Sara Paretsky - V.I. Warshawski 08 (60 page)

They
had insignia painted on the side.

I
moved Conrad’s head to get the glasses from my backpack. The helicopters had
turned, so I couldn’t make out the logo. Men in brown uniforms poured from
them, followed by Murray with his camera photographing the scene. State
troopers. I gave a glad cry and scrambled over the top.

A
Poet Surfaces

The
rest of the night passed in a series of jerky frames. Conrad on a stretcher in
the helicopter. Orderlies prying me from his side at the hospital. Me in a
hospital bed, being treated for burns, Terry Finchley at my side asking the
same questions over and over, telling me Conrad was fine but that he needed
blood.

Stupidly
fighting with the nurses to give a pint—my AB negative wasn’t much use to him.
Mrs. Rawlings, who showed up around dawn, crying, “What did you do to get my
baby shot?”

Lotty
appeared at noon and life began to run smoothly again. She tried to persuade me
to come home with her. My injuries were minor—a couple of missing eyebrows and
a large burned patch on my right forearm—but I wouldn’t leave Morris while
Conrad was in the hospital, so she booked a room for me at a nearby motel.

They’d
extracted the bullet, but hadn’t attempted work on his shoulder: Lotty wanted
the reconstruction experts at Beth Israel to do that as soon as he was strong
enough to move to Chicago.

In
the middle of the afternoon, freshly washed and dressed, I went to see him. He
was lying so still that my heart contracted. I put my head on his chest to make
sure he was still breathing.

His
eyes fluttered open. “Hi, Ms. W. I came out to rescue you. Good work, huh?”

“Perfect.”
I kissed him softly. “You’re going to be okay, you know. Lotty’s here. Top
surgeons are already saluting like privates.”

At
that he gave a shadow of his familiar grin. I held his hand until he drifted
back to sleep, then went out to meet a phalanx of state, local, and Chicago
cops. They would have been on me like terriers as soon as I woke up if Lotty
hadn’t held them at bay.

Bobby
Mallory came to represent Chicago, along with Chief of Detectives Kajmowicz and
an exceedingly formal Terry Finchley. The state police sent two senior
officers, while the local boys provided two each from the town and the county.
And the head of Gant-Ag’s own security force, Klavin, came, the corn tassel on
his uniform gleaming. The feds sent an observer, bringing us to an even dozen,
all crammed into a badly ventilated room at the local police headquarters. The
stifling air only stoked the ill will among the different jurisdictions.

The
meeting was rather confused. The local law had instructions from Gant-Ag to
arrest me for trespassing and destruction of private property—namely their jet.
After I reported the musketeers’ plans to kill Conrad the locals had to back
down in the face of Bobby Mallory’s fury. The county might still have insisted
it was just my word against Gantner’s—and whose was heavier?—if not for
Murray’s tapes: everyone had watched those by now.

Unfortunately
the debate among the musketeers about what to do with Conrad was not on film;
that had occurred while I was lurking outside the hangar and Murray was
fetching help. No one, not even the state troopers, was about to arrest Alec
Gantner on my say-so alone. On the other hand, Conrad had a bullet in his
shoulder, and Anton had made a statement. Gant-Ag had hired him, as he put it,
“to shoot that bad black man sneaking onto their land in the dark.” So the
locals backed off, although with enough dirty looks to make me feel I needed to
wash my clothes after the meeting.

I
finally got them to tell me what had happened to the men in the plane. One of the
mechanics had escaped through the tail as the machine turned over. He had
second-degree burns on his face and arms, but had a good prospect for recovery.

Blakely
and the other mechanic had died in the wreckage. Anton was in the same hospital
as Conrad, recovering from a bullet in the groin. Lucky shot—it hadn’t been
possible to aim under the circumstances.

Chicago
planned to charge Anton with assault against Conrad as soon as he could leave
the hospital. They were deliberating charging him with Deirdre’s murder. Anton,
fighting back, was apparently implicating not just Charpentier, but Heccomb as
well. To cover their butts the Gant-Ag people claimed that Conrad had been
lurking around the premises for no reason. Despite my contrary testimony they
claimed Anton shot him as he was sneaking into the place. The whole discussion
ended in a dull stalemate: no one was going to obey Gant-Ag’s command to charge
me, but they didn’t want to tackle Gantner without more hard evidence than
Murray and I had gathered.

Bobby
wanted at least to bring in Gantner and Heccomb for questioning, but Kajmowicz
overruled him. Bobby had to retire in a few years, but Kajmowicz was only
fifty. He didn’t want the rest of his career ruined by a vengeful U.S. senator.

Two
days later Conrad was strong enough to travel back to Chicago. Lotty admitted
him to Beth Israel, where they had vast experience with bullet-shattered bones.

Terry
waited out the operation with Mrs. Rawlings, Conrad’s four sisters, and me.
Even Janice, the neurology resident, was there—she flew in from Atlanta to make
sure Chicago doctors treated her brother right. It was a four-hour ordeal, but
at the end the surgeon brought a happy report. The main joint in the shoulder
had been spared; he’d been able to rebuild the damaged clavicle.

Mrs.
Rawlings was so relieved at the news that she let me share in the first family
visits to her son. Conrad took my hand in a feeble clasp but went straight back
to sleep.

As
Conrad’s strength returned, though, he began to withdraw from me. I tried to
ignore the signs, continuing my daily visits, trying to build a smoother
relationship with his mother. Camilla preached optimism, but on the day of his
discharge Conrad sent his mother and sisters outside so he could speak with me
alone.

He sat
on the edge of the bed, his dark eyes somber. “Vic, I owe my life to you. I
know that. But my life would never have been in danger if you hadn’t gone
headlong out to Morris without talking to me about what you planned to do.”

I
squeezed my eyes shut. I couldn’t blow my last chance by shouting out that
Murray and I would have slid out of the cornfields as easily as we came in if
Conrad hadn’t galloped to the rescue.

“I
thought if I talked to you about it you’d give me another lecture on the Fourth
Amendment.” I tried to speak lightly but my words sounded petulant.

“You
could be right about that.” Conrad took my hand with his sound one. “I think
you and I need to cool things off for a while. The last month has taken a real
toll on my love for you. You don’t have enough room in your breast for
compromise.”

“But
Conrad, Terry was going to arrest Emily Messenger. If I hadn’t brought back
that tape recording of Gantner and Blakely’s conversation, the state’s attorney
might never have vacated the warrant.”

“And
you couldn’t trust the courts to sort it out? You’re a sorry excuse for a
lawyer, you know that, Ms. W.?” He was trying to joke, but the words had a real
sting.

When
I didn’t try to respond he added, “As it turned out, you were right about
almost everything—except that Fabian didn’t kill his wife, the way you hoped.
But I can’t go through another episode like this, Vic. It isn’t that I resent
you for being right. It’s not even the bullet in my shoulder. It’s watching you
plunge ahead without regard for anything or anyone except your own private
version of justice.”

I was
crying so hard when I left the room that I couldn’t see. Camilla sprang from a
chair to escort me to a bathroom. I stayed there, alone, until I was sure
Conrad and his family had left the hospital.

After
that it was hard for me to take great interest in the vicissitudes of the case,
except as they affected Emily Messenger. While Conrad was still in Morris I had
started badgering the state’s attorney to vacate the warrant against her. Terry
helped. He was angry with me for Conrad’s injuries, as well as embarrassed at
being shown up, but he was a just cop.

The
day I knew Emily was clear I drove to Arcadia House. “I’m hoping Mary Louise
Neely brought Emily Messenger to you,” I said to Marilyn Lieberman.

She
gave a crooked smile. “You know we can’t reveal the identity of our residents,
Vic.”

“Don’t
spin me around, Lieberman. I didn’t come near you, not even with a letter, let
alone a phone call, as long as I thought there was any chance I would bring
trouble to Emily. The state’s attorney has vacated her arrest warrant. The guy
who tried to kill her is in the Grundy County Hospital with a hole in his
groin. He’s never going to be the same he-man he used to be. Donald Blakely has
joined that great money laundry in the sky.

“Emily
can surface now. She can go back to school and figure out what she wants to do
with her life. Is she here? Or do I have to dismantle this city down to the
tunnels to find her?”

Marilyn
grinned at me and nodded. I’d been certain, a hundred percent certain, that
Neely had brought her to Marilyn. But I needed to hear it before I could relax.

“What
about her old man?” Marilyn asked. “She’s a minor; we aren’t about to
acknowledge her existence if she has to go back to him.”

“Fabian?
I think I can fix him. But first I’d like to know what her own desires for the
future are.”

Marilyn
summoned Eva Kuhn. I explained the change in Emily’s most-wanted status; Eva
reported on Emily’s emotional progress.

“This
isn’t Hollywood, Vic—she’s only been here two weeks. She needs a structured
environment, lots of support, and some long-term therapy. More than I can
provide her. But she’s a fundamentally healthy girl, with a lot of gifts.

With
the right kind of help she should make it. I’d like her to stay here for
another month or so, until she feels strong enough to move out. But where
she’ll go then is a major question mark.”

When
she took me to see Emily I was amazed at the change in her. Maybe it wasn’t a
miracle ending, but she already looked younger than I had ever seen her. She
had on jeans that fit her and a bold turquoise T-shirt that proclaimed “Our
Bodies, Our Lives.” Someone—one of the mothers staying there, Marilyn told me
later—had braided her frizzy mop into cornrows, complete with multicolored
beads.

Emily
looked at me with her usual solemnity, but her face relaxed into a grin when
Eva said, “Vic thinks she’s tough, but she’s never beaten me on a fast break.
Don’t let her talk you into anything you don’t like, kid.”

“You
shooting baskets with Eva?” I asked. “Her elbows are registered weapons—don’t
go near ’em.”

I
told her the history of the last few days, who had killed her mother and why,
and why she didn’t need to worry that anyone else would try to hurt her.

“I
saw the plane burning up on television. Was that you?” she said in her shy
little voice.

“They
were trying to run over me, so I shot the tires out.” As she looked at me in
awe I added, “I’ve never been so scared in my whole life, believe me.”

“And
you really know for sure it was that man in the hospital who killed Mother?
You’re not saying it to make me feel better?”

“To
make you feel ... oh. You mean that line Dr. Zeitner laid on you, that you had
amnesia about killing her yourself. No, sweetie. I’m afraid my vocabulary
doesn’t run to telling lies just to cheer people up.” Maybe I’d be better off
if it did, but it was too late in the game to change that now.

“But
who did I see, then? That night in your office, I mean. I saw Daddy there.”

I
grimaced. “Dr. Zeitner was right about one thing: our memories aren’t very
reliable. If we’re convinced that we saw something, that’s what we remember.
You saw a man’s feet, and you were sure they were Fabian’s. But think about it
logically: you know he was home that night until after you went to bed, because
you were waiting up, hoping he would go to bed first. And after he attacked you
he went to his own room. He was there when you left the house.

“When
you got downtown your mother was already dead. Your dad physically could not
have gotten downtown, killed your mother, and left my office before you got
there. Even if he came by car while you went by bus.”

As
she thought it over the pinched look returned to her face. “So does that mean
he’s right, that I made up ... made up the other stuff? That I
remember—him—doing that to me because I want to?”

“Doyou
think so, Emily?” I asked.

“I
don’t know,” she whispered. “Sometimes I think I must be crazy and that I
imagined it all.”

“I
know you’re not crazy, Emily, not after all the talking you and I have done
this week, and how I’ve seen you behave with other people,” Eva said, sounding
in her assurance like the voice of God. “I don’t know your father,but I’ve met
a lot of fathers who are so ashamed of what they’ve done to their wives and
daughters that they pretend it never happened. They get angry, they tell lies,
and they try to blame their daughters for what they themselves did.”