ZERO HERO (The Kate Huntington Mystery series)

ZERO HERO

A Kate Huntington Mystery

by

Kassandra Lamb

A
misterio press
publication

Published by
misterio press

 
www.misteriopress.com

Edited by Marcy Kennedy

Cover art by Melinda VanLone, Book Cover Corner

http://bookcovercorner.com/

E-book design by Kirsten Weiss

Copyright © 2013 by Kassandra Lamb

All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be used, transmitted, stored, distributed or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without the author’s written permission, except very short excerpts for reviews. The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or by any other means without the author’s express permission is illegal and punishable by law.

Zero Hero
is a work of fiction. Names, characters, and events (with the exception of 9/11 obviously) are all products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual events or people, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. Some real places may be used fictitiously.

Books by Kassandra Lamb

The Kate Huntington Mystery Series:

MULTIPLE MOTIVES

ILL-TIMED ENTANGLEMENTS

FAMILY FALLACIES

CELEBRITY STATUS

COLLATERAL CASUALTIES

ZERO HERO

FATAL FORTY-EIGHT

(coming in 2014)

The Kate on Vacation Novellas:

An Unsaintly Season in St. Augustine

Cruel Capers on the Caribbean

(coming Winter/Spring 2014)

ECHOES, A Story of Suspense

(a stand-alone ghost story/mystery)

To all the 9/11 First Responders,

and to those who lost their lives that day

and their families and friends.

We will never forget!

PROLOGUE

            Swirling shades of gray. Searing heat. Air choked with black particles. His arms wrapped around two little bodies. The little girl limp. The boy’s mouth open, eyes scrunched closed, screaming in terror, his screams inaudible over the roar of the flames and the groaning of a building tearing apart.

            Stumbling down steps. Can’t see. The wrenching sounds getting louder. Then the crackling voice from the radio, “Get out! Get out now! It’s coming down!”

            Racing down the stairs, praying.
Don’t miss a step! Don’t fall!
Then nothing under foot. Only space and darkness.

            Airborne, twisting around to avoid landing on top of the little bodies.
Gotta protect the children!
Falling through space...

            He bolted upright, gasping for breath, eyes wide and unseeing. Sweat poured down his face. His body stank of it. It took several seconds for his brain to register that it was just a dream.

            His therapist’s voice echoed in his head.
It’s not just a dream, Pete. Stop minimizing what you’re going through.

            Something she had told him more times than he could count.

            But she wouldn’t be saying it anymore. No more therapy sessions. His insurance had run out.

            Kelly’d had tears in her eyes when she’d told him that if it was up to her she would see him for free. But it wasn’t up to her. She worked at a for-profit counseling center. She’d referred him to the county health department’s mental health clinic. Six to eight weeks, he’d been told, before one of their counselors could see him.

            He wasn’t sure he was going to make it.

CHAPTER ONE

            Kate watched for the telltale thatch of silver hair above the heads of the lunchtime crowd at Mac’s Place. Her lunch date was late, which wasn’t all that unusual. Partners in thriving law practices sometimes had trouble getting away from the office.

            She wondered if there was anything to the old wives’ tale that stress causes one to gray prematurely. Rob said his hair made him look distinguished, gave him an advantage in the courtroom, but Kate knew it bothered him some. He was occasionally mistaken for the father of his petite, strawberry-blonde wife, much to her delight and his annoyance.

            “Penny for your thoughts.”

            Kate jumped a little, then smiled up at the tall, broad-shouldered man standing next to the booth. A slight paunch, pushing against the buttons of his dress shirt, attested to his ongoing battle with middle-aged spread. He tossed his suit jacket onto the bench and sat down across from her.

            She shoved an errant dark curl out of her eyes. “I’m not sure they’re worth that much.” She wasn’t about to tell him what she’d been thinking, that his stress level might be aging him before his time. “How’re you doing? How’s Liz?”

            Before he could answer, a short, compact woman suddenly appeared beside them.

            “Holy crap, Rose.” Kate clutched at her chest in feigned shock. “Oh, no, we’ve been transported back in time. Mac’s still running the place and you’re helping out. Where’s your apron?”

            “Very funny,” Rose Hernandez said. “Mac and I needed to meet. Got cases to discuss. Figured might as well come here, so he could touch base with the manager.” Mac Reilly, Kate’s friend since childhood, had grown tired of running a restaurant a few years back and was now an investigator for the private detective agency Rose and Kate’s husband co-owned.

            Rob grinned at Rose. “Not to mention the food is free for the boss and his bride.”

            She graced him with one of her brief but gorgeous smiles. “Yeah, there is that. Mac’s in the kitchen. You want me to place your orders, for old time’s sake?”

            “Sure,” Kate said.

            After Rose headed for the kitchen, Rob leaned forward. “Speaking of cases, I have a referral for you, if you want it.”

            “What do you mean, if I want it?”

            “This guy doesn’t have any money, and his health insurance benefits just ran out.” Rob shook his head slightly. “He was a first responder on 9/11. He’s a Baltimore County firefighter but he was on vacation in New York, visiting a cousin. If he’d arrived five minutes earlier, he’d have been inside the World Trade Center when the first plane hit. Like everybody else, he assumed it was some kind of freak accident or pilot error. He started helping with the evacuation. Then the second tower was hit.” Rob paused to take a sip of the water a waitress had deposited on their table.

            “Long story short, Pete borrowed the equipment of a firefighter who was suffering from smoke inhalation. He was responsible for several of the lives saved that day, including a couple kids.”

            Rob’s voice was hoarse. Clearing his throat, he picked up his unused straw and started twisting it around his thick fingers. “Now his life’s become a nightmare, thanks to the insurance companies. He was okay at first. Said he was in some of the debriefing groups held in New York right afterwards.”

            Kate nodded. Hundreds of teams of stress management counselors had descended on New York City in the days and weeks following 9/11. Their interventions had been effective with a fair number of people. It never ceased to amaze her how resilient the human psyche could be.

            “Pete didn’t start having problems until the ten-year anniversary. When the media started replaying the videos of the planes hitting the towers, and the scenes from Ground Zero afterwards...” Rob dropped his gaze to the mangled straw on the table. “He’s been having nightmares and flashbacks ever since.”

            Butterflies invaded Kate’s stomach. Rob was not prone to either nervous behaviors nor poor eye contact. He’d struggled with post-traumatic symptoms himself years ago, after her first husband’s murderer had tried to kill them as well, and had almost succeeded with Rob. Could this client’s case be stirring all that up again?

            The waitress arrived with their food. Mac’s Place was famous for having the best crab cakes in Towson, no small feat in the state of Maryland. The fragrance of succulent crab meat mixed with Old Bay seasoning was as mouth-watering as always, but somehow Kate wasn’t as hungry as she’d been a few minutes ago.

            She was somewhat reassured when Rob swiped her pickle slices to add to his own on his sandwich. That
was
normal behavior for him.

            They ate in silence for a minute. “How could his benefits run out this early in the year?” Kate asked.

            “Not his yearly benefits, the lifetime cap,” Rob said. “Insurance company has an upper limit of sixty visits for PTSD.”

            “Say what? That’s only a year of weekly sessions.”

            “Yeah, I talked to the Baltimore County fire chief. He said they went along with that in order to get any kind of decent premiums. Since PTSD is so common in firefighters no company was willing to give better coverage for it without charging outrageously. He figured since it’s almost always work-related in firefighters, most cases would be covered by their workers comp insurance anyway.”

            “But this is due to trauma he suffered when he wasn’t officially on duty.” She was starting to grasp the rock and the hard place here.

            “Exactly. So no workers comp and only sixty visits. Pete got into drugs. Trying to hide from the feelings, he said. Got suspended from duty, went through rehab, but he needed to go to counseling twice a week for awhile to stay clean. That ate up most of his visits pretty fast. And here’s the real kicker. His insurance required that he go to one of their specified providers. The one he went to doesn’t do reduced fees or
pro bono
counseling. So no more insurance benefits, boom, they dropped him.”

            Kate took a bite of her sandwich to buy some time to think. She wasn’t an addictions counselor, which was a fairly specialized subfield of psychotherapy. Her first reaction was to say no to this case. “Drug addiction should make him eligible for more sessions.”

            Rob shook his head. “That’s what I’m fighting with the insurance company over. They’re claiming the drug addiction is secondary to the PTSD so the cap should still apply.”

            “That’s bull hockey.”

            “Of course it is, but a few insurance companies do this. Any excuse to deny the claim, hoping the patient will pay out of pocket, or drop out of treatment. They don’t really care, as long as they get away with not paying.”

            Kate put her sandwich down.
Hell of a way to treat anybody, much less a national hero.

            “Aren’t lifetime caps against the law now?” she asked.

            “The insurance company’s claiming that only applies to physical health benefits. The law’s a little vague regarding mental health issues. I have my paralegal checking if there have been any cases filed yet, see if any precedents have been established.” Rob paused and took a sip of water. “The sad thing is Pete really liked his counselor, felt she was helping him. Now he’s on a waiting list for the mental health clinic at the health department.”

            Rob was fiddling with his straw again. “And I haven’t gotten to the worst part about the insurance–”

            “How long has he been off the drugs?”

            “Not quite eight months.”

            Ah, now they’d come to the true source of Rob’s hesitation. He knew she required at least a year clean and sober. She wanted addicts to be solid in their recovery before she started poking around in their psyches, maybe stirring up stuff that could rock their sobriety.

            She shook her head again. “I’ll try to find a colleague who will take him on a reduced-fee basis.”

            Rob winced. “That’s the worst part. He can’t even afford reduced fee now. His disability benefits have run out too, and his commander won’t put him back on duty without a medical release. His previous counselor told him she couldn’t in good conscience give him one. She’s afraid he’ll start having flashbacks while in a burning building and maybe run in the wrong direction, get himself trapped in a fire.”

            “She’s probably right,” Kate said. “Can’t he get Social Security disability? Hey, wait a minute. What about that law that was passed a few years ago, to provide healthcare benefits to 9/11 first responders?”