Authors: Lisa Scottoline
27
TH FLOOR
. Suddenly a shot rang out. Mary flinched and stumbled down the stair and past the red door. She didn’t know at first if she’d been hit. She didn’t know where the shot had come from or where it had gone.
26
TH FLOOR
. She glanced at her arms, whole in an intact suit. She was fine. He had missed. She felt herself laugh, hysterical with relief and terror as she flew down the stairs. Out of breath, in pain. Weeping with fright.
25
TH FLOOR
. She was almost there! She pitched down the stair and stumbled as her bloodied leg buckled under her.
“Help!” she shouted as she went down, but the siren swallowed her cry. She hung on the steel banister and almost swooned when she saw fresh blood staining her suit on her right side, near her hip. Videon had shot her in the side. He hadn’t missed; she’d been too adrenalized to feel it. Jesus, God.
She looked up in the dim stairwell. Videon was scurrying down the stair, only a floor up. Terror paralyzed her but she hoisted herself to her feet. Dots popped before her eyes. She couldn’t see but she started to run. She must be losing blood pressure. She kept her bloodied hand on the banister as she ran past the fire door and down, down, down.
24
TH FLOOR
. It was getting darker. Was it getting darker? Was she going the right way? She was in such pain. Was it worth it? She ran down the stairs, at least she thought she was running.
“Help!” she screamed, but even she couldn’t hear it over the din. She fell again, in the dark, and her hand slipped free of the banister. She didn’t have the strength to get up. The red door was right there but she couldn’t make it. Everything hurt so much. She was drowning in the sound of a siren that hadn’t brought help.
Her eyes fluttered closed as a dark figure stood above her. The last sound Mary heard was the sickening
crak
of a gunshot.
Brinkley stood on the concrete landing of the fire stair, behind a smoking gun. He’d taken a single shot at the man about to shoot Mary, and Brinkley’s bullet had found its target.
“Oh!” the man screamed, as his hand exploded. He doubled over, howling, and his gun clattered to the concrete stair.
“Freeze!” Brinkley shouted. He ran the few steps between them, collared the man by the scruff of his neck, and kicked his gun over the stairwell. “Get your face on the floor!” he ordered, and the man obeyed, moaning like a little girl.
Brinkley didn’t know who the asshole was but he kept his aim on him as he rushed to Mary’s side and felt her neck for a pulse. Blood soaked her suit and blanketed her leg. Her eyes were closed. Her skin was too pale.
“Mary, wake up!” he called to her, desperate to keep her conscious. He couldn’t let her die. He couldn’t do that to her parents. He couldn’t explain why, but the DiNunzio family mattered to him. He counted his blessings that he’d guessed she’d go to Tribe, following the connection from Trevor to Whittier, and that her friend Judy had bailed him out in time.
“Mary! Wake up, Mary!” he called again, his fingertips on her neck, trembling too much to feel a pulse. He was about to lift her when a security guard burst through the fire door, followed by a group of uniformed paramedics. He couldn’t explain that either and he didn’t try. “She needs help!” Brinkley shouted.
But the paramedics took one look at Mary and didn’t need to be told.
It was the wee hours and the hospital cafeteria was practically empty. Brinkley slid his too-small turquoise tray along the stainless steel runners and went through the line, numb with fatigue and tension. He picked up four triangles of prepackaged tuna sandwiches for himself and the DiNunzio family, who were upstairs in the intensive care waiting room. He grabbed four Styrofoam cups and filled them with hot coffee from a black-handled spout. By the fourth cup he was yanking hard on the handle to drain the last of the coffee, which trickled through dotted with grinds.
“You got more coffee?” he shouted, even though there was nobody behind the counter except posters of dancing apples, happy peas ringing a carrot maypole, and a fluffy head of lettuce with a manic grin. None of the healthy food bore any resemblance to the processed crap for sale, and if Brinkley had been in any kind of mood, he would have laughed at the irony. But he couldn’t, not with Mary still in surgery and the DiNunzios so upset. Brinkley couldn’t figure out if they had adopted him or it was the other way around, but as unlikely as it was being a tall black detective in a short Italian family, Brinkley found himself liking it. Even tonight, with Mary.
He grabbed a handful of Half-and-Half cups from a bowl of melted ice and sugar packets from a basket, then played mix-and-match with the coffee lids, wondering how smart you had to be to distinguish a large lid from a medium. Shit. He eventually lucked out and pressed the plastic lids onto the coffee cups, then got to the end of the line and handed a twenty to the girl who finally showed up to take his money, then left with only her attitude. Brinkley packed the stuff into bags himself and wedged the cups carefully into a cardboard carrier, and when he was leaving, stopped, because he recognized a man in a suit, hunched over his own cup of coffee.
Dwight Davis. Boy Wonder. The D.A.’s rep tie was undone and his oxford shirt wrinkled under his suit jacket. There was no fresh legal pad in sight, and Davis’s head was bent, his eyes bloodshot and his gaunt runner’s cheeks even more sunken than usual. The man struck Brinkley instantly as a burnout case, though the detective couldn’t scrape together any sympathy for the prosecutor.
“What are you doin’ here?” Brinkley demanded, standing over the turquoise table, and Davis finally looked up.
“Reg. She the same?”
Brinkley was so surprised, he couldn’t answer. Was Davis asking about Mary? Was that why he was here?
“That’s two hours she’s been in surgery,” Davis said, and Brinkley felt a knot of anger tighten in his chest.
“Who told you that?”
“How do I know? I keep calling the desk, different nurses answer, and they tell me.”
“They’re not supposed to do that.” Brinkley’s tone stayed calm but he was shouting inside.
“Huh?”
“They’re not supposed to tell you.” Brinkley wanted to deck the man, but he tried to remember himself. He was a professional. They needed him upstairs. He had the tuna sandwiches, cream cups, and the cardboard carrier.
“You’re right, Reg. They’re not supposed to tell. I stipulate to that. Okay?”
“No. Why do they?”
“Jesus, Reg!” Davis’s voice sounded hoarse. “I tell ’em Masterson wants to know and they tell me. What’s the friggin’ difference?”
“It makes a difference. You’re not immediate family.”
“I’m the
D.A.
”
“So what? That don’t matter. They shouldn’t tell you.” Brinkley could barely control himself. Why did it bother him so much? Then he knew. “Because you don’t have a right to know.”
Davis leaned back in his plastic bucket chair. “You’re wrong, Reg. I have more of a right to know than anybody.”
“How the fuck is that?”
“I put her there.”
Since Brinkley could neither deny Davis’s guilt nor take pleasure in it, he left the man with it and walked away.
A somber-faced Brinkley shifted uncomfortably on the wooden dais, his arms linked behind his back, standing next to Kovich. He blinked against the harsh flashes from the Hasselblads and avoided the black lenses of the video cameras pointed at him. He hadn’t slept the rest of last night and had barely had enough time to change clothes for this morning press conference, which was a total waste of time. He’d much rather be with the DiNunzios, who needed him, but he was on orders.
Microphones sprouted from the podium at the center of the dais, their thick black stems craned toward Captain Walsh. The Cap was wearing his dress uniform, since this was official, and to his left stood Dwight Davis. Davis wouldn’t even look at Brinkley, which was fine with him.
Captain Walsh raised his hands to settle the reporters packing the large press room. “Okay, people,” he said, when they had quieted, “we’d like to make a short statement about recent events in the Newlin case. Bottom line, we’ve dropped all charges against Jack Newlin. We have charged Mr. Marc Videon for the murder of Honor Newlin and the murder of Mr. William Whittier.” Walsh nodded once, as if to punctuate his speech. “We’ll take a few quick questions at this time.” The reporters shouted and waved at once, but the Cap pointed at a woman reporter in the front row. “You,” he said.
“Captain Walsh, did the police department really charge the wrong man? And if so, how did that happen?”
“No two ways about it, we made a horrendous mistake. We accepted Newlin’s confession and we shouldn’t have. The credit for correcting this mistake goes to our own Detective Reginald Brinkley, of Homicide.” Walsh gestured to Brinkley, who looked immediately down at his loafers. He had changed them at home. His sneakers had been stained with Mary’s blood.
Mary
. He bit his lip.
Walsh continued, “I would also like to give credit to someone who is not here with us today, Mary DiNunzio, Mr. Newlin’s attorney. Next question?” He pointed again. “You, John.”
“This is for Dwight Davis,” the older reporter said. “Mr. Davis, you thought the Commonwealth’s case was so strong that you announced earlier this week you would not offer Mr. Newlin a plea bargain. How do you square that with his ultimate innocence?”
Davis edged forward to take the podium. “John, I have to agree with Captain Walsh,” he began, and Brinkley looked up, listening. He’d never heard a D.A. admit he was wrong and couldn’t believe he was about to hear it from Davis, in front of everyone. It was one thing to ’fess up in a hospital cafeteria and another to do it in public. “My prosecution of Mr. Newlin was a complete miscarriage of justice, and the fault is entirely mine. I am announcing effective today my resignation from the Office of the District Attorney.”
Brinkley looked over, stunned. Davis had changed his view of lawyers in one shot. Almost.
“I was overzealous in this case and I think it’s time for me to take a breather. Beyond that, I have no further comment.” Davis stepped away from the podium, as strobe lights flashed like gunfire.
The reporters immediately began shouting again, and Captain Walsh picked one in the back of the room. “You have the last question, Bill.”
“Thank you, sir,” the reporter said. “What’s the latest on DiNunzio’s condition?”
Sunlight filtered through oak trees in full leaf, and Jack felt the late-summer sun on his shoulders through the worn cotton of his oxford shirt. He crossed his legs on the park bench, gazing across Logan Square at the Four Seasons Hotel. In one hand he held the red tape leash of a fuzzy golden retriever puppy, who was chewing happily on the looped shoelace of Jack’s sneaker. The traffic around the hotel flowed steadily on this Saturday afternoon, affording him and his partner on the bench, Lou Jacobs, a decent view of the restaurant.
“I remember the day I was here, with Mary,” Lou was saying. His eyes looked flinty in the sun, and his tanned hands rested on the pressed crease of his khaki pants. His white polo shirt was a neat concession to Philadelphia’s humidity. “It was right after she met you, on the case. She was tellin’ me about the fountain.”
“Swann Fountain?” Jack looked behind him. The fountain spurted and bubbled at the center of the cobblestone plaza, sending graceful arcs of frothy water into the circular pool and misting the air with cooling droplets. “What about the fountain?”
“She liked it.”
“I can see why.” Jack smiled at the sight. Two little boys played in the fountain in front of an indulgent mother, squealing with each cold splash. At the sound, the puppy’s neck swiveled and his wavy-haired ears lifted to attention. Jack breathed in the fresh smells of the greenery and the faintly chlorinated scent of the fountain water. He had so much to be grateful for and so much to regret. “Tell me what she liked about it. Do you remember?”
“Sure. The statues around the fountain are a man, a woman, and a young girl. See?” Lou’s eyes remained fixed on the hotel. Filaments of his silvery hair caught a passing breeze. “Mary said it reminded her of you, your wife, and your daughter.”
“She said that?” Jack felt touched that Mary had been thinking of him even then. He had been thinking of her that early, too, but he had been lonelier than she, he just hadn’t known it. “What’s going on now?” he asked, turning to the hotel.
“Hold on.” Lou raised the binoculars to his eyes and aimed them at the hotel restaurant. The baby shower, taking place two months after the baby had arrived, was going on inside, and through the window he could see the hen party was breaking up. “Finally they stopped yapping.”