Angel Interrupted (9 page)

“Except you’re the best shot in the department,” Peggy offered. “It wouldn’t have been you lying on that carpet.”

Maggie looked at her friend. “Peggy, when I was in the house, I felt . . .” She hesitated.

“What?” Peggy asked. “Go with it.”

“I felt this sense of betrayal,” Maggie said. “It sounds silly, I know.”

Yes,
I exulted. She had picked up on it, too. Or maybe she had picked up on me. Maybe I had helped.

“It’s not silly,” Peggy said firmly. “I felt it, too.”

“Like someone she loved had betrayed her?”

“Exactly,” Peggy said.

“Like someone who loved her had killed her,” Maggie said sadly.

“Ah, Maggie.” Peggy was her senior by three decades.

“When you get as old as I am, you will know one thing for sure: people kill the people they love all the time.”

“You’re right,” Maggie acknowledged. “And, god knows, I know that.”

Peggy was staring at her oddly.

“What?” Maggie said. “Spit it out.”

“Hypnosis,” Peggy said firmly.

“Hypnosis?”

“If that poor schmuck in there actually saw something, I’d put him under and get it out of him quickly, before Calvano buries everything under a mountain of fear.”

“You really think that will work?”

“We used it a lot during the eighties when there was a spate of carjackings around here. We got better descriptions and a few license plates. It helped with a murder in ’97 and a couple of rapes the same year. A few other times, too.”

“Why not recently?” Maggie asked.

“Gonzales thinks of it as hocus-pocus, and evidence gathered through hypnosis is not necessarily admissible in court. But the woman we worked with still lives in town. She’s good. She has a private therapy practice and is a certified forensic hypnosis specialist. Plus, she helped me quit smoking.” Peggy smiled and there it was again: her signature smear of orange lipstick on her teeth. I had come to love that smear.

Maggie shrugged. “I can give it a try.”

“I’d do it before the feds get here if I was you,” Peggy suggested. “You won’t have a say in it after that.”

“How did this place ever run without you?” Maggie asked.

“It’s never had to,” Peggy admitted with a laugh.

Maggie stared at the green dinosaur in Peggy’s hands. “Do you really think you’ll get something off it?”

“I have to,” Peggy said simply. “Calvano’s getting nowhere.”

And with that, she left Maggie to clean up Calvano’s mess, disappearing down the hall toward her lab, where evidence was orderly and answers were logical and whole new worlds awaited her beneath the lens of her beloved microscope.

Maggie reached Gonzales at the exact same time that Martin’s lawyer finally made it to the interrogation room. She reentered the observation area just in time to see the lawyer say to Calvano, “This interrogation is over.”

Gonzales sighed.

“He wasn’t getting anywhere anyway, sir,” Maggie offered in consolation.

Gonzales looked at her intently. “Give me good news.” “I think this guy is legit,” Maggie said, nodding toward Martin. The poor slob had started to sweat like a seal in a sauna, but he also looked completely dumbfounded at his good fortune: he had a lawyer, a real one, who had rescued him just as he realized he had truly screwed the pooch by not listening to Noni’s advice. There was conferring, cards were passed, hands shook. Calvano was pouting, as usual.

“He was sounding the alarm about some guy in the park before any of this took place,” Maggie told Gonzales. “He might have seen something important. Not just about the missing kid, but maybe the nurse, too.”

Gonzales looked interested. “What are you suggesting?”

Maggie took a deep breath. “Hypnosis.”

His smile disappeared.

“Sir, the department has used it before, and there’s a very good, certified specialist here in town. Her testimony has been accepted in court before. I’m not looking for that, though. We just need something, anything, from this Martin guy to narrow it down. Maybe with some help he can give us a good description—or, just as important, a more
objective
description—of the man he saw. It might tell us whether the man in the park was a real threat. Or maybe Martin saw a car, or a license plate that leads us somewhere. I’d take anything. I don’t have a clue, literally, and neither does Calvano.”

“I’m not a believer, Gunn,” was all Gonzales said. He turned his back on her and stared wistfully through the observation glass. Martin was being hoisted upright by his lawyer, who was angry at Calvano and giving him a lecture about Fifth Amendment rights for any cameras that might be rolling.

Gonzales was distracted, or he would never have thought he’d get away with saying no to Maggie. It was like waving a red flag at a bull.

“I’ll make you a deal,” she said sweetly, which told me she was up to something, even if Gonzales missed it.

He turned to look at her. She held his gaze.

Gonzales gave up first. “Let’s hear the deal.”

“I’ll swap you a polygraph for hypnosis.”

“Pardon?” Gonzales looked amused.

“I know you like your polygraphs,” Maggie explained. “If I can convince that poor schlep in there to take one, and if he passes, will you consent to one hypnosis session? I’m offering you one quasi-scientific method for another.”

“All right, Gunn,” Gonzales said. He always called her “Gunn” in front of others. “You’re on. But good luck convincing the suit his client should take a polygraph.”

“No worries, sir,” Maggie said confidently. “I can do that.”

And she did. She started by humiliating Calvano the moment she entered the interrogation room. Only slightly, mind you, and not nearly enough for me, but enough for Robert Michael Martin and his lawyer to feel a little vindicated.

“I’m taking over,” she announced to Calvano, turning her back on him dismissively. I was close enough to catch the wink she gave her partner. Calvano saw it, too, but he was such a dumbass, it took him a few seconds to process it. Once he did, he mumbled, “Fine,” and stalked from the room.

“Sorry about that,” Maggie said to Martin, throwing him her hundred-watt smile. “Everyone gets on edge when a little kid goes missing.”

“Well, of course,” Martin stammered. “It’s the worst possible thing that could happen.” He stared at Maggie, worried about where she was going with the whole thing. He did not look as worried as his lawyer, though. Maggie read the mood in the room and changed directions.

“Here’s the deal,” Maggie said, ignoring the lawyer and talking directly to Martin. “I believe you, and I need your help.”

“You need my help?” Martin asked eagerly.

“Yes. I’m working the case of the murdered nurse and my partner . . .”—she dropped her voice to make it clear she thought her partner was an idiot, which probably wasn’t hard—“well, he’s in change of the missing boy case.”

The lawyer looked scandalized at the thought of Calvano being in charge of anything. I guess word about Calvano had gotten out in the legal community.

“Until,” Maggie added.

“Until what?” the lawyer demanded.

“Until later tonight went the feds arrive and take over and all hell breaks loose.”

Martin looked alarmed. So did his lawyer. “As in the FBI?” Martin asked.

“At the very least. They’ll be taking over the missing boy case. It’ll be out of our hands at that point.”

“What are you suggesting?” the lawyer asked.

“He takes a polygraph,” Maggie said quickly, “for screening purposes only. Nothing will be used in court, you have my word.”

“Screening for what?” the lawyer asked. Martin looked mystified.

“If he passes the poly, I want to bring in a hypnotist.”

“Cool!” Martin said before his lawyer could react.

“Not
cool,” the lawyer said firmly.

“Listen to me,” Maggie said earnestly, once again addressing herself directly to Martin. She knew his type. He wanted to be a hero. He wanted to help. He wanted his quiet, uneventful life to have meaning. She looked deep into his eyes, and I felt him falter. “I really need your help,” Maggie said softly. “It’s something only you can do.”

The lawyer made a sound that seemed a lot like a snort, but she ignored him. “You were in the park yesterday and this morning,” she said. “Do you know what that means?”

“It means your idiot partner considers my client the number-one suspect in the boy’s disappearance,” the lawyer said drily.

“It means that you are in a position not only to help with the missing boy’s case—”

“It’s
Tyler
,” Martin interrupted.

“I beg your pardon?”

“The little boy’s name is Tyler. Tyler Matthews.”

Maggie blinked. “I’m sorry. You’re absolutely right. My apologies.” She smiled at him, and Martin melted some more. “You can help me find whoever took Tyler, but that’s not all. You may have seen who killed Fiona Harker and not even realize it.”

“The nurse?” Martin said eagerly.

Maggie nodded. “You are in a unique position, my friend. You could help us with two cases, not just one.”

Martin stared back at her, trying to engage his brain. I don’t think women looked at him like that very often.

“The only thing is,” Maggie prodded him, “you need to do this before the feds take over. They won’t want any part of this. They have their own ways. If you want to help us, you need to do it now. They’re not going to care what you saw and they are most definitely not going to let you help. I’ll be lucky if I get to help.”

The lawyer looked from Maggie to his client, and he knew when he was beat. “I need a word with my client,” he said firmly. Maggie left the room.

Gonzales was already outside in the hallway, shaking his head.

“What, sir?” she asked defensively.

“He’s going to agree,” Gonzales predicted.

“I know,” Maggie said matter-of-factly. “Is there a problem?”

“Not if you keep those big, brown eyes to yourself.” With that, he walked away.

“Okay,” the lawyer announced, popping his head into the hall. “He’ll do it. But I’m to be present at all times.”

“Deal,” Maggie said.

“But my client gets to go home first and put on clean clothes and take a deep breath,” the lawyer added. “You can send someone with him if you need to.”

“Deal,” Maggie said quickly. “I’ll set it up for early evening.”

“Keep your partner away from him in the meantime,” the lawyer added.

“No problem,” Maggie agreed with a smile.

Maggie had a few hours free until she had to return to the station, so she headed back to the hospital in hopes of questioning some nurses before they started their shifts. I decided to make my own way over in hopes of picking up something useful on the missing boy along the way. I detoured down side streets, into neighborhoods, hoping to pick up a trace of Tyler Matthews. My search uncovered nothing. But I’d had to try. After a while I gave up and drifted over to the hospital to see if Maggie had done any better gleaning information about Fiona Harker.

I found Maggie in a staff lounge, talking to two tearful women who had clearly known Fiona Harker. They were dressed in fresh scrubs and waiting for their shift to begin. One was from Trinidad, I guessed, given her accent and the fact that half the nurses in our town had been recruited from there. “Fiona was one of the good ones,” she was saying in a musical lilt. “She never crossed nobody, ever.” The other nurse was a pale, little bit of a thing with curly brown hair. But she must have had strength in there somewhere if she was a nurse. I’d never met a weak one.

I loved nurses. They were the one good thing about the hospital. Even though you ran across the occasional gorgon like the one who had turned Maggie away earlier, most of them led lives connected to dozens of other lives and reveled in their connections. There was such beauty in their willingness to be a part of other lives. I had seen people in great pain have that pain eased when a nurse walked into the room; put a hand on their brow; and, without even realizing it, took some of the pain onto themselves. Their ability to accept the humanness of others put the rest of us to shame.

Of course, those bonds could hurt when they were severed. The two nurses dabbed at their eyes with tissues as they answered Maggie’s questions. Taken together, their comments allowed a portrait of the dead nurse to emerge:

No, Fiona had not been involved with anyone. They would have known if she had. It was impossible to keep your personal life private at the hospital.

No, they had never even heard of her being involved with anyone in the past, which was odd when you stopped to think about it, given how lovely she was. But then Fiona had always been a very private person, and she did not gossip. She did ask people questions about their lives and she was a wonderful listener. It was only after she’d left that you realized she hadn’t offered any information about herself.