Cold Betrayal (13 page)

An athletic bag was stationed at his feet. He reached down into it and pulled out a clear Ziploc plastic bag. When he handed it over to Sister Anselm, she saw it contained long coils of braided and blood-soaked blond hair. The braids had been clipped off close to the scalp, but whoever had cut them off had first secured the top of each braid with a rubber band just below the cut line.

As Sister Anselm studied the braids, she was thrown back in time, thinking of another girl, years earlier, one who had also worn her long blond hair in braids just like this. Drawing a deep breath and forcing the memory aside, she turned back to the distraught young man seated next to her.

“She was unconscious by the time they cut off her braids?” Sister Anselm asked.

David nodded.

“Presumably, then,” Sister Anselm concluded, “the EMT was an Indian.”

David gave her a puzzled look. “I’m pretty sure she was, but how did you know that?”

“This is probably waist-long hair when it isn’t braided,” Sister Anselm explained. “When Indians used to be shipped off to boarding schools, the matrons cut their hair off first thing, whether they wanted it cut or not. Keeping the victim’s hair from being lost was an act of kindness on the EMT’s part.”

“It’s covered with blood,” David pointed out. “I probably should have given it to the cops when they showed up, but they started giving me the third degree, and I forgot all about it. The cops didn’t get there until after the ambulance had pulled away. They took the position initially that I was at fault—that I was someone who knew the girl and had run her down deliberately. Either that, or else I was drunk as a skunk. They gave me a Breathalyzer and were blown away when they saw the results, because I don’t drink, not at all, except for too much coffee.

“Anyway, after hassling me for the better part of two hours, they finally let me go, but they impounded my car. They said that since this might turn into a fatality, they had to confiscate my vehicle until their investigation was complete. There was no way I could go on up to Vermillion Cliffs to meet my friends without my car, so I caught a ride with some of the people who had stopped to help and came here.”

“To the hospital?”

He nodded.

“There’s more than one hospital here in town. How did you know which one?”

“The EMT who gave me the braids told me. At the time, I think she still thought I was the husband.”

“And you came here because?”

David shrugged and rubbed his eyes, bleary with fatigue. “Because I needed to know if she and the baby were okay. It wasn’t my fault, but still, I’m the one who hit them. The problem is, nobody here will tell me anything. They asked me if I was her next of kin. When I told them no, they said there was some law that made it impossible for them to give out any information.”

“HIPAA,” Sister Anselm murmured.

“What?”

“That’s the name of the law,” she explained. “It’s called the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. One of the requirements prevents health-care providers from giving out a patient’s information to anyone other than an individual the patient has designated to receive it.”

“So being here is pretty much useless,” David said despairingly, “because they’re not going to tell me anything anyway.” He paused. “She’s just a kid, Sister, probably still in high school. What was she doing out there on her own, alone in the middle of the night in the middle of nowhere? And what about the jerk who knocked her up? Where’s he? The father must be some kind of a bad guy, because that’s what she said to me out there on the road. She begged me to keep anyone from taking either her or her baby back—wherever the hell back is!”

Sister Anselm studied the distraught young man and heard the outrage in his voice. As a patient advocate, she had taken a vow of confidentiality—one that had come long before the mid-1990s when someone in Washington, DC, had made HIPAA the law of the land. But this young man, related or not, was the only one here—the only one taking responsibility for and caring about what had happened. Depending on the seriousness of Jane Doe’s injuries, for now and perhaps for the rest of her young life, David Upton was the closest thing she had to a next of kin. Sister Anselm was still holding the braids.

“Now,” she asked, “do you want these back or should I put them with the rest of her effects?”

“With her effects, of course,” he agreed at once. “I’m sure they shouldn’t have been given to me in the first place.”

“I believe that, for whatever reason, they were given to exactly the right person. Now then, Mr. Upton,” Sister Anselm said, standing up, “you should go home. Try to get some rest. How far do you live from here?”

“Not far, just a few blocks off campus. I can walk. But what if something bad happens?” David asked. “What if she doesn’t make it? I won’t even know.”

“Give me your phone number,” Sister Anselm said, pulling her own iPhone out of her pocket. “I promise, if her condition changes, I’ll keep you apprised of what’s going on.”

“But I already told you,” David countered. “I’m not . . . you know . . . any kind of relative.”

“You are now,” Sister Anselm said with a smile as she finished keying his number into her phone. “Because I said so.”

“You can do that? Didn’t you just say that giving me any information about her is against the law?”

“Yes, that is what I said,” Sister Anselm conceded, “but I can also give you the information if I deem it necessary. As of this moment and as far as I’m concerned, you are my patients’ only known next of kin. That goes for both of them.”

David nodded. “Thank you,” he said, “although I’m not sure how you can get away with it.”

Sister Anselm patted the gold crucifix that dangled from the gold chain around her neck. “You might say, Mr. Upton,” she told him with a conspiratorial wink, “that I’ve been granted a waiver in that regard by someone much higher up the chain of command.”

10

A
t half past ten the next morning, Ali stumbled into the kitchen in search of her first cup of coffee. She had obviously slept too late to suit Bella, who was already curled up in a ball on the small round dog bed next to the kitchen counter near where Leland stood rolling out rounds of dough for pasties. He smiled a good morning and then nodded in the direction of Ali’s cell phone.

“When I came into the house this morning and realized that Sister Anselm had decamped overnight,” he said, “it occurred to me that you’d probably had a less than restful night. I took the liberty of coming into your room, liberating your cell phone from its charger, turning off the ringer on your bedside phone, and taking Bella along with me.”

“Thank you,” Ali said, pouring a cup of coffee that wasn’t nearly as fresh as it would have been had she awakened at her usual time. “Sister Anselm was called out to look after someone up in Flagstaff. Once she left the house, I took advantage of being awake that early and had a leisurely conversation with B.”

“I trust all is well with him.”

Ali nodded. “He’s hoping you’ll make meat loaf for dinner when he’s home for the weekend.”

“Always a pleasure,” Leland said. “By the way, there’ve been a couple of calls already this morning—one from Stuart Ramey and the other from Sister Anselm. I told them both that you’d call back.”

“I will,” Ali answered, “but not until I’ve had some coffee and gotten my head screwed on straight.”

She took her coffee over to the kitchen window and stared out at a landscape made unfamiliar by snow. The sky was blue overhead, but the temperatures were still cold enough that the sun had yet to melt the five inches or so of snow that had fallen. Across the valley, the bright red cliffs were made all the brighter by being framed in white.

Slipping onto one of the kitchen chairs, she glanced at the small television set that was built into a cabinet slot just above the microwave. It was tuned to a news channel with the local weatherman standing in front of a map featuring lots of blue that designated frigid weather in places not generally accustomed to it.

“I’m afraid it’s been all weather all the time this morning,” Leland explained. “The storm that came through here last night dropped measurable snow in Phoenix for the first time since 2006. The time before that was 1937. Now that same storm is causing trouble in southern New Mexico and on into Texas.”

Leland put down the rolling pin and wiped his hands on the front of his flour-dusted apron. “Now, what would you like for breakfast? A cheese-baked egg perhaps? On a cold day like this, that’s what’s called for—something hot from the oven. That’s why I decided today was just the day to make pasties.”

Ali turned away from the TV set as the coverage switched over to images of a multivehicle pileup that had occurred in Texas an hour or so earlier. In her days as a television reporter in Chicago, Ali had covered plenty of those kinds of incidents. Other than the exact death toll, she already knew too much about what would come next.

“Cheese-baked eggs sound wonderful,” she said. “Will you join me?”

Leland shook his head. “No, thanks. I had my breakfast hours ago.”

“How long before the eggs will be ready?” Ali asked.

“Twenty-five minutes from start to finish, and I’ll have a new pot of coffee for you by then, too.”

“All right,” she said, abandoning her almost empty cup and grabbing her phone off the counter. “I’ll go shower and get ready to meet the day.”

By the time she returned to the kitchen—showered, dressed, blow-dried, and reasonably made up—a single place had been set for her at the kitchen table. A small plate held a still steaming ramekin full of Leland Brooks’s crusty-topped egg concoction. There was toast and jam and freshly squeezed orange juice as well as an empty cup and saucer, which was filled with coffee the moment she sat down. As soon as she did so, Bella abandoned her bed and came over to sit on the floor beside her in hopes that a treat or two might come her way.

“You do spoil me,” Ali said as Leland returned to the counter to finish making the pasties.

“Isn’t that why you keep me on?” he asked. “To spoil you?”

Ali nodded. For years Leland Brooks’s presence in Ali’s life had been an ongoing blessing, but she also understood that the only reason—the real reason—he was still toiling away in her kitchen was that he needed something to do. Leland was a man who required a purpose in his life. For right now, spoiling Ali Reynolds was it.

Other than a month-long vacation earlier in the year when his long-lost friend, Thomas Blackfield, had flown over from England to tour the U.S., Leland hardly ever took any time off. By the time the visit was over and Thomas flew back home, Leland had been eager to get back to work. Ali hadn’t the slightest doubt that putting him out to pasture permanently would be the end of him. Leland Brooks was someone who wouldn’t do well in retirement.

“I talked to Sister Anselm briefly while I was getting out of the shower,” Ali said, cutting through the cheesy crust on top of the dish and sticking her spoon into the whole hard-cooked egg hiding underneath. “She asked if I could come by the hospital to see her later today. I told her that would depend on road conditions. The Cayenne is four-wheel drive, but just because it’s roadworthy doesn’t mean everybody else’s vehicles are ready for winter driving.”

“Jesus has already cleared and sanded our driveway,” Leland said, referring to Jesus Gonzales, someone Ali had hired to handle the heavier outdoor work that was, in Ali’s opinion, beyond Leland’s physical capabilities. “He says that once you get down off Manzanita, the roads are fine.”

“All right, then,” Ali said. “As soon as I’ve finished breakfast and made a few more calls, I’ll head out.”

Stuart Ramey called before she managed to finish the last bite of egg. “I understand you spoke to B.,” he said. “He mentioned that I was cleared to dispatch Joe as far as he’s concerned, but not until I get the go-ahead from you. The thing is, Joe has a clear spot in his schedule today and tomorrow, so if you’d like him to handle this now, we need to get the ball rolling.”

“Sorry,” Ali said. “I’m afraid I overslept. I can’t give you the all clear until I talk it over with Betsy Peterson. I’ll get back to you as soon as I do.”

That was what Ali had been thinking about the whole time she was showering and getting dressed—about how she should approach Betsy Peterson and what she should or shouldn’t say. Ali would, in effect, be casting suspicion on Betsy’s nearest and dearest, and Ali wasn’t at all sure how that conversation was going to go.

Leaving the table, she poured another cup of coffee and took it with her into the library, clearing her mind as she went. The gas-log fire in the library was already burning. Her newspaper and yesterday’s mail, both brought up the driveway by Jesus, were laid out on the nearest end table. Settling into her chair, she sorted through the mail, setting the bills aside for B. to handle when he was home and consigning the advertising circulars to the recycle bin. After all, how many 20-percent-off Bed Bath & Beyond coupons did one household need?

Finally, taking her phone in hand, Ali located Betsy Peterson’s number and pushed the Send button. Betsy answered after the second ring and before the third.

“Good morning, Ali,” Betsy said at once. “I hope you don’t mind my addressing you by your first name. That’s how you showed up in my caller ID.”

“Of course not. Calling me Ali is fine.”

Betsy might be in her eighties, but she clearly wasn’t flummoxed by using a cell phone.

“And you can call me Betsy. Now tell me, what have you found out?”

“We’re working on it,” Ali answered. “First off, have you heard anything at all from the local authorities?”

“Yes,” Betsy said. “From what I’ve been told, they’ve determined that whatever happened the other night was an accident of some kind. As far as they’re concerned, I’m nothing but a dotty old woman who needs to have her head examined.”

“When was the last time you spoke to Athena?”

“Just a little while ago, during her planning period.”

“Did she mention my husband’s firm to you?”

“As a matter of fact she did, a security firm of some kind—an old TV show, maybe—
Gunsmoke
,
Have Gun Will Travel,
something like that.”