“What, then?”
“I don’t know. Probably alcohol. I also wonder if someone might have been preparing him for plastic surgery. But how do you explain his reaction to the photo of me and Umberto? It certainly wasn’t me he was reacting to. You should have seen him, Junie. In about a second, he went from Night of the Living Dead to Rambo. Does that seem like wet brain to you?”
“Maybe drugs.”
“I suppose.”
Now Nick was listening to the chest of an anxious twenty-year-old woman who lived in the nearby projects. Junie cleared her throat and shook her head at him disapprovingly.
“Hear anything?” she asked—her way of telling him that he might want to start that part of the exam over again.
“Nothing yet,” he muttered, and focused in.
Their patient had evidence of a loose mitral valve and no other good explanation for her recurrent chest discomfort. Nick asked Junie to run a cardiogram on her. They would have scheduled an echocardiogram and blood tests if she had insurance, but that was wishful thinking. Nick gave her a sheet on obtaining health coverage, and Junie promised to follow up with a phone call to see if she had any luck. That was the best they could do.
Running a clinic like Helping Hands involved compromises, especially when patient cooperation and follow-up were constant variables. Specialist involvement in their cases was more dependable. Through study and courses, Nick was decent at reading cardiograms, but they had several cardiologists who donated their services to Helping Hands. Finally, there was the handout dealing with mitral valve prolapse that one of their heart people had prepared.
“Either of you want coffee?” Nick asked the nurse and patient. “It’s going to be instant, but we have decaf and high test, and white stuff in the fridge.”
Both declined.
“Is that woman out there on the driver’s seat with you?” Junie asked their patient.
“Nope, just my boyfriend. He’s the one sitting at the table.”
Nick glanced toward the front of the RV. He had noticed the woman several times in passing. It was hard not to—very good-looking with short, sand-colored hair and a light spread of freckles across the tops of her cheeks.
“As far as I can tell,” Junie added, “she never signed in to be seen. It’s been like forty-five minutes. I thought she was here with one of our patients.”
“I’ll ask. She doesn’t look like she’s in any trouble, but it is a little weird she hasn’t spoken up. Maybe she’s a reporter or one of MacCandliss’s secret agents.”
Nick, doing his best to appear nonchalant, stopped by the refrigerator for a Coke. Now that he could look directly at the woman in the driver’s chair, he wondered how he had ever made it past her in the first place. She was wearing jeans and a white barn jacket with a brown collar—from L.L.Bean or Eddie Bauer or someplace like that, he guessed. She was facing slightly away from him, gazing out of the massive windshield. Then, as if sensing his attention, she turned and smiled—not a broad smile, but still enough to light up the whole front of the RV.
Special. That was the word that came initially to his mind, followed closely by interesting, intelligent, and unusual. As he approached her, Nick stumbled enough to slosh some Coke onto the carpet. Nice start. Leave it, or mop it up? Grinning sheepishly, he went back to the galley and returned with some paper towels.
“Hi,” he said, looking up from one knee and sensing he was speaking an octave higher than usual.
“Hi, yourself,” she said, seeming totally at ease.
It felt awkward to be so close to her. As incredible as was her smile, her eyes, an unfathomable blue-green, were even more so. He made it to his feet and braced his leg against the console between the front seats to gain some breathing room.
“Are you here to be seen by the medical staff?” he asked.
Medical staff! Give me a break! he chastised himself. Just tell her you’re the doctor.
“Nope,” she said. “Healthy as a horse. But you can help me with this.” She reached into a thin brown paper bag and held up a copy of Nick Fury and His Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. “My name’s Jillian Coates. I’m a psych nurse at Shelby Stone Memorial. Got a moment to talk, Dr. Garrity?”
IT TOOK forty-five minutes to pack up the canopy and wipe down the interior of the van. Jillian pitched in and got to know Junie as she did. Nick stayed close to the women and entered the conversation when he could. “Special” was right. There was a femininity and wisdom to her, coupled with a sharp wit that he found totally appealing. Nick, who hadn’t really broken through his PTSD enough to become interested in any woman since Sarah, was surprised to find himself making some comparisons. Junie exchanged enough glances with him to make it clear she was thinking the same things.
Finally, with the nurse, Kate, off to her home in the suburbs, and the shades pulled, Nick and Junie sat at the fold-out table and listened with empathy and quiet astonishment to the sad story of the death of Belle Coates, and her odd connection to the medical director of the Helping Hands Mobile Medical Unit through an almost forgotten nickname.
“You say your sister had actually written in M.D. and Dr. and Ph.D. next to Nick Fury’s name on the covers of these comics?”
“She seemed to be trying out every form of doctor.”
“Like she heard it rather than read it.”
“I wish I had the issues to show you,” she said, “but they were destroyed when my apartment burned down a few days ago.”
“Your sister was murdered and then your apartment burned down? Do you think the two are connected?”
“How can I not, Nick, except the arson people didn’t find anything.”
“Well, unless you’re incredibly unlucky, it seems suspicious to me,” Nick said, wishing he could come up with something, anything, to help the woman. “Wait a minute,” he said suddenly, “I have a friend, a detective with the D.C. police. He is incredibly well connected. I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if he knew the arson people in Arlington, or at least here. Can I put you in touch with him?”
“That would be great. I have the number of one of the insurance inspectors who looked at my place. Maybe I can get a copy of his report over to your friend.”
“I’ll get a hold of Don first thing in the morning,” Nick said, feeling his knees beginning to go to Jell-O from the woman’s eyes.
In the end, it seemed obvious that Belle Coates had come across a reference to the name Umberto Vasquez had given to his friend a million miles and a hundred thousand years ago—not just come across the name, but had been impressed enough by what she had heard to go out and buy more than forty different copies of the comic book.
Dr. Nick Fury.
At one o’clock, Junie encouraged them to keep talking and wandered off to lie down in the aft examining room.
“Even before our parents died, Belle and I were reasonably close,” Jillian said, “but there was a fairly wide difference in our ages, and I really didn’t know all that much about her and what she was into. By the time of the accident, I had already been married for like a year and divorced, and was out there in the big, wide Washington world making up for the time I lost by getting married so young. The truth is, I was living on the edge a great deal, partying, always first in line for anything that would provide a rush, and chasing my passion for photography to some pretty dangerous places.”
“Then suddenly you were the parent of a teenage girl.”
“It sounds like that would be the case, and that’s what I expected when I somewhat reluctantly agreed to stay home with Belle. But that’s hardly what happened. Belle was the most centered, spiritual person I had ever met. Yoga, flute, painting, athletics, gardening, cooking. Whatever there was to experience, she wanted to try it. She didn’t care if she ever became the best at anything, except maybe nursing, but she wanted to know things, to feel them in her own way, not necessarily to master them. And she was without a doubt the best listener I ever knew.”
“She sounds pretty incre
dible.”
“She was. Even at fourteen it was like being around some sort of advanced life-form. In the end, before she chose nursing and moved into the dorms in D.C., she was the one who was teaching me how to live—I mean really live. Not loud or big, but softly and passionately, with a delight in the details of things and of people.”
Jillian’s eyes filled, then overflowed. She made no attempt to wipe aside her tears, nor was she at all embarrassed by them.
“I never tried to stop the tears when I used to cry over Sarah,” Nick said. “I felt they might be, I don’t know, cleansing. Then the PTSD took hold and all of a sudden I wasn’t crying anymore. I just stopped.”
“I don’t think that’s good.”
“I guess. As devastated and grief-stricken as I was, I don’t think I even felt sad.”
“Just empty.”
“That’s right. I can’t believe you said that. Just empty. It’s an almost indescribable feeling. Umberto used to say that as long as I could cry, there was hope. More than anyone else, including my therapist, he was upset when I stopped. At some point he also told me that he hadn’t cried a single time since his discharge from the hospital after the explosion. He went from being the best soldier I’ve ever known—a man who ran back instead of running away, and risked his life to keep me from being blown to bits—to being an aimless alcoholic. He didn’t have any physical wounds like I did, so they refused to consider his PTSD reason enough for a Purple Heart.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“Thanks, I can tell you are, and that really means something to me.”
“Then he disappeared.”
“Then he disappeared,” Nick echoed, shrugging helplessly.
“Listen, Nick,” she said. “I want to help you find Umberto. Meeting you, and thinking about the strangeness of all those comic books Belle wrote on, makes me believe there has to be a connection. Somehow or other, her path and Umberto’s had to have crossed. And if getting through to this Manny Ferris will move you closer to finding Umberto, then I want to help you with that as well. I’ve got ten years as a psych nurse that says I can help there.”
“I’d love the help,” Nick said, wondering if he should have delivered the words more forcefully.
“You told me that Manny Ferris had an almost violent reaction to one of the photographs of Umberto.”
“Not almost violent. He went berserk. It was nothing special—just a photo of me and Umberto standing by the RV. There was at least one other of Umberto and me. But Ferris took one look at that picture, heaved a jar at me, and bolted.”
“Do you think I could see the photos?”
Nick retrieved the envelope from one of the drawers in the galley and passed it across. Now, instead of her eyes, he became fixated on her hands—smooth, pale skin, nails not too long, with a clear coating except for the ends, which were quarter moons of white polish. He studied the movement of her long, delicate fingers as she went from photo to photo.
“Umberto has a very kind face,” she said.
He would love yours, Nick thought.
“That’s the photo,” he said, “the one that set Ferris off.”
Jillian appraised it with the concentration of one used to examining art.
“I self-published a book of my photos of the great buildings and monuments of D.C. Gave it to friends for Christmas. The shots of the Lincoln were my favorites.”
“I’d love to see it.”
“You may get your chance,” she said, this time lighting up the galley with her smile. “I wonder . . .”
“What?”
“Maybe it wasn’t the clinic or you or Umberto that upset Ferris so. Maybe it was the setting—the Lincoln itself.”
“How could we ever prove that?”
“Well, how about we do a little photo shoot of our own. Interested?”
CHAPTER 20
Nick paced along the crowded walkway in front of the Lincoln Memorial waiting for Jillian to arrive. The afternoon sky was crisp and bright, with only a few passing clouds to block out the three o’clock sun. If Jillian’s analysis of the photograph was accurate, it was around this time, four years ago, that Junie snapped the picture of Nick and Umberto that sent Manny Ferris running for the exit door.
It was after three that morning before Jillian had left the RV. By then, Junie was asleep in the back examining room, and Nick was entangled in a mesh of bewildering feelings surrounding the intense, engaging new arrival in his life. It was Jillian who came up with the idea to take photographs from every conceivable angle around the Lincoln Memorial, then observe Manny’s reaction to each. Maybe there was something to her theory that it wasn’t who was in the picture that so upset the Marine, but what.
To be certain they did not confuse Manny any more than he already appeared to be, Jillian wanted to get the time of their shoot as close as possible to the actual hour the photograph had been taken, in case time of day factored into his intense reaction.
It took some careful study of the photograph’s light and shadow for Jillian to determine the hour. Nick was astounded by her ability to deduce information from a single picture, right down to her figuring out that it was also taken in the springtime, based solely on the clothes worn by pedestrians in the background. He was certain if she had chosen a career in radiology, she would have been a star.
Jillian spotted Nick and called out to him as she hurried over. The last time Nick had experienced anything remotely close to a crush, he and Sarah had just met and were going out on their first date. Now, it was Jillian who had invaded his thoughts. They were supposed to meet by the stone bench, but Nick was too anxious to sit and wait. He tried to attribute his nervous energy to a desire to solve the Manny Ferris mystery, but he knew better.
“Hey you,” she said, “are you ready to be my assistant?”
“You look professional.”
And stunningly beautiful, Nick wanted to add, but fought the urge.
“I thought we were meeting at the bench,” she said. “I was waiting for you there.”
“I guess I got antsy,” Nick said. “Figured I’d start scouting potential shots.”
“Well, I would have brought my Nikon D300 and wide-angle lens, but then I remembered I’m a nurse and about two grand short of being able to afford one, so you’ll have to settle for my Canon Rebel XT. It’s a little like a beagle next to an Irish setter, but they’re both pedigrees.”
“Hey, for all I know about photography, you could have pulled out a shoe box and told me we’re doing this with a pinhole camera. Consider me your loyal assistant, ready and willing to serve.”
“Is that a promise?”
There it was again. That flirtatious blink of her eyes and infectious smile that seemed to add ten degrees to an already warm spring afternoon.
“We better get started,” he said. “We’ve got a lot of pictures to take and not a lot of sun left.”
They finished the shoot in just under two hours. Jillian had stashed a portable printer in her camera bag, so they were able to print out twenty or so quality shots, representing every conceivable vantage point. The pictures from the east exterior captured the monolithic temple columns, palatial staircase, and expansive causeway. A few shots were from the temple interior, as well as one of Lincoln himself.
“So, if it’s the Lincoln shot that sets Manny off, does that just tell us he’s states’ rights and not an abolitionist?” Nick asked with a wry grin.
“Either that or he’s scared of statues.”
“That would make him staurophobic,” Nick replied.
“Now, how did I know that you’d provide that information?” Jillian asked, punching him teasingly on the shoulder. “I feel like I’ve been set up.”
It was childish, he knew, but Nick beamed inwardly at having impressed Jillian with his knowledge of phobias, the subject of a psychology term paper in college. What else could he impress her with, he wondered. But as quickly as that thought arrived, it left. This woman just wasn’t t
he type.
They continued sorting through the photographs, picking the very best shots to print from the hundreds stored in the camera. There was a picture of the Washington Monument across the Reflecting Pool, taken from the very spot where Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech. Another captured the north wall of the Washington Monument through the Lincoln Memorial’s towering side portico. There were a couple shots of the back of the memorial as well, including one from the walkway along Parkway Drive Northwest and another rear shot taken from the bike path across the Potomac, which ran parallel to the George Washington Memorial Parkway.
“Looks like we’re ready to go,” Jillian said, zipping up her tripod bag after they printed the final shot. “Are you sure Manny will be at the club?”
“Manny Ferris seemed as much a fixture in that bathroom as . . . the fixtures in that bathroom,” Nick said. “He’ll be there. I’m sure of it.”
CHAPTER 21
By the time they arrived at Lucky Bill Pearl’s, the April sun had long ago set. A cool night wind chilled their skin. The two descended the dimly lit carpeted staircase with Jillian leading the way. Nick kept a few paces back, wanting to see if the bouncer who had pinned him up against the wall was again working the door. As luck would have it, it was another bald gorilla, although he was equally adorned in ink.
Maybe because the weekend was approaching, the club was more crowded this time than last. Nick watched with amusement as Jillian took in the scene. Her mouth hung just a little agape as she stared in bewilderment at the arcing bar, the high-backed chairs lining the edge of the stage, the brass poles, and the women—spectacular-looking by almost anyone’s measure.
“You guys do this for fun?” Jillian asked, leaning in close and speaking directly into Nick’s ear so she could be heard over the techno music blaring in the background. Nick enjoyed the sensation of her lips against his skin and wished the music were even louder and her question a little longer.
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