Hybrid (9 page)

“Hey,” Phil yelled. Not very eloquent, but it managed to redirect the man’s attention away from George. Phil started to run towards them, but immediately tripped and fell face forward into foot-deep snow. He scrambled up, but the tall man was already striding across George’s lawn, leaving a trail of deep footprints. “What did you do?” Phil screamed after him.

“You are too late again, Phillip,” the man called back.

“Come back here,” Phil demanded, but the tall man continued across the yard, seemingly unhindered by the snow. He reached a Ford Taurus parked and idling at the curb just as Phil reached George. Phil bent over his neighbor as the Taurus pulled into the unplowed street. George was dead, his eyes squeezed closed, his face contorted in a mask of pain and horror. Phil reached to check for a pulse, but the blue, livid face told him he wouldn’t find one. He checked anyway. Nothing. He started CPR with no real hope, and after five minutes, gave up. He sat down next to George, breathing hard from the exertion and the pressure of what would have to come next. Patsy was inside, lost in the bliss of a deteriorating brain. Someone would have to explain to her that George, her husband of sixty-four years, would not be coming back inside to make her breakfast ever again. Unfortunately, she had enough of herself remaining to understand what that meant.

Two hours later, Phil was doing his best to console Patsy Van Der, while the police ran tape all around her front yard. Initially, there had been a considerable amount of resistance from the officers who responded to Phil’s call. George Van Der had obviously died of a heart attack, that was plain to all who had responded, and the opening of a murder investigation based on a neighbor’s report of a man standing over the body was a waste of their precious time—at least, until they found out that the neighbor was the coroner. At that point, the not-so-well-disguised grumbling focused on Phil and his eccentricities. Reluctantly, they sealed off the crime scene and began to process it. They worked slowly, waiting for the detective in charge to arrive and convince Rucker that this was a misapplication of their already strained resources. Phil was uninterested in their problems. He sat with Patsy, waiting for her son to arrive so he could finally get to work.

“I don’t think I have enough eggs for all these nice people, Phil. Would you mind running down to the store and getting a dozen more?” Patsy asked. She had retreated into her mind, refusing to believe that George was gone.

“Why don’t we wait for Patrick to get here,” Phil answered, relieved for the moment that she had stopped asking about George. Dementia was easier to deal with than grief.

A large black man opened the front door and stomped snow off his shoes. The officer at the door immediately straightened, accepted the man’s wet overcoat, and directed him to the couch. The sudden flurry of activity caught Patsy’s attention, and she watched as he approached.

“Are you with the police, young man?” she asked in a soft, grandmotherly voice.

“Yes, ma’am, I am. I am Detective Rodney Patton. I’m here to find out what happened to your husband.”

Phil stiffened, waiting for Patsy to break down again. As far as he was concerned, Patsy was in a good place—cooperative and unaware.

“I appreciate that, Detective,” she said sadly. She was lucid again, and Phil desperately wished that her son Patrick would get there.

“Can I ask you if your husband had any medical conditions, heart disease, blood pressure problems, anything?” He had the well-practiced voice of a veteran cop, and he directed all his attention to Patsy, but it was clear that he was also talking to Phil.

“He had a heart attack about twenty years ago, but he’d been fine since. His blood sugar was a little elevated, but he didn’t have to take any medications for it.” She sounded like the Patsy Phil had grown up with.

“I don’t mean to leave you alone, so I’m going to ask this officer to stay with you until your son arrives.” Patton motioned the uniformed policeman to sit next to Patsy. “In the meantime, I need to borrow Dr. Rucker.” He spoke directly to Patsy, not even acknowledging Phil.

“Oh, you mean Phillip,” she exclaimed with a bright smile. Her mind had gone away again.

“Yes, I need Phillip for a moment,” he stressed the name, but the insult was lost on Phil.

“Go with this nice young man, dear, and when you’re finished, don’t forget my eggs.” She gave Phil a smile.

Phil followed the huge man into the kitchen. At six feet two, he was no taller than Phil, but he was very close to twice his weight, somewhere in excess of four hundred pounds. Two uniformed officers immediately found their way out of the kitchen as Patton approached.

“Dr. Rucker, I’ve been meaning to introduce myself since I arrived in Colorado Springs three months ago, but as you know, things have been somewhat busy.”

The words were cordial enough, but Phil sensed his underlying frustration.

“I appreciate that, Detective, and your attempt at being friendly, but you’re wasting your time. I will not be persuaded to drop this,” Phil said without emphasis.

Patton stared at him, inhaling giant gulps of air. For a moment, Phil thought that Patton was trying to pressure him by sucking up all the air in the room. He almost smiled at that absurdity.

“You told the officers that you saw a tall, dark man standing over the deceased, and that he simply strolled away after you yelled at him.” All attempts at being friendly were gone. “Further, you saw this same man yesterday assault a woman and then disappear down an empty street.”

“That’s correct,” Phil said simply.

“Doctor, please try and look at this from my perspective. Mr. Van Der was eighty-six. He had a history of heart disease, and he was clearing ten inches of snow with a snowblower that was designed for no more than six. As I see it, your neighbor suffered another heart attack, and this man just happened to be driving by as Mr. Van Der collapsed. I don’t see a crime here.” His voice had a subtle, manipulative undercurrent.

Phil would not be moved. “That is one possibility, Detective, but it happens to be the most expedient possibility. Experience has taught me that the most expedient possibility is rarely the correct one.”

“Experience has taught me that the simplest explanation is usually the correct one,” Patton fired back with a touch of anger.

“But not always. Otherwise, we wouldn’t need detectives,” Phil said just as quickly.

“I can’t authorize this. I will not pull people off of legitimate investigations to prove that Mr. Van Der died of natural causes.” His voice was now adamant.

Phil hesitated. They both knew that he had the legal authority to compel Patton to do whatever he wanted. Patton’s defiance was curious, and Phil was intrigued by it. But Phil was never intrigued by the motivations of others. The realization played across Phil’s mind, but didn’t change it.

A part of him registered the arrival of Patrick Van Der. “You will continue to investigate this as a crime until you are told otherwise, Detective,” Phil said without emotion. He had no desire to continue this discussion, or to share the grief of the Van Ders’ only child. He retrieved his coat from the back of a kitchen chair and left through the back door.

Phil trudged through the snow to his back door. Several of the police stopped what they were doing and stared, hoping he would fall.

Regency Care Center was half acute-care hospital and half rehabilitation center. Emily Larson didn’t feel she needed either and Amanda found her aunt outside walking in the cool morning air, a heavy coat covering a hospital gown. Amanda quickly parked her car and hurried over to her aunt.

“What are you doing out here?” Amanda asked coming up behind her.

“What are you doing here?” Emily answered back.

“You know you’re not supposed to be out here, and why aren’t you using the cane?”

“The only way they’ll let me out of here is if I can walk, so I’m walking.”

Amanda smiled for the first time in days. Emily was a true force of nature; on the surface, she was a carbon copy of her brother: rude, loud, and opinionated. But whereas he justified his behavior with some fanciful notion of inherent superiority, Emily had earned the right to be loud and opinionated. She had been a sociology professor for more than four decades, and at the center of every academic circle that she had ever found herself within. Even her critics—and she had quite a few—listened respectfully when she spoke. She championed the unpopular view that individuals had become too reliant upon society for their welfare, and now, here she was in subfreezing temperatures living her philosophy. “Aunt Em, it’s cold out here, let’s go inside at least.”

“Might as well, no one has taken the time to properly clear the ice off of these damn sidewalks, and in front of a hospital no less,” Emily said while wheeling around and heading back to the door, a four-post cane tucked firmly under her arm. The pair silently walked back to Emily’s hospital room; along the way, she didn’t spare any of the nurses or aides a good long glare.

“All they do at night is laugh and talk on their cell phones . . .” Emily noticed the concern on her niece’s face. “Why are you here, Amanda?” Her voice became serious, her frustration over petty matters forgotten.

“I’m going back to Colorado Springs.”

“Why?” Emily asked sharply.

“Greg called me a little over a week ago.” Amanda hesitated; Emily knew about her infection and some of the subsequent events, but she didn’t know everything. Amanda had hidden the most important consequence of her infection because she didn’t know how Emily would react. “I’m fairly certain that a version of the virus that I contracted in Honduras has found its way to Colorado Springs.” The one thing Amanda did know about Emily was that she was an excellent intellectual sounding board; she would examine Amanda‘s reasoning and logic and dispassionately pass judgment.

“The flu that everyone is talking about; don’t we have a health department to deal with that?” Emily studied Amanda. ”Are you planning on turning yourself in? Are you going to sacrifice your freedom to help them? Or is it that you are responsible?”

“I’m not responsible, and I’m not really sure what I’m going to do.” Amanda said weakly.

“Then why are you going?” Emily waited for an answer, but only silence filled the room. “Amanda, we’ve never discussed this because you’ve never wanted to, but now the time has come when we have to. Something happened to you in Honduras; when you came back, you were a different person. I can only imagine what you went through down there, but it doesn’t explain everything. It doesn’t explain what you’ve become.”

“No, it doesn’t.” Amanda began to fidget with the straps of her purse.

“I think I have a right to know,” Emily said firmly.

Four years after her father died, Amanda’s mother was diagnosed with lung cancer. She didn’t put up much of a fight—it wasn’t her style—and mercifully the end came quickly. Amanda was thirteen; her brother William was turning eighteen, on his way to college, and didn’t require a guardian. Amanda was shipped off to Tulsa, Oklahoma, where she would become the burden of her only surviving relative.

Amanda met her Aunt Emily for the first time at her mother’s grave site. Her world had been turned inside out. Her mother was gone; her brother was gone; the three-bedroom apartment that she had called home for three years was gone. Even her bed was gone, sold to some stranger for fiftyfive dollars. All that she had in the world fit into two small suitcases, and, with the exception of her older brother, no one in the world cared. She was nothing more than a “disposition issue,” as one social worker had phrased it. Aunt Emily’s disposition issue, to be exact.

“They wanted to put you into foster care, and I’ll admit I thought long and hard about it,” Emily said as the pair left the grave site. “After all, what’s the difference if you live with a family you’ve never met or an aunt you don’t know? If there had been a reasonable chance of you being adopted, I would have left you here. At least you’d still be close to your brother and friends, but no one adopts thirteen-year-old girls, at least not for the right reasons. So, I guess we’re stuck with each other.” Emily made no attempt at hiding her emotions from her new charge. “I’m not your mother, God rest her soul, and I’m nothing like your father. He may have been my brother, but the man never worked a hard day in his life, and it showed in what he made of himself. I don’t mean to speak ill of the dead, but you are half him, and if you think you’ll skate by on good looks alone, you’re in for a rude awakening. Only with an education can you hope to escape your family’s legacy of unrealized potential. They don’t give scholarships for being pretty.”

Her Aunt’s ground rules clearly established, Amanda was ushered into the car by large rough hands; before the door closed, she waved to her brother; tears streamed down both their cheeks.

“Do you think that was the most appropriate way of introducing yourself?” Amanda challenged her Aunt as the car pulled away.

“I make no apologies for how I communicate,” returned Emily.

“It’s unworthy for an educated person to speak with complete disregard for another’s emotional state. It’s an abdication of personal responsibility,” Amanda fired back, her grief now being focused into anger.