A Confidential Source (6 page)

He wore that same expression now. Was there some error in my story? Something I’d written but failed to tell the police last
night?

He dropped into a chair behind a desk and gestured for me to sit on one of the straight-back metal seats that felt as if it
was designed to torture prisoners. “You really shouldn’t be writing this stuff in the newspaper,” he said. “You put the case
and yourself in jeopardy.”

“I’m a newspaper reporter.”

“You’re a witness.”

I raised my hands to the ceiling. “It’s not like I planned it this way.”

He looked as if he were about to argue with that, but decided it was futile. He sighed, as if he’d already wasted too many
precious moments arguing with newspaper reporters, and that getting one as a witness was colossally unfair. “I want you to
look at more pictures,” he said.

“Don’t you already have the guy?”

“That’s what we gotta see.”

He explained that the police had chased a white Toyota Camry with a missing taillight and dented fender up Gano Street to
the I-95 entrance, where it had hydroplaned on a puddle. The driver lost control of the car, smashed into the cement abutment,
and catapulted through the windshield. The suspect had been transported to the emergency room at Rhode Island Hospital and
was now lying there unconscious.

I thought of the enormous man in the parka, the hard, evil look in his eyes, and felt a wave of relief: unconscious, as in
lying helpless in a hospital bed. I offered a silent thanks for heavy rain and slick roads.

Because the accident had followed a police chase, it required an official review, which would make Holstrom and the department
less than forthcoming. “Is there any kind of issue with the police chase? Any kind of internal investigation because it ended
in a car accident?”

He looked slightly insulted. “There’s always a review, but we have plenty of witnesses at the scene. The pursuing officers
were well within the speed limit. The driver had an elevated blood-alcohol level and lost control of the car because of the
rain. It’s pretty clear-cut.”

“Is he charged with murder?”

Holstrom shook his head. “Driving while under the influence of alcohol, driving to endanger, and resisting arrest.”

“Did you find anything in the car? Cash? A gun?”

“Can’t give you any details until the forensic report gets back from the URI lab.”

“Can you at least tell me if this guy is a suspect in the Mazursky murder?”

“I just told you, we don’t even have the forensics report back yet.” Holstrom was growing irritated. “Right now, we’ve got
no proof linking this guy directly to the murder.” Then, he reached for a three-ring binder that was at his elbow. He picked
it up, leafed through it, stopped, and pushed the open binder toward me.

I grabbed for it. More than anything, I wanted to give Holstrom his proof. I wanted to find the hulking frame, the mean eyes
that I could still feel boring into me.

“Take your time,” Holstrom said, leaning back in his chair with a
Sports Illustrated.

I scanned the pages of mug shots, mostly Polaroids in plastic sleeves. They were all young men, all with the same black-and-white
rawness to them no matter what race they were. Their expressions varied, from irritated to sullen to exhausted. Intelligence
did not shine on their faces. I finished one book and started another.

“Anyone look familiar?”

I flipped over several more pages and moved on to a second book. Finally, in the back, in the right-hand corner of the second
row, I saw him. He wore a T-shirt instead of a parka and looked like he might be a couple of years younger. But even though
it was just a photograph, I could still feel the mockery, the sneer.

For just a second, my finger froze on the clear vinyl sheath. Then I was jabbing at the Polaroid, pushing the binder across
the desk to Holstrom. “That’s him. That’s the guy I saw in the store.”

“You sure?” Holstrom asked. “Take your time.”

“I saw him—ten, maybe fifteen minutes before the shooting. He was in back, by the dairy case. I startled him. He looked me
straight in the eyes. I got a real good look.”

Holstrom made no comment. A detail man, he dutifully wrote it all down even though we’d gone through some of this the night
before.

“Is that the guy you have in custody?” I asked.

Holstrom pushed the binder back toward me. “You recognize anyone else?”

I’d been so overwhelmed by the sight of the guy in the parka that I had forgotten about the other man in the dairy aisle,
the smaller one in the navy jacket and the gray cap. I’d never seen his face, and wasn’t even sure he’d been with the guy
in the parka, but I dutifully scanned the mug shots again.

One guy on the bottom had dark, curly hair, but it was too much of a stretch to identify him on that one similarity. I flipped
the page back to the guy in the parka. “No. Just this one guy.” I pushed the binder back toward Holstrom again. “Was he in
the car?”

Holstrom shifted his gaze upward, as if just noticing the ceiling tile that hung by a thread.

“Okay. Okay, so you can’t tell me.” If I wanted any information at all, I had to stick to the car accident. “But was the guy
in the car, the white Toyota Camry—the guy driving to endanger—was he alone?”

Holstrom spoke carefully. “The guy in the car was alone.”

I hadn’t realized I’d been holding my breath until I exhaled. If the man I’d seen fleeing the murder was alone in the car
and unconscious in the hospital. If it really was the same man…

I knew then that I had to see his face. I had to make sure that the guy I’d seen last night in front of the dairy case was
the same guy who was now incapacitated in the hospital. Then I could breathe again, I could run on the boulevard without looking
over my shoulder for hulking figures, without imagining threats in every shadow and on every street.

From my short foray into a hospital public-relations career in Boston, I knew that if this guy was a murder suspect, he would
also be under police guard. But I also knew that most hospitals were short staffed on Saturdays and that the visitors’ desk
was often manned by a volunteer. It wouldn’t be hard to sneak into the hospital, but what floor?

“You okay?” Holstrom asked.

“Fine.” I smiled to show the appropriate gratitude, to let him know I knew he was giving me information to allay my fears.
“You said this guy was unconscious?”

He nodded. “Head injury.”

“Did he need surgery?” If he needed surgery, I could limit my search to the surgical floors.

“Yeah. Something to do with relieving pressure in his cranium.”

“Will he survive?”

“They usually do,” he said, with a roll of his eyes.

I pulled out my notebook. It took only a few minutes to jot down the little that Holstrom had confirmed. I found myself wondering
where exactly a police guard would be posted at the hospital—inside the room? Outside in the hall?

“Can you tell me the name of the guy? The
car accident
victim,” I asked.

Holstrom gave me a look, and I realized I’d made a mistake by calling him a victim. This might again imply that the police
cruiser chasing him was somehow at fault. “The reckless, driving-to-endanger guy. The one charged with resisting arrest,”
I clarified.

Holstrom rewarded me with an actual name: Victor Delria, twenty-four years old, of Central Falls.

“Prior arrests?”

“Simple assault and an unarmed robbery, two years ago. Driving under the influence, last year, too.”

“But there’s no official connection to the Mazursky murder?” Sometimes in reporting, you have to ask the same question over
and over, just to clarify.

“The matter is still under investigation.”

I scribbled this in my notepad to show that I would quote him verbatim. When I looked up, I saw another cop standing in the
doorway. The man was dressed casually, in blue jeans and a ski sweater, and was holding a file under his arm, but I could
tell by his posture and by the way Holstrom shifted in his seat that the new cop was of higher rank.

“I’m surprised to see
you
in today,” Holstrom said.

“Just checking in on a few things.” Holstrom introduced him as Detective Major Errico. He was a densely packed man with solid
arms and a lined face. His eyes scanned mine, sizing me up.

“Reporter?”

“The one from last night. At the shooting,” Holstrom said. “Hallie Ahern—new to the
Chronicle.”

“Ah,” Errico said, as if that explained everything. He looked past me to the photo books on the desk. Holstrom tilted his
head slightly. A response of some kind. A communication between them.

“Well, I think we’re about done here,” Holstrom said, standing.

I hesitated to take my cue, but Holstrom’s face was suddenly stony. There was no question, this interview was over. I picked
up my notebook from the table. At the doorway, Detective Major Errico acknowledged my departure with a polite nod, but his
tense stance transmitted impatience. I glanced at the stack of files under his arm. On the outer corner, I saw some lettering.

He instantly tucked the file tighter under his arm. Outside in the hall, I heard the click of the door closing behind me.

With an extraordinary display of confidence, I told the elderly man at the visitors’ desk that I was a social worker who had
left a case file up on the surgical floor. “What floor is that again?”

He looked it up and even gave me a page of printed instructions, which first involved finding the elevator bank.

As I got off the elevator, I spotted a whiteboard with names and room numbers and scanned the list: V. Delria. 603 B. The
elevator was in the exact middle of the floor, with two small nurses’ stations on either side and hallways in almost every
direction. I sauntered past the first nurses’ station as if I already knew where I was going, turning the corner and heading
down the first hallway. Immediately, I could tell the room numbers were going the wrong way, so I backtracked and headed down
a hallway in the opposite direction.

As soon as I saw the police guard sitting on a chair outside the room, all my confidence vanished. Adrenaline started flooding
my veins. What had I been thinking? That I would just barrel right past him?

I passed the police guard, walking purposefully. At the end of the hall, with nowhere else to go, I ventured into one of the
rooms. An older woman was being examined by a man in scrubs. “Sorry,” I said, turning around. “Wrong room.”

If only I had a plan. A plan would be useful. I walked slowly back toward the cop. Someone had pasted Halloween decorations
in the hallway. I halted outside a closet door with a witch on a broomstick flying over a full moon. Facing the door, I squinted,
as if I needed perspective on fine artwork.

I decided that any attempt to cleverly divert the cop from his guard post would likely end up in my arrest. The thing to do
was to identify myself as a brand-new reporter at the
Chronicle,
tell him it was my first big car-accident story and that I’d been assigned to check on the victim’s current medical status.
I had to hope that the room door was open and that I could catch a quick glimpse inside while the cop redirected me to patient
information.

A peek, I told myself, all I needed was a peek.

I was heading slowly down the corridor, past several dirty breakfast trays, when I saw the cop rise from his chair. He folded
his newspaper, put it on the seat, and started walking away from me, toward the elevators. Was he going to lunch? Could a
guard leave his post and go to lunch? Wasn’t that some kind of major cop screwup? A miracle just for me?

Slowly, I walked past Delria’s room, noticing as I did that the door was just slightly ajar. I was wearing a cotton sweater
and black jeans and could feel sweat trickle from my armpits all the way down my sides.

I heard the elevator doors open and shut and walked to the end of the hallway and peeked around. The cop was gone. I turned,
headed straight back to room 603 B, and put my hand on the knob.

I glanced over my shoulder, expecting another cop or a nurse to appear, to grab me by my sweater, pull me away from the door,
curse at me for my audacity. But no one came. No one stopped me, so I swung open the door.

It was a private room, dim, with the blinds closed against the sunlight, and empty except for the patient, presumably Victor
Delria, sleeping in the bed. He was lying on his back, hooked up to an IV. A pile of blankets blocked my view. I needed to
see his face, the sty weighting the one eye. I took a single step inside the hospital room and froze, courage failing me.
The room had a pungent odor, like bacteria in a flesh wound.

What if he woke up? What if he looked right at me? Even unconscious, he was terrorizing me. I told myself that the sooner
I saw his face, the sooner I could get the hell out of here. On a chair by the window, I saw some kind of jacket bunched up
inside a clear plastic bag. The color of the jacket was a muted green khaki.

As I took a step closer to the bed, I became aware of the sound of water running.

Directly to my right, a door clicked open and standing in the doorway of a bathroom was a tall man wearing a blue button-down
shirt tucked into blue jeans and a sports jacket. Our eyes met. There was a moment of puzzled recognition.

It was the guy I’d been flirting with at Barry’s, Matt, the quart-of-milk guy, with the dark eyes and nice smile. Only now
he wasn’t smiling. I was barely inside the room, but he quickly stepped in front of me, deliberately blocking my path to the
patient’s bed. “What are you doing here?” he asked.

What was
he
doing here? I might have asked, but there was an air of authority about him, something official, like maybe he was a plainclothes
cop. It dawned on me that that was why the other cop could leave his post. He had backup. “I just wanted to check—check and
see if this was the guy from Barry’s—the guy from last night.”

He looked at me for a long time as he processed all this. My heart started to pound, remembering my aggressive flirting the
night before. God, this was awkward. Somewhere in his house was a grocery bag with my phone number on it.