Missing (The Cass Lehman Series Book 3) (23 page)

Ed spoke into the intercom and the door clicked and swung open.

‘Cass …’ Ed looked at me with worry creasing his forehead.

‘It’s all right, you don’t need to warn me. I know how sick she is.’

‘Let’s go then.’

We entered a room where the beds were clustered in a circle around a central nurses’ station. The only conversation was coming from the nurses. The patients were silent other than the occasional moan or cough. Machinery whirred and beeped at every bedside, creating a backdrop of white noise.

An older nurse met us as we walked in and directed us to a bed over on the far side of the room. She had short, white-blonde hair and was in her late fifties. She gave an impression of calm, unflappable efficiency — exactly what you want when you’re visiting someone who’s critically ill.

‘How is Gwen Carmichael doing today?’ Ed asked.

‘Not well, I’m afraid. Her blood pressure is way down and her pulse is erratic. We’re also struggling to keep her core temperature up. The doctors are a bit baffled. We’ve run all sorts of tests and we can’t seem to find any underlying cause. There’s no disease or problem with her vital organs that we’ve been able to identify. Were either of you with her when she became unwell?’ she asked, leading the way across the room.

‘I was,’ I said.

‘The doctor wants to talk to you. He wants to know a bit more about what happened. I’ll give him a call.’

I nodded, but I was only half listening to her. My attention was focused on the slight form in the bed we were approaching. Gran was lying almost flat. She was hooked up to oxygen and a drip. But it wasn’t the tubes that bothered me, it was how tiny and frail she looked against the sea of white and stainless steel.

‘How are you travelling, Cass?’ Ed asked.

I read the double meaning in his words. There was no doubt that people would have died in the beds that circled the room, but I figured that as long as I didn’t lie in any of them, I would be OK.

‘So far so good. Push me closer to Gran, please.’

‘You sure?’

I wanted to touch her hand. I was terrified, but I needed to do it. I’d touched the hand of a man on life support once before and discovered he was dead, long gone. I had to keep reminding myself that Gran wasn’t on life support. Being in a coma wasn’t the same thing. I reached out and grabbed her hand. Her skin felt cold and I closed my eyes, praying.

After a few seconds I opened them again. The room was the same. Gran was the same. Ed was leaning over me with a frown on his face.

‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘But she’s so cold.’

I bent my head down and pressed her hand against my cheek. The tears I’d been holding back overflowed and I cried silently,
my shoulders shaking. Ed rested a hand on my back, patting me in an awkward attempt at comfort.

‘Gran?’ I said. ‘Come back to us. Mum and I need you. You’re strong, you can do it.’ I lifted my face away and wiped the dampness off her skin. I stroked her hand, wishing I could heal her like she’d healed me so many times before.

‘Miss Lehman?’ A male voice interrupted my misery.

I turned. A doctor was behind us. The guy must have broken the land speed record to get to the ward so fast. He was good-looking, tall with dark hair and an olive complexion. He wore a dark suit, which made me think he must be a specialist. His elegance suddenly made me conscious of my wild hair, runny nose and bloodshot eyes.

‘I’m Dr Richards. Can I speak to you for a few minutes?’

‘Sure,’ I said, sniffing and brushing the tears off my cheeks.

He looked in Ed’s direction.

‘It’s OK. This is my partner, Ed.’

‘Right.’ Dr Richards barely acknowledged Ed before grabbing a chair and sitting down. ‘I’m a cardiac specialist, but to be honest with you I’m not sure if I’m the right person to be treating your grandmother. Her blood pressure has been very low. Her heart rate is also low and her core temperature is way below what it should be.’

My own heart had twisted into a painful knot in my chest.

‘It’s almost as if she’s suffering from hypothermia, except her brain activity is off the charts. Can you tell me what happened?’

‘How much do you already know?’ I asked.

‘I know your family was held hostage by a convicted criminal who’d escaped from a psychiatric facility. That’s about it.’

‘He was waving a gun. Gran tried to calm him down. It seemed to be working until he got very agitated and shot my mum. I managed to wrestle the gun off him and shoot him. I think the fear and strain was too much for Gran. She fainted.’

‘Fainted?’

‘Yes, passed out.’

‘Her physical state was consistent with severe shock when she first came in, but she should have started to show signs of recovery long before this.’

I looked at him. I wasn’t prepared to say more. Trying to explain Gran’s talent and the toll it took on her would fly in the face of everything this guy had ever learned. ‘Will she get better?’ I asked. I had to ask, but I was afraid of the answer.

He met my eyes. ‘I’m going to be honest. I’m quite worried about her.’

I felt the tears coming again and bit my lip to try and stop them.

‘We’ll do everything we can.’

I couldn’t speak and it was too hard to meet his eyes.

Ed saw that I was struggling. ‘Thank you, Doctor. We appreciate all your efforts. She’s very special to us.’

He walked away and I went back to resting my head against Gran’s hand. Ed’s phone trilled, earning him a glare from one of the nurses. She pointed towards a sign on the wall above Gran’s head: a picture of a mobile phone with a large red cross over it.

‘Cass, do you mind if I step out? Phil wants me to call her. She wouldn’t have phoned if it wasn’t important.’

‘That’s fine. I’m happy to just sit here,’ I said. As grateful as I was for his help, I wanted some time alone with Gran.

I watched as he made his way back across the room and through the secure door. I turned back to Gran. Her face was so white it almost matched her hair. I rubbed her hand, trying to get some warmth back into it, then I closed my eyes and thought of all the happy times we’d shared together. My whole life was full of memories about our home, and she was at the centre of every one.

A montage replayed itself behind my eyelids: the three of us sitting around the table in the kitchen eating her delicious food, walks around the cliffs to try and burn off the calories, sitting in the sunroom chatting and reading, pottering around in the garden together and bagging up her dried herbs to take into town. She was such a central part of my life. I couldn’t imagine it without her. The thought intruded like a yawning chasm of blackness. I banished it and focused on the good times.

I kept rubbing her hand, wishing some warmth and life back into it, willing my energy to flow into it. I didn’t even realise I was doing it until a thin voice interrupted my concentration.

‘Darling, stop rubbing so hard, I won’t have any skin left.’

My eyes flew open. I looked over at her. She’d tugged the oxygen mask down and she was looking at me through half-closed lids.

‘You’re awake!’

‘I am. I was having such a nice dream about the three of us sitting in the sunroom.’

I blinked. I’d been thinking about the sunroom — had I transferred that thought to her? We had a close bond and she could often read me but actually planting a thought in her mind? That was a new one. She closed her eyes again.

‘Gran!’ I pushed myself up out of my chair and looked around for the nurse.

Her eyes opened again.

‘Yes?’

‘God, you gave me a fright. I thought you’d gone.’

‘Gone? Don’t be silly,’ she whispered.

The nurse came over to see what was going on.

‘She’s awake,’ I said.

The nurse moved to Gran’s side and peered down at her. ‘Welcome back, Mrs Carmichael. It’s nice to have you with us. Let’s put the oxygen back on, shall we?’ She checked all the monitors, then took Gran’s blood pressure and temperature. I sat back down and watched. Gran’s eyes fluttered shut again after a couple of minutes.

‘Well, her BP and pulse have improved and her core temperature has risen. I don’t know what you did, but having you here seems to have done what the doctors couldn’t.’ She smiled at me. ‘She’s still very sick, but this is a step in the right direction.’

CHAPTER
24

Ed was so busy wallowing in the blanket of guilt that had descended over him since dropping Cass at home in Jewel Bay he almost missed the turn-off to Fairfield. Swearing, he slammed his foot on the brake and wrenched the wheel around, only just managing to avoid sliding onto the gravel verge.

Heart thudding, he swore again and dragged his attention back to the road. Phil had called to tell him that just as the team were winding up their efforts at the dump, they’d stumbled across some more human remains. Sonya, the Fairfield pathologist, had done a preliminary review and Phil had thought Ed would want to hear the initial findings.

He hadn’t liked dropping Cass at her house and leaving straight away. Sure, he’d made her a cup of tea and tucked her up in a rug
in the sunroom, but it still felt like he was abandoning her. Her words of reassurance hadn’t quite rung true.

‘Of course you need to go. Don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine.’ But she wouldn’t look him in the eye when she said it.

‘You don’t feel uncomfortable being here by yourself?’

‘Don’t be ridiculous. This is my home. It’d take more than some lowlife like Jenson to spoil that for me. It was nice of Phil to get cleaners in.’

‘She thinks a lot of you.’

‘She’s grown on me too. Who would have thought?’

Stranger things had happened, but not many. If Anita had told him two years ago that she, Phil and Cass would one day have a casual lunch together at Mrs McCredie’s, he would have taken it as proof that her talent was a load of shit.

He swung into the underground car park at Fairfield Station and went to park in his usual spot, but a shiny blue BMW 3 Series was in his space. He parked his dusty white Commodore in one of the visitors’ spaces and tried to push away the irrational anger that had surged out of nowhere. He’d been gone nearly nine months. He knew it was ridiculous to think his car spot would be waiting for him. Still, he had a pretty fucking good idea who that nice new Beamer belonged to, and he had a sudden urge to run his keys down the extra-glossy paintwork on his way past. Childish, he knew, but so what?

He decided to skip the main office floor and head straight to the pathology suite. He owed Sorenson an answer about the job, but he still hadn’t spoken to Cass about it. Now, with Anita
injured and Gwen’s life hanging in the balance, he was pretty sure she’d want to move back to Jewel Bay, but whether she’d want to move with him was another matter.

He punched in the security code for the pathology suite, then fumed as the lights flashed red. It really wasn’t his day. With a grimace he picked up the courtesy phone and dialled.

‘Yes?’ a female voice he didn’t recognise answered.

‘Detective Dyson.’

‘Good morning, Detective. They’re waiting for you in the conference room, last door on the right.’

He opened his mouth to tell her he knew damn well where the conference room was, but checked himself. No point being churlish. It wasn’t her fault she didn’t know him. He couldn’t help wondering how many more new faces he’d find if he came back. Even though he knew it was unreasonable, he’d expected everything to have stayed the same while he’d been off reinventing himself.

He’d been holding onto the thought that things were ticking along back in Fairfield just as they always had. He’d been kidding himself. Had he really thought he could come back any time and it’d be as if he’d never left? What a first-class idiot he’d been.

The door buzzed and clicked and he entered a corridor that smelled like a hospital but lacked the riot of activity. By the time Ed got to the autopsy suite his eyes were beginning to ache. The corridor was a study in white: white walls, white ceiling, white fluorescent lights, white tiles on the floor. The budget for the new building clearly hadn’t stretched to interior design. The
conference room was another twenty metres along and he could hear Phil’s voice long before he got there. The door was open. He strode in.

‘Ed, you’re just in time. I was just telling Dave to cool his heels until you got here.’

Ed looked around the room. It was a full house — Phil, Dave and Sonya, along with Maria the dog handler and Sorenson. So much for avoiding the boss.

‘Sorry, am I late?’

‘You’re right on time. We’re just waiting on Steve to join us,’ Sorenson said. ‘How are Cass and her family?’

‘I dropped Cass at home. Anita has to stay in for another night. She’s not happy about it — by tomorrow they’ll probably be pushing her out the door. Gwen isn’t so great, but she did wake up for a couple of minutes when Cass was with her, which is a good sign.’

Sorenson gave an audible sigh of relief. ‘I’m glad. When I rang, they wouldn’t tell me much about Gwen’s condition.’

‘She’s got them a bit puzzled.’

Steve chose that moment to hustle into the room. He took a seat next to Phil and looked around the room with puppy-dog eagerness.

‘Developments?’ Phil asked.

‘You could say that. I just got a call back from one of Beth Crowley’s former employers. I was doing some background checks to see if she had any connections to the other missing persons on our list.’

‘And she did?’ Phil leant forwards.

‘Not to the individuals but it turns out she did some volunteer work when she was at uni.’

Ed rolled his eyes with impatience. ‘With?’

Phil shot daggers at him.

‘The Hutt Street Centre. They’re an organisation that supports homeless people in Adelaide,’ Steve said.

‘Well that suddenly makes her more interesting doesn’t it? Better bump her up the list of possibilities,’ Sorenson said.

‘We’ll look into it and see what else we can find out,’ Ed said.

‘All right, let’s kick this off shall we?’ said Sorenson. ‘Phil, will you summarise where we’re up to for everyone’s benefit?’

‘The McLaren Vale dumpsite has been extensively searched over the last week. With Maria and Bruno’s help, four days ago we found another set of remains at the compacting site. We’ve been searching that site for three days now, but haven’t found anything more. When we interviewed the operators, they explained that the remains were found in the location where they compact the rubbish before moving it to landfill. So the day before yesterday we expanded our search to include the landfill area. The crime-scene techs used a grid to search the site, but it covers well over a square kilometre, and it’s nearly fifty metres deep in some places.’