Without providing any warning to the police who were guarding her, Emma abruptly changed direction and began to walk toward her friend. One of the officers thought she was trying to run away and grabbed her roughly by her injured arm.
Emma screamed from the pain and almost collapsed. She grimaced, trying to erase the anguish. In a clear voice, she said, “I want to see her first. Lauren Crowder, the woman in the wheelchair.”
Scott Malloy called to the patrol officers. “I’m Detective Malloy. It’s okay. Stay there. We’ll come down to you.”
Casey pushed the wheelchair forward until Lauren was two feet from Emma. A nurse appeared from behind Emma with a second wheelchair and guided her into it. Emma cradled her injured arm in her lap and stared at Lauren.
Emma said, “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry you were caught in this.”
“Emma? Are you okay?”
Emma said, “Yes. It’s over, I think. I didn’t have to—”
Casey was studying the cops’ faces and didn’t like what she saw. She faced Scott Malloy. “Detective, is Ms. Spire a suspect in a crime?”
“Yes,” Scott said, “she is. There’s been another shooting. She was involved.”
Casey left Lauren’s side and lowered her face to within an inch of Emma’s ear and said, in a kind, but authoritative voice, “I’m a lawyer. Listen to me. Don’t say another word. Not another damn word.”
Casey’s tone reminded Emma of one of her mother’s more mordant admonishments.
Lauren asked, “What are you holding her for, Scott?”
“Ask her. Go ahead, ask her about her boyfriend.”
Lauren said, “Ethan?”
Scott said, “Why am I not surprised that you knew that?”
Lauren looked up in the direction of Scott’s voice and appeared to be considering whether to reply to his question. Instead she turned back toward Emma and spoke clearly.
“Emma, are you looking at me?”
Emma stammered, “Yes.”
“Do you trust me?”
“Yes.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes.”
“I’d like to introduce you to someone. This is Casey Sparrow. She’s a good friend of mine. And she’s going to be your attorney. Do everything she says. Everything. Okay?”
“Yes.”
Casey turned to the uniformed officers. She didn’t miss a beat. “Is my client in custody, gentlemen? Has she been Mirandized yet?”
Scott Malloy turned away, shook his head in amazement at what was developing, and despite his best intentions, smiled.
“Here we go again, Sam,” he said.
Sam pointed outside the glass doors of the ER, where a microwave truck from one of the Denver TV stations was setting up for a remote broadcast.
“Ha,” Sam said. “And they said there wasn’t life after O.J.”
J. P. Morgan was on the next stretcher wheeled into the ER. He had a compression bandage on his left calf and he, too, was accompanied by cops. He had pulled himself to a sitting position and was trying to make sense of what he was seeing. Emma was in a wheelchair, surrounded by a half-squadron of police officers. Ethan was nowhere to be found.
With forced calm, Morgan called out to the closest nurse, asking where Ethan Han had been taken.
The nurse was flustered. “Are you family?”
“No. I’m his friend, his partner.”
“I’m sorry then, but I can’t divulge any medical information to you.”
“That’s fine, just tell me where he is.”
She looked at the cops beside him and then down the hall at the police presence huddled around Emma. “I’m sorry,” she said again, shaking her head.
Morgan called, “Emma?”
Over the shoulder of one of the officers, he said, “Emma, where’s Ethan? Is he okay?”
Casey interrupted. “Don’t answer him, Emma.” She directed herself to the newcomer, “Who are you?”
“I’m Thomas Morgan. Who the hell are you? Where’s Ethan, Emma?”
“Please speak to me. Don’t address my client.”
Morgan’s voice took on an intense cadence. “Your client? What the hell is—?”
Lauren noted the change in tenor in Morgan’s voice. The new sound pounded her consciousness like a bass drum. In her mind, Lauren heard a vivid replay of the voice of the man who had kidnapped her from the treatment room in the ER.
She said, “Oh, my God, J.P., it was you.”
Alan parked his car in a no-parking zone and ran into the emergency room to find Lauren. Cozy was steps behind him. The first thing Alan saw as he burst through the door was the bright yellow back of J. P. Morgan’s parka. The next thing he saw was the look of alarm on his wife’s face.
As Alan was trying to comprehend the events in front of him he heard his name called from behind. He turned. Standing in the airlock between the two sets of automatic doors was Raoul Estevez.
In one arm, like a football, Raoul held a vanilla-colored piece of electronic equipment about the size of a small VCR.
Raoul said, “Diane said you called, and that there had been a shooting. I thought—”
Alan’s eyes locked on the optical drive in Raoul’s arms and said, “Oh, no. Oh, shit. Oh, no.” Quickly, he recovered. “Raoul, turn around and get out of here. Go home. I’ll call you as soon as I can. Go.”
Lauren was riding the crest of a steroid buzz. She didn’t want to sleep, she wanted to talk.
Alan wanted her to sleep so he could take the dog for a walk and try to figure out what to do.
He’d driven her home from the hospital and guided her in the door and down the stairs. He’d undressed her and drawn a warm bath and scented the water and he’d gently shampooed and conditioned her hair. He’d toweled her off and massaged her skin with her favorite lotion. He’d found her softest cotton top and eased it over her head before leading her to bed where he fluffed her pillows and covered her with a duvet.
“Do you want some music on?”
She turned to the sound of his voice. Their eyes failed to meet. She said, “No, I want to know what you saw in the ER. You’re keeping something from me.”
He tried to change the subject. “First, would you please tell me what you were doing at Emma’s house?”
“I thought if I was there I could talk her out of volunteering to be raped by whoever had the disc. Or at least I could scare the guy away.”
“That’s why you had the gun?”
She averted her eyes. “I almost always have the gun with me, sweets. I should have told you about it a long time ago, but I didn’t think you’d react well to me carrying a pistol.”
“That doesn’t show a whole lot of faith in me.”
“No, I guess not. But I think that’s a different conversation for us.”
“Yes, it is.”
“What did you see in the ER, Alan?”
“I want to tell you. But before I do, I need to know something. What comes first for you? Are you my wife or are you a prosecutor?”
“What do you mean? I’m both. Are you in some kind of trouble?”
“Maybe. Some things happened last night that you don’t know about.”
Her throat was dry. She told herself it was the Solu-Medrol. She knew it was only partly true. If she could see she would reach for the carafe of water by the bed. She couldn’t see.
“What did you do?”
“Wife or prosecutor, Lauren?”
“Hon, that’s a complicated question when I don’t know the circumstances.”
“I know it is. The answer’s complicated, too, and I don’t want to put you in an impossible place. You may have an ethical obligation to disclose what I know to your colleagues, or even the police. I don’t think you will want to do that. You may end up being in a better position not knowing what happened.”
“Is it about you?”
“Yes. And about a friend of ours, too.”
“Who? Emma?”
“I reall
y shouldn’t say.”
“Why?”
“What are your obligations to your office if I tell you?”
“I won’t know that until you tell me.”
“See,” he said, “that’s why it’s complicated.”
She considered the territory before she asked, “Are you protecting yourself, or are you protecting me?”
He paused, reflected, and said, “Both you, and me, I think.”
Lauren digested his answer before she said, “But you’re definitely not protecting us.”
Raoul phoned two hours later. Lauren was finally resting. Alan answered.
Without preamble, Raoul said, “Two nights ago, I came by the lab to see Ethan. Generally, he prefers to meet with me in the evening, the lab is quiet, he is more open to conversation, is more…reflective, or perhaps, contemplative. I don’t know. I have a key, but the laboratory was unlocked. When I walked in, I heard music, some Beethoven I think, but I couldn’t find Ethan. I knocked at the door to his flat but no one answered. I walked around the laboratory looking for him and then in the front room I found them, Emma and Ethan. They were…involved, amorously, you know? I saw that he was wearing the collar.”
“Yes?”
“It frightened me. I know what the device does. I feared what he would do with the data he was collecting. That he would be impetuous with it. She is so famous. I felt I needed to put the data out of his reach temporarily while I asked him to consider the ramifications of what he had recorded. I feared he would be impulsive with it, mention it to someone, or worse, share it. Word would get out. It would be bad for him, for the company. For her, too. You know, for Emma. It would be most tragic for her.
“Instead, it was me who was impulsive. I waited in the lab, hidden. After they finished, you know…they went to bed. I took the drive.”
“Did you tell him you took it?”
“I planned to, of course. I was going to call him the next morning. But immediately when I got home, I regretted what I had done. I was—what?—humiliated. I am not a thief. And Ethan was very upset the next day. The investors called early and told him they had decided not to increase their positions in BiModal. He was facing another fight with Morgan about an IPO. It was not the correct time to tell him I had the drive. Instead, I erased the data and was planning on returning the drive when I had the chance. You know, surreptitiously. I never expected…”
“You couldn’t have.”
Raoul’s voice became airy. “When Diane told me you had called, what had happened, with Lauren, with the shootings…”
“You may need a lawyer, Raoul.”
“Yes, perhaps you are right. I’m so sorry, Alan. I have ruined so many lives. And Ethan’s technology, it dies with him for now. It could have done so much good. So much.”
Alan made a light dinner and decided to reveal to Lauren what he could. He felt a wall being built, brick by brick, between him and his wife. He wondered how they would scale it, what the consequences would be if they failed.
He said, “Neither Ethan nor J.P. really had the disc or knew where it was. That I know. A lot of the rest is conjecture. You want to hear my version?”
She said, “Yes.”
“Ethan told J.P. what had happened—that the Emma disc existed and that it had been stolen. J.P. saw an opportunity. He decided to use the missing disc to blackmail both of them—Ethan and Emma. By then, the investors had already decided not to increase their stakes in BiModal. J.P. was worried that Ethan was again going to insist on taking the company public. But J.P. had no trouble convincing Ethan that they couldn’t launch an IPO for BiModal until the Emma disc was recovered. It could have been used against Ethan and the company with devastating results. Then J.P. had to make sure that the disc wasn’t recovered. That meant getting Kevin Quirk off the trail.”
Lauren finished for him. “But J.P. had another agenda, too. He wanted Emma. He left her a note, pretending to have the disc, to blackmail her into sleeping with him.”
“Yes.”
Lauren brought her warm hands to her cold cheeks and held them against her skin. “There’s more, isn’t there, babe? You know who really has the disc, don’t you? You know who stole it?”
He tried to conjure a way to respond. He wanted her to know. He didn’t want to tell her. “Like before, some of what I’m about to tell you is conjecture. Some of it I know for sure.”
“And I’m supposed to guess which is which?”
“No. You’re supposed to see the wisdom of leaving it the way it is.”
“Tell me your way, then.”
“You got my message that Emma was at my office yesterday?”
Lauren nodded.
“Okay. After she left, Quirk stopped by, looking for her. He was on his way to Eben Fine Park—you know, at the mouth of Boulder Canyon?—to meet someone who said they had the disc. I think it was J.P. he was meeting.”
“You think?”
“I think.”
“So J.P. shot Quirk? But when? I didn’t hear another gunshot up by Emma’s house.”
He paused, permitting the silence to say things he could not. “I’d guess that the shooting took place at the park. Maybe there was a…a confrontation of some kind. And a shooting. That’s where Kevin was wounded, but he had enough stamina to drive to Emma’s house. He wanted to warn her, I guess. J.P. followed him there from the park. Saw Kevin had collapsed in the street. Ran him over, to finish him off, make sure he was dead.”
“Who took the disc, Alan? Who really has it?”
“I don’t think you want to know everything I know, Lauren. I can assure you the data is destroyed. And that it was never copied. Emma’s privacy is safe.”
Even though she couldn’t see him she focused her eyes like lasers in the direction of his voice. “Emma’s in jail for killing Ethan Han. Geraldo has a wing reserved at the Boulderado. Court TV has a satellite truck at the Justice Center. Emma’s privacy is in flames. Who stole the disc?”
“Please believe me when I say I really shouldn’t tell you. God, I wish I could.”
“You don’t trust me with this?”
“That’s not fair, and that’s not it, and I hope you know it. I love you.”
“Was Ethan a good guy or a bad guy? Was he going to blackmail Emma with the disc? Was this whole thing about her father and abortion rights? At least tell me that.”
“I don’t know.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“Damn it. It would be easier to swallow this tragedy if I knew Ethan was evil.”
Later, after dinner, Alan drove Lauren back to Community Hospital for her second dose of Solu-Medrol. The tension between them was palpable. After Lauren was set up for her treatment, Alan used a pay phone in a hallway near the ER to return a call to Cozier Maitlin.
“How’s Emma, Cozy?”
“Fragile, at best. She needs help, your kind of help. Casey’s with her. She looks dull to me, no guilt, no remorse. I’m afraid of what’s going to happen to her when she realizes what she’s facing.”
“I don’t think she meant to shoot Ethan, Cozy. I think she was aiming at J.P. That’s what I told the police it looked like to me.”
“That’s what she’s telling us, too. She says she was protecting the cop from Morgan. It turns out the bullet that killed Han entered from behind. It was a deflection or a ricochet. Unfortunately, being a bad shot isn’t the choicest of defenses for Emma. We’ll probably need a statement from you about your assessment to get a court order for psych treatment.”
“No problem. Are you still my lawyer, Cozy?”
“Absolutely. With the size of the retainer you gave me, I’m yours for life. How’s Lauren?”
“Okay. Her vision’s still bad. But the pain in her eyes has stopped. That’s a good sign. I’m calling from the hospital. We’re back for her next dose of medicine.”
“Say hello for me. What’s up?”
“The ambush in the park? I think it was Ethan Han’s p
artner who set it up.”
“The man Lauren fingered in the ER?”
“Yes. I bet the gun I ended up with is his. If I turn it in, the police can check that; can’t they?”
“They can. If it was his and if it was registered. But back to our earlier conversation. Why should they believe your story?”
“Why not? It’s the truth.”
Cozy scoffed. “Because you can’t provide corroboration or evidence to support it. You want to risk it? For what? Morgan’s already in custody. The police think they can tie his car to the tire marks on Kevin Quirk’s clothing. And, anyway, Erin’s been busy. I sent her to Eben Fine Park. She found a computer memory device, something called a Bernoulli drive, in a suitcase under a picnic table in the park. Her babysitter’s a computer nerd. He checked the drive for her, said there’s nothing on it. It’s blank. I’ll be giving it to the DA in the morning.”
Alan was gaining more respect for J. P. Morgan’s inventiveness. “The drive Erin found is a fake, Cozy. It was left there to trick Kevin Quirk into giving up the chase. The one you have isn’t the one with the data on it.”
“How do you know that?”
Alan sighed. “God, Cozy, it’s going to take a while to explain all this. It’s complicated.”
Alan felt Sam Purdy’s presence before he saw him. The sensation was of a change in atmospheric pressure, as though a cold front was approaching.
Alan said, “Cozy, I’ll need to call you back. Sam Purdy is here.”
“Don’t let me interrupt you. I’m sure whatever you’re talking about with your lawyer is much more important than anything I have to say.”
Alan hung up, stared at Sam’s face a moment and then embraced him. “Thanks, Sam. There’s no repaying you for what you did last night.”
Sam permitted the hug but didn’t return it. “That’s probably true; there isn’t. Showing some occasional faith in me might be a good place to start, though.”
Alan felt the rebuke physically. He took a few steps back and sat on a waiting room chair. Sam took the one beside it. He was still wearing his coat.
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