Locked In - [McCone 29]
Page 15
“I can make more of that, if you like.”
“No, thanks. Ted, you’ve known Shar a long time. Has she ever been stuck on a case? So stuck that she never solved it?”
“Not exactly, but...” He came all the way into the room, the fluorescents highlighting the gray streaks in his black hair and goatee, and leaned on the edge of the table.
“Her first case for All Souls—a missing person investigation— was a bust. She just couldn’t find the guy. Then years later, on the day we moved to the pier, she was going through some boxes of her old papers, and found this last open file. So she read it, noticed something she hadn’t before, found the guy, and closed the case.”
“She never gives up, does she?”
“No. You shouldn’t either.”
“How’d you know I was thinking of giving up?”
Ted leaned toward her and patted her cheek. “Because, my dear, I am the Grand Poobah.”
* * * *
Julia went back to her office and started plowing through the Dietz file again. She was halfway through when her phone rang.
“Ms. Rafael, this is Gloria Wickens. You called me earlier about Haven Dietz.”
Gloria Wickens—she’d held a higher position than Dietz’s at the financial management firm. “Yes. I’m reinterviewing people I spoke with earlier—”
“Well, I’m glad you called. I didn’t want to bring this up when I talked with you the last time because I didn’t think it was fair to Haven. But I saw in the paper that she was killed, and that makes a difference.”
Julia sat up straighter, reached for a pencil and legal pad. “Go on, please.”
“The audit of our firm’s accounts the year Haven was attacked turned up a shortfall of a hundred thousand dollars. This was ten months after she left the firm.”
It was the critical piece of information that might put everything together. “Did they suspect her?”
“I never heard anything to that effect. Another woman, Delia Piper, was under investigation, but eventually exonerated.”
“Is Ms. Piper still with the firm?”
“No. She quit, and I heard she moved to Hawaii.”
“And nobody ever questioned Ms. Dietz?”
“Why would they? She’d been gone a long time and besides, she was a trust-fund baby. A hundred thousand dollars must’ve been insignificant to her.”
Julia questioned the woman more, but received little additional information. After she ended the call, she thought about her conversations with Dietz: how her parents couldn’t help her after the attack because they were sailing across the Pacific in their “damn yacht.”
Okay, she’d do an in-depth check on the elder Dietzes.
It showed the yacht had gone down in a storm near Fiji with both of them aboard a year before their daughter was attacked; their estate had barely paid final bills and back taxes.
The things people say that you take at face value.
The things you overlook.
Haven Dietz: rich girl who all of a sudden wasn’t going to inherit a cent. Had a good job, but wanted more.
So what else, Julia wondered, had she overlooked?
* * * *
MICK SAVAGE
M
ick ran into Hy in the lobby of the Brandt Institute; Hy was in a hurry because he needed to take Mick’s grandma to the airport, but he paused long enough to tell Mick about the staff meeting to be held in Shar’s room the next morning.
“How is Grandma?”
“She carried on again this morning, and Saskia offered to accompany her back to San Diego,” Hy said. “It’s for the best. These histrionics ...” He shrugged.
“What about Elwood?”
“He comes and goes. I don’t even know where he’s staying.”
“Well, he’s here for Shar.”
“Everybody’s here for her.” Hy paused. “She’s not good today.”
A prickle of alarm at the base of Mick’s spine. “How so?”
“Not responding much. Sleeping, and there’s a lot of rapid eye movement. This has happened a couple of times before, and she’s always rallied. I’ve alerted her nurse. See what you think.”
Hy left and Mick went to see his aunt.
She lay on her side facing the window. When he came around the bed, he saw that her eyes were dull and unfocused, her face pale and her breathing ragged.
“Shar?”
No eyeblink.
“Shar!”
No response. He ran out to the nurses’ station. Melissa, the night nurse, took one look at his face and together they rushed back to the room.
“She’s not responding, but her eyes are open,” he said.
Melissa moved swiftly to the side of the bed, looked at Shar, and grabbed the wall phone. She spoke urgently to the operator. “Get the Code Team and Dr. Saxnay to Room Three. Stat!”
“What’s happening to her?” Mick asked.
“Please step outside.”
“But—”
“Please—go!”
Mick left the room but stayed in the corridor close to the door.
Dr. Saxnay, the attending physician who had taken a personal interest in Shar’s case and seemed to live at the institute, rushed past him, barely beating the Code Team through the door. Mick followed, stopped just inside. He could hardly breathe.
“Damn,” Saxnay muttered after one look at Shar. He grabbed a tube from the crash cart while the team stood by.
“Get the chopper!” he said to Melissa. “She’s going to SF General. Now!” Without waiting for a response, he tubed Shar, handed the tube over to one of the team to keep the oxygen moving. “And don’t forget to alert the on-call neurosurgeon over there.”
Saxnay spotted Mick. “You! Call her husband and have him meet us at the hospital.”
Mick was shaking as he stepped outside, but not far enough to be out of earshot. He pulled his cell phone off his belt.
Saxnay muttered, “Bullet must have dislodged, caused more bleeding. That clot’s probably growing by the minute, putting more and more pressure on her brain stem.”
“What do you think her chances are?” Melissa asked.
“Her best hope is surgery.” Saxnay watched the team transfer Shar to a stretcher, cinch her in for transport. “I was afraid it would come to this. Surgery’s going to be tricky, but it’s that or lose her.”
Lose her!
No! That wasn’t possible. They couldn’t be talking about Shar. Flapping rotors and the whine of the helicopter’s engine. Feet pounding from a rear entrance. Men grabbed the stretcher, pushed past Mick as if he weren’t there.
He watched, numb, as they took his aunt away.
* * * *
SHARON McCONE
W
hat’s happening to me? God, my heart’s pounding like it wants to break through my breastbone.
Light. The light’s fading, disappearing.
My sight, the only thing I have left... going, gone!
My mind...
Where is everybody? Where am I?
No sense of space, place, time.
Alone, so alone.
Rising. Falling.
Dark.
Falling.
Oh, bright flash ... pain ... roar...
Metal grazing my fingertips.
I see it!
No, I can’t. My sight’s gone. I’m all alone in the dark.
Falling.
The dark.
Falling, falling...
Help! Don’t let me die!
* * * *
HY RIPINSKY
H
e sat in the waiting room at SF General, surrounded by distraught and anxious strangers, but as alone as if he were on a deserted island. He hadn’t called anyone; he couldn’t have stood the sympathy and the too-early condolences.
A door opened, a tall dark-haired man in scrubs strode in.
“Mr. Ripinsky, I’m Ben Travers. I’ll be your wife’s surgeon.”
“What’re her ch
ances?”
“I don’t play the odds with people’s lives.”
“Meaning not good.”
“Meaning we don’t know.”
“What happened? She wasn’t good when I left her today, but she hasn’t been good a lot of days.”
“In all likelihood, the bullet has moved and a blood clot has formed and is causing more severe pressure on her brain stem. We’ll have further information when we get the results of the CT scan. In the meantime, we’re prepping her for surgery.”
Hy felt a wrenching in his chest. He propped his elbows on his knees, put his face into his hands.
Travers’s hand touched his shoulder. “I’ll be back as soon as we know something.”
“Never mind me. Just save my wife.”
Mick came through the doors from the parking lot, his eyes wild, hair disheveled.
“Jesus, Hy,” Mick said. “Where is everybody?”
“I didn’t make any calls.”
“I was at the institute when she ... I saw something was wrong and got the nurse.”
Hy nodded.
“You shouldn’t be here alone.”
“Go away, Mick.”
“What?”
“I need to be alone.”
“I don’t understand.”
He’d been alone when Julie died, staring off the bluff at the light— dying, too—on Tufa Lake. Left her in the care of her best friend because she didn’t know him anymore. He’d always felt guilty about that. Maybe it was his punishment to be alone when Shar died.
Mick said, “No one needs to be by himself at a time like this.”
Hy just looked at him. It wasn’t something you could explain to anyone else.
Mick backed off, probably seeing the anger and desolation in Hy’s eyes. “Okay,” he said, “I’ll go. But I think you’re being selfish. I love Shar, too.”
“I’ll call you as soon as I know something. And please don’t call any of the others.”
“... If that’s what you want.” Mick turned and left.
Want? All he wanted was for Shar to live.
* * * *
An hour gone.
“She’s still in surgery, Mr. Ripinsky.”
“What did the CT scan show?”
“You’ll have to talk with her doctor.”
* * * *
An hour and a half gone.
Hank Zahn and Anne-Marie Altman came into the waiting room. Two of Shar’s and his best friends. Both attorneys, both calm and rational people. If Mick had to tell someone what had happened—and Hy had seen the need in his eyes—they were the best possible choice.
They sat on either side of him, clasped his hands. Hank, lanky with gray curly hair; Anne-Marie, statuesque and blonde. Curious couple: they lived in different flats in the same building. She bordered on the obsessive about housekeeping, and he was more than slothful. Their adopted teenage daughter, Habiba Hamid, divided her time between their places—although she seemed to favor Hank’s more offhand attitude toward housekeeping.
Sharon loved all three of them. So did he.
“Mick called you, huh?”
Hank said, “Yes.”
“I told him not to.”
“Why?” Anne-Marie asked.
Suddenly Hy felt foolish. Why had he thought he should be alone? Penance? Ridiculous. This was not about him or his past misdeeds.
He said, “Let’s wait a while, and if there’s no news, then we’ll call the others.”
* * * *
RAE KELLEHER
S
he located Lee Summers at the Pro Terra Party’s headquarters in a refurbished warehouse south of Market. A fund-raising party was going on, drinks and canapés being served all around.
The man learns his daughter has been murdered and he attends a party? Incredible!
She’d shown the man at the door her credentials, said she was here on official business. He let her in without question and pointed out Summers. In Rae’s experience these gatekeepers— usually hired from security firms—were not always the brightest individuals or totally committed to their jobs. She ought to know; she’d worked security for a time. There was the colleague who read only comic books, moving his lips the whole time; the woman who painted her finger- and toenails while the entire building was burglarized; the man who took sleeping pills on the job. Of course, there were smart and conscientious people, too—many students working their way through college, as Rae and Shar had done—but they usually left for better jobs or different careers.
Now Rae watched Summers from across the room: tall, silver-haired, expensively dressed, his posture and gestures hinting at arrogance. He was surrounded by other well-dressed and attractive people who seemed to hang on his every word. Rae accepted a glass of wine from a passing server, a shrimp canapé from another. Fringe benefits.
A woman who had long gray hair and was wearing a poorly fitting black cocktail dress came out of the crowd and went up to Summers, touching his arm; Rae recognized her—Cheryl Fitzgerald. Summers looked down, clearly not pleased to see her there. She went up on tiptoe and spoke into his ear. When she was finished Summers excused himself and ushered her to a door at the rear of the room.
Rae set down her drink and followed.
The door opened into a long corridor with several other doors opening off it. One stood ajar, and voices came from inside. She slipped along the wall until she was within hearing range.
“... Nothing to connect the party with what happened to Sharon McCone.”
“This Rae Kelleher told me it was just one of a number of lines of investigation, but if there wasn’t something compelling, why did she bother to come see me?”
“Fishing.”
“I’m not so sure. I know about Kelleher and McCone and that agency. They’re good. If they find out about Alicia and—”
“Don’t mention my daughter’s name to me!”
“I saw it on the six o’clock news—the body of a hooker killed in a SoMa alley identified as Alicia. Celebrating, Lee?”
“What kind of comment is that?”
“I’ve heard the rumors about what you did to her. What if Rae Kelleher finds out about them?”
“Is that a threat?”
“Of course not. But for a while now I’ve been wanting to move on to someplace where the smog isn’t as thick as it is in Silicon Valley.”
“Don’t even think of blackmailing me, Cheryl. Others have tried; they’ve all regretted it.”
“What others? The mayor? Jim Yatz? Or are you talking about Amanda Teller and Paul Janssen?”
“Clearly you’re out of your mind—”
Rae’s cellular vibrated. She ignored it.
“... Perfectly sane, and my lawyer has a letter in his safe that tells all about Pro Terra. All I have to do is give the word and it goes straight to the authorities. Or if something happens to me—”
“God, you’re melodramatic, Cheryl. What do you want? A trip to an expensive fat farm? You could use it, I admit—”
Sound of a slap.
“Jesus! Okay, what do you want?”
“Let’s begin with a first-class ticket to Rome.”
Rae’s cell vibrated again. Shit! It might be important. And Cheryl Fitzgerald wasn’t going to pack up her life and move to Italy overnight; plenty of time to find out what knowledge she’d used to exert such pressure on Summers. Rae looked around, saw an exit door, and slipped outside. A ways down the alley, she checked the number—an unfamiliar local one—and answered the call.
“Ms. Kelleher, this is Callie O’Leary. My attorney said you want to speak to me about an inheritance.”
Delaney had passed along the message to Alicia Summers’s— aka Angie Atkins’s—friend, probably in exchange for a cut of the fictional money.
“Yes. When can we meet?”
“Tomorrow, at Mr. Delaney’s office?”