Sara Paretsky - V.I. Warshawski 08 (50 page)

The
restaurant had a pay phone by the entrance. While Murray tried getting the
waiter to disgorge a bill I called my answering service. They told me to check
in with the Streeter brothers as soon as possible.

I got
Tim Streeter out of bed. “V.I. No, no—I’m glad you woke me up. We got bounced
from the hospital.”

“What
happened?” I demanded sharply. “I thought Ellen Higgins had agreed Emily needed
some protection.”

“A
combination of Fabian and the night shift. During the day I was cool because
Nurse Higgins let me park a chair in the hall. When Emily woke up in the late
afternoon I went in and introduced myself, brought her brothers in to see her,
and got a rap going. Your note helped, by the way: she was wary, but figured if
I was with you I was cool.

“Anyway,
when the night staff came on duty they made me retreat to the waiting area.
Higgins explained the story to them but they didn’t totally buy.

And
after Fabian showed up everything unraveled anyway.

“See,
he shows up at six-thirty with this older dude—white hair, black eyebrows,
suit. They confer with the charge nurse, who calls a doctor. And pretty soon
all four of them go into Emily’s room. One of the other nurses says the guy
with the eyebrows is a private headshrinker Fabian’s dug up—Mort Zeitner.” He
spelled it for me. “So I go in to make sure the kid knows she’s got the right
to refuse medication or whatever else they want to do to her.”

Murray
and the waiter showed up next to me making signs that the restaurant was
closing and I should get off the phone. I turned my back on them and hunched
into the receiver.

“And
then what?” I asked. “Fabian blew sky-high?”

“Yeah,”
Tim said. “Maybe I should have waited in the hall, but it looked like four
against one. Fabian is in there saying she has to talk to Zeitner about her
mother’s death and I tell her she has the right to remain silent, and Fabian
wants to know who the fuck I am, and Emily starts howling and demands to see
you, and then Fabian really goes totally around the bend. And the next thing I
know three hospital security guards are showing me the gate.”

“Shit!”
My stomach churned with worry. “She’s been alone since six-thirty?”

“Not
quite that bad. It was after seven by the time they booted me. I got Tom, who managed
to hang out in the waiting room until eight-thirty, at which point the
chargenurse got suspicious. We thought about covering the entrances, but for
one thing there are too many, and for another, we didn’t know who we were
looking for. Fabian and Zeitner left around eight. If you have any ideas, Tom
and I will go back down there. We feel terrible letting you down like this.”

My
shoulders sagged. “I’m fresh out of ideas. I’m north now, heading south.

I’ll
stop at the hospital and have a word with the night ward head. Lila Dantry, is
it?”

“Yeah,
but don’t expect a parade and flowers when you introduce yourself.”

I
hung up and plunged outside, completely oblivious of Murray, who caught up with
me at the corner of Broadway.

“Where
are you off to so fast?” he demanded, panting. “You trying to stiff me? You owe
me eight bucks for dinner.”

As
the light changed I pulled some singles from my pocket and handed them to him.
“You ate most of my food. You can have four.”

He
hurried into the intersection after me, grabbing my shoulder. “If you’ve come
up with an idea you’d better share it—you owe me something for that routine at
the Grand Guignol tonight.”

“Right
now I’m more worried about Emily Messenger. I posted a guard at her room, but
Fabian busted it up. Maybe it would be better if Finchley did arrest her: at
least that way I’d know she was safe from the real murderer.”

“You’re
taking for granted that she didn’t kill her mother.”

We
had reached the Grand Guignol, where we’d left our cars. I paused with my hand
on my door to look him in the eye. “I believe her story, yes. It had a sort of
authentic ring to it. If—unlike the cops—you’d try to believe that I’m a
reliable judge of what I hear, I’d forgive you all your recent transgressions.
I might even give you the other four bucks for my food.”

The
noise of my engine turning over drowned out most of Murray’s sarcastic
response. I made a dramatic U, flaring exhaust across him.

It
was almost midnight on my dashboard clock. Conrad would be off duty soon; maybe
he could talk Terry into posting a police guard at Emily’s room.

I
didn’t like the possibilities for her, near term. If Terry arrested her it
might protect her from the murderer: he might feel his best defense was having
someone else stand trial. But the trauma of arrest was something she didn’t
need, poor little mouse. And whether they arrested her or not, in a day or two
she would be released back to Fabian’s custody.

I
swooped around a double-parked newspaper van and made the turn onto Lake Shore
Drive. So even if I could look after her tonight it wouldn’t solve the problem
of protecting her from Fabian, which I had promised.

The
thought of that promise reminded me of another I’d made recently—to pick up Mr.
Contreras from his daughter’s in Elk Grove Village Thursday morning. As I
waited for the light at Lake Shore Drive I punched the steering wheel in
irritation. He needed to go in daily for rabies shots. If I brought him home
would I have time to look after him?

I
exited at Chicago and found a parking place on the street. Anxiety made me
sprint the two blocks to the hospital. Waiting for the elevator I drummed my
fingers on a nearby planter. When it came I shared the ride with a mother whose
child was having emergency surgery on a heart valve.

I
followed her to a waiting area halfway down the hall where other parents of
critically ill children were keeping an anxious vigil. I could just make out
the door to Emily’s room from a pay phone on one wall. I called Conrad to
explain where I’d been and why I’d be late getting back.

Conrad
couldn’t totally believe that I only met Murray for business, but he roared
with laughter at the description of the man in the pink silk jumpsuit
propositioning him.

“Thanks,
babe. That did me more good than a beer. How long you think you’ll stay up
there?”

“Until
I feel it’s safe to leave. You don’t think you could talk Terry into posting a
guard here, do you?”

“I
think I’d rather walk down South Morgan without a vest than get between you and
the Finch on this case. I have roll call again at eight, so I’m not going to
wait up. You be careful driving down here in those fancy wheels, okay?”

“Yes,
Papa.” I hung up on his exasperated snort.

I
thought about checking in with the nursing staff, but I didn’t want a fight.
The halls were empty; I slipped into Emily’s room.

She
seemed to be sleeping. I moved quietly to an armchair in the corner.

After
a while the stillness of the room and the stresses of the last four days
combined to make me doze off.

I was
startled awake at two by a light being switched on: a nurse had come in to
check on Emily’s vital signs. When she caught sight of me she beckoned me into
the hall to demand who I was.

“V.
I. Warshawski. I was told that she was calling for me earlier tonight. I wanted
to stay with her in case she woke up looking for me.”

“Are
you related to her?” the nurse asked.

I
shook my head. “She doesn’t have any female relatives in town that I know of.
You know her story, right? She’s been through too much lately for anyone to cope
with, let alone a child. I’m here to help her feel safer.”

Whatever
Lila Dantry had told the owl shift about the Streeters and Fabian had
apparently not included an interdict on me. Other than telling me to stay in
the waiting room, since I wasn’t Emily’s mother, but that they would call me if
Emily asked for me, she didn’t try to kick me out.

“We
do ask people to check in at the nurses’ station,” she said. “We try to make
our children as comfortable as possible, but we can’t have strangers moving in
with them. You do understand that, I hope.”

I
understood it, all right. I hoped that the musketeers, or whoever killed
Deirdre, would be similarly circumspect before visiting Emily. The nurse
escorted me to the waiting area. By moving a chair to the edge of the enclosure
I could just make out Emily’s door. No more dozing on duty now: I’d have to
strain to keep an eye on the hall.

The
woman whose child was having valve surgery was sharing a nervous vigil with
three other parents of critically ill children. We exchanged anxious,
fragmented conversation. At two-thirty one of the men offered to fetch
coffee—he was a habitue of the hospital and knew the fast routes to and from
the all-night vending stand.

At three
the heart surgeon came to talk to the mother. They stood outside the waiting
area, blocking my view of the hall. I got up so I could see around them.

After
a few minutes they headed for the elevators. It was three-twenty when Anton
walked swiftly past the nurses’ station and opened the door to Emily’s room.

“Call
the police,” I said to the man who’d brought coffee. “Someone just went into my
kid’s room—a guy I know.” I was down the hall on the run, my hand on my gun,
before he could ask any questions.

Anton
was leaning over Emily with a pillow. I brought my gun down on his head. He
didn’t fall, but the blow rocked him enough that he lost his hold on the
pillow. I kicked him in the small of the back. At that he turned around, aiming
a punch for my head. I ducked under his arm and hurled myself against his legs.
I shoved hard. The momentum of his punch made him stumble forward over me.

Behind
me in the bed Emily started to scream.

Anton
righted himself as he fell and grabbed my head. I twisted in his grasp but
couldn’t free myself. I bucked as he tried to suffocate me, brought my legs
over my head and managed to hook my right toe under his chin. His fingers
loosened. I pushed hard against his windpipe.

In
the next instant the room was full of light, of people. Anton let go of me. He
knocked a nurse and a security guard out of the way and crashed through the
door.

Droit
du Pere

“I
don’t get it. I stopped the guy as he was smothering Emily, and you want to
arrest her. Don’t you see—Anton must have killed Deirdre. Emily was hiding
under my desk. She only saw his feet, but he thinks she can ID him, because he
knows she was in my office—he knows because she brought the bat home. So why in
God’s name are you punishingher ?”

I was
in a conference room at Eleventh Street with Terry and Officer Neely.

And
Fabian. And Mortimer Zeitner, M.D. Conrad had traded shifts again when he
learned about the meeting, but he was sitting on the far side of the table from
me, near Finchley. It was ten-thirty Wednesday morning and I felt like a
building that someone was sandblasting.

After
knocking over the nurse and the guard Anton had no trouble leaving the
hospital: the security staff were too bewildered to give chase quickly enough.

As
soon as they’d dragged me away, gotten my story, and conferred with the nurses
about whether they could question Emily, they’d called the city cops—but that
had not, in fact, been very soon.

I had
staggered into Conrad’s apartment at five, where I’d managed three hours of
sleep between giving him my saga and returning downtown for the conference. As
far as Terry knew,Anton was still at large.

“We
talked to Gary Charpentier, as you suggested,” Terry told me. “He says that
Anton was after you, not the girl. He couldn’t have known about the bat because
we never released that to the press.”

“Emily!”
I snapped, too tired to care about tact. “She is not ”the girl,’ or “the kid.’
She has a name. Please use it. And you must know that Alec Gantner has a
pipeline to the investigation—you felt the gusher when he got onto Kajmowicz
last week. Of course they know all about the bat.”

“We’re
not going to agree on Alec Gantner being a party to this, Vic. Let’s stick to
what we know right now. Gary Charpentier was very helpful and quite upset. He
says Anton went berserk over the deportation of the Romanian work crew and felt
it was due to your meddling. Charpentier says he didn’t realize Anton was
skimming their paychecks—”

When
I started a passionate interjection Terry held up a hand to silence me.

“I
know, I know—he’s bailing out and leaving his foreman to carry the can. But
Charpentier does say he was worried that Anton might be stalking you. He gave
us the guy’s address and a couple of leads on where to find him. And, Vic, the
gir—Emily saw him attack you. But she doesn’t have any recollection of him
attacking her.”

I
almost screamed. “She was asleep. Are you saying that in the absence of a
witness you’ll believe I made up seeing him smother her?”

“I’m
saying Charpentier told a plausible story. Until we can find Anton we don’t
have any way to question it. Dr. Zeitner here is convinced that Emily is
suffering from hysterical amnesia that is causing her to block out killing her
mother. There’s evidence to support that, which you cannot ignore. The murder
weapon was in Emily’s room. With her prints on it.”