Sleight of Hand

by CJ Lyons

  "I don't know," he started.

  Virginia gripped his hand with a strength that was surprising. "You have to. I could lose my children because of her." Her eyes met his, their grey depths the color of winter storm clouds. "Please. The Senator's a powerful man, he can help you."

  "Help me get my Ella back?"

  He saw her cringe at his nickname for Cassandra. A cloud of sorrow crossed Virginia's features. He was sorry he couldn't remember more about their time together. A kaleidoscope of images: hands, bare flesh, rumpled clothes, panting in dark corners was the best he could do–although Virginia assured him there had been much more to their relationship than mere sex. Still, it paled in comparison to the love he had for Cassandra.

  Virginia looked down at their hands and nodded. "Yes, Richard." Her voice lowered to a soft whisper that fanned the embers of his hope. "If that's what you want."

  Richard felt his mouth stretch into a smile, even the side that was still dead to touch lifted higher at the thought of Cassandra Hart returning to him. This time forever, he vowed.

  CHAPTER 13

  An hour later, Drake and Jimmy were back in the car, weaving along the curved streets leading away from Eades' house. Drake remembered now why everyone hated working cold cases. Facing victims and their families, ripping the scabs from never-healing wounds.

  It was hard enough working with families freshly grief-stricken. At least then you could offer some hope that you'd find justice for their loved ones. But these interviews–remote from the immediate yearning for retribution, knowing that a loved one died in vain, a death meaningless even of protecting others by incarcerating the perpetrator–these interviews seemed only to remind survivors that sometimes there was no justice in this world.

  Eades had given them nothing new except a glimpse into his and his son's own private hell. And a handful of reports from Mitchell's school–both before and after his mother's murder. The papers had been haphazardly filed together in the dim recesses of a drawer. Eades had offered them to Jimmy, security against further visits from the detectives, the ghosts of the past.

  As Jimmy drove, Drake skimmed over the detritus of Mitchell's third grade. The teachers initially described the boy as painfully shy and withdrawn, blaming his speech impediment. They said he was diligent in his work, but kept himself isolated and apart from the other children. At one point the school psychologist began to work with Mitchell, hoping to quell some of his social anxieties. He also tested the boy for any learning disorders that could be addressed.

  "Anything good?" Jimmy asked.

  "Kid was miserable even before he found his mother's body," Drake told him. "Real loner. The teachers describe him as quiet but sweet-tempered. But–"

  "What?"

  "The school psychologist said he saw signs of repressed anger, warned that the kid was aggressive, would be a bully, could potentially become violent."

  "Sounds like the shrink was right on the money."

  Drake didn't answer. He'd found the class photo and was staring at it, searching out the boy whose life was about to take a tragic turn. Mitchell was in the second row, on the end, closest to his teacher. He had his father's gaunt looks and red hair. The smile he flashed the camera seemed timid but wide, full of hope.

  He compared the photo with the family photo in the murder book. The family shot was taken after the school one, probably at Eades' own studio, he thought, looking at the glossy Christmas card. Regina and Eades had their arms around each other's waists and one on each of Mitchell's shoulders, a circle of family unity. Their smiles were warm, and they looked into the camera with eyes set on the future.

  Not their son. Mitchell's face wore what could be best described as a grimace. His lips were pressed together, his face pale, eyes hooded, looking down at his feet as if frightened that the camera might steal his soul if he faced it straight on.

  Scared, Drake decided. The kid looked scared.

  The Christmas shot was taken months before Regina Eades was found strangled in the dumpster behind her studio. What could have spooked the kid? When they stopped at the light on Route 22 he showed Jimmy the Christmas photo. "What do you think of the kid?"

  "Cute, skinny. Fidgeting–probably pissed his parents made him dress up and put the tie on," Jimmy summarized, handing it back to Drake. "Why?"

  Drake frowned and looked again. Jimmy was the expert–he had six-year-old twins, one boy, one girl. What did Drake know about kids? Just letting his imagination run wild, trying to find some fresh trail to go down, he decided.

  "Nothing."

  But still, it nagged at the artist in him. The mother was a commercial photographer. Was this the best photo of her family that she could compose?

  <><><>

  So this was what it felt like to be on vacation, Cassie thought as she slumped in her office chair. A dull throbbing echoed from her Achilles to the headache beginning behind her eyes. Richard and Virginia? Her marriage to Richard had been such a rollercoaster ride between euphoria and despair that she'd never had a chance to even imagine that he might be having an affair.

  When things were good, he was extraordinarily attentive, they'd been virtually inseparable. And when things went sour she'd blamed his absences on the drugs and her own inability to help him.

  How blind and stupid she had been. She grimaced and turned on her computer. Why was it that Richard and his world kept colliding with hers? All she wanted was to do her job, live her life, have a little peace and quiet. Was that too much to ask?

  A few calls and e-mails later and her calendar was cleared, as was her desk. Cassie looked at the crystal Waterford clock in the shape of a flattened globe, the continents etched and frosted against a pale blue of water. A present from the senior residents last year. It was engraved : To the best teacher in the ER, thanks for getting us ready for the real world.

  Not even three thirty. On vacation for less than forty minutes and she was already bored out of her mind.

  She stood and stretched. She'd love to go over to the dojo and see if Mr. Christean thought she was ready to return to her Kempo training, but she knew better. She had to get her timing back, regain her power before continuing to work on her brown belt. And she didn't want anyone at Mr. Christean's to see her until she was back at her fighting best. They all knew what had happened in February, and she refused to give them the chance to show any pity.

  She wondered how Antwan and Charlie were doing upstairs in the PICU. As persona nongrata, it was now off limits. Still, she could pull up their charts in the computer. She leaned over the back of her chair and began typing. Antwan was no better–but no worse either. And Charlie was enduring another round of consultations and tests, all with no answers. At least he was off the ventilator and clinically stable. Maybe her call to CYS had done some good, convinced Virginia Ulrich to keep her hands off her son for the time being.

  Hang in there kid, I'm not giving up on you.

  Cassie stared at the blank cinder block walls of her small broom closet of an office. She should ask Drake to paint her something, a tromp l'oeile, a window on the world beyond the cement walls with their institutional puke green paint.

  If Drake ever spoke to her again after the way she treated him yesterday. She regretted the stubborn impulse that had caused her to refuse Ed Castro's offer of intervening with Drake. She was scared to face him; she could admit that. Was she more afraid that Drake would not agree with her about Virginia Ulrich or that he would take on Charlie's cause, but not take her back as well? Was there any way she could make it a package deal?

  All or nothing–her and Charlie. How would Drake respond to that?

  Cassie frowned. She knew how she would. She'd hate it, being forced, cornered–she couldn't do that to Drake.

  So what could she do to help Charlie? Maybe find some convincing evidence to present to Drake and Ed. She thought about the notes she'd given Ed. There were a few gaps she'd hoped to fill in. Like Sheila Kaminsky and her suspicions that had led her to cal
l CYS about Charlie's brother, George. And the medication error that had almost killed George and effectively ended that first CYS investigation. Sheila Kaminsky had been fired over that incident.

  Where was the ex-nurse now? A few minutes with the computer, and Cassie had the answer: Swissvale.

  <><><>

  Kaminsky sounded eager to talk when Cassie called her. Cassie followed the ex-nurse's instructions and arrived at her apartment building half an hour later. The parking lot was rutted with potholes and the lines demarcating spaces had faded to invisibility, creating a working model for the chaos theory.

  Cars were parked haphazardly. Some seemed purposely aimed at thwarting other's escape routes. None were newer than Cassie's own four-year-old Subaru and all sported dents and scraped paint–casualties of the parking wars.

  The April sky was a brilliant blue that seemed to scoff at the paint peeling from the building, once upon a time a robin egg blue. Now the color had faded to a bilious shade etched with streaks of oxidation from acid rain. Once white trim around grimy windows and doorframes had yellowed like a smoker's teeth.

  Cassie passed several people of indeterminate age sitting on the curb and steps leading to the front door of the two-story building. They were a mix of sexes, races, and the only thing they seemed to share were the cigarettes that hung between their limp fingers and a fascination with the parking lot. None of them raised their gaze from the mesmerizing asphalt to glance at Cassie as she zigzagged around them on the steps and entered.

  Halfway house for psych patients? She noted the identical blank expressions that the residents all wore. A few had small blobs of dried spittle that they wiped absently with the back of their hands, hands that shook with the distinct tremor of tardive dyskinesia–a side effect of powerful anti-psychotics.

  She made her way down the steps to Kaminsky's "garden" apartment in the rear of the building and rang the buzzer. Silence. As broken as the rest of the building and its residents.

  Cassie raised her hand to knock but was surprised by the snap of a peephole sliding open. A watery brown eye, enlarged to grotesque proportions of the peephole, swam before her, darting in random directions before settling on Cassie.

  "I'm Dr. Hart," she told the eye. "I called earlier."

  The peephole slammed shut. The sound of several locks clicked and clanged before the door opened. A skinny hand squirreled out to grasp Cassie's arm and pull her inside. The door slammed shut behind her.

  On the other side Cassie found herself in another world. What little furniture there was–two metal folding chairs with the name of a funeral home stenciled on the back, a upside down milk crate between them and a black and white thirteen inch TV with rabbit ears extended by a precarious arrangement of coat hangers and tin foil–was gathered into the middle of the room. The walls were covered with religious icons, prayer cards, crucifixes, even a black velvet Jesus whose sorrowful eyes followed her.

  In between the religious mementoes someone was penciling and inking Bible verses in a random fashion–Job interwoven with the Song of Solomon, Psalms interrupted by letters to the Corinthians. The floor below was littered with votive candles, figurines of saints, statues of the Virgin Mary draped with rosaries.

  Cassie pulled her eyes away from the biblical feast to look upon its artist. Sheila Kaminsky was nothing like she'd pictured. Instead of a stocky, broad shouldered Polish matron, Cassie found herself looking upon the face of a saint. Thin, painfully so, and almost six foot tall, Kaminsky had long hair so blonde it glowed in a white halo around her. She carried herself with the posture and grace of a dancer, turning from the door while her fingers still twisted the locks, creating musical rhythm with their clicking and sliding. After a long moment, the woman seemed satisfied and gave a small nod.

  The collection of locks were uniformly cheap, flimsy and poorly installed. They'd never stop any serious thief. But they were polished to a high sheen. Kaminsky's final movements were to wipe them all clean of her fingerprints with the corner of her flannel shirt. Cassie noted that she'd ended up with most of the locks open. Maybe it was the rhythm that was soothing rather than the thought of security?

  "Thank you for coming, Dr. Hart," Kaminsky told her in the sweet voice of a choirgirl. She gestured to the folding chairs as if she were royalty granting an audience. "Can I get you anything?"

  "No thank you," Cassie said as she took a seat. Kaminsky nodded and folded her long body into the seat opposite, crossing her ankles, not her knees, like a proper lady.

  A proper lady whose blue jeans were worn to the point of allowing bony knees to protrude and who didn't seem to notice the incessant jiggling of one foot.

  Or the cockroach climbing the chair leg, Cassie noted, quickly scanning her own space for any similar insect companions.

  "You were interested in my career at Three Rivers?" Kaminsky went on, sliding a crumpled pack of generic brand cigarettes from the pocket of her flannel shirt. She spoke as if she were interviewing Cassie instead of the other way around.

  Cassie watched the trembling hands light the cigarette. "Yes. I understand you were concerned about a mother named Virginia Ulrich, reported her to CYS?"

  Kaminsky took a deep drag of the unfiltered cigarette and exhaled. She nodded eagerly. "Virginia Ulrich, now there's a name I haven't heard in a long time. She's a wicked, evil woman," she told Cassie, her inflection never changing. "I tried to save her son, George, but Satan intervened and I was defeated."

  "What made you suspect that Virginia wanted to hurt her son?"

  "I see things," Kaminsky assured her. "I see everything. Virginia couldn't hide, not from me. No one can."

  Cassie fought the desire to squirm in her seat and instead nodded gravely. "What did you see?"

  "I saw her opening his central line, dripping his blood into a cup." Kaminsky drew on her cigarette, draining it of life. "She didn't think anyone was watching, but I saw how she looked at him–poor baby, he had the face of an angel." Her voice became a singsong croon as she looked past Cassie to a world faraway. "And Virginia hated him–loathed him. He would cry, and she would cover his mouth and nose to make him stop. When no one was around, she'd totally ignore him, treat him like he wasn't even there, no part of her life. But if anyone came near she'd get all sweet and sugary–butter wouldn't melt in her mouth and you'd believe anything she said. Well, everyone but me. They were all under her spell, but I was immune." She pulled a jangle of religious medals from under her shirt.

  "I have protection." Kaminsky ran her fingers over the embossed profiles of saints and martyrs, then abruptly brought her wandering eyes back to Cassie. "Do you?" she demanded, leaning forward, her face mere inches from Cassie's, ash-blonde hair billowing around her face.

  Her brown eyes searched Cassie's as she exhaled an effluvium of tobacco, cheap wine and rotting teeth. Cassie leaned back, trying to escape the rancid cloud of oppressive odors. Kaminsky hadn't bathed in a long while, nor washed her clothes, it seemed. Cassie wondered how many doses of her medication she'd missed, because it was obvious that the eyes locked onto hers were lit by insanity.

  Paranoid schizophrenia was her first impression. Maybe bipolar in a manic phase. Kaminsky's bony fingers latched onto Cassie's arm once more, pulling Cassie back into her sphere of influence.

  "You need protection to fight evil." She abruptly released Cassie and began untangling her medallions, her fingers frantically searching. "You know she put the potassium into George's IV fluids, don't you?" she continued as her eyes left Cassie's to join her fingers in scrutinizing her clanging medals. One after another, the saints were rejected. "There was a vial missing from the medication room–potassium wasn't locked up, not back then when we used to mix our own IV fluids. She must have done it right after I left the room, maybe flushed the vial down the toilet, it was small enough. Then she sat back and watched her son begin to die."

  Kaminsky quieted, her body becoming still, eyes muted until the only signs of life were the jangling rhythm of her f
oot and the shallow rise of her chest. Her fingers tightened on one of the nickel medallions. She held this pose for several minutes.

  Cassie shifted in her seat, reluctant to break the madwoman's reverie. Despite her mental illness, Kaminsky was still lucid enough to be giving her some valuable information–even if it was nothing she could prove as fact.

  Kaminsky's awareness returned, shuddering through her body as if she were possessed by an alien spirit.

  "This one," she said, looking down at the face of the saint imbedded into the flesh of her palm. "This one for you, to protect, to shield." She slid the chain over her head, tousling feathery strands of hair as she did, and reached over to place it around Cassie's neck.

  Cassie noticed that the ex-nurse's hands were no longer trembling and wondered at that. Then she looked into the face on the medal. St. Jude, patron of lost causes.

  "I knew her–knew where she came from, what she really was," Kaminsky continued, lighting another cigarette, her hands shaking once more. "Jurassic, that was her real name. She's killed before. In West Virginia, Wheeling, West Virginia. Poor souls, they were old and worn out, never had a chance. Ask about her at the Golden Crest, ask about how many patients died while she worked there." Again the thousand-mile stare took an abrupt detour to land on Cassie's face. "You go there, see for yourself."

  "Golden Crest?"

  "Old folks home. Virginia impressed everyone. Told them she was planning to go to medical school soon as she earned the money." Kaminsky's gaze went out of focus once more. "She worked as a nurse's aide. But they wouldn't see the truth, even when I showed it to them. I took a job there–after what she did to me here–went undercover, to discover, to unveil the evil they had invited. I found the proof, but they wouldn't believe it, cast me out, accused me..."