Authors: Hank Phillippi Ryan
Jane had a glimmer of the wrenching dominoes of divorce. Melissa had confided to her that Daniel missed his daughter. The little girl wrote him loopy-lettered postcards about kittens and school and being the flower girl.
Daniel’s impending marriage to Melissa, who Gracie thought was “awesome,” Melissa had confided, was a chance for father and daughter to reconnect. But reconnecting with her father—while living with stepmother Melissa—meant being yanked from her mother, leaving the stepfather she seemed to love, moving to another city every summer, and being made to live a semi-schizophrenic life. Not uncommon, but maybe not the best for a nine-year-old. Maybe not the best for anyone. But the couple, bolstered by Melissa’s know-how of the legal system, had pled their case to a probate court, a judge had ruled, and so it was.
Jane watched the mother and bride-to-be as they continued their familial tug-of-war. How did anyone know what was overreacting and what was a real emergency?
“Lewis didn’t want Gracie to go, you know? That’s what’s beginning to worry me.” Robyn took out a cell phone, tapped some numbers with manicured thumbs. “He was bulls—I mean, so upset about it. ‘She’s my daughter, too,’ he kept saying. And I know he was upsetting Gracie. Talking about how she’d miss school and her friends and her cat. I didn’t know how to handle it, but I truly thought he’d get over it. I mean, if it has to be, it has to be. We made our beds, I guess.”
“Was he ever … inappropriate with her?”
Had to give Melissa credit for asking that, flat out. Jane had been wondering the same thing, puzzling over how to phrase it. Lawyer Melissa had probably phrased it many times, in and out of court.
“
What?
No, oh, absolutely no.” Robyn was shaking her head, even while Melissa was talking, waving the question away. “Are you serious? No. He was never,
never …
he’s been wonderful, until the judge—anyway. He’s just sad, I guess. You know accountants, they’re all about logic and planning and making things turn out the way you want. But Lewis recently decided to break out of the mold. Show his emotions. Try new things. Experiment. ‘Live to the fullest,’ he started saying. ‘Life is short.’ Anyway. I’m texting him, again.”
Jane watched these players inhabit their roles, trying to analyze whether what she was seeing and hearing was blanketing some complicated emotional subtext. But theoretical motives and familial chess games aside, where was Gracie? If Lewis Wilhoite was a manipulative emotion-hiding planner, those were not reassuring attributes. Was Robyn protesting too much? Hiding from reality?
A nine-year-old and her stepfather were not where they were supposed to be. The stepfather didn’t answer his phone. Not a good thing. If they were out getting ice cream, fine, they’d all have a good laugh, someone would get yelled at, and it would all be happily ever after.
If not?
“Ah, Melissa?” Jane wasn’t sure of the protocol here, but she was sure their focus should be on Gracie. “Robyn? Do you think we should call the police?”
“He say anything?” Jake whispered his question to the cadet stationed by the bed in room 610. Although if John Doe No. 2 was going to be awakened by sound, the bings of the IVs, the hiss of the oxygen, and the beeps of the monitors would have roused the patient—suspect—long before Jake arrived.
“No, sir.” The cadet shrugged, stashed his cell phone in a jacket pocket. His name tag said
RONALD VERRIO
.
Young
, Jake thought with a pang. When did Jake himself become not-young?
“He’s out, you know, sedated, and with that oxygen mask on,” Verrio said. “Been out like this since I got here.”
Verrio wasn’t supposed to be using his personal cell on watch, Jake knew, but he’d let it go this time. Nothing more boring than babysitting a potential suspect. Unless and until, of course, said suspect woke up and spilled the beans.
“Where’s Bartoneri?” Jake knew Angie was supposed to be guarding the suspect—victim—but she was not in the room.
Verrio pointed to his watch. “I replaced her,” he said. “She got called back to HQ.”
“Gotcha.” Jake was just as happy not to see her. No need for any more personal complications in a—well, that was an understatement. No matter what Angie might want, their relationship was a thing of the past.
The man’s eyes remained closed, his ashy face pocked with stubble, his salt-and-pepper hair matted against a pink scalp. He lay motionless, propped on two white pillows. A translucent plastic oxygen mask covered his mouth and lower face. So much for getting a cell phone photo to help with ID, Jake thought. Maybe a doctor could move the mask just long enough to let him get the shot.
The guy looked grim. Gray. Frail. Much worse than he had in the alley. Someone had tucked a thin white blanket around him, pulled the thick binding up to his chin and secured the lower edge under his feet, making him a white lump in the center of the flat metal-tubed bed. So. The tattoo. Right upper arm. Now under the blanket.
Jake reached a hand toward the cover, ready to pull it down to check for the red rose intertwined in the shield, a playing-card-size design he knew from the bystander’s photo was inside the crook of the stabber’s right elbow.
Then he stopped, hand poised in midair. If Jake yanked away the blanket, would some defense attorney insist it was an illegal search?
“Shit,” Jake said.
“Sir?”
“Did you see a—anything on this man’s right arm?” If the man’s arm had been exposed, in plain sight, all well and good and by the book, and this case could proceed to arrest. Or at least a discussion with the brass. But by the random ridiculousness of the universe, that crucial patch of skin had been hidden by a solicitous nurse.
“Anything like what?” Verrio examined his own right arm, as if to check what might be there.
“The guy we’re looking for has a tattoo. On his right arm. Did you see his arm?” Jake thought for a moment, considering. It might be something that would wash off. “Or what looks like a tattoo.”
Verrio squinted his eyes, maybe trying to picture it. “I don’t think so, Detective.”
Jake’s gut twisted. No? If this guy didn’t have a tattoo, it made for a whole different story. It meant Hewlitt had attacked him in Franklin Alley and accused him of being the stabber, maybe in a last-ditch attempt to throw Jake and D off the track. If this guy died, the ruse might have worked. But Hewlitt couldn’t have known about the tattoo in the bystander’s photograph. He’d have to call D, instantly, and let him know this latest wrinkle.
“Really? No tattoo?” Jake said, peering at Verrio.
“No. I mean, not no there’s no tattoo.” The newbie’s face reddened. He yanked at his earlobe. “I mean, no I don’t think I ever saw his arm. It was covered up when I got here.”
The puzzle pieces reassembled again. Now Jake had a dilemma. The man’s medical records, flapped in an aluminum folder, dangled from a twisty chain of flat metal links attached to the white plastic tubing that formed the foot of the bed. Certainly the doctors would have noted distinguishing marks. But medical records were legally private.
He blew out a breath, impatient with well-meant but time-consuming rules. Cops didn’t need to break those rules to close their cases, he didn’t, at least. And once the legal bullshit started, it was difficult to stop. To pull down that damn blanket or to look at the records, Jake reluctantly decided, he needed a warrant.
But wait. Had he seen the tattoo during the Franklin Alley altercation? If he had, that would be enough probable cause. He closed his eyes, briefly, picturing it. Trying to. Nothing. Still, Jake could simply wait for a nurse or someone to come in, wait until the blanket was pulled down, and voilà, the answer.
“Oh, I get it.” Verrio nodded, gesturing at the covered-up arm. “You think you’d need a warrant?”
“Yeah,” Jake said.
The cadet looked at the floor, then back at Jake. Shifted his weight. “Okay if I go take a leak, since you’re here?”
“Sure.” Jake smiled, shook his head. “Thanks, buddy. But even if you leave, I’m not gonna look.”
The door closed behind Verrio with a click of the sleek metal latch. Jake was alone with the man—suspect—and the beeping machines, and the invisible maybe-tattoo. If he had a tattoo? That was probable cause to arrest him for murder. If he didn’t? He was a victim of something.
Jake simply couldn’t be sure of what.
* * *
Could he have misunderstood? Bobby Land stared at his silent cell phone. Or had Jane Ryland lied to him?
He’d chosen the chair closest to the door of the little office the cop had parked him in. Put the unread magazines on the seat beside him, balancing the almost-empty Sprite can on top of them. He was super alone and having a hard time sitting still, waiting. Dee Something, the skinny cop, promised to come back, but that was, like, an hour ago.
Bobby swallowed the last sugary slug of tepid soda and put the can back on the magazines, balancing it right in the center of a basketball hoop.
At least the cops had allowed him to keep his phone. Which, he guessed, meant they weren’t thinking he had anything to do with anything but were honestly trying to make up for the dumb-ass way they’d let the dirtbag in the alley kick his camera to shit. He’d thought about just letting it all go, especially since he’d kind of led the cops to believe he’d actually seen the stabbing, but the outrage over the busted camera was too much. Someone had to pay for it, and it wasn’t going to be him.
Incredible bummer.
Could have been so cool, having the big evidence, getting his photos everywhere, like the beginning of his career. He mourned those photos, longing for them with the certain knowledge of a vanished opportunity. Scuffing the brown carpeting beneath his running shoes, he imagined what might have been—his photos on TV and in the paper, everyone clamoring for the rights, limos and lawyers and famous people, and his mother finally realizing … well, screw it. Reality. Someone had to pay.
He would take his chances on what he said he’d seen. Go with the flow. Maybe his memory could get a little worse as time went on. Or. He paused, imagining it. Maybe his memory could get better.
Huh.
He had been there, after all, when the stabbing took place. Maybe if he really concentrated he could reconstruct the scene a little, remember it better. If they, like, showed him pictures of suspects, the way they did on TV? He’d know who it
wasn’t,
at least. Not a black guy, not a big guy, that narrowed it down. He
had
seen something, right? Through the lens. All he had to do was put himself back in the moment. He couldn’t be the only witness, that was for sure.
And they weren’t gonna crucify some guy only based on what
he
said. He was a kid, after all. Plus, no one could prove what he did or didn’t remember.
First the stabbing, then the photos, then meeting Jane Ryland and all that, then the guy in the alley. And his smashed camera and the pulverized memory card. All he ever wanted was to get his photos on TV. He’d been totally in the right place at the right time, and it should have worked out. Now, through no fault of his own, he was in the cop shop, his camera busted, and trying to decide whether to continue to lie to the police. Plus, he was going to be marked absent from class.
A loud knock on the office door surprised him. Bobby flinched, almost knocking over the teetering soda can as he stood. There was silence for a fraction of a second, then the door swung open.
Jane heard phones ring in three places, a trill from the Wilhoites’ red wall-mounted kitchen landline she could barely glimpse from her living room vantage point, a jangle from the portable on the antique desk, and the three-chime alert of the cell phone clutched in Robyn Wilhoite’s unsteady right hand.
“Call from…” The disembodied techno-voice floated over the living room. Robyn stood, her cardigan falling from her shoulders, staring at the screen of her cell.
“Who is it?” Melissa whispered.
“… Lewis Wil—” the voice continued. Jane had never met Lewis or Gracie, but a silver-framed five-by-seven of what must be the two of them was displayed near the desk phone. Gracie mugged for the camera in front of a pink-blossoming tree, her curly almost-blond pigtails held up with Hello Kitty barrettes and her flowered overalls spilling over her sneakers. One hand clutched a stuffed hippo. The other clutched the hand of a smiling middle-aged man. Lewis?
He wore owlish glasses and a Patriots cap. An accountant, Jane remembered. He hardly looked physically equipped to defend an abducted daughter, though Jane knew people summoned surprising strength when necessary. Her reporter brain concocted a vision: Lewis bleeding in some parking lot, Gracie now who knows where with who knew who. Exactly why Jane had pushed to call the police. But before that discussion even got under way, here was Lewis on the phone. Maybe everything was okay. Maybe.
Lucky she hadn’t called Jake about this. She guessed.
Robyn picked up the desk phone and punched a button on her cell. The ringing stopped.
“Lew?” Robyn almost whispered. “Are you there?”
“Is he there?” Melissa, frowning now, looked like she was struggling not to grab the phone from Robyn’s hand. Robyn stared at the thick creamy pile of the carpeted floor, holding the phone so tightly Jane could see the blue-tinged veins on her hand.
“Lewis?” Again, Robyn’s voice came out in a breathy tremble, half inquiry, half plea.
Jane narrowed her eyes. Was Lewis Wilhoite calling for help? Or with an embarrassed explanation? It would be a relief to be angry, she thought. Everyone home, everyone happy, after a marital spat or even a misunderstanding.
“Lewis,” Robyn implored.
Why was Wilhoite apparently not saying anything?
“Is it him?” Melissa asked again. She leaned forward, maybe trying to get as close as possible to the phone. Jane realized she was doing the same thing, straining to hear, but Robyn had the phone so close to her face not a sound escaped.
Another problem. Simply because the phone voice announced it came from Lewis didn’t mean it
was
Lewis. What if someone else was using Lewis Wilhoite’s phone? A white cat appeared at the archway to the kitchen, blinked at them, waved its tail, and slunk away.