Locked In - [McCone 29]

by Marcia Muller

  Knowing what he would find, Craig pushed to his feet and ran toward it.

  * * * *

  JULIA RAFAEL

  S

  he looked across her desk at Haven Dietz and said, “I’m sorry I asked you to come in so late in the day, but there’re some things about your case I need to check out.”

  A jagged scar extended from below Dietz’s right eye to her chin, another across her brow. Although you couldn’t tell it unless she moved, her right arm was useless because tendons and muscles had been severed during the knife attack last year. Before that, according to Julia’s file, Dietz had been pretty and confident, a junior executive with a top financial management firm. Now her blonde hair hung lank and unwashed; she wore no makeup; she seemed shrunken inside her baggy sweater and jeans, as if protecting herself against further attack. She had other scars that you couldn’t see, but they were psychological and emotional.

  Pobrecita.

  Julia always thought in her primary language when she was upset. And every time she conferred with Haven Dietz, she had trouble concealing her emotional turmoil.

  Thing was, it could’ve been her. Was more likely to have been her, given her past. She’d been hooking and dealing on the tough streets of the Mission district when she was a teenager; Haven had been assaulted while taking a shortcut home through a park in the supposedly safe, middle-class outer Richmond district.

  Por Dios ...

  But something wasn’t right with Dietz, and Julia couldn’t pin it down. She’d come to the agency for help, but her behavior ranged from noncooperative to hostile. Also, she professed to dislike Larry Peeples’s parents, yet she’d strongly urged them to contract with the agency and request Julia as their investigator. Of course the cases were connected, and Dietz knew it.

  Always before, Julia had met with Dietz at her apartment, but today she’d asked her to come here. Power play.

  “I’m finding strong links between your case and the Larry Peeples disappearance,” Julia added. “Can we talk about your relationship with him again?”

  The woman sighed and fired up a cigarette without asking—in spite of theNO SMOKING signs posted on the wall along the catwalk. “We’ve been over and over this. Larry was a neighbor and he was gay. We were casual friends, nothing more.”

  Julia didn’t like Dietz, but more than once she’d told herself she couldn’t let it interfere with her investigation.

  “You and Larry were close friends, according to his lover, Ben Gold.”

  She shrugged. “We lived on the same floor. Sometimes I’d go to dinner at his apartment, or he’d come to mine. We didn’t exactly run in the same social circles.”

  “When you saw him, what did you talk about?”

  “Haven’t we done this before?”

  Julia bit the tip of her tongue to control her temper. “It helps to keep going over things.”

  Another sigh. “We talked about my job at the firm and his at the Home Showcase. About movies we’d seen and books we’d read. Nothing heavy. It was a way to pass the time and not have to cook for one. I don’t exactly call that a relationship.”

  “But Larry took care of you when you came home from the hospital.”

  “Nobody else was going to.” Bitterness filtered into her tone. “My parents were too busy sailing their damn yacht across the Pacific. My so-called friends turned out to be people who couldn’t deal with disfigurement.”

  Dietz looked down at the cigarette, which was close to burning her fingers. She registered that there was no ashtray on the desk and glanced around.

  “We don’t encourage our clients to smoke,” Julia said and motioned to her wastebasket. “Make sure it’s out. The service’s already emptied it, but I don’t want the plastic bag to melt.”

  Dietz ground the butt out on the basket’s side and dropped it in. The smell of scorched plastic immediately drifted up to further poison the air.

  Julia said, “You’ve told me you and Larry didn’t see too much of each other after you recovered from the attack.”

  “No, we didn’t. He was working extra hours at Home Showcase and was with Ben Gold a lot. Besides...”

  That was one thing she’d been holding back.

  “Besides?”

  “Well, we had kind of a falling-out. He told me I was a terrible patient and didn’t appreciate all he’d done for me. I offered to pay him for his time, and then he called me a spoiled rich brat. Which is definitely not fair, because if anybody was spoiled it was Larry. His family has tons of money: they own an award-winning winery in the Sonoma Valley.”

  Julia knew all about the winery: Larry’s grieving parents had told her that shortly before he’d disappeared he’d agreed to return home and train to take over the business. They’d also invited her up there for a tour and lunch, but so far she hadn’t gone. She didn’t know how to act or dress in social situations with rich people. Across her desk she did better.

  She said, “You and Larry never made up, right?”

  “Right.”

  “But you suggested that his parents consult our agency about his disappearance.”

  “That was to get them off my back. They kept coming down here and hammering me with questions. They’re sure I know something—which I don’t.”

  Julia consulted her file. “The day Larry disappeared—”

  “We’ve been over this at least half a dozen times...Oh, hell, all right. I ran into him at the mailboxes about eleven that morning. We ignored each other. Later I felt guilty about that. After all, he did take care of me, and I’m not a very good patient. Besides, the building manager had told me Larry was giving up the apartment and moving back to Sonoma. So after I went out for groceries I went over there to say good-bye. He didn’t come to the door, although I sensed he was there, so I said the hell with it. Two days later Ben Gold came to my door asking if I’d seen Larry. And then the police got into it, and then the damned parents.”

  “This Ben Gold—what’s your take on him?”

  Dietz shrugged.

  “Come on, you must’ve formed some opinion.” From her background check, Julia had learned the details of Gold’s life: born in the Bronx to a poor family, abusive home life; tried to make it on the New York stage and, when he didn’t, headed to less competitive San Francisco, where he’d had modest success with low-budget commercials. But she really couldn’t get a handle on Gold, other than that he was very distressed by his lover’s disappearance.

  “He doesn’t like me, and I don’t like him,” Dietz said. “He’s ambitious about the acting and modeling. Sucked up to Larry’s parents, too. Have you talked with him?”

  “Yes.”

  “So what’s your take on him?” Dietz asked.

  “For a while he wasn’t getting on with his life. Spent a lot of time at the Peepleses’ vineyard. The mother seems to view him as a substitute for her son. That’s about to end, though; he’s moving to LA soon—something about an acting job.”

  Dietz’s brow knitted and her gaze grew far away. After a moment she said, “Those parents ...”

  “What about them?”

  Another shrug.

  “Why d’you suppose they think you know more than you’re telling?”

  “You’ll have to ask them.”

  Julia had more questions, but her phone rang. She checked to see who was calling and said, “I need to take this.”

  * * * *

  HY RIPINSKY

  H

  e slumped in a chair across the desk from Dr. Ralph Saxnay, Shar’s attending physician at the Brandt Neurological Institute. The starkly white and functional office was very quiet, except for the ticking of a grandfather clock on the facing wall. City sounds were muted in this eucalyptus-surrounded enclave.

  “Mr. Ripinsky?”

  “I’m sorry. It’s difficult to process all this.”

  “I understand.”

  Hy studied Saxnay. The doctor was tall and thin and totally bald, with a pale skeletal face and small b
lue eyes. Intelligent eyes, and full of compassion.

  The situation with McCone was evidently much worse than when the medical professionals had thought she was in a coma.

  “I don’t understand why nobody noticed she was ... in there,” Hy said. “Shouldn’t they have seen the eyeblinks and motion when they put saline solution or whatever it is they use to keep the eyes hydrated?”

  “Initially she was in a coma; if the patient’s eyes are closed and hydrating normally, there’s no need to augment it. Anyway, now that we know she’s awake, as indicated by the good brain wave activity shown in the CT scans taken at SF General and here earlier today, our preliminary diagnosis is locked-in syndrome. Do you know what that is?”

  “No.”

  “Have you seen the film or read the book The Diving Bell and the Butterfly?”

  “Neither.”

  “Well, then. The syndrome is caused by traumatic brain injury: head wounds as in your wife’s case or by stroke. Before you leave today, we’ll provide you with literature that may help you understand it more thoroughly. And, of course, there’s plenty of material on the Internet, although much of it may be inaccurate. With locked-in syndrome, unlike coma, the patient has normal sleep-and-waking cycles, is conscious, can think and reason, and has sensation throughout her body. Your wife can blink and move her eyes and, now, breathe without a ventilator—all of which are very positive signs. But, as you know, she cannot speak or move or take nourishment without a feeding tube.”

  It was a moment before Hy could process the information. “What’s the course of treatment for this syndrome?”

  “We will take measures to prevent infection or pneumonia and give her physical therapy to prevent her limbs from contraction. She’ll be turned often to prevent bedsores. Good nutrition will be provided, of course. A speech therapist will help her to establish a communication code utilizing eyeblinks or eye movement.”

  Alarm seeped into him. Something the doc wasn’t saying.

  “And the recovery time ... ?”

  Saxnay met his gaze evenly. “The mortality rate is high. Patients typically die within months, although some live for a few years.”

  Months. A few years.

  No! Not McCone!

  “... You’re saying she’ll never come out of this.”

  “No, I’m not, Mr. Ripinsky. The syndrome is relatively rare; there’s a lot we don’t know about it. Medical science is developing new methods such as implanting electrodes in the brain which bypass the normal communication channels from the brain to the muscles. Most of these are still in the experimental stage, but as soon as they’re proven, we’ll try them. Ms. McCone is a strong, otherwise healthy woman in full possession of her intellectual faculties. Each case is different—”

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Let me tune you out now. Because what you really mean is that my wife is going to die in silence.

  She’s going to die, and there’s not a damn thing I can do to prevent it.

  * * * *

  Now Saxnay left him alone for a while, ostensibly to collect more test results on Shar but really, he knew, to allow him to regroup. The grandfather clock ticked—seconds of his wife’s life slipping away. He got up and paced around the office.

  All those times he and McCone had cheated death. The explosion in Stone Valley The ambush down on the Mexican border. The near-crash in the Tehachapi Mountains.

  And by herself: all the stuff from the past she’d told him about. Last year, when she left RKI’s Green Street building seconds before it blew up. Last November, when a lousy rental plane had crapped out on her and she’d had to crash-land in the high desert.

  And now a fragmented bullet was lodged near her brain stem, doing more harm than all the criminals and aeronautical malfunctions could. A deadly little piece of metal, that none of her smarts and guts could combat.

  * * * *

  RAE KELLEHER

  T

  he rundown Tenderloin district on the edges of the city’s posh downtown had improved since she’d first moved to San Francisco, but there were still more bad areas than good. Barred storefronts, boarded-up windows, winos passed out in doorways. Every stripe of predator on the prowl. But she wasn’t afraid. She’d walked these streets after dark many times before and come out unscathed. And she’d had the good sense to get firearms-qualified with a carry permit while she was Shar’s assistant at All Souls. Tonight she was armed and alert for danger.

  A hooker in a short skintight red dress gave her the evil eye.

  No, sister. Do I look like somebody who’s trying to take over your turf?

  A man in a black leather jacket and pants, accessorized with flashy gold jewelry, surveyed her speculatively, then looked away.

  Well, I’m not a target for pimps, at least. Good to dress down for this foray.

  She slowed at the corner of Ellis and Larkin, checking the numbers of the buildings on Ellis. Proceeded to the middle of the next block. The place where she was headed was one of those old brick six-story jobs that had once been respectable apartment houses and were now transient hotels—a polite term for flophouses.

  She pushed the door open and went into a grubby faux-marble entry whose mailboxes had been vandalized, their doors ripped off or hanging on bent hinges. The entry opened into a dimly lighted lobby with a desk to one side, where a white-haired man sat in a chair, his head bent forward, chin resting on his chest. Snores gusted from his mouth.

  She tiptoed past him to the elevator. Out of order. She looked for the door to the stairs, took them to the second floor. Room 209 was to the right, in the back.

  She knocked on the door, called out softly, “Callie?”

  No answer.

  “Callie?” Louder.

  Nothing.

  This was definitely the address her informant had given her on the phone for Callie O’Leary, friend of the murdered hooker, Angie Atkins. So where was she? Out on the streets? With a john someplace else? Having dinner?

  Of course, it could also be a bogus report, so the informant would seem to be doing the job Rae had paid her for. Or a trap of some kind. Well, let anybody try something: she had less than a hundred dollars in her purse, as well as her nine-millimeter Glock.

  She slipped the Glock out, then turned the knob. The door wasn’t locked, and it swung open into a pitch-black room. No sound, no motion, no odor except disinfectant. She edged inside, found a light switch, flipped it on.

  Empty.

  Just a small room—couldn’t have been more than six by nine— in a state of disorder. She moved toward a pair of doors and, with the Glock in her hand, pulled one open. A bathroom, towels on the floor, mildew in the shower; the other gave into a closet full of empty hangers.

  Shit. If Callie O’Leary had lived here, she wasn’t just away for the evening, she’d cleared out.

  Rae took out a pair of surgical gloves and snapped them on. Went back to the door to the hallway and closed it. Set the lock and secured the chain. Then she began to prowl.

  Bedclothes rumpled and twisted, covered with stains she didn’t care to inspect. Pair of laddered pantyhose thrown over the room’s one chair. Ashtray full of lipsticked butts beside the bed; Callie’s choice of smokes was Virginia Slims. Bureau: nothing but a worn-out pair of red crotchless panties. Bedside table drawers: only a few packages of condoms and a phone book.

  She took the book out and turned to the first page. People often noted things down there, and Callie had been no exception. In rounded handwriting were the words BILL DELANEY—CELL, 415-555-6789.

  Rae ripped the page from the book, took another look around the room, and left. When she passed through the lobby, the elderly clerk was still snoring.

  * * * *

  MICK SAVAGE

  W

  e can eliminate Celestina Gates,” he said. “In fact, I’d’ve liked to do it with my own bare hands.”

  Patrick Neilan, freckled face lined with weariness, red hair tousled from many finger-combings, asked, “Why?”


  “The woman is a total asshole. A fraud, too.” He filled Patrick in on his meeting with the identity-theft expert. “Just a publicity stunt.”

  Patrick consulted the large flowchart on the wall of the office he shared with Adah, wiped out the Gates line of investigation. “So we can assign you to help somebody else?”

  “Sure. Derek’s got the computer forensics stuff in hand.” Derek Ford: a tall, slender Eurasian man of about Mick’s age. Always expensively attired and well groomed—one of those males the press had termed “metrosexual.” Mick and Derek were close friends and had developed some awesome software programs together. They’d be millionaires when they licensed them, but neither had any intention of quitting investigating or tinkering with new concepts.