Forgotten Place (44 page)

"Perhaps you should see him now."

"No," I whispered.  "That's the last
thing I should do.  He's got life long friends and associates
from his career in law enforcement.  If he's asking for Gwen
Foster, in his memory at least, she hasn't died, which means I'm a
literal stranger to him."

The battle for emotional control was
skidding precariously toward defeat of the stoic front I felt the
need to project to the world.  I always pushed my feelings
behind a stronghold of machismo.  I ran with the big
boys.  I needed to behave like one too. 

"Tony Briscoe and Crevan Conall have more
personal information about him than anybody else waiting for word,"
I said.  "They can help you.  I cannot."

A brisk walk took me back to Devlin, whose
eyes sought answers much like everyone else's did.  Bodies
parted for me like the Red Sea mythically had for Moses. 
"Let's go, Dev.  We have a case to close."

"But aren't you going to –"

My gait quickened, bordered a dead run.

Chapter 39

"Dammit," Maya muttered under her
breath.  "You've been to the hospital how many times tonight
and never bothered to get that gash looked at?"

Indifference numbed every nerve in my
body.  "You're a doctor.  Sew me up.  After you call
your grave digger pal."

My brain was thousands of
miles away, somewhere in Hawaii to be precise, with the crosshairs
of a sniper rifle trained on the back of Datello's
head. 
Kill him, kill him
had replaced the usual
lub-dub
in my chest. 

Ned, who met us at the morgue, looked at
Maya and gave one of those incommunicado shakes of the head. 
"I'll call Carney and have him meet us at the cemetery with his
crew.  See if you can talk some sense into her."

"Helen, I staple my patients shut with a
device designed to close the sternum for God's sake.  I don't
have suture kits."

"Improvise."

She moved to one of the cabinets and started
digging.  I watched a growing pile materialize on the
countertop.  Gloves.  Hydrogen peroxide.  Saline
solution.  Gauze.  Forceps.  Prepackaged something
or other.

"I don't have any anesthetic."

"Don't need it.  Sew."

She continued to mutter objections under her
breath, things like malpractice and ethics and a few choice
observations on bedside manner being wasted on forensic
pathologists.

I didn't feel a prick, just a tiny tug and
tingling sensation as she drove suture after suture through the
long laceration that started at the crown of my head and descended
southward.  I didn't move, didn't wince, most important,
didn't cry.  The burning sensation in my throat was
gone.  Sure, I felt about a bucket of sand in each eye, but
I'd been up all day and night. 

One glance at the Rolex told the story
succinctly.  Twenty three hours, seventeen minutes.  It
would be dawn soon.  Not the optimal time for a little stealth
grave digging. 

I didn't care.  My path was committed
the second I realized what Datello, through his arm of Southerby,
had done to Johnny.  Evidence meant about as much to me as
getting my head sewn shut. 

I turned abruptly toward Ned and
Devlin.  One was green, watching with something akin to horror
at Maya's ministrations, the other staring at the floor.

"Ned." 

He lifted his eyes.

"You and Devlin should be at the cemetery
supervising this exhumation.  Bring Ireland's casket back here
and we'll examine it in a secure environment."

Maya didn't grill for details.  Ned
muttered something to Devlin and disappeared.  I stared with
dull resolve at his new partner. 

"Run along, Detective Mackenzie."

"No can do, Helen.  Ned's got the
exhumation.  I'm staying with you."

Perhaps my flat affect and dissociation from
Maya's needle conveyed more of my agenda than I realized. I broke
eye contact and stared at the floor, plotting, always looking for
the next way to do something – legal, illegal, it didn't matter
anymore.

"Hold still, Helen.  Are you trying to
make me stab myself with a dirty needle?"

Fifteen stitches later and Maya was dragging
me by the arm down the hall to the women's locker room. 
"Detective Mackenzie, you may wait outside the door.  Helen
will shower and change into something less stained, and I'll stay
with her to make sure she doesn't pass out from blood loss."

Head lacerations bleed like a mother. 
Hadn't thought about that until the ruined cashmere hit the floor
with a wet smack.  Blood had run down as far as the waist of
my leggings and stained them with a half-moon that looked somewhat
like a wide, toothless smile.  Didn't care.  Couldn't
care.

Water pelted me.  Steam obscured my
vision.  A pink hue replaced the pallor on my arms and chest,
probably elsewhere if I cared to look.  I didn't.  I
stepped out of the shower on autopilot and accepted the towel Maya
held out. 

Her pointed stare at protruding ribs and
collar bones bounced off the armor of what-must-be-done. 

The vigorous rub was half-hearted.  My
skin remained lubricous enough for the scrubs to cling to every
bony prominence before the rest of the soft fabric sucked against
my skin.  Shrink-wrapped-Helen in surgical blues. 

Maya shook her head.  "Do I get the one
word version of why you look like you don't really give a damn
about anything anymore?"

"No."  Hey, she asked for one
word.  She got it.

"Helen, what the hell is going on?  The
last time I saw you, you looked like you had the devil by his short
curlies and were ready to send him straight to hell.  You're
exhuming David Ireland.  Something tells me the case isn't
dead in the water if you have cause –"

"Johnny was hurt worse than the moron in the
ED thought," I said.  Emotionless.  I might've said, "The
weather will be cloudy in Darkwater Bay today."

"Oh, honey, I'm so sorry."

That armor was impervious to sympathy
too.  "He'll survive."

"I thought you said –"

"Zapped his short term memory pretty good,
scrambled a bit more.  He'll be fine."

I stared at my watch.  "How long do you
think it'll be before Williams delivers the body?"  It had
been roughly an hour since Ned left.

"It won't take that long.  Why don't
you take something for pain?"

Because I didn't feel anything, not pain,
not anger, not anything but resolve gnawing its way through every
nook and cranny inside my body.  I looked at her, recognized
the concern etched around Maya's whiskey gold eyes. 
"Endorphins.  I'm fine."

"Are you hungry?"

"No."

"Helen –"

"Fine.  Bring on the Twinkies and
Ho-Ho's."

The greasy confection coated my tongue and
made me want to gag.  It tasted like sticky sawdust injected
with a bolus of lard.  The acidic carbonation of Coke didn't
eat through the congealed goop that coated the roof of my
mouth.

"Ned's here with the grave guy." 
Devlin broke a long silence by poking his head through the staff
lounge door.  "You want to wait here?"

Sure
, brain said, didn't give a damn one way or the other. 
"No," duty commandeered my vocal chords. I dropped the bite of
remaining Twinkie and half-drunk cola into the trash and ignored
the recycling bin. 

Maya headed to the autopsy bay where Ned
waited with the coffin.  It had to be unsealed before we could
perform a grisly search. 

Devlin stepped inside the lounge and leaned
against the door.  "Helen."

I drew breath secretly through my
nose.  Slow.  Remain calm. 

"Tony called."

Tony Briscoe had probably started dancing a
jig the moment word spread that Orion had no idea who I was. 
He probably provided curvaceous Marci a police escort to the
hospital to hold Johnny's hand and nurse him through the trying
days ahead.

"I'm not interested in
hearing this, Devlin.  We have a case to close." 
Translation:
I have an irresistible
distraction to throw at the lot of you so I can slip away and end
this the way I should've done it in the first
place
.  Coming to Darkwater Bay under
the umbrella of professionalism had been a huge mistake.  I
should've ducked in under the radar, never returned George Hardy's
phone call, slit Datello's throat while he slept warm in his bed
and made my own disappearing act to a country that would offer safe
haven.

"Couple of guys in suits showed up looking
for you."

And once again, the FBI reared its ugly
head.

"Tony and Crevan detained them.  They
were carrying."

As most feds do.

"They haven't been able to
woo them into giving their real names.  We're assuming
Smith
and
Jones
are
aliases."

My eyes snapped into focus. 
"What?  They were looking for me?"

"You know what we suspect this means."

Hell burned through my
veins and sparked a bit of life back into me. My heartbeat hammered
out a tribal beat not dissimilar to the infamous drum solo from a
little ditty called
In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida
.  I knew what
it meant too.  News of a failed coup at Dunhaven reached the
ears of a certain bad guy.

"How did he get back from Hawaii so
fast?"  I glanced at precise Swiss craftsmanship on the right
wrist again.  Little more than eight hours had passed since I
left the police gala.  "God, the son of a bitch was still
here, wasn't he?"

Devlin shook his head.  "Crevan's
scouring the airline passenger manifests.  We think he might
be headed back to town."

"He wouldn't be on a commercial
flight.  Question is, can his private jet break the sound
barrier?"

"The commercial flight would take about five
and a half hours.  If somebody got word to him that you served
a warrant on Dunhaven –"

"Sykes," I cursed.  "He called him
before he ever showed up at Dunhaven.  All this time, I've
been wracking my brain trying to figure out why they didn't torture
me right away."

He laid one hand on my shoulder and squeezed
gently.  "Didn't they?"

My armor wasn't immune to the memory of what
I heard Johnny suffer.  "Indirectly, I suppose that's
true.  You know what I'm talking about.  Datello would've
wanted to be present for whatever they planned to do to me. 
Orion was a nuisance to him.  With me, it's personal."

"What the hell are you talking about? 
From all accounts, Commander Orion has more than tweaked Datello's
nose over the years.  Word in Montgomery is that Datello's
managed to woo the governor's most vocal opponent into challenging
him in the next election.  Everybody knows what that means,
Helen.  Terry Sanderfield has dug his heels in on every bit of
financial appropriation to OSI."

Devlin's ignorance wasn't astounding. 
"You have no reason to trust me.  This thing with the
governor's race is nothing more than insurance."

He cupped my chin, forced eye contact. 
"Why is this personal, Helen?  It makes no sense.  The
man talked to you what, once?"

"Twice if you count my wedding."

Devlin's jaw gaped open like the bottomless
pit.  "What?"

"He is my late husband's
cousin, a fact I did not know until... let's just say
recently.  Nobody but Johnny knows...
knew
that I learned the truth except
Datello.  Roll into the scenario that the spouse is always a
person of interest when one of the pair shows up dead under
suspicious circumstances, and it's not rocket science to figure out
why this is personal."

There was no choice but to divulge the truth
now.  Stupid, impulsive conversation with Southerby left two
living witnesses to what I said – the hired gun in question and
good old Painless Carl.  Dug my own grave on that
one. 

I side-stepped the recently-stunned
detective and shoved the door open.

"Helen, we need to talk about –"

"Don't you get it?"  I hissed. 
"If Datello is on his way back or here already, it's
irrelevant.  He's already sent his lunatic employees after me
twice tonight.  I can promise you, we haven't made a dent in
his supply of conscienceless employees.  They already know we
have Ireland's remains.  It's just a matter of time before
they storm any fortress they damn well please to retrieve this disk
they think we're going to find."

His footfalls matched mine as we rushed down
the hallway.

Chapter 40

Inside the casket of David Ireland, a small
section of satin had been tugged free from the box.  One
corner of plastic protruded from the pillowy material.  It
would've been unnoticed by anyone unless they knew what they were
looking for. 

I snapped my fingers and a pair of gloves
appeared.  One tug freed the sandwich-sized zipper bag. 
"What do you want to bet we'd find Isabella Ireland's prints on
this bag if we bothered to look?"

"Jesus," Ned muttered.

"Took the secret with him to his grave,
literally," Maya said.  "The floppy disk."

I took a closer look. 
In the same block letters now familiar to me as my own handwriting
were three words written on the yellowed label. 
Honor thy father
.

"We need to find a computer capable of
opening the files on this thing.  Maya, how obsolete is your
hardware?"

Devlin was still a little freaked out about
my dire predictions that Datello's men would storm any
fortress.  "Shouldn't we get this to division instead? 
Chain of custody and all that."