Читать книгу Closer Than Blood - Gregg Olsen - Страница 14

CHAPTER SIX

Tacoma

It was the weary time of day when the world is sleeping and the digits on the clock are small and stand alone. Except for the crying from down the cavernous hallway toward the elevators, the fifth floor of St. Joseph Medical Center was quiet. No visitors. A nurse with a citrus yellow scrub over a red turtleneck studied the chart and checked the bag of fluids that circuited from a tube overhead into the vein of the woman everyone at the fifth floor nurses’ station was talking about. The gossip at the station centered on the tragedy that had unfolded on North Junett Street. Nurses have well-deserved reputations for caring and nurturing, but the reality of their world is that they see so much that it is hard to force a tear for every misfortune that rolls down the high-gloss linoleum floors.

Diana Lowell, the nurse wearing the yellow smock, chatted a moment with a younger woman fresh out of nursing school. Her name escaped the veteran nurse, out of the unfortunate acceptance that young people came and went. Few became lifers like her. Diana was friendly, but only enough to get the job done. They spoke in hushed tones. It was the kind of casual chatter that characterized a lot of admissions at St. Joseph’s. Probably true of any hospital in any city. The exchange was somewhat lighthearted despite the subject matter at hand.

Frivolity constantly played against tragedy at the nurses’ station.

“Her husband was shot,” Diana said. “An intruder, I guess.”

“Yeah, right in the face, I heard,” Corazón White, the younger nurse, said. “I have a friend in the morgue. I’ll ask for details.”

Diana smiled slightly as she observed an exasperatingly slow computer screen morph from one patient’s file to the next.

“Nice to have friends in low places,” she said wryly.

“Yeah, I guess,” the newbie said without a trace of humor. “Last person most of us see is the morgue attendant.”

“That’s why you must always look your best,” Diana said, playing with the girl now.

“Anyhow, is she going to be okay?”

“Yeah, fine. Barely a graze, really. Three stitches. Lucky girl, she is.”

Diana picked up a clipboard, the last vestige of the days when she was in the newbie’s position. Several nurses carried electronic clipboards, but Diana was lagging behind on her required training. She started toward the corridor that led to Tori Connelly’s private room, 561D, arguably the best room on the floor. It was smaller than the others, and because of that it, was never converted to a tandem. There was no sharing of a bathroom. No feigned interest in one patient’s malady from across a curtain suspended by grommets and a steel tube. Diana Lowell let her eyes wander over the woman in the bed. She could tell that the patient was watching her every move, though her head stayed stationary. Diana could feel those eyes follow her as she rotated the bag containing clear liquid that was a mixture of saline and anti-anxiety meds. Not enough to knock her out. Not enough to keep her from complaining. If the woman in 561D was a complainer, that is.

In time, most were.

Diana flipped the crisp new pages of the printed chart and scoured its contents. Tori Connelly certainly had the pedigree to be a complainer. Her home address was an exclusive street in North Tacoma. Her hair was cut with the messy precision of a stylist who probably charged half of what Diana made in a day. The color was good, too. Blond, the hue of wheat on a bronze-lit summer day. Not the DIY color from the bottle that Diana and her sister used because they were “worth” it.

“How are we feeling?” Diana asked, catching the patient’s stare. “You slept all day yesterday.”

“We,” Tori said, moistening her parched lips. “We have been shot.”

Diana smoothed a bedsheet. “Of course, I know that. How is the pain? You know you can increase the dosage by pressing the button.”

Tori was annoyed. “You are pressing my buttons now,” she said.

“I didn’t mean to,” she said. “Just trying to be helpful.”

“I want to know if my husband’s okay. He was hurt, too.”

Diana knew what had happened to the patient’s husband, of course, but it wasn’t her place to say anything. The doctor could tell the new widow. A cop could.

She set the chart down and focused on Tori.

“The police are here now,” she said, moving toward the hallway and catching the eye of the man lingering by the doorway. “They’ll tell you everything you need to know.”

“The police?”

Diana looked at her. “Yes. The shooting, remember?”

“I look like a wreck,” she said. “Besides, I’ve already answered questions galore.”

This one was going to be memorable in every way.

“You look fine. You know, considering all you’ve been through.”

Tori ran her fingertips through her hair. In doing so, she tangled the tubes taped to her wrist. She indicated the IV line.

“This hurts,” she said.

Diana bent closer and unwound the tubes from the bed rail. “Let me help you.” She gently splayed them out from Tori’s wrist to the bag of solution.

“Will I be all right?”

“You’ll be fine,” Diana said. There were times when that phrase was said as a white lie, only to bolster a patient’s dwindling prospects. But Tori Connelly would be as good as new. At least physically.

“I bet I look like twenty miles of bad road,” she said.

“Not hardly.” Diana studied Tori. She’d been shot, yes. She’d lost blood. Yet somehow she held herself together enough to allow her vanity to come into play. The woman in 561D was one of those women with nerves of platinum and an unbending concern for how things appeared.

A man appeared in just inside the doorway and Diana motioned in his direction. It was Eddie Kaminski.

“She’s resting comfortably, but she can talk, Detective,” she said, walking out the door and past the detective.

Kaminski knew that the victim’s recollection of the crime would be most accurate closer to the event, rather than later. Tori Connelly’s doctors told him that she was on pain medication and fluids, but was lucid and given the circumstances would be able to share what she knew about what had transpired.

“Ms. Connelly,” Kaminski said, ducking into her room. “I’m sorry to disturb you.”

She barely looked at the man in a seasonally questionable black overcoat, dark slacks, and a rumpled white shirt.

“Ms. Connelly?” he repeated, this time a little louder, but modulated for the hospital setting. “I’m Detective Kaminski, Tacoma P.D. I’m here to talk about the shooting.”

She moved her lips. Her eyes fluttered.

“Yes,” she said.

He found a place by her bedside. Not so close as to invade her personal space, but with the narrowest of proximity to hear her words. Tori Connelly’s hair was swept back and her skin quite pale. Her eyes rested in charcoal hollows. She was fine featured. Despite her ordeal, however, she was an attractive woman.

She looked up, eyes damp. “There was so much blood. Everywhere.”

He nodded. “Yes, there was.”

She lowered her eyes and then looked out at the Tacoma skyline. “He didn’t make it,” she said, more a statement than a question. “My husband, I mean.”

He shook his head. “No, I’m afraid not.”

A tear rolled from the corner of her eye, leaving a shiny trail as it traveled to the white linen of the hospital pillow.

“But you did,” he said.

She held her words inside a moment.

“Yes, yes, I did.”

Kaminski took out a notepad and started writing. He’d given up the idea that he could remember every word uttered by a witness. It wasn’t that he was struggling with early-onset Alzheimer’s. It was simply the recognition that a notation was a safeguard against forgetting when it came time to tap out the report.

“Did he suffer?” she asked.

Kaminski stopped writing and looked up. “The coroner doesn’t think so. Death was instantaneous or thereabouts.”

She stayed quiet for a moment and then let out a long breath. “That’s a blessing.”

“I’d like to talk about what happened. From the beginning, if you don’t mind. I know you’re exhausted.”

He didn’t really care that she was tired, but he’d come off a two-day sensitivity training workshop that had him primed to all but hug a felon.

“We’d been out to dinner,” she said. “It was just one of those lazy evenings. We never expected anything to happen.”

“Of course not,” he said. “Where was dinner?”

“Oh, a little Italian place on Pacific we’d never tried before, and we’re never going back.” She caught her mistake. “I’ll never go back. No, I won’t.”

His stare bore down on her. “Anything happen at dinner?”

“What do you mean? Happen?”

“Out of the ordinary? I’m just trying to capture what happened before the shooting.”

She stared at him. “Did we argue? Is that what you’re hoping for, Detective?”

Kaminski was taken aback by her sudden shift to an undeniably defensive tone. “No, that’s not what I was inferring, Ms. Connelly.”

“Implying,” she said.

“Excuse me?”

“Implying, not inferring.”

“Fine. Okay.”

“I want to know if Alex suffered long, or at all. If he was able to say anything.”

The detective hated this part of his job. More than anything. “I’m sorry, Ms. Connelly, but your husband was dead at the scene. I thought you knew.”

She looked away, toward the window.

“I knew. I just wanted someone to say it to me.” She looked at Kaminski, her hollow eyes now flooded. “I knew when I ran out that door that I’d never see him again. Never again.” The words tumbled out. “I loved Alex so, so much.”

“I know. I need to know what happened,” he said.

Tori looked at him, almost pleadingly.

“I don’t want to relive it.”

“You are the only living witness,” he said. “You want us to catch the killer, don’t you?”

“Yes, of course I do.”

“Tell me. I’m here to help you,” he said.

She told him that she was in “another room” when she heard a commotion and the “popping” sound of a gun.

“I mean, I know it was a gun now, but honestly, I thought it was a champagne cork popping. Alex could be like that, you know. Surprising me.”

“I’m sure he was a good man. I’m sorry for your loss. Then what happened?”

“I went into the living room and a man was standing there by Alex. I screamed and he started to run to the door.”

“How’d you get shot?”

She looked at him, irritated and emotional. “I’m getting to that. Do you mind?”

“Not all, please. Just trying to help, Ms. Connelly.”

“Then it was over. He ran out the door and I followed. I went over to Darius’s place and he called for help.”

“What did your assailant look like?”

“It happened so fast,” she’d said. “I think he had dark eyes, but they might have been dark blue or green.”

The response could have not been more ambiguous.

At least she didn’t say “red,” thereby ruling out an albino assailant, he thought.

“Could you determine his ethnicity?”

She looked at the reporting officer, almost blank eyed. “Not really. He had on a mask.”

This was the first time she’d mentioned a mask. Kaminski underlined that.

“Ski mask?” he repeated.

The wheels were turning now. Tori was retrieving some information. A pause, then an answer. “Not sure. More like a panty hose. I could see his face, but his features were smushed by the fabric.”

“Had you seen anyone in the area who matches—to the best of your recollection—what you saw that night?”

The question was bait, and usually good bait. A suspect frequently takes the suggestion and runs with it.

“He looked like a gardener.”

“A man who delivers groceries.”

“A transient I’ve seen a time or two nearby.”

Tori went limp. A tear rolled down her cheek.

“You’re going to have to give me a minute. This is extremely difficult.”

Kaminski waited for her to collect herself. Her eyes were damp with tears, but none flowed down her cheeks. She was a coolheaded woman, a logical woman. She’d expected the worst and had prepared herself for the moment when she’d knew with certainty, with utter conviction, that she was alone in the world.

What came from her lips next would have been stunning to the most veteran detective.

“I’ll need a lawyer,” she said. “Won’t I?”

“Why would that be?” he asked.

“Just call it a hunch,” she said, this time looking directly at him. “You’ll focus the investigation on me. I understand it. I know how things are done. In the end, you’ll have to look elsewhere because I had nothing to do with any of this.”

“No one is looking at you,” Kaminski said.

She looked past him once more, breaking the gaze they’d held. “Not now. But tomorrow somone will. Someone will say the ugliest things and your minions will circle me and my tragedy like a school of sharks. Each after a piece.”

She stopped talking.

Kaminski stood there in uncomfortable silence.

“Detective,” she finally said. “I want to know one thing.”

“What’s that?”

“How am I supposed to live without him? He was my soul mate. I loved him.”

Tears started rolling down her cheeks.

“Again, I’m truly sorry for your loss,” he said, taking a couple of steps backward before turning for the door.

She looked back at the sky through the window, turning to the blush of a new day. “Thank you, Detective,” she said.

The beige Princess phone next to Tori O’Neal Connelly’s bedside rang. She smoothed her covers and disregarded it for a moment. But the ring was persistent and altogether annoying. She reached for it, wincing with the pain that came with stretching skin that had been sutured. She assumed it was a nurse or, as she liked to call them, an attendant from the hospital. She planned on telling whoever it was that she would make an outgoing call if she wanted anything. Tori was never shy about indicating whatever it was she wanted. Her heart’s desire was hardwired to her mouth.

As she clasped the receiver to her ear, nurse Diana Lowell entered the room.

“Hello,” Tori said into the mouthpiece. She shifted her body in the bed. Immediately, her face froze. She turned away from the nurse who was emptying a plastic bag liner brimming with used tissues and other nonsharps into a large disposal can.

“Yes,” she said.

Her voice was low. Not a whisper, but if Diana Lowell had actually tried to listen, it would have taken considerable effort.

“Understood,” she said, her eyes fixed on the nurse as she rolled the disposal can from the room to the bathroom.

She turned away.

“Don’t ever call me here again,” she said, her voice, decidedly firm.

She pressed the button to disconnect the call. The line went dead, but she didn’t put the phone down just yet.

“Don’t worry. I will be fine,” she said, her eyes purposefully catching the attention of the hospital worker. “I miss you, too. I can’t wait to see you.”

The nurse who frequently didn’t see a need to hold her tongue just looked at her.

Tori shifted in the bed. “My sister,” she said. “She’s coming to see me.”

Diana nodded and smiled, that practiced smile that didn’t really betray the fact that she thought the patient with the dead husband was a B.S. artist of the highest order.