The Man Who Killed His Brother

  Then Ginny asked, “What about Astin Greenling?”

  “Ah, Mr. Greenling,” Smithsonian said, “the man with the sick wife. I took a good look at him. Medical expenses cause more crime in this country than anybody knows about. You can bet he doesn’t pay his bills with his salary. And the kind of hospitalization the board carries is nothing special. I was a little surprised to learn that in fact Mr. Greenling does pay his bills.

  “How? you ask. I’ll tell you how.” Smithsonian was enjoying himself. “That sucker is up to his ass in loan sharks.”

  “Loan sharks.” Ginny sat up straight, tossed the letter opener aside. I could almost see her thinking, How does he pay them back? Maybe he pays them with something besides money. Maybe he pays them with information. “How long has that been going on?”

  “About two years.” Smithsonian chuckled. “I don’t know why they haven’t broken his arms yet.”

  “After two years? How do you think he’s handling it?”

  “Hard to tell without actually talking to him. No doubt every time one of them gets nasty he goes to another and borrows enough to save his skin for a while. If that’s what he’s doing, he’s digging himself a hole they’ll bury him in.”

  “All right, Lawrence,” Ginny said. “You’re giving me exactly what I want. Now I have some more names for you.”

  “More?” he barked. “You think you’re my only client? I don’t have better things to do than this—?”

  Ginny cut him off. “I’ll pay. Whatever it is. Just send me a bill.”

  “Believe it, Fistoulari. I’ll send you a bill.” He paused to give us a chance to feel like we were being threatened, then said, “So tell me the names.”

  “Mabel Allson,” Ginny said promptly. “Connie Mousse. Joan Phillips. They’re all secretaries for the board. And Jon Gren.” She spelled out the names for him. “Gren is Joan Phillips’ fiancé. An intern at University Hospital.”

  “Do not call me,” he said heavily. “I’ll call you. Tomorrow. Around noon.” He paused again, probably waiting for Ginny to tell him how wonderful he was. When she didn’t say anything, he hung up with a bang.

  She switched off the speaker, and we stared at each other for a minute. Or rather I stared at her, and she looked through me into empty space. I stood it as long as I could. Then I got up. “Let’s go.”

  Her gaze didn’t shift an inch. “Where?”

  “Back to the school board. Or over to Greenling’s house, talk to his wife. Somewhere. We can’t just sit here.”

  She wasn’t listening. “I’ve missed something. There’s something here. Something that gives it all away. But I can’t pick it up. Damn and blast! What’s the matter with me?”

  I said, “You’re trying too hard.”

  I don’t know why I bothered. It didn’t register with her at all. “I’m going blind,” she insisted. “It’s right here in front of me, but I can’t see it.”

  I didn’t see it either, so I took a deep breath and said, “Acton.”

  That reached her. She looked up, and her eyes came into focus on my face. “What did you say?”

  “Acton.”

  “What is that? More intuition?”

  “No. I’m just trying to shake you up a little. You’re in a rut. You’ve got Greenling on the brain.”

  She leaned back in her chair, put her hands behind her head. “You still don’t believe he’s the one?”

  “Who, me? Do you think I’m crazy? Of course he’s the one. Who else could it be?”

  Her eyes narrowed, until I almost couldn’t see the fighting gleam in them. “All right, ace. Maybe I’m in a rut. She’s your niece. What do you think we should be doing?”

  “I think we should go shake down Jon Gren.”

  “Wonderful. Try it with my blessing. Only there’s one thing you ought to keep in mind. Hospitals don’t keep heroin around. Morphine, yes. Heroin, no. He’s just Joan Phillips’ fiancé—that’s all you’ve got on him.”

  What could I say to that? “Well then, let’s talk to Mrs. Greenling.” Trying not to sound defensive. No point in telling her that she’d just shot down the only theory I had.

  She sighed. “That may be a good idea.” Reluctantly she got to her feet. “So why do I feel like you’re asking me to go hurt a sick woman?”

  Under other circumstances, that would’ve made me mad. After all the things I’d done in the past three days without helping Alathea even a little bit, I was in no mood for her to turn finicky. But I was saved by the phone.

  She snatched it up. “Fistoulari Investigations.”

  While she listened, all the blood drained out of her face and something else took its place—something that looked like murder. Then she said, “Hang on. We’ll be right there.”

  She put the receiver down.

  If I hadn’t known better, I might’ve thought that it was me she wanted to kill.

  In a tight voice, she said, “That was Lona. She’s over at University Hospital. The cops just brought in Alathea. She’s still alive, but she’s in a coma. OD.”

  Maybe she wanted some kind of reaction from me. Maybe there was something she wanted me to say. I didn’t know, and I didn’t care. I was already on my way out to the elevator.

  14

  I hit the call button for the elevator, hit it again, pounded the damn thing. Finally the lights of the floor indicator started to move. They were slow, slow. By the time the doors opened, Ginny ran down the hall to catch up with me.

  “Sorry,” she muttered under her breath as she hurried into the elevator. She must’ve thought I was holding it for her. “Had too call my answering service.”

  I ignored her. I was thinking, Coma. Alathea. In a coma. Bastards bastards bastards.

  “They’ll get her out of it,” Ginny said. “Doctors know more about these things than they used to. She’ll be able to tell us everything we want.”

  “Leave me alone.” I looked at her, let her see I meant it. “That isn’t what I need.”

  For a second I feared that she would ask me just what it was I did need. But then the elevator opened into the basement, and we both hustled toward the Olds.

  I wasn’t driving, I didn’t have anything to do, I was helpless. The sun shone cheerfully, the traffic took its own sweet time, and the man who designed the sequencing of the stoplights was a maniac—and there was nothing anyone could do about any of it. I just sat staring through the windshield with my hands clenched on my knees, trying to hold myself together while Ginny wrestled with things she couldn’t change. I’d forgotten my sunglasses.

  She made good time. She must’ve because I was still in one piece when she slammed the Olds into a parking space in the University Hospital lot. We hit the asphalt together. But when I started to run, she caught my arm, held me back so that we walked toward the entrance together.

  I let her do it. When Ginny gives orders, I obey.

  University Hospital is a tall structure built in two square sections. For five stories the sections have a common wall, then the east wing goes on up for another five stories. They built the place out of red brick, and when the sun catches it at the right time of day, it looks like blood. The emergency entrance is on the ground floor of the west wing, and with all the security guards they have around, it looks more like a top-secret military installation than a place where urgent hurts are treated. At least during the day. At night, with lights in all those windows, it looks a bit more comforting.

  We went in, asked a guard for directions, and got ourselves pointed toward the waiting room. That was where we found Lona.

  She stood at a window looking out into the parking lot. Sunlight glared into her eyes from the chrome and glass, but it didn’t seem to bother her. When Ginny said, “Mrs. Axbrewder,” she turned to face us.

  I wanted her to take a step toward us, hold out her hands, do something that would give me permission to put my arms around her. But she was too much alone for that. Her pain cut her off from everything. She stood there
small and brittle, with her mouth clamped shut because there was nothing she could say or even cry out that would relieve the pressure inside her. It was as clear as daylight that we’d failed her, failed Alathea. When from somewhere she found the strength or maybe the generosity to say, “Thank you for coming,” I almost groaned out loud.

  “How is she?” Ginny asked softly. She felt as much a failure as I did. I knew that. The difference was that she could keep it from interfering with more important things.

  “I don’t know,” Lona said. Her voice quavered, on the edge of control. “I haven’t seen the doctor since he came out to talk to me. Before I called you. He told me what he was going to do. I had to give my permission because she’s underage. But I didn’t understand it. He wouldn’t let me see her.

  “He said”—she didn’t look at us, never lifted her eyes above my chest—“he said she’s an addict. There are needle marks all over her arms.”

  “It’s not her fault, Lona.” What else could I say? “Someone did it to her. She was forced into it.”

  Very carefully, she said, “I know that.”

  Lona!

  “How did they find her?” Ginny asked. “What happened?” She wanted to know if the cops had caught Thea’s kidnapper. Hell, I wanted to know. But she was moving slowly, gently.

  “I’m not sure. I don’t understand it. I got a call. From Lieutenant Acton. He was one of Richard’s friends. He said that she’d been found. He said she was wandering around somewhere. Out on Canyon Road, I think. Trying to get a ride back into town. Somebody saw that she looked sick and called the police. I don’t know who it was. When they found her, she was already unconscious. In the dirt at the side of the road.”

  I wanted to throw up. She was only thirteen. Things like that shouldn’t happen to children.

  “Did he say anything else?”

  “He told me she was here. He said I should come down here right away because the doctors needed my permission to treat her.”

  For a minute, I had an impulse to grab the Olds and head for Canyon Road, out toward the mountains east of the city, where only the richest of the rich people live. I wanted to bang on doors until I found wherever Alathea had come from. It was a crazy idea, of course. Maybe she hadn’t been kept in that area at all. Maybe she’d just been dropped off there so that she would get killed by the traffic. But that didn’t make sense. There isn’t much traffic on Canyon Road. And anyway that part of town held at least a hundred houses.

  Somehow I fought the impulse down.

  “Is there anything we can do?” Ginny asked.

  “No, thank you.” Lona’s eyes didn’t leave the buttons of my shirt. “I’m all right.” If she’d been any more all right, she would’ve been hysterical. “You don’t have to stay if you don’t want to.”

  Ginny’s eyes were full of tears, but she didn’t let them fall. “That’s OK. We’ll stick around.”

  If that meant anything to Lona, she didn’t show it. She turned away from us, went back to staring out the window.

  Then we waited. Just waited. Which is what makes the famous Chinese water torture so unbearable. It isn’t the dripping of the water—after a while, your forehead just gets numb. No, it’s the waiting between drops that does it. Drives you completely bananas. Other people came into the waiting room, left again. Two angry and anxious mothers told each other what their kids had done this time. A man fumigated the room with a cigar the size of a Glock while his aged father had an ankle X-rayed. A guy and girl who’d been in a minor car wreck came in and took turns sitting around while they were checked out for whiplash. Compared to waiting, sobriety is easy.

  It was almost four o’clock when a doctor finally showed up, asking for Mrs. Axbrewder.

  Lona whirled as if she’d been stung. Her face was so full of questions that she couldn’t get them out. She just stared at the doctor and ached, dumbly begging him to take pity on her.

  “She’s stable physically,” he said. “She needs care, but she should be all right. I’m having her taken up to a room. You can visit her there in a few minutes.”

  Relief blurred Lona’s face. She looked like she was about to give way when the doctor’s tone sharpened. “But I have to tell you, Mrs. Axbrewder. We haven’t been able to rouse her. She’s still in a coma, and we can’t reach her.”

  Ginny was standing beside Lona, had an arm around her shoulders. “How do you treat that?”

  “We take care of her body and wait. Maybe she’ll pull out of it tonight. Maybe tomorrow, maybe next week. Maybe—I have to say this, Mrs. Axbrewder. Maybe she’ll never pull out. It depends on what kind of damage has been done to her brain.

  “Permanent coma is rare, but it does happen. Every body is different. An overdose can be like an eraser on a blackboard. It can wipe out the conscious mind. But more often only a small part of the brain is damaged, and after a while the person recovers,

  “Of course, her situation is complicated by the fact that she’ll be going through withdrawal. All we can do at this point is keep her body nourished and pray.”

  Lona had her hands in her hair, pulling it away from her face. A woman in danger of going over the edge. Ginny gripped her hard.

  “Have you ever had a case like this before, Doctor?” Ginny asked.

  “Personally, no. But I’ve read about them. Studies say that these conditions are more likely to develop when the addict resists the drug for some reason. The mind fights the body as hard as it can for as long as it can, and then there’s a backlash.”

  That meant something. It was trying to tell me something. But I couldn’t hear it. Pressure filled my ears. My heart. The doctor told us what room Alathea would be in. When Ginny and Lona left the waiting room, I followed them toward the elevator.

  Then another question occurred to me. I turned, ran after the doctor, caught up with him at the nurses’ station. “Did you do a complete physical on her?”

  He looked at me sourly. “I don’t know who you are. What’s your interest?”

  “My name is Axbrewder. Alathea is my niece.”

  He considered for a moment, then nodded. “I examined her. What do you want to know?”

  It stuck in my throat for a second. Then I got it out. “Is she a virgin?”

  He grimaced. Disgusted at me. Or at the question. Or at the answer. “Not by a long shot.”

  I tried to swallow the acid in my mouth, but it wouldn’t go down. Clenching my fists, I went to catch up with Ginny and Lona.

  Ginny was holding the elevator for me. She had the same question in her eyes. I said, “Goddamn it to hell. Yes.” When she let the door close and punched the floor button, she looked mad enough to chew steel.

  Alathea’s room was on the eighth floor of the east wing. We found it without any trouble. The halls are laid out square and the doors all have nice big numbers on them. But when we got to her room, another doctor stopped us from going in.

  He was about as tall as Ginny, with longish red hair curling around his ears, more paunch than he needed, and bloodshot little eyes. He had freckles so bad that they looked like smallpox. His white coat was buttoned up to his neck. There was a stethoscope in one of his pockets, and his right hand gripped the handle of a black medical bag.

  He smiled blandly at us. “I’m Dr. Stevens. Now that she’s out of Emergency, I’m responsible for her. You can see her as soon as I’m finished. It’ll just take a minute.”

  Ginny nodded for Lona. We stood around in the hall while Stevens went into Alathea’s room and closed the door.

  He didn’t take a minute, he took three. It felt like thirty, but we were in no position to complain. When he came out, he gave us his smile again. “Don’t worry,” he said. “She’ll be fine.”

  With his hands in his pockets, he went down the hall away from the nurses’ station.

  There was something about him I didn’t like. He had the look of a man who’d just told a dirty joke. But my opinion of him didn’t matter. As long as he helped Thea.


  We went into Alathea’s room.

  It was a semiprivate room. Alathea lay in the bed near the door. A curtain drawn halfway across the room between the beds kept us from seeing who else was there. Past the second bed was the window. The afternoon sun slanted in through it across a long section of the floor.

  Alathea looked like death. A sickly paraffin color filled her face, and the scrubbed white of the hospital gown only made it worse. The sheets were tucked up to her armpits. From her bare arms, IV tubes ran up to bottles hanging from poles at the head of the bed. Around the slashes of adhesive tape that held the IV needles in place clustered other red marks like insect stings—tracks of them mapping the veins inside her elbows. Violation as bad as any rape.

  Lona went close to her, gripped her hand, and started to cry. After that I couldn’t see anymore. I was blind with fury and loss.

  Trying to control myself, I shambled over to the window. For a bad minute or two, I couldn’t do it. But slowly my eyes started to clear. I hit my knuckles on the windowsill until I could see straight again. Then I looked around.

  The room was on the west side of the building. The window hung right over the roof of the west wing, three stories below me. That roof had been fixed up as a recreation area, with stubby trees growing out of little plots of earth, big umbrellas for shade, and plenty of wrought-iron tables and chairs. The place was full of people—nurses, patients, children, visitors. Men and women in hospital gowns walked jerkily around or sat in wheelchairs. They looked like they belonged there, catching a little sun to warm their bones.

  Only Alathea didn’t belong. And me. She didn’t deserve it, and I hadn’t earned it.

  A faint breeze came in through the window. The window was double glass, insulated for the sake of the AC. But today the hospital was saving money. The air-conditioning wasn’t on. Instead the window had been cranked open a crack at the top.