Chapter 19
Chapter
19
The spot Lee had picked was a shaded niche on the east side of a quad. Half a dozen metered parking spaces were gratis on weekends and, today, unused. Each corner of the broad, green rectangle was occupied by one of the U.’s four original buildings. Romanesque Revival beauties that evoked a time when art was more than a concept.
I pulled into a slot and had just turned off the Seville’s engine when a wine-colored Mercedes convertible glided in next to me.
Lee was at my door before I opened it, looking as she always did. Five-five, minimal body fat, long, dark wavy hair crowning a girlishly open face marked by two of the sharpest eyes I’ve ever seen. As a post-doc, she’d done brain research with a Nobel laureate, could’ve easily gone the lab-poobah route but decided to help people directly.
Generally, she smiles a lot. Not today.
We hugged briefly. Between the leanness of Lee’s frame and her full-body tension, it was like embracing an iron gate.
She pulled away and looked around. Settled on a couple picnicking in the center of the lawn. “I was thinking we’d walk but let’s talk in my car.”
—
We settled in the Mercedes’s fragrant beige leather interior.
I looked at Lee. She looked straight ahead.
Finally, she said, “It’s complicated. I know that’s what people say when they’re bullshitting but I’m not.”
“Appreciate that.”
“Here’s the thing, Alex. I’m not sure I can give you any information unless you can assure me that no one will ever find out I was the source. Not for my protection, for…doesn’t matter. The point is without a source I can’t see it being useful for your friend.”
“Milo’s discreet.”
She kept her eyes on the windshield.
“I know you respect confidentiality,” she said. “For people like us it’s a religious observance. But cops are allowed to lie if it gets them what they want. For something to be useful to them, it needs to be recorded in writing. So it can be used in court. Correct?”
“Not necessarily,” I said. “Some stuff never makes it into the files.”
“Such as?”
“The identities of confidential informants and protected witnesses. Or just content detectives choose to omit because they don’t need it.”
“But you wouldn’t have asked me if you didn’t think he’d need it. And if he goes ahead and makes a—okay, I’m going to stop being all spy-novel and give you the gist of what I know but only that. And I’ll trust that our relationship will lead you to respect my wishes.”
I said, “That I can promise. Something happened at Cal Culver.”
She smoothed back her hair. Licked her lips.
“Something did, indeed. However, my source spoke on condition that the information not be made public. The stakes are high, Alex.”
“Financially.”
“Yes, financially, and yes, a patient was dumped there. Very similar to your case. Weirdly similar.”
“When?”
“Several months ago.”
“GHB overdose?”
“GHB plus diazepam. The poor woman was left out in the parking lot and lay there for hours before anyone noticed her. The obvious claim was the delay led to significant medical deterioration.”
“Claim as in malpractice suit.”
“Malpractice plus a request for punitive damages due to institutional negligence,” said Lee. “Massive damages demanded. During pre-trial depositions, the hospital’s experts tried to claim the victim had arrived extremely impaired and the passage of time wouldn’t have made a difference. The plaintiff’s experts said that was a lot of bunk. So the hospital legal staff…” She paused, blinking hard, and I wondered if her source had been a lawyer. “Their conclusion was that an institution fighting the family of a severely damaged victim would be a loser as well as a public relations disaster. They settled quickly contingent on a total non-disclosure agreement.”
I said, “Who found her?”
Another pause, another blink. “A staff person coming on shift who’d parked nearby.”
I thought: Maybe a doctor or a nurse.
“How was she found?”
“By accident. She’d been left in an out-of-the-way spot, near a hedge behind an outer row of cars, and the person just happened to spot her feet. The lot was patrolled on a regular basis but you’d have to be poking around to find her.”
“No cameras?”
“Not right there. What a horrible thing to do to someone, Alex. She’s blind, quadriplegic, and cognitively impaired. Twenty-six years old and under full-time care.”
“God.”
“Apparently God wasn’t paying attention that night.” Her lips vibrated. “Twenty-six years old, Alex. Whoever did that to her is pure evil. Does it sound like your dead bad guy?”
“It sounds exactly like him. There was no police investigation?”
“Nope, that was part of the deal. There was a lot of pressure to deal with it quickly.”
I said, “What can you tell me about her?”
“That’s all I’m at liberty to say. The payout was huge and any disruption of the settlement would be disastrous. For the family and for the hospital. The place is already in financial straits, last thing it needs is a scandal.”
“The family had no interest in knowing who hurt their daughter?”
“I can’t speak for the family and I’m certainly not going to judge. My source wondered if a criminal case would even go anywhere, assuming they could find a suspect. Even if they did, the schmuck could claim she overdosed herself, he tried to take her to the E.R. but she fought him, ran away, and ended up behind the cars. Can you imagine what the media would do with something like that? The hospital gets screwed, the victim gets dragged through the mud, talk about a shitshow.”
She turned but looked past me at the passenger door. Wanting me gone but too much of a friend to expel me.
I said, “How about this: Give me her name and I’ll do my own research—nothing official, just basic internet stuff. If I learn something relevant, I’ll let you know, you can pass it along to your source and see what they think.”
“You’d hold back on your cop pal.”
“I would.”
“You wouldn’t go to all this trouble for some scumbag who rapes and dumps women,” she said. “So it must be the second murder that’s motivating you. Who’s that victim?”
“A musician murdered in cold blood,” I said. “And a third victim has just surfaced. A mother shot in front of her two-year-old.”
Her palms slapped together and remained fused. “Good Lord, Alex, how can you stand to live in that world, even part-time?”
A question I’d long stopped asking myself.
I said, “It can be challenging, Lee. But it’s not that different from the other work I do. From what you do.”
“Uh-uh, I’m sorry, that makes no sense to me.”
“Different tools for trying to fix the world.”
“That’s a really big stretch, Alex—sorry, who am I to judge, your choices are yours.”
Neither of us talked for a few moments.
Lee said, “Got a local anesthetic?”
“For what?”
“The acute pain of admitting you could conceivably be right.”
I laughed.
She said, “Don’s always telling me my world’s too dark. I deny it and when he picks the wrong time to say it, I tell him writing screenplays is a juvenile attempt to avoid reality. But sometimes…like the case I was working on this morning. Fourteen-year-old referred for learning disabilities. I do a full battery and find subtest patterns suggesting a brain anomaly. They do an MRI and it’s a glioblastoma. Diffuse, not multiforme, so that’s at least a positive.”
She let out a soft gust of arid laughter. “The helping professions.”
I said, “At least we’re doing good deeds.”
“If you say so…yes, of course we are. But still…a two-year-old. Shit. ”
She inhaled deeply, leaned over and got close enough for a kiss.
“Saucedo,” she said. “Victoria Saucedo.”