Dead File (15 page)

“Did you call the detectives, Dr. Stevens?”

“The staff immediately called nine-one-one and they alerted the authorities involved with the case.”

“The detectives came?”

“Yes. I have their cards. Detectives Murchison and Black. They had the police post a round-the-clock armed guard at the door to Sandie’s cubicle.”

“Were they able to talk to Sandie?”

“No. I couldn’t allow them to try to question her. My primary concern is not who did this to her; as her physician, my concern is her physical and mental recovery. It wouldn’t be helpful for her to have the police grilling her at this point, perhaps invading her subconscious. It could actually set her back.”

“What can I do, Doctor?”

“We thought if
you
spoke to her, maybe—”

“But … couldn’t that set her back as well?”

“She seems to want to talk to you. She’s been asking for you.”

“For
me?
” Maxi asked incredulously.

“Well, she’s been saying your name. She’s not altogether coherent, but we recognized your name a couple of times. That’s why I’m calling you. I think it might help if you came over here and talked to her. Maybe hearing your voice will trigger something more from her.”

Maxi paused for a beat, processing the information. “Does the media know about the break-in?” she asked.

“No. The detectives asked us to keep it quiet. But as I told them, I can’t guarantee how long that embargo will last, with all the people who work here—”

“All right, Doctor,” Maxi cut in. “I’ll find another reporter to cover the story I’m assigned to and I’ll come over to the ICU. As soon as I can.”

Maxi had a question for herself:
How did I manage to get myself on the inside of this story?
Oh, well, you know what they say about a gift horse.

“Thank you, Ms. Poole,” Dr. Stevens said. “I’ll be here. And Mr. Schaeffer will too. He says he knows you.”

Hurrying down the central corridor of the Intensive Care Unit at Cedars, Maxi spotted the uniformed LAPD patrolman posted outside the door to Sandie Schaeffer’s small ICU cubicle. Anticipating him, she had her press credentials in hand.

“Hello, Officer Ricklaus,” she said, glancing at his name tag. “I’m Maxi Poole. The patient’s father is expecting me.”

The officer took her ID cards and studied them for a beat, then studied her face. “That’s you, all right,” he muttered without a smile and handed the credentials back to her. “They told me you were coming. Go on in.”

“Is everything okay?” she asked him.

“Fine,” he said noncommittally and looked away from her.

“Well, Merry Christmas,” Maxi offered, attempting, as always, to make a friend who might be helpful on the story later. This officer was having none of it—he didn’t respond.

She stepped into the room and said a general hello to the people inside. A tall, thin man in a white lab coat, fifty-something, with rimless glasses and receding blond hair tinged with gray, offered his hand. “We spoke on the phone,” he said. “I’m Dr. Stevens.” Maxi saw that his eyes looked tired.

Turning to another white-coated man by his side, Dr. Stevens introduced his colleague, Dr. Ari Hamatt, a brain-function specialist. A female nurse in white uniform and surgical mask, holding a clipboard, stood at the foot of the bed. And William Schaeffer sat in his wheelchair on the far side of the bed, watching his daughter solicitously.

Maxi turned to the patient. “Sandie,” she said quietly, “it’s Maxi Poole. I’m here. And your father’s here. And your doctors. It’s Christmas, Sandie. Can you hear me?”

She slipped into the one vacant chair by Sandie’s hospital bed and bent low over the patient’s ear.

“Sandie,” she said again, louder this time. “Can you hear me? It’s Maxi Poole. You asked for me, Dr. Stevens said.” She took one of the patient’s hands in hers. “Can you hear me, Sandie?” she repeated, putting pressure on Sandie’s hand. And in that instant she felt a little pressure in return.

Seeking Dr. Stevens’s eyes with hers, Maxi lifted Sandie’s hand a few inches off the bed, indicating that she’d had some reaction from his patient. Then she said, “Good, Sandie. I know you can hear me. Squeeze my hand again.” And she felt more feeble pressure.

Maxi nodded to the doctors. “She hears me,” she said. “She understands. She squeezed my hand again, lightly, but definitely.” Then Sandie opened her mouth. With what looked like a great deal of effort, she whispered a few words. It sounded like, “He tried to kill me. . . .” The exact words Maxi thought she’d heard Sandie say the last time she’d come into the ICU and tried to talk to her.

“What did she say?” asked an anxious William Schaeffer, never taking his eyes off his daughter’s face.

“I think . . .” Maxi began. “I think she said, ‘He tried to kill me.’ ”

“That’s what I heard too,” the nurse offered.

They spent the next half hour in Sandie Schaeffer’s room, taking turns talking to the patient, but got no more reaction from her. Maxi stood up then, walked around the bed, and knelt beside Bill Schaeffer’s chair. “She’s getting better,” she said to him.

“I think so,” he returned, his intelligent eyes warming to Maxi’s concern. “At least she seems to be coming out of it. The real question is, how will she be then? How will she be for the rest of her life?”

“I’m thinking good thoughts for you and your daughter,” Maxi told him. “That she reacted this much today is a real holiday gift for you, isn’t it, Mr. Schaeffer?”

“I hope so,” Schaeffer said.

“She’s tired now,” Dr. Hamatt put in. “It’s very common that after the kind of activity she showed earlier, the patient will be very tired. But she’s had a productive day.”

Maxi gave Mr. Schaeffer’s arm a solicitous pat and stood up. “I’ve got to go back to the station for the Six O’clock News,” she said. “Call me if you need me again. I’ll do whatever I can to help.”

“That means a lot to me,” Schaeffer said. “Sandie seems to respond to you.”

Maxi hesitated a beat, then decided to level with the patient’s father. “Mr. Schaeffer, I’m going to report what Sandie said on the Six O’clock News tonight. Both her progress and her words today are news. You and I have no source confidentiality agreement, and I’m actually working right now; I dropped a story assignment to come here. I want you to know that I’ve come to care about you and your daughter, but I also have a job to do.”

“I understand, Maxi,” Schaeffer said. “In fact, I’m hoping that whatever you report will help bring Sandie’s attacker to justice.”

Good,
Maxi thought as she hustled out of the ICU. She had established that henceforth, any “personal” visit was also business.

Back in her office, Maxi had several messages waiting, most of them holiday greetings. One was from Richard. “Call me, Maxi,” he’d said on her voice mail. She dialed the number for his apartment.

“Hello,” he said, and Maxi’s heart jumped a little.

“Merry Christmas,” she said.

“Back atcha. I’ve been thinking about you.”

“What have you been up to?”

“Exactly what I told Capra: I spent the day going through a ton of mail, writing checks, catching up, trying to clear the decks before I have to leave again.”

“Did you accomplish a lot?”

“I did. For some reason I was in a good mood all day.”

“Probably because it’s Christmas.”

“Probably because of Christmas Eve.”

Maxi smiled. “What are you doing tonight?”

“That’s why I’m calling. Are you doing a story for the Eleven?”

“Yes, but I’m just recutting a network piece.”

“How about having a bite?”

“Well, I’m going to the beach between shows. To Debra’s house, for Christmas dinner.” Richard had met Debra Angelo before he left for Afghanistan, at St. Joseph Medical Center in Bur-bank where Maxi was recovering.

“She’s fun,” Richard said.

“Wanna come?”

“Really?”

“Of course really.” She laughed.

“You’re on. I’ll pick you up in the newsroom after the Six.”

Maxi hung up. Smiling. She called Debra to ask if she minded setting another place, then went out to the assignment desk to pick up her network tape on Christmas at the White House, to cut her story for the late news. Might as well get it out of the way before she left for dinner, she figured, so she wouldn’t have to hurry back. She was looking forward to seeing Richard.

30

T
hursday morning, the day after Christmas. When Maxi got in to work, there was a message on her voice mail from an Adrienne Gray asking her to get back to her as soon as possible. Maxi recognized the humorless voice: Goodman Penthe’s assistant. The time code on the message was 4:36
A.M.
That was 7:36
A.M.
in the East. Ms. Gray had promised to get back to Maxi after Christmas. What took her so long? She dialed the number.

“Oh, Ms. Poole, thank you for returning my call,” said Ms. Gray.
Good,
Maxi thought,
she’s a step or two down off her lofty horse.
Then it occurred to her what a drag it must be to work for a creep like Goodman Penthe and she melted a bit. “What can I do for you?” she asked the woman.

“Mr. Penthe is arriving in Los Angeles this afternoon, and he wants to know if you’re free for lunch tomorrow.”

“And again—” Maxi started.

“Yes, I know, Ms. Poole,” the woman jumped in. “He wants to discuss Carter Rose and the Rose company.”

Big surprise—what else did they have in common? Could be interesting. “I can’t do lunch,” she said. She didn’t want to look at this guy over tuna salad. “I could see him before lunch. Late morning, say, eleven o’clock? Here at the station.”

“I’m sure that’ll be fine with him,” Penthe’s assistant said. “Give me an address, if you would. And unless you hear from me, he’ll be there at eleven.”

Maxi entered the appointment in her agenda book, then thought a little about last night. For about the twenty-fifth time today. And it was only nine in the morning. Richard had collected her in the newsroom after the Six, and they’d driven to Malibu for Christmas dinner with Debra and her guests, mostly interesting people from the movie world. And Debra’s beautiful daughter, Gia. Maxi had been Gia’s stepmom during the five years she was married to their mutual, now dead ex-husband. Couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy, as Debra always said.

Dinner was fabulous, and fun. Maxi had brought an armful of presents for Gia, and a bottle of Dom Pérignon with a tin of beluga caviar tied to the neck with Christmas ribbon for Debra—to save for a night with a special guy, she’d told her. Debra gave her a see-through negligee that was way too risqué, but that was Debra. “You too, darling—for a night with a special guy,” she’d said, with a pointed look at Richard.

When they got back to the station, Richard parked in the lot and came up to the newsroom with her. To prowl through the mountain of mail that had come over his transom while he was gone, he’d said. Maxi looked over the piece she’d written earlier, then went downstairs to Makeup, then onto the set to intro it. When she came back upstairs, Richard was still in his office going through paperwork. She stood in his doorway and looked in.

“So, can I come over to your house?” he’d asked without looking up. His aspect, in fact, just a little sheepish. Which was
so
not Richard. Which was enormously endearing. And she felt that annoying, delicious flutter in her stomach again. Or was it her stomach? Hard to know.

“Way too dangerous.” She grinned.

“Yeah. Okay, tomorrow night. Dinner.”

When she hesitated, he went on: “It’s my last night in town before I go to war.”

“You’re going to your mother’s, Richard.”

“Ya, but … then I’m going to war. I may never come home.”

“You’re shameless.”

“It worked during World War Two. And Korea, and Vietnam, and the Gulf War. Women worldwide—”

“Shameless!” Maxi said again. Then, “Okay. Tomorrow night.”

“Great. Meet me at Mimosa at seven.”

“For a guy who’s only lived in L.A. for fifteen minutes, you sure know all the good restaurants.”

“Guy’s gotta eat,” he said. He got up from his desk and started toward her, whereupon she turned and headed back to her office. She felt a newsroom clinch coming on, a very bad idea. “Tomorrow at seven,” she tossed over her shoulder. “Mimosa on Beverly.”

“Come on,” he said with a grin, “I’ll walk you down to your car.”

There was no parking-lot clinch, either, Maxi thought back dreamily. Not that she wouldn’t have liked it. But they both knew better.

She was looking forward to dinner tonight.

Carter Rose sat on one of the plush leather couches in his office at Rose International, drinking coffee and reading the
L.A. Times.
Kendyl hadn’t come in to the office this morning. Nor had they spoken at all yesterday, Christmas Day. He still had the little package for her that he’d intended to give her at dinner on Christmas Eve, until she blew out of Spago in a huff: a pair of very expensive diamond earrings. Three carats each. A token of his professional appreciation. And maybe a little personal appreciation. After all, they had a history. A steamy history. But it was over, the steamy part at least.

He finished reading the sports section, folded the newspaper and set it down on the coffee table in front of him, took his cell phone out of his pocket, and dialed her number. Her answering machine picked up.

“Kendyl, come to work,” he said. “All is forgiven. I sat at our table in front of God and Wolf and everyone and finished the bottle of wine. Like you said, who cares what people think? Livened up Spago, what the hell. I’m going to Maui this afternoon. And you have to understand why I can’t take you. But I need you at work while I’m gone. There’s a lot happening. I’ll be home Monday night, and I have your Christmas present for you. Okay? Call me. Please.”

He hung up. Hoped that would work. Their affair was over, but he couldn’t let her know that yet. He had some loose ends to tie up with Kendyl. Big, dangerous loose ends. He couldn’t afford to let her stay furious with him.

Sunday Trent came over to Wendy’s desk in the Channel Six newsroom and pulled up a chair beside the producer’s computer terminal. “I’m here for our meeting,” she said. “About your book.” Classes at USC were out for Christmas week.