“You’ve got to take the fire stairs, Inspector. The elevator is out.”
Christ.
Conklin took the fire stairs down, opened the fire door, and stepped into eight inches of cold seawater. He passed the 725 gallons of illuminated moon jellies, then slogged along the dimly lit corridor, following signs to the three-hundred-foot-long moving walkway that had been tunneled under the bay.
Conklin stopped at the head of the walkway, which was no longer moving, and tried to get his bearings. The aquarium arced overhead. Sharks and other large fish, schools of anchovies, and various slimy creatures from the deep swam over and around him. It was like surround sound for the eyes—and it wasn’t comfortable.
Halfway down the tunnel, a stream of water poured onto the walkway through a hole about six feet up the wall. At best, the spray was destroying evidence. At worst, the entire exhibit was in danger of becoming like a submarine with a breached hull.
Feeling suddenly sick from the underwater effect, Conklin held on to the railing. He really didn’t want to puke in the crime scene. He steadied himself, took some deep breaths, then he pushed off and sloshed over to where the CSIU team was processing the scene.
The victim’s body was facedown on the walkway, and the rising water was almost to the point where it would cover the hole in the back of his head.
Charlie Clapper, longtime head of the CSIU, was stooped over the body, lifting a pocket flap with his gloved hand.
Conklin said, “Hey, Charlie. What’s the story here?”
“Well, Rich, we’ve got a white male, fifty or so, shot through the back of the head, as you can see. Hold on, I’ve got his wallet. Crystal, can you shine a light on this?”
A young tech in high rubber boots came over to them and flashed her light on the dead man’s driver’s license.
Clapper said, “Here we go. Our victim is in fact a white male, fifty-two, five foot six, hundred and forty pounds, hazel eyes. Name of Mr. Perry Judd. FYI, Mr. Judd never knew what hit him.”
“Damn it,” Conklin said. “This man is Perry Judd? You’re sure?”
“I’m only sure that I’m holding Perry Judd’s driver’s license.”
“Can you turn his head so I can see his face?” Conklin asked.
“Not until the ME gets here,” said Clapper. “You know that, Richie. Until then, we gotta cool our heels.”
Chapter 75
JOE AND I spent the night inside a cozily furnished hospital room, holding Julie, bottle-feeding her, and telling her that she was a good strong baby and that we loved her so much.
When we weren’t with Party Girl, we slumped in chairs in the waiting room, where we counted holes in the acoustic tiles and sometimes caught a few, very fractured z’s.
As long as the night had been, the hours between 8:00 and 9:00 a.m. had been longer. We drank vending machine coffee as we waited for Dr. Erwin Dwy, Julie’s hematologist, to see us. And then, finally, he came to the waiting room and brought us back to his office.
Dr. Dwy was 6 feet 9 inches tall, going gray at the temples, and had a long, smiling face and sad eyes. He offered us chairs at his desk and we sat across from him, watching him take phone calls from parents of sick children. Between calls, he apologized, then took another call, until at last he gave us his attention.
“Let me be candid with you,” said Dr. Dwy, folding his hands on his desk. “I don’t have wonderful news.”
I was already terrified; I had been in that state since we’d last seen Dr. Gordon and she had said Julie should have an aggressive workup at the hospital. But now, looking into Dr. Dwy’s eyes, I reached a new high in terror.
I went rigid. I gripped Joe’s hand hard, and I flashed on the night I gave birth to Julie in a blackout with an electrical storm crackling around me. I remembered screaming like a wounded mountain lion—and I wanted to scream like that now.
I don’t have wonderful news.
Joe said, “Tell us what you know, Dr. Dwy.”
“Of course,” he said. “Of course. Well, we gave Julie every test in the book—blood tests, CAT scans, we even did a bone marrow biopsy. She took it very well.
“But this is what it all comes down to,” said the sad-eyed man. “Julie’s white blood cells are abnormally large.”
I blurted, “She has an infection. Dr. Gordon said she had an infection.”
“We believe she has malignant lymphoma. It’s in the leukemic stage.”
Everything went white.
The blood left my head and although I was staring at Dr. Dwy’s face, I saw nothing. I heard a buzzing, then someone was calling my name. I was on the floor, my chair tipped over beside me. I heaved and someone placed a garbage bag right beside my mouth. I heaved again, then there was something cold on my chest.
My blouse was open. Dr. Dwy had a stethoscope on my chest and was listening to my heart. I pushed him away, saying, “I’m fine. I’m fine.”
I tried to sit up, but when I did, everything began to fade again. The doctor told me to just stay down and I tried that, but after a minute or two, I asked Joe to help me up.
When I was standing, Dr. Dwy righted my chair and I buttoned my shirt.
Dr. Dwy said, “Your blood pressure is very low. Have you ever passed out before?”
“No. Because this is the first time someone told me that my daughter has cancer.”
Joe put his arm around me. Tears were sheeting down my face, but I wasn’t sobbing. I was in the present and I was listening hard. I had to keep myself together for Julie.
Chapter 76
AFTER I ASSURED Dr. Dwy that I wasn’t going to black out again, he told me and Joe about Julie’s medical condition in a language that seemed to be English, but definitely wasn’t English as I knew it. I just couldn’t grasp what he was telling us; I could only apprehend that Julie’s situation was dire.
I said to the doctor, “Please. Just tell us in simple terms.”
He said, “All you really have to understand right now is that acute leukemias move rather quickly. I don’t like to give statistics, but in this case, I have to tell you that Julie has a fifty percent chance of survival. It’s fifty percent now.
“I advise chemotherapy, the sooner the better. I’d start her on chemo today.”
I wanted to howl, “Nooo,” but I clamped the arm of the chair with one hand, squeezed the life out of Joe’s hand with the other.
My thoughts went to my tiny, helpless child, so recently born, so fiercely loved. She had only been with us for a few weeks, but I had envisioned her life extending out to the horizon. I wanted for Julie what all parents want for their children—that she would have a long and happy life.
I tuned in to Joe saying, “Doctor, what are the side effects of chemotherapy?”
Dwy said, “What you’d expect. She’ll feel sick. She’ll lose her hair. There may be some long-term effects. She could become infertile. And of course, the chemotherapy is not a guarantee that she will successfully beat the cancer. It’s a hard decision, but I know what I would do in your situation.”
Joe said, “My wife and I need a moment to talk this over.”
“Of course,” said Dr. Dwy. “Take your time. But just be aware that if we’re to go ahead with the chemo, I have to organize things for Julie.”
Dr. Dwy stood, ducked his head under the door frame, and left the room. It was unbearably bright in his office once we were no longer in the doctor’s shadow. The overhead fluorescent strip glared, and so did the reflection of light on the blond wood and the white paint. The wall of windows made me feel transparent, and I wanted to be in the dark.
I wanted to grab my baby and run, disappear down a rabbit hole or hide at the back of a cave. I wanted to put Julie back inside my body so that I could protect her, so that nothing bad could ever happen to her. How could I change the devastating fifty–fifty odds Dr. Dwy had given her?
Joe looked drained and grave. He said, “Lindsay, are you feeling okay—physically?”
“Yes.”
“What do you want to do?” he asked me.
“We don’t have a choice. We have to let them shoot her up with chemicals. And we just have to be strong for her when she gets sick. I went through chemo with my mom—”
“I’m not so sure this is the way to go.”
“What? You aren’t?”
I was sputtering, still dumbfounded by what Joe had said, when a nurse opened the door and told us, “I have a little girl here who wants to be held.”
Joe and I both put out our arms.
“You two, flip a coin,” the nurse said with a smile.
Joe stood up, took Julie from the nurse, thanked her, and handed our baby to me.
Oh, my God. I almost swooned again at the smell of her, at the sight of her sweet face.
Julie couldn’t die. She just couldn’t die.
Chapter 77
I HELD JULIE and tried not to crush her with my maternal love. She fussed, and so I cooed and cradled her, pushed her dark curls back from her face. Her skin was warm but not overheated. She opened her beautiful dark eyes and looked at me.
I don’t know how much a four-week-old baby can sense, but I didn’t want her to know how scared I was. How scared we were.
I said, “Hi, sweetie. How’s my girl?” “I want a second opinion,” said Joe.
“What do you mean, Joe? We shouldn’t do the chemo?”
“I want someone else to see her, to do the tests again, see if we get the same results.”
“But that could waste valuable time. Maybe that loss of time would just tilt the odds from fifty–fifty to sixty–forty against her. I like Dr. Dwy. I like this hospital.”
Joe said, “May I hold her?”
I gave the baby to my husband and he held her against his shoulder the way he likes to. He walked around the small room with her, rubbed her back. She closed her eyes and started to breathe rhythmically until she was in a deep sleep.
I thought about my mother’s cancer, what a tenacious bitch it was, and how, despite the chemotherapy, the radiation, the surgery, and my mother’s strong will to live, she had died.
I heard Dr. Dwy in my mind saying, “These acute leukemias move very quickly.”
“I want to take her to Saint Francis,” Joe said. “I’ve done a lot of research. There’s a very highly regarded hem-onc there.”
“A what did you say?”
“Hematologist-oncologist. I want to bring Julie to Mark Sebetic. He’s busy. He’s famous. He’s well guarded by his staff. I’m going to knock down whatever doors I have to. I won’t accept ‘no’ for an answer. I’ll sleep outside his office if that’s what it takes.”
I was torn right down the middle of my heart. I didn’t want Julie to go through the sickness and discomfort of chemotherapy, but I also didn’t want to delay treatment that could save her life.
My husband is older than me, has been uncle to more than a dozen children, and has made life-and-death decisions for other people his entire professional life. But we loved Julie equally. We had to agree on the best course of treatment for our baby.
We had to decide together what was best for her.
Chapter 78
CONKLIN TURNED AWAY from the dead man’s partially submerged body and saw Claire Washburn coming toward him in the watery gloom. Her scene kit was in hand and three techs trailed in her wake.
“Hey, cowboy,” she called out. “Where’s your partner?”
Conklin said, “You got me. She’s a mom first these days. I keep getting her voice mail. So what happened, Claire? You ducked out the back door and Dr. Morse doesn’t know you’re missing?”
“If we didn’t have a ten-car smashup on the freeway, he’d be here instead of me. Hey, Charlie,” she said. “How goes it?”
“What I love about this job is that it’s always different. Take a look at that.” Charlie Clapper pointed to the hole in the wall, six feet off the ground, water flowing through it as though it were a fire hose. He said, “Could be that the shot went wild, or could be it was deliberate, so that everyone’s mind would go to the six hundred million gallons of water coming into the tunnel, not to the vic or the shooter.”
“I hope someone’s going to put their finger in the dike,” Claire said, looking at the stream. “Meanwhile, I need to get a look at the DB.”
Conklin stood beside Claire as she photographed the body and the wound. He said, “I think I know this guy.”
“You do? Tell me about it,” she said.
“This English professor came in to see us a couple of weeks ago. He said he’s been having these dreams.”
Claire moved around the body, got another angle on the head wound. “What do you mean, ‘dreams’? I’ve been a little out of the loop since Faye Farmer was boosted from my freezer.”
“This professor had dreams of people being murdered. First time, it was a woman who liked to shop at his local grocery store. He described her down to her toenail polish. Bang, she takes a hit in the ice cream section. Just what he dreamed.”
“So you’re saying this professor sees dead people? But he sees them when they’re alive?”
“Something like that. So a few days after the supermarket hit, the professor comes in again. This time he’s dreamed that a female streetcar driver on the F line took one through the forehead. He described her as blond-haired. Even described advertising inside the car.”
Claire said, “Richie, if you’re waiting to ID this man, let me put your mind at rest. I’m not turning the body in this swamp. Lyle, call Henry, tell him to hurry up with that stretcher.”
“Just turn his face,” Conklin said. “I’ve got to see if this man is the professor.”
“You’ll get your chance later. I’m gonna process this body by the book, and that means back at the office.”
“I’ll come with you.”
“If you must. So the blond-haired streetcar driver was murdered like the professor dreamed?”
“Well, that’s the weird thing. The victim was a streetcar driver. She did take a shot right between the eyes, but she wasn’t blond. She was a black woman, had black hair.”
“So he got it wrong, but at the same time not that wrong,” Claire said.
“Correct,” said Conklin. “Then he came in yesterday with another dream; this time his dream takes place right here. He’s moving along the walkway, then he hears a gunshot. But he tells me he didn’t see anyone get hit. So I say, ‘This isn’t a murder case.’ And he said that if I wasn’t going to help him, he was going to come to the aquarium and see if he could pick the shooter out of the crowd before he pulled the trigger.”
“Maybe he did see the shooter, huh? And that’s why he got shot.”
“From behind?”
“Well, maybe the killer recognized him.”
Clapper trudged through the water, past the guys on a tall ladder and under the divers who were inside the tank, pressing something that looked like a piece of neoprene against the hole in the glass.
Charlie held the butt of a gun with his gloved fingertips.
He said, “Inspector, look at this. We found it at the far end of the walkway. It’s drenched, but I can still smell that it’s been fired. This is going to be our murder weapon.”
“Excellent,” said Richie. “Good job.”
“Unless, of course,” Clapper said with a wink, “I’m dreaming.”
Chapter 79
CONKLIN SPOKE TO Sheila, who was answering phones at the front desk at the medical examiner’s office.
“I’m expecting Mackie Morales from Homicide. You can send her in when she gets here.”
“If Dr. Washburn says okay.”
“She already did.”
And then Morales appeared at the glass door.
“And here she is,” Conklin said.
He opened the door for Morales, who was looking terrific in tight jeans, a man-tailored shirt, and a fitted camel-hair jacket. Her dark hair was loose and bouncy. She had a very fresh and inviting look about her. An al
l-American girl by way of Scotland and Mexico. She smelled good, too.
“Did the victim turn out to be Professor Judd?” Morales asked Conklin. She stood close enough for Conklin to see down into her cleavage.
“It’s him,” Conklin said. “If you believe this psychic stuff, then Perry Judd dreamed his own death. He didn’t see the shooter in his dream, because he was shot from behind.”
“I’m on the fence about precognition,” Morales said. “But I believe that Professor Judd believed it.”
“I’m open to other ideas,” Conklin said.
He held the door to the autopsy suite for Morales, then followed her in. Claire was weighing Perry Judd’s liver when they got there.
Once again, Conklin felt the cold shock of guilt. A day ago he had been sitting with Perry Judd upstairs in Interview 2. Now the little guy’s chest was open like a book and his guts were overlapping the rim of a stainless steel bowl.
Morales said, “Dr. Washburn, I’ll run that bullet out to the lab for you. Save some time.”
“It’s in the envelope on the table over there,” Claire said. “Thanks for helping out.”
“Happy to do it,” said Morales. “See you later, Rich.”
Morales left with the semimangled round Claire had taken out of Perry Judd’s skull. Claire said to Conklin, “The shooter was standing three to five feet behind the victim when he fired. There was no stippling around the wound.”
“Can you confirm that the cause of death was the gunshot wound to the back of the head?”
“Yes. I can say that—conditionally,” said Claire. “It’s still off the record until I finish here, in about six hours.”
Conklin nodded at Claire, then went back upstairs to the squad room. He was transferring his notes to the case file when Charlie Clapper called him on his cell phone.
“Here’s something that will make your ears stand up,” Clapper said. “The round fired from the gun matches the one Claire took from Perry Judd’s head, so we definitely have the murder weapon. And I’m not done yet.”