“No,” Wyatt answered. “This isn’t a social visit.”
“I hope your client isn’t complaining about the way he’s being treated. We’re bending over backward to make him as comfortable as possible, under the circumstances.”
“No,” Wyatt said, “he’s not complaining about that. His beef is about being here at all. What I wanted to ask you is how is it that a key prosecution witness, a convicted felon, is working in your infirmary and has the run of the place?”
“Do you mean Dwayne Thompson?”
“Yes.”
Lowenthal shrugged. “He was qualified to work there and we needed the help. That’s not unusual. It sounds like you’re sore that he was in a position to hear your guy’s confession, not about whether his job is suitable or not.”
“That’s part of it, I admit that. But it still seems unusual to me.”
“It is what it is—was. We weren’t violating any regulations.” He checked his watch. “Listen, I’ve got to go. When this is over we’ll have lunch.”
Wyatt got up. “One other thing.”
“What’s that?”
“I can understand Thompson working in the infirmary. I don’t like the circumstances, but I see the rationale. But why was he sleeping there? What possible benefit could there be to your organization in that?”
Lowenthal shot him a look. “Who says he was sleeping there?”
“You didn’t know?”
“Where did you get this information?” the sheriff asked. He was clearly upset.
“It’s common knowledge.”
“Not to me.” He gave a snort of exasperation. “I’m always the last one to know about these things. Which doesn’t make me happy, I’ll admit that.” He escorted Wyatt to the door. “I’ll look into it when I get back from this conference. It’s not a big deal, Wyatt,” he added hastily, “don’t get thinking you’ve got something here, because you don’t. But I’ll see what’s going on and take the proper steps to remedy it.” The sheriff stood up. “I’ll get this straightened out.” He opened his office door. “Your client is guilty, Wyatt. We’re not going to screw this up on any technicality.”
WYATT STOPPED AT THE hotel to check in and drop off his gear, then drove over to the hospital. It was a few minutes before four. Dr. Levi was in Michaela’s room when he arrived, with a retinue of orthopedic-surgery residents, interns, and nurses.
“Ah, the paterfamilias is here,” Levi called out when Wyatt entered the crowded room. Moira was standing off to the side, observing everything with a worried eye. “We just finished explaining the schedule to your daughter, Wyatt.” He was holding Michaela’s hand. The doctors made room for Wyatt to slide by them so he could take her other hand. She squeezed it tightly.
“How are you doing, sweetheart?” he asked, his voice reassuring. He glanced over his shoulder at Moira. Her face was blank.
“Okay, Dad. I’m nervous, but not too much.”
“You’re going to come through like a champ,” Levi told her, his demeanor sunny and bright. “Everything looks good.”
Thank God for this man, Wyatt thought, looking at his daughter. Being with Moira all day couldn’t be good for Michaela’s spirits; her mother was walking around with a perpetual black cloud over her head. He needed to spend more time here.
Levi led his entourage out. Father, mother, and daughter were left alone with each other.
“Anything I need to know?” he asked. He felt awkward; he knew Moira did, also.
“We saw the psychologist,” Moira said.
“How did it go?” he asked guardedly.
“Okay. I mean … Rome wasn’t built in a day. She wants to meet you. You should be participating, at least some of the time.”
“I know. I’ll try.” He hadn’t thought about the need to see a therapist.
“My adviser came by earlier,” Michaela volunteered, feeling the tension and changing the subject to deflect it. “She brought me some books and a schedule. They’re going to send a tutor to the house when I get home, so I can keep up. And Ramona came by, too.” Ramona was Michaela’s dance instructor. Michaela had been six, not even in first grade, when she had started ballet lessons. That seemed like another lifetime ago.
Michaela looked over at her mother, who was staring out the window. “She brought me that, from all the girls.” She pointed to a table by the bathroom door. A huge teddy bear sat on the table. The bear was dressed in a pink tutu and toe shoes.
He smiled. “Very cute.”
The afternoon slid by slowly. All three of them were in a torpor, awaiting tomorrow’s unknown. No one said much; Michaela was tired, while Wyatt and Moira were locked in their own thoughts. Wyatt had instructed Josephine not to put any calls through. Nothing couldn’t wait until midday tomorrow, after the operation.
Michaela was served dinner shortly after five. She picked at her food; she had no appetite. None of them did. A couple hours later the nurses began prepping Michaela for the operation. They added a tranquilizer to the painkiller dripping into her vein through the IV and in minutes she was asleep.
Wyatt and Moira stood outside Michaela’s darkened room. The corridor was quiet; patients were sleeping. Visitors, except those, like Moira, who were spending the night, had gone home. Moira sagged against the dusty-peach walls that had been painted with an eye to cheeriness, although now the place felt sterile, like an exhibit under glass of preserved life, not life itself.
She needs you, he thought. And you should need her, too.
He didn’t feel need, so he manufactured it. He pulled her to him and held her in a hug, feeling her weight sag against him. It felt like dead weight. “She’s going to be all right,” he whispered through her hair.
Moira was crying, sobbing soundlessly. He held her tighter, not saying anything, letting her cry. He held her after she finished crying, waiting for her breathing to come back to a semblance of normality.
“I’m going to go now,” he said. “I’ll be back by six tomorrow morning.”
She nodded. They walked back to Michaela’s room, his arm around her shoulder. “Take care,” he said.
She stared at him. “Don’t leave,” she asked.
“There isn’t room for both of us here. I’ll spend the night with her if you want to go home and take a break from this.”
She shook her head. “I didn’t mean that.”
He looked at her.
“Don’t leave me.”
He pulled her close again. Her heart was fluttering under her skin like a hummingbird’s. “I’m your husband, Moira. I’m not leaving you.” He held her for a minute, rubbing her back. “I’ll be here first thing in the morning.”
He kissed her again. She went into their daughter’s room, which was dark except for a low-wattage night-light near the floor. It reminded him of Michaela’s bedroom, when she was small and slept with a Mickey Mouse night-light.
The night-light was burning, so she should feel safe. Or at least have the illusion.
SHERIFF LOWENTHAL CALLED DORIS Blake into his office. “Close the door.”
She shut it and stood in front of his desk, trembling like a leaf.
“Why did you authorize the prisoner Dwayne Thompson to have the run of our infirmary?” he asked. Lowenthal was a decent guy and liberal by law-enforcement standards, but he could be brutally tough.
“I didn’t do that,” she stammered. “The assignment officer did. When Thompson was transferred to our facility from Durban.”
“That was a work assignment. Not sleeping there overnight, with no supervision. I’ve been informed you made that transfer.”
She squared her shoulders. “Yes sir. I did do that.”
“On whose authority, may I ask?”
Go for it. It’s your only chance to escape this alive. “I thought yours, Sheriff.”
He was on his feet like she’d lit a fire under his ass. “What gave you that notion, Lieutenant?”
“I knew he had been assigned to work in the infirma
ry, and I also knew he was to be … protected. Because of his importance to the district attorney’s office.” She was thinking on her feet amazingly well, which was unusual for her. “There had been some unpleasantness on his tier. Someone had found out he was a stool pigeon, and his life was threatened. I thought you had requested he be moved to a location where he would be safe. Since he was already working in the infirmary I thought that would be a safe place. I did make that decision, sir, but I thought it was following your and the district attorney’s guidelines, if not explicit orders.”
He stared at her. She stood stock-still in front of him. Sweat was pouring from every orifice.
“You were wrong,” he said finally. “I never gave any such orders, direct or implied.”
“I’m sorry, sir. I apologize.”
He calmed down some. “All right. It was an honest mistake—I hope. That you knew this man at Durban doesn’t help you, Blake.”
“I only knew him as a guard knows a prisoner, sir.”
He looked at her but didn’t say anything. “I’m going to let you off with a reprimand,” he said. “This time. But if you have any more contact with this prisoner—any—you will be suspended, and you may be fired. Your conduct is certainly cause for either of those actions. Am I clear?”
“Yes sir.”
THE SUN HAD COME up early and clean, breaking through the morning clouds. Wyatt watched it enter the horizon line as he drove from his house to the hospital. It was going to be a beautiful day. Hopefully, an optimistic day.
He and Moira sat in the operating section visitors’ lounge. Wyatt tried to go over some notes but he was too antsy, so he worked on the daily crossword puzzle. Moira had The Recognitions with her and was slowly reading, from time to time looking at the clock on the wall, then at her watch, as if by doing that the time would pass faster.
Levi’s prognosis had been three hours. At nine Wyatt went down to the cafeteria and brought back two cappuccinos and croissants—neither’d had breakfast; they had stuck like glue to this room, to be as close to Michaela as possible.
At a quarter to ten Moira got up and started pacing. To the elevators, to the nurses’ station, down the length of the hallway and back. She tried to sit, but she couldn’t. He watched her, and felt his own anxiety rising.
The clock struck ten. Their eyes swung to the double doors that led to the operating area. Willing Levi to come out, with a smile on his face.
Ten-ten. Ten-twenty. The doors remained closed, no one entering or exiting.
“Something’s wrong,” Moira fretted. Her voice was on the verge of breaking.
“Nothing’s wrong,” he said, almost furiously, trying to be reassuring, to her and to himself as well. “If there was something wrong, they’d tell us about it.”
“If there was something wrong they’d all be working as hard as they could to make it right,” she countered. “They wouldn’t have time to come out here and schmooze with us.”
“Nothing’s wrong,” he said again. He spoke to her back; she was up and pacing again. He walked over to the nurses’ station. The nurse, a middle-aged Jamaican who had an air of authority about her, looked up at him. “Everything is fine,” she reassured him in a lilting voice before he could ask the question. “We’ve been monitoring the situation. There’s no cause for concern.”
“Okay,” he said. “Thanks.”
Moira saw him talking to the nurse and hurried over. “It’s under control,” he told her. “They’re monitoring the situation.”
Moira turned to the nurse. “What does that mean?” she asked. “Why are you monitoring the situation?”
“Because you might be worried, and I want to be able to tell you not to,” the nurse answered her.
“Whether I should be or not?”
“We wouldn’t tell you she was all right if she wasn’t,” the nurse answered calmly. She was used to families being on edge; soothing them was the most important part of her job.
They sat down again. Wyatt didn’t want to look at the clock, but he couldn’t help himself. He watched the second hand sweep across the face, number by number. Five seconds, ten, twenty, thirty, another minute gone. Five seconds again, ten, thirty.
Moira was slumped over in her chair. “I don’t like this,” she muttered to herself. “I don’t like this.”
She got up and paced again, marching like a soldier. Wyatt tilted his chair back until he hit the wall behind him. He closed his eyes and started deep-breathing.
Wham! The double doors burst open. Wyatt jumped out of his chair. Levi came striding through.
Wyatt looked up at the clock. It was 11:15 in the morning. The operation had gone on almost fifty percent longer than had been anticipated.
Levi looked at them. Then he smiled. “That one was a bitch,” Levi admitted. “But she’s going to be fine,” he added, reading the concern and fear on their faces. “She is a strong, strong trooper. You two should be proud of her.”
“It took so much longer than you said it would,” Moira said. “Is she going to be all right?”
“Yes, Moira. She should recover completely—full range of motion and feeling.”
Wyatt grabbed Levi’s hand and shook it vigorously. “Thank you, Lew. I can’t tell you how much your help and support means to us.”
“Yes, Lew,” Moira added, remembering her manners. “Thank you,” She kissed him on the cheek. “When can we see her?”
“She’ll be out of it for a couple of hours. Why don’t you two take a walk? It’s a beautiful day outside. Michaela isn’t going anywhere.”
They found a small, quiet park on the hospital grounds and sat on a wooden bench that had a commemorative plaque attached to it and took in the sunlight and the smells of the grass, which had been freshly cut. Moira slipped off her canvas shoes and stretched her bare feet out on the grass, leaning back on the bench for support, her arms splayed out to either side, eyes closed to the almost high noon sun. Wyatt looked at her. Her face was beginning to relax, the first glimmer of a smile he’d seen on her lips in days, from the moment the gun had fired and Michaela had screamed.
“Do you feel better?” he asked.
She nodded, her eyes still closed. “I’m ready to go on now,” she said. “I haven’t been for days.”
“We need to thrash all this out, so we can put it behind us.”
She nodded again. “But not this minute. Right now, I just want to feel alive again.”
MICHAELA CAME TO THREE hours later. They visited with her in the postop room. There were dozens of stitches along the side of her leg where it had been opened up, and she was wearing a heavy knee brace. Screws had been put in the bone above and below the fracture to hold the rod in place. The leg was in a traction device attached to the bed.
Relieved that she was in no immediate danger, Wyatt headed over to the jail. He wanted to begin tracking Dwayne Thompson’s comings and goings, from the moment he had entered the facility to be a witness in another trial until when he had gone to the grand jury and testified against Marvin White. He tried to put himself in Thompson’s shoes. You’ve come down here from Durban to testify in a trial whose origin goes back several years. The DA working the case is going to sit with you, prep you. A ton of paperwork to review, documents to refamiliarize yourself with, including your previous testimony. Where do you do that inside these walls?
“Afternoon, Mr. Matthews.” The duty officer greeted Wyatt professionally. “How can I help you?”
“I’d like to get a look at your law library. You do have one, I assume?”
“Yes sir.” The officer, a sergeant, paused. “May I ask for what purpose?”
“To see what you’ve got there.” He didn’t elaborate. “Is there a problem?” he asked, putting an edge on his question.
The duty officer knew the drill—treat this important lawyer with respectful deference as long as he didn’t ask for anything improper. Checking out the jail law library didn’t seem like an improper request. After all, th
e man was a lawyer.
“No, no problem. I’ll have one of the deputies walk you down.”
It was a decent-sized library. He had never been in a jail law library so he had no frame of reference to judge it against, but it seemed to be adequate for the needs of the inmates here, who weren’t doing long stretches and researching intricate, lengthy appeals. He looked around the facility, gazing at the various books and legal journals. Most of the code was there, along with a random sampling of other material. Fairly comprehensive, but half a decade or more out-of-date. Criminal law had gone through a lot of changes recently, he knew, although until now it hadn’t been his field. It would be a bitch trying to do anything on your own out of this place.
Along one wall there was a row of computers on a long table, bolted down. Old 386s, good enough for word processing but nothing more sophisticated. A couple of inmates were hunched over the machines, typing into them. Wyatt noticed that none of the computers were connected to outside telephone lines. The only telephones in the room were public pay phones, which were all occupied.
He approached the deputy who was monitoring the room and introduced himself. “Can I ask you a couple of questions?” he inquired pleasantly.
The deputy in charge looked at the other deputy, Wyatt’s escort. The escort deputy nodded approval. “What do you want to know?” the library custodian asked.
“Who has access to this library?”
“Inmates who need to.”
“What determines that?”
“The sheriff.”
“What is his criterion?”
“There’s different ones. Usually an inmate’s lawyer will file a petition asking permission for a specific reason. We don’t like them hanging around. Some guys would stay in here all day if we let ’em.”
“What percentage of inmates use the facility?”
“Not many. Ten percent or less. Most of the doofuses in here, they’re not sophisticated enough to put what we have to use. And since we’re a jail, by the time they’d work something up that could do anything for them they’re out of here, either sprung or sent to a regular prison facility. Mostly it’s men who have a long wait before their trial’s coming up, because of delays, postponements, continuances.”
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