Live to Tell (45 page)

I realize for the first time that he’s holding a large black gadget between his hands. It looks like a gun, but not really. “What’s that?” I ask.

He looks around. Still no nurses in sight. “Expediency,” he says.

He points it at me. I feel a sudden electric jolt, and then …

CHAPTER
THIRTY-SIX

D.D. and Alex bypassed the elevators in favor of the stairs. They needed to stretch their legs, and the empty stairwell was excellent for talking.

“What d’you think?” she asked Alex the moment the heavy fire door closed behind them.

“About Gym Coach Greg?”

“About all of them. We have Nurse Danielle, whose family history dovetails with the crimes, as well as having a personal connection to both Lucy and Lightfoot.”

“Lightfoot?”

“He was into her, even if she wasn’t into him.”

Alex considered this as they descended the first flight of stairs. “Meaning, if someone were targeting Danielle, the methodology of the first two crimes and the targets of the second two crimes would make sense.”

“Which also points the finger at Gym Coach Greg, who has motive.”

“Unrequited love.”

“Exactly. Worships Danielle for years, can’t even get dinner with
her, though she accepts Lightfoot’s invite. He has opportunity—knows the Harringtons, knows the Laraquette-Solis family. He was on duty the night Lucy disappeared, and working tonight when someone spiked Lightfoot’s drink.”

“He claims to have an alibi for the Harringtons’ murders.”

“An alibi not easy to verify, given that the mother has been stabbed and the child’s psycho.”

“Attack gone awry?” Alex mused.

“What d’you mean?”

“The son stabbed the mother. Sounds a bit like our first two crime scenes.”

D.D. shook her head. “Too small. This family is just a mother and child. No father figure, and in the first two attacks, the father figure mattered. That’s who had to be posed just so. The crimes had to reflect on the fathers.”

“Dads are evil.”

“At least the ones who kill their families.”

Alex seemed to accept this. “Problem is, Lightfoot knew the families, too. So now we have two suspects to consider. Both of whom have lied to us.”

“Lightfoot told us he didn’t know Tika Solis, when he did.”

“And Greg said he’d never met Tika’s family, when he had.”

“Actually,” D.D. pointed out, “Greg never said he hadn’t met the family. He just said they didn’t visit the ward.”

Alex gave her a look. “You’re letting him off on a technicality? Remind me to wear more tight-fitting T-shirts and speak in a baritone.”

D.D. rolled her eyes. “Don’t get me wrong—Gym Coach still makes the most sense. After all, Lightfoot wasn’t working the night Lucy was hanged. Plus, there’s the matter of him being poisoned.”

Alex nodded. “Kind of wonder,” he said as they rounded the fifth-floor landing. “First we had no links between the families, now we have all kinds: the unit, an MC/respite worker, and the local spiritual healer. Begs the question, who else don’t we know about? Mentally ill kids appears to be a small and incestuous world. So maybe there are other experts—a psychiatrist, a therapist, a respite worker, a nurse?”

“Meaning we should check in with Phil and Neil: Phil, who’s
running the background reports, and Neil, who’s making the list of all the employees who regularly visit the unit. Put those two items together …”

“See who else shakes out.”

D.D. liked it. They had four more flights to go, so she worked her cell phone.

She got Phil on the first ring. He sounded tired and hungry. Apparently, back at the ranch, they hadn’t gotten around to take-out pizza. Then again, HQ hadn’t dealt with a bunch of kids threatening to gouge out eyeballs. Win some, lose some.

So far, Phil had covered the basics: DMV records, employment history, and various criminal databases. Running the list of employees that Karen had supplied, Phil could report that no one had any outstanding warrants or history of arrest. Ed, the burly MC, liked to speed, and Danielle needed to clean up a few parking tickets. Greg, on the other hand, was clean as a whistle. D.D. supplied the MC’s sordid family history. Phil promised to dig deeper into Greg and his sister’s past.

“Though, by the sound of it, Sally was a juvenile and it never went to trial, so not sure what I’ll find in the system,” Phil warned.

“Let’s start with verifying that Sally exists, that her parents were poisoned with strychnine, and that her current residence is costing Greg an extra twenty grand a year.”

“That I can do.” D.D. could practically hear Phil cracking his knuckles over the phone lines. He loved a good data search.

“Have you heard from Neil? How’s he coming with the list of other hospital employees, contractors, etc.?” D.D. asked.

“He turned in a preliminary list of janitors, food service workers, deliverymen, and a few contractors an hour ago. Still working on those, though one name did jump out—the healer, Andrew Lightfoot. Guessing Lightfoot’s not a real name, because it’s not in the system.”

D.D. glanced at Alex, then remembered. “He mentioned in the first interview that he reverted to an old family name. Sounded better for business.”

“Well, if you want the skinny, get me better info.”

“Deal.” D.D. snapped her phone shut, turned to Alex. “More questions for Lightfoot,” she reported. “Starting with his real last name.”

Which shouldn’t have been too hard, except when they reached the main ward of the hospital, Lightfoot had disappeared.

CHAPTER
THIRTY-SEVEN

DANIELLE

“Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked Greg.

“Why didn’t you ever ask?” he replied.

We were huddled at the interrogation table, confined to the classroom, under another detective’s watchful eye. The nanny detective was on the other side of the room, eating pizza and reading files. That gave us the illusion of privacy, though he probably had crack hearing and was writing down every word we said.

“I would’ve understood,” I said. I sounded petulant, even to me. Greg’s secrets angered me. I was the one with baggage. He was supposed to be an open book. Now I had to face the fact that Greg had his own tragic past, and was still a better-adjusted person than me.

Greg regarded me thoughtfully. “Why?”

“How can you even ask? Your family history, my family history. You could have told me about your sister. I would’ve understood!”

“Why?” he asked again. “For me to presume to know what you’re feeling, for you to presume to know what I’m feeling …” He shrugged.
“Isn’t there some quote: ‘All happy families are alike, but each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way’?”

“Anna Karenina
. Only line of the book I read. But still …” I sat back, hands tucked in my front pockets, still scowling. “Most people know who their families were, or
what
their families were. But we don’t. Our family history remains a question mark. Was your father that bad or was your sister that ill? Was my father that bad or did the drinking make him that ill? We don’t know. We’ll never know. And that kind of not knowing really sucks.”

“I miss my parents,” Greg said after a moment. “My dad was a good dad to me. My mom was a good mom. I wish they could see me now. I wish they could know that at least one of their kids got it right.”

I nodded. I thought that, too, the few times I allowed myself to think of my family. Would my mom be proud of me? Would Natalie and Johnny appreciate my work with troubled kids? Maybe, when I’d graduated from the nursing program, they would’ve cheered for me. And maybe, when I saw success with my first disturbed child, they would’ve liked to hear my stories from work.

I should’ve gone to dinner with Greg. He was a good person. The decent guy who didn’t get the girl, because most girls, including me, were stupid about things like that.

“I don’t want you feeling sorry for me,” he was saying now, voice grim. “I don’t need your pity.”

“Not what I was thinking.”

“I mean, look at the kids here. Most of them don’t have fathers. Most of them don’t have involved caretakers of any kind. That’s life. If we expect
them
to get over it,
we
can, too.”

“You should come to my place,” I said. “In two weeks. I’ll be saner then. The dust will have settled on this mess. I’ll fix you dinner.”

Greg blinked. Paused. Blinked again. “Your place?”

“I don’t have roommates. And we have unfinished business.”

His mouth formed a soundless
Oh
. It made me feel better about things. But then Greg narrowed his gaze, studying me intently.

“Think you’ll really be saner?” he asked. “Think the dust really will have settled?”

“Hope so.”

“Why don’t you let go, Danielle? It’s been decades for you and, speaking strictly as a friend, each anniversary you get worse, not better. Is it that you ask too many questions, or not enough?”

“I don’t know. Maybe …” I sighed. The nanny detective still seemed preoccupied. What the hell. I bent my head closer to Greg’s and whispered: “For the longest time, I didn’t ask any questions. I was angry and content to stay that way. But this time around … I’ve starting thinking about that night. Remembering. I was the one who brought my father’s gun to my parents’ room. I was fed up. My dad was … doing things. I wanted it to stop. My mother forced me to give her the gun. She said she’d take care of things. She promised me.

“Next thing I remember is my father standing in the doorway, blowing out his brains. I always thought it was my fault. I had confessed to my mother. She had confronted my father. He had gone berserk. Had to be my fault, right? But now … I don’t know. My aunt says there were problems in the marriage, things that had nothing to do with me. And I’d swear the clock read ten twenty-three when I left my parents’ room. The police didn’t arrive until one a.m. That’s two and a half hours later. What happened? My parents fought? My mother confessed to an affair, tried to kick him out? Two and a half hours is a long time. Two and half hours …”

I shook my head, confused. “I always thought the central question of my life was whether my father spared me because he loved me that much, or because he hated me that much. Now I wonder if my entire life doesn’t boil down to two and a half hours when I was hiding under the covers of my bed.”

“Danielle—” Greg began.

“Remember the deal: no pity.”

“And dinner in two weeks.”

“Yeah, dinner in two weeks. No roommates.”

He grinned. It eased the tightness in my chest, made me want to touch the bruise I’d left on his jaw.

“I’m not good girlfriend material,” I reminded him. I heard the
edge in my voice. “I’m gonna try. It’s time to forgive. Time to forget. But this is new territory for me. I’m better at being angry.”

“Danielle—”

“My family’s dead. I’m still alive. I need start doing something with that.”

“Are you done?”

“Okay.”

“Danielle, how long have we known each other?”

“Years.”

“Five, to be exact. I’ve only been asking you out for the past two. You can be angry, Danielle. It’s nothing I haven’t seen. And you can be sad, because it’s nothing I won’t understand. And if you want to learn to forgive and forget, I’m happy to help with that, too. Maybe I’ll even learn something along the way. But you don’t have to change, Danielle. Not for me.”

“You’re a brave man.”

He smiled. “Nah, but I’m solid. Just am. And solid’s not glamorous and it’s not for every girl. But I’m hoping it will be enough for you.”

“I’ve never done solid. For me, solid will be glamorous.”

“So two weeks—” Greg began, then stopped. He sat up, sniffed the air. “Do you smell smoke?”

I paused, sniffed. At first, I smelled only cheese and pepperoni, but then … “Yeah, I do.”

Suddenly, the smoke alarm split the air. I covered my ears, pushing back the chair.

Greg was already climbing to his feet, the detective, as well.

“You two, stay put—” the detective began.

Greg cut him off. “Not a chance. After that episode earlier this evening, most of these kids are heavily medicated. They’re not walking out of here. We’ll have to carry them.”

Greg headed for the door, placing his hand against it. “Cool to the touch,” he reported. He flung it open. Tendrils of smoke were wafting down the hall and we could hear the rapid patter of running feet.

Definitely not a drill. Greg and I looked at the cop. The cop looked back at us.

“First kid you see,” I informed the detective, “grab him or her and get down the stairs. Fourteen kids to go, and we’ll be right behind you.”

We got to work.

Karen led the charge. We found her positioned before the ward’s front doors, checklist in hand, wire-rimmed glasses askew on the tip of her nose. I still couldn’t see the cause of the smoke or feel any heat, but the hallway was noticeably hazy, smoke curling around Karen’s feet as she read off each child’s name in a firm, tight voice.

Ed stood nearby, preparing to take the first group of kids, a groggy trio Cecille was herding down the hall. She had them walking single file, their hand on the shoulder of the child in front of them, just as we’d practiced. The kids, still wearing pajamas, stumbled along, too tired to do anything other than what they were told.