by Shawn Grady
That shattered windshield flashed in my mind.
Angled shards surrounded a torso-sized opening. They protruded into the rain like clear flanges of an explosion frozen in time.
That memory was the whole reason I was going to become an emergency physician. To redeem lives. To snatch back Death’s spoils.
My duty lay to her. To that day.
But Simon had given the note to me. I bore the last message of a man condemned to death.
A stranger.
A lunatic?
Could I let him lay unnoticed in the grave?
I unclasped the pendant chain from around my neck and held it in my palm. The Hippocratic Oath, etched in tiny seriffed font, held all the joint and marrow separating conviction I needed.
Do no harm.
The clock flashed eight thirty. Naomi was working today.
It was my cross to bear. I rose and turned the blinds. Morning poured into the room.
Time had arrived to bring it all to light.
Reno’s aging police headquarters sat on Second Street, about a block east of the central fire station. Its cream-colored walls rose from the pavement in Art Deco defiance, its distinct lines a contrast to the modern skyscrapers just to the west. It seemed fitting, and made it feel as though I were walking into a color episode of Dragnet. I imagined hard-boiled detectives and the clang of manual typewriters. The story I was about to see was all true. Only the names had been changed to protect the innocent.
A woman in a badge uniform with brunette ponytailed hair greeted me from behind a thick glass window at the reception area. She asked if I needed a work permit or a report filed.
I hesitated, then gave her my name and told her that I needed to speak with a detective about two possible murders. She sized me up in one long still look and lifted a phone receiver. Her thumb and forefinger dialed a three-digit extension.
“Detective Humbolt, please.” She glanced at the desk and then to the side. “Yeah, Evan, there’s a gentleman here to see you about a double homicide.” She hung up and shifted a stack of papers. “There’s seating on the far wall.”
“Thank you.” I tapped the counter once and retreated to a slatted wood bench anchored to the far wall. A couple magazines lay in a steel-wire basket. Good Housekeeping, a copy of Popular Mechanics with a computer-generated image of Automobiles of the Future on the cover. I reached down to pick it up.
“Mr. Trestle?” A clean-cut man with a light brown Republican hairdo and a pressed black suit stood in an open doorway.
I rose, wondering how he knew my name.
He extended a hand. “I’m Detective Humbolt.” We shook firm and quick. “Please come on back.”
I followed him through a maze of narrow hallways. Cork bulletin boards held wanted posters and stolen-vehicle advisories. Two street cops sat talking around a small table in a break room. On the second floor a short hallway opened into a room filled with packed cubicles. Phones rang. Two men leaned on the gray fabric-lined wall at the mouth of one cube, stopping to nod at Humbolt, then tightening their expressions and evaluating my innocence in the five steps it took me to pass them.
We turned the corner at the end of the room, the smell of burnt coffee wafting down the path, and passed a water cooler with an empty cup holder alongside it. Humbolt had stretched the distance between us with my sightseeing, so I skip-jogged to catch up.
He stopped at the last cubicle. “Please, have a seat.”
A chrome-framed fabric chair lodged between an L-shaped oak laminate desk and the cubicle wall.
I sat with enough room for my knees to face forward, my shoulders squared so that my hands rested on the tops of my thighs.
Humbolt started to sit but paused. “Can I get you some coffee?”
I waved a hand. “No, thanks.”
He unbuttoned his coat and sat with a heavy breath, making quick examination of the fan of files spread across his desktop. The edge of the bottom one read Crown Motel. He shuffled them together and dropped the stack into a side drawer. The polished wood handle of a holstered sidearm flashed beneath his coat. It struck me as not unlike glimpsing a stagehand in the wings during a play. One knows that he’s there but has the sense that he’s not meant to be seen.
Humbolt folded his hands on the desk and tilted his head, staring at me. “Fourth Street, right?”
A vague memory formed in my mind of a suited detective mingling with the officers who’d taken my statement on the night I found Letell. “You were there.”
He nodded and picked up a white coffee mug. Taking a swig of the dregs, he grimaced, like it was hard liquor. “Gets cold fast.”
I swallowed, not sure how to break the ice.
He shifted in his chair. “So tell me what you got.”
I hadn’t noticed how tired his face looked. But now, under the fluorescent light and against a backdrop of muted cubicle drab, the spidery red showed at the corners of his eyes. Short silver strands emerged in his hair, tucked back in neatly combed rows.
“Another man has died. A friend of Simon Letell’s.” I expected him to say that he was already familiar with Martin’s case.
But he kept silent, elbow on armrest.
“Dr. Richard Martin,” I said. “The last thing I heard Letell say on the day he died was ‘Give this to Martin.’ ”
Humbolt’s eyebrows pinched. “Give what to Martin?”
I eased Letell’s original note from my pocket, folded once over in its airplane shape. Letell’s handwriting had dried in bled smears. I handed it to Humbolt, who took it by the corner between thumb and forefinger. He examined it, appearing unimpressed.
This wasn’t going to be easy. I realized how foolish it must look to him. Here I was claiming that two murders had taken place, and as my first piece of gripping evidence I produced a water-damaged and crinkled paper airplane.
Humbolt cleared his throat. “So Letell hands you this note and says, ‘Give this to Martin’?”
“Yes.”
“And was that at the motel?”
He should’ve known from my written police statement that I’d found Letell dead at the motel. He was testing me, probing. “No. It was after we’d shocked him out of v-fib.”
“After what?”
“Defibrillated him. Downtown. That was the first time I saw him. He was in cardiac arrest on the sidewalk, and a bystander was doing CPR. We shocked his heart out of a lethal rhythm, and he regained consciousness.”
Humbolt looked like he was reading a timeline that floated in the air above my head. “And that was all he said?”
“Yes.”
“Nothing about being attacked or threatened?”
“No. No, that was it.”
“And at the motel, later, did he say anything else then?”
“No, I . . .” What was his angle? “It’s in my report. I found him dead at the motel. He didn’t say anything. He was dead.”
Humbolt leaned on an arm of the chair, thumb on his chin, forefinger across his lips. “And were you able to revive him that time?”
“There was no reviving him.”
“Why’s that?”
“Rigor mortis was already setting in. Dependent lividity. Signs of irreversible death.”
“How long had he been like that?”
“Couldn’t have been more than a few hours.”
“Why’s that?”
I folded my arms across my chest. He knew the answers to his questions. I was feeling less like a witness and more like a suspect by the second. But my body language was bad timing. It showed him that I felt uncomfortable.
I brought my hands back to my lap. “He had been at the hospital we took him to earlier.”
“How’d you find Letell at the motel?”
“A nurse gave me his key to return to him. He left it at Saint Mary’s. Look, I put all this in my report.”
Humbolt put a hand in the air. “Of course, of course. Forgive me. It’s been a while since I’ve looked at it.”
&n
bsp; Whatever. I was beginning to think I’d made a mistake coming in.
He read my unsettledness and quipped, “What is it they say?
Only two things are certain, death and . . . memory loss?”
“Taxes,” I said, unhumored.
He fished a legal pad from the thin drawer of his desk and wrote down the facts. “Okay. What else?”
“The coroner is an academic mentor of mine. I asked him about Letell’s cause of death, and – ”
“Poisoning.”
“Right. You must – ”
“Have a copy of the coroner’s report. It comes to me with any suspicious death.”
“So you suspect foul play?”
He blinked. I could tell for a second that he’d said more than he wanted. He wrote something random on the legal pad. “Just standard procedure. Cover the bases.” A quick, dismissive smile said the conversation was now moving on.
I rubbed my ear, considered leaving, but couldn’t think of where to go from there. I didn’t know if I could trust Humbolt, but what other avenue did I have?
“What else?” he said.
“I searched out this guy Martin.”
“To give him the note?”
“To give him the note.”
“And let me guess. You found him – ”
“Dead. Yes.”
“At the university.”
“Right.”
“And where had you been the hours preceding Martin’s death?”
I stood. My voice came out louder than I expected. “A man came back from the dead to tell me to give that” – I pointed at the note – “to Martin. That night I found him dead at a motel, and when I tracked down Martin, he was dead too. Letell was poisoned, and now Martin’s body is missing from the morgue.”
Humbolt studied me. Like a disinterested kid on a field trip watching a caged monkey rage at his onlookers.
He didn’t acknowledge that I was standing, didn’t regard my heaving breathing or that I’d raised my voice. He picked up Letell’s note and pointed at a row of numbers with the back of his fingers. “So what are these?”
“Dates.” I ran the back of my hand beneath my nose and looked away. “Run times.”
“Run times for what?”
“Ambulances.”
He sat back and motioned to the seat I’d been in. “Please.”
I was tired of being led along. I leaned both hands on his desk and lowered my voice. “Every one of those times and dates coincides with ambulance runs to Letell’s former residence. The times in Aprisa’s database don’t corroborate what is here. Letell’s beef was that the ambulances had been taking too long to get to his house and that, ultimately, his mother died because of it. But according to Aprisa’s stats, the ambulances arrived at his house every time within the six-minute time standard set forth in their contract with the county.”
Humbolt intertwined his fingers and pushed his lips together. “How convenient for them.”
“Exactly.”
“But who’s to say they’re wrong and he isn’t?”
I pointed to my chest. “I am. I’ve been out there. Especially on night shift I’ve seen it. Fewer ambulances. Longer response times.”
“Significantly longer?”
“Yes.”
He cocked his head. “Say you’re right. If response times aren’t being made, who records that?”
“Dispatch makes a computer entry when a call comes in, when they dispatch it, and when we radio on scene.”
“So Aprisa is accountable only to itself.”
“In a sense. Representatives from the County Board of Health do periodic audits.”
He twirled a pen between his fingers. “And what standard is Aprisa held to? How often do they need to make this six-minute mark?”
“Ninety percent of the time.”
“What happens if they don’t?”
“Fines. Eventually revocation of their contract for service.”
“Their exclusive contract?”
“Yes.”
Humbolt leaned back in his chair. “Meaning another ambulance company could come in.”
“Right, and corner a monopoly on the transport cash cow. The problem though for any private ambulance company would be offsetting the costs. There’s the employees, equipment, dispatch, billing personnel. Collection is difficult. If they get payment from even half the people transported, that’s doing pretty good.”
“So it’s not an easy buck.”
“Not if you want to do it right.” I straightened. “Therein lies the rub.”
Humbolt nodded. “Sounds to me that if someone didn’t care about doing it right, they could make a killing.”
CHAPTER 27
Humbolt’s phone rang, one square of five on the bottom row blinking white.
He stretched to answer it. I scanned the room over the cubicle walls. A few heads faced computer screens. A woman in business attire crossed the far side with files in hand.
“I see.” Humbolt scribbled something on the yellow pad. “ Uh-huh. All right.” He hung up and stood. “Mr. Trestle.”
I stretched out my hand. “I won’t keep you any longer. Thanks for meeting with me, Detective.”
He stepped around the desk and buttoned his coat. He shook my hand. “You should know your rights.”
I nodded. “Definitely.”
He didn’t let go. A set of handcuffs jingled and glinted in his opposite hand. He clicked a bracelet on my wrist.
“You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say or do can and will be used against you in a court of law.” He placed one hand on my shoulder and bent my right arm around behind my back.
I twisted. “What’s going on?”
He shoved my shoulder into the cubicle wall.
“What is this?”
“Mr. Trestle, you are under arrest for narcotic theft.” He patted my pockets. “Anything in here that will poke or cut me?”
“What? No. Narcotic theft?”
“You’ll be escorted down to the detention area. A hearing will be scheduled for tomorrow afternoon.”
“Are you kidding me? This – I came in here to provide information that might help solve a murder – two murders – and you’re going to throw me in jail?”
“Hey.” He turned me around and looked me in the eye. “Remember that part about remaining silent? Keep it in mind. Let’s go.”
Who could I trust? As much as I wanted to, I dared not contact Naomi with my one phone call for fear of implicating her. But I had already mentioned Eli, so I reasoned that it was safe to call him. I had to hope he had his cell phone with him and that it was turned on. But he only carried it for “emergencies,” and as expected, I was sent to his voice mail.
In the basement I recognized the detention guard from the streets. A slow nod and laissez-faire expression fell across his brown features. His name tag read Sonny Rysen, but I remembered guys calling him Bad Moon. I wondered what had gotten him off the beat and assigned to dungeon duty.
I explained that there was no reason for me to be down there and that there’d been a huge misunderstanding, all the while thinking how cliché it must sound to him.
He raised a hand. “Hey now, I judge not, lest I be.”
He paid me the professional courtesy of a private cell, which, though itself not much, was much appreciated. It was windowless with a single bed along a white-painted cinder-block wall and a stainless toilet in the opposite corner. They’d taken my street clothes and given me orange scrubs and shoes without laces. I laid my head on a pillow that had all the cushion of a folded blanket and stared at the ceiling.
How many movies had I seen, how many books had I read, where the main character ended up in a similar predicament? Even Paul the apostle praised God with Silas from behind bars. The earth shook and their cell doors swung open. Seemed very much like fiction now, with my present powerless circumstance every bit real.
Cold like metal bars. Empty like whitewashed walls.
I have a memory of picking up my dad from jail. As a kid, jail is the ultimate punishment. That’s where they put the bad guys – pirates and thieves and scoundrels. Though sometimes Zorro or Jim West might end up in the predicament. But they always escaped with a knife hidden in a boot or a wagon tied to a barred window.
I shifted on the bed, mattress springs jabbing my flank.
To see my father, unshaven with his eyes half-glazed behind bifocals . . . It didn’t evoke images of an incarcerated hero. My mother didn’t say much. She didn’t try to explain. He hugged me, the stench of alcohol on his breath. My mother stayed stoic, never letting go of my hand, perhaps for fear that I’d somehow end up in jail as well.
I’d been asleep for some time when a familiar voice echoed down the hall. I blinked and propped up on my elbow.
“Yes. No. That I assure you. Thank you.”
“Right this way, then, Doctor.”
Eli.
Bad Moon signaled the duty clerk to buzz my cell door. A loud metal clank followed, and it slid open.
Bad Moon smiled. “Done found the truth for you, Jonathan. At least according to this man, you’re innocent. And so be it – free.”
I exhaled. “Thank you.”
“Ain’t nothing. Thank the fella who dropped some coin to bail you out.”
Eli walked up and grabbed me in a tight hug. He pulled away and gripped my shoulders. Fissures etched deep in his face, an angle of concern in his eyes. “I came as soon as I heard.”
I patted his arm. “Thank you.”
I changed back into my clothes, signed some paperwork, and followed Eli up to street level. The sky had shifted into shades of mauve.
Eli wiped his glasses with a corner of an untucked shirt. “Where did you park?”
I had to think about it. “I’m . . . right over here by the – ” I found myself pointing at a tow truck hoisting a Passat by an expired meter.
I ran into the street. “Hey, wait! Wait!”
The driver climbed in the cab. “Tell it to the company.” He grinded the truck into gear and drove forward.
I ran my hands through my hair.
A blaring horn and rushing air whipped past my hips. I looked both ways and walked back to Eli on the sidewalk, heart pounding and legs trembling.
