Out Cold

by William G. Tapply

  She smiled and held open the door. “Mr. Coyne. You’re back. How nice. Come on in.” She looked down and saw Henry. “Oh, is this your doggie? Is he friendly?”

  “His name is Henry,” I said. “He’s a veritable pussycat. Can he come in, too?”

  “Of course. Animals are welcome here.” She scootched down and patted Henry’s head. He tolerated it. Then she straightened up and said, “The children always love animals. The women do, too, actually, most of them. But especially the children. We used to have a cat, but it ran off. I want to get another one. Come on. Let’s sit.”

  She led me over to the television nook, and we sat on the sofa. Henry lay down and plopped his chin on my instep.

  At the rear of the dining area, a dark-haired woman in a white smock was talking with a beefy black woman and a little girl of four or five with lots of pink plastic clips in her hair. The black woman’s daughter, I guessed.

  Otherwise, the place was empty.

  “Where is everybody?” I said.

  “A few women are upstairs,” she said. “Most of them have places to go during the day. I don’t encourage them to hang around. Our whole mission is for them to get their lives back. They have jobs, they take classes, they attend meetings, they go for interviews, things like that.”

  I jerked my head in the direction of the back of the room. “Is that Dr. Rossi?”

  Patricia nodded. “She’s just finishing up. Is that what brings you here today? Did you want to talk to her?”

  “Yes. I’ve got a question for you, too.”

  She put her elbows on her knees and her chin on her fists and leaned toward me. “Fire away.”

  “After I left here yesterday,” I said, “I noticed a panel truck outside. It had a picture of bears on its side. Looked like a logo of some kind. I wondered if you might’ve seen it before?”

  She frowned. “Bears? What kind of bears?”

  I shrugged. “Sort of stylized bears. A mother and a cub, maybe. A line drawing, with what looked like pine trees in the background. I think they were supposed to be bears. There was some writing, but I couldn’t read it. Why? Does it ring a bell?”

  “I don’t know.” She shook her head. “I don’t think so. Maybe if I saw it…”

  I had the sketch I’d drawn in the morning folded in my shirt pocket. I took it out, opened it up, and showed it to her. “I’m no artist, obviously,” I said. “It looked something like this.”

  She narrowed her eyes at it, then looked up at me. “Sorry, no. Why are you interested in this truck?”

  “The driver was talking to some girls. They told me he was asking about a young blond girl.”

  “Your dead girl?”

  “I don’t know. Could be.”

  “You think he knows her?”

  “I’d like to ask him.”

  “Some of the shelters,” she said, “have vans that drive around the city looking for folks without any place to go at night. But I don’t know any that have a picture of bears on them.”

  “This truck had New Hampshire plates.”

  She shook her head. “That doesn’t make any sense. Maybe Dr. Rossi can help you.”

  The black woman and her daughter were talking to the doctor. Then Dr. Rossi stood up and gave them each a hug, and the mother and daughter turned and headed for the door.

  Patricia stood up and went over to talk to them.

  Henry was lying on the carpet with his chin on his paws. I told him to stay, then went to the back of the room, where Dr. Rossi was sitting at a table with half-glasses perched down toward the tip of her nose, writing on some note cards.

  I stood there for a moment. She kept writing. I cleared my throat. “Uh, Dr. Rossi?”

  She looked up at me over the tops of her glasses. She was somewhere in her forties, I guessed. Up close I saw streaks of gray in her short black hair. Creases bracketed her mouth and squint lines wrinkled the corners of her eyes. “Hello?” she said, making it a question.

  “I wonder if I could talk with you for a minute.”

  She nodded. “For just about a minute. I’ve gotta be someplace in half an hour.”

  I pulled a chair up to the table where she was sitting. “My name is Brady Coyne. I’m a lawyer.”

  She smiled. “Oh, dear. A lawyer.”

  “Not intimidated, huh?”

  “Should I be?”

  “No. This has nothing to do with being a lawyer.” I took the photo of the dead girl out of my pocket and put it on the table in front of her. “I wonder if you ever saw this girl.”

  She poked her glasses up onto the bridge of her nose, peered at the photo, then looked up at me. “She’s dead?”

  “Yes.”

  “What happened to her?”

  “She came into my backyard the other night. She was pregnant. Had a miscarriage. Curled up in the snow and bled to death. Or froze to death. Or both. They haven’t done an autopsy yet. They’re waiting to ID her, I guess.”

  “How absolutely awful.” She touched the girl’s face with her fingertip. “I do see street girls now and then, and sometimes they’re pregnant, but I don’t remember this one.”

  “Would you remember?” I said.

  She looked up at me. “Excuse me?”

  “You must see a lot of people,” I said. “You might not remember every face.”

  She smiled quickly. “Every face? Of course I don’t remember them all. I see hundreds of faces every week. Different faces every day, and the next week, a different hundred faces. The faces come and go. Do you have any idea what I do?”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “Of course.”

  “I work from grant to grant,” she said, “with the occasional charitable donation gratefully accepted. These people have no insurance. Some of them, they want to pay me. They have a lot of pride. I let them. I take five dollars from those who have it. It makes them feel better. Do you understand?”

  “Yes,” I said. “I didn’t mean anything. I was hoping you might be able to help me out. I need to know who this girl is. Was.”

  Dr. Rossi picked up the morgue photo of the girl and looked at it again. Then she shrugged and shook her head. “I wish I could help you,” she said.

  “She died last Monday night. I found her body in the snow when I got up on Tuesday morning. I was thinking that you have your clinic here on Mondays, and this girl was seen in the neighborhood that evening, and she was sick, throwing up, so I just thought—”

  “That I might have seen her that afternoon.”

  I nodded.

  “I’d remember her. Pregnant and sick? Having a miscarriage? I’d’ve gotten her to a hospital.”

  “Right,” I said. “Sorry.” I hesitated. “What about a woman named Maureen Quinlan?”

  She looked at me blankly.

  “They called her Sunshine. She was staying here at the Shamrock.”

  “I don’t remember that name. You should ask Patricia about her.”

  I nodded. “She was murdered the other night.”

  “Oh,” said Dr. Rossi. “Yes. I heard about that. A terrible thing. But, you know, just not that shocking to me anymore. Violence is commonplace among the homeless. Anyway, no, if I ever saw this person, I don’t remember it. I could look her up in my records….”

  “No, that’s all right. I was thinking of the other day you were here. Thursday. She was killed Thursday night.”

  “I didn’t see her then. I’d remember that.” She started organizing the note cards and prescription pads and pamphlets that were scattered across the table. “It must have been a terrible shock for you,” she said, “finding this girl’s body in your yard.”

  “My dog found her. I brought her inside and called 911. It’s not clear whether she was already dead or she died on my sofa.”

  Dr. Rossi smiled softly. “I’m sorry.”

  I cleared my throat. “So where do pregnant street kids go in this city?”

  “There is no particular place. When they come to me, I talk to t
hem about diet and lifestyle and responsibility. I try to scare them about drugs. I try to convince them to get off the streets. I offer to intervene with their parents, talk to their boyfriends. I give them the addresses of Planned Parenthood clinics and adoption agencies. I urge them to talk with a priest or minister. I give them pamphlets.” She waved her hand at the stacks of pamphlets on the table. “A lot of them are abused. Incest is rampant. A lot of these girls don’t like to hear what I have to say.”

  “It sounds frustrating.”

  “It’s tragic, is what it is. But now and then you save somebody, you know?” She picked up her note cards, tapped them into a deck, put a rubber band around them, and reached down and put them in a black satchel that sat beside her chair. She did the same with the pamphlets. Then she pushed herself back from the table. “I’ve really got to go.”

  “One more question, please,” I said.

  “Make it quick. I’m running late.”

  “I wonder if you’ve noticed a panel truck in the neighborhood, perhaps cruising, looking to pick up girls. It has New Hampshire plates and a picture of bears on the side. A company logo, most likely. The driver would be a middle-aged man, round wire-rimmed glasses, well groomed, probably well educated.”

  “I’m not the kind of person who notices trucks.” She stood up, reached down for her satchel, put it on the table, and snapped it shut.

  I took my sketch of the logo out of my pocket and put it in front of her. “It looks something like this.”

  She glanced at it, shrugged, and shook her head. “Sorry,” she said.

  “You don’t recognize it?”

  “No.”

  “It could be important,” I said.

  “I understand,” she said. “I still don’t recognize it.” She shrugged on her coat, which had been hanging on the back of her chair, picked up her satchel, and held out her hand. “It was nice meeting you.”

  I shook her hand. It was square and strong and rough, as if she did a lot of hammering and digging. “Please,” I said. “If you remember anything about the girl, or if you see that truck, will you call me?”

  “Of course I’ll call you. Do you have a card?”

  I took a business card from my wallet and handed it to her. “Call me any time,” I said. “My home and office and cell numbers are all there.”

  She ran the ball of her thumb over the raised print, then stuck the card in her pocket. “I will. I’m sorry to be impatient with you. There’s never enough time in the day, you know?”

  I smiled. “I know. Thank you.”

  She nodded. “Good luck, Mr. Coyne. I hope you get some answers. No girl that age should die. Somebody’s responsible.”

  Dr. Rossi waved at Patricia McAfee, who was sitting in the television area talking on a cordless phone, and left.

  I said, “Hey,” to Henry, who was still lying where I’d told him to lie. He scrambled to his feet and trotted over. I snapped on his leash and mouthed “thank you” to Patricia.

  She wiggled her fingers at me.

  Henry and I went outside. The late-afternoon gloom had already begun to seep into the city streets. The snowbanks that lined the narrow streets were dirty. The puddles were sheeted with ice. The January air was cold and damp and depressing.

  Unless I was mistaken, we were in for some more snow.

  I hunched my shoulders in my topcoat. “Somebody’s responsible,” Dr. Rossi had said.

  I couldn’t stop thinking it was me.

  Eleven

  I took a cab to the airport and got to the arrival gate at 4:25 Sunday afternoon. America West flight 820 was on time, according to the monitor.

  I found a pillar to lean against and watched the people go by. I spotted Evie the moment she appeared at the top of the escalator that would bring her down to my level in the baggage-claim area. She was wearing her standard air-travel outfit—baggy blue jeans, loose-fitting men’s Oxford shirt with the tails hanging out, Boston Celtics jacket, dirty canvas sneakers, Red Sox cap. A long braid of auburn hair hung out of the opening in the back of the cap. Evie went for comfort, not style, when she knew she was going to be wedged into a window seat for five or six hours.

  Still, she looked pretty stylish to me.

  I watched her descend. She wasn’t expecting me, wasn’t looking for me, didn’t see me. She looked tired and grouchy. Some people walk up and down escalators, as if they didn’t go fast enough. Not Evie. She just rode it down.

  She was about five steps from the bottom when her eyes landed on me. At first she frowned. Then she blinked. Then she smiled.

  She hopped off the last step, threw her arms around my neck, and kissed me hard on the mouth.

  I hugged her against me.

  She broke the kiss, rubbed her cheek against mine, and said, “I missed you.”

  “Me, too,” I said.

  She stepped back and shook her head. “I told you not to come meet me. What a hassle.”

  “I couldn’t wait.”

  “Dumb,” she said.

  “But sweet,” I said.

  “Dumb but sweet. That’s my man.” She grabbed my hand. “Let’s fetch my bag and get the hell out of here.”

  In late-Sunday-afternoon traffic in the middle of the winter it’s about a twenty-minute cab ride from Logan International Airport to Mt. Vernon Street on Beacon Hill. Evie spent the entire time with her cheek resting on my shoulder and her hand absentmindedly moving along the inside of my thigh.

  Or maybe not so absentmindedly. Purposefully, maybe. If so, surely effective.

  I told her I intended to make shrimp scampi with risotto, lima beans, and a greens-and-mushroom salad for our dinner. A nice white wine was chilling in the snowbank on the back porch. White linen tablecloth. Evie’s grandmother’s silver. Miles Davis and Stevie Ray Vaughan, her favorites, were all cued up on the CD player.

  She murmured that it sounded perfect…she was looking forward to a long steamy shower…get into something comfortable…maybe I’d mix us a pitcher of martinis…all the time, her fingernails scratching little circles on the inside of my leg.

  Otherwise, we didn’t say much. We didn’t need to. We were both comfortable with silence. That was one of the things I loved about Evie. Silences didn’t bother her, and she didn’t feel compelled to fill them with chatter the way a lot of people—men as much as women—did.

  Henry greeted us at the door with his stubby tail wagging, his entire hind end a blur. He barked and jumped at her, and she went down on her knees so he could lick her face. She told him how much she’d missed him. He made it pretty clear that the feeling was mutual.

  I carried her bags up to the bedroom. Evie and Henry followed along behind me. I sat on the edge of the bed. Henry sat guard in the doorway, lest we attempt to elude him again. Evie stood in front of me, her eyes on my face. She pried off her sneakers with her toes, kicked them into the corner, and began to unbutton her shirt.

  I took off my shoes and unbuttoned my shirt.

  She dropped her shirt onto the floor.

  So did I.

  She unbuckled her belt, unzipped, wiggled out of her jeans.

  I lay back, arched my hips, and shucked off my pants.

  She unsnapped her bra and let it fall off her arms.

  I smiled.

  Evie arched her eyebrows.

  I curled my forefinger at her.

  She leapt upon me.

  An hour later, Evie was in the shower and I was downstairs in the kitchen dicing garlic cloves and sipping a martini. I’d left Evie’s martini sitting on the edge of the bathroom sink upstairs, right there for her emergence from the shower. Miles Davis was tooting mournfully from the speakers. Henry was lying under the kitchen table, his chin on his paws, his eyes alert for errant morsels.

  I was dicing and sipping and humming, and it took me a minute to register Evie’s presence behind me.

  She was standing in the doorway, barefoot, in her white terrycloth robe, with a pale blue towel wrapped around her hair.
She was pressing something against her chest with both of her hands. Her eyes were big and shiny.

  “What’s the matter?” I said.

  She showed me what she was holding. It was one of the photocopies of the morgue shot of the dead girl. I’d left it on top of my dresser in the bedroom.

  “It’s hard to look at,” I said. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to leave it out. That’s the girl I told you about. The girl who was—”

  “Right.” She blinked. A single tear squeezed out of each eye and rolled down her cheek. “I know her.”

  I put down the knife I’d been using on the garlic and went to her. I opened my arms. She stepped into my hug and wrapped her arms around my waist.

  “You know this girl?” I said.

  I felt her nodding against my chest. “Her name is Dana. Dana Wetherbee.”

  I tilted my head back so I could look into Evie’s face. “How do you know her, honey?”

  “The hospital,” she said. “When I was at Emerson. I haven’t seen her for almost three years. She was twelve or thirteen then. She’s changed, but…”

  I brushed a tear off her check with the knuckle of my forefinger. “Are you sure?

  She looked at the photo again, then nodded. “It’s Dana.” Tears were leaking from her eyes. She let me take her hand and lead her to the kitchen table. I held a chair for her. She sat down, put the photo on the table in front of her, and stared at it. Then she looked up at me. “It’s not just her features. I mean, her hair, her nose, her chin, they look right. Three years older, but the same. But that’s not what I mean. It’s her…her look. Do you understand?”

  I nodded.

  Evie touched Dana’s face with the tip of her finger. “This jade nose stud? I remember when she got it. She kept touching it, as if it embarrassed her.”

  I sat across from her. “Tell me about Dana,” I said.

  “She came here looking for me,” she said. “That’s why she was here that night you found her in the snow. She came to see me. She needed me. She was in trouble, and I could have helped her, except I wasn’t here for her, to help her, so she died.”

  “Honey—”