Locked In (17 page)

“Was she?”

“I’m not certain. I offered to have a paternity test run, but he wouldn’t hear of it. Even though the records would be confidential,
he was afraid information would leak out. With Lee, everything is about his reputation.”

“So he raised her as his own.”

“He gave her everything a child could need or want—except love.”

“I’d like to talk with your husband.”

“Good luck. Maybe you can catch up with him at Pro Terra Party headquarters. But that’s no guarantee he’ll give you the time
of day—not where his family is concerned.”

H
e was feeling at loose ends and kind of brain-fogged after his meeting with Craig and Diane, so he took a walk south on the
Embarcadero to clear his head. Sat down on one of the granite blocks with the bronze octopus sculptures embedded in it, patting
the head of one and staring out over the bay. The day was clear. Runners pounded by on the pavement. Pleasure boats sailed
past on the water, probably heading for McCovey Cove by the ballpark; there was a Giants game going on today.

Diane’s lecture on city government had bored him. All those special interests fighting each other, all the rivalries and the
feuds and the scandals. Didn’t anybody think of the common good any more? No—it was me, me, me.

He’d been like that once, a consequence of growing up poor and then having the money gush in when his dad finally made it
big in the music business. They’d gone from a tiny rental house to a bigger one that they owned, and then an even bigger one,
and finally to a huge estate in the hills above La Jolla. An ancient VW bus was dumped in favor of a Porsche for his dad and
a Mercedes for his mom. Other costly cars followed. They shopped constantly; they took trips to exclusive resorts; they built
a desert compound south of Tucson, complete with recording studio.

I need, I want, I must have…

No longer his philosophy. The irony being that he and Derek were about to get rich off this new software they’d developed.

Rich didn’t mean happy, though. Not even contented. He’d seen that in the decline and explosive end of his parents’ marriage.
Thank God they’d both found other people to love and made peace between themselves.

Okay, enough of that, he told himself. Concentrate on the case.

Sex tapes involving city and state officials. Three murders. Missing document signed only hours before the killings. Exchange
of money between Janssen and Teller implied. Other documents missing from city hall. No telling how many highly placed officials
were involved in this mess.…

The voice on Craig’s audiotape of what Janssen had said to Teller at the lodge: “You think you’ve pulled off a big coup, but
these people are dangerous. Consider what they did to Harvey.”

What people?

Mick stared out at a sailboat on the bay. Rubbed the bronze octopus head for luck, and stood up.

Time to talk with Shar.

H
y seemed cheerful when he came into my room and plunked an orchid plant on the roll-away table. Yellow flowers. Pretty. Was
he planning to replace the weekly roses with orchids, run the gamut from yellow to deep, dark red again?

Or is the transition to yellow a sign that his love’s weakening, now that he’s saddled with a silent, motionless mummy of
a wife?

Don’t go there, McCone. You’re only entertaining such ideas because you’re feeling lousy today.

He kissed me, chased the bad notion away for a while. Flopped in the chair, looking pleased with himself.

“I went over that file about the work you did last year for Amanda Teller again. Deep background on a Cheryl Fitzgerald and
a Don Beckman. Founders of the Pro Terra Party, which put Paul Janssen in the state house of representatives.”

I wanted to blink, but weariness overcame me. Something wrong, a new low point. Today everything felt negative. Was negative.
My breathing wasn’t right and my head hurt. Why didn’t Hy notice?

He added, “I sense connections, but I can’t quite put them together.”

I drew a labored breath, shut my eyes.

“What I want to do is call a staff meeting first thing tomorrow morning. Here. I’ve already cleared it with Saxnay. Is it
okay with you?”

With an effort, I opened my eyes, then blinked.

“Great. I’ll get Ted started on setting it up.”

Why don’t you notice something’s wrong with me, Ripinsky?

And what else are you getting started on? What about this deal with Len Weathers?

God, there had to be some way to communicate with the man! Tell him how bad I felt. Tell him to change course where Weathers
was concerned.

But I was so tired.

I closed my eyes.

“We’re going to beat this, McCone. I know we are.”

Maybe not.

S
har had told her to dig, so she did. Also asked Thelia and Diane to help her.

More background on Haven Dietz. Nothing there she didn’t already know. Phone calls to Dietz’s former friends and colleagues.
Most of them weren’t available. She left messages, doubting her calls would be returned.

Julia found she was retracing old ground, repeating things she’d done in the early stages of her investigation. The report
Thelia gave her on Dietz’s finances was identical to one already on file: Dietz was living on disability payments; she had
few assets. Nothing was forthcoming from Diane.

Dios
, maybe she wasn’t cut out for this kind of work after all. She couldn’t get an original angle on the case. She felt like
the driver of a car stuck in sand who kept accelerating and digging it in deeper. That wasn’t the kind of digging Shar wanted
her to do.

She went to the conference room where the coffeepot was. About half a cup left—dark and yucky-looking. She poured it into
a mug anyway. While she was there, trying not to choke on the strong brew, Ted stuck his head through the door.

“I can make more of that, if you like.”

“No, thanks. Ted, you’ve known Shar a long time. Has she ever been stuck on a case? So stuck that she never solved it?”

“Not exactly, but…” He came all the way into the room, the fluorescents highlighting the gray streaks in his black hair and
goatee, and leaned on the edge of the table.

“Her first case for All Souls—a missing person investigation—was a bust. She just couldn’t find the guy. Then years later,
on the day we moved to the pier, she was going through some boxes of her old papers, and found this last open file. So she
read it, noticed something she hadn’t before, found the guy, and closed the case.”

“She never gives up, does she?”

“No. You shouldn’t either.”

“How’d you know I was thinking of giving up?”

Ted leaned toward her and patted her cheek. “Because, my dear, I am the Grand Poobah.”

Julia went back to her office and started plowing through the Dietz file again. She was halfway through when her phone rang.

“Ms. Rafael, this is Gloria Wickens. You called me earlier about Haven Dietz.”

Gloria Wickens—she’d held a higher position than Dietz’s at the financial management firm. “Yes. I’m reinterviewing people
I spoke with earlier—”

“Well, I’m glad you called. I didn’t want to bring this up when I talked with you the last time because I didn’t think it
was fair to Haven. But I saw in the paper that she was killed, and that makes a difference.”

Julia sat up straighter, reached for a pencil and legal pad. “Go on, please.”

“The audit of our firm’s accounts the year Haven was attacked turned up a shortfall of a hundred thousand dollars. This was
ten months after she left the firm.”

It was the critical piece of information that might put everything together. “Did they suspect her?”

“I never heard anything to that effect. Another woman, Delia Piper, was under investigation, but eventually exonerated.”

“Is Ms. Piper still with the firm?”

“No. She quit, and I heard she moved to Hawaii.”

“And nobody ever questioned Ms. Dietz?”

“Why would they? She’d been gone a long time and besides, she was a trust-fund baby. A hundred thousand dollars must’ve been
insignificant to her.”

Julia questioned the woman more, but received little additional information. After she ended the call, she thought about her
conversations with Dietz: how her parents couldn’t help her after the attack because they were sailing across the Pacific
in their “damn yacht.”

Okay, she’d do an in-depth check on the elder Dietzes.

It showed the yacht had gone down in a storm near Fiji with both of them aboard a year before their daughter was attacked;
their estate had barely paid final bills and back taxes.

The things people say that you take at face value.

The things you overlook.

Haven Dietz: rich girl who all of a sudden wasn’t going to inherit a cent. Had a good job, but wanted more.

So what else, Julia wondered, had she overlooked?

M
ick ran into Hy in the lobby of the Brandt Institute; Hy was in a hurry because he needed to take Mick’s grandma to the airport,
but he paused long enough to tell Mick about the staff meeting to be held in Shar’s room the next morning.

“How
is
Grandma?”

“She carried on again this morning, and Saskia offered to accompany her back to San Diego,” Hy said. “It’s for the best. These
histrionics…” He shrugged.

“What about Elwood?”

“He comes and goes. I don’t even know where he’s staying.”

“Well, he’s here for Shar.”

“Everybody’s here for her.” Hy paused. “She’s not good today.”

A prickle of alarm at the base of Mick’s spine. “How so?”

“Not responding much. Sleeping, and there’s a lot of rapid eye movement. This has happened a couple of times before, and she’s
always rallied. I’ve alerted her nurse. See what you think.”

Hy left and Mick went to see his aunt.

She lay on her side facing the window. When he came around the bed, he saw that her eyes were dull and unfocused, her face
pale and her breathing ragged.

“Shar?”

No eyeblink.

“Shar!”

No response. He ran out to the nurses’ station. Melissa, the night nurse, took one look at his face and together they rushed
back to the room.

“She’s not responding, but her eyes are open,” he said.

Melissa moved swiftly to the side of the bed, looked at Shar, and grabbed the wall phone. She spoke urgently to the operator.
“Get the Code Team and Dr. Saxnay to Room Three. Stat!”

“What’s happening to her?” Mick asked.

“Please step outside.”

“But—”

“Please—go!”

Mick left the room but stayed in the corridor close to the door.

Dr. Saxnay, the attending physician who had taken a personal interest in Shar’s case and seemed to live at the institute,
rushed past him, barely beating the Code Team through the door. Mick followed, stopped just inside. He could hardly breathe.

“Damn,” Saxnay muttered after one look at Shar. He grabbed a tube from the crash cart while the team stood by.

“Get the chopper!” he said to Melissa. “She’s going to SF General. Now!” Without waiting for a response, he tubed Shar, handed
the tube over to one of the team to keep the oxygen moving. “And don’t forget to alert the on-call neurosurgeon over there.”

Saxnay spotted Mick. “You! Call her husband and have him meet us at the hospital.”

Mick was shaking as he stepped outside, but not far enough to be out of earshot. He pulled his cell phone off his belt.

Saxnay muttered, “Bullet must have dislodged, caused more bleeding. That clot’s probably growing by the minute, putting more
and more pressure on her brain stem.”

“What do you think her chances are?” Melissa asked.

“Her best hope is surgery.” Saxnay watched the team transfer Shar to a stretcher, cinch her in for transport. “I was afraid
it would come to this. Surgery’s going to be tricky, but it’s that or lose her.”

Lose her!

No! That wasn’t possible. They couldn’t be talking about Shar.

Flapping rotors and the whine of the helicopter’s engine. Feet pounding from a rear entrance. Men grabbed the stretcher, pushed
past Mick as if he weren’t there.

He watched, numb, as they took his aunt away.

W
hat’s happening to me? God, my heart’s pounding like it wants to break through my breastbone.

Light. The light’s fading, disappearing.

My sight, the only thing I have left… going, gone!

My mind…

Where is everybody? Where am I?

No sense of space, place, time.

Alone, so alone.

Rising. Falling.

Dark.

Falling.

Oh, bright flash… pain… roar…

Metal grazing my fingertips.

I see it!

No, I can’t. My sight’s gone. I’m all alone in the dark.

Falling.

The dark.

Falling, falling…

Help! Don’t let me die!

H
e sat in the waiting room at SF General, surrounded by distraught and anxious strangers, but as alone as if he were on a deserted
island. He hadn’t called anyone; he couldn’t have stood the sympathy and the too-early condolences.

A door opened, a tall dark-haired man in scrubs strode in.

“Mr. Ripinsky, I’m Ben Travers. I’ll be your wife’s surgeon.”

“What’re her chances?”

“I don’t play the odds with people’s lives.”

“Meaning not good.”

“Meaning we don’t know.”

“What happened? She wasn’t good when I left her today, but she hasn’t been good a lot of days.”

“In all likelihood, the bullet has moved and a blood clot has formed and is causing more severe pressure on her brain stem.
We’ll have further information when we get the results of the CT scan. In the meantime, we’re prepping her for surgery.”