The Kept Woman

  Will felt a pain in his jaw. Had Angie dragged her own mortally wounded, paralyzed daughter out of the building?

  “Then, bitch comes back in again and starts kicking things around again.”

  Hiding the fact that she’d dragged a body across the floor.

  “She leaves for real this time. Next thing I hear something like a car door slamming. Lots of car doors slamming.”

  Faith asked, “Could it have been a trunk?”

  “I don’t got, like, radar ears, bitch. It was just lots of things slamming shut on a car.” She looked exasperated. She didn’t like Faith asking questions. “Anyway, then there’s this whoosh! like I don’t know what. Big whoosh. And I look up at the windows—now, the windows are blacked out, right, but I see these flames shooting up like a Viking funeral. Just—” She waved her arm around. “All over the place.” She dropped her hand. “That’s it. The car pulled away.”

  Amanda asked, “Did you see anyone else?”

  “Nah, that’s the truth. Just the bitch and the chick and the fire.”

  “No children?”

  “What the hell would a kid be doing there? It was the middle of the night. Should be tucked up in bed.”

  Amanda asked, “You didn’t go upstairs to see what the first woman did up there?”

  Jane licked her lips. “Well, I might’a. Just out of curiosity”

  Amanda rolled her hand, indicating she could continue.

  “There was a dude up there. Not dead, but just as good as. The light was better on account of the windows are right across from the balcony.”

  “And?”

  “Bastard was a fucking whale. Sleeping real sound, but like I said—not dead. But close. You could tell. Or at least I could. I seen some people die in my time. Pissed himself already. Had a doorknob in his neck. Like that guy from TV. You remember that show?” She snapped her fingers twice, like in The Addams Family.

  Will provided, “Lurch, but I think you mean Frankenstein.”

  “That’s right.” She winked at him. “I knew you were the smart one, honey.”

  Amanda said, “I’m waiting to hear where the coke came in.”

  “Dead guy’s jacket pocket.” She patted her chest. “If I squatted down, stretched my arm real far, I could take it without getting blood all over me. Two fucking grams. I ain’t seen that much blow since I was a kid.”

  “So you went across the street because—”

  “I couldn’t stay in there with that guy dying. That’s just weird. And who knew if the bitch would come back? God damn, she already left and came back once.” Jane started breaking off pieces of Styrofoam from the cup. “So, I moseyed back across the street, partied until the sun came up. Then the cops rolled in, so I was like, shit, I better cheese it up the stairs. Once I started climbing, I couldn’t stop until I got to the top. That blow was fucking pure, man. One hundred percent.”

  Will saw Faith roll her eyes. Every dealer said his blow was pure.

  Amanda asked, “Is that it? You’re not leaving anything out?”

  “Hell, it don’t seem like it, but you never know, right?”

  Amanda typed on her BlackBerry. “I’m going to have another agent take your statement. He’ll bring a sketch artist who will talk you through the night, try to jog your memory.”

  “That seems like a lot of trouble to go through.”

  “Consider it part of your get-out-of-jail-free card.” Amanda motioned for Will and Faith to follow her out of the room. She walked a few feet down from Jane’s room, stopping in front of the nurses’ station.

  Faith asked, “Do we believe her?”

  Amanda said, “Charlie found a bloodstain on the lower level. He thought it came from a nosebleed.”

  Will said, “Angie could know how to stage a crime scene.”

  “I’m trying to wrap my head around this.” Faith tried to talk it out. “Somehow, Jo bled out in the room upstairs, then she made her way to the bottom floor, where she collapsed. Angie leaves for some reason. She comes back for some reason. She drags Jo to her Monte Carlo, blows up Dale’s Kia, then drives off again?” She added, “And leaves her own daughter marinating in her trunk for six hours?”

  Will stifled his impulse to say that Angie wouldn’t do something like that.

  Amanda said, “I’m getting a lot of pushback on that warrant for Figaroa’s telephone. We got the street surveillance approved, but just barely. No one has left the Figaroa house except Laslo. He was sent to McDonald’s for breakfast. He bought three cups of coffee and three breakfast platters.”

  “Three, not four, which means that they didn’t get anything for Anthony.” Faith said, “Let me get my notes. I need to talk this out again.”

  Will didn’t want to listen to another recap.

  He looked past Faith’s shoulder, pretending that he was listening. He watched the nurse typing something onto a tablet computer. All of the patient files at Grady were digitized. The whiteboard behind the nurses’ station was still low-tech. They handwrote patient names and updated their status so that they could keep track of the ward. As Will watched, the nurse went to the board and erased Jane Doe 1. She wrote in a new name with a red marker. All caps, which was easier for him to read. And it helped that he had seen the name several times before.

  He said, “Delilah Palmer.”

  Amanda asked, “What about her?”

  He pointed to the board.

  The nurse had overheard him. She explained, “Domestic abuse. They can’t find the boyfriend. She walked into the ER with a knife sticking out of her chest.”

  “When?” Faith asked.

  “Early Monday, right before my shift.”

  Will said, “I thought we checked the hospitals for stabbing victims.”

  “We didn’t.” Faith sounded furious. She told the nurse, “Olivia, the patient’s been Jane Doe One since I was here last night. What changed?”

  “The orderly checked her clothes before he took them down to the incinerator. He found her driver’s license.” Olivia capped the marker. “She’s still in an induced coma, so you can’t interview her. Anyway, I thought this was being handled by the APD.”

  Amanda asked, “Who caught the case?”

  “I can look it up here.” Olivia referenced the tablet computer. Her face broke into a smile. “Oh, it was Denny. Denny Collier.”

  Chapter Twelve

  “Subarachnoid hemorrhage,” Gary Quintana said. “That sounds like spiders.”

  “It’s a spidery area,” Sara told him. “But basically, it means she had bleeding in that part of the brain.”

  “Oh, wow. Weird.” Gary continued reading Josephine Figaroa’s preliminary autopsy report. Whatever Amanda had said to the young man yesterday morning had clearly left a mark. His shirtsleeves were rolled down. He wore a knit tie in place of his heavy gold necklace. Even his ponytail had been neutered. Instead of jutting proudly from the back of his head, the hair had been gathered into a neat bun.

  She was sad to see the ponytail go.

  “Okay.” Gary read aloud from the conclusion, “‘Cause of death is an epidural hemorrhage.’ What’s that?”

  “It’s another type of intracranial bleed.” Sara could tell he wanted to know more. “She experienced an external trauma to her head. The skull fractured, tearing her internal maxillary artery, which branches off the external carotid and helps supply blood to the brain. Blood filled the space between the dura mater and the skull. The skull holds a fixed volume, meaning it can’t expand. All of that extra blood put too much pressure on her brain.”

  “What happens when that happens?”

  “In general, the patient loses consciousness transiently. At the time of injury, they’re typically knocked out for a few minutes. Then they wake up and exhibit a normal level of consciousness. That’s why these bleeds are so dangerous. There’s a severe headache, but they’re lucid until the bleed progresses enough to shut down the brain. Left untreated, they slip into a coma and die.”
br />   “Wow.” He looked at the gurney that held Figaroa’s body. They were standing in the hallway outside the APD morgue, which was located in the subbasement of Grady Hospital. The gurney was pushed up against the wall, awaiting transport. Thanks to a batch of bad meth, the medical examiner had a full house.

  Gary said, “She sure went through some hell.”

  “She did.”

  He returned to the report. “What about ‘fracture of the cervical vertebrae’? That’s the neck, right? That sounds really bad, too.”

  “It is. She would’ve likely been paralyzed.”

  “Her heart was bruised, too.” He frowned, disturbed by the findings. “Somebody whooped the hell out of her.”

  “Not necessarily.” Sara explained, “The skull fractures are evenly distributed. The ribs and cervical vertebrae are fractured, as you said, but the thoracic vertebrae and long bones aren’t. She’s not really bruised except on one side. Did you notice that?”

  “Yeah, what’s that mean?”

  “That it’s very likely that she either fell or was pushed from a great height. The cervical fractures are a tip-off. You don’t get those from being beaten. She fell from at least twenty feet up. She hit the ground on her side. Her skull fractured, the artery tore, and then a few hours later, she died from the brain hemorrhage.”

  “That balcony inside the club was about thirty feet up.” Gary looked at Sara with a sense of awe. “Wow, Dr. Linton. That’s pretty cool how you scienced that out.” He handed her the report. “Thank you for sharing all this with me. I really want to learn.”

  “I’m glad Amanda assigned you to my division.”

  “Yeah, she got me to slick up my look.” He patted his tie. “I gotta represent, you know? The focus should be on the victims, not on me.”

  Sara supposed this was reasonable advice. “I should track them down to let them know about the findings. Do you have any more questions?”

  “Yeah, she’s just, like, out here in the hallway. You think it’s okay if I put her back in the freezer?”

  “I think that would be very nice.” Sara patted him on the shoulder as she walked toward the stairs. The ICU was six floors up, but the elevators at Grady worked on their own time, and she needed to find Amanda sooner rather than later.

  Of course, finding Amanda meant she would also find Will. Sara was shaken by an unwelcome reticence. She still wasn’t sure how she felt about last night. Will hadn’t wanted to talk in the car, but then he wouldn’t shut up once they got home. He hadn’t slept. He had been almost manic, spouting theories that were the equivalent of a snake eating its own tail. He was furious with Angie. He was deeply hurt, whether he would admit it or not. Everything that came out of his mouth was either talking around Angie or talking about her. Sara looked at him as a doctor and wanted to medicate him, and this time make sure he didn’t palm the pill. She looked at him as his girlfriend and wanted to wrap her arms around him and make everything better. Then she had looked at him as a woman who’d been married, who knew how to be in a healthy relationship, and wondered what the hell she had signed up for.

  Sara pulled open the door to the ICU just as a man was yelling, “So fucking what?”

  Holden Collier threw his hands into the air. His boyish affability was gone. It was no wonder why. Amanda, Faith, and Will were crowding in on him. Two of the Grady security guards were standing close by, their hands resting on their guns.

  Collier demanded, “Why would I report a domestic when we’re looking for an unexplained stabbing?” He threw up his hands again. “It’s explained. The boyfriend did it. She won’t name him. What am I going to do?”

  “Tell me again.” Amanda’s tone was hard as steel. “From the beginning.”

  “Unbelievable.” Collier threw up his hands a third time.

  Sara had no idea what he was being accused of, but his innocent act was filled with textbook overreaction.

  He said, “I was already at the ER with a perp. I took the domestic. She was bleeding out, but I got her story. Boyfriend came after her with a knife. She won’t tell me his name. Where she lives, whatever. Same bullshit as usual. She went into surgery. I wrote the report. I told them to call me if her status changed. That’s my job.” He wasn’t finished. “You’re so fucking hell-bent on jamming me up, you don’t even see what this case is really about.”

  “Tell me what it’s about.”

  “Rippy’s club is a shooting gallery. Gang tags are everywhere. Harding has a shit bucket in his closet. He was running drug mules up from Mexico and it got him killed, end of story.”

  Amanda asked, “What about your relationship with Angie Polaski?”

  Sara bit her lip. Angie. She would give her entire life savings to never, ever have to hear the woman’s name again.

  Amanda said, “Sunday night into Monday morning, you had three calls back and forth with a burner phone. One of them lasted twelve minutes.”

  “I was talking to an informant. He uses a burner. They all use burners.”

  “Who’s the informant? I want his name.”

  “I’m not doing this here.” Collier had finally realized he couldn’t bluster his way out of the problem. “If you want to question me, I’ve got a right to have my union rep in the room.”

  “Give him a call, Denny. This is happening.”

  “Can I go?”

  “We’ll be in touch.”

  He stomped off, barely acknowledging Sara as he bumped open the door to the stairs.

  Faith had her hands on her hips. She was furious. Amanda was furious. Will looked the same as he had for the last twenty-four hours, like a deer caught in the headlights.

  Amanda said, “Dr. Linton. What do you have?”

  “Nothing you’re going to like.” Sara felt sorry to again be the bearer of bad news. “According to the preliminary autopsy report, Josephine Figaroa died of a brain bleed. The stab wounds in her chest were very shallow, postmortem, so there wasn’t any bleeding. The cut on her cheek was postmortem, so no bleeding. Her fingertips didn’t crack from the heat. Someone sliced them with a razor, probably to hide her identity, which doesn’t make sense, but that’s your department. Speaking from my department, I can tell you the finger cuts were postmortem, too, because there was no bleeding.”

  Amanda clarified, “You’re saying that the blood at the crime scene did not come from the woman who was autopsied downstairs.”

  “Exactly. All of her bleeding was internal. My guess is that she fell, probably from the balcony. Charlie said there was some blood on the ground floor. I’m assuming it came from her nose. She was alive for several hours, probably paralyzed, before the bleed killed her.”

  Amanda didn’t seem surprised, which was not unusual, because she had a good poker face. What was puzzling was that neither Faith nor Will seemed surprised, either.

  Amanda asked, “Could it be possible that there was a second victim at the crime scene?”

  “Absolutely. The club was heavily trafficked over the last few months. Someone with even a rudimentary knowledge of crime scene investigation could temporarily pull the wool over our eyes. At least until the labs, fingerprints, and analysis came back, which could take weeks, maybe months.”

  “Did you see any signs of a child?”

  “A child?” Sara was confused. “You mean a toddler? Infant?”

  “Six years old,” Faith said. “We have a missing kid. We think Angie took him.”

  Sara’s hand went to her chest. She looked at Will, expecting him to be staring at the floor, but instead, he looked back at her. There was a hardness to his expression that she had never seen before. His manicness was gone. Anger had enveloped him body and soul.

  He said, “We think Angie had a blackmail plan going with Jo. Jo ended up dead, so Angie thought she could leverage the grandson.”

  “But she told you that Jo was dead. You had no idea that Jo even existed, let alone that she was Angie’s daughter. Why would she tell you anything?”

&nbsp
; “Something went wrong with the plan.” Will had to be guessing, but he sounded certain that Angie had yet again risked someone else’s life for her own reward.

  Amanda said, “Come with me.” She took Sara into a room with a cop standing outside. The lights were low. Sara scanned the equipment by the bed: cardiac monitor, central line, catheter, NG tube, test tube. The patient’s right arm was elevated, propped on pillows—not too low so that the blood rushed into her fingers, not too high so that there wasn’t enough circulation. Surgical gauze and drains ballooned around the hand. O2 sat measures were on the tips of her fingers.

  Sara said, “Her hand was reattached.”

  “Yes.”

  Sara studied the woman’s face. Brown hair. Olive skin. The eyes were swollen, but they still had the distinctive shape.

  Amanda said, “She was admitted as a Jane Doe, but they found her ID this morning. Delilah Palmer.”

  That name sounded familiar. Instead of asking Amanda more questions, Sara went back to the nurses’ station and asked to borrow a tablet computer. She still had her admitting privileges at Grady. The nurse, Olivia, knew her from before.

  Olivia said, “The waiting room should be empty.”

  Sara got the hint. Four people blocking the ICU hallway was never a good idea.

  They all walked down to the empty waiting room. Will stayed at Sara’s side. His shoulder touched hers. He was trying to make sure the connection was still there. She couldn’t find it in herself to let him know this was true.

  Sara sat down on one of the chairs. She logged into the system and scanned the woman’s CT, X-rays, MRI, and surgical notes.

  Finally, something made sense.

  Faith asked, “Well?”

  Sara relayed the information from the chart. “She was stabbed sixteen times, mostly in the torso, twice in the head. The tip of the knife broke off in her collarbone, minimizing the reach of the blade, which is probably why it just missed the heart and liver. The bowel was punctured. Her left lung collapsed. What remained of the knife was left imbedded in her sternum. The first slash must have been to her arm.” Sara held up her own arm, the same as she had done yesterday morning. “The attacker came straight at her. She took a defensive posture. The knife sliced her wrist, nearly severing the joint. She would’ve been flailing her arms, trying to stop the attack, which would spray blood everywhere, like a hose. Fortunately for the victim, the blade severed the radial and ulnar arteries. I say fortunately because the arteries contract when they’re sliced in two. That’s why suicides tend to fail. You sever the artery, it rolls up into the arm and stops the blood, almost like when you pinch the end of a garden hose to stop the pressure.”