Daddy's Girl (12 page)

“Yes, I’d have to find them.”

“So this would be one of those lawsuits where the burglar sues the homeowner. The kind that endears lawyers to the populace.”

“Thank you.” Angus’s eyes glittered with mischief. The Beetle zoomed ahead, and Nat’s spirits lifted when she spotted a sign for I-95. She had a shot at keeping her hunky boyfriend, which was a good thing. Angus said, “In my younger days, I’d be all over it, but I’m so corporate now. I need a good relationship with that prison, for the clinic.”

“But I don’t. I can sue the prison, for admitting Buford and Donnell to your class. For failing to adequately safeguard the other inmates, and us. They’d raise an immunity defense but it would be a first strike.”

“Not bad.” Angus nodded. “That’s what Machik is worried about, and he deserves it.”

“So we tell him we’re going to file, then we give him my settlement demand.” Nat shifted forward as a plan began to form in her mind. “We ask for a copy of the videotapes in return for my complete, signed release. Essentially, we offer him a free settlement. If he says no, we know something’s very, very wrong. Who turns down a free settlement? And if nothing incriminating is on the tape, he’ll make the deal.”

“That’s a great idea! It blocks him in.” Angus thought a minute. “But why will we say you want the tapes? What do we give as a reason?”

“We say it’ll help me process the trauma of the event.” Nat wasn’t half kidding, but Angus laughed.

“You’re an evil genius. Do you intend world domination?”

“Not at all. Tenure, merely.”

“Done and done.” They took off, and the Beetle hit the ramp for I-95. They reached the highway, three lanes of flat road headed north into Philly, and the traffic moved fast. The reflected light of cars, houses, and buildings muddied the sky. It was almost nightfall. They whizzed past billboards of pretty people, their supersize smiles illuminated by spotlights from beneath. The Beetle switched into the fast lane, and Nat figured that now she might even get home before Hank.

“Now we’re moving,” she said happily. She checked her cell phone, but there were no messages from Barb Saunders.

“This is way better.” Angus looked annoyed in the rearview. “Except the dude behind me is a tailgater.”

“Ignore him. He’ll pass.”

“How nonviolent of you.”

“It’s this talk of knife fights.” Nat shuddered.

Angus accelerated, but the car behind them blasted the Beetle’s interior with light. Nat turned around and squinted into headlights, which were higher than usual, above a large chrome grille.

“It’s tall, like an SUV,” she said.

“I think it’s a pickup. He’s been weaving through traffic. Must be a drunk. I can’t believe Willie ever did stuff like this.” Angus accelerated again. White reflective lines on the highway flashed by as one. Road salt made
tick tick
noises as it hit the Beetle.

“Slow down.” Nat gripped the stiff rubber hand strap. “Make him go around you.”

“Get off my ass, pal!” Angus shouted at the rearview, and the Beetle’s interior finally went dark. The lane to their right opened up, and the pickup darted into the empty spot.

“Good.” Nat relaxed. “I’ll give him a dirty look.”

“Nobody messes with Professor Greco.”

Nat looked over and saw it was a black pickup, its F-250 letters and a Calvin decal in view. The Beetle and the truck sped side by side through the twilight. The asphalt glistened in the headlights. A veneer of black ice on the road winked darkly. In the split second before the accident happened, Nat saw it like déjà vu. The pickup hit the ice. She screamed. The pickup sideswiped the Beetle in a dark flash of metal, sending both vehicles skidding into the guardrail, spraying sparks and making a hideous scraping noise.

PHOOM! The Beetle’s airbags exploded. A hot plastic cushion burst into Nat’s face and pressed her back into her seat. The car slid forward, out of control. She kept screaming, praying for the Beetle to stop. She couldn’t see anything but plastic. She couldn’t hear anything but her own yelling. Everything was heat and fear and a funny smell.

Finally, the Beetle came to a slow, jerky stop. Angus must have engaged the ABS brakes. Nat’s face plowed into the pillow. Her shoulder collided with the passenger window. Powder was everywhere. Then the accident ended as soon as it had begun. Nat’s airbag began to deflate, and she looked over.

Angus was slumped against his collapsing air bag, motionless.

T
he examining room was small and ringed with white metal cabinetry. Against one wall was a stainless steel sink, underneath an array of cleanser dispensers. A steel basket on the wall near the examining table held a blood pressure gauge and its rubbery black cord. The vital-signs monitors remained off, their black screens etched with frozen green and red lines. A plastic IV bag that read “Baxter” hung from a steel hook on the wall, dripping saline into the crook of Angus’s arm. He sank back into the thin pillow, his blue eyes reddish under a forehead dressed with a new gauze bandage. His cheekbone had sprouted another wound, he’d cracked a rib, and doctors were trying to determine if he had any internal injuries, besides a bruised ego.

“That jerk!” Angus said. If he felt weak, it didn’t show. “I would’ve kicked his ass if he’d been man enough to stop.”

“Peace, brother.”

“Screw peace!” Angus scowled. “That guy coulda killed us!”

“I know, but calm down.” Nat sat in a metal chair beside his bed, having sustained no injuries except an achy nose and a throbbing headache. She was oddly calm, either because Angus was so upset or because a car accident wasn’t as scary as attempted rape. Airbag powder dusted her camelhair coat, and she’d lost a shoe in the accident. Her wardrobe couldn’t take all this excitement.

“Drunk-ass jerk. A hit-and-run. That man should be shot!” Angus said.

“Aren’t you against capital punishment?”

“Except for drunk drivers. I’m making an exception.”

“What about Willie? And your principles?”

“Willie is the exception to the exception, and my principles hurt when I move.” Angus shifted unhappily in the undersize bed, and the top of his hospital gown revealed a sexy tangle of red-gold chest hair that Nat had been trying to ignore.

“Please, relax. The doctor told you to stay still, remember? He’s worried your spleen might be perforated.”

“Gross! Will it leak spleen juice? In front of the girls?”

Nat smiled. “No, but if it’s ruptured, he said you’ll need a splenectomy.”

“I
knew
I needed a splenectomy! I’ve been saying that for years. What’s a splenectomy?”

“You don’t want a splenectomy, Angus. You heard the doctor. It would have effects on your lymphatic system. You’d be susceptible to infections.” Nat didn’t remind him of what else the doctor had said. She was hoping it wouldn’t be an issue. She sensed Angus hadn’t focused on what the doctor was telling him during the examination. “I think they’re going to admit you. You sure you don’t want to call someone?”

“No one to call, except about work. I’ll call the clinic tomorrow to file Willie’s papers.” Angus seemed to quiet, and his gaze shifted to Nat, lingering on her face a moment. “You sure you’re okay?”

“I’m fine.”

“Did you call Mr. Whatever?”

“Mr. Hank.”

“What did he say?”

Arg
. “That’s not your business.” Nat didn’t want to think about how hurt Hank had sounded when she’d told him where she was and that she was with Angus. She felt like she’d cheated, though she hadn’t. She should have told him where she was going. History taught that the cover-up was always worse than the crime. You would think that she and Machik would learn.

“First the riot, now this.” Angus flopped back on his pillow. “Is this cosmic payback, Natalie?”

“For what?”

“My life’s work.”

“Of course not.”

“My head hurts.”

“Close your eyes.” Nat reached over as he complied, and she dimmed the harsh overhead lights and sat back down. “Payback for what, anyway? You represent the tired, the poor, the huddled masses. You have karma to spare.
Pro bono
karma.”

“Yeah, right.” Angus opened his eyes as if he’d just thought of something, or his rib poked his spleen.

“What’s the matter?”

“More what-ifs.” He shifted up in bed, wincing. “What if this was no accident tonight?”

“You mean our accident?” Nat wasn’t sure she understood.

“Yes. What if that truck meant to hit us? What if it was related to the phone calls, last night?”

Stay outta Chester County.
Nat couldn’t tell if Angus was paranoid or brilliant.

“Well, you two look familiar,” a masculine voice said from the doorway. Nat turned. Two uniformed state troopers in black insulated jackets stood in the doorway, the same ones who had questioned her in the ambulance after the prison riot.

“Hello, again,” Nat said, rising. She was still thinking about what Angus had said. What if it hadn’t been an accident?

“Trooper Bert Milroy, Professor,” the trooper said, sliding his black glove from his hand and shaking hers. His eyes looked tired, and his bony nose was still red at the tip from the cold, as if he hadn’t warmed up in two days. He jerked a thumb at the younger cop who stood beside him, the one with the faint scars. “You remember Trooper Johnston.”

“Nice to see you again,” the second trooper said, as Trooper Milroy stepped toward the bed.

“How you doin’, Holt?”

“I’ve been better.”

“That was quite an accident out there tonight. You caused a pileup. No fatals, fortunately. Four cars, you, and another totaled. That section of I-95 is still closed.” Trooper Milroy slid his pad from his back pocket and extracted a ballpoint from under his jacket. “The other drivers report a late-model Ford F-250 pickup, maybe 2002, black, driving erratically. Can you corroborate?”

“Yes,” Angus and Nat answered in unison, as the trooper flipped back a few pages, then scribbled as he stood, rocking back on shiny shoes edged with melting snow.

“Did you get a license plate, folks?”

“It was from Delaware,” Angus answered. “I didn’t get the number.”

“Me, neither,” Nat said

“One of the other drivers got it, so we’ll go with that.” Trooper Milroy turned to Nat. “Did you see the driver? You were on the passenger side, correct?”

“Correct, but I don’t remember seeing him.” Nat tried to remember. “The truck was higher than the VW. The window was dark.”

“Smoked windows?”

“I don’t know. It had a Calvin decal.”

“I’ve seen those.” Trooper Milroy made a note, then clicked his pen closed and slipped pen and notepad into his pocket. “Thanks, folks.”

“Before you go,” Angus said, clearing his throat, “Natalie and I were discussing the possibility that the truck was trying to hit us. Last night, we both got phone calls warning us to stay out of Chester County. Today we went out to the prison and got hit on the way back.”

“It does seem very coincidental,” Nat added, though she wasn’t completely convinced.

“You think the pickup driver
tried
to kill you?” Trooper Milroy arched an eyebrow under his wide brim, though his tone remained professional. “We have no evidence of that, and you know better than to speculate. Night like this, with black ice everywhere, we got five accidents already. One fatal.”

Angus said, “He tailgated us, dangerously so.”

“Tailgating’s common on that stretch, and our information is that he was switching lanes erratically. Other drivers corroborated it. That’s a drunk.”

Nat considered it. “He wasn’t drunk enough to stay at the scene. He drove away. I don’t even know how he did that, if his airbag went off.”

“Could be he disabled it,” the other trooper interjected. “My wife drives a little Ranger pickup and she had me disable our airbags, because it’s dangerous with the baby, in his car seat.”

Trooper Milroy shot him an annoyed look, and Angus scoffed. “This guy didn’t drive like a good daddy.”

“You say you each got phone calls?” Trooper Milroy asked. “What did they say?”

“A man warned us to stay out of Chester County.”

“Did you report it to the Philly police, or to us?”

“What’s the difference?” Angus frowned. “And if you think about it, the fact that the driver was acting drunk doesn’t mean that he was. Maybe he was faking it, to throw everybody off.”

“That’s pure speculation,” Milroy said. “We’ll find this guy. Drunks never stop the night they have an accident because we breathalyze’em. Dollars to doughnuts, he’ll come in of his own accord tomorrow morning, with his lawyer.”

But Nat had another question. There’d still been no return call from Barb Saunders. “Any suspects on the burglary at the Saunders residence, by the way? The house of the prison guard who was killed?”

“Sorry, that’s not our case.”

Suddenly, Hank and Paul appeared at the door, their hair messy and cheeks ruddy from the cold. Next to the uniformed troopers, they looked oddly civilian in their dark wool topcoats, worn over sweatclothes and basketball sneakers. Hank’s brown eyes softened when he saw Nat.

“Babe, you okay?” he asked, excusing himself as he walked past the troopers. On the way over, he glanced at Angus, who nodded in acknowledgment. Nat cut short the awkward moment by stepping over to him.

“I’m fine.” She gave him a warm I’m-sorry hug. He smelled the way he always did after basketball, his waning aftershave heightened by a faint sweat.

“Nothing broken?” Hank pulled gently away, assessing any damage.

“No.”

“Thank God,” he said, though Nat noticed he avoided her eye.

Paul introduced himself to the troopers, then started in.
“I HEARD IT WAS A DRUNK DRIVER. HE COULDA KILLED MY SISTER! HOW THE HELL DID HE GET AWAY?”

“Don’t worry, Mr. Greco. We have his plate and—”

“YOU HAVE THE LICENSE PLATE? THEN WHY DON’T YOU JUST ARREST HIM?”

“We’re a little shorthanded tonight, with all the—”

“THEN WHY DON’T
YOU
GO? THE DRUNK DRIVER’S NOT IN THE HOSPITAL, OFFICER.”

Nat stifled a moan. “Paul, please.”

“GIVE
ME
THE DAMN PLATE NUMBER! MY FATHER WILL HIRE A P.I. TO FIND HIM. HE’LL BE HERE ANY MINUTE!”

Oh no. Dad? Here?

Trooper Milroy said, “My captain happens to be outside, if you want to speak with him, Mr. Greco.”

“YOU’RE DAMN RIGHT I DO.” Paul whirled around on his squeaky Iversons. “BE RIGHT BACK, NAT.” The decibel level lowered as soon as he left with the troopers, but the tension level increased. The small room contained only Nat, Hank, and Angus. She told herself there was no reason for this meeting to be strained. It wasn’t like the three of them were in a love triangle or anything. Still she was having an out-of-hospital-room experience.

“Hank, this is Angus Holt, from school,” Nat said, attempting to dispel the undercurrents.

“Nice to see ya.” Hank extended a hand, and Angus winced when they shook. Hank said, “Uh, sorry.”

“No, I’m sorry about all this.”

“Not your doing.” Hank smiled in a polite way. “How long you gonna be here, buddy?”

“Day or two. I’m happy Natalie’s not hurt.”

“Natalie.” Hank repeated. “Right. Sure. Nat.”

Gnat. Terrific. Time to go. Before my head explodes.

Hank nodded once, then again, plainly uncomfortable. “Nat, did you wanna go or stay?”

“Go,” Nat and Angus answered, in unfortunate unison. She added unnecessarily, “I’m discharged, so I can leave anytime. I was waiting for you, Hank.”
Faithfully. And I wasn’t turned on by his chest hair.

“We’ll call your dad and tell him to turn around. They must’ve got held up in traffic.”

“Okay, let’s go.” Nat took her coat from the back of the chair, and Hank quickly stepped over to help her put it on, which he always did. It felt heavier than usual, and she wondered if the wool was weighted down with guilt, like a new fabric blend. She said lightly, “Okay, well, hope you feel better, Angus!”

“Thanks,” Angus said, like a normal person, because he wasn’t insane.

“See you, buddy.” Hank put a hand on Nat’s back, guiding her out of the room. “Let’s go home.”

Home
. It sounded so good. She could shower and change, and they could have a glass of chardonnay, and she could explain everything and make his hurt go away. Hurt that he wouldn’t admit to her, or even to himself, buried beneath his easygoing guy-ness. They could sort it all out, alone together. They were overdue for a talk.

“Your parents are beside themselves.” Hank pulled his cell phone from a pocket and pressed speed dial as they went through a wooden door and down a corridor to the wide automatic doors, which slid open. “We’ll give ’em a call and we can all go home.”

“Wait.” Nat got hit by a blast of cold air. “By home, you mean my
parents’
house?”

“Big John!” Hank barked into the phone. “I got the horse right here. She’s fine. Turn around and we’ll see you at home.”

Big John.
Her father. Her brothers. Paul.

“HANK! WAIT’LL YOU GET A LOAD OF THIS!” Paul shouted, hurrying toward them from a police cruiser parked in the emergency lot.

My head hurts. And for some reason, so does my heart.

“I GOT TWO SIXERS TICKETS!”

“Excellent!” Hank called back, throwing a heavy arm around Nat, and she knew that this would be their last moment alone until midnight.

“We should talk about this.” Nat leaned wearily in the doorway to her bathroom, still dressed, while Hank buzzed his teeth in his blue boxers and bare feet. He nodded, holding the electric toothbrush against his incisors. His lips drooped over the brush like a basset hound’s.

“Would you turn off the brush?” Nat asked.

“I can hear you,” Hank answered, but it sounded like
I ckn heor bu. Bzzz
.

“Okay, fine. I know you didn’t want me to go out to Chester County, but I felt I had to, after we heard that Saunders’s widow was burglarized.”

Bzzz
. “You didn’t go see the widow, you went to the prison.”

“I couldn’t reach her. I didn’t think it was dangerous because I was with Angus. He got the same call, by the way.”

“You don’t belong at the prison. You belong at the law school. You’re a professor, not a criminal. Or a criminal lawyer.”

Nat let it go. They’d had this conversation in the car. At least he was calmer now. “Let’s agree to disagree.”

Bzzz
. “Whatever that means.”

“I just wanted to say I was sorry for going out there with Angus today and not telling you.”