by Mike Markel
“Yes. She had a brain trauma injury. I don’t know if you knew that.”
“No, I didn’t … Well, I guess I knew. I’m not sure.”
“Are you all right, Detective?” The nurse stepped around from behind the nurses’ station and took my hand, looked at my eyes.
“Yeah, I’m all right. I’ll be all right.”
“You sure? You look kinda pale.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I was hoping it wouldn’t be that bad.”
“She was in a T-bone crash.”
“How badly hurt … Is she gonna be okay?”
“Detective, come over here and sit down. I don’t like your color,” the nurse said, leading me over to a small couch in the nurses’ lounge. “Let me get you some water.”
I sat and waited. I took the water and said, “Tell me how bad she is.”
“Well, she suffered a skull fracture and contusion to the brain. Then she developed an intracranial hemorrhage, but we drained that and got it under control. She’s still in a coma.”
“What’s the prognosis?”
“It’s still too early to tell. It’s only been twelve hours.”
“The coma, what does that mean?”
“It’s fairly common in cases like this. We’re hoping she’ll come out some time today.”
“Long term?”
“Don’t know. She could be perfectly fine, everything normal in a month or so.”
“Or?”
“Well, there’s a range of potential problems, but we don’t want to get ahead of ourselves. We’re hoping to see progress every day.”
My shoulders slumped, my head sinking into my hands. I began to weep quietly. The nurse said, “Detective, are you investigating what happened to this girl?”
“No,” I said, lifting my head and looking at the nurse, “I am what happened to this girl.”
The nurse said, “I’m so sorry,” and went back to her post behind the nurses’ station.
I took a tissue out of my bag and wiped at my eyes, stood up, and walked down the hall to room 415. I looked in the window, through the half-closed blinds. The mother was sitting on the bed, clutching the girl’s hand. The mother wore a neck brace. The girl’s head was shaved and bandaged, with a tube running from the right side of the skull, out under the bandage.
I walked in slowly. The mother appeared to hear the door opening but didn’t turn to see who it was. Nurses and doctors were in and out all the time. I stood there, noiselessly. The woman turned and saw me but said nothing.
“Mrs. Pritchard, my name is Karen Seagate.” I didn’t know what to say next. I had no idea whether Mrs. Pritchard knew who was in the accident. “I’m a police officer with the Rawlings Police Department,” I said, immediately realizing how that would mislead her.
Mrs. Pritchard placed her daughter’s hand down gently on the bed and stood. “I’m pleased to meet you. Aubrey Pritchard.” She walked over, extending her hand to me. Suddenly, her expression clouded as she noticed the brace on my wrist, then the knot on my forehead. She said, “It’s … it’s you.”
I said nothing. Aubrey Pritchard’s hand came up suddenly. I saw it coming but chose not to block it. The slap to my face knocked me off balance, but I recovered my footing before hitting the wall. Aubrey Pritchard stared at me as I looked down at the floor. Neither of us said anything.
After what seemed a long while, Aubrey said, “Where do you find the nerve?”
I was silent for a moment. “I came to see Annie. To see if there is anything I can do.” My voice was low and flat.
Aubrey Pritchard said nothing. She walked slowly over to the bed, sat down in the chair, and then gently took Annie’s hand. I stood motionless. “Annie is in the second grade at Riverside. She has a brother, Mike, who is in kindergarten. She says Mike is a real pain, but she is very protective of him. And she has an older sister, Kathleen, who’s just starting junior high. Kathleen is pulling away from Annie now that she has discovered boys. Or, to be more precise, boys have discovered her. And Annie has a cat, Marmalade, who she promised she would take care of. For the most part, she has kept her end of the bargain. And Annie has a father, Russell. Russell and I love Annie very much.”
She was weeping.
“Mrs. Pritchard, I cannot express how sorry I am this happened.”
“Annie was working on a project at school. She was going to measure the growth rate of beans. One group of seeds was going to be placed in the shade all the time. One group was going to get four hours of sun every day. And one group was going to be placed in the sun all the time. She was going to measure how high each group grows.”
I let the words hang in the air. “Mrs. Pritchard, please talk to me. Please. I have done a horrible thing, Mrs. Pritchard. I know that. I do. But I didn’t mean to. It was an accident. And I will do whatever I can to make it better. I won’t dispute your version of the accident. I’ll give you all the money I have. Mrs. Pritchard, please talk to me.”
Aubrey looked up at me. “How did you run that stop sign?”
It was a few seconds before I could speak. “I wasn’t paying attention. I … I took my eyes off the road.”
“I was told you were given a Breathalyzer test at the scene.”
“Yes, that is true.”
“Had you been drinking?”
I swallowed. “I am so sorry, Mrs. Pritchard.” She turned back to Annie, as if I had already left the room, as if I no longer existed. I said, “Mrs. Pritchard, may I come to see Annie?”
Aubrey Pritchard turned to me, like she was surprised I was still there. “No, you may not,” she said softly, turning back to her daughter.
* * *
Ryan was working at his desk when I walked in to the detectives’ bullpen, hung up my coat, and sat down at my desk. He looked up. I could see him checking out my busted face. “How’re you feeling?” he said.
I felt pretty beat up, with new purple bruises popping up all over my body and everything sore, but I wasn’t even conscious of my injuries. Before the car crash, I would have been able to answer Ryan’s question easily. I had a bunch of problems, each of which I could name. This was shitty and that was shitty, but I knew I could work through it all. I’d think about my problems, analyze them, put them in categories, go to work on them, and with time and luck I’d tick them off my list. I’d get through it.
Before, I knew I was a nuisance. The people in my life—my son, my ex-husband, my partner—had to make allowances for me when I screwed up, which I was doing with increasing frequency these days. But I was still functioning. And even though I had long since become a pain in the ass to everyone in contact with me, I was still doing valuable work. Ryan and I were making progress on the case.
But when I put that little girl in the hospital, everything changed. I had hurt her, maybe for life, maybe killed her. I had become toxic. I was now a poison, seeping out from my own circle of people, infecting strangers. Clearly, I could no longer be trusted to do my job, to work with Ryan. Now, the calculations had changed. I could no longer say that, yes, I had some serious problems, but in the big picture I was doing more good than harm. No, it was clear I could not say that.
How did I feel? I felt, for the first time in my life, like I deserved to die. And I wanted to. “I’m sorry, Ryan, what did you say?”
“I asked you if you’re okay, you know, the accident?” The accident had happened too late to make the paper.
“I’m fine. Just a little beat up.”
“The wrist broken?”
“No, just sprained.”
“I’ve had that before. It’s a pain because you keep banging it against things. But it’ll get a little better every day.”
“Yeah, I’ve heard that.” I didn’t know whether the word had gotten out I had been drinking. Maybe Matt didn’t tell anyone, particularly because of the way he faked the BAC test and drove me back to my house. Yes, Matt was a shithead, but he wasn’t a stupid shithead. He wasn’t the kind to jeopardize his own career
by talking it up around headquarters.
The way Ryan was treating me supported this. If he knew I’d been drinking, he wouldn’t have mentioned his own sprained wrist, talking like this was a routine car accident. But what did it mean that he didn’t ask whether it was a one-car or a multi-car? I thought he surely would ask if all he knew was that I was in a car crash. He would ask me how bad I was hurt, then whether there was anyone else in my car, then whether there was another car. That’s what anyone would ask. So he must know. Maybe he just didn’t know I was drunk.
Ryan said, “The chief wants to see you. As soon as you get in.”
Well, I thought, soon I would know how much everyone knew. I nodded. “While I’m gone, why don’t you try to find out why Timothy Sanders went to Milwaukee?”
“Yeah, I’ve got that on my list.”
In the chief’s office, Helen Glenning, the receptionist, waved me in, wearing an expression that told me most of what I needed to know. There was no understanding or disappointment or even pity, just disgust.
I stood in front of the chief’s desk. On a good day he was likely to make the detectives stand. Today, he sure wasn’t going to invite me to sit. He kept writing for five seconds, then ten. I didn’t care. Finally, he looked up.
“Close the door.” I did it. “I talked with the prosecutor this morning to see what you’re going to be charged with. I was hoping it would be DUI, because I know you’re a drunk, and then I’d be able to fire you. Unfortunately, the BAC wasn’t filed early enough. So it looks like it’s going to be Inattentive Driving, which is a gift. You got lucky.”
“Funny,” I said. “I don’t feel lucky.”
“If the victim dies, of course, then the prosecutor can re-file for Involuntary Vehicular Manslaughter, which will carry time.”
“Yeah,” I said, “I’m aware of that.” He kept looking at me. “Why did you ask to see me, Chief?”
He shook his head. “Just to let you know where you stand.”
I knew where I stood. I knew that he had been gunning for me ever since I’d made detective. This might turn out to be his chance. Good, I thought. Let’s get it over with. If he thought I cared whether I got in trouble at work, disappointed him, got fired, he didn’t understand me. I simply no longer cared. I didn’t care about being humiliated in front of Ryan and everyone else on the force. It didn’t matter. I realized I wasn’t even ashamed of myself. What could that mean?
It hit me. I wasn’t ashamed of myself because I hadn’t let myself down. I didn’t do anything I should not have done. I was a drunk. That’s what drunks do. They drink, then they hurt people. For me to be ashamed, I would have had to be a better person than that. I would have had to be in control of myself. I would have had to be responsible. I would have had to know my actions affected other people. But that would have been too much to ask of myself. I was just a drunk. I did what drunks do.
“Do you have anything to say?”
I thought for a moment. That I was sorry I embarrassed the department by getting in a car crash after having too much to drink? No, that wouldn’t be quite true. That I understood why he wanted to fire me? No, that was fairly obvious. That I felt an aching pain in my soul that I had never felt before, that I could not have imagined before? That I wanted to unholster my service pistol, place the barrel up against my temple, and stop it? No, I didn’t think I wanted to share that with the chief.
“No, Chief, I don’t have anything to say.”
“Since I can’t suspend you, here’s what you’re going to do on the Hagerty case,” the chief said. “It could be a while before the Hawaii cops can get that kid to either back off on his story how Dolores Weston had her husband killed—or give them something they can go on. I don’t believe in coincidences. My money’s on her being the link. If she was into something dirty, maybe her husband found out about it and she had him taken out. Then she had to take out Hagerty for the same reason. I want to be ready to grab her up if it turns out that’s what happened.”
“Okay, so what do you want us to do?”
“You and Miner get the phones and financials on Hagerty and Dolores Weston. Figure out what kind of shit they were into. With any luck, I can connect the dots and get her for both murders before the Hawaii guys flip the kid.”
“That would get your picture in the paper, wouldn’t it?”
“Seagate, get the hell out of my office and do your job, while you still have one.”
I turned and left. I wasn’t seeing the connection between the two murders. The Maui detectives must’ve sweated the kid hard on the conspiracy. If there was any evidence, they would have been all over Weston’s place here in town when they were here. But they went home the next day. Even if Weston’s employees in town said the doper kid was an asshole, since when was that a crime? No, I didn’t see any reason to pursue the James Weston murder—until something else turned up. In the meantime, Ryan and I would work the Hagerty murder.
“All right,” Ryan said when I got back to our desks. “How’d it go?”
“He authorized us to get the phones and financials on Arlen Hagerty and Dolores Weston. Wants us to nail Weston for killing her husband and Hagerty.”
“We’re a ways from making that connection.”
“Yeah,” I said. “But since he’s letting us get the information we want, let’s just do it.”
“Okay,” Ryan said. “I’ll start rounding up the records. Oh, and one other thing. I called Soul Savers in Milwaukee. There’s an office there, but there’s no record of Timothy Sanders stopping by.”
“You work on Hagerty’s records. I’ll do Dolores Weston.” I looked at my young partner as he began to fill out the forms on his computer. Either this kid is one hell of an actor, I thought, or he doesn’t know what happened in that car crash.
* * *
Getting the phones and financials on Hagerty and Dolores Weston took the rest of the morning. We had to officially route the requests through the chief’s office. He forwarded them to the prosecutor, who signed off on it. The phones were simple because there were only a handful of carriers who could have had accounts for Hagerty and Weston. The financials were more complex. Naturally, Soul Savers had so many layers of bureaucracy I had to spend a lot of time on the phone getting shuttled between various administrative and accounting offices in Colorado Springs.
The search for private accounts for Hagerty took a call to the Colorado Association for Bank Security, which puts law-enforcement in touch with the right bank during a criminal investigation. For Weston, it was more complicated because she had residences in four other states, which we had to run down.
Ryan ate his bag lunch from the other day. I bought some calories from a machine in the break room. By 1:00 we had what we needed to start talking with each other.
“Okay, Ryan,” I said, tossing my empty chips bag into the garbage can, “tell me about Hagerty.”
“He didn’t have a cell, or at least he didn’t have a registered one. All he had was a home phone. When he was on the road he used hotel phones. I got his itinerary from Soul Savers going back three months and contacted the various hotels. There are calls from the hotels at each of the places he’d been during that period, so he didn’t appear to be using a calling card.”
“Okay, who’d he talk to?”
“The most calls were back and forth to Soul Savers headquarters, a few to the Archbishop. He called a lot of restaurants. The only thing that jumps out is he was talking a lot to Dolores Weston.”
“When was that?”
“The whole time. Going back to late August, at least once a week. The last month, more than that. Couple times a week. And there were two calls—one to her, one from her—the day he was killed, in the afternoon.”
“So when he’s here in Rawlings, he’s using the hotel phone. What phone is she using? A number in the legislature or home?”
“Day he was killed,” Ryan said, looking down at the records, “he called her at her office in the legislatu
re a little before 3:00. The call was fifteen seconds, so I’m guessing he left her a message. She called him back, from her home, around 4:00. That call lasted nineteen minutes.”
“Those other calls to Dolores, going back the three months, are they during the day or the evening?”
“Both. And they range from less than a minute to more than forty minutes.”
“That’s a little more chatting than I’d expect between these two,” I said.
“Seems like it to me. I guess Dolores would want some sort of endorsement from Arlen running up to the election. Let me look at the pattern.” He ran his finger down the record. “But the frequency doesn’t change after the election. In fact, some of the longest calls were in the last couple of weeks.”
“They could be talking about the Henley Pharmaceuticals thing,” I said. “What did you get from the financials? That might tell us something.”
“Okay,” Ryan said. “He had an operations budget and a travel budget from Soul Savers. He had control of them, although I couldn’t get straight whether Connie de Marco had any authority to draw on them. But there’s nothing particularly interesting about them, anyway.”
“Anything interesting separate from Soul Savers?” I said.
“Maybe. He’s got three different accounts: two joint accounts in his name and Margaret’s, one in his name only. He’s got no trusts or anything fancy. The bank account in his name, he makes a five-thousand dollar deposit around the fifteenth of every month.”
“Those deposits coming from Soul Savers?”
“No, not according to Soul Savers,” Ryan said.
“They have any fingerprints on them?”
“No, they’re not checks, they’re cash.”
“That’s weird,” I said. “Where’s he getting five K a month in currency?”
“Maybe that’s something we want to talk with Dolores Weston about,” Ryan said. “What’d you get on her?”
“Okay, start with the phones,” I said, scanning the records. “I’m seeing the same calls you saw between her and Hagerty.”
Ryan said, “Anything between her and the doper kid? What’s his name?”
“He’s Robert Cowan. A couple, but nothing right before the husband died.”
