Fatal Fall

by Diane Capri

  She put the paper aside and started on breakfast.

  The coffee was strong. A French roast that livened her senses more than hot water and beans had a right to do. The fruit was freshly cut. She buttered the toast. The orange marmalade was in a small white serving bowl with a tiny silver spoon. She ladled it on and spread it thickly with her knife. It was sweet and tangy.

  She finished her toast and gazed over the manicured lawns. A pair of peacocks strutted past.

  She checked her watch, again. She had waited long enough. The hospital staff would be up and running. She had waited more than a decade for the chance to find Peter, she wouldn’t wait any longer.

  CHAPTER TEN

  On the way to the hospital, Jess found a store and couriered the bloody rock to Stephenson. She bought extra packaging to double seal the sample and added instructions to perform a full sequence DNA test.

  The hospital parking was almost full. Jess toured the lot twice before finding an available space. She reversed in, turned off the engine, and left the car. She bypassed the front desk and took the corridor toward the ICU, avoiding eye contact.

  The halls were busy. Patients were being wheeled away for X-rays, EKGs, and ultrasounds. The click and whirr of pumps feeding clear liquids into the arms of patients were the ubiquitous sound of modern medicine. Mornings were the same in hospitals everywhere.

  “Miss Kimball?” said a nurse.

  Jess turned toward the voice. “Nurse Harvey. Hello. I—”

  “Are you wondering about Peter?”

  Jess nodded. “I came to see. I don’t think his parents…” Jess’s sentence trailed off as she saw the look on the nurse’s face.

  Jess sighed. “They’ve been found?”

  Nurse Harvey nodded. “John and Barbara Whiting. Last night. I thought you might have heard.”

  “I read the paper this morning. It didn’t say anything.”

  Jess’s stomach felt hollow, like she’d been punched in the gut. How quickly the matter was closed. Another dead end. The last in a long line of false leads. Parents found. Simple as that. She’d jumped to an unwarranted conclusion, and crossed half the country based on nothing but unfounded eagerness. Perhaps Nelson had been right to keep her away.

  She took a deep breath. “That’s good, of course. For him, and the parents. They must have been going mad with worry, and,” Jess bit her lip, “I guess they’re still worried.”

  Harvey nodded.

  There was a long silence. Jess shifted her weight. “You’re sure, I presume. That they’re his parents?”

  “He’s still unconscious, but they know about him, where he goes to school and all that. They have pictures. Him and them. Growing up.”

  “Right, right. Sorry. I had to ask.”

  “Sure.” Harvey checked her watch. “I have to go. End of my shift.”

  Jess smiled. “You work long hours.”

  Harvey nodded. “We’re down a couple of nurses. Flu. We’re all filling in with extra hours.”

  “Have you had breakfast?”

  She shook her head. “I’m off the clock in a few more minutes.”

  Questions swirled in Jess’s head, but a corridor in a hospital wasn’t the best place to get the best responses in an interview. “How about I buy? There’s a place in town. Biscuits.”

  Harvey laughed. “Sure.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Jess was already seated with a coffee in front of her when Elisha Harvey arrived at the diner. The nurse crossed the room, waving her order to a man at the kitchen door. She sat on the vinyl bench seat across from Jess with a thump.

  “I’m getting to be a regular here,” Jess said.

  Harvey flashed a tired smile. “You’ll have to be in town a while longer to qualify as a regular.”

  “I came here with Captain Nelson.”

  She frowned. “You in trouble?”

  Jess shook her head. “We had coffee. He’s a nice man.”

  Harvey nodded. “He is.”

  “Can I call you Elisha?”

  “Most people do, seeing as it’s my name.” Elisha grinned.

  “How’s Peter today?”

  “I can’t talk about my patients, but he’s stable.”

  “Just tell me what was in the news, then. That’s public information.” Jess cocked her head. “Did the news report say he was conscious?”

  “He has several broken bones, and,” she touched her forehead. “Skull damage. Doctors aren’t sure if he’ll lose his right eye.”

  Jess winced.

  “Docs are keeping him unconscious. Helps with recovery.”

  “How are the parents taking it?”

  “As well as can be expected.” The waitress put a plate of eggs and bacon in front of Elisha. The nurse dug in.

  Jess sipped her coffee. “What are they like? The Whitings?”

  “Normal. She’s blond, blue-eyed. Tall. Very pretty.” Elisha looked up from her food. “He’s nice. Same blond and blue eyes. A little shorter than her. A touch of gray in his hair.”

  “You never told me what color his eyes were.”

  Elisha hummed. “Guess it doesn’t harm. Brown eyes, brown hair. Similar to you.”

  “But not blue.”

  Elisha shook her head. “It is possible. A brown-eyed child from blue-eyed parents.”

  “Rarely.” The issue had come up before in some of the stories she’d investigated. She’d studied the science in several journals.

  “Very rare, yes. But it happens.”

  Jess knew the odds were slim. She didn’t argue further. “Nelson said they live in Bamford. Are they originally from this area?”

  Elisha shook her head. “Wrong accent. They’re probably from the south somewhere, if I had to guess.”

  “Why did it take them so long to get to the hospital?” Jess wasn’t sure how much Elisha would reveal, but she’d keep asking questions until Elisha balked.

  “She works in a call center. One of those jobs where you can’t have a cell phone because you’re supposed to be talking to customers every minute of the day.”

  Jess nodded. “And him?”

  “Warehouse manager. He was still wearing his company shirt when he got there. Some paint company.”

  “Must be tough, coming home to find their son’s in the ICU.”

  “They’re in shock, of course. Stayed at his bedside all night. Slept on bunks in his room. It’s perfectly understandable, but it’s always difficult to sleep with all the hospital noises, and he’s going to need them at their best.”

  Jess shoved the thought of The Montpelier’s luxurious bed to the back of her mind, along with a vaguely guilty feeling.

  “Like this morning. They had to have a whole conversation to work out how old he was.”

  Jess frowned.

  “He said fourteen and she said thirteen.”

  “So, how old is he?”

  “Thirteen. That’s what they decided.”

  “Seems odd, not knowing.”

  “Lack of sleep does funny things to me, too.”

  “Do they have any idea why he was here?”

  Elisha shook her head. “They think he skipped school for fun.”

  “Did he do that often?”

  “No idea.” Elisha shrugged. “But they aren’t staying with him around the clock like I would be.”

  “They’re not?”

  “Not there now, in fact.”

  Jess nodded slowly, wondering what would cause a mother and father to leave an injured child alone in the hospital. “I went out to the place where he fell.”

  Elisha grinned. “Rumor has it you climbed the tree.”

  “A lot of things about his accident don’t make any sense.”

  “So you did climb it?”

  “The first twenty feet or so. Not as high as he went. It was kind of scary. He must have had a good reason for climbing as high as he did.”

  Elisha shrugged. “I have two boys. They don’t need a reason to do anything. Lo
gic doesn’t figure into the stupid things they do.”

  Jess shook her head. “There must have been a reason.”

  “What could you see from up in the tree?”

  “You know Senator Meisner’s mansion?”

  Elisha screwed up her face and groaned. “Mauling Meisner.”

  Jess leaned forward. “What do you mean?”

  “It’s nothing. Rumor. He’s just slimy.”

  “Tell me about it. We shook hands.”

  Elisha curled her lip. “Likes to think he’s a big deal around here. Always telling everyone how good he is to us.”

  Jess nodded. “A politician.”

  “Through and through. Was there anything else you could see from up in the tree?”

  Jess shook her head.

  Elisha finished her food and laid her knife and fork on her plate. “Then I guess he just climbed because he was being a boy.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Elisha left Jess at the diner. Her story about Peter’s parents was disturbing. How often had Jess forgotten her own age, or her son’s? She must have, surely, but she struggled to recall a specific instance.

  Finally, she grinned. There was one time. Years ago. She’d said she was twenty-four, twice, until a friend had pointed out her mistake. Specifically, her friend had pointed the error out to the man Jess had been trying to date. Her grin faded. Not the only reason that relationship hadn’t gone anywhere.

  But that was the only instance she could recall. And she didn’t remember ever forgetting her son’s age or his birthday or his precious face or anything else about him. Not one thing. Ever.

  And why had it taken them until the end of the day to find their son?

  There could be innocent answers. Simple explanations. The Whitings could surely provide them, but she wouldn’t trust the answers without verification.

  She left the booth and returned to her car and sent a message to Mandy Donovan, her assistant at Taboo Magazine.

  A few minutes later, she received an address for John and Barbara Whiting in Bamford, Washington.

  A second message followed, from her editor. New project? Want to tell me about it?

  She smiled. Carter Pierce might be the best boss on the planet, and Mandy sat right outside his office, but she needed time. She texted back, No and not yet. Thanks.

  A moment later, Mandy followed up with LOL. Guess you told him!

  There was no point in getting people excited, only to find there’s an innocent explanation for everything that seemed at first more than strange. Besides, the motivations of tree-climbing boys were not the kind of story her readers were interested in. They wanted stories about victims of injustice. The kind of injustice that angered normal people and made their blood boil. Peter’s case would have to get a lot more serious before Carter Pierce would consider it a Taboo Magazine-worthy story.

  There were certainly some things that didn’t stack up, though. Jess dashed off another message to Mandy, requesting the public record of the birth of Peter Whiting in the hospital nearest to Bamford within the past fifteen years, broadening the time frame to be certain.

  The map on her phone showed the Whitings lived in a ranch house on a dead-end road, precisely thirty-three miles, and forty-four minutes from Biscuits.

  She turned on her windshield wipers and headed out of Biscuits’ parking lot.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Karl Blackstake sat at the corner table in the back of Biscuits. He watched the nurse leave, followed a few minutes later by the reporter. He pulled his earphones out of his ears and quit the app on his phone. The sensitive, directional microphone embedded in the phone’s thick case had picked up everything the women had said and piped it directly into his ears.

  There had been a moment when the reporter had dropped her knife. The microphone’s amplification had distorted the noise into a jet-engine loud cacophony that made him flinch. He hadn’t dared look up. He didn’t want to make eye contact, but she hadn’t paid him any attention.

  He brought up a second app on his phone and examined a map with a red and blue dot. The blue dot was stationary, centered on the diner. Him, in the booth with a mug of so-so coffee. The red dot was the magnetic tracker he had placed in the wheel arch of Kimball’s car. It was moving. Thirty miles an hour. Headed south, out of town, toward Bamford.

  As he left the diner, the red dot stopped. He quickened his pace. To form a complete picture of what the reporter was doing, he needed eyes on the subject at all times.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  By the time Jess was leaving Randolph, large drops of rain had splattered her windshield. The light jacket she’d packed looked unlikely to keep her dry. She made a last minute turn into the unpaved parking lot of a resale shop at the very end of Main Street.

  The store seemed to have everything, from pots and pans to furniture. There was a for-sale board with pine furniture, dogs needing a new home, and someone willing to donate a kidney, under which some wag had scrawled “only one left!”

  Next to a table filled with toys, she found a stack of waterproof boots with a wide tread. She tried on three pairs before finding the right size.

  At the other end of the store was a rack of dark green workman’s jackets. They were PVC with welded seams and creaked as she moved, but the hood and white cuffs would keep her dry for sure.

  The girl at the checkout cut off the tags.

  Jess climbed back into her car wearing her new gear and headed to Bamford.

  She drove a series of minor back roads. They twisted and turned through wooded areas and undulated over hillocks. Lumpy clouds obscured the sun, stealing shadows and leaving the scenery dull in the flat light.

  Four miles before the town’s outskirts, she passed a police cruiser on the opposite side of the road, pointing toward her. The driver’s window was down, and wisps of steam trailed from the exhaust. She watched in her rearview mirror as he J-turned and followed after her. She checked her speed and eased off the gas.

  Bamford was signposted left at the next intersection. She took the turn. The police cruiser followed.

  The town nestled in a broad dip. She crested a rise and felt as if she were descending from an airplane. The road sloped down for at least a mile. Bamford’s main street was a broad slash of signs and lights through an expanse of industrial and suburban buildings that could best be described as generic brown.

  She passed a “Welcome to Bamford” sign and slowed down to the posted limit. The cruiser gained on her. Not threatening, but closer than expected on a quiet road in a quiet town.

  She passed a light industrial building with a single car parked outside. The roll-up doors were closed, and there were none of the piles of boxes, rusting equipment, or barrels of who-knows-what that accompanied human endeavors.

  She took a right, toward downtown. The cruiser did, too. The officer might be heading into town for a late lunch. Or back to the station to write up another shift log. Or, she glanced at her car, maybe he simply didn’t trust drivers in rented sporty red cars to obey the speed limit.

  Main Street was small stores nestled between bigger stores. Neon “Open” signs glared from sandwich shops and pizzerias. One or two small chain stores. No Wal-Mart or Target. The town wasn’t big enough.

  Angled parking spaces lined the sides of Main Street. Pedestrians walked on a concrete sidewalk, dotted with tired looking trees bowing from large wood planters.

  Jess chose a parking bay with cars on either side. She slid into the spot, putting on the handbrake, turning off the engine, unbuckling her seatbelt. Looking busy. Doing what normal people do. What people who aren’t perplexed by a cop following them for four miles do.

  The cruiser rolled past. Slow. On momentum. The driver not pressing the vehicle’s accelerator. The windows were tinted, even in the front. She couldn’t see the driver, but she felt his gaze. What had she done to warrant the scrutiny?

  She’d driven the speed limit, taking in the scenery. She’d done nothing that s
hould have attracted attention. A leisurely drive from one small town to another. Nothing more. She craned her neck to watch but lost sight of the cruiser between the parked cars and leaning trees.

  She blew out a long breath. If he’d wanted to stop her for something, he would have done so on the outskirts of town, where it was quiet, and a traffic stop wouldn’t have upset anyone but her.

  She consulted the map on her phone. The Whiting place was a half-mile east. She memorized the route and backed out of her space. Soon, she drove onto the right street.

  The ranch houses she’d seen on the map looked smaller in real life. Middle class homes with a mixed bag of maintenance habits. Some houses were immaculate, and some displayed peeling paint and weeds run amok. The Whiting house was in the former category. A white picket fence, a mown and trimmed lawn, and a selection of potted plants around a frosted glass front door.

  A driveway ran down the right-hand side of the house, curving around to a double garage set behind it. There was a join line across the driveway. The Whitings had likely removed a single attached garage and replaced it with a double in the back yard. Not a bad idea with Washington’s weather.

  There was no gate on the drive. The curtains were open, but she saw no lights inside. She eased her rental onto the driveway, stopping before she reached the house.

  Now that she’d arrived, the trip suddenly seemed foolish. She’d told Nelson she wouldn’t interview the Whitings, but she could talk to them. She wanted to see these people. See where they lived. Get a sense of them. She had a good grasp of human nature and something about the situation, and these people didn’t feel genuine.

  She would start by offering her sympathies and best wishes for the boy’s recovery. She’d see what kind of people they were. Maybe offer her help, if they needed any. Although she had no idea what kind of help they might need from her.