Gospel (17 page)

‘Oh,' said David and Nora noticed him steal a glance at Sara, who smiled as if to let him know everything was okay. ‘I have nothing of interest to say.'

‘My point exactly,' grinned Nora, the spark now back in her eye. ‘Has been my point for years.'

Two days.

Two days of holding a vigil beside Rita Walker's hospital bed and the woman was still not making any sense. Despite the heavy sedation, she was still ranting in fits and bursts as if riding a wave between unconsciousness and some semi-lucid state of dream-like terror. And that was what it was, thought Detective Sam Croker, genuine, bona fide terror.

The Walker case was to Croker what was known in the universal police community as a ‘splinter' – one that got under your skin and sat there, irritating you, until you worked out a way to manoeuvre its ‘release'. There was something about this whole picture that just didn't ‘fit', and his instincts told him there was more to this mess than just one unfortunate family's ton of bad luck.

He had spent all of Wednesday at Rita's bedside before heading back to the graveyard shift at work. He repeated the pattern yesterday, grateful Thursday was his night off and, for once, falling into a deep sleep despite the dark hours and the noise of the eighteen-wheelers making their way north to San Francisco.

Now it was Friday and the woman was still at it. Croker had taken to writing down her babble which, strangely enough, seemed to be taking some form of pattern. There were the religious references, the talk of the New Testament's four most famous writers and the regular allusion to the late Vice President Bradshaw.

‘Back again, Detective?' said the ICU nurse, a pretty young girl named Amy with short blonde hair and hazel eyes. ‘This woman in trouble? I mean, more than apart from the obvious?'

‘I hope not,' said Croker, not knowing what else to say.

‘Well, you missed a doozie early this morning,' said Amy, checking Rita's almost empty IV. ‘She woke up for a few minutes and buzzed the nurses' station. She said some man had been in her room – said he was fiddling with her medical equipment, claimed he was trying to kill her.'

‘What?' said Croker, now fully alert. ‘Was there anyone here? And if there wasn't, did everything in the room look okay?'

‘No and yes. We didn't see anyone, but she screamed loud enough to
scare the hell out of Satan.' Croker watched as Amy checked Rita's blood pressure, moving quietly about the room with care and efficiency.

‘Millie, that's the night duty nurse, she said some guy came by last night . . . said he was Mrs Walker's cousin, but Mrs Walker was in radiology at the time. They were backed up and she was the last scan of the day.'

Now that was strange, thought Croker. His brief investigations into the Walker family revealed no immediate relatives. In fact, the family's history seemed unusually scant.

According to his research, both Rita and Kevin Walker were born in Minneapolis, both were only children with parents on both sides deceased. Kevin's employment record was neat but concise – revealing the family had moved to LA from Minnesota late last year. Their social security information screamed Mr and Mrs Average, almost as if it had been created to correspond with the cliché, and there was no mention of any next of kin, and certainly no reference to any cousin living here in LA.

The ‘splinter' was digging a little deeper.

‘This cousin,' said Croker. ‘Did he hang around?'

‘No, he left without waiting. If he came back early this morning, I didn't see him, but then, we are short staffed and he could have wandered in here without my knowing. Maybe she imagined he was trying to hurt her?' Amy stopped what she was doing to shift Rita slightly on her pillow, making sure the covers were neatly under her arms.

‘Anyway,' she went on, ‘to be honest, I feel kinda sorry for her. Everybody assumed she was, you know, a user. But her tox screen came back negative. Seems to me she's just totally consumed with grief. If I lost my husband and son in the space of a month, I'd be halfway to crazy as well.'

‘I know what you mean,' he said. And he did.

She looked at him as if reading the loneliness in his eyes. ‘Can I get you something, Detective? A coffee maybe, a soda?'

‘No, no thanks . . . but . . .' Croker made his decision.

‘I need to make a call if that's okay. I know I can't use my cell in here, and I have to call long distance, Boston.'

‘No problem, let me hook you up in our waiting room, you can make the call from there.'

‘Thanks. In the meantime, can you make sure no one else enters this room?' Croker was already thinking this may not be enough. ‘Better still,
do you think you could arrange for Mrs Walker to be moved? I don't wanna downgrade her ICU status, but maybe if we could put her on another floor, in another wing? In the meantime, I'll arrange for a plain clothes police officer to come down and sit outside her door.'

‘I'll see if we can move her to oncology. Meanwhile I'll keep as close an eye as I can, and tell the other nurses. I just have to change her IV, and then I'll get an orderly to watch her door.'

‘And let me know if the cousin calls again.'

‘Will do.'

The ‘cousin' saw the large detective leave the woman's room and decided he had to act immediately. His orders were specific, ‘
immediate termination'
which at face value did not sound so difficult. The man, after all, had spent much of his life staking out and terminating ‘targets' with speed and efficiency. The Walker woman should be a piece of piss. The failure of his first attempt was embarrassing enough and now his director was anxious. Still, he knew, under the circumstances, that discretion was paramount. If he was caught it would be traced directly back to his superior and that would be unacceptable.

He waited until the nurse with the Meg Ryan face and the tight butt disappeared around the corner with the ragged-looking detective, before slipping down the corridor and entering Rita Walker's room, giving a small smile of relief when he saw she was asleep, or more likely sedated. Knowing time would be short, he had already filled the syringe with the slightly milky fluid. One shot of this into Rita's IV and the woman would be on her way to permanent sedation, and to all intents and purposes, cause of death would be a stroke from the accident-induced head trauma. He removed the canula and poised the needle above the plastic piping, now allowing his thumb to press down slowly, releasing the poison into the tube and watching it mix and flow down towards Rita's veins.

The syringe was almost empty when he heard the faint sound of compressed air – the door was being pushed in from the outside. Someone was about to enter the room. He quickly pocketed the needle, recapped the canula and looked for somewhere to hide.

K
arin Montgomery moved to the grey window in the grey room with grey walls of Suffolk County Jail's holding room twelve and looked out over the grey waters of the Charles River. The lazy canal effectively separated the city of Boston from its neighbouring city of Cambridge, with Boston's commercial district sitting at its Harbour mouth to the south and the University city of Cambridge – home to Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology – sitting across the river to the north-west.

She had no regrets about abusing Chilton-Smith at yesterday's arraignment. Her husband had chastised her for attacking their own lawyer in public, but Karin was adamant. Chilton-Smith was a condescending, self-aggrandising idiot and if Stuart had any chance of beating this thing, he would have to go. She knew what she had to do, but now, looking out over the Charles, the warmth of distant memories flooded through her; the sunset river cruises, the early morning jogs along Storrow Drive and the many Saturdays spent watching her boyfriend play his European code of football against the almighty Harvard team on their hallowed fields of green. Simpler times. And in that instant she wondered why she was so concerned about her husband's incompetent counsel.

‘You're fired,' she said, as if in reaction to her selfish thoughts, thoughts that were all too honest and filled with regret.

She turned away from the third floor window and looked Chilton-Smith directly in the eye.

‘
What
?' squeaked the pasty lawyer, now rising from his grey plastic chair and straightening his royal blue Hermes tie.

‘I said, you're fired, Howard. You can bill us for your time and we can terminate our relationship immediately. We appreciate your efforts but you are simply not the right man for the job.'

‘Karin,' said Montgomery, obviously annoyed by his wife's sudden pretence of authority but also appearing strangely amused by her attempt to control a situation over which he no doubt believed she had no influence.

‘You cannot fire me,' said Chilton-Smith. ‘I was hired by your husband. He has been a loyal client for twenty years and is not about to . . .'

‘Bullshit, Howard,' said Karin, now moving across the room to meet Chilton-Smith eye to eye. ‘My husband hired you for two reasons and neither of them have anything to do with loyalty. Firstly, you are British, and for some reason my husband still believes he comes from a superior race where respectability is a euphemism for snobbery. And secondly, you come for free.'

Her husband could not hide his surprise. He obviously had no idea she knew about his little arrangement with his long-time lawyer.

‘Yes, Howard, I know about your little problem and while your condition may be none of my business, my husband's future is.'

Howard Chilton-Smith was married with three children. His wife Anne was the daughter of Norman Schaffer, a wealthy American industrialist who served on the Washington Lawyers Guild. Schaffer had often wondered what his plain but eligible daughter had seen in the weedy Brit, but he was her choice and, as such, Schaffer did his part in opening doors for his ambitious son-in-law.

Chilton-Smith was witty and well dressed, dapper if not a little droll, skilled in the art of subtle sycophancy and gay as the day is long. He was also HIV positive. Karin knew that her husband had been aware of his lawyer's repeated indiscretions for years. She also knew he had facilitated the discreet prescription of drugs necessary to keep Chilton-Smith healthy and safe from the revelation that would shatter his personal life and destroy his blooming career. Now, Stuart, who was as astute with his
money as he was with his political ambitions, was calling in his chips. Chilton-Smith, who could normally bill a thousand dollars an hour for representation in a case such as this, would work for squat. Nothing, nada . . . FOC.

Karin knew the lawyer's only compensation, besides the obvious safety from exposure, was the knowledge that an attorney's currency was not always green. Often it came in the form of ‘publicity' and this case was his ticket to national notoriety. He would not care that he doubted his client's innocence, nor that he may even lose to the opposition. By the end of this thing he would be a household name and at the top end of the ‘business'. Fame bought power, and power a financial return that even Chilton-Smith's father-in-law would envy. Karin knew he would be determined to hold on to this opportunity as if his life depended on it.

‘Stuart,' said Chilton-Smith, with an expression which said ‘I know you will not allow your wife to overrule a decision made by such a powerful man as yourself'.

‘Don't look at him, Howard,' snapped Karin. ‘I am the one holding the cards here. Either you leave gracefully or we start talking about the virtues of honesty. Like it or not, wives are entitled to have a say in their husband's future, and I am sure Anne would agree.'

Stuart Montgomery sat mute, a bemused smile on his face. Karin would have liked to have thought it was because he was proud of her determination to see him obtain competent counsel, but she knew it was simply a matter of self-preservation. Stuart was not stupid, he knew his lawyer's performance yesterday was nothing short of embarrassing and his wife was now doing his dirty work for him. She was sure he was already considering a list of more suitable counsellors.

‘I'm afraid she's right, old boy,' said Montgomery, giving his friend his best ‘regrettable but inevitable' smile.

‘I don't believe this,' said Chilton-Smith. ‘I know the arraignment appeared to be somewhat . . . uncomfortable, but it is very early days and I have established your high standing in the community which is key to our . . .'

‘I'm sorry, Howard,' Montgomery went on. ‘This does not have to affect our friendship, of course. Better this way, old chum. Onward and upward.'

‘Stuart, I must protest. This is . . .'

‘. . . over, my friend.'

And so, there it was. Karin had won and there was nothing left to say.

Howard Chilton-Smith retrieved his jacket and walked towards the cold grey door, knocking twice to alert the guard of his intention to leave. The door opened and he turned towards his client, or rather his ex-client, the pent-up emotion in his now pink face seemingly determined to release itself in some form of verbal retribution.

‘Stuart, I find this . . .' he said, his fists clenched, his breath short, his eyes brimming with tears. ‘I find this
most
disappointing.'

And with that he shook his head, straightened his tie and turned to scurry from the room like a servant banished for some unthinkable societal embarrassment.

‘Well done, my dear,' said Montgomery taking a sip of what was no doubt his less than acceptable generic brand tea. ‘Had to be done, if not in such a demonstrative manner.' He gave her a half smile. ‘Still, time is short and I have a number of reliable alternatives who I have no doubt will . . .'

‘No,' she said, pushing her thick brunette layers behind her ears as she turned to face him.