“Nothing further.” Sanders went back to his table and said something to Hemenway. They both smiled derisively.
But Thaddeus caught the jury out of the corner of his eye. They were watching every move the doctor made. In that moment, Thaddeus felt that he had brought the best defense case to them possible. And he was very grateful for Dr. Sewell leading him to Dr. Rachmanoff. Grateful for his case, certainly, but most of all grateful for Katy.
He patted the recorder in his pocket, patiently poised to get it all down.
55
Thaddeus next called to the stand the attorney who had set the original lawsuit against Dr. Sewell in motion. Thaddeus had one end of the string and he was about to unwind the whole ball. It was Milbanks Wang’s turn to give it all up to the jury.
“Mr. Wang, who do you represent in the Nadia Turkenov conservatorship case?”
“I represent the conservators, Roy Underwood, and Jack Middleton.”
“And they represent the estate? Meaning, the money?”
“Yes.”
“Who represents the conservatee, Nadia Turkenov herself?”
“That would be Albert Turkenov, her son.”
“Who is Albert’s lawyer?”
“That would be the public defender. He had to have a lawyer to get a bond. The court appointed the public defender for that purpose so that Nadia—Ms. Turkenov—wouldn’t have to spend money on a lawyer of her own.”
“Was that a wise thing for the court to do?”
“Well, she hasn’t had to spend any of her money on a lawyer for herself.”
“Speaking of which, who pays you?”
“The estate. I’m paid out of estate funds.”
“How much have you been paid so far?”
“Five thousand dollars.”
“And that’s by order of the court?”
“Well…I’m working on that. Judge Mendoza has a form of order that I’ve prepared and given him to consider.”
“But he hasn’t signed that order yet?”
“No.”
“And yet you’ve already been paid?”
“Yes.”
“Without the court authorizing it?”
“Yes.”
Thaddeus saw Judge Hoover leaning down toward the witness so as not to miss a word. His face was calm, but Thaddeus knew Judge Hoover well enough to know that his calm exterior could often bely the raging storm inside the man.
“Has anyone else been paid out of Ms. Turkenov’s money?”
“Yes. Both conservators of the estate. And the conservator of the person.”
“How much so far?”
“Seventeen thousand and five hundred dollars.”
“Has Judge Mendoza authorized the money they received?”
“No, he hasn’t.”
“But there’s an order pending that you’ve prepared.”
“Yes. It hasn’t been signed. But I expect it will be.”
At just that moment, Judge Hoover raised his hand, shutting Thaddeus off. He adjusted the spectacles on his short nose and fixed the witness with his stare.
“Just so the court understands,” said Judge Hoover, “I would like to follow up with my questions.”
“Certainly,” said Thaddeus. He turned and took his seat.
The judge went on for five minutes or more, eliciting the names and addresses of the persons paid, the dates of payment, the names and addresses of the persons writing the checks, and other facts that would assist him in understanding what exactly had been transpiring with Ms. Turkenov’s money. At least, that’s why Thaddeus imagined he was doing it. But then came the shock.
“Bailiff,” said the Judge, “Go downstairs and return with six deputies.”
The bailiff left on the run and everyone stared into space until he returned five minutes later with six armed, uniformed, burly deputy sheriffs.
“The clerk has made up a list of three names and addresses. I am issuing a bench warrant for each of these gentlemen. You are to go out two-by-two, arrest them, and bring them before me without delay. Do you understand me?”
The deputies all confirmed their understanding.
“Now, go!”
“Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I ask your forgiveness for that little detour, but the court just couldn’t continue with this trial knowing that a felony had very likely been committed by the names you just heard me give to the deputy sheriffs. And as for you,” he said to Attorney Wang, turning his full attention to him, “I would suggest you carefully consider whether you too might have committed larceny during your dealings with the money that belonged to Ms. Turkenov. You have testified that you received five thousand dollars without an order of the court. Here inside these four walls,” the judge said, indicating the walls of his courtroom, “that amounts to theft. As far as the bar association is concerned, those facts also amount to the commingling of your personal funds with a client’s funds. Lawyers get disbarred for such inappropriate acts every day. You, sir, should see a criminal lawyer. Which you, obviously, are not. Bailiff, I hereby order you to take this witness to jail and hold him there until charges can be brought against him.”
“Now, ladies and gentlemen, being without a bailiff, the court is going to recess until our bailiff returns.”
He slammed his gavel down twice against its pad and abruptly stood to his full height and soared from the bench to his chambers.
“Not a sound could be heard all through the house, not even a mouse,” Shep said to Thaddeus.
Both men laughed.
Dr. Sewell stood and looked around, dumbfounded.
“What?” he said.
“Let’s just say, the jury is out,” Thaddeus told him. “Come on back to the office. I’ll explain it all to you there.”
56
She knew she was going. It felt like fingers losing their grip one by one on the sheer face of a granite cliff. It was a dream, a dream about falling, but it wasn’t. It was real and the drugs were what made it surreal, dreamy, almost wistful.
It occurred to her one afternoon: the world no longer needs my thoughts. At just that moment she felt the pain move its fist up along her spine, twisting the tortured ligaments and nerves there one more time until they cried out, “Too much! End this!” Ignoring her body’s wracking cries just one more time, she said to herself, again, the world no longer needs my thoughts. I won’t be missed by the world. It will survive without me. My kids will survive without me. My family. Thaddeus will survive without me.
She realized what all people must learn: the world will survive them. There is no rule to keep them above ground and doing for the world. No rule whatsoever.
So she could afford to relax her grip. Could afford to let go.
They had replaced the oral medications with a pump, the plunger to which was gripped in her hand. With a poke of her index finger, she could release the strongest pain reliever known to medicine directly into her bloodstream. Then—Sweet Jesus!—the relief would come, instantly and remarkably suppressing the pain in its path. Of course, it made her lose consciousness each time she self-dosed. Her consciousness, as she saw it, stepped aside briefly to allow the medicine to do its job.
Her consciousness would survive. She had read the doctor’s story. The book, The Doctor Is In…Heaven was all but committed to memory. And she had heard the recorded testimony of Dr. Rachmanoff from the Consciousness Institute and USC School of Medicine. Thaddeus had provided it to her. Dr. Rachmanoff had provided the science she so desperately needed to give her the only kind of hope she could countenance. The religious kind of hope was based on faith; her world of thought and ideas and feelings were based on science, on measurability, on experiment and notation, of inquiry and testing. Her hope was rational where the other was faith-based. It was the same difference that existed between binary computational systems and quantum physics. The one was measurable going in, the other was measurable only coming out. Did that make sense to her? Going in and coming out? She had to admit: it did
.
Now she had her science of a consciousness that survives death. Now she had the hope that she would meet her children again. Meet her Thaddeus again.
So when he came home that night, she told him.
It was time to go up on the mountain.
He held her in his arms, lying beside her on the hospital bed, rocking with her.
He said nothing more.
He had brought to her all he could find to offer.
* * *
After dinner, served in the room where Katy passed her days and nights, Thaddeus maneuvered the kids to their mother, one by one, kissing her good night. “Tell mama something sweet tonight,” he encouraged the little ones. “Tell her your most secret secret.”
“I love you, Big Mama,” whispered Parkus. “Come tuck me in when you can.”
“G’night, Mommy,” whispered Sarai. “God loves you, don’t forget.”
Celena leaned up and cupped her hands. She couldn’t be heard, but Katy began nodding her head and turned to kiss the little girl. “Yes, love you back, my precious,” Katy said.
And Katy was strong, Thaddeus saw, my God, she was strong. She never cried nor flinched. Gave no clue that she wouldn’t be there for them in the morning.
Not a clue.
He watched the ten o’clock news as he did most nights when he was home. She—lying on her side, a rare enough event—watched with him. The weather predicted snow by the end of the week. The NAU Lumberjack football team lost to the Arizona Wildcats by forty points. An Amber Alert was abandoned after the missing girl was found upstairs asleep in her closet. And Pet Parade had a serious Schnauzer puppy up for adoption.
At ten-thirty, he went to the front closet and shrugged into his barn jacket. Then he came back to Katy and pulled a blanket from her closet and wrapped it around her.
Without a word, he lifted her from the bed. She had double-dosed for what she knew was coming: the unbearable pain of being lifted and pulled from the bed. She was unconscious as he carried her silently out the back door of the house and came around front, heading for the mountainside two miles away.
“When Diego shows up for his shift,” Thaddeus told the two XFBI agents out front, “put him in your backseat and wait for me to come back.”
“Yes, he’s back on tonight?”
“Yes, he is. Do it. He gets no closer to my house than we are right here.”
“Done, Thaddeus.”
“It will be done when it’s actually done.”
They looked from Katy to Thaddeus. But they didn’t say anything. His intention was clear.
Like a trail horse, he knew the way even in the dark. There was only a brief stumble as he carried her in his arms, bearing her up and up onto the side of the mountain that she loved and that her tribe reverenced. It was a holy place to her people, Thaddeus knew, a place of spirits. Good spirits. A place where she could safely go to meet them.
He was still climbing a half hour later and still hadn’t broken a sweat. She had lost thirty-five pounds during her illness and weighed less in his arms than the hay bales he tossed easily around the barn when servicing the horses that stood stamping and blowing below the loft. She was light and she was mostly unconscious, until the last several hundred yards when he realized her eyes were open and she was studying his face. She was reading his face, actually. She was memorizing every detail, every pore, every hair, his look. And for him, he wordlessly allowed her to come that close.
The final one hundred yards were realized through her gasps of breath as his footsteps jolted her with unimaginable pain. She turned her face to his chest and clenched her fists. Finally, when they came to her tree, she wept because she could hold it back no longer. So he sat with her at the foot of her tree, a hundred foot ponderosa that marked the edge of the invisible circle where the trees ran out and the shale and volcanic pumice began. He sat at the base of the tree and arranged her across his lap. He was cradling her as if a small child.
“Cold?”
She shook her head.
“Good.”
He pulled her ever closer to him. Together they breathed. Their breath, coming forth in white clouds, mingled and boiled before blowing sidewise off into the night. A puff, still air, another puff, still air, puff.
Thaddeus watched the air move and move. He felt her heart against his own. He leaned forward and kissed her head. He kissed her cheeks. She moved and he kissed her mouth.
“Now,” she whispered.
He reached into the pocket of his barn jacket and withdrew the small clear plastic bag that she had prepared. It contained twenty white pills. Then he withdrew the small water bottle and unscrewed its cap.
“Shall I pass them to you?”
She nodded and opened her mouth.
One by one he fed the pills into her open, warm mouth. Not until she had all twenty on her tongue did she move her mouth toward the water bottle. He held it to her lips and tilted. She swallowed hard one time. Then less hard. Then easily. “Ahhh,” she said and closed her eyes.
“You swallowed them all at one time?”
Her eyes opened. “You should mind your own beeswax.”
She turned her face to his chest.
He pulled her ever tighter against his body.
Then he told her about the night sky, the constellations he could make out through the trees, the two satellites that crawled across the panorama, the owl he heard less than twenty feet away, the sound of a doe galloping past to a water hole. He described the children, back down the mountain, safe and asleep in their beds. He told her about their dreams, about their lives as they would grow up, who they would marry, where they would live, what her grandchildren would look like and how they would love her. He told her all the things he saw that she could no longer see for herself.
Because the world, at last, no longer needed her thoughts.
And she, in the end, no longer felt the need to visit her thoughts upon the world.
They were even.
At four o’clock a.m. his back was aching from not moving. Using his back and thighs, he moved upright against the tree. She was still clutched to him, still warm on the side pressed against his body. But cold where their warmth wasn’t shared, him to her.
Tears streaming, he carried her back down the mountain. Carried her back down the mountain and crept back inside the large ranch house with her in his arms. He placed her on her bed, reattached the long tube that ran from the medication rack into the connection in the back of her hand, then drew the sheet up over her. He arranged her long, black hair on the pillow so that she looked as lovely there as she would have wanted when they came for her.
The people he called removed her body before daybreak.
He would be able to pick up the urn at five p.m., they told him.
He went into the kitchen and made coffee. He went out back and stood on the porch, looking off across the meadow at the forest beyond.
Then he went back inside and refilled his mug and sat down at the kitchen table. He switched on the flat panel TV that she had insisted be installed in her kitchen. At six o’clock the local news came on and the dream—he knew by now it was all a dream—continued.
Five o’clock, he reminded himself. He could pick her up at five.
It would be a long day without her. But he knew he could make it, because by now he too had read the book and he had heard the doctor’s testimony and he had accepted that the science had it right.
He would join her again. No idea when or how, but it would happen.
He would settle for no less.
* * *
At half past six, he remembered.
Diego Luchesi.
Thaddeus went out the front door of his house, stood on the deck and stretched. The two north side agents were parked forty yards apart, listening with their electronic gear for any movement. Their heads turned and they stared at Thaddeus when they heard him come out. The agent on the east side of the property reached out his driver’s window and pointed
at his rooftop.
Fine, that would be where Luchesi was being held.
Thaddeus went back inside, reached beneath Katy’s pillow, and withdrew the Glock 26 he had left with her. He stuffed it in the front pocket of his jeans. The man who’d sold him the gun had specifically told him it was not a pocket gun. As Thaddeus walked toward the agent’s vehicle, he slapped the pocket containing the gun. Not a pocket gun, hell, he thought. What do you call this?
At the passenger’s window, rear, Thaddeus motioned Luchesi to exit the vehicle. The agent popped the lock, allowing Luchesi to comply. The man stood up, slightly bent from being cuffed behind, and stood to face Thaddeus. He shivered in the cold, as they had removed his winter coat and searched him before placing him in the vehicle.
“So,” Thaddeus said to the man. “You have come here to kill me. Or my wife. Or my children.”
“Not so!” cried the man. “I have only come to help.”
“Is that what Mascari told you to say if we caught you?” Thaddeus asked. “Tell us you were only here to help?”
“Who is that? I know no Mascari.”
“Right, pal. Well, I have it on good authority that you were the guy who threw gasoline on my friend and set him on fire. You don’t have to answer that; I already know what you’ll say.”
“I didn’t—I didn’t—”
“No, of course you didn’t. Now. Do you know what a dry well is, Mr. Luchesi?”
“No.”
“Well, let’s go then, you and I. You are going to learn something this morning.”
Together they went to the tool barn and Thaddeus opened the door to his Ram 3500 and placed the handcuffed man into the passenger seat. Then he backed out and drove them several minutes south until they came to the south end of the ranch. Ahead was open, flat plain that fell away to Sedona to the south, and, off to the west, sparkling desert sand sizzling in the morning sun where the snow ended downslope.
“Right about here,” Thaddeus said. He stopped the truck at the point in the barbed wire fence where the natural gas pipeline right-of-way marched through, bisecting his property south to north.
The Near Death Experience (Thaddeus Murfee Legal Thriller Series Book 10) Page 27
