Sleepsoftly, p.22
SleepSoftly, page 22
“Son of a flaming whore,” Jim swore, his face dark with rage. “How long have you known this?”
“She started trying to find him right away. I just got confirmation that she wasn’t successful. You heard me.”
Jim pointed a finger at me, barely contained rage in every nuance of the gesture. “You call FBI headquarters right now. If you can’t get put through to Simmons, you leave a message with that information. No more of this, Ash. I’m not your lying, cheating husband or his murdering business partners. I’m a cop. A good one. And I care about you. Either you trust me and work with me, or we call it quits. Your call.”
Without waiting for my reply, he turned and walked away, moving with the jerky pace of a man who had just been backstabbed by his best friend. Or by the woman he trusted. What had I done?
I rested my head against the wall and tried to find my sense of balance, tried to remember my place in the world. Everything was off-kilter, out of whack. Nothing in my world was right anymore. Not right in any sense of the word. I had been raised to be a Chadwick, to put family first before anything and anyone else except God and country, and sometimes even them. That way of life had worked for over forty years. But it wasn’t working now. Everything I was doing was coming out wrong.
A soft voice whispered in the back of my mind. Maybe it never worked. Maybe that’s why Jack cheated on you.
Tears sprang to my eyes. I stood straight and smoothed my scrubs. Later. I could think and worry and live in guilt about it all later. Later, I could remember that I hadn’t told Jim about the prowler in my house. Later, I could remember the look on his face, fury and hurt and abject…betrayal.
The thought sang deep inside me, like some primal note of truth. Jack had betrayed me, ripping my world to shreds. And now, this time, I had betrayed someone else….
I had hurt Jim by not trusting him enough to tell him everything. But to do that, I would have to be well and truly over the damage done to me by Jack. A catch-22 I wasn’t sure I was ready to deal with.
Right now, I had patients.
22
Saturday
B y 7:27 a.m., I was on the way home, drained by more than just the hours, the codes, the misery and the blood from the shooting that had come in at 5:05. A young father, who had lost his job, his family and his hope, had shot his young son, his ex-wife and himself. We’d worked for thirty minutes to save the child, before turning him over to the OR crew, thinking him stabilized, believing him savable. The seven-year-old boy had died on the table at 6:18.
Any sense of accomplishment and hope I had died with him.
When Jas called me, I was pulling out of the employee lot, tears streaming down my face. My voice was calm when I answered, however, and Jas never knew that I was upset. Which was the way I wanted it. I never wanted any of the darkness I faced day in and day out to taint my baby.
Jas was excited—hyped, she called it—her words and sentences running over each other in her enthusiasm. “You can’t tell anyone, ’cause they’ll get in trouble, but we found another site underneath the first one and it has Muses and the little girls and it’s called Melete. It has a poem dedicated to Apollo, who tried to bring Zeus down and failed, and three of the photos are girls whose pictures appeared on the other site and it says they were abducted by Zeus to protect them from Apollo, and it has lots of poems about ‘She will awaken, she will return.’
“And honest to God, Mama, there’s a photo of a woman in the pose of a Grecian matron, and she’s blond and identified as Mnemosyne, the wife of Zeus, and she looks just like—just like—Aunt Winnie, if Aunt Winnie was white and not mixed, and we think we can figure out who he is, the guy who is taking these kids, and we need to talk to the FBI and Jim and what do we do? What do we do? We can’t get my pals in trouble.”
While she jabbered, I had pulled off the road into a drop-off zone, giving the policeman sitting in his cruiser on the corner a little finger wave. I might be in trouble if the cop saw me driving and using the cell phone and fighting tears all at the same time. As I parked, I latched on to the one thing that seemed to be the most distressing to my daughter. “Jas, honey, what friends? Why would they get in trouble?”
“We had some of the guys over and they hacked the Web site. The one with the little girls who were kidnapped.”
Putting aside the thought that my daughter had “some of the guys” over when I wasn’t home, and that, if her tone and the background noises were any evidence, they were still there, and not considering the idea that they had hacked into an Internet site and that Jas had, therefore, told more people that she was part of an FBI investigation, I fastened onto the other important bit of information. “Jasmine? You have to call Jim.”
“But, Mama they hack—”
“No ‘but Mama.’ Children are in trouble. Call Jim, right now.” An eighteen-wheeler blew through the intersection and the SUV rocked. The cop eased out into traffic and turned on his blue light, following the speeding transport truck. “Jim can protect you from trouble about hacking into the site. But you will call him. It’s the adult thing to do. And if you aren’t adult enough to do it, I will.”
“That was a low blow, Mamash,” Topaz said, clearly having stolen the phone. “Smart, but a low blow.”
“Put Jasmine back on, Paz.”
“I’m here, Mama. Stop it, Paz. You sure he’ll keep us from getting in trouble?”
“Yes.” He would, wouldn’t he? “Call him.” I gave her his cell number. “Call me back after you talk to him. And stay home from school today, okay? So we can talk.”
“It’s Saturday, Mama. No school. But anyway, we’re on the way to see Elroy. He’s taking visitors in the hospital and he has to know something about Muses. He works at the museum, right? And there’s a show coming, right? Which is just too big a coincidence, right? You have to see how it is! Something could be connected here, so we’re going to talk to him, Mama.”
“Jasmine, you will not—I repeat, not—leave the house today.”
“Umm. Mama, we’re almost there. We left right after six.” The background noises I had heard were music and car sounds, not rec-room sounds.
The background noises changed. There was a long, total silence, indicating a lost signal or disconnected call. Had Jasmine hung up on me? Or had she entered the no-man’s-land of I-77, an area of no coverage that lasted for about ten miles. If I’d been a cussing kind of woman, I’d have cussed a blue streak. As it was, I settled for a very unsatisfying “Damn.” It didn’t help at all. “Damn, damn, double damn!”
I held the cell in one hand while I whipped back into the employee lot, hitting Redial. I got Jasmine’s voice mail and left a terse message. If the girls had left at six, they should be far beyond the stretch of road that was no-man’s-land. Jas was right. She should be nearly here. Which meant that she was ignoring my call. I began hitting redial.
I couldn’t stop my nails drumming on the steering wheel as the phone rang each time. And rang. When the voice mail answered the fifth time, I gripped the wheel so tightly the chapped skin stung across my knuckles, and said, “Jasmine Davenport, I am not playing games. You will call me back in the next sixty seconds or I will give Johnny Ray your truck.” I hung up and watched the second hand on my watch.
The cell rang at forty-seven seconds. I pressed the send button and said tightly, “I am not so stupid that I’ll fall for any excuse for you not answering the phone. Only an apology is acceptable.”
“Sorry, Mama,” she said softly.
I took a breath, trying to calm myself down. I leaned my head on the wheel. “You are an adult, despite some of your actions, and I am trying to honor your growth into adulthood. If you want to see Elroy, that’s fine. But—” I took a steadying breath “—I’m asking you not to go alone. If you don’t mind, I’ll go with you. Where and when?”
“That would be great, Mama. Topaz and I are parking now.”
Thoughts of my bed and a good four hours of sleep were instantly squashed. I stifled my sigh. It was, after all, my big idea. I wheeled back into a parking spot, turned off the car and said, “What room number?”
As I walked to the patient room, the door opened and a stout woman in too-tight polyester clothes stepped into the hallway, a pocketbook under one arm and a satchel hanging on the other. She waved at me on the way past and said, “Morning, Ms. Davenport.” I figured she was either psychic, or I knew her from someplace and had forgotten her entirely, or the girls had described me to her. I hoped it was the latter. Psychics scared me and my own bad memory was not something I wanted to cultivate. I knocked, listened to the faint reply, pushed open the door and entered.
The girls had stopped at a gas/fast-food combo place and picked up a box of fresh Krispy Kremes and three large coffees. They were on the patient’s table, coffee steaming, box open and one third-empty. There were traces of sugar on Topaz’s face and Jasmine’s shirt, and Elroy was stuffing a cream-filled doughnut into his mouth, the filling squishing out around his lips.
I was sure Elroy’s doctor would not want him eating fats, sugar and caffeine this soon after surgery but I kept my mouth shut. The kid looked miserable, pasty-faced, dark rings under his eyes, hair hanging in strings. He was reclining on the hospital bed, turned on his side, a hospital gown over padded bandages and soiled sweatpants. But his eyes were glowing and I guessed this was the first time pretty girls had given him much attention.
“Mama!” Jas jumped up from a chair and ran to me. Hugging me, she whispered, “Play along.” In a louder voice, she said, “Elroy told us he remembered you from the emergency room, so that’s why I called you.” She closed the door behind me and pulled me toward the boy. “I really appreciate you coming to check his bandages. Right, Paz?”
“Mamash is the best.” Paz shot me an amused grin as I dropped my bag on the table beside her. The girls were dressed nearly identically in jeans and T-shirts with denim jackets and boots. The uniform of American girls everywhere.
“Elroy,” I said, “nice to see you again. And looking so good.” Fishing, since I couldn’t ask him outright about the nature of his injuries. But I shouldn’t have worried. While Elroy was clearly in pain, he was in an expansive mood.
“The shotgun missed everything vital except the top part of my liver. They had to take out part of that, and my gallbladder. Here, wanta see?” He raised the gown up, revealing a swollen, pasty, purpled torso and bloodstained bandages taped into place at front and back.
Because I was being called upon to play nurse, I washed my hands and dried them before bending over the bandage.
“They won’t let me take a shower. Sorry about the BO,” he said.
He was a bit rank. But the skin around the two wounds was clean, not particularly swollen or hot to the touch. I pulled the gown back over his stomach and patted his hand. “I’m glad you’re okay,” I said. “You had a good surgeon.”
“Sorry about my mouth in the E.R.,” he said. “The doctor told me I was rowdy but I don’t remember much.”
I smiled at him and said, “People in shock and pain often say things they don’t mean.” I hoped he didn’t mean the racial slurs. Amy had taken a mouthful of them.
“Tell us what happened,” Jasmine said.
Elroy walked us through the events in front of the museum, the car full of gangbangers, the shots fired. The blood on his hands. The pain and the voices of people who came to help. His mother’s face when she got to the hospital. “She just left,” he said. “You mighta seen her.”
“I did,” I said, taking a seat in a plastic chair. It was just as uncomfortable as it looked, hard, molded too sharply and pressing against the outer part of my hips. Chairs in hospitals were designed by sadists, I was sure of it.
“Bet they’re gonna miss you at the museum,” Jas said. I thought that was a strange—or nonexistent—segue, but Elroy didn’t miss a beat.
“Big time. We got that Grecian exhibit opening soon, one we negotiated over for years. Four of the artifacts were damaged in transit.” He rolled slightly and his face tightened with pain. In sympathy, Jas handed him another doughnut. He took a bite and drank the coffee.
I couldn’t help myself. I raised my brows and said, “Aren’t you supposed to be on a liquid diet?” My tone came out sounding like a nurse and not a mother, but both of my girls rolled their eyes. There was no NPO sign on his door forbidding food and none over his bed, but I was pretty sure Elroy shouldn’t be eating solid foods.
Through a mouthful of doughnut, he said, “Dr. Peterson was here at five and said I could eat. But when they brought my breakfast, it was still liquid.” He pointed at the covered tray on the window ledge. “The nurse said she’ll get me something but it hasn’t come yet and I’m starving. Coffee?” He held out a hand to Paz. She handed the cup to him and took it back when he finished slurping.
“The show from Greece?” Jas prompted. She looked at me significantly. “What was damaged?”
“Two urns and two small statues,” he said. “When we unpacked them a week ago, the curator discovered it. Some deckhand probably dropped a crate on the ship or in port.” He took another doughnut and pushed the box away. “Thanks. I’m good now. Anyway, the museum was lucky to get the show because the Greeks never let their artifacts out of the country. I don’t think they would have let a no-name museum like us have it if Dr. Poulous hadn’t pulled some family strings.”
I remembered the horse’s hoof, broken off a statue. Couldn’t be…But that had been buried with the child months ago. “Elroy? Was one of the statues a horse? With a broken hoof?”
“Nope. Two vases and two small household gods. Man, this coffee’s good. Hospital coffee sucks, you know. No offense, Mamash.”
“None taken,” I said.
“Dr. Poulous,” Jas said, sounding far too casual. I looked at her quickly. “He married a local woman, didn’t he?”
“Yeah. Not a Greek. And believe me, that caused a stink. His mother wanted him to marry a woman she picked out like last time, and she was pissed when he married an American.”
“A South Carolina girl,” Jas said, sounding certain rather than questioning.
I felt the small hairs rise up along my arms. A Chadwick?
“Yeah, she was.” Elroy looked around as if searching for unseen listeners and leaned in a bit. “A divorcée.”
Jas snorted, the laugh she uses to signify derision. “How evil.”
“And a dedicated Baptist, with no intention of converting to Greek Orthodox. I was there when his mother came to the museum and let me tell you, she raised hell.” Elroy glanced at me. “Sorry. Heck.” I waved it away and he went on. “You could hear him through the door of his office, shouting at her that he had done his duty the first time and he was doing what he wanted this time.”
“What was her name?” Jas asked. “The new wife. Do you remember?”
“Clarisse Johnson. I think.”
Jas smiled like a barn cat with a mouse, all predatory and pleased with herself. I looked the question at her and she gave a minute shrug as the door behind us opened and an aide entered. “Breakfast,” she said. “Looks like you had the good stuff already.”
I moved my bag and the aide set the tray down, pushed it to Elroy and lifted off the plastic top. The scent of bacon and eggs mingled with the coffee and the doughnuts. Elroy moaned and took a piece of bacon, chomping half a strip in one bite.
“Well, we gotta go,” Jas said. “We’ll try to get back before Monday. Let us know if you go home, okay?”
“Yeah, sure. Leave me your number?”
They exchanged numbers and I followed the girls out of the room, pulling the door tightly behind me. “Clarisse Johnson?” I asked instantly.
“Clarisse Anne Chadwick Johnson. Now Clarisse Chadwick Poulous,” Jas said smugly. “And we have our killer. A man who knows more about the Greek Muses than almost anyone in the whole state.”
“I remember Clarisse Anne,” I said. “She came to the last family reunion….” With her new boyfriend. I had met him. Nick Poulous. Dr. Nick Poulous, curator of the state museum. A mid-fifties man with a paunch, who drove a Porsche, wore suits worth more than most people made in a month and who just happened to fit the police profile of the killer. And who had been in a position to go with the small group of relatives out to the old family homesite and burial ground.
I looked from Jas to Paz, their excited, satisfied faces, eyes filled with certainty. “Okay. Come with me. We’re going to call Jim.”
I led the girls to the ED and into the office I shared with the charge nurses, forensic nurses and others with job titles and hectic lives. I closed the door, pointed each girl to a chair and took the swivel seat behind the desk. I dialed Jim’s cell and waited through the rings.
23
J im knew all about Poulous. The curator had already been questioned, in his home, by police. Jas was deflated at the news, and sat back, arms crossed tightly, her legs twisted and wrapped around each other in an impossible position only a teenager or a yogi could attain. She stared at me with mutinous eyes, telling me without words that the police had missed something.
Knowing my daughter, I had to call her off or she would hunt the curator down and question him herself. So I said into the phone, “Jim, there’s something else. Paz hacked into the Web site with the Muses and found another Web site beneath that one.” The girls did that identical eye-roll thing. “Or inside it or beside it or something.” Jas held out her hand for the phone and I shook my head. “It shows additional photos.”
“Yeah?” Jim said, sounding interested and amused. “You know those girls are going to cause you major trouble, don’t you?”
“Going to? One headache after another,” I agreed. “On the new Web site, there are photos like the one of the adult that’s cut out on the pages you saw. Will you talk to the girls and keep them from getting into trouble for hacking the site?”
