L.A. Bytes (17 page)

He turned his head and a crushing pain traced a path of fi re from his skull to his hip. He groaned.

A warm hand touched his forehead. “Try not to move, Christopher,” a calming female voice said. “You’ve had a bit of an accident. You’re at County General.”

“W-what happened?” Chris asked. At least that’s what he intended to say. His lips were numb and the words came out as a broken series of grunts.

“Don’t,” the voice insisted. “Don’t speak. Don’t move. You’re going to be okay.”

Chris didn’t believe her. As consciousness returned he grew aware of pain that seemed to emanate from every part of his body. “What happened?” This time the words were stronger.

“You had an accident.”

“Accident?” Had he been in another car wreck? He couldn’t even remember being in the car this time. He struggled through a growing headache to remember anything.

At fi rst when the bizarre images began fl ashing through his mind he wondered if he was hallucinating. Dark leather. Brilliant lights and loud music. What the hell kind of memory was that?

David!

He bolted upright, pushing aside the hand that tried to hold him down. His vision blurred and his head spun. The room
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whirled around him. When his stomach turned over he stared up at the thin redhead hovering over him.

“Oh God,” he muttered through clenched teeth. “I’m going to—”

She held his head as he emptied his stomach into a bedpan.

“Now,” she said briskly as she helped him lie back down.

“Didn’t I tell you to stop fussing and relax? Nothing is more important right now than getting your rest.”

“Where’s David?”

“David?” The nurse used a warm damp face cloth to wipe his mouth, throat and eyes. He winced at the sharp pain in his jaw.

“Who’s David?”

“He’s my husband. Is he okay? Was he in the accident too?

Where is he?”

“I assure you there was no David—”

“You have to tell me.” Chris grabbed the hand holding the cooling cloth. “Is he all right?”

“David is fi ne. Now you really must rest, Christopher. The doctor will be in to see you shortly, then all this will be straightened out.”

The numbness that started in his lips crept down his body.

Pain and the memory of pain faded; replaced by a growing lassitude. Something wasn’t right. There was something about the

“accident” this woman wasn’t telling him. A new pain abruptly terminated his worry. It sliced down his left arm; he cried out.

This time when he tried to speak his muscles failed him completely. He watched helplessly as the nurse reached for the call button beside the bed. Her cool fi ngers gripped his wrist; she smoothed the skin of his brow with the other hand. Then consciousness fl ed altogether and Chris fell back down into darkness.

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Wednesday, 6:40 pm, USC County General, State Street, Los Angeles
David bolted out of the car before Martinez pulled to a stop in front of the main doors. He raced down the corridors toward ICU, ignoring the startled looks, vaguely aware of the hard tension that fi lled him with suppressed rage.

He should never have left Chris. He should never have let them force him back on active duty while the man he loved lay in a hospital bed, injured, possibly dying.

Chris couldn’t die. It was simply unthinkable.

He pushed through the door to the ICU. He knew from experience he wouldn’t get past the next set until someone let him in. He thrust his badge into the face of the startled nurse at the desk.

“Detective Laine. I need to speak with Christopher Bellamere’s doctor.”

The nurse nodded and pulled up something on the computer.

She frowned. Her eyes darted back to David. She picked up a phone and spoke low-voiced into it.

“Someone will be right down to see you.”

David nodded, but instead of taking one of the stiff, plastic chairs he stood by the desk, though he knew he was unnerving the young nurse.

They were both relieved when a green-garbed surgeon shoved open the inner door. She hastily pulled down her mask.

“David?”

“Detective Laine—” David pulled away from the nurse’s station. “How is Chris? I got a message—”

“Chris is strong, he’s young and in excellent physical shape.

We expect a full recovery.”

David felt something leave him then. His rage collapsed like a pile of wet ashes. “Are you sure he’s okay? Will there be any permanent damage?”

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“I don’t expect anything to impede him making a full recovery.”

“He’s going to be okay?” He wanted to believe her but he’d lived too long in a world of death. He knew how fragile life was.

It hit the strong ones as easily as the weak.

“Oh, he won’t be doing any strenuous activity for a few days and he’ll be bruised and sore for a while longer, but provided he stays clear of falling debris, he’ll be just fi ne.”

“When can I see him?”

The doctor brushed a strand of salt and pepper hair off her face. “He’s being moved into a private room as we speak. You’ll have to wait a few more minutes.”

David paced the waiting room waiting for someone to come and tell him what was going on. Martinez joined him. They didn’t speak; what was there to say?

“He’s been moved. You can see him for ten minutes. I can’t allow more than that. He’s been heavily sedated.”

David followed her behind a curtained alcove. Memories of another bed and another body fl ooded him. Chris lay under a thin blanket, his pale face slack and motionless. Except for the soft rise and fall of his chest he might have been dead. Like Jairo. The small room was made even smaller by the clutter of machinery. Monitors tracked Chris’s vitals. Somewhere down the hall, a woman moaned an unending litany of pain. Whispering voices. The miasma of sickness and disinfectant fi lled the air.

David shoved the memories of his dead partner aside and held his breath as he approached the bed. “Ten minutes,” the doctor said. “No more.” Then she pulled the curtain shut and slipped from the room.

David bent over the fi gure on the bed. He touched Chris’s arm, staring at the bruises that mottled his skin from elbow to collarbone. One eye was swollen, the skin already turning an ugly purplish color. Most of his head was encased in thick white bandages.

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His eyes were darting around behind closed eyelids; David wondered what he was dreaming about.

“Chris,” he said. “Can you hear me?”

At fi rst he assumed Chris hadn’t. He slid his fi ngers over the bandages, feeling the heat from Chris’s swollen skin.

“Chris?”

One eye fl uttered opened. Light glittered off his dilated pupils.

“Hey, sleepyhead,” David whispered. “How do you feel?”

Chris’s eyes slid shut again.

David leaned forward. “Chris? Can you hear me?”

The doctor popped her head around the curtain. She frowned when she saw David.

“Sir, I’ll have to ask you to leave,” she said. “Come back when the patient’s a little more responsive.”

David knew she was right, but he didn’t want to go. He brushed his fi nger over Chris’s swollen mouth.

“I’ll be back,” he said. “Rest and get stronger. I have some business to take care of, but I will be back. I love you.”

He found Martinez lounging in the waiting room, ogling a nurse who didn’t seem entirely loath to the attention. David grabbed his partner’s arm and hauled him away.

“You want your wife to kill both of us?” David muttered as he dragged Martinez outside. “Come on, I want to fi nd out what’s going on with this bombing—”

“We can’t,” Martinez said. “That was assigned to Bentzen and Krug. The lieutenant specifi cally said we weren’t to go near it.”

“That’s bull—”

“Orders, Davey. We got paperwork back at Northeast. McKee wants us on it tonight.”

“What paperwork?”

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“From the old lady’s apartment.” Martinez shrugged. “Hey, Bentzen’s a good man. If anyone can fi nd out what’s going on, he can.” When David opened his mouth to protest again, Martinez shook his dark head. “Lieutenant’s orders, man. I don’t think you wanna mess with him on this.”

David knew he risked his badge if he did. McKee was a tolerant man, but even he had limits and he had just about reached them with David. The temptation was still there, but in the end he nodded. “Fine,” he snapped. “Let’s go back and look at this paperwork.”

§ § § §

Back at Northeast they dug out the boxes of bills and other documents that had been collected at Nancy Scott’s. There were four boxes, all crammed with paper documenting the life of a dead woman.

David pulled out several appointment slips for Scott’s doctor.

“Anyone ever talk to the doc?” He read the name, “Doctor Vanya Parkov?”

Martinez leaned back in his chair. “The guy was contacted.

He wanted to play footsies, until we explained things to him, then he gave us a big fat goose egg. He saw the woman maybe two-three times a year. Says she wasn’t one to look after herself, he was always on her to improve her diet, stop the junk food, the usual. He never saw her son.”

“She never mentioned her family?” David was skeptical. “Or he didn’t know she had any?”

“Apparently he was aware she had a kid, Scott put him down as an emergency contact, but never gave up any other details.”

“What about her husband?”

“Nothing,” Martinez said. “The old man was out of the picture by the time Parkov started playing doctor with her.”

“Out of the picture? Didn’t Crandall say she was a widow?”

“Parkov did say that when Scott fi rst came to him she told him her husband was ‘gone.’”

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“Gone. Dead?”

Martinez shrugged. “It gets better. A few months later she comes in for her bi-yearly visit and she’s all in black and it’s pretty obvious she’s in mourning. Doc doesn’t know for who and she was right cagey about it too. Like she didn’t want to say. So if he wasn’t dead the fi rst time, he died later?”

“The doc asked after her son, I guess thinking maybe he had passed, but Scott assured him her son was just peachy. And she was pretty forthcoming about not having any brothers or sisters or any family for that matter.”

“So it had to be the husband.” David studied the paper stuffed box in front of him. So many secrets. What was it about people they had to keep so many things hidden? “First they divorce or separate, then he dies? If it was acrimonious it could explain the reticence. When was this anyway?”

Martinez pulled out his own notes and fl ipped through them.

“Couple of years ago as near as the doctor can remember. He did say she seemed to come even less after that, canceled several appointments in fact. I get the impression he’d about written her off.”

“Could she have been depressed over the husband’s death?

Are we looking in the wrong place here? Could she have self-administered the poison?”

“Where would a recluse like her get cyanide? I mean, it’s not exactly rare, but it’s also not sitting on your local pharmacy shelf.”

Martinez slipped his notes back into his shirt pocket. “Seems to me she could have got what she needed from her own doctor. A nice prescription for Prozac or Zoloft and she’s swinging. Hell, she was diabetic. She just needed to double up on her dosage and it’s hello paradise. Besides, isn’t she safely in the bosom of the Church? They don’t look lightly on suicide.”

Martinez was right, of course. Not that it stopped other Catholics from killing themselves, but according to the neighbor, Alice, Scott was unusually devoted. So scratch suicide unless a compelling reason to change his mind came in.

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“Let’s fi nd the son again,” Martinez said. “He can tell us what happened to dear old dad, and how shook up Mom was over it.”

They dug back into the boxes. There had to be something on the son in this collection. He was apparently all the family Nancy Scott had possessed.

After nearly an hour of stifl ing yawns and trying to ignore his muscle aches, David broke down and dry swallowed a couple of Advil, chasing them with station house coffee.

“Lookee here.” Martinez held up an opened envelope and a single sheet of paper with a letterhead. “Looks like our boy was accepted to Caltech last year. Think he’s still there?”

“Only one way to fi nd out. But it’s too late today. Administration offi ces won’t be open this time of night.”

Martinez glanced at his watch. “Speaking of time, if I don’t hightail it home soon you’ll be investigating my homicide. With my luck my wife’d claim justifi able and get some judge I’ve been up in front of who would agree with her.”

David grinned. It was true Martinez tended to alienate the higher ups in the legal profession. He didn’t suffer fools gladly, and he especially hated liberal judges.

“Then I guess you better get home before she calls out the dogs,” David said. He pulled the second box on his desk closer.

“I’ll just keep looking for a bit, then I may drop back in to the hospital.”

“Then I’ll see you tomorrow. And for God’s sake, try to get some rest, man.”

David nodded at his retreating partner’s back. “Right after this whole mess gets settled,” he said. “When this whole mess is put to bed and I know Chris is safe, then I’ll rest.”

Thursday, 6:50 am, Cove Avenue, Silver Lake, Los Angeles
The phone broke through David’s restless sleep. Thinking it was Chris, he rolled over and snapped it up.

“Detective Laine? This is Gunderson from the
Times
—”

“No comment.”

“What can you tell me about the explosion at Ste. Anne’s? Is it true your ah, spouse was injured in the blast—”

“No comment.” David snapped and slammed the phone down. Almost immediately it rang again.

“What part of no comment don’t you understand?”

“Is this a bad time, Detective? This is Detective Bentzen.”

“Bentzen. What can I do for you?”

“Your name came up in my investigation,” Bentzen said.