by Joshua Corin
Laughter, laughter from the crowd.
“I told her about Donnie. I said how much he wished he could be there right now, although, I added, he hated punk music. But he was a sweet guy, blah blah blah, and I gave her Donnie’s phone number. Now that concluded my responsibilities, right? I mean, I had a monster dissertation waiting for me back home. I didn’t have time to hang out in a funky café, much less buy an adorable girl a coffee. But common sense left the building, ladies and gentlemen, the moment I laid eyes on her.”
The crowd aww-ed and cooed.
Lester swilled down some more champagne. His common sense left the building. At least he admitted it.
“We got to talking. Not about anything in particular. She told me her name was Esme and she worked for the FBI. We talked and talked. I refilled her coffee. Around midnight, Donnie called me on my cell, wanting to know what had happened. I let it go to voice mail. Sorry, buddy.”
Donnie lifted a glass in toast.
“Our conversation continued. That funky sofa was very comfortable. Anyway, suddenly it’s 3:00 a.m. and management is kicking us out. 3:00 a.m.! Well, we stepped out into the night air, but it was obvious neither of us was tired. I asked her if she wanted to take a ride, just ride around. She said yes.”
“Must enjoy traveling!” quipped Esme.
The wedding crowd laughed.
“We must have hit every street in the D.C. metro area. No route. No destination. Just the two of us and the city and the Sex Pistols on my CD player. I’d occasionally steal a glance at her. She’d occasionally steal a glance at me. Finally I asked her the one question that had been burning on mind. ‘What’s an amazing girl like you needing a personal ad in the Washington Post?’ Her answer? ‘I’m looking for someone I can take to weddings.’ And here we are!”
Everyone cheered. Someone stood, and then the rest followed. Finally, reluctantly, Lester joined them in the ovation.
Rafe and Esme locked hands and kissed.
At Table 8 were her colleagues from the FBI, including that hippie boss of hers who rode that loud motorcycle. They appeared so happy for her. How happy would they be when she told them she was quitting? Lester allowed himself to savor the pleasure of superior knowledge. He and Rafe had co-signed the papers for the house in Oyster Bay. Suburbia would tame that daughter-in-law of his.
Lester took the exit off the expressway. The Bob Dylan CD had already cycled four times, and was now about to begin track one yet again. “Like a Rolling Stone.” That’s her theme song, mused Lester. He followed the route to their idyllic subdivision. They had been married seven years. Seven years, and still she’d managed to wiggle out of the cocoon he had created and gotten herself fucked up halfway across the country.
Lester wasn’t heartless. He felt immense pity—for his granddaughter. It might be days, even weeks before Rafe would return. Perhaps this was a blessing in disguise. Weeks afforded Lester plenty of time to spend with beloved Sophie, plenty of time to illuminate her about the truth, about the dangers of irresponsibility, about her mother.
12
“I’m not dead?”
The doctor frowned. “Would you like to be?”
Esme tried to sit up, failed. What little strength she had quickly dwindled. It was an Olympian effort just to keep her eyelids open.
Her hospital room was small, and the shades were drawn. A heart monitor beeped to her right. Beside it stood a pole, and on the pole hung two bags: one half-full with a clear liquid, perhaps morphine, and the other half-empty with a red liquid that could only be blood. Both trafficked intravenously into her right arm via thin tubes.
She smelled antiseptic and body odor.
“Are you in any pain?” the doctor asked.
Esme focused on him. Small dark man, big white coat. His nametag read DR. ACHMED AZIZ.
“Can you feel this?” He tickled the bottom of her left foot. His fingertips were soft, like the hands of a child. He gauged her reaction, and then tickled the bottom of her right foot. Her lips involuntarily pulled into a grin. Esme was, after all, ticklish.
“Mrs. Stuart,” he said, “you are very lucky.”
“Why can’t I sit up?”
“You are in a rigid brace which limits your upper body movement. Sitting up right now could very well pop your staples and then we’d have a big old mess, wouldn’t we?”
Esme blinked. “Staples?”
“To sew you up, Mrs. Stuart. From your surgery.”
“Surgery?”
Dr. Aziz leaned toward her. “Mrs. Stuart, do you know what year it is?”
“Yes,” she answered, and told him.
“And who is the president of the United States?”
She told him that too.
“And what is the last thing you remember before waking up here?”
Esme frowned. The last thing? She had been at her desk in Oyster Bay—no, that wasn’t right. She boarded a plane. She was in Texas. She was in Amarillo. There was a sniper on the loose. She was helping the FBI catch him. She was helping Tom.
“Where’s Tom?”
“Mrs. Stuart, I need you to tell me what the last thing you remember is.”
Memories continued to shuttle through her brain. The shoe boxes. The video. The Unity for a Better Tomorrow. She had been in the conference room at city hall. She had solved the case. She was going to call Tom and tell him what she’d discovered. There were voice messages on her phone. Rafe had apologized to her. Then there was a gunshot. Galileo! She evaded him, though. She had climbed into the ceiling. But it had collapsed beneath her and she fell and the sniper came toward her and he pressed the barrel of his gun to her scalp and…
“Mrs. Stuart?” He raised an eyebrow. “What is it?”
“I wasn’t shot,” she said.
“Shot?” Dr. Aziz replied. “No.”
She focused on the doctor’s calm brown eyes. “I need to speak with Special Agent Tom Piper.”
“Mrs. Stuart, do you know why you are in the hospital?”
“I fell.”
“Yes. You did. And a piece of wood pierced your right kidney. When you arrived here, you’d lost several pints of blood. You almost died, Mrs. Stuart.”
No. That was impossible.
“We were able to transfuse your blood loss, but your kidney suffered irreparable damage. We had to perform an emergency nephrectomy.”
“An emergency…?”
“We had to remove your kidney.”
“Wow.”
“You’ll be in a brace for a few days to keep your movement limited. We’ll also need to keep careful watch on your remaining kidney to make sure it’s up to the task of doing the job of two. This isn’t like an urban legend where you wake up in a bathtub of ice and can go to work the next day. However…”
“However?”
“Your electrolytes and your blood pressure look very decent. Provided you stop trying to sit up every five seconds, and you promise not to fall out of any more ceilings, you should be able to make a full recovery in four to six weeks. There may be some permanent stiffness, but…here, let me get you a tissue, Mrs. Stuart. You’re crying.”
Shortly after the doctor left, the painkillers lulled Esme asleep. When she woke up again, it was nighttime. Her shades were still drawn, but while before some sunlight had managed to squeeze through, now there was nothing but a moon-bone shadow.
“Esme?”
Her eyes darted from the window to the left side of her bed. Someone stood there, in the darkness. It took her vision a moment to adjust.
“Rafe?”
His face split into a joyous smile. “It’s me, jelly-bean. I’m here.”
She felt his large paws wrap around her left hand, and echoed his smile with one of her own. She looked past him. Was Sophie here too?
“Who are you looking for, baby?” His voice grew an edge. “I am here.”
“Who…” Esme swallowed. Her throat was dry. “Who’s watching Sophie?”
Rafe relaxed. Whateve
r unnerved him had passed. “My father’s babysitting her. He just dropped everything and drove down. So I could be here with you.”
Esme rasped, “Thank you.”
“Do you want some water? Nurse, can you get my wife some water? Nurse?”
One of the duty nurses entered and kindly showed Rafe where the sink was (hidden in plain sight), and where the cups were (sneakily located beside the sink). In minutes, Esme was wetting her whistle with sweet cold Texas agua.
Rafe took a seat.
“I’m staying at the Holiday Inn across the street,” he said. “It’s kind of neat. The architecture is faux adobe. From a sociological standpoint, this is an interesting city.”
Esme smiled at him. She was too tired to speak.
“I wanted to get you something from the gift shop, but I couldn’t make up my mind. They had carnations, but not green ones, and I know you like the green ones. I don’t know why, but I came this close to buying you a teddy bear. Maybe I’ll get one for Sophie.”
Esme nodded.
“So—” he looked at the tiled floor “—did you listen to my voice mail?”
“Yes.”
“I meant every word. I’m so sorry, Esme. I had my head up my ass. We both know it’s not the first time that’s happened. I just…didn’t want anything to happen to you…” His gaze lifted up, and matched hers. “And I’m not going to say ‘I told you so.’ I’m not blaming you for what happened. What’s done is done.”
Esme forced a grin. She didn’t believe his altruism, not one bit—but it was considerate of Rafe to at least pretend, wasn’t it?
“So, are you in much pain?”
She shook her head.
“That’s good. The doctor thinks you’ll be jogging again in no time. I tried to pin down how long, but he refused to stick to a specific answer. Not that it matters. If he said six weeks, you’d be up and about in four. That’s just who you are.”
Esme responded with a shrug.
“There’s a restaurant in the lobby of the Holiday Inn. I took a look at the menu before I came here. Their special is a seventy-two-ounce steak. A seventy-two-ounce steak! Apparently, if you can finish the whole thing without dying of an infarction, you get your name on a board. A seventy-two-ounce steak. Can you imagine? Speaking of steak, you must be hungry. Want me to get the nurse to bring you some food?”
Esme replied, but her voice was too weak from exhaustion, and her diction too slurred from the painkillers. Rafe got up from his chair and bowed close to his wife’s lips.
“What was that?” he asked. “What is it you want?”
She inhaled a breath, then repeated her request:
“Tom,” she said. “I need to speak with Tom.”
While Tom was meeting with the mayor, a bird shat on his Harley. He exited city hall and found the white goo on his leather seat. He slogged back to city hall to retrieve soap and paper towels, so it was in the first-floor men’s room that he got the call. Esme was awake.
But first he had a stop to make at the police station.
Among this case’s many, many perturbing questions, the most recent was this: why had the killer gone to city hall? He had no way of knowing anyone would be there. In fact, he would have been under the assumption that the entire task force was staking out the parking garage. And if he hadn’t gone to city hall to add to his tally, what then had been his goal?
Tom biked in silence to the police station. Muddy clouds milled overhead. There would be rain, soon. His Harley’s engine hummed against his chaps. Some thought him frivolous, having his motorcycle flown with him wherever he went. Tom pitied them, for they obviously never knew true love.
He parked it in the station lot, secured his gear, and moseyed in through the back door and down two flights of stairs to the sub-basement, and the crime lab. Much of their equipment from the bullpen had been moved here overnight for forensic analysis. Daryl, hands wrapped in latex gloves, was fiddling with one of their laptops.
“Talk to me,” said Tom.
“This is Esme’s laptop, the one she was using in the conference room.” Daryl glanced back at him. “Except she wasn’t the last person to use it.”
Tom’s heart jumped an inch. He took a seat. “Explain.”
“Every other computer in the bullpen had been switched off around 8:00 p.m. I scanned their BIOS to be sure. Esme’s was never switched off.”
“She was using it when we left.”
“Yes, she was. And I have a complete history of every key she typed and every Web site she viewed through our network. Now what’s surprising is what happened to this machine at 9:58 p.m.”
“What happened?”
Daryl brought up a window on the laptop and pointed at a series of algorithms. “Do you see it?”
“Yes, I see it. What is it I’m seeing?”
“At 9:58 p.m., someone inserted an unknown external device in this USB port. I’m thinking it was a portable hard drive.”
“Why would…?”
“At 9:59 p.m., the user accessed the network. At 10:01 p.m., they found what they were looking for and downloaded it onto their portable hard drive.”
“Daryl, what were they looking for? What did Galileo go to city hall to get?”
“That’s the thing. I don’t know.”
“But…”
The tech brought up another window. This one Tom recognized. It displayed a Windows error message.
“He fucked up the OS,” Daryl explained. “It’s not a complicated virus, and can be easily cured.”
“By reinstalling Windows.”
“And reformatting the hard drive.”
Tom rubbed at his temples. “Were you able to lift any fingerprints, anything off the keyboard?”
“We got some hair. It fits the description Lilly gave us. Short. Blond.”
“That’s great,” he replied. “Now we can—”
“It’s from a wig, Tom.”
Tom sighed. Of course it was. Back to square one.
No. That wasn’t quite true. There was still Esme.
“I’ll be back in a little while,” Tom said, and went for the exit. Minutes later he was on the road to the hospital, and then hurrying up the stairs (past the policemen he had stationed everywhere—there would be no repeat of what happened to the fire chief) to Baptist St. Anthony’s second floor. Being back here cramped pangs of déjà vu throughout his left shoulder, yet another mark left by the sniper. His heart, however, was surfeit with hope, that his dear friend was all right, and that she had once again come through for him and cracked the case.
Rafe intercepted him in the corridor.
At first Tom didn’t recognize him. Since last they’d seen each other, Rafe had lost his hair and gained a belly. Such were the metamorphoses of time.
Rafe recognized Tom immediately.
“Well,” he said. “I was about to call you up.”
“The doctor beat you to it,” Tom replied. “He told me she’s awake. That she’s going to make a full recovery.”
“She’s something else.”
“Yes. She is.”
Tom took a step forward, but Rafe nonchalantly blocked him.
“Where were you?” he asked.
Tom raised an eyebrow. “What do you mean?”
“When Esme fell. I’m not asking why you didn’t catch her. I’m just curious where you were.”
“We were trying to arrest the man who’s been responsible for all this—”
“Right. Yes. Did you? Arrest him, I mean?”
“Not yet. That’s why I need to speak with Esme.”
“I see. To apologize.”
Tom looked past Rafe. Esme’s room was only a few yards away. It would be so easy, even with only one good arm, to shove this fat man aside and proceed. Match Rafe’s pigheadedness with some of Tom’s own, Kentucky style. But Tom held back. The last thing Esme needed right now was her husband sporting a black eye. “Look, Rafe, you must know it was never my intention for Esme to be in harm�
��s way. I feel as bad about the whole thing as anyone.”
“I’m pretty sure she feels worse.”
He again tried to move forward, but again Rafe blocked his path.
Tom didn’t have time for this.
“So, tell me, Special Agent Piper. Tell me what you’re going to do to make it up to us.”
“Make it up to you?”
“I don’t mean financially. I’m sure you made her sign all sorts of waivers of liability. It’s not like our government to take responsibility, if you know what I mean. So that’s why I’m asking you. You, Tom Piper. What are you going to do to atone for dragging my wife down here and letting her almost get killed?”
Rafe’s voice quavered with emotion, and his eyes were wet with anger.
“Look…” said Tom, but at that moment the dam burst inside Rafe and he took a swing, a fat roundhouse aimed straight at his opponent’s face. Tom anticipated it, though, and easily slid away. Before Rafe could bring another fist to bear, Tom booted him in the groin, not too hard…but not too soft either. Rafe fell to his knees, gasping.
“You always did have a temper,” muttered Tom, and he passed him onward to Esme’s room. On his way, he motioned to one of the nurses and indicated poor Rafe, still on his knees. As she ran to Rafe’s rescue, Tom stepped into Esme’s room, and shut the door.
She was staring at him.
“I heard you,” she croaked.
Tom grimaced. “I was afraid you might have.”
“Did you hit him?”
“No.”
“Can you do it now?”
Tom smiled, and approached her. She looked so small there on the hospital bed.
“He means well,” said Tom.
Esme nodded. She knew.
Tom placed a hand on her shoulder. “I’m sorry, Esmeralda.”
She attempted to shrug, but her brace only allowed her to nudge her chin. “I’m not a child. I knew the risks.”
“Mmm-hmm.”
Esme pointed at the cup of water. Gingerly, Tom irrigated her palate.
“I got a good look at him,” Esme rasped. “Lilly’s description is solid. He is medium height. Blond hair. He—”
