Killing Hope (Gabe Quinn Thriller) (14 page)

‘Do you realize what you’re asking? Nay, what you’re
expecting
? Jesus Christ.’

Certainly not the latter, I thought.

I’d caught the Chief Administrator outside, hiding in a Perspex box designed to make a spectacle of smokers. He’d tried to make a run for it, but I’d barred his escape. Shooed all the other addicts out. Now he was pacing back and forth like a caged animal.

‘It’s a good plan, Eric. Maybe it could be better. I don’t know that for a fact. But right now it’s all I’ve got.’

He paused his pacing long enough to strike up another cigarette. He sucked hard. Glowered so intensely his face looked like it had collapsed into his skull.

‘Christ on a crutch.’

‘Eric.’

‘Screw you, Gabe.’

Ask anybody: Eric Bryce is the spitting image of the movie actor Nick Nolte. The resemblance is uncanny. Patients are always coming up to him, asking for autographs. Asking if he’s doing a new movie based in a hospital. Hence the permanent glower.

‘I know what you’re thinking, Eric.’ I said. ‘Nothing will go wrong.’

‘Bullshit!’

I made a submissive face. ‘You know I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important. You know it’s not my idea of fun being back here.’

‘And it’s not my idea of fun you being back here either, Detective. As I recall, the last time you and I were in the same room you accused me of working for the devil.’

Damn it. I’d forgotten. Eric hadn’t. Wasn’t going to let me get away with it. Couldn’t blame him.

‘Extenuating circumstances.’ I said with a surrendering sigh. ‘I wasn’t in the right frame of mind back then. Everything I knew had been torn down and crushed. I wasn’t thinking straight. I was angry. Blaming everybody else but me. I’m sorry.’

Bryce stared at me with steely eyes. Blew out smoke.

I stared back. Knowing that saying too much could undo what little progress I’d made already.

‘Just supposing I go along with this.’ Bryce said after a while. ‘I’m not saying I will. But just for argument’s sake. What happens if this plan of yours goes tits up?’

What if it did? I hadn’t given myself any time to debate the negatives. Probably because I didn’t want to debate the negatives.

‘It won’t.’

‘Let me remind you the safety and security of my patients is my number one priority. If your plan puts even one member of the public in peril, this hospital could be sued for reckless endangerment.’

I screwed up my face. No matter how much I tried to fool myself into believing my plan was airtight, Bryce had a way of popping the bubble.

I pulled out a photograph of the little girl. Lying like a sleeping angel on the tartan blanket. Red hair fanned out. Tiny hands clasped across her chest in the customary pose of interment. Saw Bryce’s raincloud snatch up its britches and flee for the hills.

32

^{___________________________}

Stacey Kellerman had a dilemma. She didn’t believe in God. Or any gods for that matter. In all of her twenty-seven years, religion had never entered her life. She’d never been to church – even for her father’s funeral. Never attended a friend’s wedding. Never given the idea of an afterlife any serious thought whatsoever. She considered herself a realist. Pragmatic. The only faith she’d ever needed was in her own ability to succeed. But she did believe in fate. And therein lay the impasse.

She poured herself a cold merlot from the big black refrigerator dominating the kitchen space in her duplex in Winchester. Then went into the living room, kicked off Pierre Hardy pumps and flopped into an easy chair.

Could fate exist in a world devoid of a grand designer? she wondered, then just as quickly dismissed the thought. The fact that she was here, at this point in her life, on the cusp of a great personal transformation, was testament that it could.
 

The merlot made her gums tingle.

The wall opposite her was covered with photographs of people she admired: Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, Seymour Hersh, Katherine Graham, a black-framed twelve-by-eight glossy of Stacey shaking hands with Kate Hennessey at a swanky Manhattan bash. Flashes of teeth through false smiles.

Stacey had been highly intoxicated that night. And she guessed it showed. Her hair was slightly mussed. Her make-up slightly askew. Her white Donna Karan shirt buttoned up wrong. She’d given enough head that night to make a lasting impression. You could say, it was networking at its peak.

She dug out her cell phone and hit speed-dial. After three rings a male voice answered:

‘Stacey, I’m busy. What do you want?’

‘An update.’ She said, crisply.

‘I don’t have one. I told you: I’ll call when I know something. It could take days. I’ll call you.’

‘We could do dinner.’ She waited to hear his response, then added into the silence: ‘Or lunch.’

She heard him sigh. Sighs were never a good sign.

‘Stacey, I said I’ll call when I have news. Okay?’

‘Okay.’ She said.

‘It could take days.’

‘Okay.’

‘It’s Tuesday.’

‘I said okay.’ She paused, then said: ‘Mike, why do I irritate you?’

‘Stacey …’

‘No, really, Mike. Don’t give me the usual bullshit. We were good together. You can’t deny that. We could have done anything. Gone anywhere. What happened to us?’

Another sigh. ‘That’s just it: nothing happened. Do we have to keep going over the same old ground?’

‘Does she make you happy?’

There was a long pause, then: ‘Yes. Yes, she makes me happy. Aren’t you happy for me?’

‘We were happy, too.’ She said through barred teeth. ‘I made you happy, didn’t I? At least that’s what you said. What you led me to believe. We had dreams, Mike.’

‘Stacey …’

‘Just call me.’ She said and hung up.

She dropped the phone onto the soft leather of the chair.

Mike had no idea about fate. About
their
fate. No up-and-coming junior attorney with fried egg tits could change what they had together. Their destinies were entwined.

She let her eyes roam across the living room: the big projection TV, the stylish black vertical blinds instead of drapes, the cream-colored carpeting and the black leather furniture. Finally, the dark metal urn sitting at the center of the black ash coffee table.

Ten years ago, fate had presented an escape from the clutches of her abusive father. She’d grabbed it by the horns and rode it out of the stadium.

Mike had no idea how powerful fate could be.

Stacey Kellerman slung the merlot down her neck.

33

^{___________________________}

Medication numbs. I’d been numb for months. I didn’t want to be numb anymore.

I sat outside Cedars-Sinai with the engine running. Squinting at the evidence bag from the van den Berg crime scene. Trying to make out the faded text on the newspaper clipping. The killer had left the torn photograph from the Samuels house with the little girl. Now he’d left this clipping on Marlene’s pillow. If there was a pattern here, why hadn’t he left something similar on Samuels himself?

I got to the NBC4 News studios in Burbank at a little before 11 a.m.. I should have brought the Captain in on my activities. I didn’t.

Kelly Carvelli is a striking African-American woman in the leaner end of her forties. Tall even in flats. We’ve been friends since the
Star Strangled Banner Case
a few years back. The case that won me my coveted title.

‘Won’t be a sec,’ she told me as I entered her office overlooking Johnny Carson Park.

She was on the phone. Brokering world-breaking stories for her popular
Channel 4 News
slot. I closed the door quietly behind me. Pottered around while Kelly ran rings round her caller. There was an ant farm against one wall, away from the sunshine blazing in through the window. It always drew my eye. I went over. Watched the workers scurrying up and down their tunnels, while their queen made her deals from deep within the labyrinthine setup.

‘Gabe.’ Kelly said as she hung up. ‘What a pleasant surprise!’

I came over. Shared a hug. Came away smelling of
Chanel No
.
5.

‘Sunlight looks good on you.’ I said with a smile.

She smiled back without causing a crease. ‘Face fillers. Don’t be fooled. They plump everything out. Take years off. You wouldn’t believe.’

‘I could do with some of those.’

‘Hardly. How old are you now: forty-five, forty-six? And you’re still a catch.’

‘Fifty-one.’ I said. ‘And thanks for the compliment.’

Kelly looked me over. It was a look I was getting a lot lately. Matronly.

‘It’s been a while,’ she said.

‘It has.’

‘How’ve you been? I heard you were back on the beat. Doesn’t seem like two minutes since …’ her words trailed off, as though she’d stumbled down an unfamiliar alleyway and sensed danger lurking in the shadows.

‘I’m still breathing,’ I said.

She blinked. ‘That’s good. No, I mean,
really
good. Breathing counts. I recommend everyone do it. Regularly.’

She gave me another squeeze just to be on the safe side. I let the warmth of it enclose.

‘Thanks, Kelly.’

‘You’re very welcome.’

We sat down on a big sofa opposite the ant farm. The sunniest side of her office. It felt a world away from the 7th Street Bridge.

Kelly patted my knee. ‘So, tell me: how’s the crime business these days?’

I shrugged. ‘Busy, I guess. Dirty. Plagued with criminals. What about the news business?’