Forgotten Place (18 page)

"Really?  Did you find something else
on Southerby's case?  Did Storm suppress what he really
learned?"

She shook her head.  "But what I did
find was a drastic change in his dedication to performing thorough
postmortem examinations.  Guess who the first in a long line
of sloppy work was?"

"Mitch Southerby."

"Oh, it's better than that, Helen."

"Who was it?"  I was certain that
Southerby's death had to be the critical missing piece that covered
the link to Datello.

"Harry McNamara."

"The former chief of detectives?"

She nodded.  "I brought several autopsy
reports with me that Riley personally performed, both before and
after McNamara's death.  It's obvious, Helen.  We went
from several pages that demonstrated a search for cause of death to
McNamara and just about every other exam he performed thereafter
that were one page at best.  Some didn't rate more than a
paragraph that listed height, weight, identifying marks and a
rubber-stamped cause of death."

"Heart failure.  We've talked about
this before.  Do you think it was Harry McNamara that was
keeping Riley in line?"

"I have no idea.  What I find even more
incredible is that nobody complained about the sharp drop in
quality from the ME's office.  I've been here a year,
Helen.  If this case had happened last Christmas, we'd be
talking about work that Riley Storm would provide for the
investigation."

"Heart failure generally isn't considered
murder.  This is strange.  How much does Billy know?"

"All of it.  Does that matter?"

I shook my head.  "I thought maybe if
there were details that we could hold back, just for a little
while.  I feel like I'm close, really close to figuring
something out.  It's on the tip of my brain and I can't seem
to pull it together."

"Novel idea.  Maybe talking to Johnny
about what's got you stumped will help.  Oh, Helen, I wish
you'd open your eyes and see what this is doing to him."

"To him?  Like I give a damn. 
He's free to come and go as he pleases.  I wasn't
exaggerating, Maya.  He is literally holding me captive in my
own home."

"Johnny would give you anything,
Helen.  All you have to do is ask."

I gripped her hand.  "You need to
understand something, Maya.  I cannot stay here.  Yes, I
rebuilt this house and I spent a lot of time... wasted time
decorating it.  But it's an investment, nothing more.  I
don't intend to be here permanently."

"Don't say that.  We need you
here."

"I came for a specific purpose.  When
that's done, I'm gone."

Orion coughed softly.  "You told her,
didn't you?"

Maya's chin took a guilty dip.

"Helen, everything I'm doing is so when you
are ready to leave, you don't go in a pine box.  Ned, Devlin
and Crevan are here.  Zack called and said he'll be ten
minutes late.  Maybe we should get started."

"Helen," Maya whispered, "why can't you see
how much he loves you?"

"Love," I spat.  "There is no such
thing.  Only strings.  Forgive me, but I don't need that
ever again."

Johnny brought two more pain pills and a
steaming mug of something that smelled like creamy tea and
nutmeg.  "Drink it," he ordered. 

I hated that his pain pills worked better
than my oxycontin.  I hated that his hot beverages tasted so
good and settled my stomach and even stimulated my appetite. 
It annoyed me to watch him putter around my kitchen making
breakfast and thoughtfully sliced apples with chunky peanut
butter.  The cups of cocoa and hot tea and scrambled eggs –
they screamed words at me that he hadn't said in so long, but I
heard them just the same.

Johnny's infamous point of no return. 
His promise not to leave me, no matter what.  I hated him for
meaning it.

"Mmm," Maya sniffed at my mug. 
"Chai.  Johnny, isn't that stuff made with black tea? 
It's loaded with caffeine."

"This blend is made with Sleepy Time," he
grinned.  "She'll be ready for a hot bath and a good night's
sleep in about an hour, I'd say."

Zack arrived before the banter over Johnny's
wonderful bedside manner abated.  I wanted to kiss Zack's feet
for sparing me hearing it another second.

"Did you find anything out about what
Ireland was specifically investigating?"

He stared.

"Zack."

His head shook.  "Sorry... I was...
uh..."

"For God's sake.  I lost eight
pounds.  Can we please discuss this case before Journey
Ireland dies of old age?"

Devlin slouched beside me on the sofa. 
"I'm all for it.  Something happened at the hospital this
afternoon.  I don't know how related it is to the case,
but..."

I grinned at him.  "All details are
important, right?"

"I'm a quick study, Helen."  He glanced
around at the spectators to our easy camaraderie.  "She got a
certified letter from a messenger this afternoon.  Her
mother's finances are completely depleted.  It took awhile to
coax it out of her, but apparently she's been stressed about this
coming for a few months, and last week, she even met with a realtor
to talk about putting the family home on the market."

I gripped Devlin's arm.  "Did she do
it?  Put the house up for sale, I mean."

He shook his head.  "That's the thing
for her.  She's having a hard time letting go of it,
Helen."

"Not related to the case my ass," I shot off
the sofa and started pacing.  "I wonder what that son of a
bitch said to her yesterday."

"Helen, what are you thinking?" Maya
asked.  "Granted I'm not up to speed on everything that's
going on, but it's not rocket science that you think the attempt on
her life is related to what happened to her father."

I looked a Zack.  "What did you find
out about David Ireland's cases today, Zack?  Was there
anything remotely related to Datello in the cases he was
prosecuting?"

"David wasn't working in the trial law
division.  He prosecuted cases relating to fraud.  At the
time, he had a couple of corporate cases dealing with embezzlement
and a whole slew of mail and credit card fraud cases.  There
was nothing that at least superficially related to Danny
Datello."

"Did the DA's office hang onto his files?"
Johnny asked.

"Sure.  I figured you'd want to have a
look at them, so I packed up the boxes out of our basement storage
center and brought them over.  Mind you, there aren't any
files from his cases – at least not the official files.  After
he died, all his active cases were reassigned.  What was
stored were his personal notes."

"That's even better," I said.  "I doubt
we'll find whatever Southerby was sent to find, but we might learn
what piqued his interest in Danny Datello in the first place."

"Did you tell them about Linder?" Ned
asked.

I turned to the audience.  "He's a pig
who showed up at the door naked, wondering if I was the playmate he
ordered for the afternoon."

Johnny clenched his fists.  "Anything
else?"

"I spent the afternoon trolling Mercer
Boulevard looking for his alibi for the time of the attack on Dr.
Ireland," Ned said.  "It checked out."

"I'm curious about the Mistress Mercy
Divine.  What did she say?" I asked.

He shook his head.  "I'm not sure which
of them is more disgusting, Linder or Divine, whose real name by
the way, is Charlene Doyle.  She had digital photos with a
time stamp.  They spent approximately forty-eight hours in
character.  Her going rate is five hundred a day.  No
wonder Linder lives in a shit neighborhood."

"So he's really in the clear on this," Orion
said.  "Samantha Wine will be devastated I'm sure."

"Did she say anything that made Linder stand
out as the primary suspect?" Devlin asked.

"Mostly she expressed her strong dislike of
men in general," Crevan said.  "But Johnny got her to talk
about Isabella Ireland more than anything.  She confirmed that
Isabella has been in the Sisters of Mercy Convalescent Home for
about three years because of dementia, and that for about half that
time, she's been non-verbal."

"Her disease is advancing quickly through
the later stages," I said.  "She was diagnosed about what,
seven or eight years ago?"

"Eight," Devlin said.  "Journey was
nineteen according to her friend Timothy Evans."  He looked to
Crevan.  "Did you have any luck talking to her friend Trevor
Kent with the phone number Journey gave me?"

He nodded.  "I spoke to him early this
afternoon.  He was very upset about what happened to her, but
he's been in Africa for the past year.  They talk
frequently.  He mentioned that Journey has become increasingly
concerned about her mother's financial situation.  Apparently
Sisters of Mercy doesn't accept state funds for care.  He told
me that Journey didn't mention dating anyone else, that she rarely
talked about her job at the hospital.  For the past two
months, all she's done is essentially solicit advice about what to
do about the money situation."

"Why wouldn't she just sell the house?"
Billy wondered.

"I think I can answer that," I said. 
"After all, it's been almost twenty years for me, and I still can't
bring myself to part with my family home."

"Doc..."

"It's all right, Orion.  Everybody here
except Devlin knows that I still have a living parent, that my
mother died trying to kill my father after their last heist. 
I can only imagine how conflicted Journey must feel.  Her
parents were good people.  Mine?  Not so much, and I
still can't bear to part with their home."

"This is just a wild theory," Devlin said,
"but what if that's what this is about?  Somebody wants
Journey to sell the house."

"Thinking that David Ireland might've hidden
his evidence against Datello at home instead of the office? 
It's a theory, Devlin," I said.  "But a guy who didn't
hesitate to kill Ireland in a government parking building and
ransack his office probably wouldn't have hesitated to kill a woman
and her daughter to gain access to their house."

"I'm not so sure, Doc," Johnny said. 
"Think about it.  If nothing in David's assigned cases was
related to Datello, the investigation was off the grid.  What
does that suggest?"

"He stumbled onto something that wasn't
related to his open cases," Maya said. 

"Right," Johnny
nodded.  "So once he's dead, there's no
official
record of what he found,
maybe even the only evidence that existed was in David's
head.  It's enough for the killer."

"But not the man who hired him to kill
Ireland."  Johnny's theory started gelling in my brain. 
"So if this alleged evidence is hanging over Datello's head all
these years, and he's the one that isn't convinced it's not
physical evidence that someone else might find, and Journey is
facing the sale of the family home... why not simply buy the
house?"

"Because she didn't put the place on the
market," Devlin said.  "She told me that she would rather move
into the house and live there rather than see strangers in the
place where her happiest memories were made."

"Which brings me back to what Wine said
about Isabella," Johnny said.  "She was paranoid long before
this Pick's disease thing happened.  I think she was
threatened after David was killed.  When she started losing
her mind –"

"You make it sound volitional, Johnny. 
Pick's disease, all the dementias are the result of brain
damage.  Pick's specifically is caused by an aggregation of
tau proteins into spherical clumps in the frontotemporal region of
the brain –"

"English, Maya."

I grinned.  "Everybody is familiar with
the basics of Alzheimer's disease, right?  Tangled nerve
bundles in the brain, plaque deposits.  Tau proteins in Pick's
disease form sphere shaped deposits in the brain.  The end
result is shrinking of the brain itself, or atrophy.  It
affects the ability to reason, to communicate, to remember recent
events, but not necessarily old ones."

"Thanks," Johnny grinned at me.  "So,
Wine says that it's like Mrs. Ireland is stuck in the time around
David's murder.  When she was still able to communicate, she
was obsessed with the notion that someone was outside her house,
trying to get inside."

"It could've been a real event that happened
after David died," I said.  "What else?"

"Apparently the last thing
she said to Journey was
honor thy
father
, which I guess was something she
liked to tell her before this disease kicked in.  The rest of
it –"

"Gibberish, just like Ms. Wine said," Crevan
shook his head.  "Something about David's disk."

I looked at Zack.  "Sixteen years ago,
how did the DA's office store information primarily before cases
were closed?"

His jaw dropped.  "Floppy disks."

Chapter 16

Johnny put a halt to my pacing with an arm
that manacled my waist before I could fly by again.  "Hey," he
said.  "Take a breath, Doc."

"That's what Southerby was after,
Johnny.  Isabella might've been losing her mind, but she knew
exactly what she was talking about.  You know it.  I know
it."

"Let's think about this rationally for a
minute, what we can prove versus what we suspect."

I nodded.  He was right of course.

"Want some more chai?"  Johnny's arm
still bisected my waist like a steel band.  His thumb twitched
in half a caress. 

I chose to call the
resulting sensation nausea, though a couple of months ago, I wasn't
kidding myself.  It was butterflies, and when the billions of
wings flapped, I found it hard to breathe.  Wendell's words
resurfaced. 
Don't look behind you,
Sprout.  You're not going that way.