Snapshot (19 page)

“Why should I tell you? She's dead. She was a damn fine nurse. They're tryin' to say she was messed up with drugs, one more dark-skinned girl dead from drugs, no big deal, right? But it's not like that.”

“Then don't let them write her off,” I said.

“Nothin' I can do, is there?”

I shrugged my shoulders. “Maybe not,” I said, taking a sip of warm beer, keeping silent, watching him decide.

He started slowly, in a low, flat voice. “A while back, beginning of the year, just before she left JHHI, she came in from work a mess, went right into the bedroom, wouldn't hardly talk to me.”

“Yeah?”

“I cooked dinner. She wasn't hungry. I tried talkin', she wasn't listenin'. Wound up watchin' TV reruns most of the night.
The Tonight Show
, but she didn't laugh once. Didn't even hear the jokes.”

I kept quiet. He held his empty glass in one hand. The index finger of his other hand traced a circle on the arm of his chair, the same circle over and over.

“She took a shower before bed. I always know it's really bad if she takes a shower at night instead of in the morning. Like she wants to wash somethin' offa her. So when she comes out I ask her flat-out did she lose a kid? Seven years she's a nurse, it still rips her up to lose a kid. And she gets this look on her face and she says, ‘You know, I had bad days before, but this is some kinda personal best.' I remember she said that, ‘personal best,' 'cause she's a runner, too, like me. And she tells me she lost three. Three in one day, one right after another. All real sick, yeah, but she don't understand it, and she's worried as hell thinkin' maybe, maybe, she did somethin' wrong. Thinkin' about how it'll look and all. Three.”

Three.

“Can you pin the date down on that?”

“Huh? How?”

“What did you watch on TV? Anything besides
The Tonight Show?
”

“I don't remember.”

“Was it the first week in January?”

“Could be.”

Becca Woodrow had died January sixth.

“Did she get fired?”

“No.”

“Was there an investigation?”

“I dunno.”

“She didn't talk about it?”

“No. And I didn't ask. I didn't want to get her upset again. I was just damn glad when she left that place is all.”

“Left for Cee Co.”

“She only mentioned the name Cee Co. once. And then she kinda laughed.”

“She only mentioned it once?”

“That's what I said.”

“You didn't ask her about it?”

“What's to ask? ‘You have a nice day, honey?' Yeah, I'd ask her stuff like that. ‘Say, what's the real full name of that company you work for?' Naw, that didn't come up.”

I swallowed my exasperation along with a mouthful of tepid beer. “How about this? How soon after her bad day at work did she leave JHHI?”

“Maybe a month later.”

“Think hard, Tony. Do you ever remember Tina mentioning a woman named Emily Woodrow?”

“No. Sorry. I don't.”

“Isn't there anything you can remember about Cee Co.?”

“Honest, no. I didn't pay it hardly any mind, and she didn't seem to work much, to tell you the truth. Put in a few hours is all. Nothing like the hours she worked at JHHI.”

“A few hours?”

“Some days she didn't go in at all. Then, the last few weeks she spent a lot of time away. But some of that was at the library.”

“What library?”

“I dunno.” He seemed momentarily abashed by the scope of his ignorance, but then brightened up and offered, “She was readin' about Pakistan. Know-your-roots stuff, I guess.”

“Pakistan? Was she planning a trip?”

“Nope. Just readin' about it is all.”

I took a sip of beer and wished I'd had a chance to meet Tina Sukhia.

Not many women are killers, Keith Donovan had said. And he was right. But a nurse in a Texas hospital had killed sixteen children with a lethal drug a few years ago. Made national headlines, that one. She said she'd done it to show administrators how much the hospital needed a pediatric intensive-care unit. The lady was in jail and would stay there till she died.

I wished I'd remembered that little tidbit when I was sparring with the shrink.

I called a Green & White cab for Tony Foley before I left.

22

The light slipped from the sky as I walked back over the bridge into Boston. The air had cooled and a breeze whipped the dark river. A spandex-clad bicyclist swerved to avoid a pedestrian. A dented Volkswagen blared its impatience at the traffic light.

Chase a bereaved man away from his home, buy him drinks, and desert him, friendless, in a bar. I congratulated myself on a job well done. Time was, I'd have stayed with him, munching stale peanuts, nodding and listening. But the plain and simple fact was that I didn't want to hear the precious details of his pain.

I shook my head and plodded on. I've felt empty before, depleted of compassion. I quit being a cop when I felt that way all the time.

Worries slowed me like pebbles in my shoes. Paolina. Marta. Emily Woodrow. Becca and Tina were dead and couldn't profit from my anxiety anymore.

Hell, if I were Tony Foley, would I go home to that solitary apartment, to Tina's peacock feathers and filmy scarves, to the bed they'd shared? I'd moved back to my aunt's house after I'd split with Cal, and he wasn't even dead, although he might as well have died, for all the good he did me, zonked out on cocaine.

I passed a phone—not a booth, just a public phone stuck on a metal stem. The 411 operator took her time before parting with the Woodrows' number. Harold picked up on the first buzz, like he'd been hovering over the instrument, willing it to ring.

No, Emily was not home. No, she had not been home.

“Don't you think you should call the police?” I asked. “She's been missing for more than twenty-four hours—”

“What do you mean, ‘missing'? It's her choice. You think that's what she's waiting for? Me to call somebody, let the general public know my wife's turned into a lunatic?”

“Look at it this way. If something's happened to her, if she's in a hospital somewhere, it won't look good if you haven't lifted a finger to find her.”

“I've informed my attorney. Desertion is grounds for—”

“This is a no-fault divorce state, Mr. Woodrow, as you know. Look, I hate to bring this up on the phone, but I'm concerned about your wife's welfare—”

“And I'm not, I suppose?”

“Are there pill bottles in your medicine cabinet? Did you notice a lot of prescription bottles?”

He gave an exasperated snort. “What are you getting at?”

“I think you ought to hire me to look for your wife.”

“Hire you? Hah. Use the thousand she already paid you, the money you bilked her out of already. Don't come to me for more.”

“It's not money I need, it's authorization! I can't tell you what your wife hired me to do, but I can tell you she didn't hire me to find her!”

“I'm hanging up.”

“Wait. I'm sorry I raised my voice. I won't do it again. You said her mother hadn't seen her—”

“Her mother's in a nursing home. She can't speak. The attendants haven't seen my wife in days.”

“Is there anyone else? A sister or brother?”

“I phoned her half sister in Rhode Island.”

“Can you give me that number?”

“You think Emily's there, but she doesn't want to speak to me?”

“It's possible.”

“She's not close to her half sister. No love lost there. Greta would have begged me to come fetch her.”

“What about her friends from before you got married?”

“Before we married? Well, I wouldn't know about them, would I?”

“This is no good. On the phone like this. I need to see you. It'll take me, what? Half an hour, forty minutes—”

“Not tonight.”

“Fifteen minutes of your time. No more.”

“Absolutely not. Not tonight.”

“Tomorrow, then. Ten o'clock.”

“You won't be late?”

“No.”

“Nine thirty would be more convenient.”

“Nine thirty, then.”

“Good-bye.” The receiver cracked into the cradle and a rusty dial tone hummed in my ear.

How inconvenient, I thought, to have a missing wife.

Tomorrow. Wait till tomorrow. What the hell would I tell Mooney tomorrow? That my client was missing? That she might or might not have killed Tina Sukhia? That she might have killed herself as well?

I turned blindly and walked uphill toward the bridge. A teenager in a B.U. sweatshirt jogged past, breathing hard. She started to smile at me, stopped with her lips barely stretched, and looked quickly away.

Poor Emily Woodrow. Mother in a nursing home. Husband cold as ice. Daughter dead. I stared at the high iron railing surrounding the bridge. High enough to discourage midnight jumpers? Or did the polluted Charles River beneath, the thought of an unclean death in murky water, do that? For a moment I thought I could see Emily in the gloom, still and small in her neat suit, stockings torn, poised on the brink. Just out of my reach.

My mother used to throw up her hands and cry,
“Eyner vil lebn un ken nit, der tsveyter ken lebn un vil nit.”
“One person wants to live and can't, another can live and won't.” Her all-purpose comment on the basic injustice and futility of it all.

If Tina had been killed by someone other than Emily, my client could have been murdered as well.

Where in hell were those documents Emily had promised to send? Did Harold know about them? Had she confided in her husband? Would he confide in me?

I walked.

I could have gone back to comfort Tony Foley.

“What is it you do when you're down?” Keith Donovan had asked.

I could have gone home to play guitar and eat frozen pizza.

I called Sam Gianelli.

23

“Hey,” I murmured gently, running a light finger over Sam's ear, “wake up.”

He smiled and sighed. His eyes stayed shut.

Me, I'm a second-round lover. Unless I have a steady bedmate, a regular night-and-morning man, I find the guy too eager to come, too easily satisfied, too quick to drift off to sleep. I'm slow to rouse and slow to finish. Sam knows that. He forgets.

But when I wake in the middle of the night and reach for him, Sam isn't surprised. That's the coziness of old lovers, who know just where to lick and touch and probe.

“C'mon,” I said, a little louder.

Sometimes I miss the craziness of new lovers, who haven't got a clue, but are more than willing to search. My subconscious flashed an image of Keith Donovan knotting his tie. Substituted one in which he unbuckled his belt.

“Mmmmm,” Sam said. “That's nice.”

“How to put the romance back into your affair,” I said.

“You could wear lace,” he murmured.

I peeled off my menswear tank-top undershirt. “Black lace?” I asked. “Kinky?”

“Kinky,” he agreed solemnly.

I've never been into dress-up sex. Music's my aphrodisiac, and since Sam tolerates my old blues albums, maybe I ought to give itchy lace another chance. I've got a black underwire bra I haven't worn since high school. The push-up kind, bought when I thought every girl needed Miss December breasts. Had I thrown it out?

“Pay attention,” Sam said.

I did. The sheet and blanket entangled us, but they finally surrendered and tumbled to the floor. We managed to stay on the mattress, me on top, wriggling and slowly, slowly sliding, while Sam, his big hands free and busy, did his own underwiring and encircling.

When the phone rang, I was winded, pleased that it had waited till I'd climaxed.

“Relax,” I said to Sam, lifting my hair off my sweaty neck with one hand. “It's probably just a ransom demand for my garbage.”

I tilted the receiver off the hook before it could shrill a fifth ring. The woman on the other end of the line cursed me in Spanish. I was tempted to hang up, but I knew the voice too well.

“Marta,” I said firmly.
“¡Por favor, repita!”

That had no effect at all.

“¡Más despacio!”
I demanded.

The flow of sound slowed and started to make sense.

“How long ago? Did she take any money?” I spoke in Spanish. I know better than to try English on Paolina's mother when she's in a state.

“¿Cuánto? Gracias
. Now tell me exactly what she said. Word for word. Spanish, English, whatever! If I don't understand, I'll ask.” I shut my eyes and ground my teeth to keep from screaming.

Sam leaned over and flicked on the light.

“
‘¿Jamás?' ¿Cómo se dice en inglés?
Never? Same as
‘nunca'
? Stronger, when you use them both? What else? Okay. Okay.
Cuanto antes.”
I hung up while she was still shrieking at me about how it was all my fault and she would sue me, kill me, if anything happened to her daughter.

“Bad?” Sam asked, already sitting up and starting to pull on his pants with the speed of a man who felt guilty about missing the earlier episode with the trash cans.

“Paolina. She ran away.” I started punching buttons as soon as I heard a dial tone.

“Cops?”

“Not yet.”

“Green and White Cab,” Gloria sang on the first ring. She didn't try to interrupt while I sketched the outline. “Poor lamb,” she muttered. “Poor darlin'.” Then “You hang on two seconds, hear?”

It was more than two seconds, more than two minutes. I spent the time foraging for clothing on the floor, handing an occasional article to Sam, balancing the receiver between my shoulder and chin while donning the rest.

“You called it right, babe.” Gloria's voice was so soothing I wondered why I didn't dial her whenever I got an insomnia attack. “Johnny Knight picked her up on Portland Street, dropped her in front of the Delta terminal fifteen minutes ago. Sweet child knew enough to flag a Green and White. No perverts workin' here. 'Course she probably hoped she'd get you.”