Spotted Cats (10 page)

The sun settled beneath the tall trees behind me while I gazed easterly. There were several hours of daylight left, but the shadows in the hollows below Jeff’s hill grew long and dark.

I wondered if he was going to make it.

Lily. I knew nothing about her. It would be easy to create a scenario of the crime with her at the centre of it. I could see how Maroney could do it. He had the advantage on me there. I knew her, or thought I did. What I knew didn’t fit. It skewed my perception, fuzzed the picture. She was beautiful, sexy, sensitive, loving, loyal. None of those was a criminal trait.

But aside from the beautiful and sexy parts, it all could be pretence. That plus my own predisposition to project a certain repertoire of feminine qualities on to beautiful women.

I wondered about those phone calls from the Totem Café in West Yellowstone, Montana. They could have been for Lily, not Jeff.

I sipped my beer slowly. Swallows soared and swooped against the afternoon sky, waiting for the mosquitoes to come out. I waited for them, too.

I had begun to slap at their scouts when I heard a car engine whine up the driveway. Then it stopped. A door chunked shut. I got up and went into the house. The rooms were growing dark. I switched on some lights.

Lily came in. I studied her face. It showed me nothing. She gave me a quick, weary smile. ‘Hi.’

‘Hi.’

She dropped her purse on the table next to the empty glass cases and plopped on to the sofa. ‘I’m beat,’ she said.

‘Beer or something?’

She shook her head. ‘Nothing.’ She looked around. ‘You cleaned up.’

‘Yes. It was a mess.’

‘Thanks.’

I sat beside her. She reached for my hand and pulled it into her lap. She laid her head back on the sofa and closed her eyes. I waited for her to tell me that Jeff had died.

It was several minutes before she spoke. ‘They wouldn’t even let me see him,’ she finally said, her voice soft and vague. ‘They had him in surgery for like three hours, and I just waited, and finally a nurse came out, and I could tell by the way she looked at me that he was dead. And, Brady, I had this feeling—I’m ashamed, but I couldn’t help it—I was relieved. Just in that moment between the time I saw her face and she spoke to me, it was like a big rock fell out of my stomach. And it wasn’t that I was relieved on Jeff’s account, either. Not as if I was happy that his misery had ended, or that it was better that he wouldn’t live like a vegetable or something. I was relieved on my own account. I felt free, finally, and I realized in that instant that I hadn’t been free for a long time and that I had resented the hell out of Jeff, that he had kept me imprisoned all those years.’

She squeezed my hand tightly with both of hers. I turned to look at her face, expecting, from the tone of her voice, to see tears. But she wasn’t crying. Her forehead was furrowed, her eyes squeezed shut, her lips taut, and I read more anger than sadness there.

‘He’s not dead,’ she said after a long pause. ‘Holding his own, was how the nurse put it. Stable, she said. I asked for details. How badly hurt is he, I said. What will happen? Will he be OK? Stable, she repeated. That’s all she could tell me. I got—I got a little loud, I guess. I had been sitting there for a long time, waiting, trying to figure out how I felt about it, what I wanted to happen, and it was like something snapped. So a doctor came out. He put his hands on my shoulders and kind of sat me down. So I asked him the same questions. Know what he said?’

‘What?’ I said.

‘He asked me if I was next of kin. I said I was his goddamned housekeeper, that’s all I was, but I was there and I was all he had just then. And this doctor—he couldn’t have been thirty years old, with a dippy little blond moustache and these round wire-rimmed glasses down on his nose—he gives me this bullshit smile they probably teach them in medical school, and he tells me Jeff’s stable, he’s holding his own, the surgery was successful. So I asked him what the fuck that was supposed to mean, what was going to happen, and he told the nurse to bring me a glass of water, for Christ sake. I stood up. I told him I didn’t want water. I wanted to know about Jeff, and since they didn’t seem like they wanted to tell me, I was gonna get a lawyer.’

‘You are a piece of work,’ I said.

She moved her head and looked at me. ‘I am, aren’t I?’ She sighed deeply. ‘Anyhow, was that OK?’

‘Was what OK?’

‘About you going there tomorrow and demanding to know about him?’

I smiled. ‘Oh, sure. Badgering doctors is one of the main things lawyers do.’

She rested her cheek against my shoulder. ‘Good. I think I’ll have that beer now.’

‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘I just finished the last one.’

L
ILY AND I ARRIVED
at the Cape Cod Hospital in Hyannis a little after noon on Sunday. The day had dawned drizzly. The roads were clogged with traffic, vacationers aimlessly seeking alternative time-killers to lying on the beach. It took nearly an hour to get there.

At the main desk we got directions to the ICU. We found the waiting room, so named, I supposed, because people waited there for other people to die. No one happened to be waiting there this time.

I told the secretary behind the chest-high counter that I was Thomas Jefferson Newton’s attorney—sometimes I use the word ‘attorney’ rather than ‘lawyer’ because laypeople seem to respond more quickly to it—and that I wanted to talk to the doctor in charge.

She had hair like Brillo and a quick sympathetic smile that wrinkled her face like a gust of wind across a pond. She squinted at me for a moment, then nodded. ‘OK. Have a seat, please. The doctor will be with you.’ I waited at the counter until she picked up a phone and spoke into it. Then I went back and sat beside Lily.

Fifteen or twenty minutes passed before a man wearing pale green hospital scrubs came into the room. He was probably forty, although the bags under his eyes made him look older. His skin was pale and his shoulders sagged. He looked overworked, underpaid, strung out on too much stress and too little sleep. He looked at me and Lily, hesitated, then came over.

‘You’re here about Mr Newton?’ he said, aiming his question at the space between me and Lily.

I stood up. ‘Yes. I’m Mr Newton’s lawyer. Brady Coyne. This is Miz Robbins.’

‘I’m Dr Rodman.’ He shook my hand and nodded towards Lily. There was a bloodstain the size of a dime on the sleeve of his smock. It was as perfectly round as a button. ‘Mr Newton’s holding his own. He’s had quite a bad accident.’

‘Holding his own,’ I repeated. ‘What does that mean?’

‘He’s stable. All his vital signs are stable. He’s unconscious, of course, but—

‘Why “of course”?’

The doctor gave us a tired smile. ‘His injury was potentially…’ He let his voice trail off.

‘Fatal?’ I said.

He nodded. ‘Yes. Fatal,’

‘Doctor,’ I said, ‘would you mind sitting with us for a minute?’

He shrugged. ‘Sure.’ He pulled a chair around and sat facing me and Lily.

Lily reached for my hand and pulled it into her lap.

Dr Rodman took a deep breath, expanded his cheeks, and let it out in a long, slow sigh. ‘When Mr Newton arrived, his vital signs were poor. The EMTs probably saved his life. We suspected an epidural bleed.’ He looked at Lily. ‘Bleeding in the brain. Visually examining the wound, we were worried about bone fragments. We gave him a CAT scan then took him into surgery. We evacuated the blood and bone, but he herniated before we could—’

‘Herniated?’ I said. He nodded. ‘The brain swells and bulges out. A bad sign.’ He leaned towards us. ‘A lot of the cortex on the left side of the brain was disrupted. The left hemisphere of the brain, you know, controls speech, plus the entire right side of the body and the face.’

Lily’s grip on my hand tightened. ‘So what’s the prognosis?’ I said.

The doctor shook his head. ‘I wish I could be more optimistic’

‘What’s that mean?’ said Lily.

‘We haven’t done an EEG yet.’

‘Therefore?’

‘Therefore, I’m reluctant to say.’

‘You’re familiar with head wounds?’ I said.

He nodded.

‘We’d like to know what to expect.’

He narrowed his eyes and studied me, then Lily. Then he nodded. ‘OK. Here’s what I expect. Should Mr Newton regain consciousness, at the very least he will be nonverbal and paralysed, or virtually so.’

‘But,’ I said, ‘you don’t expect him to regain consciousness.’

His mouth smiled. His eyes did not. ‘I expect Mr Newton to remain comatose,’ he said.

‘For how long?’ said Lily.

The doctor looked at me as if he wanted help.

‘Until he dies,’ I said.

The doctor shrugged. ‘That, I’m afraid, would be my expectation. We’ll know better in a couple days. That’s as candid as I can be with you. Things happen we don’t expect. Right now Mr Newton is on a ventilator. His inter-cerebral pressure is being monitored. Sometimes…’ He shrugged, then smiled quickly. ‘There’s a lot we don’t know,’ he said. ‘Injuries like this, people often survive for a long time.’

‘On machines,’ said Lily.

‘Yes. Sometimes independent of machines. Sometimes they even regain consciousness. But not often. You shouldn’t get your hopes up. There is no question whatsoever that Mr Newton has suffered severe, irreversible brain trauma.’ He looked at me and narrowed his eyes, as if he had just thought of something. ‘I think you will find that we did everything we could. He’s lucky to still be alive.’

I smiled. He was worried about a lawsuit. I couldn’t blame him. I figured, for Jeff’s sake, it was just as well that he was worried.

‘You could see him if you want,’ said the doctor.

Lily looked at me. ‘You go ahead,’ I said.

She shook her head. ‘I don’t think so.’

Dr Rodman stood up. He shook hands with both of us. ‘If there’s any change, we’ll let you know,’ he said.

I took back roads from Hyannis to Orleans. Although they were a little less congested than Route 6 had been in the morning, I found myself stuck behind a Dodge wagon trailing a big powerboat in Dennis. He kept the needle on 20.

‘Who does Jeff know in Montana?’ I asked Lily as we crept past a miniature golf plaza in Harwich.

‘Montana?’

‘Yesterday when I was picking up the living-room I saw his phone bill. There were four collect calls on four consecutive days, all from the same number in West Yellowstone, Montana.’

I glanced sideways at her. She was frowning at me. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Why?’

‘Just curious, I guess.’

‘So he’s got a friend in Montana,’ she said.

‘He doesn’t have many friends.’

‘Well, he used to.’

‘What about you?’

‘What about me?’

‘Know anybody in Montana?’

‘What are you getting at, Brady?’

I reached over and touched her leg. ‘Nothing. Sorry. I’m nosy. After the other night…’

‘Yeah, well, me too, you know.’

I squeezed her knee. ‘I know. Accept my apology?’

‘Sure.’ She didn’t sound especially enthusiastic.

Lily and I didn’t talk much the rest of the way back. There didn’t seem to be much to say. Lily stared out the side window. I repressed urges to curse the traffic.

When I finally pulled in beside her Cherokee, I turned to her and said, ‘I guess I’ll head back tonight, OK?’

She turned in her seat to face me. ‘No.’

‘No?’

‘No. It’s not all right. I don’t want you to go.’

‘Lily—’

She smiled quickly. ‘Yeah, I know. You’ve got to get back to your office. I understand that. But it’s not all right with me. I don’t want to be alone here. Not yet. Do what you feel you have to do. But don’t ask me what I want.’

‘I can’t stay with you here forever.’

‘I know. One more night would be nice, though.’

‘I’d have to take off early in the morning.’

She nodded. ‘That’d be great.’ She reached over and placed the palm of her hand on my cheek. Then she tilted towards me and kissed me there. ‘I’ll take you fishing tonight, how’d that be?’ She kept her mouth against my face. ‘Jeff’s pond is full of nice rainbow trout. I’ll paddle.’

‘The way to a man’s heart,’ I said. The dewy touch of her lips remained long after she had pulled away from me.

Lily broiled T-bone steaks for dinner. Baked potato, salad of mixed greens, a musky red wine. We ate in the kitchen.

While she was cleaning up I retrieved my fly-fishing gear and went out back to the toolshed to hunt up the paddles and cushions for our canoe excursion. The sun had already dipped behind the trees, and the shed had no windows. The only light came through the open doorway. Everything in there was a shadow.

I squeezed around a lawn mower and a wheelbarrow. I spotted a pair of paddles propped up in the corner behind a large object shrouded under a canvas cover. As I leaned over it to reach the paddles I realized the object was a motorcycle. Seeing it saddened me somehow. The bike was a relic, I guessed, from Jeff’s vigorous youth. Before the leopard got him. And now he was lying in a hospital, more dead than alive.

Lily was waiting for me on the dock. She had the canoe drawn up alongside. I held it for her while she stepped in. I handed her the paddles and cushions. Then I took the bow seat. Lily shoved us off. I stripped line from my reel and began fly casting.

A furry blanket of mist skimmed the inky surface of the pond. An orange wedge of moon hung low in the eastern sky, and towards the western horizon the brilliant gold of an hour earlier had faded to yellowish pewter. Aside from the close-up hum and zizz of swarming mosquitoes and the rhythmic, distant swish of the traffic on Route 6, out there in the canoe Lily and I seemed cocooned in the liquid silence of the evening.

She had been right about the trout. The rings of surface-feeding fish caught wiggly reflections from the night sky, expanded them outward, broke the fragile light into pieces, and scattered them until they seemed to sink into the depths of the pond. They were fat, healthy rainbows, averaging a foot or so in length, and they sucked in the little white-winged dry fly I cast to their swirls.

I released the first few I caught without boating them by tracing the leader down to the fly in their mouths with my fingers and twisting the tiny hook free. Finally, Lily said, ‘Hey, that could be our breakfast,’ so I lifted the next two into the canoe and snapped their necks.