Fractures: A Detectives Seagate and Miner Mystery Page 14

  Robin was seated at one of her computers. She was wearing bright red headphones and didn’t hear me. I knocked again, harder, and she looked up.

  “Hey, cops,” she said brightly.

  “Anything we should know from Lee Rossman or the disgusting alley?”

  She shook her head. “Nothing yet that can help you. There’s all kinds of DNA in the alley—mostly cigarettes and a couple of used condoms. Two needles. But nothing that can be tied to Rossman. There’s a long hair, dyed brown, European origin, on his outer coat, but no way of knowing if he brought it into the alley with him or it just blew onto his coat and stuck there. The wool on the coat has good adhesion.”

  “His fly was down. Any sticky stuff on his dick?”

  She shook her head. “He hadn’t gotten laid since his last shower.”

  “Saliva? Lipstick?”

  “Or blown.”

  “Shit.” I was hoping for some vaginal fluid from a hooker in our database. “Anything on the rest of his clothing that tells us what he was up to?”

  “He was wearing leather-soled shoes. No tread on them or anything to collect any soil. Didn’t see anything other than traces of gasoline, which he could’ve picked up in any garage or street. There was another hair, also European, from a different person, dyed a different brunette, on his suit jacket. About nine inches long. He got a brunette wife or girlfriend?”

  “A brunette wife. Don’t know yet about a girlfriend.”

  “Do you want me to start typing the hair samples?”

  “No, not yet. Maybe he hangs his coat up in some kind of closet at work. The hair could come from anyone in his office. I’ll let you know.” I tapped on the doorframe with my knuckle. “Shit, I was kind of hoping you’d have something for us.”

  “Well, when you and Ryan were out joyriding today, I did find something: a throwaway cell phone in the BMW. It was stashed away pretty good under his seat.”

  “Very good, Robin. Thank you.” I looked at my watch and turned to Ryan. “Why don’t you head home? I’m gonna run upstairs and do the form to get authorization to run the phone down.”

  “I already brought it to the chief,” Robin said. “He authorized the search. The report’s on your desk.”

  I turned to Ryan. “That was excellent police work, wasn’t it?”

  “Beyond excellent.” He nodded.

  “Robin, you have outdone yourself.” I don’t know what crazy shit happened to Robin when she was a kid, but sincere expressions of affection or gratitude made her really uncomfortable. Therefore, I looked for opportunities to praise her. “Are you blushing, Robin?”

  She put her hands up to cover her pale, freckled cheeks, which only made it worse. Her neck was the color of a rosé, well on its way to a red. I walked over and kissed her gently on the top of her head. She had some new pale blue streaks.

  She let out a yelp and shuddered. “Get away from me, you hideous hag.”

  I laughed, and Ryan and I headed upstairs to take a quick look at Lee Rossman’s phone records. When we got to our desks in the detectives’ bullpen, we discovered two copies of a printout of the call log and text messages for the disposable phone.

  “This doesn’t look like the reports we usually get,” I said. It had the same data—numbers, duration of calls, names of account owners—but it looked homemade, like we had printed it ourselves. “What’s going on?”

  “It’s a throwaway phone. There’s no record that associates it with a particular person.”

  “So we go to the phone company.”

  “They’re not required to store that information,” Ryan said. “The phone is just like a notebook or a diary we found in the car. We can crack it open and see what’s in it.”

  I held up the paper. “That’s what this is? We cracked it open?”

  “Jorge’s got some software that can do a complete system dump on any phone—regular cell or disposable. I bet he just grabbed these logs for us.”

  “How ’bout that,” I said, and we started scanning the printout. “Who’s Warnock, Susan? I recognize that name.”

  Ryan grabbed his notebook from the inside pocket of his suit jacket. It took him a few seconds to locate the name. “She’s one of the strippers at Johnny’s Lounge.”

  Chapter 16

  It was after eight when I pulled into the lot at the Rawlings Regional Medical Center. I could tell the temperature was going down fast because I had my heater all the way up but I could still feel the chill coming off my windshield. The thermometer on my dashboard read three degrees, which meant we’d hit minus ten, easy, by midnight. The snow and the winds had stopped, as if the weather god wanted to strut around, proud of how brutal he could make it in Montana even with one hand tied behind his back.

  I got out of the car, the frozen air wrapping itself around me, tingling as I pulled it into my lungs. I gathered my coat tight and started crunching across the parking lot toward the main hospital entrance. Right next to the main entrance, sharing the paved semi-circular driveway, was the emergency entrance, with a big, bright red neon sign in all caps. I realized I should have been glad I wasn’t arriving in the back of an ambulance. The feeling of gratitude lasted a good two or three seconds. Spiritually, I’m quite retarded.

  I assumed that Mac would be in the ICU, which was on the third floor. There was nobody in the elevator when I got in. Ordinarily, when I’m trapped in a big metal can with strangers, I’m relieved to not have to smile and discuss whether we all agree it’s awfully cold out there, but now the isolation seemed to push in on me from all four sides and I started to cry.

  In a moment, the elevator beeped, the doors opened, and I was looking directly into the eyes of the woman on duty at the main nurses’ station. She saw me wiping at my eyes. I must have looked as scared and bedraggled as most people getting off on the third floor, and I probably was. “Excuse me—” she said, ready to inform me that I had missed visiting hours.

  I pulled my shield out of my bag and held it up for her to see. “A patient named McNamara. ICU?”

  She looked confused, as if she wasn’t expecting anyone who looked like they’d gave a damn about a drunk son of a bitch who attacked a woman. She rallied, offering a polite smile, and pointed me down the hall. I didn’t need directions; there was only one room had a young cop sitting on a chair out in the hall, reading a magazine.

  I didn’t recognize the uniform, who was so new he wore his black polyester tie even though the department didn’t require it. Apparently, he recognized me and jumped to attention, sending his magazine and his eight-point service cap flying, as if he thought I’d come to inspect him. As a matter of policy, we don’t often send detectives out, off-shift, to make sure uniforms are doing a satisfactory job preventing unconscious drunks from making a getaway. I was never as young as this guy.

  He picked his things up off the floor and stood out of the way as I shielded my eyes to look in the big window. In the dim light I could just make out six beds arranged in a semi-circle. With the eerie green and amber glow from the readouts on the equipment, I needed a moment to recognize Mac. Like all the other patients, he was lying flat. Near the foot of his bed sat a woman in a wooden chair. Her back was to me, her coat draped over the chair.

  I walked into the room, not right up to his bed but close enough to confirm that it was Mac. He had an IV in his arm and an oxygen tube in his nose, and his head was bandaged. A tube stuck out of the bandage. His eyes were closed, and except for the shallow rise and fall of his chest, he looked pretty much dead.

  With the humming and beeping from all the machines, the woman at Mac’s bed hadn’t heard me. Her hair was brown, cut medium-length. She was wearing a sweatshirt and jeans. I still hadn’t seen her face, so I couldn’t tell her age. She could have been his wife or a girlfriend.

  One of the machines hooked up to the patient at the end of the semi-circle started flashing a red light and beeping, a nasty, high-pitched screech engineered to get your attention from fifty feet away. I
stepped aside as a couple of nurses rushed in. One of them started fiddling with the machine while the other trotted back out, presumably to get more help. The guy in the bed hadn’t moved and showed no sign of whatever hell he was experiencing on the inside.

  When the commotion started, the woman at Mac’s bedside turned around. She stood and pulled the chair away, although the medical people didn’t seem to know or care she was in the room. She looked concerned for the guy attached to the squawking machine. Then she noticed me, holding her gaze to determine whether I’d come to see the guy in trouble.

  She was in her late twenties, medium height. Even in the bad light, I recognized Mac’s full face and long nose. In one of our conversations about the many people we’d fucked over, Mac had talked a little about his daughter. Her name was Maureen. We’d never met; Mac and I weren’t meet-the-family types.

  Two doctors came in, trailed by two nurses, and walked briskly over to the crashing guy. They looked at the green lighted numbers and wavy lines, hit a couple of buttons, and the beeping stopped. They checked his chart and talked quietly among themselves for half a minute. I couldn’t hear them, but the doctors’ body language suggested the bed would likely be available by daybreak. The two nurses looked grim as the doctors left to get back to whatever they had been doing.

  Maureen walked over to me. “You here to visit someone?”

  I wasn’t thinking fast enough to come up with a plausible lie. “Mac.”

  She seemed glad someone had come, and she forced a smile. But the bags under her eyes and her hangdog expression said she was completely wrung out. She didn’t look scared that her father might die—right here, right now. She just looked incredibly weary and defeated. I didn’t know what had been going on for the last six months, since Mac left to take care of his wife, but whatever it was, it was real bad, and his daughter wasn’t just getting the occasional phone call. She looked like she was smack in the middle of it.

  “I’m Maureen,” she said.

  I tried to smile. “What happened? I mean, to Mac.”

  She closed her eyes and looked down, then she started to cry. “The policeman said Mac attacked some woman. She defended herself, hit him with something. On the head.”

  “I’m so sorry.” Which was true.

  “Apparently the woman has to decide if she’s going to press charges.” Maureen’s voice was slow and almost expressionless, as if this was just the latest bad thing she didn’t see coming, couldn’t have stopped if she had, and didn’t know how to fix.

  “Is Mac hurt bad?”

  “The idea that Mac could attack someone is … it’s just crazy. Most days I have to help him get dressed. Half the time he has no idea where he is. Sometimes, doesn’t even know who he is.” She shook her head. “‘Attacked someone.’ That’s ridiculous.”

  We stood there for a minute, silently.

  “How bad is he?” I said.

  Now she was crying pretty hard. “They said it’s a depressed skull fracture. Means the skull is broken and the broken pieces were, like, pushing down on the brain. He’s in and out of consciousness. They’re afraid he might have seizures or he might need more surgery. You know, if there’s some damage to his brain that they didn’t see from all the tests.”

  “They had to do some surgery?”

  “He had some kind of blood clot, you know, under the skull? So they’re worried about pressure on the brain. Something like that. Tell you the truth, I didn’t understand half the things the doctors told me. They talk like you went to medical school.” She wiped at her eyes with a tissue. “It’s not their fault. They try to explain everything. I’m just so tired.”

  I could see she was starting to get wobbly. “Why don’t we go sit down?” I helped her get back to her chair. “Just a second.” I walked over to the other side of the room and got another chair and brought it back.

  “How do you know Mac?” Maureen said as I sat down next to her.

  “I was in AA with him, a few years ago.” She gripped the wooden chair arm to try to control the trembling. I grasped her hand. “He reached out to me. He helped me a lot.”

  “What’s your name? Maybe he’s mentioned you.”

  “I’m Eleanor,” I said. That’s my mother’s name.

  She shook her head. “Mac’s helped so many people … it’s too bad he can’t help himself.”

  I squeezed her hand. “He’s drinking again?”

  “The last month has been … horrible. When my mom died … he was just so exhausted. I don’t know if you’ve ever watched someone die like that. Cancer.”

  “I have.”

  “I really don’t blame him. He started drinking. He said he just needed it for a little while, but I think he knew he’d never get free of it if he started again. Probably didn’t want to keep going.”

  “He’d been sober for a while?”

  “When he moved back in with my mother, after her diagnosis, I could see him struggling with it. But he really tried, did everything right. He leaned on some of the people from AA.”

  He hadn’t leaned on me. It hurt me deeply at the time, but I had come to see it as his generosity.

  Maureen squeezed at her eyes. “I thought … I thought he’d be okay when she … you know. Because she was in so much pain. I thought he’d be okay. But he was laid off—I don’t know if you knew that—hasn’t worked for the longest time. They lost the house. He was living with me, and he started drinking. Which, I told him, I can’t have that. I have a little girl, and I couldn’t take care of the two of them.”

  She covered her face in her hands and began to sob. “Three days ago I told him I couldn’t have him drinking in front of my little girl and he’d have to leave. Which he did. He didn’t give me any trouble about it. But he didn’t tell me where he was going. That was three days ago. I still have no idea where he was all that time. Then I get this call from the police that he’s attacked some woman and she hurt him.”

  “Who’s going to take care of him? I mean, when he’s released.”

  “If this woman presses charges—” She raised her palms in confusion. “I don’t know, the county or state or whoever takes him. I guess they have some kind of program for medical care until he’s well enough to be tried.”

  “What if she doesn’t press charges?” I said. “What happens?”

  “Then I don’t know what we’re going to do.” She was silent for a moment. “I mean, I don’t know what he’s going to do. Maybe the VA can do something for him. I can’t.” She paused. “I wish I could, but I can’t.”

  “Maybe there’s someone who can help him,” I said. “He has to want to help himself, get better. This incident … I don’t know what I’m saying, I don’t know what he went through … maybe what happened with the woman will help him. Once he gets out of here, he might see things different. It could give him the motivation he needs.”

  “I almost think he’d be better off if this woman goes ahead and, you know, tells the police to charge him. At least that way he’d be put into some kind of program.”

  “I think there are those programs.”

  “He was involved with a police woman, a detective, I think she was. They were together for a while.” She paused to see if I knew who she meant.

  I looked at her and shook my head.

  “Do you think she could help him?”

  “How do you mean?”

  “I … I really have no idea,” Maureen said. “It’s just, when he comes out of this, he has no one.” She looked at me. “Did he mention this woman? Do you know who I’m talking about?”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I don’t know anyone who can help him.” I felt myself starting to cry. “I wish I could help. I really do.”

  “I don’t know what to do,” she said between her sobs.

  “Can I tell you something I’ve learned?” She nodded but didn’t say anything. “Most of the shit that happens, you can’t do anything about it. If you try to stop it, it’ll kill you—and then it j
ust happens, anyway. Only thing you can do is just let it happen.”

  Sobbing and out of control, she put her arms around my neck and pulled me in.

  “It’s going to be okay, Maureen,” I said softly, stroking her hair. “It’s going to work out okay.”

  Of course she was old enough to know this was untrue. Maybe even old enough to forgive a stranger who has nothing better to offer than empty clichés.

  Chapter 17

  I heard a ringing, like one of the machines Mac was hooked up to in the ICU, but it was faint enough and far enough away that I just let it go. I didn’t think I’d be able to focus sufficiently to do anything about it, anyway. After a while—I don’t know how long—it stopped, and I slipped back into sleep. Then, it started again. This time I realized it was my phone. I opened my eyes. The sun was coming in my big picture window in the living room.

  Something was wrong. November, it’s dark when I get up. I tried to focus my eyes. I wasn’t in bed. I was on my couch, still dressed from yesterday. I sat up quickly, cracking my leg against the coffee table, knocking over the empty bottle of Jack Daniel’s. Then it came back to me, what had happened.

  My mouth was dry and foul tasting, and my head felt like someone with steel hands was pressing the front and back together with all his strength. As I struggled to get off my couch, I saw the time on the big grandfather’s clock next to the fireplace: 8:10. Holy shit, I thought. Don’t let it be the chief calling me.

  I rushed into my bedroom and looked at the screen on my phone. It said “Miner, Ryan.” I breathed a sigh of relief. It was Ryan, calling me on his own cell.

  I picked it up. “Hey, Ryan.”

  “You okay, Karen?”

  “Yeah, I’m fine. Just had a dead battery. Had to get my neighbor to give me a jump.”

  “Want me to swing by and pick you up?”

  “No, no, that’s okay.” I tried to sound awake, but I could hear my voice, thick and full of crud. “I’ll be there in twenty,” I said.