by P.D. Workman
CHAPTER 20
THE PHONE STARTED RINGING before Ursula awoke. She sat up blearily in bed and rubbed her eyes, looking at the clock. Calls before six in the morning were never good. Taking a deep breath, she reached over and picked up the receiver. No caller I.D. Another sign that this was not going to be good. The best she could hope for was a wrong number. She pressed the “talk” button.
“Hello?”
“Is this Mrs. VanRaemdonck?” a crisp, official voice questioned.
Who else would it be?
“Yes,” Ursula answered, a knot in her stomach. "Is something wrong?”
“City police here. Your husband has been admitted to the General hospital.”
“Abe? What happened?” Ursula’s voice rose in pitch despite trying to sound calm and together.
“I can’t give you any information at this time,” the voice said flatly.
“Is he hurt? Sick? What happened?”
“You’ll have to talk to someone who can give you details. I’m not authorized to tell you anything at this point.”
“Well, who is?”
“You’d be best off going to the hospital in person. That’s likely the best way to get any details.”
“Okay, thank you,” Ursula said, and she hung up as she got out of bed and started to hurriedly pull on her clothes. Her mind was foggy and she wasn’t sure she really wanted to know what Abe was at the hospital for now. Was he violent? Hallucinating? Had someone hurt him? It was ridiculous of the police to refuse to answer her questions. If they knew her as his wife - not his ex-wife - then they should be willing to tell her the details. It was ridiculous to insist that she go down to the hospital to find out for herself.
Ursula grabbed her purse and went down the hall to Juneau’s room. She opened the door and sat on the edge of Juneau’s bed.
“Juneau. Juneau, wake up.”
Juneau stirred but didn’t awaken. Ursula shook her harder.
“Juneau. Come on. Wake up!”
Juneau tensed and awoke with a start. She clutched the blankets close to her.
“Mom? What’s wrong?”
“Dad’s in hospital. I don’t know why yet, I have to go down to find out the details. I’ll let you know as soon as I can. Can you take care of the kids, get them off to school?”
“Sure, of course,” Juneau agreed.
“Thanks, honey. I’m sorry to have to dump this on you.”
“It’s okay,” Juneau said, snuggling in her blankets.
“Okay. I’ll talk to you later.”
It was an exercise in frustration, as so many trips to the hospital were. You needed to be patient and keep asking questions and demanding help. Admitting indicated that Abe was in surgery, but would not say what had happened to him or how he was injured. They told her that she had to talk to the police. They would give her details. Ursula pointed out that the police had told her to talk to the hospital. They suggested maybe she should talk to a social worker.
“A social worker?” Ursula repeated. “What is a social worker going to tell me? I want to know how he got hurt!”
“Ma’am, it’s an ongoing police investigation. We have to be very careful not to release information to you that might harm their investigation.”
“Who is in charge of the police investigation?” Ursula demanded.
“There was a Captain Servos here earlier,” the administrator said. "But I think that he left.”
“Then who am I supposed to talk to?”
“You’d best call the police about that.”
Ursula gritted her teeth and went back to the waiting area. She dialed the police and wasn’t able to get make any progress in finding someone who would talk to her about Abe or tell her where Captain Servos could be found. She left various messages and held her phone in her hand, waiting for some other inspiration to strike. She tried once more.
“I’m looking for Agent Lovett,” she said. “Can you put me through to him, please.”
“One moment please, ma’am.”
Musical hold. Some easy-listening version of Sonny and Cher. Ursula tried to relax her body while she waited, to bring down her heart rate and blood pressure and just breathe easily. Eventually there was a click as the line was picked up, and Ursula waited for the inevitable apology that Lovett could not be found or was not available.
“Lovett,” a voice snapped.
“Oh!” Ursula was surprised, and for a moment not very coherent. “Agent Lovett.”
“Who is it?” Lovett questioned.
“It’s Ursula VanRaemdonck.”
“What can I do for you, Mrs. VanRam?”
“It’s about Abe.”
“Yes?” he prompted.
“Were you aware he was admitted to the hospital last night?”
“No,” Lovett’s voice was focused and interested, and she could picture his intense green eyes drilling into her, trying to squeeze as much information out of every word and movement she made as he could. She drew a long breath, trying to keep herself calm. “What happened?” he queried.
“I wish I knew. The police officer who called me early this morning said to go to the hospital to get details. The hospital says I should talk to the police because it is an active investigation and they’re not allowed to say anything.”
“Have you seen him? What sort of injuries does he have?”
“No. He’s in surgery. I gather it must be pretty serious. But I’d really like to find out what’s going on.”
“Absolutely,” Lovett agreed. "So would I. Where are you now?”
“I’m at the hospital. On my cell phone. I’m told the officer in charge of the investigation is a Captain Servos. I’ve left a message for him.”
“Good.” There was a pause while Ursula imagined he wrote down this information. “Ursula, I will find out what’s going on and get right back to you, okay?”
“Thank you, Agent Lovett.”
He rang off without even saying good bye. Ursula sat down and picked up a magazine, trying to force herself to sit and be quiet while she waited for someone to call her back. The time crept by at a snail’s pace. She kept looking at her watch, but the time didn’t seem to be moving. One minute. Another half a minute. Her watch was obviously not working any more. Ursula wasn’t getting anything from the magazine, but kept turning pages, looking for something to grab her attention.
The phone rang and Ursula grabbed it quickly. People glared at her because you were supposed to shut your phone off in the hospital. But there was no way that Ursula was going to shut off her only means of finding out what had happened to Abe.
“Hello?”
“It’s Baxter Lovett.”
“Did you find out anything?”
“He was shot.”
“Shot?” Ursula gasped. “How did he get shot?”
“Details are sketchy. He was in his car. Witnesses recall hearing a shot, but can’t pinpoint the time, no-one saw it. He was shot and then left to bleed out. A dog-walker came upon him, and called 911.”
“Thank goodness for that. How bad is it?”
“It’s very serious. He was lucky to survive until the ambulance got there. He’s still in surgery, and may be for a while.”
“Oh, Abe! What have you gotten yourself into!”
Lovett grunted.
“Well, thank you,” Ursula said. "I really appreciate you looking into it for me.”
“Of course. I’m going to come down to the hospital once he’s out of surgery. Are you okay?”
Ursula was surprised by the inquiry.
“Yes, I think I’m okay for now.”
“Okay. I’ve told the hospital to notify me when he’s getting out, but would you call me too, in case they forget?”
Ursula nodded to herself.
“Yes, I can do that,” she said.
“Thank you. Tell me if you run into any other problems.”
“I will. Thank you so much.”
She pressed “end” on the phone.
The
time passed slowly. She finally got word that Abe had made it through surgery and was being taken to recovery, after which she would be able to see him when he was taken to ICU.
“How did the surgery go?” Ursula asked the tired-looking doctor.
“Very well. He kept nice strong vitals all the way through it. He lost a lot of blood, but we’ve been transfusing him since early this morning, so I think we’ve replaced what he’s lost. There was a good amount of reconstruction to do, which is why it took so long, and we had to be very sure that we got everything that was damaged. You don’t want to have to open a patient up a second time.”
“Well thank you for that. How bad were the injuries? The police said that he was shot.”
The doctor nodded gravely.
“He took three bullets to the chest and torso. He’s a very lucky man.”
“You call that lucky?”
He chuckled.
“Lucky to survive it. It is a miracle that the bullets didn’t hit anything vital. And that he didn’t bleed out before we could treat him. I understand it was quite chilly last night, the cold probably helped to protect him a little. We cooled him down further to slow down his heart and the blood loss. But like I say, his vital signs stayed stable throughout. He’s a strong man.”
“How long before I can see him?”
“Probably an hour. They’ll just want to make sure he is recovering from the anesthetic all right, and that there are no sudden changes in his condition. Then he’ll be in ICU.”
“When will he be able to talk?”
The doctor considered.
“I don’t think that we need to keep him in a drug-induced coma… though if he gets agitated, we might need to consider it. We’ve got him on some pretty strong narcotics, so when he does wake up he will be groggy. I’m not sure if you’ll be able to get anything sensible from him. But he’ll be awake enough for you to tell him that you love him.”
Ursula tried to keep from reacting to that comment. There was no point in telling the doctor that they were actually divorced, that would keep her from being able to see him. And it was true, she did still love him, and she wanted to tell him so.
“Thank you, doctor. I guess I will continue to wait here.”
“Be happy that he made it. It was a miracle that he did.”
Ursula called Juneau when she figured the children would be up and having breakfast and getting ready for school.
“Mom! How’s Dad?” Juneau answered breathlessly.
“I haven’t seen him yet, but he’s okay. He had to have surgery and he’s just come out.”
“What happened?”
“He got shot.”
Juneau gasped audibly.
“Was it the jewel thieves?” she questioned.
Ursula was so sick of hearing about jewel thieves.
“It was probably a mugging or something,” she said. “I don’t think that any jewel thieves are after your dad.”
“They are, though. They tried to shoot him before,” Juneau reminded Ursula.
“It’s his delusion, Juneau. They’re not after him. They’re long gone. There would be no reason for them to stick around and to hunt him down. It just points the finger back at them.”
“I think you’re wrong,” Juneau said firmly, her voice quiet.
“You’re entitled to your opinion.”
“Tell him we all said we love him,” Juneau said in a more cheerful voice, intended for the other children to hear. They echoed their love in the background.
“I will, of course. Thanks so much for looking after the kids this morning. I’ll try to be home before you get out of school.”
“Okay.”
A nurse finally tracked Ursula down and advised her that she could now come in and see Abe.
“Follow me,” she instructed.
Ursula followed eagerly to the ICU, her heart pounding a rapid rhythm and was taken to Abe’s bedside. He looked incredibly small and vulnerable, wrapped in bandages and a hospital smock, all of the tubes and drains that were regulating his bodily functions. Ursula immediately took his hand.
“Abe, oh, Abe. It’s all going to be okay, Abe.” She looked at the nurse. “He looks just awful.”
His pallor was almost white, making his dark hair shockingly stark against his face. His eyes were sunken. He looked like he’s lost twenty pounds since she’d seen him last at the storage unit.
“For someone who was just shot three times, he looks very well,” the nurse said with a reassuring smile. “Give him some time.”
“He’s really going to be okay?”
“The doctors have done everything they could. He’s all patched up. He just needs some time to recover.”
“Okay,” Ursula agreed. “Can he hear me? Some people say that even when you’re in a coma…”
“He’s not in a coma. He’s just sleeping. He was awake for a few minutes in the recovery room. He’ll wake up himself after a while.”
Ursula nodded and pulled a chair close to the bed. She held his hand and stroked his arm gently.
Abe started to move around restlessly. Ursula squeezed his hand.
“Abe, are you awake?” she questioned softly.
He squeezed her hand back, though his eyes didn’t open yet.
“How are you feeling, Abe?” Ursula questioned. “Are you in much pain?”
His mouth shaped a word, and Ursula leaned close, trying to read or hear what it was. Abe said it again.
“Cold.”
Ursula looked around and found a blanket in the cupboard next to the bed. She pushed the call button for a nurse, and one came to the bedside as she spread the blanket over Abe.
“Can you bring me another blanket? He says he’s cold.”
“Are you awake, Mr. VanRaemdonck?” the nurse questioned, bending over him and shaking him a little. Abe moaned.
“Cold,” he repeated.
She put an electronic thermometer in his ear and read it.
“He’s still a bit hypothermic,” she confirmed. “They should have put warming blankets on him in recovery. I’ll get another to put on him now.”
“Thank you,” Ursula acknowledged.
“Now if he’s in any pain, you can hit the plus button on his morphine there,” the nurse pointed.
“Okay.”
The nurse left, and returned a few minutes later with another blanket, which she efficiently threw over Abe. Ursula continued to watch Abe and murmur reassuring words to him when he moved around restlessly.
Abe was in darkness. In a very dark, cold place. He dreamt that he was wandering through a deserted field in the middle of the night. It was freezing and he could barely see to put his foot in front of himself. How had he gotten there? What was he doing? It was something to do with the jewel thieves… but he couldn’t remember what. Had he escaped from where they had held him kidnapped? Had they dumped him here? Where was he and how was he going to get out of there?
He was lying down on the hard, cold, ground, curled up in a ball, clutching his chest, which was burning with pain. Abe could hear Ursula calling him, but he couldn’t get up to go find her. He was paralyzed, all of the energy gone out of him, his strength so sapped he could barely wiggle his toes. Abe tried to call back to Ursula, but his lips were thick and clumsy, and he just wanted to sleep.
He drifted in and out of sleep, hearing Ursula’s and his children’s voices. Trying to warm himself. Trying to crawl to his feet to get out of this awful place. At times the pain in his chest felt like a hole had been torn through him, other times it receded to a dull throb. Nightmares came and went, but each time they faded out, Abe was still lying in the cold field, all alone, unable to stir.
Long ago, he could remember promising Meggie that he wouldn’t die before she was twelve. She was still only in grade one. He had to make it through this cold desert. Somehow he had to survive.
After suffering through an eternity, Abe realized that he was warm, and that he was in a soft bed rather than on the
hard ground. He pulled the blankets up to his face, snuggling in the darkness. Ursula’s hand stroked his hair.
“It’s okay, Abe,” she whispered above the noise and bustle of the place. “It’s going to be okay. You’re going to be all right.”
“Urs,” his mouth formed the syllable, but he wasn’t sure that he had voiced it.
“I’m right here, Abe. Right here beside you.”
“Where?”
“Right here. You’re going to be okay.”
Abe opened his eyes a slit. Everything was blurry. Lots of white. His ears tried to sort out all of the different sounds, but it was all still chaos.
“Where’m I?” he whispered.
“You’re in hospital. In ICU.”
Abe let his eyes close again. Hospital. If he was in hospital, he could sleep. He didn’t have to escape. He didn’t have to find Ursula. He could just sleep.
“How’s he doing?” Lovett questioned. Cairns stood back, giving them some privacy and not hovering over them.
Ursula shrugged.
“He hasn’t really been fully conscious. In and out. He’ll ask a question, and then be back asleep again. They said he slept pretty soundly through the night.”
“I’m sure he needs a lot of sleep to recover.”
Ursula nodded.
“They say he’s doing really well. No fever or infection, his vitals have been strong all the way through everything. It’s just a matter of letting his body heal.”
“I’ll want to talk to him when he’s clear enough to communicate.”
“Sure,” Ursula agreed. "I’ll give you a call.”
“He’s certainly lived an exciting life lately.”
Ursula sighed.
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you that things used to be normal. We used to get up every morning and have breakfast and go off to school and work. And get together for supper in the evening and talk about normal things and take the kids to their activities, and just be a normal family. I mean, we always had to deal with adjustments to his medication, or little “blips”, but on the whole, things were normal. Then this jewel heist happened, and… he just went off the rails. Going off his meds, paranoid all the time, putting the kids in danger. Going and…” she choked, "getting himself shot! I didn’t sign up for this. This isn’t the life that we had planned.”
Lovett nodded.
“Our lives rarely go the way that we planned,” he said with a hint of bitterness. “Someone upstairs has a nasty sense of humor.”
Ursula cocked her head.
“That sounds like the voice of experience.”
“We all have our own sad stories. My marriage didn’t last, but I don’t have anything like mental illness to blame it on. Just a demanding job, and drifting apart.”
“I’m sorry. That would be hard too. Not as dramatic, but just as hard.”
Lovett chuckled.
“Not as dramatic,” he agreed.
Abe moved around, moaning. Ursula caught his hand.
“It’s okay, Abe,” she comforted. “Shhh…”
“Urs.”
“I’m right here, Abe.”
“Urs.”
“Yes, I’m here. Are you in pain?”
His hand clutched hers convulsively.
“Hurts,” he acknowledged.
Ursula hit the button on the morphine pump. After a few heartbeats, Abe let out a slow sigh.
“Is that better?” Ursula questioned.
“Uh.”
“Do you know where you are, Abe?”
His eyes opened a crack, but he didn’t focus in on Ursula or Lovett. His gaze was blind, unfocused.
“You’re in hospital,” Ursula told him.
His other hand moved jerkily over his chest.
“Got shot,” he breathed.
Lovett moved closer to be able to hear him better. Ursula glanced up at him.
“Yes, you did,” she agreed. “Do you remember?”
“Big man… shaved head…”
“Was he a skinhead or something?” Ursula questioned. "Was it a mugging?”
“Jewel thief,” he breathed.
Lovett rolled his eyes, shaking his head. Ursula looked at Abe thoughtfully. All this time she’d been arguing with him that he wasn’t being pursued by the jewel thieves. But the circumstantial evidence was really adding up. A dead jewel thief in the back yard. Somebody following him in a car that wasn’t the police. Getting kidnapped, or at least beaten up and put into handcuffs by someone other than the police. Getting shot, obviously in an attempt to kill him. How many more coincidences did they need before they believed him? It was like that quote: “Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't after you.” They kept putting everything down as Abe’s paranoia. But maybe it wasn’t just the paranoia. Maybe he was actually right.
“Did he say anything?” she questioned Abe.
“Back off.”
“He told you to back off?”
Abe gripped her hand.
“How do you know he was one of the jewel thieves?” Ursula persisted.
“Followed me. Shot me.”
“Can you describe him?”
Abe breathed for a few minutes, and Ursula thought that he had fallen back asleep again.
“White… tall… shaved head…”
He searched for more words, and then faded back out of consciousness. Ursula looked at Lovett.
“Does that help?”
“Not much at this point. Once he’s conscious more, we’ll get a sketch artist to work with him or have him look through photos.”
“Do you think it really was the jewel thieves?”
He shook his head, looking slightly pitying.
“Don’t buy into his delusions,” he warned. "I understand it’s hard. You want to believe him. But the chances that a gang of jewel thieves has been following him, trying to kill him…? It’s not very likely, is it?”
“But someone did shoot him.”
“The homeless are often victims of senseless crimes. He’s putting himself at risk by sleeping on the street. You know that the chainsaw attack wasn’t by the jewel thieves, even though he says it was. Same thing here.”
“I suppose,” Ursula agreed reluctantly.
“That was just a random circumstance. So is this.”
“And the body in the back yard?” Ursula prompted.
“That was Abe,” he raised a finger as Ursula opened her mouth to protest. “I realize I can’t prove it, because of the time of death that the coroner gave. But coroners can be wrong, and it’s my bet that the paranoid schizophrenic with delusions of being hunted by jewel thieves is the one who killed a jewel thief and buried it in his back yard. He didn’t count on you ever uncovering it.”
Ursula shook her head, still steadfastly believing that Abe could not have killed anyone, delusional or not.
Abe woke up and his eyes fastened on Ursula. Focused this time, more alert.
“Hi there,” Ursula said softly.
“Hi,” Abe said hoarsely.
“You look more awake this time.”
Abe nodded stiffly.
“How long?” he questioned.
“Three days ago. That’s when you were shot.”
Abe’s eyes moved slowly around the ICU room, examining the equipment, the lines going in and out of him. He turned back to Ursula.
“You’ve been here?”
“Yes, I’ve been with you for three days. Other than evenings and nights with the kids. You’ve been in and out a lot. Do you remember any of it?”
He shook his head.
“No… only nightmares.”
“Do you remember what happened?”
“I got shot,” Abe said, touching the bandages across his chest. “I think… twice.”
“Three times,” Ursula told him.
“Must’a passed out after two.”
“You’re very lucky. You shouldn’t have survived after being shot directly in the chest.”
He smiled slightly.
“I don’t always do what I’m supposed to,” he teased.
“Well, you’re lucky. I’m glad you made it.”
“Me too.”
“Do you remember his face?” Ursula questioned. "The police want you to talk to a sketch artist. Or look at pictures.”
Abe nodded.
“I won’t ever forget his face,” he said.
“Good. That will help.”
Abe glanced around the room again.
“It was one of the jewel thieves,” he said finally, reluctantly, knowing that Ursula would argue the proposition.
“Maybe it was,” Ursula said.
Abe stared at her in astonishment.
“Really? You believe me?”
“Abe… it’s just getting to be too much. Too many coincidences. Too many weird coincidences.”
“So you believe me?”
Ursula didn’t want to say too much, to get his hopes up.
“I think… I think I believe that someone is after you… and who else would it be? It’s… it’s just the only thing that makes sense.”
“It’s the only thing that makes any sense! It’s not just a bunch of separate coincidences,” Abe said with feeling. ”It’s all connected! Everything is connected!”
“What do you know about them so far?” Ursula questioned.
“Lots,” Abe said. "I have papers. In the car. I can show you.”
“Do you know their names?”
“Some of them,” Abe said.
“How about the inside man? Do you know who at the airport is involved?”
Abe hesitated.
“I have it narrowed down. I’m not sure yet. I’m… I’m afraid it might be Dennis.”
“Dennis? There’s no way it was Dennis,” Ursula protested. “He’s been such a good friend. You don’t think he’d be involved in something like that, do you? He couldn’t be.”
“I hope not,” Abe said. "I don’t want him to be. But he was there… access to everything… I have interoffice memos… and he liked the curry.”
“He liked the curry?” Ursula repeated. “What do you mean?”
“Somebody sat on my plane, and ate the curry, watching what was going on outside after the heist,” Abe said. “It might have been the inside man. It might have been Dennis.”
Ursula frowned, shaking her head.
“But you don’t have any proof that it was Dennis.”
“I don’t have proof,” Abe said. “Or I would be able to convince Lovett.”
“Well, we have to get enough to convince him,” Ursula said.
“We?” Abe repeated, eyebrows raised, studying her face.
“I’m going to help you,” Ursula said. "You show me what you’ve figured out, and we’ll find it. We’ll find the proof and we’ll put these guys away.”
“Really?” he prodded.
“Really.”
“I don’t want you to get hurt. These guys are dangerous.”
“I’ll be careful,” Ursula promised.
“You can’t let them know that you’re investigating it. I don’t want them doing this to you,” he touched his chest. “We have to protect the children.”
Ursula nodded.
“We know one of the thieves,” she pointed out.
“Who?” Abe questioned, looking startled.
“The body that was buried in the back yard, where you were digging the bunker.”
Abe was puzzled.
“He was one of the thieves?”
Ursula nodded.
“They didn’t tell you that? His name was… let me think for a minute, Daryl… umm, Daryl Bacardi. Lovett told me he was a jewel thief.”
Abe concentrated. The drugs in his system were making it hard to concentrate, to make all of the connections that he knew.
“Bacardi,” he repeated. “I know that name… I found it…”
“Lovett said he was a known jewel thief. He thought that the two of you had a falling out, and you killed him.”
“No,” Abe said. "I didn’t kill him. But I did come across his name when I was searching news articles for known jewel thieves. I was looking for the boss, for this Mary Margaret.”
“Mary Margaret?” Ursula repeated. "How do you know her name?”
“The phone call.”
“What phone call? Who called you?”
“I don’t know. It was a pocket dial, and they were talking about me, and about this Mary Margaret.”
“Did you tell Lovett that?”
Abe frowned, trying to remember details.
“Yes,” he agreed. “That was right before… when they sent me to the hospital.”
“When you were so… sick? Are you sure you were clear? You might have thought you told him, but sometimes you kind of… babble.”
“I don’t babble,” Abe contradicted.
“You think too fast and make the connections too fast for the rest of us to follow. To us, it sounds like babble. You know you were… umm… pretty scattered that day.”
Abe shrugged.
“I could try to talk to him about it again,” he said.
Ursula pursed her lips, considering it.
“Don’t tell him anything yet,” she said slowly. “It might work better if I talk to him, once we sort out all of the evidence. It might be easier for me to explain to him. You know, at regular speed instead of supersonic.”
Abe smiled slightly. He stretched restlessly and closed his eyes.
“Tired,” he said.
“Okay. Why don’t you get some more sleep.”
Ursula looked with dismay at the copies of all of the papers that she had retrieved from Abe’s car, after the police and Agent Lovett had had a chance to look at it. It had been Agent Lovett who had delivered it to her, a slightly sympathetic smile on his face.
“I hope you’re not planning on trying to make sense of all this,” he warned.
“Well, I have to look at what he’s done, at least. If it’s made someone uncomfortable, the truth must be in here somewhere.”
The sheaf of papers was thick. Lovett shook his head.
“We can’t make heads or tails of it. All of the connections are in his head. What any of this means… that’s all in his head.”
Ursula shrugged.
“I have to at least look,” she said lightly.
“Well… don’t spend too long on it. It’s enough to drive anyone crazy.”
“Thank you, Agent Lovett,” Ursula said firmly, and he nodded and excused himself, understanding her tone completely.
Now as she looked through the papers, she understood a little bit better what it was that he’d been talking about. Some of Abe’s writing was completely illegible. What wasn’t illegible was at least nonsensical. Words and phrases put together haphazardly, with no particular order or flow that she could follow. Diagrams, lines connecting words, dates, and numbers, sketches reproducing bits of graffiti. It was completely incomprehensible. She wondered if even Abe looking at it would be able to reproduce what he was thinking at the time he wrote it.
Ursula paged through the notes, looking for longer chunks of coherent thought. She found a page of research notes that Abe had apparently written out at the library or somewhere with internet access, detailing notes of various jewel heists in the past, with names of convicted jewel thieves, modus operandi, and amounts stolen. This was where she first saw Daryl Bacardi’s name. She shivered with a sudden chill. Abe had remembered Bacardi’s name when she mentioned it. Abe had discovered in his amateur investigation. But Abe hadn’t killed him. Even if he was able to track down Bacardi in person, and Ursula didn’t see how he could have, Abe would never have killed him. That was an impossibility that she just wasn’t able to accept.
There were names of other jewel thieves as well. Ursula pulled out her laptop and set it next to the papers, and started googling their names. Some of them had hits, as Daryl Bacardi’s did, of news articles detailing big heists that they had been suspects
in or convicted of. But some of the names had no connections that she could find. Were these names that Abe had merely suspected? That he had pulled out of the air, or that had real connections somehow? Ursula did a search for Mary Margaret, but couldn’t find any jewel connections. There were too many other hits to sort it out. Mary and Margaret were names that were simply too common.
She leafed through the pages some more, looking for some sort of rational train of thought. The papers didn’t seem to be organized in any way, and Ursula wondered if that was because the police had put them out of order or because Abe’s schizophrenia was simply too severe right now for him to put it in any logical order. Normally, his OCD ruled and no piece of paper escaped being carefully classified and filed. Even the children’s pictures and homework assignments didn’t escape Abe’s careful classification and cataloging.
Ursula pulled Abe’s personal effects from her purse to have a look at his phone. She put his keys on top of the papers as a paperweight, and turned on the phone. He had a key lock on it. Of course. What kind of paranoiac would he be if he didn’t protect his data? Ursula ran through a number of attempts. Birth years and anniversaries, forward and backward. Names translated into numbers. She had held her breath as she ended the fourth wrong number, waiting for the phone to do an automatic wipe, but it didn’t, it just continued to count up the number of wrong attempts to unlock it.
Juneau got home from school before the younger kids. She must have had a last period spare or something. Ursula couldn’t remember any more what Juneau’s schedule was. It had always been Abe’s responsibility to be home for the kids after school if he could, and then since Abe had been gone, Juneau’s responsibility to look after the younger kids. Juneau looked surprised to see her there.
“Hi Mom! Is everything okay? Is Dad alright?”
“Yes, Dad’s fine. Showing improvement every day. He was sleeping, so I took some time off.”
“Is he staying awake at all yet? Could we go and see him?”
“Sure, I’ll take you kids after supper. He’ll be happy to see you.”
Juneau looked at the pile of papers and Abe’s phone. Ursula handed the phone to her in frustration. Juneau pecked at the number keys, and then handed it back. Ursula looked at the unlocked phone in shock.
“What was the code?” she demanded.
Juneau smirked.
“1234.”
“No.”
“Uh-huh. Dad’s not that tech savvy.”
“How does someone who is paranoid pick 1234 as a secure pass code?”
“He doesn’t. Crispin set it up for him.”
“Crispin?”
“Yeah. Not the best passcode. Something like fifteen percent of people use it for their lock code.”
Ursula shook her head.
“Thank you.”
She went to the photos section and looked through Abe’s latest pictures. There were thousands of them. Many of the most recent were walls full of graffiti, but there were also shots of food that he had prepared, airplanes and the airport, miscellaneous documents and news articles. How was she going to review everything and figure out what were real clues, and what were just red herrings? It was overwhelming. Something that Abe had said or done had made the thieves think that he was onto them, whether he really was or not. He’d obviously walked around the airport taking pictures. Had the inside man at the airport seen him taking pictures of something that was important? Something that was a clue? He’d obviously spooked them somehow.
Closing the photo app, she opened his email. Lots of unopened stuff. She paged backward through it, looking for patterns or anything that jumped out at her. Weeks and months of sporadic communication, all manner of things coming into his e-mail in box, only a few things going out. Ursula switched over to look through his outgoing e-mail for a few minutes. Who had he communicated with? Had he sent something that had upset someone?
There was a sent e-mail item with the subject “too bad nobody died”, and Ursula’s stomach clenched with a sudden stab of fear, nausea rising to her throat. She opened the e-mail to read it. Abe had answered someone else’s e-mail, it wasn’t his own subject line. But she went cold looking at the few words that had been exchanged. The date was the morning after the mass food poisoning at the Lion’s Club. When Abe had really gone off the rails. The sender’s message was: “Too bad nobody died. Next time you won’t be so lucky. Mind your own business, or your little kids might just get hurt.” How many times had Abe told her that they had threatened the family? How many times had they argued about it, and yet he had never shown her this e-mail. Probably he had never shown it to the police or Agent Lovett either. He had responded to the threat with a terse: “Leave my family alone.” Ursula looked for any further exchanges or anything else from the same sender, but couldn’t see anything. Could this be traced back to one of the thieves? Couldn’t they trace it and find out who was sending threats? Maybe who had been involved in the Lion’s Club poisoning?
“Oh man,” Ursula murmured. “It really was an intentional poisoning.”
“What Mom?” Juneau questioned, poking her head back through the doorway.
“Oh, just talking to myself. Looking at your dad’s e-mail.”
“Don’t you need a warrant for that?” Juneau teased.
“Luckily, no.”
Juneau looked at the pile of papers on the table, and came back in to poke through the top few pages.
“These are all Dad’s, huh?”
Ursula nodded.
“All the papers that he left in the car.”
“Where’s the rest?”
“The rest?” Ursula repeated.
Juneau nodded.
“He had lots more than this. What did he do with them?”
“I don’t know. How do you know he had more than this?”
“I saw him with more. And he was always scribbling. He probably produces this much in two days.”
Ursula looked through it again.
“That has to be an exaggeration,” she said. "This would take hours to write.”
“Remember him digging the bunker?” Juneau said. "He’s like that. He just goes, and writes and writes, all night long sometimes.”
“I didn’t know… and I don’t know where the rest is. I’ll have to ask him.”
Juneau sat down, fiddling with the papers while Ursula marked the email she had found, and switched to the phone’s note taking app to see if he had written anything down there.
“So do you believe us now?” Juneau questioned tentatively.
“Us?” Ursula repeated. “What do you mean by ‘us’?”
“Dad and me. That someone was shooting at us.”
Ursula nodded, her eyes burning.
“I’m sorry, sweetie,” she said. “It just seemed so… unlikely. I thought he’d just gone off the deep end…”
“Well he had,” Juneau allowed. “But someone was shooting us.”
Ursula stood up suddenly.
“Show me,” she said.
“What?”
“I want to know… where everybody was. Where you were standing and where Abe was, when they were shooting. Just let’s go outside, and you can show me.”
Juneau shrugged in agreement, and they both went out to the front yard. Juneau pointed out where the car was parked, where Abe had been, where she had been. They both looked at the street, calculating sight lines and trajectories. Ursula walked along the fence and the front of the house, pushing bushes and tree branches aside searchingly.
“What are you looking for?” Juneau questioned.
“If they were shooting from there,” Ursula motioned. "Then the bullets would be over here, wouldn’t they?”
Juneau silently joined her, and they both inspected every vertical surface.
“Here!” Ursula said triumphantly, pointing at a knot in the wood of the fence. “Right there!”
Juneau looked over her shoulder.
“It’s a bullet!” she exclaimed, even thou
gh it was obvious. “That’s proof that they were shooting and it wasn’t just a backfire or something. Now you know he really was just trying to keep us safe!”
“I always knew he was trying to keep you safe, in his own mind,” Ursula said. “But I didn’t think the threat was real. And he put you in more danger by doing what he did.”
“He was just trying to protect us. A bullet would have killed us a lot faster than carbon monoxide.”
“Yes, you’re right,” Ursula agreed, not trying to argue it.
Juneau looked surprised at her acquiescence.
“What are you going to do?”
“Well, we’ll have to get Lovett out to show him. But it still may not help us solve this.”
They went back into the house, and Ursula picked up her keys. She looked at her watch.
“If I go see Agent Lovett, can you stay home for the kids? I’ll be back as soon as I can, then we’ll go to the hospital and you guys can see Dad.”
Juneau nodded.
“Okay.”
She hesitated for a minute, then gave Ursula a hug.
“Thank you for believing him.”
Ursula kissed her cheek and gave her a squeeze.
“I love you, June. Take care, I’ll try not to be long.”
On the way to Agent Lovett’s office, Ursula’s head was spinning. She couldn’t settle down. Abe had been right. He had learned too much, tipped someone off somehow. He had clumsily stirred up a hornet’s nest, and he was lucky to be alive. He should have been killed by the tall, shaven man. She hadn’t seen Lovett yet with a sketch artist or photos for Abe to look through. He should have done that already. Did he not really believe that it would be worth it, that it would be anything to do with the case? It was strange Lovett hadn’t jumped all over it. It now seemed like there were clues all around her; every time she reached out, she was running into another confirmation that Abe had been right all along. The bad guys had been after him, trying to ruin his reputation, hurt his family, kill him. It was incredible. All of these revelations, she wondered if it was what Abe felt like when he saw details and connections that no one else could. Her head was buzzing with it. It was all so obvious, and she didn’t understand why she hadn’t seen it before.
“Mrs. VanRam,” Lovett raised his eyebrows, looking surprised to see her. “To what do I owe the pleasure of another visit? Have you already translated Abe’s papers?”
“No, the papers elude me,” Ursula admitted, wrinkling her nose. “But… some other things that I thought you should know about.”
“Okay, what have you got?”
Ursula sat down where he indicated.
“First of all… you didn’t ever investigate to see if someone really was shooting at him the day that he… er… ran away with the kids?”
“No, we didn’t,” Lovett admitted. “Other than talking to our agents who were on surveillance and a couple of neighbors. You’re thinking that now that he has actually been shot, we should look into it further?”
“I had Juneau show me where everyone was that day. And we found a bullet in the fence.”
Lovett stared at her steadily, unblinking.
“You found a bullet,” he repeated.
“Embedded in the fence. Yes. Right where it might have hit if someone was shooting at Abe from the street.”
Lovett made a motion to Cairns, who was hovering nearby.
“Jesse, get someone out there to take a look,” he ordered.
“Sure,” Cairns agreed, and made a notation in his notepad.
Lovett looked back at Ursula.
“Anything else?” he questioned.
“That’s all you’re going to say? You’re not surprised Abe really was being shot at?”
“Of course I’m surprised,” he admitted. "But I’m also wondering if you found out anything else.”
Ursula stared at him for a moment, then shook her head and tried to go on.
“I found an e-mail on his phone.”
“Great, let’s have a look,” Lovett motioned for her to hand it over.
“You didn’t search his e-mail?”
“We would need a warrant to do that. We didn’t have enough evidence against Mr. VanRam to get a warrant to search his phone or his e-mail.”
“I’m sure he would have shown you, if you had asked.”
Lovett chuckled, shaking his head.
“We didn’t exactly see eye-to-eye. And paranoid schizophrenics tend to have privacy issues.”
Ursula turned the phone back on, tapped in the lock code, and opened the e-mail that she had marked. She handed it over to Lovett.
“Just that one,” she said, suddenly feeling uncomfortable about turning the phone over to him.
“Understood,” he agreed.
Lovett’s eyes moved quickly over the contents of the e-mail.
“I’d like permission to trace this, see where it came from.”
Ursula nodded.
“Yes, of course. That’s what I was hoping.”
“Don’t get your hopes up, though. I’m sure it will be a throw-away address, leading back to a dummy account. We’ll do our best, but we can’t necessarily figure out who sent an e-mail.”
“So how do you do that?”
“I’d like to forward this to our e-mail server.”
That seemed reasonable. Ursula nodded.
“Okay.”
Lovett played with the phone for a moment, and then handed it back to her, the e-mail still open. She could see by the icons that it had been forwarded.
“Anything else of interest on the phone?” Lovett questioned.
“I’m not sure. I’m still looking at it. Lots of pictures, but I can’t see the relevance of any of them. He seems to have been obsessed with graffiti the last little while.”
Lovett nodded.
“Is that all I could help you with today, then?”
Ursula hesitated, wondering how far she should push it.
“I’m wondering… who is Mary Margaret?”
Lovett looked startled. He frowned at her, and then looked at Cairns, who was still listening in on the interview. He leaned forward, elbows on the desk.
“Where did you hear that name?”
“From Abe. He said he told you about it, the day you 5150’d him.”
Lovett pursed his lips and shook his head.
“No, nothing that I remember. But he wasn’t exactly coherent that day. He might have tried.”
“That’s what I tried to tell him.”
“So who does Abe say Mary Margaret is?” Lovett asked, turning the question back on her.
“He says she is the boss of the jewel thieves.”
Again, Lovett and Cairns exchanged looks.
“Mary Margaret,” Lovett repeated.
“Yes. No jewel thief named Mary Margaret? I tried an internet search, but didn’t find any news articles.”
“No, because you haven’t got her last name, and she goes by a lot of other aliases too.”
Ursula was still, looking from one agent to the other.
“So you know her,” she said. “Is she a suspect?”
“She certainly has been since Bacardi’s body showed up. In your back yard. But she doesn’t work for herself, she works for hire. If she was the brains behind the heist, we still need to find out who hired her. Otherwise, the real boss gets away with it.”
“I thought Mary Margaret was the boss.”
“She may be the boss of the other thieves, but she was hired by someone. She is a big fish, and we’d like to find her, but we want to find the whale too.”
Ursula nodded slowly, understanding.
“So how does Mr. VanRam say that he got Mary Margaret’s name?” Lovett questioned cynically.
“Oh. He says he got a phone call. Someone pocket-dialed him, and he heard them talking about him, and about this Mary Margaret.”
It sounded lame to her. It sounded fake. And she was sure it sounded that way to Lovett too. But she couldn�
�t help it. All she could do was to try to give him enough clues to sort this mess out, and to get Abe off. Abe wasn’t the inside man. There was someone else at the airport who was in on it, and once they found him, Abe would be exonerated.
“Well, we’ll take the information any way we can get it,” Lovett said with a shrug. “If he has a vision of who else was involved, or who hired them, I’d be interested in hearing about it.”
Ursula rolled her eyes.
“So… is that it?” Lovett questioned.
“Yes, I think that’s it. I’m just trying to help you, Agent Lovett. I want to prove to you that Abe didn’t do it.”
“You just keep bringing me whatever information you find. I’ll follow the evidence,” he said.
“You still believe he was the inside man.”
“I’m afraid I do, Mrs. VanRam. He may be ill, but that doesn’t make it any less likely that he would help out with something like this. He may even have been talked into it, or not realized what he was getting involved in.”
Lovett left it open like that, waiting for Ursula to jump in, to explain further, to try to get some leniency for Abe based on the fact that he really didn’t know what was going on. But Ursula knew that wasn’t the case. Abe was really innocent. Not just by ignorance.
She picked up her keys, and realized with a frown that they weren’t her keys, but Abe’s. She looked at them. Lovett gave her a questioning look.
“Something wrong?”
“These aren’t my keys.”
He chuckled.
“Well, they got you here, didn’t they?”
“These are Abe’s. I must have picked up his by mistake.”
Lovett nodded. Ursula was frowning at a small key attached to the ring.
“What is this?”
“Looks like a padlock.”
“What did he lock with a padlock?” she mused.
“Maybe his locker at the airport? Gym?”
Ursula shook her head at both.
“Does he have a storage locker?” Lovett suggested.
“Yes. But I have the keys for that. He took off when we were trying to move him into a new place. I have all of the keys for that locker.”
Lovett sat there, his eyes sharp and interested as she worked through the problem. What did Abe have a padlock on? She remembered the day they had gone to get his things out of the locker. The storage lot owner had called him by a different name, and he had shaken his head and supplied his correct name. The owner had looked confused, but didn’t pursue it any further. The whole time they had been there, Abe had been agitated.
“You don’t think… he has another locker there under a different name…?”
“It’s a possibility,” Lovett agreed. "Storage units are nice places for hiding things, when you’re the suspicious type.”
The children were all excited to see Abe. He was fairly awake and smiled and gave them weak hugs when they bent over him. His face was tired, but his eyes shone when he looked at them.
“Did it hurt, Daddy?” Meggie questioned her eyes wide.
“He got shot, Meggie!” Crispin snapped. “Of course it hurt!”
Meggie looked worshipfully at Abe.
“Did it hurt lots, Daddy?” she questioned.
Abe nodded.
“It hurt lots,” he agreed. “But they’re giving me medicine to keep it from hurting too much. Just like when the dentist works on your teeth.”
“Is the doctor going to pull your teeth?”
Everybody laughed. Meggie smiled right along with them, happy to have everyone together for once.
“No one’s going to pull anything else out of me,” Abe declared. “Now are you guys being good for Mom?”
They all nodded.
“Juneau’s been such a good help,” Ursula offered. “She does so much to help out when I have to be here.”
Abe looked at Juneau, smiling appreciatively, though his eyes were tightening and his face was paler, and Ursula thought they’d better get the kids out and let him sleep soon. Juneau was twisting her ring on her finger, and Abe’s eyes fastened on it. Ursula had warned Juneau not to wear it to the hospital, and she shook her head grimly at having been disobeyed.
“That’s the diamond that Theo gave you?” Abe asked Juneau.
Juneau looked down at it and realized she hadn’t taken it off before coming. She glanced at Ursula, looking a bit ashamed.
“Umm, yeah. That’s the promise ring from Theo. It’s pretty, isn’t it?”
“You need to stay away from him and the other diamond thieves. It’s not safe. He’s going to hurt you.”
“Daddy, Theo’s not one of the thieves. I told you. I don’t understand why you think he’s dangerous.”
“I’ve seen the look in his eye. He’s dangerous to you, and he’s a thief.”
Juneau shook her head emphatically.
“June, why don’t you take the kids out and find them something in the vending machine,” Ursula said, handing Juneau some money. “I’m just going to say good bye to Dad before we go.”
“But we didn’t get to stay long!” Crispin complained.
“We just got here,” Meggie complained simultaneously.
Ursula shook her head and pointed at the door.
“Daddy’s tired. He can’t visit for very long. He needs lots of sleep. You guys go get a treat. I’ll be right out.”
Juneau marched the younger kids out, looking back over her shoulder for a moment as she exited. Ursula sighed and turned back to Abe. He was starting to fall back asleep.
“Abe,” she shook his arm gently. “Abe, wake up for just a minute. I need to talk to you.”
He cleared his throat and opened his eyes, forcing a smile.
“Honey?”
“Abe, you have a small key on your key-chain. It looks like maybe it’s for a padlock.”
He grimaced slightly and shrugged a bit as if he didn’t want to talk about it.
“What’s it for, Abe?”
“Well…” he looked away.
“Is it for another storage unit?” Ursula prompted.
He was hesitant, but eventually nodded.
“What did you need another storage unit for?”
His eyes darted around the room, and he whispered something. Ursula leaned closer.
“I can’t hear you. What?”
“For the evidence,” he whispered again.
“Oh. Of course. Well if I’m going to be helping you out, and helping to convince the police, then I’d better look at the evidence too.”
“I don’t know…”
“I need to see it, Abe. I need to know what we’re up against, and how we’re going to help solve this crime and put the bad guys away.”
He scratched his ear anxiously. He had kept the storage locker a secret from her, and he wasn’t ready to reveal it yet.
“Abe, if something happens to you, how am I going to find the evidence?”
He wrung his hands, then eventually nodded.
“Okay,” he agreed. “Number 911.”
“911,” Ursula repeated. "Did you pick the number?”
He nodded.
“Okay. Unit 911. At the same place where we have the other unit.”
Abe shook his head reluctantly.
“No,” he said, "I flipped it already.”
“Flipped it? What do you mean, you flipped it?”
“I… haven’t been renting it in my own name. Too easy for someone else to trace. So, I… I rent it in another name, for cash, pay the first month’s rent. But then I don’t pay it again after that.”
“Well, don’t they take possession of it if you don’t pay?”
“Yeah… sort of. They auction it.”
Ursula understood immediately.
“And you buy it on auction.”
Abe nodded.
“In disguise. With a different name. The owner’s only seen me once, so they don’t recognize me again. Then I take it out, and put it in another lot. Same t
hing.”
“So that nobody can trace the ownership back to you. It’s been auctioned in a bunch of fake names, and no one can connect it back to you.”
“Right.”
“Okay. So you’re going to have to tell me where it is, so I know if something happens to you.”
She didn’t repeat her mistake of saying that she wanted to look at it. He obviously was having a hard time with the idea of her looking at it. So she just repeated the line about wanting to know where it was if something happened to him. He knew something could happen to him. With a few more hesitations, Abe finally gave her the name of the storage company and the location of the lot. Ursula kissed Abe’s forehead.
“Good boy. I’ll make sure to keep it safe,” she promised.
“You can’t go there,” Abe warned. "If they follow you, you’ll give it away.”
She nodded, kissed him again, and left to meet up with the kids.
Of course Ursula went to the storage locker. As much as she knew Abe didn’t want her to see it, and didn’t want her to possibly lead the jewel thieves there, Ursula had to find out what evidence he had gathered that he was hiding. She waited until the kids were at school the next day before venturing out. She watched for anyone following her as she hit the highway. She watched carefully, but didn’t see any cars that stayed with her for any length of time. Everything was fine, just a normal day like any other. She took a round-about route to the storage locker, and didn’t see any cars following her on the residential streets, either. If they were watching anyone, they must still be watching the hospital to be sure Abe didn’t leave.
She arrived at the storage lot and signed in with an illegible signature at the security desk. Tracking down locker number 911, she looked carefully both directions to be sure nobody had followed her in and was watching to see what unit she was going to. She tried the key in the padlock and was relieved to find it fit and that Abe hadn’t sent her on a wild goose chase. Ursula lifted the roll-up door. She stepped in and groped for a light switch. As soon as she flicked the lights on, she pulled the locker door back down again so she wouldn’t be observed.
This was obviously where all of the papers had gone. Juneau had been right that Ursula only had a small fraction of them. There were a number of file cabinets lined up along the wall. No stereotypical wall of newspaper clippings with red yarn connecting all of the imagined coincidences. She opened a couple of drawers to find rows of numbered or dated files, each housing a handful of his cryptic notes. There were thousands of files. She checked each of the drawers, not wanting to miss anything. In the bottom drawer of the last one was a small safe. It had a combination lock on it, and it was heavy, but it was small enough to lift. Ursula gave it a little shake. There was a rattle inside of it. It couldn’t be… gemstones?
Ursula found herself breathing heavily, like she’d been running. She had told herself over and over again that Abe wasn’t involved, that he couldn’t be involved. But what was in the safe? What was so important he had needed to lock it and secure it in a hidden, anonymous storage unit? She told herself again that there was no way Abe was involved. He was not the inside man. He was simply someone who had gotten caught in the middle of the investigation, someone who was in the wrong place at the wrong time. And the only thing that made him any more suspicious than any of the other employees or contractors at the airport was the fact that he was mentally ill. And that wasn’t a good reason to suspect him. He had no motive. She’d never known him to be interested in anything shady. He was clean, tidy, and kept the laws. He didn’t even speed.
Unless he was being chased.
