The Probability of Murder (31 page)

It was premature to think that Jenna might have to endure the same fate.

Another awful thought intruded.

I turned toward Ernie again. “Do you have details on Bruce and Kevin?”
That you’re not telling me
, I meant.

“Honest. All we know is what I told Virgil, that both guys are cleared to come home.”

The ringing in my head dropped to a lower, slightly more comfortable frequency.

I took a minute to check the flow of the world below me. It wasn’t a famously pretty time of year in New England. Though we were a month from official winter, most of the trees were bare of leaves, their trunks a desolate gray. But the landscape was green, and even ordinary features like reservoirs, ponds, woodland areas, country clubs, and state parks took on added interest when viewed from a couple thousand feet.

About an hour after takeoff, the landing struts and runners touched ground on a helipad above the parking lot of Mercy Hospital.

As glorious as it felt to ride above it all, Ernie’s seamless landing and our deplaning felt even better.

I’d had the whole trip to prepare myself for what Bruce might look like, what shape he’d be in. Would he even be conscious? I mentally chided myself. Of course he’d be conscious. They wouldn’t send an unconscious patient home.
He’d be bruised, maybe, but I could handle that. Would we need help, or would I be able to take care of him myself?

The automatic doors of the hospital slid open in front of us, allowing a couple with a never-before-seen-by-me triple stroller to exit and MAstar workers and me to enter.

I was about to have the answers to my questions.

The young doctor who met us in the waiting area—Dias, according to his name tag—must have thought me cruel indeed as I broke into a wide smile at the list of Bruce’s injuries. A broken leg, a minor head wound, and what he called partial-thickness frostbite on some of Bruce’s fingertips.

Kevin had emerged with a broken leg and a dislocated shoulder.

Plus, there were assorted bruises and rope burns for both.

I was nearly giddy. I hoped the doctor understood that, compared to what I’d dreaded and relative to the accident reports that filled Bruce’s magazines, their injuries were like scraped knees on a preteen.

As was appropriate, Doctor Dias was closemouthed on Eduardo’s condition, other than to tell us he was “stable.”

“Code for ‘none of your business,’” Irene whispered when he turned to leave.

When we finally got to see Bruce and Kevin, not even the matching blue wheelchairs could dampen our reunion.

Choruses of “Hey, buddy” and “Woo hoo” punctuated the greetings.

I leaned over and held on to Bruce as best I could, given his restraints. We kissed, broke apart, and kissed again. For all the exchanges of “I love you” and “I’m so happy to see you,” we might have been apart for weeks instead of days.

“I’m going to have to postpone the climb in Nepal,” Bruce said when we finally let go of each other.

I was the last to laugh.

“Hey, Sophie, got a hug for me?” Kevin asked. “I’m on my own here.”

I hardly knew Kevin, the youngest member of the MAstar staff, but I leaned over and hugged him anyway, avoiding the arm that was in a sling.

“You’ll have to tell me about the case,” Bruce said to me.

It said a lot that I had to think for a beat about what he meant by “the case.” The murder case that had consumed me as much as the trauma over my missing boyfriend had receded for the last few hours.

Bruce insisted on a summary as he reluctantly let Irene wheel him down the hallway while Ernie piloted Kevin’s chair a few rotations behind, and I took on crutch-carrying duty. I suspected Bruce’s interest in what had happened since Charlotte’s body was found stemmed in great part from wanting to reconnect with me on a level other than his own current state.

I gave him a few details of my adventures, then cut to the bottom line—the police had settled on Daryl Farmer as the person with the best scores on means, motive, and opportunity, and his disappearance put him over the top as the most likely killer.

I could see that it was a struggle for Bruce to keep awake and pay attention. The doctor had warned us that
he’d given both climbers medication to ease the discomfort of the helicopter ride home.

Ernie seemed to have no compunction grilling the sleepy guys. Perhaps he thought it was his right to interrogate as he pushed Kevin’s wheelchair up a slight incline.

“What happened up there, buddies?” he asked. Something I couldn’t have asked in my present mood without sounding like a harpy.

“There was a team in front of us that was so slow, you’d think they’d never been on a real mountain,” Kevin said. “Like, what did they think? That they could go from climbing artificial holds on a theme park wall to scaling Cannon?”

Bruce picked up the thread, his speech labored, as if heavy meds were kicking in. “We couldn’t pass them, so we played it slow. We thought we could still beat the storm, but it was on us like”—Bruce’s weak swooping motion didn’t do justice to a raging storm—“and we just did the best we could.”

“Until the guys who were in over their heads literally cut loose an avalanche onto us,” Kevin said.

I hoped Kevin and the slow team would never meet again.

“Rocks and snow. Very nice,” Bruce added.

“I was belaying, almost out of the way, tucked into a corner with enough of an overhang, so nothing major happened to me,” Kevin said. “Bruce was next to me, but more exposed.”

I guessed a broken leg, a dislocated shoulder, and rope burns were nothing to write home about.

“Eduardo was leading and got the full brunt,” Bruce said. “We figure he fell at least a hundred feet. He was over fifty feet above us when the avalanche knocked him down and ripped his axes and crampons from the ice. Then some of his gear zippered and failed as the rope went tight.”

Kevin picked up the story again as the two men seemed to be reliving a nightmarish moment. “We watched him
slide and tumble down the ice. He came to a stop below us. Luckily I was securely anchored and the rope wasn’t cut by any sharp rocks.”

“He just missed a nasty outcrop of rocks,” Bruce said. “Snow was packed into his mouth and throat, but we got to him in time to clear his airway so he could breathe.”

“We did what we could, put on every piece of clothing we had, and waited.”

I let out my own breath.

“Bad scene for Eduardo,” Kevin said. “But the doctors up there are used to accidents like this, so he’s in good hands.”

“And…woo hoo…you two are here to tell the tale,” Irene said.

“Ready to climb again,” Bruce said.

One of the crutches slipped from my hand and landed on Bruce’s shoulder.

“Oops,” I said.

As we approached the helipad, I looked around again at the unfamiliar surroundings of Mercy Hospital, its grottos and angelic statuary meant to offer respite and compassion. Having Bruce safely back gave me a small measure of hope that things could be peaceful again down in Henley, Massachusetts.

I sneaked a look at my phone to see if by any chance Virgil had reported in by email. Maybe Daryl had been located and taken in. For all I knew, he was among us in New Hampshire, even at Mercy, posing as a temporary IT consultant on his way to Montreal.

I wondered if I’d ever have closure if Daryl was never found. Virgil had reported that it was “highly likely” it was Daryl who’d planted the bug in my den in an attempt to track the money, and that had to do for now. I made a note to ask Virgil the statistics on missing criminals.

I scrolled through notices of messages from Chelsea, Hannah, and Fran, all of which could be handled later. Nothing from Virgil.

One email that would never have stood out before last weekend was listed with a subject line “Unpaid Beneficiary—Urgent We Hear From You.”

From a Charlotte wannabe-scammer? I deleted it immediately and emptied the trash.

I sent a quick text to Ariana and an email to Virgil with updates on Bruce that I knew they’d be looking for.

Two young women—candy stripers without the pink-and-white uniforms, I guessed—loaded the climbers’ gear onto the aircraft.

“Last call for Flight eight ninety-six to Henley,” Ernie shouted.

For now it was going to have to be enough to have closure on my boyfriend’s ice-climbing trip. Not complete closure, however. I knew that once all the guys woke up and were on the mend, it would be a while before we stopped hearing stories of what had happened on the mountain.

We flew back to Henley without much chatter, as both patients fell sound asleep under Irene’s watchful eye. From the front seat, I kept looking back to make sure both men were breathing. Every time I did, Irene gave me an understanding smile and a thumbs-up.

I’d given Virgil a quick follow-up call after my email and he was waiting at the airfield with a van and driver. The vehicle was something between a true ambulance and a soccer mom’s minivan with a few medical embellishments. I never thought to ask how all these logistics had been worked out. Perhaps all law enforcement officers and all transportation-related personnel, by land or sea or air, were connected somehow and had only to tap into a network to plan a journey.

I doubted it was that simple and once again thanked Virgil and Ernie and Irene for setting up the trip. Virgil had even thought to retrieve my car from campus and used it to lead the van to my house.

We’d worked out a plan in which Kevin—who was
“between girlfriends,” as he put it—would stay at my house, along with Bruce, who gave me no argument. It was either my little cottage or a crowded rehab center two towns over.

Kevin’s residency in my home would be short-lived, lasting until his mother arrived tomorrow to stay with him while he recuperated in his own apartment.

Bruce’s stay was another story. I knew how my mother felt when as a child I’d disappear into a bookstore in the mall without telling her. She’d be so relieved when she found me, but very cranky that I’d put her through the worry.

My mother got over things like that very quickly, but there was no telling how long I’d be cranky.

If the patients weren’t ready to be awake and social, it was too bad for them, because Ariana had worked her magic and, even with barely a moment’s notice, had put together a party of sorts at my house.

Takeout containers from the major ethnic food groups lined my kitchen island. Chinese, Italian, Mexican, and French, the last from a new heat-it-and-eat-it place in downtown Henley.

She’d also made up the couch for Kevin and the guest room for Bruce.

“Guess I’ll have to sleep at home tonight,” she said, adjusting a handmade banner she’d stretched across the doorway between my kitchen and the hallway.

“Welcome Home Bruce!” it read, with a hastily added “and Kevin!” at the bottom.

Virgil enjoyed passing his beer in front of Bruce and Kevin and reminding them they couldn’t mix meds and alcohol. “Just one advantage of staying at sea level,” he teased.

Adrenaline kicked in and overpowered the meds while the guys told their stories again to Virgil and Ariana. Fran stopped by, and they recounted their exploits. Each time I heard the tale, I picked up a few new details, like the fact
that Bruce had suffered frostbite in his toes as well as his fingers, and Kevin had endured a head wound when his helmet was crushed by a large rock.

No one seemed to care whether the facts as reported by the victims were true or not, as they seemed to take on embellishments with each telling.

I couldn’t help thinking of Eduardo, Jenna, and Todd and wishing they were with us to celebrate a successful rescue. I debated calling Jenna and decided to wait until she was ready to initiate the contact. I knew Bruce had other ways of finding out how Eduardo was doing.

The final event was the signing of the casts, with as many acronyms as words. Ernie informed us laypeople that the NYD he wrote stood for “Not Yet Diagnosed” and Irene’s NWB meant “Non-Weight-Bearing.” Virgil said he couldn’t decide between IP for “Injured Party” and ASB for “Antisocial Behavior.” Ariana simply drew an angel and wrote, “Guarding you” next to it.

Before she left, Ariana asked me how I’d liked my lunch surprise. I was embarrassed to tell her that the goodie bag had been the victim of the impromptu helicopter ride to New Hampshire. I had no idea where the food was now—maybe being crushed by aircraft wheels on the Henley airfield.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “What was the surprise?”

“No big deal. I made you cookies in the shape of dollar signs.”

It was just as well I hadn’t eaten with Marty.

Fran, who’d passed on the cast art project, generously offered to continue to cover for me on campus.

“You’ve got your hands full here,” she said, pointing to wheelchairs, crutches, ice bags, a home blood-pressure monitor, and the piles of pillows, blankets, and towels, out of place in my kitchen. Evidence that my home had turned into a hospital ward. “On the other hand, you may need to get out of here tomorrow.”

I nodded. “I’ll see you on campus.”

*     *     *

From the way the athletic Kevin hoisted himself from his wheelchair to the couch in my den, I figured he’d had some practice.