Retribution (27 page)

"The full two weeks unless the vet can find his rabies certificate."

She inhaled sadly. "I haven't called yet. But since the practice was sold, it's been chaos over there." She looked at John. "Can he be with me days and locked up at night?"

"He has to be quarantined. I don't have any choice in this, honey." John put his hand out, took her arm, and pulled her to his side, then slipped his arm about her waist. "I don't have time today, but tomorrow, if necessary, I'll go over there and look through the back files myself."

She gave a rueful laugh. "That could be more heroic than you know. Old Baez did not believe in computers."

"If it springs Jagger early, it's worth it." He snapped the lead onto Jagger's collar. "I've got to take him now, in case someone decides to be really efficient and come by to check up on us."

Jagger looked from her to John, his tail threshing the air, obviously thinking he was going for a run, not a care in the world. She ruffled his ears. "My tests are scheduled this morning." She checked her watch. "In fact, I should be picked up any minute!"

"It'll be all right."

She wrapped his arm a little tighter around her. "It has to be."

"Don't think. Don't worry. Just do what you have to do today, and we'll handle the rest of all this later. Understand?"

"We," she repeated faintly.

"That's right. We. You, me, and eight new puppies."

"Eight?"

"Do you even listen to your phone calls?"

Embarrassed, she answered, "I haven't had time this morning…"

John gave her a squeeze and a quick kiss, saying, "I'll call you then… and take your line off voice mail. I want to be able to talk to you. I think you'll be please with what I found out."

She felt her face warm as he let himself out the front door. She stood poised for split second, in case he should return and kiss her again, but he did not. Charlie put her hand to her cheek, touching it, before pivoting and managing as quick a dash as she could back down the hall to change clothes.

* * *

Clarkson checked the operating theater clock as he left. It was just after eleven in the morning. He began to strip off his scrubs, lightly bloodied as they were, rolled them up, and dropped them in the waste, the container labeled "Infectious/Contaminated Waste Haz Mat" and marked with the state code for the proper disposal of the material as well as the company the hospital used to collect it. He stripped off his gloves, mask, and booties, disposing of them as well. The container smelled strongly of blood.

Wade ran his hand through his hair before stepping to the sink and scrubbing again, just for a precaution, and then prepared to leave. The beeper at his waistband went off. He collected it, wrists still dripping, as he juggled toweling himself dry and thumbing the beeper off. The voice recording intoned, "Charlotte Saunders MRI has been completed."

Nodding to himself in pleasant surprise, he grabbed a fresh pullover top from the shelves marked "large" and tugged it on, headed down the halls to his office. He had a report to finish on the operation just concluded, some letters to dictate, lunch, and then another operation slated for one-thirty. As Laverman had suggested to him, his day was scheduled like clockwork.

But there was little methodical about what he did once he got in the operating theater. Every case had its own unique challenge. His skill, the technology which gave him that skill, was forever being tested. Unlike Laverman, who had to rely on casebooks and precedents for his decisions and rulings, every time Wade went in to operate, he was in some sense trail-blazing. He wrote his own precedents.

The news that Charlie had come in as scheduled felt gratifying. The day had started out well, and was continuing the same way. Quentin Saunders had done what he had promised, and gotten his daughter in for an examination. He would call down and make sure the report was on his desk by three. Wade would have to pull a favor or two, but he felt time to be of the essence. Mothlike, Charlie Saunders was flirting with flames which would consume her, and only he could quench them.

He passed through his offices. His office manager, Rosa, trailed him partway, saying, "I paged you."

He shot her a smile. "I caught it. Let me finish my dictation on this last one, then I want you to get radiology on the line for me."

"Right." She nodded and turned on her heel, a white-and-blue blur of action and reaction. She already knew what he wanted, that MRI and a copy of the reading on his desk as soon as he could get it. She would help him move heaven and Earth to achieve that.

Wade settled into his chair. Despite his reputation and that of the clinic, most of his patients were everyday people. Good people, unique people, all valuable in their own small ways, cogs in a machine that could be thought of as commonplace and ordinary, of worth only to other cogs turning in their own small ways, dependent upon it. Unique and worthwhile, but mundane… and conceivably lost in a universe made up of many such folks. It was rare when a case presented to him also presented a life that was such a commodity that the whole world would be lessened by its loss.

Such a person was Charlie Saunders. He would not lose her.

If it took all of the skill he had and more, he would have to stretch, to extend himself. Today Charlie had taken the first, hesitant step into his care, committing herself into his hands.

He would not fail her.

* * *

The dogs greeted Jagger's arrival with their usual fuss until Ruby yelled at them to be quiet, then they settled down. They all pushed their noses through the chain-link gates, but none of them would know Jagger except Flint. The Alsatian came to the fore with his usual dominant attitude, secure in himself and his position in John's pack. Jagger slowed as he paced by John's side but stopped somewhat reluctantly as Rubidoux halted to let the two touch noses and renew their acquaintance.

Some dogs were remarkable in their ability to associate scent with memory. He watched the two sniff at one another, Flint rumbling low in his chest, Jagger neither subservient nor dominant, his tail down but steady, and then Flint left off threatening and seemed to recognize that Jagger had been around before. The golden retriever shook himself, collar and lead rattling, before giving John a look, as if to tell him he could move on now. Ruby trotted Jagger down the row to the first clean and empty kennel isolated at the row's end, opened the gate, and put him inside.

Once in, Jagger gave him a look of accusation and betrayal from caramel eyes as John shut the kennel door and locked it. "Better here than county," John told him. "And hopefully you'll be sprung tomorrow."

The dog circled the pen before making a chuffing noise and lying down. He put his head on his paws, gazing at John mournfully.

"I wouldn't lie to you, pal. You're better off here than anywhere." He coiled the leash and pocketed it, before going in to check on Sultry. He had an appointment that he did not wish to miss.

* * *

A young woman about his age opened the front door and gave him a lookover that was neither friendly nor hostile. He straightened slightly, introducing himself, "John Rubidoux, LAPD, retired. I believe your mother is expecting me?"

She said, in a slightly teasing voice, "Kind of young to be retired, aren't you?" as she allowed him inside. Thick in the hips and overly bosomy, she showed him inside, and if she was disappointed that he did not rise to her line, she did not show it.

The house, like its outside, was humble middle-class inside. Carpeting, a neutral beige, showed traffic wear in areas. The furniture, neither new nor old, sagged in a spot or two. The paintings on the wall had no doubt been bought at one of those mall shows, an unremarkable study of flowers in a vase and a mountainside brook. John found himself looking at them critically and turned his eyes away, thinking that Charlie had already affected him in ways he hadn't even known.

"I'm Becky," the young woman said. "Mom is sitting in the family room. Her quiz show just finished." She paused. "Mom watches a lot of TV these days. Especially Bob Barker. She says he cheers her up. Always pleasant, upbeat… better than the talk shows." She shuddered slightly and then said, "Try not to upset her, would you? It's hard enough to have her living with us right now, and my husband…" she trailed off, leaving unsaid problems which John would just as soon have not been told about. She raised her voice. "Mom. John Rubidoux is here," stumbling a little over his name.

Becky guided him around a corner to a sunken family room, an add-on, where a woman sat in a battered recliner. At their appearance, she thumbed a remote, and the room, which had been filled with clapping, and cheery music, and the sound of a winner's excitement, abruptly went still. She looked toward John, thinning gray hair, skeletal face, a bird-like woman who appeared decades older than her years.

She stared for a moment as if caught by total surprise.

"I'm John Rubidoux," he said, stepping down into the room. "LAPD, retired. We talked on the phone last night…."

"I remember," she snapped, and popped the recliner into an upright position. "I hope to God you came to tell me you finally found my daughter's body."

John put out his hand. "Mrs. Finley. I'm sorry, I did not mean for you to… I don't want you to think I misrepresented myself. I am retired from the department. I'm not here in any official capacity."

She looked at him sharply, then seemed to deflate, shrinking in on herself, becoming even smaller and more frail. The recliner, upholstered in a heavy olive material and built to hold the heftiest of American working men, dwarfed her. "I don't understand."

"If I can just sit and talk with you. It is about your daughter, but I don't have any answers."

Becky said, "Mom…." She did not finish, but looked at John.

Her mother flapped a thin hand. "Let him stay. I'll talk to him. It's been years anyway since anyone has even called us about Linda."

"Are you sure? Mr. Rubidoux—" Her daughter shifted uneasily.

"I'm not here to upset matters."

Finley gave him a hard look. "Retired? Why?"

"Disability. Perp caught me in the leg with a bullet. They put me back together, but it keeps me from doing the things I need to."

"No longer fit to be one of L.A.'s finest, huh?" She pulled her stick-thin legs up and tucked them under her. "Becky, you go and do whatever you have to, to make whatshisname happy. I'll let you know when I don't want to be bothered any more." She pointed at the nearby sofa, beat up and crouching on the floor, one end littered with newspapers and TV guides. "Have a seat, Mr. John Rubidoux."

Becky turned, gave John a wink, and padded away to somewhere at the other end of the house. The faint sounds of pan lids and running water could be heard, cabinet doors opening and shutting.

"Mrs. Finley—"

"Edna. Mrs. Finley was my dear old mother-in-law." The woman smiled, and for a fleeting second, John caught a hint of a humor that must have been readily apparent once.

He pushed papers aside and sat down next to six weeks' worth of TV Guides, the covers of every one turned and folded to the crossword page, which had been done in ink.

"You want to ask me about Linda. Well, you already know she's been missing, is probably dead, and no one has been able to find her body for me." Edna gave a sigh that made her birdlike chest rise and fall tremulously. "I need to know what happened. I've given up that we will ever find out who might have taken her. But I need to know if she's alive or not." She held a fist to her chest. "They say a mother knows. Well, I'm a mother and a damn good one, but I don't know. The police don't know. They have a word for it today— closure. I need closure. When they found Denise Huber's body, they thought maybe he'd stuck Linda in a freezer somewhere, too. But he didn't know anything about it. When that Marine confessed to killing that girl on the Saddleback Campus and four or five others, I thought, 'He's the one.' But it wasn't him either." Her face narrowed. Her eyes grew suspiciously bright. "I need my daughter, dammit, dead or alive."

"You still have a daughter."

She sniffed, and tucked a pewter-gray strand of hair behind her ear. "For which I am grateful, and she knows it. Don't give me any of your pop psychology. I get enough of that shoved down my throat by Oprah Winfrey and Sally Jessy Raphael." Edna laughed without humor. "Actually, Becky was my favorite. She and I have both been carrying that guilt around with us. Linda was a good girl, but she didn't have the brains and grades that Becky did."

He took his notebook out. She eyed it for a moment, then nodded, familiar with the ways of interviewing policemen. He cocked his pen. "Can you tell me what you remember? I was researching what I could through the newspaper back files…."

"October 19, 1987. Almost eleven years ago. She had been working, then had gone to night class at Saddleback College, and then went out for a beer nearby before heading home. She'd had a fight with her boyfriend. He thought she was flirting with somebody at work, they fought, so she left and headed back here. But when she was upset, she liked to drive. The Ortega Highway, back roads, just sort of run the aggression out." Edna Finley took a deep breath.

"She was a good girl. When she disappeared, at first the police didn't tell us much. They suggested she'd run away." The woman plucked at the crocheted blanket over her knees.

"She went for a drink after class… and then had a fight with her boyfriend? Was he in her class? Did she meet him somewhere? Anyone in her class involved?"

Edna Finley frowned, the expression in her eyes absent, thinking, remembering. He knew the look, and waited patiently, his pen ready. "He was lucky to graduate high school. She knew him from then, but she didn't date him till she started working. He was a mechanic. More than that actually, he worked for a shop that built Indy cars… you know what I mean?"