Notorious Nineteen

  “You look like you could use a beer,” Morelli said, getting to his feet.

  “It’s been a long day,” Ranger said, handing the dress over to me.

  I carried the dress upstairs, took a fast shower, and pulled what was left of my hair into a ponytail again. I searched in Morelli’s medicine chest for aloe ointment and smeared some on my blistered neck. I slipped the acres of pink taffeta over my head and struggled to get it zipped. What had originally been a dress from the Little House on the Prairie collection was now straight out of the Little Whorehouse on the Prairie collection. It was so tight and cut so low in the bodice that my boobs were all popped out. If the material hadn’t snagged on my nipples they’d have been popped out too. I smashed myself in as best I could and went downstairs.

  I marched into the living room in my dress and sneakers. “Do not say one word,” I said. “I will personally make a eunuch out of anyone who makes a crack about this dress or my hair.”

  “I like it,” Morelli said.

  “You’re skating on thin ice, mister,” I told him.

  Ranger set his empty beer bottle on the coffee table and stood. “Let’s get this done.”

  I followed him out and stood looking at the 911 Turbo. “I’m not going to fit,” I said. “How am I going to get all of this dress into this little car?”

  “Get in and I’ll do the rest,” Ranger said.

  I swiveled around, dropped into the seat, and Ranger beat the dress into submission and stuffed it in. He was laughing when he got behind the wheel.

  “Now what?” I asked.

  “You’re wearing sneakers. I hope the bridal shop lady never finds out.”

  “You didn’t notice in the house?”

  “My eyes never got lower than your nipples. If it wasn’t for the fact that Morelli would shoot me I would have taken you on his front lawn.”

  Perfect, I thought. I have half my hair burned off, I’m wearing the dress from hell, and all I have to do is show a little nipple and I’m a sex goddess. Something to remember.

  Ranger rolled out of the lot and headed for Hamilton Avenue. “Your apartment is relatively clean and your door is fixed. I have another cleaning crew coming in the morning. I wouldn’t advise going back there tonight. It’ll be fine after tomorrow.”

  “Orin?”

  “Defused and taken away.”

  “Do you want to talk about it?”

  “No,” Ranger said. “I want to let it rest.”

  “When you’re ready to talk about it I’ll tell you what he told me before he set my hair on fire. He was very, very sick.”

  “I know he was sick. And maybe someday I’ll want to know his reasoning and his inner demons, but right now I’m moving on.”

  He parked in the church lot and we walked to the side door. We were originally supposed to be with Kinsey and Amanda prior to the wedding, but circumstances had of course changed that. The other ushers were already collected in the vestibule. Guests were beginning to arrive. A room had been reserved for the bride and her bridesmaids. Ranger dropped me there and went to wait for Kinsey.

  Everyone was there but Amanda. She was coming with her parents. None of the other women were popping out of their dresses and no one else had hair styled by a Bic lighter. They were relatives of the bride, college roommates, and best friends. They were all good people, including me in their pre-wedding excitement. No one mentioned my hair, but it was the elephant in the room.

  “It was set on fire,” I finally said. “I had an episode with a crazy person, and he set my hair on fire.”

  Everyone went bug-eyed.

  “What happened to the crazy person?” one of the women asked.

  “He blew himself up.”

  “Get out! You mean like guts all over the place?”

  “Not all over the place,” I said. “He was pretty well contained, all things considered.”

  Ranger called on my phone and asked me to come into the hall. I went out and found him smiling.

  “They eloped,” he said.

  “Seriously?”

  “Kinsey just called. They’re on a plane for Paris.”

  “Gee,” I said. “I’m all dressed up. I was looking forward to walking down the aisle in my sneakers.”

  “You can wear your sneakers to the reception. They’re going ahead with it.”

  “I’ll pass on the reception.”

  Ranger kissed me on the top of the head. “Good choice.”

  Morelli, Logan, Tiki, and Bob were still in front of the television when I returned. Logan and Bob were asleep. Tiki was ever vigilant. Morelli looked bored.

  “Short wedding,” Morelli said.

  “They eloped at the last minute.”

  Morelli looked at Logan. “What am I supposed to do with him? Are we adopting him?”

  “No. Give me a minute to get out of this monstrosity and I’ll take him off your hands.”

  I ran upstairs, shucked the dress, and got back into my jeans and Morelli’s T-shirt. I went into Morelli’s upstairs office and sat at his desk. I pulled up an online travel site on his computer, searched for tickets to Hawaii, and booked Logan and Tiki on a red-eye leaving from Newark. I returned to the living room and grabbed my messenger bag.

  “I need the keys to the Buick,” I said to Morelli. “I’m taking Logan for a ride.”

  “You’re not going to drop him off in a field like a stray cat, are you?”

  “No. And I wouldn’t do that to a stray cat either.”

  I woke Logan, gave him a granola bar, and told him we were heading out.

  “Are we going to jail?” he asked.

  “No,” I told him. “I’m going to get you and Tiki back to Hawaii.”

  “I haven’t got the moola,” Logan said. “I only saved up enough for half a ticket.”

  “My treat,” I said.

  “This could be construed as helping a fugitive to flee,” Morelli said.

  I rolled my eyes at Morelli. “He bashed in a police car. That’s everyone’s fantasy.”

  Morelli turned back to the television. “I didn’t hear anything. This conversation never took place. Do you want me to ride along with you?”

  “Not necessary,” I said, “but thanks.”

  I got Logan and Tiki buckled into the Buick and I made my way to the highway. Route 1 wasn’t bad at this time of evening on a Saturday, and once I got on the Turnpike I flew. I pulled into short-term parking and walked Logan to the terminal. I waited while he and Tiki sailed through check-in with their e-tickets for two seats and went through security without a hitch. I walked back to the Buick feeling good. It had been a really weird day, but it was ending happy.

  I got a mental message from Tiki a few minutes before seven that they were about to take off, and he wanted to thank me. Minutes later I got a text message from Morelli telling me to pick up a pizza on my way home.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  MORELLI AND I were halfway through the large pizza, extra cheese, extra pepperoni, when Grandma called me.

  “I cracked the case,” she said. “I got it all figured out. Millie Debrowski and I went to the diner on Livingston for dinner tonight because Millie was hankering for their rice pudding. That’s the diner the old coots went to when it turned out they couldn’t rough up Geoffrey Cubbin. Well, we’re walking in and I notice they got business hours on the door and it says they close at one o’clock. That means the nurse fibbed about seeing Cubbin in his bed at two o’clock. Cubbin went missing a lot earlier.”

  I was gobstruck. It was suddenly so clear why we didn’t see Cubbin leave. We were watching the wrong segment of video.

  “You’re a genius,” I said to Grandma.

  “Yep, I’m a regular Sherlock.”

  I hung up with Grandma and told Morelli about the diner hours. “We watched the wrong part of the video,” I said. “We need to go back and watch from the beginning of the shift.”

  I called Briggs and told him we’d meet him in his office in a half hour, and
that we wanted to see earlier video. He said he’d have everything ready to roll by the time we got there. Morelli gave the last piece of pizza to Bob, I gave a small chunk to Rex, and we took off for the hospital.

  “I was going to ask for twenty-four hours of video to begin with,” Morelli said, “but I have a monster caseload, and after reviewing the nurses’ statements I was hoping it wasn’t necessary.”

  My excuse wasn’t that legitimate. I hadn’t wanted to spend that much time with Randy Briggs.

  We parked and walked through the lobby together. Visiting hours were coming to a close and Morelli badged his way past the reception desk. I’m used to working with Ranger but not so much with Morelli. I always feel like an illegitimate stepchild when I work with Morelli. He’s a Trenton cop and I’m someone with a badge I bought on the Internet.

  Briggs was waiting in his office. Mickey Zigler was patrolling the floors.

  “Holy crap,” Briggs said when he saw me. “What happened to your hair? It looks like you got too close to a barbecue.”

  “Pretty close to the truth,” I said. “Are you set to go?”

  “Yeah. I have all the cameras on the screen and backed up to eleven o’clock.”

  Morelli and I pulled chairs around to face the monitor and Briggs got the video rolling at fast-forward. The time ticked off on the bottom of the picture. At 11:45 the Yeti stepped out of the service elevator, pushing a large laundry hamper.

  “Stop!” I said. “It’s the Yeti.”

  The picture was grainy and the light was low, but I was sure it was him. He was dressed in scrubs, like an orderly. He kept his head down and quickly moved down the hall and off camera.

  “Are you sure?” Briggs asked. “How could it be the Yeti?”

  “Pull just that camera up,” I said. “I want to see it again.”

  Briggs went back to 11:45, the elevator doors opened, and the Yeti came on screen. We watched him disappear down the hall and we let the video keep running. At 11:53 the Yeti appeared again, pushing the laundry hamper. It was clear from the way he was pushing that the hamper was heavier than before. He rolled the hamper back to the service elevator and disappeared into it.

  “That’s how Cubbin got off the floor,” I said. “In the laundry hamper.”

  “There’s laundry pickups like that all day long,” Briggs said. “Nobody would even notice this guy.”

  Morelli leaned forward. “Run the camera on the loading dock.”

  “Give me a minute to find it,” Briggs said.

  He scrolled through a series of cameras. He locked onto the loading dock and reset the time for 11:55. A white panel van was already backed up to the platform. At 11:59 the Yeti rolled the laundry hamper into the van, the van doors closed, and the van drove away.

  “Damn,” Briggs said. “That’s how they did it.”

  We looked at the video several more times. There was no writing on the side of the van and the license was obscured. The driver wasn’t visible.

  “Dollars to donuts that van went to The Clinic,” Briggs said.

  I looked over at Morelli. “Do you want to take another look?”

  “At The Clinic?”

  “Yep.”

  “Now?”

  “Yep.”

  He slouched back in his chair and looked at me. “I shouldn’t do this. This could get me in a lot of trouble.”

  “If you get kicked off the force you can always get a job here,” I said. “Briggs would hire you.”

  “Not funny,” Morelli said.

  I stood and returned my chair to the front of Briggs’s desk. “I’m going to The Clinic with or without you, and I’m going to find out what happens to these guys after they leave the hospital.”

  “I’m with you,” Briggs said. “Count me in.”

  Morelli scraped his chair back. “Me too.”

  I went in the Buick with Morelli, and Briggs followed in his car. We turned onto Route 1, drove a couple miles, and turned off into the light industrial complex. We drove to the end of the cul-de-sac and idled in front of The Clinic. Lights shone on the second floor.

  “I’m pretty sure that’s the area they’re using for a surgical suite,” I said to Morelli. “The dayroom and the lab are in the back of the building. The operating room and patient rooms are in the front. When I was here last time I parked in the lot next to The Clinic.”

  Morelli drove to the Myron Cryo lot and cut the engine. “Do you have a plan?” he asked.

  “No. Do you?”

  “Nope. I assumed we’d play it by ear. If we attempt entry into The Clinic and an alarm goes off and the police show up, I’m running into the woods and hanging you out to dry.”

  “Been there, done that,” I said.

  “Thought I should get it out in the open,” Morelli said.

  “No problem.”

  Fact is, if the police showed up I’d be in the woods before Morelli.

  We got out of our cars, stumbled through the patch of woods, and stood looking at the back of The Clinic.

  “How do we get in?” Morelli asked.

  “Briggs lets us in.”

  “Then what?”

  I didn’t know then what.

  “Suppose we send Briggs in and he snoops around and comes back with a report,” Morelli said.

  “I guess I could do that,” Briggs said.

  “Shouldn’t he have a wire or something?” I said. “What if he gets caught?”

  Morelli looked at me like I was from Mars. “It’s my day off,” he said. “I don’t have any wires in my back pocket.”

  “Hey,” I said. “I’m just saying.”

  “Do you have a gun?” Morelli asked Briggs.

  “Yeah, I have a gun,” Briggs said.

  “Well, if you get caught you can shoot someone,” Morelli said. “If we hear shooting we’ll call the police.”

  “Don’t pay attention to him,” I said to Briggs. “Just be careful and you’ll be fine.”

  I went to the drop box and opened it. “Okay,” I said to Morelli, “pick him up and stuff him in.”

  Morelli looked at the drop box and looked at Briggs. “You’re not going to tell anyone I did this, right? Blood oath. Sworn to secrecy.”

  “Just stuff him in,” I said.

  Morelli picked Briggs up and slid him into the drop box. I closed the box, there was some banging, and then there was quiet. I opened the box and looked in. Empty.

  “He’s inside,” I said to Morelli.

  “This is freaky,” Morelli said. “What do we do now?”

  “We wait.”

  Morelli wrapped an arm around me. “Want to make out?”

  “No! Suppose something goes wrong and the Yeti comes out after us. If we’re making out you might not be able to run.”

  “Why not?”

  “You know . . .”

  “I can run like that,” Morelli said. “I can jump out of second-story windows like that. I had a lot of experience when I was in high school.”

  We waited for five minutes but didn’t see any sign of Briggs. Ten minutes. No Briggs.

  “I’m worried,” I said to Morelli.

  “Do you want me to try to stuff you into the drop box?”

  “Try the door. Maybe he opened it before he wandered away.”

  Morelli tried the door and it opened.

  “This is illegal entry,” Morelli said.

  “Only for you,” I told him. “I have rights.”

  I stepped inside the dimly lit garage and let my eyes adjust. There were four cars parked. White panel van, black Escalade, silver Lexus, red Jaguar.

  “Something’s going down,” I said to Morelli. “All the players are here. Maybe we should call the police.”

  “I’m the police.”

  “I was thinking it might be better to have guys in uniform.”

  “What are you going to say to the guys in uniform? Are you going to tell them I shoved Briggs into the drop box and he didn’t come out so you want them to bust the
door down?”

  “Of course not. I’ll think up a fib.”

  “I can do better than that.”

  He climbed onto the hood of the Escalade and then onto the roof. He reached overhead, punched the smoke detector that was attached to the ceiling, and the fire alarm went off. He jumped down, and we ran out of the garage and hid in the wooded area.

  Lights went on all over the building and after a minute the alarm went silent. Ten minutes later the lights began blinking out and there was no sign of police or a fire truck.

  “They must not be hooked into an alarm company,” Morelli said.

  My cellphone rang. It was Briggs, whispering so low I could barely hear him.

  “You gotta get me out of here,” he said. “I saw feet. Big naked feet. I think they might have been dead but I don’t know for sure.”

  “Were they attached to something . . . like a body?”

  “They were sticking out from under a sheet.”

  “Where are you?”

  “I’m on the second floor, under a desk, and there’s a guy sitting in that little lobby area reading a paper. I can’t get past him.”

  “Hang tight,” I said. “We’re on it.”

  I disconnected and looked at Morelli. “He’s under a desk on the second floor and can’t get past some guy in the lobby.”

  “Call him back and tell him to make more of an effort. I’m missing a really good ball game.”

  “He said he saw naked feet sticking out from under a sheet. He sounded a little freaked.”

  “Were they live naked feet or dead naked feet?”

  “He said they might have been dead but he couldn’t be sure.”

  “So much for the ball game,” Morelli said.

  We went to the door beside the drop box and found it locked.

  “They must have noticed the door was unlocked when they went around checking smoke detectors,” Morelli said. “This makes things more complicated.”

  We were standing there hoping for a brilliant idea when the garage door rolled up. We flattened ourselves against the building, the door went totally open, and Kruger’s red Jaguar glided out of the garage and down the driveway.

  “She’s going to work,” I said.