‘From what everyone says, she sounds like a good woman.’
‘She lived on a fixed income and couldn’t afford some of what she did,’ he said. ‘She always needed a cause – and she’d make one up if she couldn’t find one. If she wasn’t saving people, she bugged the heck out of them.’
‘What did you think when you heard about the bike hitting her?’
‘The news flattened me. Look, my mom was old, but not old old. I didn’t see this coming.’
‘What do you get now that she’s dead?’
Kelson’s question made the man hesitate. ‘You mean, what do I inherit?’
‘Sure.’
‘You’re really asking that?’ But he shook off his irritation. ‘Phil’s money goes to his daughters from his first marriage. He owned the apartment – it goes to them too. I get Mom’s photographs and jewelry. There’s not much of it and there’s not much else. Satisfied?’
‘I was never unsatisfied,’ Kelson said. ‘What do you think about the care your mom got at the hospital?’
‘What’s this about anyway?’ Tomlinson said. ‘Why are you asking these questions?’
‘A nurse at Clement Memorial thinks some deaths at the hospital look strange. Your mom’s death is one of them. He hired me to look into them.’
‘Strange, how?’
‘Based on your mom’s injuries, he thinks she shouldn’t have died. He thinks someone helped her along.’
‘Really?’ Tomlinson readjusted his glasses. ‘I was there with her as much as I could be. I liked her doctor – and her nurses.’
‘Do you remember the doctor’s name?’
‘Of course. Dr Madani. And the nurse who was mainly with Mom was Wendy.’
‘Wendy Thomas?’
‘That’s right.’ A real smile flickered and faded. ‘The stories she told about her fiancé made Mom laugh.’
‘Did the head of the ICU treat her at all?’
‘I don’t know – I don’t think so.’
‘Jeremy Jacobson?’
Again Tomlinson looked startled. ‘Jeremy Jacobson is at Clement Memorial? I thought he retired after his wife died.’
Now Kelson was startled. ‘He took time off but came back. How do you know about him?’
Tomlinson looked ashen. ‘From my mom. My damned busybody mom. She saw Terry Ann Jacobson get run over. She swore an affidavit. She was going to go to court, but the trial never happened. They worked out a deal. If you want to know the truth, I think that disappointed Mom. She wanted to testify.’
‘What did she see happen?’
‘A bad accident. Terry Ann Jacobson’s son was backing out of their driveway. He was only a kid – barely old enough to drive – maybe he only had a learner’s permit. Mrs Jacobson was on the driveway talking on her phone. She didn’t see him coming. I guess he didn’t see her either. He hit her and panicked. The police found him a couple hours later, sitting in the car in one of the lakefront parks.’
‘Scott Jacobson?’
‘That’s right. Just a kid. Mom felt as bad for him as for his mother and the rest of the family. Jeremy Jacobson hushed it up. He kept the details out of the news. His lawyers talked to Mom and tried to keep her quiet too. But she insisted on at least swearing the affidavit. She sure would’ve liked to testify.’
TWENTY-NINE
As Kelson drove back toward the city, he called Rodman and told him what he’d learned.
‘Wow,’ Rodman said.
‘Yeah, that’s pretty much what I said. I’m going back to Patricia Ruddig’s apartment. I’ll get more out of the deskman if I have to twist him out of his reindeer sweater.’
‘What if he has nothing more to give?’
‘Then I feel bad for his sweater.’
The deskman took no twisting – and he wasn’t wearing the reindeer sweater. Now his sweater was bright green. So was his hat.
‘Let me guess,’ Kelson said. ‘St Patrick’s Day early?’
‘Every day’s a holiday around here. I’ve got something for you.’ He peeled a Post-it note from a pad and slapped it on the desk. ‘There you go.’
Kelson read it. ‘Ken.’
‘He’s the doorman across the street. When you came before, you asked about video of the bike hitting Patty, and I told you our security camera was broken. But today I’m thinking I should ask who Ken’s boss got to fix the camera at his building when it broke last October. That was around Halloween – because I was wearing my pumpkin sweater – but it could’ve also been July. Long story short, the building across the street might have video of Patty getting hit.’
Kelson picked up the Post-it note. ‘I almost like you.’
‘Give it some time,’ the deskman said. ‘I’m very popular with the eighty- and ninety-year-olds.’
Kelson crossed the street. Ken stood inside the automatic doors, wearing thick olive-green pants, a blue wool coat with epaulettes, and a plastic-visored bellman’s cap. He needed a shave and had the complexion of a man who’d crawled out of bed after sleeping off a hangover.
The doors slid open under Kelson’s weight. ‘Morning,’ he said.
The man nodded hello.
‘Taciturn,’ Kelson said.
‘Sorry?’
‘I would call you taciturn.’
‘Sticks and stones.’
‘Right,’ Kelson said. ‘What’s the point?’
‘The point of what?’ His voice was flat.
‘Of having a doorman when you have automatic doors.’
‘Don’t know.’
‘Santa from across the street sent me to talk with you.’
Ken’s eyes were uncomprehending.
‘Mr Lucky Charms. The Great Pumpkin.’
‘You mean Jerry the Sweater?’
‘Is that what people call him?’
‘It’s what I call him.’ Flat.
‘Jerry the Sweater says you might have video of Patricia Ruddig getting hit by a bike.’
At her name, the doorman’s eyes showed sudden warmth. ‘Poor Patty.’
‘Heat wave in the tundra,’ Kelson said. He handed him a card. ‘If you have video, I’d like to see it.’
Ken stared out the glass doors as if a rush of residents might need his services. ‘I guess so.’ He led Kelson across the lobby to a utilities room. He went to a computer desk and accessed the date-stamped video files for the first week of the month.
‘Do you sleep in that hat?’ Kelson said.
‘No.’ He clicked the January 1 video.
‘I’m kidding,’ Kelson said.
The doorman watched the video load.
‘Sort of,’ Kelson said.
The doorman started the video playing at 08:57.
The camera pointed at the area outside the automatic doors, extending across the circular driveway to the sidewalk and street.
From 08:57 until 08:59, nothing moved. Then two cars passed. At 09:00, a van rolled by. Then the door to Patricia Ruddig’s building opened, and a small woman in an overcoat stepped outside.
The doorman said, ‘Patty.’
She moved with the cautious steps of an explorer venturing on to thin ice.
A dark bicycle shot toward her from the right side of the screen. As she edged out, the rider – a tall man in black leggings, a dark jacket, a black bike helmet, and bike goggles – swerved, as if to avoid a patch of uneven pavement, a piece of garbage, a pothole. He slammed into her.
She hit the pavement with a force that seemed to burst from the computer screen. The bicycle skidded, the rider barely holding on.
Patricia Ruddig lay on the pavement.
The rider stopped. He got off the bicycle. He approached Patricia Ruddig as you might go to a wild animal you hit with your car. You want to help it, to hold it, but you’re terrified it will tear you apart with all the fury of its pain.
Patricia Ruddig didn’t move.
The rider seemed to speak to her. Obscured by the distance from the camera and by his helmet and goggles, he mig
ht have apologized to her – or accused her of carelessness – or sworn at her – or said nothing at all. He went back to his bicycle. He climbed on and rode away.
A moment later, Jerry the Sweater came from the building. Patricia Ruddig raised her head as he squatted beside her, touching her shoulder, her ribs, with the gentleness of a lover.
‘Damn,’ Kelson said.
‘The rider hit her on purpose,’ the doorman said.
‘I don’t think so,’ Kelson said.
The doorman restarted the video at the moment when the bicyclist flashed on to the screen. ‘Why’s he riding on the sidewalk?’ he said. He adjusted a knob and started the video again, in slow motion. The bicyclist inched toward the building entrance. Patricia Ruddig inched out. The bicyclist swerved toward her. ‘Why’d he do that?’ the doorman said. The rider seemed to have time to swerve away. He drove head-on into her – lowering himself over the bike frame and bracing his shoulders before the impact – though he might’ve done that to keep from flying off the bike when he saw a crash as inevitable.
‘I don’t know,’ Kelson said.
The doorman restarted the video and watched the collision at regular speed. Then he did it again. Kelson let himself out of the utility room as he restarted it once more.
Kelson got in his car and turned the heat high. He called Rodman and told him the latest.
‘Well, that sucks,’ Rodman said. ‘What’re you going to do now?’
‘Keep circling,’ Kelson said. ‘You want to go back to the underworld?’
Rodman did.
Through the afternoon, they breathed exhaust fumes in the shadowy lower-level streets fingering from Lower Wacker into underground Chicago.
They met dozens of homeless men and women huddling over warm grates, shoving stuffed shopping carts along the narrow street sides as cars flew by, sharing Schlitz tallboys or crusty bottles of vodka. None of them admitted to knowing Daryl Vaughn. Most knew the professor and his waifish friend, though no one had seen them in a couple days. Kelson and Rodman went back to the encampment they visited the last time they came. It was vacant. Except for burnt scraps of cardboard, a cruddy blue Bic lighter, and a grimy T-shirt, Kelson would’ve thought they’d come to the wrong place.
‘People don’t just disappear,’ he said.
‘Sure they do,’ Rodman said. ‘In so many ways.’ He crushed the plastic lighter with his boot.
They climbed three flights of metal stairs and came out into the evening dark. A cold, wet wind wrapped around their necks, and Rodman pulled up his coat collar.
Kelson took him to dinner at Bella Bacinos. They talked about the uncertainty of almost everything Kelson had learned – about the way they could explain it as meaningless, adding up to nothing at all, or as evidence of murder.
‘Except for Patricia Ruddig seeing the Jacobson lady’s death,’ Rodman said. ‘That’s something. Those coincidences don’t happen.’
They agreed they would drive to Fort Wayne in the morning to see Josh Templeton’s mother – circling back.
Then they talked about other screwed-up families.
Cindi’s brother and the whirlpool of trouble pulling him down.
Rodman’s brother, whose death made another whirlpool when the police shot him years ago.
Kelson’s divorce from Nancy.
Kelson’s divorce led them to talk about Sue Ellen. Maybe it was that last change of topic – or maybe it was the warmth of the five-meat penne Bolognese – or maybe it was some of each – but when Kelson and Rodman stepped out of the restaurant into the cold, wet wind, they looked satisfied with the world.
So much so that instead of driving straight home, Kelson headed back to his office. ‘When you’re on a roll,’ he said to himself.
The computer training school was closed for the day, and the cleaning staff had already come through. His heels clacked down the empty hallway, and when he came to his door, he stopped and listened to the silence.
He went in and, since the warmth of dinner was starting to fade, locked the door. He peeked at the KelTec pistol under the desktop. He checked the Springfield in the bottom drawer. Then he went to his window and dialed Jose Feliciano’s number.
When the call bounced to voicemail, he repeated what Jerry the Sweater had told him when he arrived at Patricia Ruddig’s. ‘I’ve got something for you.’
He hung up and walked around the office, stopping by the framed photos of Sue Ellen and the cats. ‘Could be worse,’ he told them. He circled again, then sat at his desk. The building around him was silent. He tapped a finger on his desk – and stopped. The office was silent. He was silent.
He found his own silence intolerable. It seemed to squeeze his body.
‘And where do I go from here?’ he said.
As if in answer, there was a knock at the door.
It made him jump. He stared at the door.
Another knock.
‘Yes?’ he asked.
Another.
Kelson considered his Springfield and KelTec.
He went to the door and opened it.
Frida, the waitress from Club Richelieu, stood in the hallway. She wore jeans and a flannel shirt, no coat, and her dark hair looked as if she’d spent a long time in the wind.
‘Hey,’ she said.
‘Hey.’
She shivered, as if she’d carried the cold air in from outside the building. She said, ‘I can’t get you out of my head.’
THIRTY
‘Christ, you’ve got great eyes,’ Kelson said. ‘By which I mean, come in – warm up.’
‘I didn’t know if I should come,’ Frida said, her right eye cocking the tiniest bit inward.
‘Intimate,’ he said. ‘You have intimate eyes.’
‘I almost froze,’ she said, and sat on one of the client chairs.
‘How long were you outside?’
‘I saw you go in about twenty minutes ago. I was there a while before that.’
‘Kind of stalkery,’ Kelson said.
She let her eyes rest on his.
‘Smoky and intimate,’ he said. ‘Why aren’t you wearing a coat?’
‘Do you ever not say what you’re thinking?’
‘I talk most when I’m nervous or scared or with someone I find attractive.’
‘Which is it with me – nervous, scared, or attractive?’
‘A little nervous, a lot of attractive. You have a great smile.’
‘I’m not wearing a coat because I left it at Richelieu. Rick Jacobson came in and started bullying Mr Vargas – Jeffrey – the way he does. Jeffrey got upset, and when he’s upset, he takes it out on the bartenders and servers. So I scooted out when everything started to fly.’
‘I thought Rick and Vargas were pals.’
‘Jeffrey needs cash – he always needs cash. Rick doesn’t always want to give it to him.’
‘He said the club makes a profit.’
‘Weekends are good. Thursdays if we have a hot DJ. Richelieu’s still open, so they must work something out. Jeffrey gets his money, and Rick plays the big man. Anyway, seeing Rick get all uptight again made me think of you. Thinking of you made me wonder … well, here I am.’ She gave him more of the great smile. ‘I’m sort of impulsive.’
He smiled back. ‘Have you ever had a brain injury?’
She gazed over his shoulder at the framed picture of Sue Ellen. ‘Is that your daughter?’
‘My one and only.’
She glanced at the other picture. ‘And cats.’
‘Payday and Painter’s Lane.’
‘Either you hang out at the racetrack, or your daughter named them.’
‘She originally wanted a horse. Now she wants a potbellied pig.’
‘Kids,’ Frida said.
‘Kids.’
‘Do you need to get back to her tonight?’
‘She’s with her mother.’
She gazed at him with her cocked eye. ‘It’s a shame to be alone on a cold night.’
&nbs
p; ‘You move quick,’ he said.
‘Too quick?’
‘I like quick. Do you do this kind of thing often?’
‘Would it bother you if I did?’
‘I once sat butt-naked on a woman’s dinner at Big Pie Pizza.’
‘Your point is?’
‘My point is, who am I to judge?’
Frida said her Maltese, Napoleon, peed on the couch out of jealousy when she brought men home, so they drove to Kelson’s apartment. The wind buffeted the car and made street signs flutter on their posts. Kelson notched the heat high, and Frida held her hands over the vent like it was a tiny campfire.
They came to a red light, and three cars crossed the intersection, followed by a motorcycle ridden by a man in snow pants and a parka, a woman in a matching outfit clutching him from behind. ‘The things we do for love,’ Frida said.
‘I know an ex-bull rider who’s in love with a little round nurse. They’re going to get married.’
‘See?’ she said. ‘I like couples like that.’
‘Sure, what’s not to like? Or your boss and his girlfriend.’
‘Jeffrey? He’s gay.’
‘What about the woman he was with at the club – the one kneading his thigh with her fingernails?’
‘Darla? She’s his cousin.’
‘You’re kidding …’
‘The girl has issues. She hooks up with Rick. A funny couple, but it seems to works for them.’
‘Do you know much about the Jacobsons?’ Kelson asked.
‘Just what Darla tells me. I think they’re into each other for the pain.’
‘The things we do for love.’
She laid a hand on his thigh. She kept her fingernails to herself. ‘Yeah.’
At his building, they ran from the car to the entrance. ‘The elevator’s slow,’ he said.
‘Quick is good. Slow is OK.’
The elevator came and they got in. ‘Go, go, go,’ Kelson said.
So Frida put her lips on his, and they rose to his floor in a long kiss.
‘Yeah, you’re quick,’ he said when the doors opened. They rushed down the hall to his apartment.
He fumbled with the key, crammed it into the lock – and stopped.
A voice spoke inside the apartment.
‘Oh, no,’ he said.
Head Case Page 15
