The Governor's Wife (18 page)

I
sat in my office and poured myself a short glass of whiskey. At my elbow were the file folders I’d unearthed from the bottom of Ray Perry’s trunk. I opened one and found Ray’s birth certificate, his marriage certificate, and a diploma from Northwestern Law School. Underneath the diploma was Ray’s will. I picked up the thick document in one hand and considered its weight. Then I set it aside with everything else. At the bottom of the pile, I found the folder I was looking for, baby blue and faded with age. Clipped to the cover was the picture I’d first seen framed on Ray’s old desk. The former governor was caught in a bloom of light, his head bent over an infant. The child was wrapped in a blanket, one arm flung awkwardly toward the camera. I took a slug of whiskey and studied the photo. Then I thought about the old man at Prentice. And the dead child he’d held in his hand. I looked at the picture of Ray again, the splay of the child’s limbs, and saw what I instinctively knew to be true. When death touched a body, it left its fingerprints. Even on an infant. The child Ray
Perry was holding was dead. And I needed to know why. I opened the folder and began to read.

The first item was an admission report from Northwestern Memorial Hospital, dated June 8, 2004. The patient’s name was Marie Anne Perry. She was thirty-eight years old, eight months pregnant, and in labor. I flipped to the next page. At 2:32 p.m., she gave birth to a girl, weighing five pounds, three ounces. There was a lot of medical shorthand, but I got the sense the birth was considered a high-risk proposition. The last three pages, written in neat, uniform cursive, explained why. The girl had been born with a form of spina bifida. She was immediately taken from her mother and put into Northwestern’s NICU. There seemed to be some possibility of surgery on the infant, but it was unclear if or when that was going to happen. The mother was doing well. The prognosis for the infant was guarded. Underneath the initial hospital reports I found two certificates clipped together. The first was a birth certificate for Emma Marie Perry, dated June 8, 2004. The second was the child’s death certificate. Emma died from “respiratory complications” a day after she was born, on the afternoon of June 9.

I drank some more whiskey and thought about the lines carved into Marie Perry’s face, the dry grief in her smile, the hole in her heart. I’d been wrong about Marie. And her secret. Still, it didn’t make sense. Not the way it needed to. I flipped back to the hospital admission report and began to read, looking for the missing piece. At the bottom of the first page I found it—in the form of a street address.

I
cracked the window in my car and studied the unremarkable exterior of 254 Old Harbor Road. I now knew who lived inside. And why Marie Perry had shown up here yesterday.

Late-afternoon sun glinted off living room windows and car windshields up and down the block. A woman carrying a bag of groceries walked through a fracture of light and into a valley of shadow. It was the person I’d been waiting for. The person who didn’t have her name on the deed but nonetheless lived at 254 Old Harbor. I waited until she was halfway up the front stairs before getting out of the car. She was just pulling out her keys as I hit the first step. Amanda Mason turned. “Mr. Kelly.”

“Hi, Amanda.”

Her eyes darted up and down the street, then behind her to make sure the front door was still closed. “You startled me.”

“Sorry.”

“What are you doing out here?”

“I think we need to talk.”

“About what?” Her voice sounded hollow, like a pill rolling around inside an empty bottle.

“Might be better inside, Amanda.”

“This is my home, Mr. Kelly. I have two children inside.”

“I’m not going to harm your children.”

“I didn’t say you were, but I don’t want them exposed…It doesn’t matter. It’s my home. If you want to talk, we can do it right here.” The nurse stiffened her jaw and clutched the bag of groceries to her chest.

“It’s about Emma Perry,” I said and took out the hospital report from 2004. At the very bottom was Amanda Mason’s name and address. Underneath that, her signature.

“You were the attending nurse, Amanda. I’d like to know what happened.”

We sat at her kitchen table. I’d gotten a quick glimpse of her two girls before Amanda hustled them upstairs. One looked like a teenager, thick limbed with pale skin and straight auburn hair. The other was maybe nine or ten, with blue eyes and blond hair that ran halfway down her back. Amanda closed the kitchen door behind them and filled a kettle with water.

“You want some tea?”

“Sure.” I watched her bustle back and forth with mugs and milk. Sugar, spoons, and tea bags. She waited by the stove, staring blankly out the window while the water came to a boil. Then she poured the tea and sat down. I fixed mine up with some milk and sugar and took a sip. Amanda pulled the admission report close and touched her signature on the bottom of the page. I’d attached Emma Perry’s birth and death certificates.

“Where did you get all of this?” she said.

“Does it matter?”

“It might.”

“I’m a private investigator. Ray Perry had it stashed among his personal belongings.”

“Ray.” Amanda sighed, and I thought the old nurse and charismatic governor might have been allies at some point, maybe even friends. Not that it mattered now.

“Does Marie know you have it?” she said, holding up the admission report with two fingers before dropping it back on the table.

“No.”

“What is it you want?”

“I want the rest of the story.”

“No, you don’t.”

“Try me.”

Amanda stared at me as if I were suddenly made of wood, then fortified herself with a sip of tea. “What do you know about spina bifida?”

“Nothing.”

“It’s a congenital birth defect caused by an incomplete closing of the neural tube that houses the spine. There are different levels of severity. Mild cases can sometimes be corrected with surgery, and the child can still lead a fairly normal life. In severe cases the life expectancy is often three to four years. Sometimes less.”

“I assume Emma had a severe form?”

“You saw the death certificate. She passed away a day after being born.”

The child’s passing sat with us for a moment. Amanda sipped some more tea and avoided my eyes.

“Why did Marie Perry come out here yesterday?” I said.

“Out here?”

I took out my phone and showed her the photo I’d taken of Marie at the front door to 254 Old Harbor. Amanda’s
face flushed with anger. “You like to spy on people, Mr. Kelly?”

“What I don’t like is when people lie to me.”

“I have no reason to lie.”

“Sure you do. And you’re not very good at it. If you help me, I’ll try to protect whatever it is you want protected. If you don’t, I’ll leave here owing you nothing. And that’s probably not the best spot for you to be in.”

She played with a spoon on the table. Then she picked up the hospital report and read through it again. Finally, she stood up. “Can you wait here a moment?”

“Sure.”

I could hear her walking through the house, then the opening and closing of a door. The house went still. No sound from Amanda. Nothing from the girls upstairs. Ten minutes passed, twenty. Finally, I heard footsteps returning. Amanda walked into the kitchen. She was alone. Her hands were empty.

“I’m sorry for making you wait.” Her voice was hushed, almost afraid of itself.

“Not a problem. You want to sit down?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Why not?”

“You need to come with me, Mr. Kelly.”

“Where are we going?”

“Just come with me.”

I got up and followed Amanda into the bowels of the house.

S
he walked me through a tidy living room to a door at the end of a hallway. The door opened to a set of steep stairs that ended in a finished basement. Amanda went to a second door and opened it. Inside was a dimly lit room finished in thin wood paneling and wall-to-wall carpeting. It might have once been intended as a family room, but now it served as a hospital ward. The patient was laid up in the far corner. He had tubes running into both arms and one up his nose. The machines that surrounded him kept time with the ragged rhythms of the patient’s heart and lungs. Amanda walked me to the foot of the bed.

“This is my husband, Nicholas. Nicholas, this is Mr. Kelly.”

Nicholas Mason had the sheets pulled up to his chest. He carried a few wisps of hair on his head and the scalp underneath looked crumbling and gray. His forehead overhung black eyes sunk deep into his skull and yellow bags of skin dripped off his cheekbones. I wasn’t a doctor, but I knew death when
it was in the room. And it was here. Grinning and licking its chops. Nicholas Mason waved off his wife.

“I’m fine, Amanda.”

“I think I should stay.” Her eyes flicked from me to her husband.

“Go,” Mason said softly. “I’ll buzz you when we’re done.”

Amanda closed the door behind her. I had the feeling she hadn’t gone too far. Mason pointed to an empty chair.

“Sit if you want.”

I took a seat. Nicholas Mason looked at me like he expected a question, but I didn’t have anything for him. The dying man began to cough, a thick, muddy sound I could almost touch. He took a tissue from a table beside the bed and spit into it, then wadded it up and tucked it into his fist.

“I’d ask you to use that gun on me, but I’m not sure I’m worth the bullet.”

“Why am I here, Mr. Mason?”

“Did my wife tell you what I did for a living?”

“No, she didn’t.”

“I was a hospital attendant at Prentice. That’s how we met.”

“Okay.”

“There’s a laptop on the other side of the bed. Maybe you could get it?”

I found the laptop and set it up on a small foldout table they used for Mason’s meals. “Now what?”

He reached under his sheets and pulled out a black flash drive. “Play this.”

I plugged in the flash drive and clicked on a video file. The screen filled with the image of a darkened hospital room. There was a white crib in the center of the room. A figure approached the crib and leaned over it.

“Stop the video,” Mason said. I did.

“This was shot on the afternoon of June 9, 2004. The day
Emma Perry died. The person you see there is me. I’m putting a small pillow over the child’s face in an effort to suffocate her.”

I stared at the grainy image as Mason continued.

“I was paid to do it. Paid by someone who thought a special-needs child would derail Ray Perry’s budding political career.” Mason began to cough again, the sound rich and moist in his lungs. There was a glass of water by the bed. He took a long sip and leaned back on the starched pillows. “The thought was that the child would become Ray Perry’s life and his prison, even if she only lived a few years. He’d delay his run for governor, and the window would slam shut. Chicago couldn’t live with that. Ray was gonna run. One way or another.”

“Who hired you?” I said.

“Who hired me?” Nicholas gave me a cracked grin. “Good question. Maybe it was Ray himself? Maybe the child’s mother? I can see you don’t believe that, but there’s a hard streak in that family. Still, we’re getting ahead of ourselves. Finish the tape.”

There wasn’t much more to see. The person stayed bent over the crib for a minute, maybe two. Then he stood up and left. “Stop the video, Mr. Kelly.”

I did.

“Murder, correct?”

“Maybe.”

Mason’s fingers had dipped below his sheets. I touched my gun in its holster. “Why don’t you keep your hands where I can see them?”

He showed me a mouth full of worm’s teeth sunken into black gums. “I’ve got days, Mr. Kelly. Maybe hours. So let’s not waste time with foolishness. The tape you watched is a fraud. At least it is if you think you’ve just watched a murder.”

“Go ahead.”

“Yes, that’s me on the tape. And yes, I was hired to kill Emma Perry.”

“Why you?”

“I had a criminal record before I came to work at Prentice. I’d lied about it, but certain people in Chicago have a way of ferreting those things out. I assume that’s why I was approached.”

“Makes sense.”

“I wanted to go to the cops, but my wife had a different idea.”

“And what was that?”

“I wanted to save the child.” Amanda Mason had slipped back into the room and was standing just behind me. “I didn’t think the police would believe us. And I didn’t think Emma would ever be safe. Not in that family. We argued about it, but I finally convinced Nicholas to
pretend
to kill the baby.”

“What about the documents? The death certificate?”

“We phonied it all up,” Amanda said. “I was running the NICU. It wasn’t that hard.”

“I saw a picture of Ray Perry holding a dead child.”

“We’re not proud of that,” Amanda said.

“The hell we’re not.” Mason gripped the rails that ran along either side of his bed and pulled himself upright. The effort it took was terrifying. “We used an infant who’d passed away. An orphan. We wrapped the child up and let the Perrys hold it. Let them think it was Emma.”

“So Ray and Marie didn’t hire you?”

“It was Bones McIntyre,” Mason said, letting the name drip off his lips and nodding at the frozen image on screen. “He hired me and then hid a video camera in the child’s room. I knew about the camera and had a pretty good idea he’d use the tape at some point. An insurance policy to make sure I kept my mouth shut. I was right.”

“And you let him think he got away with it?”

“We did it to protect Emma,” Amanda said. “As long as everyone thought she was dead, she’d be safe.”

“But she’s not dead.”

Amanda shook her head.

“Then where is she?” I said, already knowing the answer.

Amanda gave her husband a shot of something to put him to sleep and covered him with blankets. Then we went back upstairs and had a second cup of tea.

“Emma was the blond-haired girl I saw when I came in,” I said.

Amanda nodded. “I thought there’d be questions, but no one batted an eye. Of course, we’re a quiet couple. Not a lot of friends. I think that helped.”

“When did you tell Marie her daughter was alive?”

“Just after Ray disappeared. I wanted to do it sooner, but Nicholas wasn’t sure. He still thought Ray might have been involved in the plan to kill Emma and didn’t want to risk it.”

“What was Marie’s reaction when you told her?”

“Hysterical. Didn’t believe it. Then she met Emma and knew. She wanted to move the girl, but decided to keep her here. It was close enough where Marie could visit and it was safe.”

“And it’s the only home her daughter’s ever known.”

“The long-term plan has always been to get them both out of Chicago.”

“But Bones has been watching his daughter?”

“Her greatest fear is that he finds out Emma’s alive.”

“Tell me about her.”

For the first time, the nurse’s composure cracked. I heard it in the seams between her words. “Emma’s a gift.”

“I bet.”

“Her form of spina bifida turned out to be not as bad as
everyone originally feared. We took her out of state for an operation right after she was born. She got rid of the walker a year and a half ago and is expected to lead a normal life.”

“That’s a wonderful thing, Amanda.”

“Yes, it is.” She dropped her head in her hands and wept. It was a desperate sound only a mother could make. “I did the best I could, Mr. Kelly. Took her to a clinic in St. Louis so as to avoid any attention. Loved her every bit as much as my own. Maybe more.”

Outside a spring rain began to fall, sudden and hard against the roof. Amanda wiped her nose and looked out the window like she’d never seen a storm before. “It wasn’t supposed to rain tonight.”

“Weathermen never know what they’re talking about.”

She sniffed at the obvious truth.

“Emma can’t stay here forever,” I said.

“She won’t.”

I could sense another shift, the widening distance in her voice telling me I was still on the outside. Neither parent, nor protector, nor anything close. So I asked another question I already knew the answer to. “Where is she, Amanda?”

“She’s already gone, Mr. Kelly. Gone with her mother and never coming back.”