Presumption of Guilt (15 page)
The emergency room physician, a guy he'd played racquetball with a few times, came out and scanned the faces in the waiting room, spotted Nick, and came to take the chair at right angles to his.
“So what is it?” Nick asked. “Drugs?”
“Actually, no. No drugs in her bloodstream at all. What your friend has is probably the worst case of double pneumonia I've ever seen.”
“Pneumonia? This time of year?”
“Yeah. She's in bad shape, Nick. She may not pull through.We're admitting her into intensive care right now. Can you fill out the paperwork? Give us her insurance company, that sort of thing?”
He shook his head. “I don't know anything about her other than her name. And I seriously doubt that she has insurance. Judging from the place she lives, I'd say she's indigent. That's why I brought her here.”
It was a charity hospital, so he had known that they wouldn't turn her away.
“All right. We'll take care of things,” the doctor said. “Do you know if she has any next of kin?”
He thought of Jimmy and Lisa. “She has two kids that were taken away from her. They're seven and ten.”
“Any adults?”
“I couldn't tell you.”
The doctor suddenly looked very tired. “I'll level with you, Nick. If you hadn't brought her in here when you did, that girl wouldn't have lasted through the night. I hate to see a person that near death, without a person in the world who cares about her.”
Nick rubbed his weary eyes. “Yeah, me too.”
The doctor slapped his knee and got up. “We've got her on an IV, and we're starting a round of serious antibiotics. ICU doesn't allow nonfamily members to visit, but I'll pull some strings if you want to come back and see her tonight.”
He nodded. “Yeah, I'll do that.”
“Thanks for bringing her in, man.”
Nick checked his watch as he headed out of the emergency room. He wondered if Bill Brandon had been arrested yetâand if Beth was safe.
Walking out into the night, he looked up at the stars spread by the millions across the sky like a paint-spattered canopy. God had been with him today. “Thank you,” he whispered, grateful that the Holy Spirit had prompted him to find Tracy, just in the nick of time. There must have been a reason.
It wasn't all hopeless. There was a plan. There were times when Nick
did
act as an angel to a dying world. That realization gave him the energy to keep going tonight.
And he knew he wasn't working alone.
I
can't give you a warrant for Bill Brandon's arrest.” Judge Wyatt said the words with such finality as he packed his briefcase that Tony and Larry only stared at him.
“Excuse me, Judge, but did you say you
can't?
”
Tony asked. I “No, I can't! Not on such outlandish charges with absolutely nothing to support them.”
Larry touched Tony's arm to quiet him, and tried again. “Judge, maybe we didn't make ourselves clear. There's the account given by the boy from the home who was caught breaking into this reporter's house. We just talked to him ourselves. The reporter has another source who used to live in Brandon's home, who corroborated that story. And Marlene Brandon, Bill Brandon's sister, was murdered right after she talked to the reporter. We've been in touch with the Tampa PD, and the only ones backing up Brandon's alibi are his employees, who could also be involved.”
“I read the article, gentlemen,” the elderly judge said. “But I'm not issuing a warrant for anybody's arrest based on some trumped-up charges by a newspaper that won't print anything unless it's painted yellow!”
“Your honor,” Tony tried, hoping a little more respect might calm things a bit, “this isn't yellow journalism. This article matches the facts we do have. We have a lot of unexplained break-ins. Kids have been seen in some of the areas before or after a crime was committed. We have small unidentifiable fingerprints at the scene of some of these crimes. We didn't pursue that angle very hard in our previous investigations of the robberies because it seemed so farfetched. But if this is a professional crime ringâ”
“Then where are they keeping the stolen goods?” the judge demanded. “Where are they selling it? Have you gotten down to that, yet?”
“Well, no, not yet. Butâ”
“Then how do you expect me to give you a warrant for this man's arrest? This is pretty shoddy police work, gentlemen. And I'm not going to wind up with egg on my face when it comes out that a decent, upstanding citizen who provides a good home to so many children was wrongly arrested because of some cockamamie story by an overzealous reporter trying to make a name for herself! Until you come up with something I can see, something other than a kid with a strong imagination who's trying to get himself out of trouble, don't waste my time with this again.”
“Judge, you can't be seriousâ”
“Good-bye, detectives,” he said, grabbing up his briefcase and ushering them out. “I have a meeting in twenty minutes, and I don't intend to be late.”
“Judge Wyatt, you're acting irresponsibly here!” Tony cried.
The judge swung around. “What did you say?”
Tony's face was red. “I said, you're acting irresponsibly. Children's lives are at stake, for Pete's sake.”
“If you don't get off these premises in the next three seconds, detectives, I'll call my bailiff and have you thrown into jail yourselves.” Tony and Larry stood there, stunned, as the judge headed out of the office without another word.
“Great going,” Larry bit out. “He's right. We shouldn't have been in such a hurry. We should have gotten more evidence before we came here.”
“Then let's go get it now,” Tony said. “Time is running out for those kids.”
B
ill Brandon thanked his source for the tip, hung up his phone, and stared down at his desk for a moment. So the article was scheduled to come out in tomorrow's newspaper. Beth Sullivanâalias Beth Wright, he thought with amusementâactually thought she was B going to expose him. But she was so wrong.
He picked up the phone again and dialed the extension for Cottage B. One of the children answered. “Put Stella on the phone,” he ordered. He waited a few seconds, then the housemother answered.
“Stella, send the team over for me, pronto. We have a job to do. Oh, and include Lisa Westin.”
He went to the closet and pulled the rolled-up blueprints off the top shelf. There was one for City Hall, one for the Police Station, one for the courthouse, one for the St. Clair First National Bank . . . He pulled them out one by one, until he came to the one for the building housing the
St. Clair News.
He put the others back carefully, then went to his desk and opened the blueprint, spreading it out across his desk.
There it was: all of the rooms at the
St. Clair News,
carefully labeled with their purposes and the machinery housed there. His sources were nothing if not thorough.
A knock sounded on the door, and he called, “Come in.”
Brad, an eleven-year-old he'd been grooming for the last four years, opened the door. “Bill, you called for us?”
“Yeah, guys, come on in.”
Seven boys and four girls, ranging in age from eight to fifteen, filed in quietly and found places around the room. Tailing the group was little Lisa Westin, her big green eyes looking frightened and apprehensive as she stepped into his office.
“What's she doing here?” Brad asked with contempt. “She's too little.”
“She's taking Jimmy's place,” Bill explained.
“Any word on Jimmy?” Brad asked.
“No. And things don't look good for him.”
Bill knew that would give them all images of the child rotting in a jail cell. Enough incentive to keep them from messing things up.
He glanced at Lisa and saw that those big eyes were full of tears. “Lisa's already done one job for me, and she did such a good job that I thought I'd reward her by giving her a little more responsibility.”
She didn't look all that proud.
“And she knows that if she botches anything up, Jimmy will be in even worse shape than he is now. You all know I can get to him if I have a point to make. There's not a lock made, even in a jail cell, that I can't open. You know that if you mess up, Lisa, that Jimmy will pay for it, don't you? That's how it works.”
She swallowed and nodded her head.
He turned his attention back to the others. “It's come to my attention, people, that there's supposed to be a newspaper article coming out about us in the paper tomorrow. It will point fingers at each of you, exposing you as thieves, and will probably result in the police arresting all of you before daylight.”
There was a collective gasp all over the room.
“Bill, what are we gonna do?”
“I don't want to go to jail!”
“Can't you tell them we're not thieves?”
Bill sat back and shrugged. “Wouldn't do any good. They have proof. Some of you have been seen, but that's not the worst of it. Jimmy Westin has turned state's evidence.”
“What's that?” Brad asked.
“He's told them everything he knows about our operation.”
“No! He wouldn't.”
“Au contraire.”
He chuckled in his sinister way, and met the eyes of each individual kid around the room. Satisfied that he had put sufficient fear in them to manipulate them into doing anything, he smiled. “But don't worry. Bill is going to take care of you.
Doesn't he always?”
A few of them nodded.
“I've got a plan. But it's going to require a lot of hard work and a few risks. Somebody might even have to get hurt. But sometimes sacrifices have to be made. As the Good Book says, âGreater courage hath no man, than to lay down a life for his cause.'”
The children all gazed somberly at him. He had them right where he wanted them.
“Oh, don't worry. I'm not asking any of
you
to lay down your lives. I just want that kind of commitment to this projectâthat you would if it came to it, which it won't. No, it's not your lives that'll be in danger. But the people in the building . . . well, some things are just in God's hands.”
He looked down at the blueprint. “This, my friends, is the blueprint for the newspaper offices. In this big room, here at the back, is the printing press that puts out every copy of the newspaper that will be distributed all over town the first thing in the morning. Your job, should you decide to accept it,” he said, drawing on the
Mission Impossible
theme, even though he knew they didn't have the option of refusing it, “is to stop the presses. Literally. That way, the story won't come out, and you won't be arrested.”
Some of the kids let out huge breaths of relief, and Bill smiled and said, “I told you I'd take care of things, didn't I? Now, come on over here and get around the desk, so I can show each of you what your job will be. We've still got a few hours before we need to go. That gives us plenty of time to plan every move.”
T
he waiting room for the family members of those in the Intensive Care Unit was full of rumpled, tired people with lines on their faces and worry in their eyes. Beth followed Nick past the reception desk, where a woman stood consoling a family whose loved one had just been in a car accident. On the desk were two stacks of towels and a sign that said that toilet articles were available if anyone needed them.
“They take showers up here?” Beth asked quietly.
“Yeah. Many of these people are here twenty-four hours a day. They're afraid to leave.”
“But I thought visiting hours were only thirty minutes every four hours.”
“Right. They sit by the bedside for thirty minutes, then come back to the waiting room and worry for four hours until the next visit.”
“Seems cruel.”
“Maybe it is. But those short visiting times are usually in the best interest of the patients. They need quiet.”
He led her into the huge room lined with vinyl recliners and chairs. Families had nested in certain areas of the room, surrounded by books and little bags with their belongings, Walkmans, and canned drinks. It was easy to distinguish the family members from occasional visitors. They looked more worn, more stressed, more near the breaking point. In one corner, a woman crocheted an afghan furiously, and already it was big enough to cover her legs. Beth wondered when she'd started it. Across the room, someone else worked on a laptop, and next to her, a red-eyed teenaged girl did cross-stitch as if her life depended on getting every stitch exactly in line.
The five telephones on the wall rang constantly, and they were always answered by one of those nearby. Then they would call out, “Smith family” or “Jackson family,” and someone would rush to answer it.
“It's like a little community up here,” Beth said.
“Yeah. My dad was in ICU for three weeks before he died. I didn't leave the unit except for meals. I ate those downstairs, and only if I had to. A lot of times, churches brought sandwiches and stuff right here to the waiting room.”
“But what's the point in staying? I mean, if you can't visit them . . .”
“It's the fear that something will go wrong. That the doctor will need you to help make a decision. Even the irrational fear that if you leave, if you're not there hanging on, they'll slip away.”
“I can't imagine being sick and having someone waiting out here that diligently for me.”
“What about your mother?” he asked.
“She's dead.” The words came so matter-of-factly that she feared Nick would think she was cold. The truth was, if Beth's mother were alive, she wouldn't have waited in the ICU waiting room for Beth anyway. The deep sadness of that fact washed over her. She was really no different than Tracy Westin, lying in there so sick with no one out here in this room, representing her and praying for her, refusing to leave because they had to stay and fight with her.