by Ritu Sethi
The black perimeter widened further, the central image of the broken door narrowed until finally all was black, sound was obscured, and there was a deafening nothingness. And the last thought Jimmy had was not of the startup, not of his girlfriend Kate, not of being murdered – it was of his Mom and how he would miss her, and how she would forever miss him.
CHAPTER 13
April 2, 7 pm
NOW BACK AT THE INSTITUTE, Étienne left the musty bathroom after his shower wearing his robe and slippers. He didn’t dare waste time drying properly, and as a result, water dripped freely down his legs and onto his ankles. Already, a new sheen of sweat was forming on his back; already, he was breathing heavily. He hated being back. If only that doctor from last year had gotten him out. If only the Inspector would get him out now.
He glanced right and left and hurried back to the safety of his room. Several of the boys frequently teased him about leaving the Institute at night. They hated that a twelve-year-old could found a way out while they remained locked away. He was clear-minded enough to understand their grievance but had pointed out that they were criminals, after all. So how could they resent being treated like ones?
His frankness only made matters worse, and the atmosphere became thick with tension. Being younger and smaller than the other inmates had obvious disadvantages, and there were other differences – they were rough, scary. Some even saw and heard things that weren’t there.
Probably, LeBlanc could include him with the crazies, but Étienne had never regretted the action which landed him at the Institute. Looking back, terror had made him keep hitting that boy. The doctors didn’t understand. He’d never intended to kill, only to save his sister from being attacked. At ten and a half, he’d made the best decision he could.
Neither of them remembered their parents. The aid worker told him his mom and dad walked out of the house one day and never come back – that a neighbor called the police because of the abandoned animals in the backyard, never suspecting that three-year-old Étienne wandered around inside, unable to get out. And his baby sister, after endless hours of wailing and whimpering, lay listless in the soiled crib.
Images flashed in his mind, whispers of memories of him leaning over a baby, of his grabbing the cold, pale fingers, filling his cupped hands with water and bringing it to Claire’s mouth, and her lapping it up and licking her lips.
Who knew what really happened, and what his imagination might have filled in over the years? But those two days bonded them together like nothing else could. And Étienne would take care of his sister, no matter what.
His room was now in sight. Keeping low, water dripping and leaving a trail on the splintered floor, he made his way down the hall. Any time now, one of the bigger boys might pounce out of the woodwork. Once, three inmates had surrounded the hall, pinned him against the wall, and held a needle next to his eye. The guard had broken it up, but he couldn’t count on being that lucky again.
He reached his room and scurried inside, wishing the room had a lock.
One of the older boys, Carl, appeared outside his doorway, fists resting on his hips, a snarl on his face. Étienne’s eyes flew to the crawl space. If only he’d had time to hide. He called out, but no one came. The guard was probably making his rounds on the other side of the building, or worse, letting the boys settle their disputes by themselves.
“You think you’re smarter than us?” Carl snarled.
“Non.”
“Non!” Carl mimicked Étienne’s higher voice.
“S’il vous plait. Go away. I do nothing to you.” He backed further into the room. Carl moved towards him. Étienne called out, louder this time, but still no one came. His room was two floors up from the Director’s, and one of the other boys had closed the door to the stairs, effectively sealing them off.
“You think you can steal that access card, go out at night, and then come back anytime you want? You think you’re smarter than us?” Carl’s eyes blazed with something strange. He wasn’t right. The snake tattoo on his arm rippled as he flexed. “It makes fools out of us. I’ve been here two years.”
“I sneak out for myself,” Étienne said. “Next time, I will give you card. I get it for you.”
“I don’t need your help.” Carl threw a wooden chair across the room. “I can get out anytime I want.”
He had an even chance with Carl, despite the other boy’s larger size, but fighting wasn’t an option. He’d promised Claire the last time she came to visit that he’d never fight again. There was every chance he could live with her foster family, provided he behaved, provided the doctors weren’t worried about him killing someone else. After he convinced them, he could finally get out of this hell-hole and be with Claire.
His high voice cracked. “I don’t want to fight.”
The other boy paid no attention. The first blow hurt, the second, a little less. And in the ones following, Étienne held up his arms in front of his face, his stomach, his chest to try and ward off the fists. He curled up in a ball on the floor and screamed, but still the punches came.
With each one, he begged for a different life, a different place to live. He heard the other boy’s insults from a distance and shut his eyes tight against the monsters. Behind his lids, there were flashes of lights, blurry images of parents he never knew, unreal and invented in his imagination, and Claire’s worried face looking down at him. The images began to fade and thin before receding into nothingness.
And so it was that two patients arrived at Westborough Hospital Emergency with serious bleeds simultaneously – one treated by the staff surgeon and the other by his senior resident. Jimmy Cane had been brought in after vomiting up blood.
But only one would live.
CHAPTER 14
April 2, 8:20 pm
HOW COULD THIS happen?
Gray had only just returned home after seeing Seymour. Gripping his cell, he resisted the impulse to smash it onto the tessellated floor. The metal dug into his skin. His teeth hurt from clenching.
He dialed Vivienne's number, the urge to punch a hole in the wall staying with him, but he controlled it – just.
She sounded subdued. “Bonjour, Chief Inspector.”
“Meet me at Westborough emerg, now. Jimmy Cane was found bleeding in his apartment an hour ago.”
“What?”
“I know. We’re losing our grip on this fast.” He ran a hand over his eyes. “Jimmy is an innocent. No telling who will be next.” He didn’t have to say more. She knew how worried he was about Étienne.
“After we’re done at the hospital,” she said, “I can plant myself outside Étienne’s room at the Institute. LeBlanc will have to drag me out himself.” Her words came out of frustration, not practicality, and they both knew it.
Grabbing his keys, he stomped towards his car. His kitchen door slammed behind him, and the cold bit into his cheeks. “It might come to that. But I’ll be the one they carry out, not you. First, we have to help our innocent engineer.”
Vivienne’s voice became distant and staticky. She must be on the hands-free in her car now. “How did you hear so quickly?”
“Jimmy left a message an hour ago saying he wanted to speak to me. The front desk delivered it five minutes ago. When I called his apartment, a uniform answered.”
He didn’t repeat what the officer had told him, that the sofa and rug were soaked in blood. That the ambulance discovered the young man slumped over it, deathly pale and unconscious. All this must be as hard for her as it was for him, and Gray needed her unemotional. “I’ll meet you there.”
“Oui.”
He ended the call. The short drive towards Westborough passed in a red haze, the emergency department as chaotic as any he’d visited in the past. He crossed the sliding doors, answered some screening questions, and flashed his ID.
Dozens of people occupied the main waiting area, some shuffling in their seats, others leaning against walls, but no one sat behind reception. The antiseptic smell hit hi
m, this time laden with more basal odors: vomit and sweat.
He momentarily held his breath, opened the inner doors, and stormed into the treatment area, where patients lay on stretchers in the hallways for lack of rooms, and an orderly brushed past pushing a wheelchair.
A nurse directed him to a back room on the right, where a new stench emanated from several feet away.
Inside, two doctors and two nurses worked around a man, his shirt and pants soaked in blood. Brown stains went down the insides of his legs.
Jimmy lay unconscious, maybe dead. While one doctor entered a needle into the engineer’s neck – a central line to reach the heart – another intubated. Two IV’s pumping saline into the limp arms stood erect on either side of the boy like sentinels.
Gray stood watching and breathed evenly, his heart feeling firmly wedged in his throat. The interminable ministrations on the supine body went on and on. A few minutes later, Vivienne arrived. She must have raced the entire way from her house, and seeing the prone figure on the stretcher, hastily wiped her eyes. She felt too much for a police officer, always had.
“You think this is attempted murder?” she asked.
“Don’t you? We have three people attacked within twenty-four hours – all members of the same startup. It’s crazy to interpret this as anything other than a deliberate attack. Question is, how was it done?”
A commotion from behind caught his attention where across the hall, a uniformed officer came and stood by the door, his arms crossed and his feet wide apart.
Instinct kicked in. Gray grabbed Vivienne’s arm and pulled her with him, a foreboding propelling him forward, one he couldn’t analyze or explain.
He smelled peanut butter. It had to be a play of his mind, an olfactory association.
Inside, a young doctor worked over a small boy. Blood caked the child’s head, the face lay swollen, and bruises patchworked his bare, bony chest.
Few moments in life feel so disconnected, so unreal that you imagine seeing them as though hovering from above. How many times could one man face the same demon? How many times could one man fail?
He grabbed the side of the door. A steel grip twisted in his belly. The uniformed officer, whose face seemed vaguely familiar, called him by name.
For a full minute, Gray couldn’t speak. He stood watching. And the body that gently jostled up and down from the doctor’s probing exam could have been Craig’s: that little limp hand, the out-turned feet, the vulnerable pale neck.
Except, no doctor ever worked to save Craig. Gray hadn’t given them that chance. He’d left home with his son and come back alone. His wife’s eyes, uncomprehending, searching for a way out of the tunnel collapsing around her, haunted him still. The feel of her fist clutching the fabric of his shirt still tugged on his chest. The violence in her voice still rang in his ears. How could you let it happen? How could you?
Vivienne said, “Why weren’t we notified? The police guard wasn’t outside the Institute?”
“I told him to go home.”
He could predict her next words. “It isn’t your fault. It wouldn’t have made a difference.”
Gray didn’t welcome absolution. He turned to the police officer, every muscle in his face tight, his voice guttural. “What happened to that child?”
“Just a nutcase from the looney bin next door. Got into a fight with one of the older boys – probably over drugs, or cigarettes, or whatever. You know how they are.” The officer shook his head and gave a lopsided grin.
Gray counted to five. The man was young, inexperienced. He hissed through clenched teeth. “Tell me exactly what happened.”
“I—I don’t know anything else, sir.” The officer mover perceptively back. “I’ve been instructed to keep him under tabs; that’s all. He’s a dangerous criminal.”
“He doesn’t strike me as being dangerous right now. I want hourly updates. This boy is an important witness in a murder inquiry. Don’t let anyone near him without checking with me. And don’t leave him unguarded for a second. Do you understand, constable? I’m going to hold you personally responsible for his safety.”
“Yes, sir.”
Overhead, the intercom spat out a garbled announcement no one could understand. Gray looked all around him, seeking a distraction – anything to get away from himself.
In one corner of the hall, a fourteen-year-old girl sat on a stretcher, a bandage wrapped around her head and another around her left wrist. A thin elderly man in a wheelchair stared at Gray, his eyes blank, resigned. A reminder that all dramas eventually end.
A brittle wail traveled down the hall, coming from a woman seated on a bench. Her chest rose and fell in gasps. She jerked forward, and her long black hair tumbled in front of her face, the impossibly long silk strands reaching the tips of her cowboy boots. She pushed them back and buried her face in her palms. Tears seeped between her fingers, and the droplets rolled down her hands.
Jimmy’s mother.
She lowered her arms and noticed him now, revealing a beautiful face, entirely unlike her son’s, both exotic and worldly. Without conscious thought, Gray walked towards her.
“Mrs. Cane?”
She spoke in a cultured, smooth voice. “Do you have news about Jimmy? Can I see him?”
“I’m Chief Inspector Gray James. The doctors are with Jimmy now. Is there somewhere we can talk?”
“I’m not leaving.” She straightened. “They told me to go to the waiting room. I won’t. I won’t leave my baby.”
“Do you know what happened to him?”
“No. He called me. Bleeding and screaming–” She let out an involuntary choke. “He’d already dialed 911, and then I called them too... but, by the time they got there... Jimmy was...” She looked up at Gray. “My baby! Tell me what happened to my baby!”
Her head slumped between her legs. Her body shook in spasms. Gray sat on the bench and waited. He put a hand on her shoulder, knowing he couldn’t help, knowing the gesture was empty, meaningless, and that nothing could ever help.
“I’m sorry. It’s important we move quickly and find out what happened. Is there anything you can tell me?”
“Jimmy said someone might kill him.” She gasped in a breath. “A person died, and he knew about it.”
Gray kept the urgency out of his voice. “Who might kill him, Mrs. Cane? Who died?”
She shook her head. Her long earrings jangled and bounced against her cheeks. “He mailed me a letter, said I shouldn’t open it, or they’d kill me too.”
“When did he mail it? What did it say?” Gray kept his voice even.
“I don’t know. I don’t know. Why did he leave me to live so far away? My little boy.” She clutched Gray’s arm. “He has Asperger's. I take care of him. Why did she take him away?”
“Who?”
“That bitch, Kate Grant. Oh God, will my Jimmy be okay? Will my Jimmy live, Inspector?”
“I don’t know, Mrs. Cane. I’m sorry, I just don’t know.”
She stared, her eyes desolate. “I have no one else.”
Gray held her hand and stayed with her awhile. He left her sitting on the bench and returned to Vivienne.
“What did his mom say?” Vivienne asked.
“She doesn’t like Kate much, I can tell you that. Jimmy mailed her a letter and later warned her against opening it. Someone died because of the startup. We need to track that letter down. Norman was a clinician, and Jimmy supplied the technology. Both of them knew something; both of them paid the price.”
“Does the killer want to expose the startup, or protect it?”
“That’s the million-dollar question, isn’t it? All this violence only draws attention to HealSo, so my money’s on the former.” Gray’s thoughts spun in all directions. He brought them into focus. “I’ll wait here. You try and trace that letter. It’s the biggest lead we have. After that, check on Étienne and try and reach LeBlanc. He owes me a damn good explanation for what happened at his allegedly secure facility, or I might just
wring his wrinkly neck.”
“If Jimmy regains consciousness, he’ll be able to tell us everything.”
Gray exhaled. “If.”
But it wasn’t to be. Gray and Vivienne watched the doctor leave the trauma room and approach Jimmy’s mom. During his short steps, her eyes grew wide, and her jaw fell. The doctor sat beside her.
She listened as the he spoke, staring straight ahead with a look Gray knew too well. So familiar. So well understood. How many times had he been an interloper in these moments because his job demanded it? How many more Jimmy’s would there be?
She asked no questions, didn’t ask the doctor if her son had suffered. They all knew she’d heard Jimmy’s screams over the phone and would hear them every day for the rest of her life.
She stood and walked into the trauma room where her son lay on the stretcher. Said nothing, made no sound, and lifted one limp hand into hers. Tears leaped out of her eyes, entirely missing her cheeks.
Evelyn Cane lowered Jimmy’s hand to his side and placed them under the sheet, as though she were tucking him into bed. Then, her eyes rolled back into her head, and she fell onto the hospital floor.
***
He needed to see Jimmy’s apartment himself before the SOCO’s completed their analysis. Collecting the anemic vehicle, the pedal mushy under his feet, Gray headed out of the hospital lot and joined the freeway.
The 720 was crowded and polluted. Restless drivers honked and cut in front of one another to hack seconds off their commute. Heading north on rue Saint Denis, he turned left into Jimmy’s street with its neat quad defining the quaint French neighborhood.
A grassed area surrounded a central fountain, and all along the road squaring the quad, tightly packed Victorian triplexes stood neck to neck: beige, blue, silver. Faint scents from nearby bakeries and bistros lingered in the air. Old-fashioned lanterns dotted the pavements, casting a glow on the ornately carved entrances.
