Bad Medicine (17 page)

"We're going upstairs," Molly told the receptionist, whose eyes widened noticeably.

"Okay."

Molly knew better than to grab hold of Joseph Ryan's arm, so she just showed him the way and let him follow. He did, the secretary's outrage following the both of them up the stairs. Imagining lice dropping at every step, Molly was sure. It wouldn't be a surprise.

She got him into the small conference room at the back and produced the coffee, black for him, although he quickly pocketed a couple of packets of sugar. He smiled, too, which just showed that at one time those grimy, broken teeth had been straightened like Chiclets. Molly fought the urge to just leave. She wanted more than ever to run back and hide in her garden.

"You're Mary Margaret's brother," she said, settling into her chair across from him. "Aren't you?"

Joseph Ryan nodded. His eyes welled with silent tears as he held that coffee cup in his palms as if it were the only warmth he could get, even on a day as hot as this. He looked away, restless and afraid and grieving, and Molly was at once amazed and unnerved.

"You know?" she asked.

Another nod. "Peg," he managed, his voice sounding like a rusty hinge. "Her name is Peg."

"I'm sorry," Molly said, suddenly full of questions she didn't want answers to.

"I need help, Cap."

Molly hadn't been called that in more than twenty years. The young kids coming in from the boonies, torn up, scared, wanting to make sure their friends were okay, still delighted enough at the sight of a woman to joke. "Hey, Cap, I never kissed nobody with bars before. What'dya say?" "Hey, Cap, I'm so short I'm damn near invisible. Kiss me for luck?"

It was summer. Molly was having trouble enough with the old memories, the new traumas. She didn't need Joseph Ryan pulling her back through it all again.

"I'm not sure what I can do for you, Mr. Ryan."

He smiled again, almost a nervous tic. The window dressing of an addict. Good enough reason as any to be on the streets all these years. Molly knew better than most that even the addictions were window dressing over the real problems.

"Name's Joe, ma'am. I never made it to Mister."

It was Molly's turn to nod. "Joe. I'm Molly, okay?"

Not Cap. Don't call me Cap and put that responsibility back on my shoulders again.

"Okay, Molly. Nobody'd talk to me, but I figured you'd understand, ya know? That kid doesn't know, he doesn't..."

Molly waited through a pause as Joe's attention strayed out the window toward the highway. Seeing something that wasn't there. Remembering so strongly that it took over.

"He doesn't what, Joe?"

Abruptly he was back. Grinning, embarrassed. "Homicide. That guy. I talked to him, but he just knows I live in a cave, ya know?"

Molly's smile was as dark as Joe's. "Yeah. I know."

Joe leaned forward, his hands suddenly still, his eyes suddenly focused, right on Molly. "Help me find out how she died," he said.

Molly hadn't wanted to have this discussion with his mother. She certainly didn't want to have it with Joe.

"I'm sorry, Joe," she began in her best bad-news-breaking voice. He never let her finish.

"No," he said, pointing a finger. "She didn't kill herself. She did not."

Molly was already shaking her head. "I was there. I saw the autopsy. Didn't your other sister or your mother talk to you about it?"

That damn near brought him to his feet. "You can't tell them," he pleaded, eyes hurt and so young, suddenly, even in that tired, wasted face. "Please promise me. They don't know."

That one took Molly a second. "They don't know what? That you're alive? Where you live?"

"They think... only Peg knew where I was. She went looking for me. Mom couldn't..."

He looked away, the cup trembling in his hands, ashamed and alone.

"I won't say anything to them," Molly promised. "I promise." As if she could ever think of any reason to flagellate herself by revisiting that house.

He settled a little back into his chair. Patted his coat and came up with a crumpled, almost empty pack of Marlboros. "Thanks. Can I..."

Molly dragged over the ashtray and fought the urge to ask for one for herself. Ten years, two months, three days and counting since she'd quit that one. Vietnam had given them all some very bad habits.

"If you didn't hear from your family," Molly said, "how did you know?"

Joe paused in lighting his cigarette with an old Zippo lighter that looked as if he'd brought it home from his tour with him. "You mean how does a guy who lives in a cave and eats out of a Dumpster keep up on current affairs?"

Molly damn near blushed. Then she saw the glint of humor way at the back of those ravaged eyes. "Something like that, yeah."

"Frank told me."

He went on lighting up. Molly gaped like a landed fish.

"Frank who?"

Although she already knew. It wouldn't have all been nearly weird enough if she hadn't been right.

Joe sucked in a first lungful of smoke and slipped the lighter away in an inside pocket. "Patterson."

She couldn't help it. "You know Frank Patterson?"

That humor again, only older and a little sadder. "We went to school together."

Which, translated into St. Louis priorities, meant they went to high school together. Any other school didn't count in the small world of St. Louis friendships and accomplishments. Frank Patterson, good Catholic overachiever, had gone to St. Louis University High,
the
school for Catholic boys. That meant that Joseph Ryan had, too. From SLUH to the sewers. Via Hue, of course.

"Of course you did."

"Frank said you don't like him, but that you'd help me."

"Well, he has the first part right."

The smoke seemed to be settling Joe down a little. His smiles were a little more sustained, his sentences almost complete. Molly wasn't sure whether that was better or worse.

"Cap... Molly. Believe me. I knew Peg better than anybody.
Anybody.
She would never have... she wouldn't kill herself. No matter what anybody says they saw. Or know... she just... wouldn't."

"Did you know she was on Prozac?"

He snorted. "So's everybody. So what? She wasn't suicidal."

"She had some other things with her," Molly tried again. "Things that might have made her less... careful."

He was shaking his head. "You didn't try anything stupid when you were her age?"

Molly almost laughed. "Sure. I enlisted."

That quickly, they shared a smile. A memory. A private hell most of the rest of the people in this building couldn't even conjure up. And once shared, put away again.

"You talked to her the last couple of weeks?" Molly asked as gently as she could. "Frank thinks you're wrong, you know."

For a second, Molly was afraid he was going to get violent. "Frank and I disagree," was all he said.

Molly didn't know what to do. She didn't know how to make him understand. Nobody wanted to think their loved ones would put a gun in their mouths. Nobody wanted the responsibility or the legacy. Especially, Molly thought, a soul so fragile he haunted the edges of society wrapped in rags and alcoholic hazes.

"How can you be so sure?" she asked, really facing him.

He faced her right back, and suddenly Molly saw that this fragile man with his tics and addictions recognized far more about her than her old captain's bars.

"Because we're the ones who dabble with suicide, Cap," he told her. "You and me. And Peg wasn't like us at all."

Chapter 9

Winnie found her in the bathroom trying to get her hands clean.

"Scrubbing for surgery?" the medical examiner asked, eyeing the effort involved.

Molly didn't even bother to look up. "Preventing the spread of scabies," she retorted.

Leaning an elegant hip against the wall, Winnie just nodded. "Minetta said you had a visitor. He a problem?"

Molly laughed. Unfortunately her laugh sounded as sane as Joseph Ryan's. "He's a homeless vet who can't believe his sister'd kill herself. So he figures another vet would be the perfect one to help him."

"Your very self."

"My"—she shut off the water with a snap—"very self."

"What are you going to do?"

"What do you mean, what am I going to do?" Molly echoed, even though her voice sounded shrill. "I'm not going to do anything. He's a guy who's so lost he's living in a cave down by the river and he tells me he knows more than we do. You think I'm going to listen to him? Would you allow me to listen to him?
You're
the one who bitched about the fact that the Ryan autopsy was just house-cleaning!"

"I did."

"Then why are you suddenly worried enough about it to ask what the hell I'm going to do?"

Winnie chose the most maddening moments to be unflappable and solemn. This seemed to be one. "I'm not worried about the victim," she said simply. "I'm worried about the investigator."

And then damn her if she didn't simply wait while Molly fell apart.

It wasn't much of a breakdown, as breakdowns went. A moment or two in the stalls, sweating and shaking and trying real hard to keep the tears at bay and her breakfast in place. Ten minutes circling the bathroom and trying to get her breath back, and all the while, Winnie simply stood by the door making sure nobody else joined in.

"Better?" the ME asked quietly when it was all over.

Molly pulled the wet paper towel from her eyes to see the quiet empathy in her boss's expression. "Yes," she said, even though she was still shaking. "Why?"

The smile grew a little wider. "When you're finished washing your hands, there's a couple gentlemen from the FBI in your office. Oh, and that intelligence team. Short on personality, aren't they?"

"Yeah, but don't piss 'em off."

"You up for it?"

Molly daubed a little more, shoved back the sudden memory of that quiet, certain statement.

We're the ones who dabble in suicide, Molly.

Son of a bitch. Where did he get off saying things like that?

Where?

"Molly?"

"Yeah." She threw the towels in the can and reached for the door handle. "What can they do to me, shave my hair short and send me to 'Nam?"

* * *

"Well, well, well," Molly greeted the team in the investigator's bull pen. "If it isn't Larry and Curly."

The two suits who'd been watching her pull weeds for two days got to their feet as she walked in the door. Jones and Martin, still verbose as ever, simply stayed on the couch. As death investigator on duty, the ever-lovely Vic Fellows tried to look unobtrusive at his desk while he listened to the police scanner and Molly's visitors at the same time. It looked like the day was going right to hell in a hand-basket. And all Molly could think of was that they were all too late. She wasn't interested in gambling anymore at all.

"You recognize agents Lopez and Hickman?" Jones asked.

Molly's smile was frosty. She wanted to be home. Hell, she wanted to be on a hot air balloon over New Mexico. She did not want to spend any time with these four, who looked like they were going to be as enjoyable as hemorrhoids on a hot day.

"Yes," she said, overcoming the desire to tell them just what she thought as she settled into the straight-backed chair at her desk. "I recognize Agents Lopez and Hickman. What can I do for them? Figure out the question mark yet, Vic?" she asked, for the benefit of both audiences.

Vic didn't have the sense to be chastised. "No. Wanna ask the FBI if they have any ideas?"

"You have any ideas?" Molly asked as everybody sat down and, over by the window, Vic leaned his chair back as if he'd just turned the TV to "Oprah." "Vic over there collects tattoos, and he had a guy who had a real interesting one. A question mark, right along the shaft of his penis. We can't figure out why."

Nobody had an answer. Molly wasn't sure why she was being so pissy, except for the fact that she could still see Joe Ryan's eyes.