The Kept Woman (Will Trent 8) (51 page)

‘That balcony inside the club was about thirty feet up.’ Gary looked at Sara with a sense of awe. ‘Wow, Dr Linton. That’s pretty cool how you scienced that out.’ He handed her the report. ‘Thank you for sharing all this with me. I really want to learn.’

‘I’m glad Amanda assigned you to my division.’

‘Yeah, she got me to slick up my look.’ He patted his tie. ‘I gotta represent, you know? The focus should be on the victims, not on me.’

Sara supposed this was reasonable advice. ‘I should track them down to let them know about the findings. Do you have any more questions?’

‘Yeah, she’s just, like, out here in the hallway. You think it’s okay if I put her back in the freezer?’

‘I think that would be very nice.’ Sara patted him on the shoulder as she walked toward the stairs. The ICU was six floors up, but the elevators at Grady worked on their own time and she needed to find Amanda sooner rather than later.

Of course, finding Amanda meant she would also find Will. Sara was shaken by an unwelcome reticence. She still wasn’t sure how she felt about last night. Will hadn’t wanted to talk in the car, but then he wouldn’t shut up once they got home. He hadn’t slept. He
had been almost manic, spouting theories that were the equivalent of a snake eating its own tail. He was furious with Angie. He was deeply hurt, whether he would admit it or not. Everything that came out of his mouth was either talking around Angie or talking about her. Sara looked at him as a doctor and wanted to medicate him, and this time make sure he didn’t palm the pill. She looked at him as his girlfriend and wanted to wrap her arms around him and make everything better. Then she had looked at him as a woman who’d been married, who knew how to be in a healthy relationship, and wondered what the hell she had signed up for.

Sara pulled open the door to the ICU just as a man was yelling, ‘So fucking what?’

Holden Collier threw his hands into the air. His boyish affability was gone. It was no wonder why. Amanda, Faith and Will were crowding in on him. Two of the Grady security guards were standing close by, their hands resting on their guns.

Collier demanded, ‘Why would I report a domestic when we’re looking for an unexplained stabbing?’ He threw up his hands again. ‘It’s explained. The boyfriend did it. She won’t name him. What am I going to do?’

‘Tell me again.’ Amanda’s tone was hard as steel. ‘From the beginning.’

‘Unbelievable.’ Collier threw up his hands a third time.

Sara had no idea what he was being accused of, but his innocent act was filled with textbook overreaction.

He said, ‘I was already at the ER with a perp. I took the domestic. She was bleeding out, but I got her story. Boyfriend came after her with a knife. She won’t tell me his name. Where she lives, whatever. Same bullshit as usual. She went into surgery. I wrote the report. I
told them to call me if her status changed. That’s my job.’ He wasn’t finished. ‘You’re so fucking hell-bent on jamming me up, you don’t even see what this case is really about.’

‘Tell me what it’s about.’

‘Rippy’s club is a shooting gallery. Gang tags are everywhere. Harding has a shit bucket in his closet. He was running drug mules up from Mexico and it got him killed, end of story.’

Amanda asked, ‘What about your relationship with Angie Polaski?’

Sara bit her lip. Angie. She would give her entire life savings to never, ever have to hear the woman’s name again.

Amanda said, ‘Sunday night into Monday morning, you had three calls back and forth with a burner phone. One of them lasted twelve minutes.’

‘I was talking to an informant. He uses a burner. They all use burners.’

‘Who’s the informant? I want his name.’

‘I’m not doing this here.’ Collier had finally realized he couldn’t bluster his way out of the problem. ‘If you want to question me, I’ve got a right to have my union rep in the room.’

‘Give him a call, Denny. This is happening.’

‘Can I go?’

‘We’ll be in touch.’

He stomped off, barely acknowledging Sara as he bumped open the door to the stairs.

Faith had her hands on her hips. She was furious. Amanda was furious. Will looked the same as he had for the last twenty-four hours, like a deer caught in the headlights.

Amanda said, ‘Dr Linton. What do you have?’

‘Nothing you’re going to like.’ Sara felt sorry to again be the bearer of bad news. ‘According to the preliminary autopsy report, Josephine Figaroa died of a brain bleed. The stab wounds in her chest were very shallow, post mortem, so there wasn’t any bleeding. The cut on her cheek was post mortem, so no bleeding. Her fingertips didn’t crack from the heat. Someone sliced them with a razor, probably to hide her identity, which doesn’t make sense, but that’s your department. Speaking from my department, I can tell you the finger cuts were post mortem too, because there was no bleeding.’

Amanda clarified, ‘You’re saying that the blood at the crime scene did not come from the woman who was autopsied downstairs.’

‘Exactly. All of her bleeding was internal. My guess is that she fell, probably from the balcony. Charlie said there was some blood on the ground floor. I’m assuming it came from her nose. She was alive for several hours, probably paralyzed, before the bleed killed her.’

Amanda didn’t seem surprised, which was not unusual, because she had a good poker face. What was puzzling was that neither Faith nor Will seemed surprised either.

Amanda asked, ‘Could it be possible that there was a second victim at the crime scene?’

‘Absolutely. The club was heavily trafficked over the last few months. Someone with even a rudimentary knowledge of crime scene investigation could temporarily pull the wool over our eyes. At least until the labs, fingerprints and analysis came back, which could take weeks, maybe months.’

‘Did you see any signs of a child?’

‘A child?’ Sara was confused. ‘You mean a toddler? Infant?’

‘Six years old,’ Faith said. ‘We have a missing kid. We think Angie took him.’

Sara’s hand went to her chest. She looked at Will, expecting him to be staring at the floor, but instead he looked back at her. There was a hardness to his expression that she had never seen before. His manicness was gone. Anger had enveloped him body and soul.

He said, ‘We think Angie had a blackmail plan going with Jo. Jo ended up dead, so Angie thought she could leverage the grandson.’

‘But she told you that Jo was dead. You had no idea that Jo even existed, let alone that she was Angie’s daughter. Why would she tell you anything?’

‘Something went wrong with the plan.’ Will had to be guessing, but he sounded certain that Angie had yet again risked someone else’s life for her own reward.

Amanda said, ‘Come with me.’ She took Sara into a room with a cop standing outside. The lights were low. Sara scanned the equipment by the bed: cardiac monitor, central line, catheter, NG tube, test tube. The patient’s right arm was elevated, propped on pillows—not too low so that the blood rushed into her fingers, not too high so that there wasn’t enough circulation. Surgical gauze and drains ballooned around the hand. O
₂
sat measures were on the tips of her fingers.

Sara said, ‘Her hand was reattached.’

‘Yes.’

Sara studied the woman’s face. Brown hair. Olive skin. The eyes were swollen, but they still had the distinctive shape.

Amanda said, ‘She was admitted as a Jane Doe, but they found her ID this morning. Delilah Palmer.’

That name sounded familiar. Instead of asking Amanda more questions, Sara went back to the nurses’ station and asked to borrow a tablet computer. She still had her admitting privileges at Grady. The nurse, Olivia, knew her from before.

Olivia said, ‘The waiting room should be empty.’

Sara got the hint. Four people blocking the ICU hallway was never a good idea.

They all walked down to the empty waiting room. Will stayed at Sara’s side. His shoulder touched hers. He was trying to make sure the connection was still there. She couldn’t find it in herself to let him know this was true.

Sara sat down on one of the chairs. She logged into the system and scanned the woman’s CT, X-rays, MRI and surgical notes.

Finally something made sense.

Faith asked, ‘Well?’

Sara relayed the information from the chart. ‘She was stabbed sixteen times, mostly in the torso, twice in the head. The tip of the knife broke off in her collarbone, minimizing the reach of the blade, which is probably why it just missed the heart and liver. The bowel was punctured. Her left lung collapsed. What remained of the knife was left imbedded in her sternum. The first slash must have been to her arm.’ Sara held up her own arm, the same as she had done yesterday morning. ‘The attacker came straight at her. She took a defensive posture. The knife sliced her wrist, nearly severing the joint. She would’ve been flailing her arms, trying to stop the attack, which would spray blood everywhere, like a hose. Fortunately for the victim, the blade severed the radial and ulnar arteries. I say fortunately, because the arteries contract when they’re sliced in two. That’s why suicides tend to fail. You sever
the artery, it rolls up into the arm and stops the blood almost like when you pinch the end of a garden hose to stop the pressure.’

Will asked, ‘That’s where all the blood came from, right?’

‘That volume of blood could definitely come from this type of injury.’ Sara studied the X-rays again. ‘This isn’t the first time she’s been attacked. She’s got several older, healed fractures to the face and head. Two breaks in her arm, probably separated by a few years. These are classic signs of abuse.’

Amanda asked, ‘Does the chart give Palmer’s blood type?’

‘They typed her when she came into the ER. It’s B-negative. Type is inherited. You would need either a B mother or B father to have it.’

‘Like Angie,’ Faith said.

Amanda asked, ‘Can you pull up Delilah Palmer’s past admits?’

Sara went back to the home screen. She found Delilah Palmer’s medical history, which hadn’t been ported into the ICU chart yet. ‘Palmer was born here twenty-two years ago. Ward of the state. Overdoses. PID times five. Bronchitis. Skin infections. Needle abscesses. Heroin addict. She had a baby two years ago. Hold on.’ Sara went back to the belly scans from two nights ago. ‘Okay, according to the most recent chart, the one that was started Sunday night, the woman lying in the bed at the end of the hall has a scar for a C-section.’ She flicked back through the screens. ‘But the older chart says that Palmer had a natural childbirth two years ago, which would fall in line with an episiotomy scar, which is what the body downstairs, the one Angie left at the funeral home, has.’ She looked up. ‘The body downstairs showed signs of long-term IV drug use, but there’s no indication of drug
use in the woman at the end of the hall, who is supposed to be Delilah Palmer.’ Sara felt slow on the uptake. ‘The body downstairs is Delilah Palmer. Jo Figaroa is here in the ICU. Angie switched their identities.’

‘That’s what we think.’ Faith showed her two photographs on her iPhone. ‘The one on the right is Jo Figaroa. The one on the left is Delilah Palmer.’

Sara studied the two women. There was an eerie similarity. ‘Are they related?’

‘Who knows?’ Faith asked. ‘They both had the shit kicked out of them. Figaroa’s own husband couldn’t tell them apart.’

Sara didn’t point out that Will hadn’t been able to, either.

Faith said, ‘We have a witness who puts Angie sticking Palmer in her trunk. I’ve gotta assume that Angie mutilated the body so we couldn’t get a positive ID off the fingerprints.’

Sara asked, ‘Why would Angie want us to think that Jo Figaroa was dead?’

Will said, ‘She’s working a scam. That’s the only explanation. Our Jane Doe put together the night of the attack for us. Harding’s dying. Josephine is bleeding to death. Angie rushes Josephine to the hospital, then instead of leaving town or lying low, Angie drives back to the club to remove Delilah and stage the scene. That’s a lot of work for somebody who doesn’t like to do a lot of work. I guarantee you there’s some kind of payday at the end of this.’

Sara felt overwhelmed with disgust. She dropped the tablet on the chair beside her. She was sick of Angie’s games, and she was the only one in the group who actually had the luxury of walking away.

Will seemed to sense that she was at the end of her rope. ‘I’m sorry.’

Sara didn’t want to blame him. If ever there was a victim of Angie’s machinations, it was Will. ‘Do you have any idea where she is? Where she might be keeping a child?’

He shook his head, and she saw the idiocy of her question. If they knew where Angie was, they would be breaking down her door.

Faith said, ‘We can only hope that because he’s her grandson, she’ll . . .
Motherfucker
. . .’ Faith’s voice trailed off. ‘She’s here.’

They all turned in unison.

Angie had just stepped off the elevator. She looked up. Her mouth formed an ‘O,’ a perfect reflection of their shock. She tried to get back onto the elevator, but the doors closed. She scrambled toward the stairs.

She wasn’t fast enough.

Will had bolted the moment he’d seen her.

In seconds he’d closed the gap between them. His arm shot out. His fingers snagged the back of her collar. Angie was wrenched back by the neck. Her feet flew out from under her. She hit the floor. He picked her up and threw her into the waiting room. Chairs clattered, crashing into each other, tipping over. He snatched her up again, his fist went back. The only thing that kept Will from shattering her into pieces was the two security guards jumping on his back like they were taking down a charging bull.

‘Will!’ Faith yelled, leaping into the fray. She pushed him against the wall. ‘Stop it!’ She was panting, out of breath. She said, ‘Stop it,’ quieter, still making it clear she wasn’t going to let him do what he obviously wanted to do. ‘Calm down, okay? She’s not worth it.’

Will shook his head. Sara knew what he was thinking. Killing her was worth it. Hurting her was worth it.

Sara said, ‘Will.’

He looked at her, his eyes on fire.

‘Don’t,’ she said, though she wanted him to.