Lifeblood (14 page)

By the time she had climbed the two flights and found her way to the lobby, she felt much better.

She was thinking it was stupid and silly to have let herself get so spooked when someone tapped her on the shoulder.

Dan Morris. She smiled and opened her mouth to just ask him straight out if he was married. If he wasn’t, she’d ask him if he’d like to meet Goldie.

Morris’ big dark eyes looked like they were going to melt and run down his cheeks. He grasped her elbow. “Sorry, ma’am. Would you please come with me?”

Chapter Twenty-five

Rachel froze, instantly certain that Morris’ request was related to her escapade on the fourth floor.

“Why?” she asked, trying to keep her voice normal while her anxiety rose at mach speed. “What’s going on?”

He was wearing a navy blue chino jacket with gold buttons. He tipped his head toward her, looking genuinely concerned. “Do you want to talk here, or somewhere a little more private?”

“Talk about what?” Her voice grew tight, almost broke. Was he going to accuse her of trespassing? How bad could that be? Surely not the end of the world. Please don’t let them cancel the lease. Why the hell did she have to be so nosey?

Morris drew out a cell phone, pushed a button, took a few steps, turned his head away and spoke into it. Rachel couldn’t hear the words. He folded the phone and slipped it back into his jacket pocket.

Gently, he nudged her forward in front of him. She felt like a rubber doll, with no control of her own as they moved through the vast expanse of lobby, past sofas where twenty or so people sprawled. Her captor steered her to the right and down a long, carpeted hall with a dozen or more doors open to offices.

At the end of the hall he guided her into an office that looked much like the ones they had passed. Rachel stopped in front of a gray metal desk. There was a large pad of paper and a phone, but no other sign that anyone actually worked there. Morris didn’t enter the office, remaining instead half in, half out the doorway.

Rachel finally found what she had been desperately searching for. Her nerve. How bad could it be? Okay, she might lose a client, but they had signed a contract, so maybe not even that. She drew herself up. “Just what is this all about, Mr. Morris?”

“We will need to have you searched.”

She was sure she hadn’t heard right. “Excuse me?”

Morris turned his head to glance down the hall. “Please, Miss Chavez, I’m sure you don’t want to make a scene.”

An aghast look spread from Rachel’s eyes across her face. “What do you think I’ve done?”

“We need a search. I can call the police and have them send a woman, or you can agree to have a woman here look through your…uh…things.”

“You’re going to strip search me?”

Morris was watching her, his look more apologetic than arrogant. He said nothing.

“This is totally ridiculous,” Rachel sputtered. “What do you think I have? My purse was just snatched right here in this very hospital a couple days ago. So I don’t have much in this one.”

“I’m sorry,” he said.

A rustling sound came from the hall. Morris stepped aside. A small woman strode in. She wore white. A lot of white. White shoes, white nylons, white uniform. No doubt her underwear, too, had not one thread of color. She moved past Rachel and stopped with her back to the window, making room for a second woman, this one in a dark blue dress with a scarf of lighter blue covering her hair, rimless glasses, and no makeup.

There was barely room for all of them in the small office.

The woman in blue looked at Rachel the way one looks at stray dogs at the pound, eyes emanating a sadness about life and death and the inability to escape either. The woman in white was eyeing Rachel as if she were an IRS examiner and Rachel was a highly suspect tax return.

Morris gestured to the woman in white. “This is Molly Kirkpatrick. One of our nursing supervisors.” The woman nodded brusquely. “And Sister Mary Frances.”

“You’re a nun?”

The woman in blue dipped her chin. “Pastoral services.”

“Sister agreed to give us a hand here,” Morris said. “It’s best to have two…witnesses.”

“I see.” Rachel looked at him. “It’s either this or the cops?”

Morris’ mournful eyes held hers for a moment before he nodded.

Rachel threw up her hands. “Okay, fine. What the hell. Excuse me, Sister. What in the name of heaven do you think I have?”

For a few seconds, the two women looked at Morris, who looked at the floor. No one spoke.

“Let’s just get it over with,” Rachel said. “What do you want me to do?”

“I’ll leave you ladies alone,” Morris said. “I’ll be right out here in the hall.” He closed the door behind him.

Clearly used to being in charge, Molly, the woman in white, went behind the desk, pulled the chair out but stood in front of it rather than sit. She tapped the barren top of the desk. “Why don’t you just set your handbag down here?”

“What are you looking for? Cocaine? An assassin’s rifle? What?”

“I’m afraid it’s necessary, dear,” the nun said. “Just do as she asks. It won’t take long.”

Rachel sighed and set down her purse where the woman had pointed.

Molly Kirkpatrick opened it and tipped it so that lipstick, comb, nail file, wallet, and coin purse tumbled out onto the desk. With the thoroughness of someone preparing a patient for surgery, she examined everything, but found nothing that interested her. She shook the purse, peered inside, ran her hand over the lining. Then, moving it and what had been its contents to the side of the desk, she said, “Now your jacket, if you please.”

Rachel slipped the faded denim jacket from her shoulders and tried to shrug her arms out of it.

The nun reached over to help, then folded the jacket more neatly than Rachel had ever folded anything and handed it to Kirkpatrick, who laid it flat on the desk, reached into the right pocket, and withdrew three pieces of tissue, a key and a black marble.

The woman turned the jacket to the other side and put her hand into the left pocket. “Ah!” The sound seemed to escape without intent. She looked up. Pale blue eyes looked straight into Rachel’s. She drew her hand out of the pocket, fingers clasping a squat, white plastic bottle.

Rachel gaped at it, stunned.

The woman shook the bottle. It rattled. She turned it over and read the label.

“OxyContin. I assume you have a prescription for this? Who is the prescribing doctor?”

Chapter Twenty-six

No! Rachel’s head wouldn’t stop shaking. This can’t be happening. It was too much to take in all at once. Not now. Not when she had finally made a life for herself, had got her head above water and was able to pay her bills and have a little left over.

Morris had telephoned the police. The two women had sat stiffly with her in that dreadful office with the naked desk between them and Morris at the door, everyone utterly silent.

“I don’t know where it came from.” Voice gone dull, Rachel was saying the seven words for the third time since the two cops had arrived. “I didn’t take it. I know it’s a drug, but I don’t even know what it’s for.”

The cops said nothing. They barely looked at her. She wondered if they thought she was such a low life form it would be a waste of time to notice her. A drug thief. Stealing from a hospital.

From somewhere on another planet, she helplessly watched the scene play out. Thank God for Miranda. In her frenzied state, she might have tried to answer their questions without an attorney.

Sister Mary Frances touched her arm and said quietly, “Would you like me to find someone for you?”

“Someone?” Rachel pronounced the word dumbly.

“A lawyer, dear?”

“Yes,” Rachel gulped. She wasn’t sure she could marshal enough rational thought on her own to do that. “Please.” Her thoughts were jumping about like drops of water on a hot griddle. She couldn’t focus on what all this meant.

After a short, miserable ride to the police station, locked behind a grill in the back seat of a squad car, she was led into a room. A scarred metal file cabinet stood in the corner, and a cheap table, three folding chairs, and a pad of yellow paper were just about dead center of the remaining space, which seemed large enough to echo.

A bright overhead light showed the room’s countless dingy smudges. One wall had a hairline crack from the ceiling down, and bits of fallen plaster were still on the floor—the effect of the last earthquake, maybe, or, judging from the look of the rest of the room, the last six earthquakes.

Left there alone, Rachel gazed at the wall trying to collect the mass of fragments that had been her mind.

Finally she began to wonder why. Why had someone planted the bottle of OxyContin on her? And who?

Sitting in that appalling room with its ugly table, she was feeling kicked in the gut all over again. Like she had once before—was it four years ago now, or five? Only that time she was guilty.

A short, stocky cop with a big brush of a mustache appeared. His blue shirt was starched and ironed, with creases that looked sharp enough to be used as weapons. His shoes were like black mirrors.

Rachel looked up at him. “May I use the phone?” Someone, she wasn’t sure who, had taken her handbag and her cell phone.

He nodded toward an ancient avocado-colored phone on top of the army green file cabinet in the corner. Perhaps back in the sixties the cops had thought the color combination stylish.

“How long are you going to keep me here?”

The man just grunted and stationed himself against the wall, arms folded, staring straight ahead, apparently waiting to monitor her phone call.

Not sure she could walk without falling over, Rachel moved slowly to the phone, dialed the garage, and told Irene she had been delayed, might in fact not be back for the rest of the day.

“Not to worry, luv,” Irene said blithely. “Everything is in hand here. Not to worry at all.”

Right.

When Rachel hung up, the cop, without glancing at her, left the room.

The clock on the dirty yellow wall was missing the minute hand. The hour hand was stealthily creeping up on noon. Could it possibly be six hours since she left the garage that morning?

Maybe the cops were waiting for an attorney to show up. Would the nun be able to find someone good? Does a successful attorney actually come down to a police station when someone they’ve never even met is arrested? Most likely it would be someone just out of law school, looking to cut his or her teeth in criminal law.

Or were they waiting for Rachel to get so stressed out and exhausted that she couldn’t think at all? They probably would prefer to question her while her defenses were numbed out. In that case, it wouldn’t be long.

999

Edgar Harrison was wearing golf shoes, a bright green golf shirt, and about the eyes, a bland, neutral look that must have had a lot of practice.

He introduced himself as her attorney. Rachel was relieved the sister had sent her someone who was at least forty and could afford to play golf. He seemed competent and assured, and for the first time, she began to feel she might have a chance.

“You need to know two things,” she told him. “First, I didn’t steal that drug. I’ve never taken OxyContin in my life. I’ve heard of it, but that’s about all.”

“All right,” Harrison said stoically. “And second?”

“I have a prior drug arrest.”

“Where? When?”

“Up north. Alameda County. That time I was guilty. This time I’m not.”

Judge Annette Garcia obviously didn’t believe that. She set bail at a hundred and twenty-five thousand and lectured Rachel about finding a rehab program for herself and that she was despicable beyond words if she was selling drugs to others. At least that’s how it sounded.

Harrison pulled a cell phone from his briefcase and called a bail bondsman.

When he was through, Rachel borrowed the phone and called Marty. “I need your help, Pop.”

“What’s wrong?” Marty sounded cautious.

“Are you in a game?”

“I’m at the club,” he said noncommittally. He was in a game.

“I’ve been arrested.” She listened to his sharp intake of breath and went on before he could comment, “Someone planted drugs on me. At the hospital.”

“I’ll be right there.”

“No. Wait. I need you to bring me the deed to the garage.” She knew how he hated to leave a poker game and his willingness to do so in response to her urgency made her eyes suddenly sting.

“I’ve still got most of that pot I won.”

“No, Pop. I don’t want it. Besides, it wouldn’t be enough.”

“But you can’t risk the garage.”

“I have to. I’ll try to arrange a mortgage later. But right now, I need that deed. And the appraisal I had done when the deed transferred from Gramps. You remember where the papers are?”

“I remember,” Marty said grimly. They both had keys to the safe deposit box.

“Thanks, Pop.” She hesitated, then said again, “Thanks.”

It took all the rest of the day to post bond with what was basically her entire life as collateral. Harrison gave her his card and a pep talk he probably gave all clients. Marty drove her back to the garage. As they pulled up at the curb, the moon was launching itself above the high-rise office buildings.

Chapter Twenty-seven

Rachel had forgotten the medical record papers until she was undressing that night. She barely glanced at them before slipping them under a pile of turtlenecks in the bottom drawer of her dresser. She wasn’t sure why she was hiding them, except that unlike the bottle in her jacket pocket, she had stolen the papers. But her interest in them had waned. She now had bigger things on her mind.

It was mid-afternoon a week after her arrest and she was getting a headache. She had devoted hours every day to searching for a company that would give her a mortgage at a decent interest rate. So far, no luck.

Leaving her booth to get a breath of fresh air she saw Emma Johnson at the street door.

Rachel stopped in mid stride. There was no avoiding coming face-to-face with the doctor. Had Emma heard about the supposed OxyContin theft? She must have.

“Hello, Emma.” Rachel wondered why she felt guilty when she knew better than anyone that she wasn’t. Even her voice sounded guilty.