Fatal

by John Lescroart

  * * *

  When Ike went back to his desk to check in on Heather’s progress back at home, Beth took the opportunity to go down to the morgue for another visit with the eccentric and brilliant medical examiner Amit Patel. Even though it didn’t work, Eric’s Taurus .25 had turned her thoughts to guns, and specifically to the weapon that had been used to kill Peter Ash. She didn’t exactly know why she felt she needed to know this, but she trusted her instincts and did not consider for a moment that this might be another waste of her time.

  She caught him at his desk, in the middle of a lunch comprised of a cornucopia of assorted raw vegetables with some kind of a white dipping sauce. He’d laid his paperback facedown in front of him. As Beth came in, he rose halfway out of his chair in greeting and said, “You’re walking much better, Inspector.”

  “Every day,” she said.

  He sat back down. “So how can I help you? As long as it’s fast and easy. Not to be rude, but as you may know, we’ve had a bit of a run on our services here. Five incidents this weekend.”

  She nodded. “I was out on one of them Saturday night. And I mean all night Saturday night. Emil Yarian.”

  Patel clucked. “An interesting man,” he said. “Six toes. Did you know that the gene for six toes is dominant?”

  “I didn’t know that.”

  “All digits, actually. Preference for six. So why, over time, don’t we all have six of everything, fingers and toes?”

  “Good question.”

  “It is. And here is something I find truly fascinating. The trait was most common in the Mideast, ancient Sumeria, which has given us sixty seconds in a minute, sixty minutes in an hour, and so on. Six fingers. Imagine if that was the norm. How different the world. In any event, Mr. Yarian was from Armenia, which I suppose is close enough, genetically.” He took a bite of carrot. “But I’m thinking your question does not concern Mr. Yarian’s toes.”

  “Actually, it doesn’t even concern Mr. Yarian. This one goes back to Peter Ash.”

  “Yes,” he said, “the floater.”

  “Right. I thought we could talk for a minute about the shot that killed him. It went right through, if you remember? Clothes, skin, heart, lung, back muscle, skin, out, more clothes.”

  “Of course. What’s the question?”

  “Can you draw any conclusions about the type of bullet or gun that would pack that kind of penetrating power?”

  Patel popped some broccoli and chewed for a moment. “Bullet or gun?”

  “Both. Either. I’d just like your thoughts.”

  He took another moment, thinking. “Well, what did Crime Scene say?”

  Beth smiled at him. “We’ve kind of worn out our welcome with them.”

  Patel paused. “Okay. But don’t expect me to offer this as an expert opinion on the witness stand.”

  “I don’t think it will come to that.”

  “Let’s take the bullet first. We are almost undoubtedly talking about a metal jacket, or it does not go through and through. And even with a full metal jacket . . . well, the main thing is that if it was a standard-issue, store-bought semi-auto, for example, it would fire jacketed ammunition.”

  “So far, so good,” she said.

  Patel gave her a thoughtful look, then a nod. “But a .380 in general, metal jacket and all, with a standard propellant charge—I wouldn’t bet my career on this—you’re probably not going to go through and through. It’s going to slow down pretty fast. I’d be hugely surprised to see it coming all the way through and out the back.”

  “Have you ever seen it happen?”

  “I’ve seen jacketed bullets go through arms and legs any number of times, but I can’t recall one through the middle of the body. On a full-grown man, anyway. Kids, unfortunately, yes. But a man, there’s just too much to cut through, and the muscle mass is dense stuff.”

  Beth sat back in her chair. “So standard issue .380, standard propellant charge, what are the odds?”

  “In the specific case of Peter Ash?” Patel pondered for a final few seconds. “I’d have to go with pretty darn close to zero.”

  * * *

  “I don’t care if we can’t verify Eric’s alibi. It’s believable as all hell. He went to Top Dog and killed a couple of hours there on his laptop because he didn’t want to hang out with his nerd roommate and his hearts-playing fellow nerds.” Beth sat at her desk, across from her partner. “I’m personally satisfied,” she went on. “Eric didn’t buy a second gun and shoot his dad with it. No way, no how.”

  “Which leaves us back where?”

  She tried to sound hopeful. “Want to go back and look at Theresa?”

  He shook his head no. “It wasn’t her.”

  “So who?”

  “Anybody. Nobody. Maybe it was random. Peter was taking a jog out at the beach after he left Carol Lukins. He’s running along and a new bunch of terrorists were training out there and he came upon them and they shot him.”

  “Yeah,” Beth said, “maybe that’s it.”

  Shaking his head again in frustration, Ike pulled his computer around and started typing.

  “What are you looking for?” she asked.

  “Nothing,” he said. “Just dicking around.”

  Beth looked over at the wall clock: 3:15. Her phone chirped at her belt and she checked the screen. “Ginny out of school, checking in,” she said.

  “Tell her about the six-toed guy,” Ike said. “That’ll make her day.”

  32

  GINNY HADN’T JUST BEEN CHECKING in to tell Beth school was out. It was far more serious than that.

  Laurie Shaw had left a message on her cell phone, her voice weak, even desperate: “I’m sorry to bother you but I’m not doing so well. I’ve been sick all day and I’m really weak. I don’t know what to do and I’m kind of scared.”

  Ginny tried calling her back, and when she didn’t answer, she put in a call to 911, and then called her mother.

  * * *

  In her Jetta, without the benefit of lights and sirens, it took Beth twenty-two minutes to get from the Hall of Justice to Laurie’s place on Green Street.

  When she was halfway to that destination, Ike called in a state of excitement to tell her that his web search had discovered that Geoff Cooke’s résumé included time spent in the military. He’d been a captain in Desert Storm in 1991.

  But Beth’s concern at the moment was for Laurie. The significance, if any, of Ike’s information seemed slight, although it did provide what felt like a little ex post facto justification for her visit to Patel. But she didn’t want to rain on her partner’s parade, so she told him he should follow up on that—whatever, if anything, it might mean—on his own while she dealt with this problem that had come up with one of Ginny’s friends. She’d see him tomorrow.

  She parked in an open space in front of the fire hydrant down by the corner and jogged at her top speed in a kind of hobble up to the ambulance, which was parked directly in front of the entrance to Laurie’s apartment building. There was no sign yet of Ginny, but Beth didn’t slow down. She flashed her ID at the ambulance driver, entered the building, and willed herself step-by-step up to the third floor, where Laurie’s door stood ajar. Just inside, they had her on a gurney and were trying to get an intravenous tube into her rail-thin arm. With some alarm, Beth noted a bluish tinge to her skin, a pronounced, perhaps deathly pallor in her face.

  The young man running the show—his name tag read “Brian Fisk”—looked up over her body at Beth’s appearance. “Who are you?”

  She held up her ID and said, “A friend of hers. My daughter called you guys.”

  “No relation?”

  “No.”

  “Do you know what happened?”

  “No idea. She called my daughter and said she’d been sick all day.”

  “Longer than that, it looks like,” Fisk said. “Besides the serious malnutrition, it looks like she’s aspirated part of a bolus into her lungs. She’s in a seriously obtunded stat
e. We’ve got to get her on some fluids. When did this start?”

  “I don’t know. She was eating very well all weekend. A lot, actually.”

  “Bingeing?”

  “It didn’t seem like it. It seemed healthy.”

  “Her body wasn’t used to it.”

  “Maybe. Probably.”

  “Whatever it was, she probably threw most of it up. She’s really weak now, barely conscious, as you can see. Her pulse is a thread. We’ve got to get a needle into her stat, but her veins aren’t holding up.”

  “Do what you need to do. Don’t let me get in your way.”

  “Don’t worry. I won’t.”

  Backing up onto the floor’s landing, she pulled her phone off her belt, scrolled down to Alan’s number, the one she’d only entered into her contacts the night before.

  Picking up on the third ring, he said, “This is a nice surprise.”

  “No it isn’t.”

  * * *

  Alan said they’d probably find her medical insurance card in Laurie’s wallet in her purse. And they did. Miraculously, Beth thought, she and Alan had not let her coverage lapse, so they took her to St. Francis rather than County General. By the time they’d gotten Laurie into the ambulance, Ginny had shown up and they all drove down to the hospital in a caravan. Alan arrived shortly after they’d finished with the admission. They’d finally succeeded in getting a drip into her arm.

  As her closest relative, Alan was allowed past the doors to the emergency room while Beth and Ginny sat together just outside, holding hands, mostly silent.

  Until finally, Ginny found her voice. “I feel so guilty, Mom.”

  “There’s nothing to feel guilty about.”

  “There is. I should have realized.”

  “Realized what?”

  “That she couldn’t just start in again like she’d been eating all along.”

  “How would you know that? I didn’t know it either, by the way.”

  “That’s what I’m saying, though. I should have checked someplace.”

  “Why? Why should it even have occurred to you? You were being a friend. You two were having fun.”

  “Yeah, but I’m healthy. She’s seriously anorexic, and that’s a real disease at her level. You can’t just treat it by getting back to eating whatever you want. At least the way we did.”

  “Okay, so we know that now. We won’t do it again. But don’t beat yourself up over what you didn’t know then. It’s possible even Laurie didn’t know, since she had not exactly been pushing the envelope on how much she could eat and hold down. But they’ve got her safely here now, don’t they? Also because of your quick thinking. Plus, I think you’ve shown her she can still have a good time in this life once she beats this thing. That’s your influence, too. And that’s huge, psychologically, which is half the battle.”

  “If she gets through this.”

  Beth squeezed her daughter’s hand. “She’ll get through it. She wants to live now.”

  “I hope she does.”

  “You wait,” Beth said. “You’ll see.”

  The waiting room doors opened. Alan looked drawn and exhausted, but he dredged a half-smile from out of somewhere. “They think they’ve got it diagnosed,” he said. “It’s called refeeding syndrome.”

  “Refeeding?” Ginny asked.

  “Yeah. If you’ve been near starving and then suddenly start to eat, your body can’t handle it.”

  “What happens?” Beth asked.

  “Pretty much what we’ve got here, although sometimes much worse and sometimes fatal.”

  “Fatal?” Ginny looked to her mom.

  “The laymen’s version,” Alan went on, “is that your metabolism gets all screwed up. But the good news is they’ve got her stabilized,” he said. “They say they’re moving her to a room soon. They’re going to keep her here at least overnight, then see where they are tomorrow. I probably should be staying with her at her place when they send her home. I probably should have stayed with her last night, too.”

  Beth said, “I’ve just been telling Ginny how this whole thing with Laurie wasn’t her fault. Do you want to get in line?”

  Alan turned his smile Ginny’s way. “She pretends to have a soft spot, but it turns out your mom is a bit of a hard-ass. Have you noticed that?”

  “I do have a soft spot,” Beth said. “I just ignore it most of the time.”

  * * *

  Ginny left in an Uber to go home at 8:45. Beth and Alan lingered by his truck in the hospital’s parking garage. “You know,” Alan said, “seeing her today, I kind of wish Frank Rinaldi was still alive.”

  “Why is that?” Beth asked.

  “So I could kill him.”

  She looked up at him with a smile. “You ever think of being a cop?” she asked. “The attitude’s about halfway there.”

  “No, thanks. I’m happy building stuff. But I almost mean it.”

  “Except that, if you want to get technical, he was a victim. You can’t really blame him.”

  “I can’t? He’s married and screwing around with my sister. I can blame the shit out of him. And I know what you’re going to say.”

  “You do?”

  “Sure. She was screwing around with him, too, so she is equally to blame.”

  “The argument could be made,” Beth said.

  “But she didn’t know he was married when they started. He told her that he and his wife were separated and getting divorced.”

  “And she didn’t check? They didn’t have Google a year ago? Not coming down on her. Just sayin’.”

  He acknowledged the point with a nod. “Okay, so maybe she was dumb to believe him. And there was probably a way she could have checked. But she didn’t. She fell in love. Probably not her fault. And by the time he fessed up, she was already committed.” He held up a hand. “I know, I’m making excuses for her. She should have dumped him as soon as she found out, but by then maybe he was really planning to leave his wife.”

  “He’d half packed a suitcase the day she shot him, so I think I believe him on that.”

  “Still, he was married. When you’re married, you don’t screw around on your spouse. Right?”

  “Well, that’s the theory, anyway.”

  “I mean, if things are miserable, okay, you break up. Although one could argue that once you commit, you simply don’t let that happen either.”

  “Don’t let what happen?”

  “Don’t let it get miserable. And don’t break up, period.”

  “How do you do that?”

  “A million different ways, all variations on the theme of keep talking, stay committed, work it out.”

  “Excuse me,” Beth said. “For a minute there I thought we were in the twenty-first century.”

  A sheepish grin. “Sorry,” he said. “I’m old-fashioned, I’ll admit it.”

  “You really think people shouldn’t break up no matter what?”

  “No, of course not. If one of them gets violent, gets an addiction problem, that kind of thing, sure. Or you’re just too damn young and don’t know who you are yet. But once you’re an adult and make that commitment?” He shrugged. “What I’m saying is that maybe some couples try their best and just really can’t make it, but maybe a lot more of them give up too easy. Or start playing around. Which brings me back to my point.”

  “Which is?”

  “Which is you don’t start seeing somebody new before you’re out of your marriage—and I mean really out, as in stopped living together, and no getting back together three or four times while you deal with all the inevitable fallout. Only when you’re absolutely sure it’s completely done and you’re really on your own, divorced, then you can go looking around again. But not before. Not a minute before.”

  “How about twenty-seven seconds?”

  “Go ahead. Make fun of me.”

  “I’m not making fun of you. Although I do worry about a guy who won’t express an opinion.” She put a hand on his sleeve. “Jus
t kidding again. In all honesty, if you want to know, I think it’s endearing.”

  Alan broke a frown. “Endearing?”

  “An old-fashioned kind of word for an old-fashioned kind of guy.”

  “Not exactly what I was going for. Old-fashioned, I mean.”

  “Well, I mean it in the best possible way. Especially for a woman who might be thinking about getting herself into a commitment.”

  “You know somebody like that?”

  “I think I do.”

  “I thought we weren’t seeing each other again until you got this Peter Ash case all worked out.”

  “We weren’t. Then this happened with Laurie today and here we are. Nothing else we could have done about it, was there?”

  “No. I don’t see what.”

  “Man plans,” she said, “God laughs.” As though on cue, the phone went off on her belt. She looked at the screen. “This is my partner,” she said in an apologetic tone. “I’ve got to take it.” She pushed the button. “Yo, Eisenhower. What up?”

  33

  THE CRIME SCENE UNIT HAD already set up the Kliegs by the time Beth rolled up and, as always, they illuminated the fog-bound scene pretty well in their garish glow. What she assumed to be Geoff Cooke’s black Mercedes-Benz sat in the back corner of the Palace of Fine Arts parking lot under a nonfunctioning overhead light. Even from back in her own parking spot far behind the yellow crime scene tape, she could see that the driver’s-side window was a spiderweb of safety glass.

  She would not be surprised—in fact she expected—to see one distinct hole in that same window when she got closer.

  But first she saw her partner standing alone near his city-issued vehicle. He turned at the sound of her footsteps crunching in the gravel of the lot. “That was fast,” he said.

  “I was motivated. Do we know for sure that this is Geoff Cooke?”

  “That license number is registered to him. He’s carrying Geoff Cooke’s wallet. I’ve taken a quick look. I’d say the odds are good.”