Daddy's Gone a Hunting (21 page)

“I have seen many instances where the person who appears to be in a coma actually is aware of almost everything that is going on around them,” Father Martin said, as he opened the black leather case that he had carried with him into the room.

Father Martin took out his folded stole from the case, kissed it, and placed it around his neck. Then he opened a small jar of sacred oil. “This is pure olive oil blessed by the bishop,” he told Hannah. “Olive oil was specially chosen by the Church because of the healing and strengthening effects that are its characteristics in everyday life.”

Hannah watched as he dipped his finger in the oil and then made the sign of the Cross on Kate’s forehead and hands. Healing
and strengthening, she thought as she listened to the words of the prayers Father Martin was offering over Kate. A sense of peace came over her and for the first time she began to believe that Kate might recover fully and be able to explain why she was in the complex with Gus that night.

Maybe I’m being too hard on Dad, she thought. From the beginning he’s been afraid that Kate set that fire. Maybe it isn’t just the insurance he’s worried about. Maybe he’s frantic at the thought that if Kate gets better and is found guilty of setting the fire, she faces many years in prison. Maybe I should give him a break.

When she and Father Martin left Kate a few minutes later, she stopped at the desk of the intensive care unit. The nurse, who by now was on a first-name basis with her, said, “Hannah, tell me you’re going home.”

“Yes, I am,” Hannah said. “To shower and change. The fashion business is fast-moving, and so I can’t stay away from the office for too long. But looking at Kate now, I’m not afraid to leave her.”

Father Martin waited while she retrieved her suitcase and coat from the closet and they left the hospital together. At the door, she said, “I’m going to be honest. I haven’t been very nice to my father since all this happened. It’s a long story but you’ve given me some things to think about and I do hope you get together with him soon. It will make all the difference to him, I know.”

47

T
im Fleming was the supervising fire marshal to whom Frank Ramsey and Nathan Klein reported. Over the past five days since the explosion at the Connelly complex, they had been submitting daily detailed updates to him regarding the investigation. On Tuesday morning, both refreshed by a good night’s sleep, they were in his office at Fort Totten.

Fleming, a solidly built man in his late fifties with iron-gray hair and a poker face, had thoroughly examined the reports and went straight to the salient facts of the case. His well-modulated voice was deep and resonant. “This Connelly guy and his plant manager let a wrecked van sit in their parking lot for five years? Be interesting to see if their drunken driver really did hit only a tree and not some poor guy on a bicycle.”

“The exterior of the van was thoroughly checked for any sign of blood or human tissue,” Klein reassured his boss. “He did hit a tree. It was an elm and from what they can tell, it was already dead.”

“So the drunk driver saved the homeowner from maybe having the tree crash on his house in a storm,” Fleming observed. “What a nice guy.”

Ramsey and Klein smiled. Their boss was known for that kind of comment. But immediately Fleming was all business again.
“Jamie Gordon’s notebook was found in the van, but that doesn’t mean that she brought it there herself.”

“No, it doesn’t.”

“And the vagrant who was squatting there doesn’t have a record?”

“None that we can find. The fingerprints in the van didn’t match up to anybody with a criminal history.”

“Okay. We’ll call a press conference for noon to give out the new information that a vagrant may have been on the premises at the time of the explosion. I understand that the descriptions of the homeless people listed in the notebook are already being circulated to all the precincts in the city.”

Klein and Ramsey nodded.

“The cops know the local street people. I wouldn’t be surprised if they don’t round up a few of them for us pretty fast. The commissioner has decided that we’ll pass out copies of that family picture to the media. But will continue to say nothing to the press about Jamie Gordon’s notebook. The guys at the crime lab know that her name is not even to be whispered.”

“Absolutely,” Ramsey confirmed.

“Telling the media about the vagrant will give them enough to chew on,” Fleming said. “They’ve all but convicted the Connelly daughter who was injured as having set the explosion with her buddy, the Schmidt guy.”

He stood up, indicating that the meeting was over. “Twelve o’clock sharp,” he said, then added, “You guys are doing a good job, which, incidentally, does not surprise me.”

Three hours later the media conference became hot breaking news when the information about a vagrant possibly being present at the time of the explosion was announced. Copies of the picture of the
young couple and baby were handed out. After nearly a week of speculation that Kate Connelly and Gus Schmidt were arsonists, the new angle was fresh meat for reporters to keep the story on the front pages.

By two o’clock, the picture taken more than forty years ago in a modest ranch-style home on Staten Island was all over the Internet.

Frank Ramsey was more optimistic than Nathan Klein that the picture would be tied to the vagrant. “My bet is that it got thrown in the garbage when somebody’s house was cleaned out,” Nathan predicted. “I mean, when a friend of my wife, Sarah, Kat LeBlanc, recently lost her grandmother, there were drawers full of old pictures. Most of them were snapshots, some eighty and ninety years old, of her grandmother’s cousins, people Kat couldn’t even identify. Sarah asked her if she was going to bring all that stuff home and drag it up to the attic so that her kids could have the job of throwing it out in thirty or forty years.”

“What did her friend do?” Frank asked, remembering that his own mother still had boxes of pictures of long-departed relatives.

“Kat kept some of the ones that had her grandmother in them. Then she picked out a few more where she could tell who the people were, and tore up the rest.”

“I still say the picture in the van is going to give us a lead,” Frank told him, “and I’m itching to pay Lottie Schmidt another visit. The report from the New York IRS should be in sometime today. If Gus Schmidt did pay taxes on a winning lottery ticket, then, as my father used to say, ‘I’ll eat my hat.’ ”

“Your hat is safe,” Klein assured him. “I’ll give the tax guys another call and tell them that, this time, ‘urgent’ means urgent.”

48

S
hirley Mercer, an attractive black woman in her early fifties, was the social worker who was assigned to visit Clyde in the hospital. She arrived at his bedside in a ward in Bellevue late Tuesday afternoon. He had been bathed and shaved and his hair had been trimmed. He was suffering from severe bronchitis but in the nineteen hours he had been there, his temperature had returned to normal and he had eaten well. He was about to be discharged and Shirley had arranged for him to be taken to a room in one of the city-run hotels.

Shirley had studied Clyde’s file before she went in to visit him. The staff at the shelter where he had collapsed knew very little about him. He had only stayed there occasionally and each time had given a different last name. They believed that his first name was correct. He always said he was Clyde. But the last names always varied. Clyde Hunt, Clyde Hunter, Clyde Holling, Clyde Hastings. Hastings was the name he had given at the shelter last night when he had regained consciousness and was waiting for the ambulance.

Some of the other regulars at the shelter had told the director that they had seen him around for years. “He comes and goes by himself. He doesn’t want to talk to anyone. He gets mad if someone bunks near him on the street. You almost never saw him at night for the past couple of years. Everyone figured that he had found a place to hole up.”

Another street person had claimed that on Saturday night, Clyde had punched out Sammy when Sammy tried to sleep in the same driveway.

But he has no police record, Shirley noted, and apparently has been homeless for many years. He had told the nurse that he was sixty-eight years old, which seemed about right. But one thing that is certain, Shirley thought, is that if he stays on the streets he’ll die of pneumonia.

Armed with that information, she had gone to Clyde’s bedside. His eyes were closed. Although the skin on his face was blotched, and the lines between his nostrils and his lips were deep, she could see that when he was younger he must have been a good-looking man.

She touched his hand. His eyes flew open and his head sprang up from the pillow. “I’m so sorry, Mr. Hastings,” she said, her voice gentle. “I didn’t mean to startle you. How are you feeling?”

Clyde sank back as he looked at the kindly expression in the eyes of the woman who was standing beside his bed. Then he began to cough, a deep, rasping cough that shook his chest and his back. Finally he was able to again sink back into the pillow.

“Not so hot,” he said.

“It’s a good thing you were brought here last night,” Shirley said. “Otherwise, by today, you’d be having a full-blown case of pneumonia.”

Clyde vaguely remembered that he had fainted just as he got to the shelter. And then another thought rushed into his mind. “My cart! My stuff! Where is it?”

“They have it for you,” Shirley said quickly. “Clyde, is Hastings your last name?”

“Yeah. Why?”

“Sometimes you have given other names.”

“Sometimes I get confused.”

“I see. Clyde, do you have any family?”

“No.”

“No one? A brother or sister?”

Clyde thought of the picture of Peggy and Skippy and him. For a moment his eyes glistened with tears.

“You do have someone, don’t you?” Shirley asked, sympathetically.

“That was a long time ago.”

Shirley Mercer could see that there was no use talking to Clyde about a possible family connection. “Were you ever in the military?” she asked. “According to your medical report, you have scars on your chest and back. You are about the age of a Vietnam veteran.”