by Chaz McGee
“Move faster,” Maggie said, shoving the doctor into the elevator. Serena stumbled against a railing.
“What’s your problem?” she asked Maggie. Her refined accent had been replaced by the raw vowels of a blue-collar Boston background. Was anything about the doctor real?
“All she did was love you,” Maggie said, her contempt so great, her anger so immense, that the patrolmen averted their eyes. “All Fiona Harker wanted was for you to love her back. And she thought that you did. She told her friend that it was the real thing, that she’d finally found someone she could love.”
“And you find that disgusting?” the doctor challenged her.
“What I find disgusting,” Maggie said, anger rising in her voice, “is that someone gave you the gift of love, someone who was private and guarded and not prone to giving her heart away. You had to work for it. And you did. You worked until you had her heart and then you took it. And once you had it, you turned around and you killed her for loving you, all to protect your reputation. What’s the matter with you? Do you even have a soul?”
I wondered that myself. Serena Holman had grown still as Maggie spoke, and her indignation had been replaced by a cold strength. I felt cunning inside her, cunning and selfishness and something darker—Had she liked taking another person’s life? Had she actually enjoyed making someone love her and then destroying her for it?
Yes, I think she had.
I had sympathy then for Christian Fletcher. He still had his career, but she had pretty much devoured him, too.
“You don’t know anything about me,” Serena Holman spat at Maggie.
“I know you’re going away for a long, long time,” Maggie said. “To a place where you will not be able to wear your little ass-high dresses. To a place where no one is going to give a shit about how much you raised for this hospital. To a place you can’t even imagine in your worst nightmares.”
In that, at least, I thought Maggie was wrong. Serena Holman would use her beauty in prison just as she had in her life—to blind others so she could get exactly what she wanted. I was pretty sure she’d end up running the joint. And I was also pretty sure she’d killed Fiona Harker for a lot more than to protect her reputation, even if she didn’t understand those reasons herself. I thought she’d loved Fiona back, maybe for the first time in her life. There was no other explanation for why she took the chance of becoming involved with her in the first place. And she had been driven to kill Fiona because of it, because her own ego would not tolerate the importance of anyone else.
Yes, Serena Holman would love prison. It was the one place where she could be herself.
“Let’s go,” Maggie said, pushing Serena out of the elevator toward the main lobby. For the first time, the doctor lost her poise and balked. No wonder. Word had gone out as swiftly as a call to battle. She had been arrested in the middle of a shift change, and hospital staff members were flooding into the lobby, wanting to see Serena Holman pay the price for killing one of their own. Nurses, aides, janitors, even doctors—all who had worked with Fiona Harker and loved her—were there, Christian Fletcher among them. There were surely a few left behind on the wards to make sure no patients died, but it seemed like every single person on duty in the hospital that morning was there, forming a phalanx of hostile onlookers that Maggie forced Serena Holman to walk through.
No one said a word. They just stood and stared at Serena. The air was thick with hate and sadness and contempt. But no one said a word.
And truth be told, no one seemed all that surprised. I guess beauty can’t hide everything.
Serena Holman sailed through the crowd, head held high, as if she were a queen passing by. All she had left was her self-anointed superiority and she had no intention of giving that up.
No one even noticed Maggie. At least, no one but Christian Fletcher. He was standing toward the back of the crowd, a sympathetic nurse on each side as he absorbed the shock of seeing his ex-wife hauled through the lobby in handcuffs. His face was as easy to read as a billboard. His surprise was genuine. I was certain of that. And, grudgingly, I admitted that his sorrow was not for himself. He grieved for Fiona Harker, whom he had respected and relied on. He grieved for the person who had been his wife but was, apparently, someone he had never really known. And he grieved for Maggie. He knew he would lose her now.
At first, Maggie did not see Fletcher. She was grim but confident. She took no pleasure in what she was doing, but she felt it was her duty to do it. She owed Fiona Harker at least that much. Then Serena Holman stumbled and Maggie tightened her grip on the doctor’s arm, steadying her. She looked over Serena’s head and straight at Christian Fletcher. A look passed between them. It was an acknowledgment of what they had lost, of what they might have had. It had been real, and they had both felt it. Now they felt its loss.
Too late, I wished that I had helped them. I wished that I had brought them together somehow, instead of trying to drive them apart. Apart, they were just two more lonely people who lost themselves in work so they wouldn’t have to think about the rest of their lives. Together, they could have been so much more.
Chapter 32
I couldn’t understand why Maggie was driving so slowly. Even the patrolman with her looked puzzled. Reality was not matching rumor. He’d come along to keep an eye on Serena Holman, who was sitting in the backseat reciting the ways she intended to make Maggie pay for this scurrilous attack on her reputation. Scurrilous? That was a new one. My suspects had mostly shouted one-syllable expletives while inadvertently spraying booze-flavored spit on me.
I sat beside the outraged doctor, my arm draped over the seat behind her. I was like a child playing too close to the fire. I wanted to probe the self-assured darkness that filled her graceful frame. Evil took many forms, I knew, but seldom one as beautiful as this. It made her even scarier.
When we reached department headquarters, I realized why Maggie had taken her time getting there. Gonzales had called a full-blown press conference, hoping to catch the first cable news cycle after church let out. He was also taking advantage of the growing media crowd that had started to gather once word went out that Tyler Matthews had been found.
I loved the irony of it. Until that moment, the abduction of Tyler Matthews had done nothing but overshadow Fiona Harker’s murder. Now Maggie intended to use the attention the media paid to the Matthews case as a way to punish Fiona’s killer. Should I have disapproved? Perhaps. But then I thought of the dead nurse’s body, as frail as a bird’s, and of all the lives that might be lost because she was no longer there to greet the ambulances filled with broken beings in need of care. In the end, the truth is that I thought to myself, Bring it on. Serena Holman deserves no mercy.
News vans, cars, and pedestrians clogged the block leading to the station house. Maggie drove past them all, lights flashing, until every eye was on her. She parked at the far end of the lot and turned around to check on a seething Serena Holman.
“You bitch,” Serena said to Maggie. She thought the press conference had been called for her. Wow. What a world she lived in.
“Uncuff her,” Maggie told the patrolman.
“You sure?” the man asked.
“Uncuff her,” Maggie repeated. “Please.”
Serena looked vindicated, as if Maggie had finally realized that she was important and should be treated as nothing less than royalty in public. Me? I knew Maggie way better than that.
Serena rubbed her wrists and glared at Maggie with hate. “I’ll have your badge by the end of the week.”
“Now take your coat off,” Maggie told her. “You’re not wearing it when I walk you into the station. I’m not letting you taint the profession any more than you already have.”
Serena Holman stared at her defiantly. That coat represented her power.
“Take it off,” Maggie ordered.
When Serena didn’t move, the patrolmen pulled it off her shoulders and down her arms, and then folded it awkwardly.
“I�
�ll take that,” Maggie said with a smile. “Evidence. Now put the cuffs back on her, please.”
Serena threw a fit. She kicked the patrolman with the tips of her pointy shoes and began screaming expletives that my drunken losers had never even dreamed of.
Then Maggie said one word, and it stopped Serena cold: “Cameras.”
Sure enough, a couple of news crews, bored with waiting for the press conference to start, had drifted toward Maggie’s car, hoping for something exciting, perhaps even an arrest connected to the Tyler Matthews case.
Serena Holman quit struggling, sat up straight, and plastered a distant “I’m not really here” look on her face.
“Let’s go,” Maggie told the patrolman. She opened the car door ceremoniously for Serena Holman, almost as if she were a chauffeur. The news cameras recorded every inch of the doctor’s emergence from the backseat. She swung her feet around first, unfolding from the car as if she were a movie star at a premiere. Reporters began shouting questions, asking who she was, until a few recognized her from prior fluff pieces about hospital fundraising events. The questions grew louder, the lights brighter, the crowd pressed in closer and closer. Maggie said not a word. She just grabbed Serena Holman’s arm and pushed her through the crowd.
The patrolman with her grew drunk on all the attention and lingered behind to talk to the cameras. “She killed that nurse,” he announced to a local station. “She’s a hotshot doctor at the hospital, and she killed that nurse.”
And thus did Fiona Harker’s murder finally get the attention it deserved.
By the time Maggie reached the front entrance, Gonzales was on his way out to start the press conference. He looked like the president of a major European country dressed in his best suit. He sailed off the elevators, trailed by a parade of lackeys, a nervous-looking Robert Michael Martin, a beaming Noni Bates, and a cluster of women protectively surrounding a reborn Callie Matthews, who still held Tyler firmly in her arms. She had changed clothes; so had her son. They wore red, white, and blue matching outfits. He still clutched his toy soldier in one hand. The mood was festive and tinged with an air of disbelief—had the good guys really won?
The feds were nowhere in sight. They had packed and left as silently as they had arrived. Calvano was nowhere to be seen, either. He was no longer the goat, but Gonzales was not about to make him a hero, not yet, not even if Calvano had managed to find an entire Boy Scout troop.
Gonzales slowed when he saw Maggie coming in the door. His head swiveled to follow her as she walked right past, acting as if she did not notice him at all. His eyes narrowed, and I thought for a moment he’d call after her, but then his lackeys pulled both exit doors open wide and the shouts and cheers began. He gave Maggie a barely perceptible nod instead and kept going, into the cameras and lights.
I had a choice: watch Maggie haul Serena Holman up to booking or stay and watch the circus. I stayed. I’d had enough of Serena Holman.
Gonzales was slick. He managed—while thanking the feds for the immense number of resources they had provided—to make it clear that “one of our own” had found Tyler Matthews through “old-fashioned police work and astute questioning of a witness.” He depicted the man who had called himself Colonel Vitek, Howard McGrew, as the lifelong pedophile he was, making it plain that it was a miracle Tyler Matthews had escaped his clutches. He reassured the public that McGrew was no longer a threat to anyone, though he spared them the details of the price he had paid—charred bodies, especially ones that are still breathing, can be a downer on the nightly news. He then brought forth Callie and Tyler Matthews to cheers and tears. And he managed to find a hero for the public in all of this after all, even without Maggie or Calvano to pimp. With much ceremony, he bestowed a Civilian Medal of Honor on Robert Michael Martin for his help providing evidence that was crucial to identifying Howard McGrew as a predator. Martin accepted his medal with shy humility and a shaky voice, Noni Bates by his side, beaming as proudly as a mother.
Good for you, my friend, good for you. You are the real hero in this.
Not once did Gonzales mention Cody Wells, the man who had actually abducted Tyler Matthews. I should have known then that something was up, but at the time I just figured he was playing his cards close to his chest, waiting to see if Wells turned out to be the good guy he had seemed to be at the end.
The whole spectacle took less than twenty minutes, but a good six of those were likely to make the news—an extraordinary coup for Gonzales. Thanks to Maggie, it had all broken his way, the dominoes tumbling in one long, lucky path straight to his doorstep. He was a man born under a lucky star. Or a man smart enough to hire one.
When I’d finally had my fill of self-congratulatory pomp and had listened to enough slick answers to stupid questions asked by reporters who secretly half wished the boy had died, because then the story could have been dragged on for months, I left the press conference behind and found Maggie on the fourth floor, splashing water on her face and, I knew, planning how best to avoid Gonzales.
I do not make it a habit to follow her into the ladies’ room, mind you, but it had been a long night and Maggie had seemed on edge. I was worried about her. It had all come down to the personal with her. I knew Maggie was all about the job. She needed the structure and the distance it gave her from the world. It was a distraction for her mind and heart. But the death of Fiona Harker, the way Maggie had found Tyler Matthews? Both cases had cut too close to the bone, brushing against her private fears and challenging a lifetime of beliefs. She was shaken and exhausted.
She stared at herself in the mirror for a long time. Where she may have seen the inevitable wrinkles starting at the corners of her eyes or noticed a few gray hairs at the tips of her temple, I saw a woman of extraordinary strength and talent, one who made the world a better place, which made her a rare person indeed. Sometimes I thought the answer to good triumphing over evil was as simple as understanding that it didn’t matter if you made the world a better place or not, you just had to try, and the good in people would win.
Maggie dried her face and hands on a handful of rough paper towels, tossed them in the trash, and left the sanctuary of the women’s room behind to face Gonzales. She had ignored his phone calls since midnight and turned her back on his press conference; she had brought in a suspect in a major case without obtaining an arrest warrant first; she had gone off the reservation, and everyone knew it. Gonzales would make her pay, even with all she had done to win his department glory.
When she walked into the squad room to await the phone call that would inevitably come down from on high, the room was packed with detectives who knew Gonzales as well as Maggie and had also skipped the press conference below. They were busy bullshitting one another, gathering together personal belongings in anticipation of comp time off after all the extra shifts and calling their loved ones to give them the inside news on Tyler Matthews and Fiona Harker. But when they saw Maggie come through the door, each and every one of them stopped what they were doing. To a man, they stood and applauded. Maggie looked stunned. They applauded harder. And then the jokes began. They surrounded her, patting her back, calling her a hot dog, accusing her of taking all the glory so they would look like schlubs. They called her Top Gunn, congratulated her on outfoxing the feds and on finding something useful for that dumbass Calvano to do. They gave it to her good. They said she looked like she’d been sleeping with every doctor down at the hospital until she’d found the right one and could arrest her. They asked if she’d recognized Serena Holman from all that hanging out at girl bars that she did. They took a vote and decided it was really her father who had solved the cases. They weren’t very sensitive, of course, and they insulted everyone up to and including Maggie’s dead mother. But they said it all because they were proud of her. They were finally ready to accept her wholeheartedly into their ranks.
Maggie knew it, too. She gave it back as good as she got, and I felt the weariness fall away from her. She had worked for this moment her
entire career. I think it was the best reward anyone could have given her, and certainly it meant far more to her than any public honor Gonzales might have bestowed.
At last they ran out of bad jokes and macho-crotcho comments. They returned to the unfinished business of their other cases just as a stocky black man in dress blues stuck his head in the door and called out, “Gunn—Gonzales wants to see you now.”
Gonzales had given up on the telephone and sent his chief of staff to find her. There was no way she could avoid him now.
Amidst hoots and jeers, she left the comfort of the squad room and began the long, lonely walk to the commander’s office, her mind lighting first on the injustice of the reprimand she was probably going to get for skipping the press conference, and then dwelling on what she might say to explain her need to go full speed ahead until she had brought Fiona Harker’s killer to justice.
She’d need none of her explanation. As she entered his office, the administrative assistant at the front desk greeted her with a grave, sorrowful expression that sent a stab of worry through my gut. Something was wrong. The woman escorted Maggie into Gonzales’s private office without a word. Gonzales sat behind his desk, staring down at its uncluttered surface, seemingly oblivious to his guests. Peggy sat in a chair to one side of his desk. Her eyes were red—she had been crying. Morty, the old beat cop Gonzales kept around because he’d been there forever, sat next to Peggy. He, too, seemed overcome with sorrow.
“What is it?” Maggie asked, her voice rising. “Is my father okay?” Peggy and Morty were old friends of her father’s, and losing him was the worst fear she had.
“He’s fine,” Peggy said quickly.
“Sit down, Gunn,” Gonzales told her.
“What is it?” Maggie asked again, looking from each grave face to the next.
“We have an ID on Cody Wells,” Gonzales said. “Peggy made a DNA match.”
