Right To Die - Jeremiah Healy (32 page)

Wonsley drew in a breath. "So, if you need
anything else, you give us a call."

"I will. But if I don't, let me know when he's
coming home the last time?"

The tongue darting again, Wonsley nodded quickly and
entered Bacall's room.
 

=28=

FROM A TRAINING STANDPOINT, THE LAST HALF OF MARCH
AND the first half of April were the worst. Wild changes in the
weather. Teens one morning, forties the next. Blizzard snow to
blinding sun. As the longer distances in Bo's program climbed past
fourteen miles, I learned where the working water fountains were. The
second floor of the Harvard Boathouse. The rest room of the MDC rink
on Nonantum Road. I carried change in my pocket for sugar drinks at
convenience stores in Newton and Watertown.

Medically, I stayed healthy, but my knees and hips
began to hurt after ten miles each time. I started to wonder if legs
were like tires, only so many miles in them before they blew. But
hurting or not, I finished each run, gaining confidence that I could
go as far as I had to, maybe even twenty-six miles.

The Andrus case, however,
stayed dead while she completed her visitorship in San Diego.
Juggling an arson investigation and a missing person matter, I
couldn't understand it. Sending notes only sporadically might avoid
diluting their effect, but there hadn't been any activity since the
sniping incident in February. Granted, Andrus hadn't been back in
Boston, either, but Hebert or Manolo, or whoever, must have had some
kind of timetable, some overall strategy. I just wasn't seeing it.

* * *

"I've taken you about as far as I can, John."

I stopped stretching against a tree. The Wednesday
before the marathon, I'd just finished a tapering run of six miles.
The April sun was warm, so I was wearing only shorts and a
long-sleeved T-shirt.

"Less than a week left, Bo."

Sitting on his bench, the man moved a shoulder inside
the two sweaters he still wore. Tied around his waist were two other
layers and the sport jacket, a green carnation from the holiday
wilted in its lapel. "What I mean is, there's nothing left to
tell you."

"How about hanging around anyway, see if I
finish on Monday?"

"No need. I know you'll finish. Besides, the
race herself is part of your life, John, not mine."

"I'd still like you to be there."

"No. No, I think maybe I'll go somewheres else.
This climate, it doesn't have much of a springtime. Hell of a winter,
but no spring."

He fingered the carnation. "I think I'd like to
be someplace I'll see live flowers this side of June."

Bo stood, wiping his right hand elaborately on a
sweater, then extending the hand to me. "Good luck, eh'?"

I took it. "Thank you, Coach."

He shook his hand loose from mine and pulled the
Redskins cap down tighter with it. "Remember to do that last
tune-up distance on Friday, now."

"I will."

Turning away, Bo stuck
both hands in his pants pockets and began to walk upriver. He paused
once, taking the left hand out to remove his glasses and pass a
sleeve over his eyes.

* * *

When I got home from the office that evening, there
was a message on the tape machine from Inés Roja. Maisy Andrus,
Tucker Hebert, and Manolo had flown in from the coast a day early
because Hebert was leaving that afternoon for a tennis exhibition in
Europe. Trying the number at the town house, I got a busy signal.

I showered and pulled on some clean sweat clothes. As
I tied the drawstrings to the pants, the telephone rang in the living
room.

"John Cuddy."

"John, John! It is Inés, Inés Roja."

"What's — "

"The note, John! There was just now another note
in our mailbox here!"

"At the house'?"

"It says 'TONIGHT YOU DIE BITCH'."

"Call the police. Nine one one. I'm on my way."

I put on my training shoes and took the four-inch
Combat Masterpiece from the closet. Due to the one-wayness of the
streets, it was literally faster to run the seven blocks than to
drive them. Reaching the front door of the Andrus house, I couldn't
hear any sirens, but the cops might be coming with just flashers.
Somebody was shouting inside. I grabbed the door handle to crash it,
but the handle turned in my hand, opening the door. Going through it
into the foyer, I could hear Inés Roja clearly.

From somewhere above, she was crying out, "He is
going to shoot the professor! He is going to shoot the professor!"

I started up the staircase.

Suddenly Roja appeared at the top. "Oh, John, he
is going to shoot the professor!"

I got out "Where — " when Manolo barreled
into Ines, pushing her off balance. He fired at me before I saw the
rifle clear the balustrade. Something tore at the waist of the
sweatshirt, a searing sensation in my left side. Reflexively, I
pulled the trigger, rocking Manolo at the left shoulder but not
putting him down.

I dropped back a step to steady my weapon as he
worked the bolt on the rifle. My foot slipped a little on the stair,
my second shot missing as Manolo raised the rifle as high as his
shoulder would allow. Inés lunged at him, cuffing his arm as he
fired and sending his next bullet wild. Manolo bellowed as he pushed
her off, the first sound I'd ever heard him make.

Steadied, I fired three more times, each slug
punching Manolo in the chest, the rifle dropping from his hands. He
bucked off the wall, his palms coming together and twisting on the
wrists, like a shortstop handcuffed by a bad hop. Staggering forward,
Manolo pitched through the balustrade, the staircase quaking as he
struck the Oriental rug on the first floor.

As I moved toward her, Inés Roja was sobbing in two
languages at once.
 

=29=

NEELY SAID, “CHRIST, MY WATCH TOPPED. IS IT
WEDNESDAY OR Thursday?"

Patiently, Murphy said, "Thursday,
twelve-fifteen A.M.”

Neely spoke to himself as he wrote. "Mass
General, Room 309."

Murphy said to me, "The Roja woman didn't tell
us anything at the scene about saving your life."

Three pillows propped me up in bed. I shifted my rump
to the left, the drain in my side starting to burn as badly as the
bullet had. "She was pretty shook up, Lieutenant. Might not even
remember hitting his arm. How is she now?"

"Zonked. The M.E. gave her something just after
he pronounced Manolo."

Neely looked up from his pad. "M.E. had to say
it three times, the way you aced him there."

I turned back to Murphy. "How about Andrus
herself?"

"She went back to sleep. The woman gets home
from the coast, all 'jet-lagged,' she said. When she wasn't bitching
at us about messing up her house. Said she took some pills, went to
bed, slept through the whole thing, firefight and all."

"Nobody else in the house, right?"

"You got there before we did. Roja never called
it in. Said she was about to when she heard Manolo heading toward the
professor's bedroom."

Neely was doodling. Murphy was biding his time.

I said, "There are some things wrong here,
Lieutenant."

"Like what?"

"Manolo had plenty of motive and opportunity on
the notes. Even on the sniping incident last month."

"I'm goosing ballistics to give us a quick read
on whether the slugs from tonight match those. The weapon Manolo used
was a Remington."

"You might check with Ray Cuervo, the son from
Spain. He said his father had one of those as a hunting arm."

Neely stopped doodling. "So what doesn't add up,
Cuddy?"

"First, Manolo's supposed to be doing this for
revenge, right?"

Murphy said, "Go ahead."

"Wouldn't you think he'd wait till she was
awake'?"

"Again?"

"Manolo wants to avenge the killing of his
father figure. Pass for now that it takes him over ten years to work
up to it. He decides to bust Andrus with a hunting rifle that maybe
belonged to the old doctor. Poetic justice. But wouldn't you think
Manolo would wait till she was awake?"

Murphy thought about it. Neely looked lost.

Murphy said, "You mean because of the notes."

"Right. Guy intends to scare her with the notes,
especially that last one tonight, wouldn't you think he'd be sure she
was awake enough to read the last one and be in terror? And wouldn't
you think he'd hold off shooting her till she was looking at him,
eyes open?"

Neely said, "So maybe the Roja woman surprised
him. Who knows?"

Murphy said, "Anything else?"

"Yeah. Manolo seemed to think of himself as
being in charge of the house security. Even if he's going to kill
Andrus, maybe especially if he's going to kill her after she reads
tonight's note, wouldn't you think he'd have made sure the front door
was locked'?"

"Was the front door ever unlocked?"

"Not that I know of."

"So it's more like he must have unlocked it on
purpose before he started after the professor."

"And why would he do that?"

Murphy rubbed his chin. "Expecting somebody."

"And probably not me."

Neely said, "I don't get it."

Murphy said, "It's thin, but this Manolo leaves
the front door open, maybe he expected a guest for the execution."

Neely looked from Murphy
to me to Murphy. "Aw, fuck. You mean this ain't the end of it?"

* * *

The next time I opened my eyes, Dr. Paul Eisenberg
and Nancy Meagher were standing over me. "Don't tell me I slept
until visiting hours?"

Nancy shook her head. "Ever the adolescent."

Eisenberg said, "I was coming up to check on you
anyway. I heard Ms. Meagher threatening the nurses' station with dire
legal consequences if she wasn't permitted to see you, so I included
her on my rounds."

I said, "How did I draw you, Doctor?"

"I was on duty last night. Heard about a private
investigator shooting someone, getting shot himself, and being rushed
here as the closest facility. A nice change of pace from the
ordinary, if you'll forgive my saying so."

"So you're not on the case as my specialist for
internal medicine."'

"Oh, no. No problems that way."

"The slug missed all the vital stuff ?"

"Completely. Just gouged a wormtrail through the
bit of fat you've got over that left hip. You're in pretty good
shape."

Nancy said, "He was training for the marathon."

"Am training for the marathon."

Nancy said, "No."

I said, "Yes."

Eisenberg said, "You mean, to run the Boston
Marathon this Monday?"

"Any reason I can't?"I

Nancy turned away and began pacing. "I can't be
hearing this right."

The doctor combed his beard. "It's not my call
medically, but physically, it's certainly not a good idea."

Nancy said, "Listen to the man."

"I didn't even take any stitches."

Eisenberg came over, lifted my johnny coat. "We
let a gunshot heal from below. If we closed it over with sutures, an
abscess might form." He dropped my coat.

"So it's not that bad, right?"

"A bullet makes a dirty wound, Mr. Cuddy. The
slug itself, fibers it introduces from your clothes."

"But you washed all that out."

"We used a saline solution to irrigate the area,
yes."

I said, "If I run, what's the worst that can
happen?"

Nancy said, "John, you're a dunce."

Eisenberg looked skeptical. "The wound could
weep through the dressing, perhaps even break open. You'd lose some
blood and risk an infection."

"So if I run and the worst happens, I won't die
before I finish the race, right?"

"Right. But you could be very sick thereafter."

"Which means I might be on antibiotics and maybe
in bed for a while'?"

"Probably."

"If the wound breaks open."

"Yes, but you'll also be rather weak to start
with."

"Any weaker than if I'd had a bout of the flu?"

Eisenberg said, "Honestly? Probably not as weak
as the flu would make you."

I looked at Nancy and
shrugged. She crossed her arms and stalked out.

* * *

I was saying good-bye to Room 309 when I heard a
knock. "Come in."

Inés Roja opened the door a little. "You are
all right?"

"Come on in, Inés."

She closed it behind her. "I wanted to thank
you."

"I'm the one who should thank you."