Damaged (18 page)

K
ate stared through the windshield of her car at Keane’s Funeral Home. Relief washed through her. She’d made it through the interview without embarrassing herself. It had been strangely cathartic. The changed interior, the more modern, compassionate female funeral director. It had helped erase the memory of the dim room in which Imogen’s smashed body lay, of Mr. O’Brien’s stiff disapproval whenever she arrived.

More than anything else, it had been Mr. O’Brien’s manner toward her sixteen-year-old self that had shown her how much her life had changed. She’d gone from attractive, promising young woman to irresponsible, fatally flawed teen. It had been a swift but shattering fall from grace.

She leaned back in her seat. Her limbs were weak. She hadn’t realized until now that she had half expected to see Mr. O’Brien appear at her elbow as she walked through the funeral home foyer. The fact that he hadn’t, that he no longer owned the business, that she would no longer need to see the censure in his gaze, lifted a weight off her chest she hadn’t been aware of until it was gone.

She’d done what she’d promised to do. She’d tracked
down Karen Fawcett. Everything checked out. That was an even bigger relief. If it hadn’t, she would have had to call the police. And she could just imagine how Ethan’d react to her latest update on her involvement in the MacAdam case.

She dialed Shonda’s number. Anticipation quickened her pulse. She’d go home after this and relax. Have a glass of wine and read the remaining home-decorating magazine that Alaska hadn’t shredded. Unless he’d eaten it today—

“Yeah?” Shonda answered in a bored tone.

“Hi, Shonda. It’s Kate Lange.”

“Yeah?” Shonda’s voice rose a notch.

“I followed up on the girls you told me about.”

“Girls?” The plural came out slurred.

Dismay quelled Kate’s excitement. Shonda sounded like she’d been using.

“You know, the missing girls you told me about a few days ago,” she said carefully. She wanted Shonda to understand what she was telling her. “Krissie Burns, Karen Fawcett and Vangie Wright.”

“Oh. Yeah. Right.”

Kate hesitated. “There is some bad news about Krissie.”

“Yeah. I heard.” Shonda’s voice was dull, emotionless. “The cops’ve been around asking questions.”

“I’m sorry.”

There was silence on the other end. She visualized Shonda’s face. The round, childish cheeks. The shuttered, watchful eyes. Intelligence glimmered in their brown depths, suffocated under layers of neglect, fear and drug abuse.

Kate cleared her throat. “I passed on the information about Vangie Wright to the police. They have someone looking into her missing persons report.”

“Yeah. I know. That blond guy.”

“Blond guy?”

“Yeah. He had some dogs… Did y’know Lisa was crazy ’bout dogs?”

“Yes, I heard.” A blond guy with dogs who knew Lisa. Her fingers clenched around the phone. “Was the guy’s name Finn?”

“Uh-huh.” Shonda’s voice was trailing off.

Why was Finn asking Lisa’s friends questions? Kate thought again of Lisa’s funeral. She’d been sure he was the guy who’d tried to help her. Yet he denied it. And now he was playing private investigator. Why? Ethan would be furious if he knew some guy was snooping around on his turf.

Shonda breathed heavily, quickly, into the phone. Kate was losing her. She needed to focus. She needed Shonda to stay on the line until she finished her report. She needed this to be over with. “I tracked down the funeral home where Karen Fawcett was cremated and they confirmed her death was not suspicious.”

“Yeah.” This was barely more than a mumble.

“So that’s good. But, Shonda, the other victims appear to be in your circle of friends. Be caref—”

The cell phone went dead.

Kate stared out the window. The stream of cars going by her window had gotten thinner. Should she have told Shonda about the link between Lisa’s and Krissie’s homicides?

No. The media had already reported it. It was up to the police to warn these girls. She’d never live with herself if she inadvertently screwed up their investigation.

Her next call was much shorter. Marian MacAdam listened to her report with little comment. “Thank you for looking into this,” she said. “I’m disappointed you couldn’t
come up with more. Especially since that prostitute has been found murdered.”

“I am not a detective, Mrs. MacAdam,” Kate said. The clock on the dash showed it was past six-thirty. She was still in her car, sitting by the curb. “And from what I understand, the police are following all these leads. They don’t need me to do their job for them.”

“No.” Marian MacAdam sounded suddenly weary. “I suppose not.” There was a pause. “Is that all, Ms. Lange?”

It could never be enough for Marian MacAdam. Nothing would ever fill the trench her guilt had dug in her heart. Kate understood. Her own trench remained as empty and ragged as it had fifteen years ago.

“Yes,” she said softly.

Dust had already settled on the room. Even in the dimness of twilight, Hope could see the motes floating lazily, undisturbed and indifferent to her presence.

Her heart thudded.
Calm down. You can do this.

She had to do it. She had to prove to Marian that she could confront Lisa’s belongings, that she had nothing to feel remorseful about.

A note had appeared in Hope’s mailbox at work yesterday.
I would like to have returned the music box I gave Lisa for her eighth birthday.
The note was unsigned.

Hope had crumpled the note and thrown it in her waste-basket. When she came home from work today, she downed three glasses of Scotch. She’d had one more with supper before rising heavily to her feet. Her legs had resisted the stairs, her heart pounding so loudly when she reached the landing by Lisa’s room that she had to stop. She leaned against the wall.

You have to do it. You can’t let Marian win.

She took a step into Lisa’s bedroom. It still bore the marks of fingerprint powder. She scoffed to herself. The cops lifted prints in Lisa’s room but they had nothing to match them to. Not one bloody fingerprint had been found on Lisa.

Her eyes fell on Lisa’s bed. Still unmade. The chartreuse chenille cover lay crumpled at the foot, the sheets bearing a faint rumple from her body. She stepped toward it. Then stopped. The rumpling was more likely caused by the police rifling through the bedding, looking for drugs.

Hating the weakness that threatened to topple her to the floor, she crossed the room. Woodenly. Like a puppet. She forced herself to study the detritus of Lisa’s life, the posters on the wall—when did she get the Andy Warhol?— realizing she hadn’t been in Lisa’s room for weeks. If not months.

She would not weep. Because it would never stop. Marian knew that and that was why she sent the note. She wanted Hope to go into Lisa’s room; she wanted Hope to pick up Lisa’s things; she wanted Hope to repent, repent, repent.

I will not. I will not succumb.

Her lips twisted when she pulled the music box from the shelf. She had never told Marian that Lisa had ignored the gift. Lisa wasn’t into ballerinas and tutus as a child. Marian hadn’t known that because she hadn’t bothered to get to know her grandchild. She was just as guilty as Hope.

Sure you can have the music box, Marian. It meant nothing to Lisa, just like you meant nothing to her.

She retraced her path across the room. Her fingers shook. The box slipped. It fell to the hardwood floor with a discordant tinkle. She broke out into a sweat.

She needed to lie down.

But if she lay down in here she would never get up.

She snatched the box off the floor. The clasp opened and something fluttered to the floor.

No. No.
Lisa had never used this box. It had meant nothing to her.

Then who had put a photo in it?

She picked up the picture. What was left of her heart disintegrated. She knew who put the photo in the box.

It was Lisa. And the box must have meant something to her, because the photo was dog-eared and creased from much loving. There was even a few water stains marring the ink on the back. She didn’t want to believe they were tear marks but she couldn’t deny that they were.

Her own tears started then. Large hot angry tears.

They coursed down her face, landing on Lisa’s eight-year-old features with such force that the weakened paper bent. She wiped the picture across her breast.

She stared at it one final time. She didn’t remember this photo being taken. It looked as if it had been at someone’s cottage. Lisa was sitting on a lawn, hugging a large unkempt dog. Happiness shone in her round features.

Hope realized she had been so used to Lisa’s defeated gaze that she had forgotten her daughter hadn’t always looked like that.

She read the childish handwriting on the back of the photo.

Me and Rufus.
A large heart enfolded the inscription.

Tearstains smeared Rufus’s name but it didn’t matter. She remembered now. She remembered Rufus. She remembered Lisa talking about him. So much so that she finally forbade Lisa to bring up his name anymore because she was so tired of hearing Lisa talking about that damned dog, of Lisa begging her for a dog of her own.

She snapped the music box shut. She stuffed the incrimi
nating picture in her pocket. She wanted to destroy it, crumple it up, shred any evidence of the mother she had been.

She had put her own ambitions in front of her daughter’s needs. Not to mention her husband’s.

Now her daughter was gone. Her husband had left long ago.

All she had left was her career. Her own hopes. And those hopes were high, right now. The Supreme Court was within her grasp. As long as she wasn’t pulled under the muck with Marian’s sneaky backroom manipulations.

After all, hadn’t she given up everything, including her chance at salvation, for her work?

Lisa was dead now. Hope’s mistakes would remain buried with her. Only she would know how deeply entrenched they would remain on her soul.

She closed the door to Lisa’s room softly behind her. On Monday, she would ask the cleaning service to begin packing up Lisa’s room.

Wednesday, May 9, 10:07 a.m.

“W
e’ve got a problem,” John Lyons announced. “But it’s not insurmountable.”

He was sitting at the head of the boardroom table, a file folder spread out before him. Kate lowered herself into the chair on his right. It was 10:07 a.m., and John Lyons had called her up to one of the smaller conference rooms.

Her heart thudded loudly in her ears. Had he called her to talk about the MacAdam case? She furtively scanned the papers in front of him. Then relaxed. She could clearly see the statement of claim of Brad Gallivant. Her eyes fell on another document with a pale blue triangle stapled over the corner. She straightened. “Looks like the other defense has been filed.”

“Yes, we just received it.” John handed her the document.

She flipped through it. “Doesn’t hold any surprises, as far as I can see.” Dr. Ericson, the orthopedic surgeon who operated on Brad Gallivant’s knee, and the Greater Halifax General Hospital, known in the city as the GH2, claimed that the injuries caused to the plaintiff were solely attri
butable to the cadaveric tissue supplied by TransTissue, Inc. “So what’s the difficulty?”

“I just spoke to their counsel, Morris MacNeil.” She waited for John to give his usual smirk. Morris MacNeil always brought that out in him. But not today. Instead, John gave her an assessing look. “He’s claiming there’s a case in the U.S. that blows our defense out of the water. And…”

A case she hadn’t found? Sweat pricked her armpits.

She forced herself to keep her cool. Morris MacNeil had a reputation for blowing a lot of hot air. She arched a brow. “And?”

“He thinks he has a new plaintiff. Someone else who claimed to have gotten hep C from a bone filler. Gal by the name of Denise Rogers.”

“I see.” This was getting worse by the minute. “When are they going to file?”

“Morris is just doing up the claim, he says.”

“And what about this U.S. case?” She hated asking. She should know the answer. She should have unearthed that case, analyzed its facts, distinguished it in a memo and presented it to John Lyons. Before Morris MacNeil called him and caught him unprepared.

It must have been embarrassing for her mentor. She’d let down the one man who’d believed in her. Her cheeks burned.

“According to Morris, the U.S. appellate court recently came down in favor of a plaintiff who contracted syphilis through cadaveric transplant.”

“Same procedure?”

“Yes.”

“I see,” she said softly. Even though the U.S. legal system was not one the Canadian courts relied on for legal precedent, in a case involving state-of-the-art medical procedures the U.S. decision might have some weight.

“How did the plaintiff prove the syphilis came from the tissue?” she asked. “In most cases it would be difficult to pin down a sexually transmitted disease on knee surgery.”

“They found that the tissue processing procedures were below standard.” John leaned forward. “How many U.S. cases did you research for our defense?”

She straightened. “I pulled up a few, but they were inconclusive. It was too difficult to determine the cause of the disease. Nothing was ever nailed on the tissue processor. I thought we had a pretty good defense.”

“Until this case came out.”

Was that a dig? She flushed. “I’ll do an online search for the case.” She hated how defensive she sounded. “But if the decision was based on substandard tissue processing procedures, we can clearly distinguish it.”

John twirled his pen. “I think we’ll be okay,” he said slowly. “But Morris and the plaintiff’s lawyer both want to visit TransTissue and see the procedures for themselves.”

Cocky bastards. “Fine. Of course, we’ll want to conduct a discovery on Brad Gallivant to explore whether he could have contracted hep C some other way.” She gave a little smile.

John returned the smile. She relaxed. He wasn’t going to hold this against her. “You read my mind. I’ll call TransTissue and set up something. How are we doing with the surgical expert?”

Kate exhaled slowly. “I’ve got a confirmation from her. She had a look at Brad Gallivant’s medical records and says there isn’t any record of a blood transfusion. So it seems unlikely he contracted hep C during surgery. But it is something he could have picked up from a high-risk lifestyle. Drug use is one of the risk factors.”

“Let’s get that discovery scheduled.” John steepled
his fingers together. “Then we’ll know if our Mr. Gallivant has been gallivanting around.”

Kate bit her lip as she scrolled through the U.S. case that Morris MacNeil had bragged about. Morris, blowhard that he was, had one-upped her. It was mortifying. A firm like LMB prided itself on its superior legal skills. Why hadn’t she been aware of this decision? John hadn’t asked her, but the question had hovered like a Michelin blimp in the conference room.

She had a lot to prove on this file. To John, to her firm, to her colleagues, to herself. And to Randall. He’d already made a point of letting her know that. She couldn’t allow herself to be distracted by Marian MacAdam’s guilt trip or by her own childhood ghosts. The whole point of getting a job at a firm like LMB was to prove she could amount to something, that she deserved people’s respect. Not their pity or condemnation. But that’s all she’d get if she ended up getting the boot at the end of her probationary period. She couldn’t hack it, colleagues would whisper. She wasn’t good enough.

And not only had she been given the opportunity to work on a civil litigation file with an expert like John Lyons, but this file in particular was one lawyers dreamed about. It was an exciting, groundbreaking case. She had an opportunity to create legal precedent. How many lawyers could brag about that? It would cement her reputation and guarantee her a place on LMB’s letterhead.

She could not blow it.

She read through the U.S. decision twice. It was comforting to know the case was decided in the plaintiff’s favor solely on the grounds that the tissue processor had been negligent in its processing procedures. The company
had failed to screen the tissue properly. Namely, it failed to run viral blood-screening tests. It was only a matter of time before some nasty bug or disease would find its way into their products.

She sat back in her chair. She needed to see TransTissue’s procedures manuals and tour the plant.
Before
the other parties.

If TransTissue was processing the tissue properly—which she fervently hoped they were—then it led her to the next question: Were their suppliers? TransTissue got their tissue from tissue brokers. Who, exactly, were these people? She’d never heard of any companies that specialized in tissue harvesting.

What really concerned her was the fact that the regulatory framework governing tissue donations was brand-new—and hands-off. The regulations placed a great deal of faith in the abilities of tissue processors to monitor their own activities. The onus to discover and report an adverse event, such as the transmission of a virus through a tissue product, was placed on the tissue processors and others in the supply chain. Assuming an adverse event was discovered and subsequently reported, the government then expected the tissue processor to conduct their own investigation and report their findings.

This would be the soft spot for her client. Morris MacNeil had already found it. Now he would begin hammering away at it.

She picked up the phone and dialed the number John had given her.

“Melinda Crouse,” a perky voice answered.

“Melinda, it’s Kate Lange from LMB. John Lyons told me to call you about some information I need.”

“Of course. I was expecting your call. What can I do for you?” she asked cheerily.

“I’m going to need your procedures manuals.”

There was a pause. “All of them?” Her voice was a little less cheery.

“Yes.”

“Okay. Will do. I’ll have them copied and couriered to you tomorrow.”

“Great.” Kate infused her voice with gratitude. “And one more thing…”

“Yes?” The enthusiasm was definitely muted now.

“I need to see the records that came with the tissue used to make Brad Gallivant’s and Denise Rogers’s knee filler. Denise Rogers is a new plaintiff,” Kate added. “In fact, I’d like the records for every batch that was made on the day their fillers were made.” That would rule out any screwups before or after the filler was made that could have affected the quality.

“Um…I wasn’t told anything about that. I’ll have to check.”

“Please do. I need it ASAP.” The U.S. case had left a niggling fear.

“Okay, Ms. Lange. I’ll get right on it.” She didn’t sound too hopeful. “It’s just that those records are confidential. We have a duty to protect the donors, you know.”

“Yes. I understand. But all this information is protected by solicitor-client privilege. I won’t divulge it.”

“Oh, right.” Her voice had regained its perkiness. “I forgot about that. It shouldn’t be a problem, then.”

Kate hung up the phone. She stood, pacing to the window, then back to her desk. She wanted the records now. She wanted to get the case on track and leave the other parties in the dirt.

It was time to show Randall and John what she was made of.