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I never knew my mother when she didn’t have to be fed through a tube. She lay in her hospital bed, dying as beautifully as the Irish saint my father thought her to be, unmindful as I squeezed her hand.
I was about four, I think. Maybe three. I just remember being small, feeling small, the child-flesh of my forearm indented by the cool bed railing as it rested there, reaching through for her cold fingers, as though to keep her from heaven, and me from hell.
My father told me she’d been very sad for a long time, and the doctors had tried to help by putting lightning into her brain, a cleansing electrical storm like the kind that used to wash away the smudged, sluggish air of Pittsburgh summers. But it had only made things worse.
By the time I was five, I was motherless, and being raised alternately by my father, between shifts and binges, and my mother’s sister. Since her husband Frank worked in the produce yards off Penn Avenue, I ended up spending most of my teenage after-school hours working with him.
Called “the Strip,” it was a world I knew well. As a child, I’d played along the railroad tracks that ran behind it. Later, I’d earn spending money unloading crates of lettuce, peppers, and tomatoes from the backs of trucks.
I remember sweaty old men, skin dark and wrinkled as olives soaking in brine, shouting at each other over the static blare of Pirates games on transistor radios. Two-wheeled carts, piled high with produce, would bounce crazily over unused streetcar tracks imbedded in the cobblestone pavement.
Over the years, nothing much has changed. The streets still smell of men and ham and cheese left to age; of truck exhaust and rotting vegetables; of animal fat and flatcar timber and smoke from thick black cigars.
To this day, there’s a triangle of memory in my mind: my mother’s death, the yards, and, just beyond Penn, the PAL gym that was old when my dad first took me there thirty years ago.
It was a black-bricked hulk in a forgotten alley of a forgotten street. Fight posters of heavy-jawed Italians and Poles posing menacingly for the camera hung like dry, cracked adhesive tape, shredded and stained by age.
Inside, likewise, nothing much had changed. I stood there now in training sweats they keep here for me, blinking salt water out of my eyes as I worked the ceiling bag. Needing to hit something. Anything. To hear the percussive slap of fist against leather, echoing.
After what happened with Casey, I couldn’t go home to an empty house. I felt jangly, upended.
I mean, what the hell
had
happened? And what was I doing about it? What didn’t I know about her, and why didn’t it bother me more? There were a hundred questions I should be asking myself and I wasn’t asking them.
Maybe because I didn’t want to know the answers.
Whatever message she was sending, I refused to decode it. To assess or interpret. All the usual therapist’s defenses against merely reacting.
I touched the side of my face, still slick from her. Mixed now with my own sweat. Insane, this wanting of her. Against my every instinct. Despite—
To hell with understanding
her
, I thought; I didn’t understand
me.
***
Outside, the rain must’ve been coming in gusts. I was vaguely conscious of its staccato drumming on the roof, like thrown handfuls of pebbles.
The gym was nearly deserted, except for an old-timer playing Solitaire by the door and the bored young cop that Biegler had assigned to me. With the case growing cold, and the pressure from the top mounting, the police figured Polk had better things to do than baby-sit me.
My bodyguard, a guy named Schotz, lounged against the wall. He was young, with steroid-pumped arms that stretched the dark fabric of his uniform. He was typical Pittsburgh: stolid, unambivalent, third generation at the job.
He pretended boredom as he watched me pepper the bag repeatedly with angry right-hand jabs.
“Not bad.” A grudging comment. “How’s your left?”
“Reliable.” Macho bullshit for the benefit of the kid.
He grunted. After leaving the station, it hadn’t been hard to talk Schotz into detouring here for a couple hours. Until he saw the place. No state-of-the-art equipment. No music. No babes.
I finished my work-out and nodded toward the locker room.
“Shower, okay?” I said. “Ten minutes.”
Schotz shrugged. “Just don’t get killed.”
A phone rang, and I glanced over at the front desk. But it was Schotz’ cell. He answered it, then took a few steps away and held it furtively to his ear.
***
I came out of the locker room wearing the same clothes I’d had on all day, now damp from my shower.
Officer Schotz had moved again, this time lounging against the front door. As I neared, he pushed off, sullen.
“Hey.” His voice was all cop.
He put a hand on my arm, stopping me. Just then, Harry Polk pushed the door open behind him, his face dark as grain leather. Before I could say a word, his thick hands were on my shoulders, turning me.
“Jesus, Harry!—”
I felt the sharp snap of handcuffs on my wrists.
I craned my neck around. “What the hell—?”
“Daniel Rinaldi, you’re under arrest for the murder of Dr. Brooks Riley. You have the right—”
“What? Brooks?..”
Polk pulled me toward him, eyes like marble chips. “They found him in his office at the clinic a couple hours ago. With two nasty slugs in his heart.”
For the next couple hours, I was the prime suspect in the murder of Brooks Riley.
The facts were these: Earlier that day, after the patients were secured following the incident in the yard, Bert Garman called an emergency meeting of all clinic personnel. Riley never showed up, nor did he answer at his extension.
That’s when Nancy Mendors offered to see if he was still in his office. She found the door closed, but unlocked. She knocked twice, got no answer, and went in.
Brooks Riley was sitting in his chair, wearing a look of surprise, or maybe just a final annoyance. Thick blood was congealing on his chest like red sealing wax, darkening at the edges.
Nancy’s screams brought a nearby orderly on the run, followed by Garman and the rest of the staff. Investigators reported later that nothing in the office seemed to have been disturbed. The metal cabinet holding patient files, though flecked with blood, was securely locked.
By five o’clock, after a quick review of witness statements from the scene, Lt. Biegler had ordered Harry Polk to arrest me.
I got all of this from Polk himself as we rode back to the Old County Building. We parked under the station. Then he brought me upstairs and into the same interrogation room that had hosted Arnie Flodine only a few hours before. Biegler was waiting for me, arms folded, glowering.
Polk unlocked my handcuffs and pulled out a chair. We sat across from each other like chess opponents, shoulders hunched, wary and hostile. There was no window, but I could sense that beyond these walls another night had fallen.
“Sure you don’t wanna call your lawyer?” Polk said.
“Not yet,” I said. “Though he could probably use a laugh.”
“You think this is funny?” Biegler’s brow narrowed.
“No, I think it’s bullshit. I didn’t kill Brooks Riley. For one thing, I
couldn’t
have.”
“Like hell,” Polk said. “The ME figures Riley got clipped sometime between noon and four this afternoon. I know for a fact that you were on the premises at Ten Oaks, ’cause I was there with you.”
“That’s right, Harry.
You’re
my alibi. Then, after the riot in the yard, I was with Nancy Mendors, until
you
showed up again to tell me they’d arrested the killer. So when the hell did I shoot Riley?”
“
During
the riot,” Biegler said. “Sgt. Polk tells me you and he got separated in all the confusion.”
Polk’s head bobbed. “I lost sight of you for at least ten minutes. Plenty of time for you to slip out of the crowd, shoot Riley in his office, and come back out to the yard.”
I stared at him. “By that same logic,
you
could be the killer. I lost sight of you during those same ten minutes.”
“Problem with that,” Biegler said, “is that
you
got a motive. Dr. Riley threatened to sue you in front of witnesses. Dr. Bert Garman and his wife Elaine. Riley swore he’d destroy you. Ruin your life.”
“Plus we got Garman admitting that you punched the guy out the night before,” Polk said. “I saw what you did to Riley’s jaw, remember? At the clinic.”
“So he threatened to sue me. That doesn’t mean I killed him.” I leaned back. “C’mon, guys, make up your minds. First, you say I’m the intended victim of a murder. Now you say
I’m
a murderer. Which is it?”
Biegler leaned in, bristling. “Don’t fuck with me, okay? I
still
like you for the Kevin Wingfield killing.”
I pushed down my own anger, focused on Polk. “Come on, Harry, you
know
this is crap.”
“Maybe. But look what we got: you and Brooks Riley hated each other, personally and professionally. Then today, another angry exchange between you two. So when the patients go ballistic, you see your chance to sneak away and do Riley. Problem solved.”
“Nice story,” I said. “But where did I get the gun to shoot him? And where is it now?”
Biegler was smug. “CSU’s scouring the clinic and grounds as we speak. We’ll find the damn gun, guaranteed.”
I took a breath. “Look,
anybody
at Ten Oaks could’ve used the riot for cover and killed Riley.”
“But only you had a motive.”
“That you
know
of,” I insisted. “Believe me, Riley was not a well-liked guy.”
Polk snorted. “Well, he got one hell of an attitude adjustment this afternoon.”
“Besides, about this so-called riot. Like I told Polk, that kind of thing is just
not
typical patient behavior. Isn’t it strange that such a golden opportunity would suddenly present itself? Unless the fight between the two female patients was staged—”
“No shit?” Polk laughed. “Believe it or not, us dumb cops managed to come up with that same theory ourselves. My partner’s over there now, questioning the two broads.”
“That’s my point. If somebody
did
arrange for those girls to cause a diversion, it would have to be someone on the inside. At Ten Oaks, I mean.”
Biegler shrugged. “You go there once a week for professional consults, don’t you? You’ve still got visiting privileges. That’s inside enough for me.”
Suddenly, the door swung open and Casey Walters strode in, face flushed with anger. In her hand was a cell phone.
“Counselor.” Biegler gave her a curt nod. “Just in time to file the papers.”
She just glared, pointing the phone at him like a gun. “It’s for you.”
Biegler blinked in confusion and instinctively back-stepped. Casey moved closer, voice hard as flint.
“As soon as I heard about this shit,” she said, “I got a hold of Sinclair.”
“Hey, you can’t—” But he bit off his words, staring nervously now at the phone as if it were actually loaded.
“Go ahead,” she pressed him, “the DA’s waiting to hear why you’ve arrested a guy we’ve had in protective custody for the past two days. Who, by the way, consults for the department and has a fucking
cop
for an alibi.”
Biegler swallowed hard and took the phone from her hand. “Lt. Biegler here.” He moved stiffly to a far corner of the room.
Casey swung around and looked at me for the first time. “Hi ya, Danny. I don’t know about you, but I’ve had enough of this place for one day.”
I got to my feet. “Works for me.”
“Hey—!” Polk protested, rising out of his chair.
“Look, Harry,” I said angrily, “either book me now, in which case I’m calling a lawyer, or I’m walking.”
Polk looked helplessly at Biegler, who stood with the cell phone glued to his ear. The lieutenant just waved impatiently in our general direction.
Casey touched my elbow. “Let’s go.”
But I wasn’t finished. I moved around the table to face Polk.
“One more thing,” I said. “When he gets off the phone, tell your boss I’m refusing police protection, as of now. Truth is, getting busted for Riley’s murder has kinda taken all the fun out of it. Besides, if Schotz is the best you can do, I’ll take my chances going solo.”
Polk growled. “Hell, you can’t just—”
“Actually, I can.” I turned to Casey. “
Now
we can go.”
“You sure about this? I mean, Sinclair’s not gonna like—”
“It’s
my
life, Casey. It’s time I took it back.”
Our eyes locked. After a long moment, she nodded.
Biegler was still on the phone as I followed her out of the Box, feeling the heat of Polk’s stare on my back.
