about it. And after she had spoken, they would discuss strategies for dealing with the situation, and all the while they would look past her as if she weren’t even there.
She pictured Thomas Merchant. Where was he right this
moment? He must know that she was in the hot seat because of his daughter. Why hadn’t he shut Julia down the moment she opened her mouth? Had he known in advance that she was going to make that accusation in her office yesterday? BNA was financing Eldercare Elite’s pending purchase of Park Manor. Did it serve his client’s interests to see Park Manor’s reputation besmirched? Was he planning to use the situation to demand a lower price for his client? Well, she had her own interests to serve and her own stories to tell, and she didn’t intend to be the scapegoat in whatever financial gamesmanship was going on.
She studied her hands. Was it her imagination or were they trembling more than usual? Michael Berger would think she had Parkinson’s if he saw her shake like this. Any observant person would think there was something wrong with her. She opened her bottom desk drawer and reached into the purse she kept there. Her fingers fumbled through the disorganized contents until they grasped the narrow neck of one of the miniature bottles she had been carrying around for a week. She’d spied the little bottles behind the register at the Murray Hill Wine and Liquor Shop the last time she had purchased a large bottle of Courvoisier. Something had propelled her to tell the proprietor, “Let me have a couple of those minis, too. They’re so adorable.” All week she had enjoyed knowing that the little bottles were with her. And now she realized that she’d purchased them for a reason. She had known—subconsciously, of course—that a time was coming when she wouldn’t be able to get to the end of a day without them.
She pulled the miniature out of the purse and held it in her lap. The bottle’s smooth contours comforted her in a way she knew they shouldn’t. She unscrewed the cap, brought the bottle to her nose, and sniffed deeply. The aroma of vanilla and candied orange intensified her need. She closed her eyes and held the vapors in her lungs. This is medicinal, she told herself. I’ve had a shock. A little sip would calm me down. Memories contradicted her words—her mother cleverly stashing miniature bottles of vodka inside coffee mugs at the back of a kitchen cabinet, beneath sofa cushions, behind books in the bookshelves, under the box springs of her mattress—but Hodges dismissed those memories as soon as they surfaced. No. I’m not like that.
