Murder Suicide (26 page)

Clevenger took the papers.  John Snow’s journal.  "Where did you get this?"

"Off your desk," Billy said.  "I grabbed it and stuffed it in my jacket when the Feds came to the loft.  But, don’t worry.  I won’t violate your personal space ever again."

Clevenger wasn’t sure what to say.  Billy really did need to respect his space.  "Look, I appreciate this," he said.  "I really do.  It helps me out on the Snow case.  But there is the issue of living together and respecting..."

"No sweat," Billy said.  "Done."  He closed his locker.  "Let’s just go."

They didn’t speak on the ride home.  When they got to the loft it was after 5:00
P.M.
and already dark.  Billy went straight to his room, shut the door.

Clevenger figured he’d give him some time to decompress from whatever had him wound so tightly.  He walked over to his desk, touched the empty space where his computer had sat.  He opened his drawers.  All his discs had been confiscated, even the new ones still in shrink wrap.  He pulled out his file drawer, saw that papers had been taken out and replaced haphazardly; they’d rifled through those, too.

He checked his phone messages, then called and checked in with Kim Moffett.  Nothing urgent.

He grabbed John Snow’s journal, some ice for his lip, and sat down on the couch.  He flipped to the drawing of Grace Baxter — her face as a collage of numbers, letters and arithmetic symbols.  He kept looking at it, thinking how completely Baxter had infiltrated Snow’s mind, how entwined her energy had become with his creative spirit.  Amazing, he thought, that one person could be entered so completely by another.  Amazing, too, that Snow would choose to break free of that embrace, even after Grace had made it clear in her note that she might not survive alone, that she had come to consider the two of them one.

A few minutes later, someone knocked on the door to the loft.

Clevenger got up, walked to the door.  "Who is it?" he called out.

"Jet," J.T. Heller said.

Clevenger opened the door.

Heller, dressed in jeans, a black turtleneck sweater and his black alligator cowboy boots, was holding onto the door jam to hold himself up.  He was pale and reeked of scotch.  "How’s he doing?" he asked.

"Fine, I guess.  Why?"

"He walked out of the O.R. before I could talk to him."

"He just walked out?"

Heller nodded.  "It was already a lost cause, but..."

"What was a lost cause?"

"The girl.  There was nothing to that artery.  It was like tissue paper for ten millimeters.  I tried to save it, save her, but..."  He closed his eyes.

"She died?"

He opened his eyes, looked directly into Clevenger’s.  "Fucking nine years old."

"I’m sorry.  I didn’t...  Billy didn’t tell me."  He put a hand on Heller’s shoulder.  Come on in."

Heller stood there.  "Maybe if I had approached from the palate — going up."  He was looking through Clevenger now, to something beyond either of them.  "I dissected down."  He touched the crown of his head.  "Through the saggital sinus.  That makes sense if you’re inserting a clip, but it makes it very hard to place a graft.  You know?"

"C’mon in," Clevenger said.

Heller let go of the door jam, swayed slightly.

Clevenger grabbed hold of him and walked him inside.

They sat on opposite sides of the couch.

"Billy’s in his room," Clevenger said.  "I think he’s asleep."

"See, I had a chance," Heller said quietly.  "God was with me in there today.  I could feel Him.  I think
I
blew it."

"Didn’t you tell me we’re human?  I’m no neurosurgeon, but I remember enough from med school to know that a ten-millimeter aneurysm on the basilar artery isn’t generally curable, no matter who’s holding the scalpel."

"I didn’t make my name on what happens ‘generally,’" Heller said.  "Neither did you."  He covered his face with one hand, massaged his temples with his thumb and fingers.  "I had to tell her mother and father.  They were waiting for the good news.  I could see it in their faces.  I was out early.  They figured it had gone better than expected."

"How were they when you told them?"

Heller looked up at him.  "How were they?  They died with her.  That’s how it is.  They may not even know it yet.  But they will.  They’ll know it once the wake is over, and the funeral, when everyone has gone home, and they’re looking at each other and seeing that their lives are nothing."

For some reason, Clevenger had a fleeting thought of Grace Baxter — of her feeling that she wouldn’t be able to go on without Snow.  "Drinking yourself to death won’t solve anything," he told Heller.  "There are a lot of other people relying on you."

Heller smiled.  "Jet Heller will go to hell and back to save your life."  He laughed morosely.

Clevenger said nothing for several seconds.  "I’m not sure this is the best time to talk to Billy about what happened," he said.

"I don’t look like much of a role model right now, huh?"  He nodded.  "Agreed."  He stood up.  "You know, for what it’s worth, I think I understand why you do the work you do."

"Maybe you can clue me in," Clevenger said, standing.

"Simple.  The disease model.  If you can find the pathogen responsible for a murder — i.d. the warped person — you might be able to prevent another good man from dying.  And that’s all there is for us, Frank.  Battling the Grim Reaper.  Day in, day out.  Today, he won.  And he won when John Snow took that bullet from some monster.  But if you can find out who killed him, isolate that pathogen, you can wipe it off the face of the earth."

"Or put it in quarantine.  Prison."

"That isn’t God’s view of things, my friend.  An eye for an eye.  That’s the only way the battle is won.  You can’t be afraid to cut out a malignancy."

Clevenger was certain the good guys had to operate on a higher level than the killers — just for society to keep track of who was who.  But he knew it wasn’t the time or place to argue social policy.  "I don’t see it that way," he said, and left it at that.

"I know that about you," Heller said.  "Dr. Gandhi."  He swayed on his feet, caught himself.

"Why don’t you crash here?"

Heller shook his head.  "I have a taxi waiting.  I’m fine."  He held out his hand.  "Good night, my friend."

Clevenger squeezed his hand, let it go.  "I’ll tell Billy about the girl."

"You’re lucky," Heller said.  "Being his father.  What a wonderful thing.  I never thought much about having a kid.  Billy makes me feel like I should have."

Clevenger knew Heller was drunk, but even alcohol didn’t explain what was sounding like an irrational attachment.  Heller had only known Billy a few days.  "Be careful getting home," Clevenger said.

"Right," Heller said.  He turned and headed to the door, opened it.  "Tell Billy I apologize.  I’ll make it up to him."

"I’ll make sure he knows there was nothing you could do."

"Thank you," Heller said.  He walked out, closed the door behind him.

Clevenger walked to Billy’s room.  He was about to knock on the door when it opened.

Billy stood just inside the room.  His lip was quivering.

"Hey, buddy," Clevenger said.  "You hear all that?"

"I didn’t get bored," Billy managed, fighting back tears.

"What do you mean?"

"In the O.R. I wasn’t bored."

"Okay..." Clevenger said.  "What were you?"

A tear started down his cheek.  "I was... I was scared.  I was scared for that little girl."

Clevenger felt his skin turn to gooseflesh.  What growing up with a sadistic father, living through the death of a sibling, facing countless kids twice his age in street fights and stepping into the ring again and again hadn’t done for Billy, a couple trips to the O.R. with Jet Heller had.  Billy was feeling afraid, and not just for himself, but for another person.  He was empathizing with another human being.  That was a kind of miracle.  Maybe God really had scrubbed in with Jet Heller that day.  Maybe the little girl on the table just wasn’t the one he was able to heal.  "Come here," Clevenger said.  He held out his arms.

Billy stepped into them, buried his face on Clevenger’s shoulder.

Clevenger held him close.

"How can something like that happen?" Billy asked through his tears.  "She was so little."

Clevenger wanted to come up with an answer, wanted to shield Billy from the fact that death was capricious, that entropy was as great a force as anything in the universe, that the love of the best parent couldn’t protect the most innocent child from an aneurysm or cancer or a car crash or murder.  He wanted to shield him, but he loved him too much to lie to him.  "I don’t know," he said.  "I wish I did, Billy.  But I don’t."

Chapter 16

8:37
P.M.

Clevenger left his loft to meet Whitney McCormick at the Four Seasons Hotel.  He climbed into his truck, then noticed a piece of paper tucked under his windshield wiper.  He got out, grabbed it.

It was a card in an unsealed envelope with his name written on it in purple ink.  He pulled it out.  The front was a watercolor of a rainbow.  He flipped it open, saw a note written in purple, signed by Lindsey Snow:

Dr. Clevenger:

I don’t expect anything from you.  I won’t haunt you.  I just want you to know how close I feel to you.  I don’t think it’s a father-daughter thing, or anything weird like that.  I don’t think it has anything at all to do with losing my dad.

In my heart, I’m so sure we were meant to be close to one another.

People sometimes just know these things, don’t they?

Yours,

Lindsey

Lindsey’s protests that her feelings for Clevenger had nothing to do with her feelings for her father were classic denial.  The connection was so close she needed to disavow it not once, but twice, in the very first paragraph.

Clevenger slipped the card into his jacket pocket and climbed back into the driver’s seat.  He figured it was time to stop by the Snow’s house again in the morning to check whether pressing Lindsey, Kyle and Theresa Snow might yield anything new on the case.

He put the key in the ignition, turned it.  He heard a hollow click.  He tried again, then heard what sounded like the crack of a whip under the hood.  His gut told him to get the hell out.  He threw open the door and dove for the ground.

The truck burst into flames.

One arm of his jacket was on fire.  He rolled on the pavement, managed to put it out.  Then he looked back at his truck, saw a plume of smoke spewing twenty feet into the air.  The hood and cabin were black and smoldering.  The windshield was blown out.

Billy came running out the door of the building, raced over and knelt down beside him.  He looked panicked.  "What the hell...?  Are you hurt?"

Clevenger moved each of his legs, each of his arms.  He ran his fingertips over his face, looked for blood.  None.  "No.  I’m okay."

"What happened?" Billy asked.

"Someone’s trying to tell me I’m getting warm," Clevenger said.

"You think someone at John Snow’s company did this?  They make bombs or whatever, don’t they?"

Clevenger couldn’t help feeling again that he wanted Billy as far from the investigation as possible.  "I have no idea who did it," he said.  "I’m just glad the person wasn’t any better at it."  He thought of the note in his pocket — of Lindsey.  He remembered that one of Kyle Snow’s arrests had been for a bomb threat at his prep school.  But then another memory popped into his mind — J.T. Heller’s peculiar statement about wanting a son like Billy.  Was there any chance Heller would try to take a shortcut, to take Billy for himself?  Or was that a paranoid projection of Clevenger’s own jealousy and competitiveness?

The thought didn’t go away.  It spawned others.  Why hadn’t Clevenger ever asked Heller precisely where he had been minutes before John Snow was rushed to the emergency room at Mass General?  Was it just coincidence that Heller had been so close to the E.R. to begin with?  Was it a coincidence that the work he did trying to save Snow destroyed the automatic landmarks that would have allowed Jeremiah Wolfe to formally rule his death murder or suicide?

Could the brotherhood of medicine have led Clevenger to give Heller the benefit of the doubt when he didn’t deserve it?

"You think this has to do with you going to Washington to see Collin Coroway?" Billy asked.

"It could," Clevenger conceded, wishing Billy would stop probing.

Billy pulled him up and out of the road.

They watched the truck smoldering.  Sirens began blaring in the distance.

"It was, what, a ’98?" Billy asked.

Clevenger felt Billy’s hand on his waist, helping him stay on his feet.  He put his arm around Billy’s shoulders.  "They come with leather and navigation now, I think," Clevenger said.  "What are you doing this weekend?"

"Buying a truck with my father?"

"Sounds like a plan."

*            *            *

The Chelsea Police Department sent four cruisers of their own to Clevenger’s building, along with a bomb squad on loan from Boston.  Two members of the team got to work on Clevenger’s truck while another three officers searched the elevator, staircase and hallways leading to Clevenger’s loft space.

As he watched them work, Clevenger used his cell phone to reschedule with Whitney McCormick for an 11:00
P.M.
drink in the Four Season’s Bristol lounge.  He told her he would explain later.

His first instinct had been to cancel altogether, but the idea of yielding a night’s work irritated him.  He was obviously making people nervous.

He called Mike Coady next.

"Hey, Frank," Coady answered.

"I had a little problem with my truck," Clevenger said.