Sara Paretsky - V.I. Warshawski 08 (44 page)

As I
stretched I watched the early morning news. City engineers had been
unsuccessful in blocking the hole between the river and the tunnels; water
continued to pour in. I shuddered as I pulled my neck gently to one side: Mr.

Contreras
and I had been exceedingly lucky.

The
Board of Trade was still closed—an unprecedented event. Marshall Field was
looking at tens, possibly hundreds of millions in damage. Rain was forecast,
which would further hamper crews pumping out flooded basements. The Loop el
lines were shut because of flooding at Dearborn Street—people were being bused
from remote sites.

“And
at Northwestern Hospital doctors were unable to save one of the children
heroically rescued by Chicago private detective V. I. Warshawski and her
neighbor yesterday.” I watched Beth Blacksin talking to a fatigued pediatrician
in front of the very building I was standing in. “Ms. Warshawski, who recently
sustained a head injury, is being held for observation. Our reporters were not
allowed to talk to her.”

I
switched off the set at the commercial break. Pressing my lips together, I
tried to concentrate on my exercises instead of my guilt over failing Jessie
Hawkings.

The
solemn-eyed train of interns and residents arrived as I was in the middle of a
sequence of leg raises. I had spent five minutes stretching my sore hamstrings
by resting one leg on the bed and using the hand controls to raise it. Now I
was lying on the floor using a piece of IV-tubing to pull my legs up higher.
The doctors thought at first I’d collapsed from my head injuries and raced over
to me in great agitation. When I explained what I was doing the neurology
resident escorted me back to bed.

“That
can wait until Dr. Herschel says you’re fit enough to work out again. I want to
test your reflexes.”

Breakfast
arrived while he was sticking safety pins into my feet. It was an eclectic
collection, ranging from a box of cereal to a sweet roll, with something
approximating scrambled eggs in between. On an ordinary day I wouldn’t have
wanted any of it, but I couldn’t keep my eyes from it while the exam
progressed—both yesterday and Sunday I had put in strenuous days on short
rations.

The
neurology resident told me the NMR scan was scheduled for ten-thirty; someone
would be along with a wheelchair to take me to the facility. When I protested
that I could walk there on my own steam he smiled gently.

“I’m
sure you can, Ms. Warshawski. But while you’re a guest here I’m asking you to
do us a favor and follow our house rules. It’s just a precaution—probably
unnecessary—but we have had people who thought they were fine collapse from
blood clots. So why don’t you rest. Someone will be around with a newspaper.

Before
you know it you’ll be out of here.”

I
tried to smile acquiescently, but I haven’t had much practice—I don’t know how
convincing I made it. As soon as they left I dove at the food tray and devoured
everything, including the sweet roll, which was quite stale. When I’d finished
I strolled down the hall to find Mr. Contreras. Someone at the nursing station
waiting for her shift to end was happy to look up his room number for me. She
got me Emily Messenger’s as well.

My
neighbor’s pleasure at seeing me was tempered by embarrassment at his skimpy
hospital gown. In the years we’d known each other the old man wouldn’t even
open his door to me if he’d stripped down to an undershirt and trousers.

His
usual good spirits had been dampened by a phone call from his daughter.

Roused
to righteous action by last night’s news reports on our heroic rescue work she
was coming at noon with a set of clothes and a van to haul him and the dogs
back to Elk Grove Village.

“My
only hope is that Mitch will bite her when she tries opening the door to the
apartment,” he said gloomily. “Although then she’d have him put to sleep.”

“Don’t
go. No reason you have to.”

“She’ll
have the dogs,” he explained. “I made the mistake of saying I couldn’t go with
her on their account. You’ll come pick us up, won’t you, cookie? Although, if I
can’t come up with that tax money I may end up staying out there.”

“First
thing Thursday,” I promised rashly, having no idea what tomorrow might bring. I
wrote down his daughter’s address and gave him a consoling hug. “And we’ll
think of something about the taxes.”

I
wish I felt as optimistic as I made myself sound. If I had to sell my little
apartment, where could I afford to live next? I tried not to think about it as
I wandered the halls looking for Emily’s room—I had enough on my mind right now
without adding tax woes to the general brew.

I
finally discovered that Emily had been put in the children’s wing, perhaps the
first time in years anyone had thought of her as a child. I had to cross the
street to get to the building. I looked down at my paper hospital slippers and
flimsy gown.

“Who
wills the end wills the means,” I muttered, striding outside.

Under
the sullen sky I joined the throng of hospital workers moving among the
buildings of Northwestern’s vast complex. As I crossed the street I saw the NMR
building. I could get there so easily on my own, assuming I wanted to go. I
ground my teeth and entered the pediatric wing.

When
I got to Emily’s room I came upon an altercation. A tall, bearded man was
arguing with a nurse outside her door. He broke off at the sight of me.

“Warshawski!
What a break. Explain to this woman why I need to talk to Emily Messenger.”

“Not
a chance, Ryerson. The only thing that surprises me is that I wasn’t expecting
to find you here.”

The
Mouse Between Two Cats

“You
can help me, Warshawski,” Murray said. “The kid’s the key to the whole
Messenger murder, but they won’t let me see her.”

“You’ve
got a hell of a nerve,” I said, my tone light but my eyes murderous.

“You
told Conrad on Sunday that I talked to you when I hadn’t. You think now I’m
going to help you torment a child who’s coming off a stint in hell? No way. And
if”—I squinted at the nurse’s badge—“if Ms. Higgins feels squeamish about
getting hospital security to boot you, I’ll call the city. Conrad would love an
excuse to run you in for a few hours.”

Murray
put an arm around me. “You turn me on when you threaten me with hobnailed
boots, Vic. If you’re going in to see the kid I’ll just sit and listen.”

I
twisted away from his grip. “She’s not ‘the kid.’ She’s a person, and one who
needs help, not interrogation.”

“That’s
what I’ve been trying to tell him,” the nurse said. “Dr. Morrison said no
reporters, no distress.”

“Murray,
when women say ”no,’ they mean “no.’ Stop bugging a hard-working nurse and get
out of her hair.”

“Then
how about an exclusive with you, Warshawski?After all, you went and pulled the
female person and her brothers out of the tunnel. Come with me for a cup of coffee
and tell me all about it. I’d love a shot of you in that robe: that V neck
recalls some fine evenings.”

“Great.”
I started for the elevator. “Come on, big guy.”

Murray
gulped—he hadn’t expected me to call his bluff. He followed me perforce, asking
me questions all the way down the hall. When the elevator came we climbed on
together, followed by a lab tech wheeling a loaded cart. I waited until the
doors were starting to close, then wriggled out past the cart. His protesting
yelp followed me as the doors shut.

Ellen
Higgins, emerging from a patient’s room, stopped to thank me when I came back
up the hall. “We’ve had reporters around here all night. Why, one man tried
going into her room at three this morning. And when the night ward head, Lila
Dantry, stopped him he had the nerve to pretend he was a friend of Mr.

Messenger’s
come to help out his daughter.”

“At
three in the morning?” I felt a chill in my stomach. I couldn’t imagine a
reporter doing that, but one of Fabian’s friends might, if Fabian sent him to
harass Emily on his behalf.

“They
should post a guard,” I said.

“That’s
the family’s decision,” Higgins told me. “But I think we can protect her from
journalists—they usually cooperate with hospital personnel.”

I
didn’t like the idea of strange men dropping in on Emily. A hospital is too
easy a place to get in and out of. I thought I might call the Streeter
brothers, some friends of mine with a bodyguard service, when I got back to my
room.

When
the nurse realized I was the person who had helped rescue the children
yesterday, she took me over to see Joshua and Nathan—Sam and Miriam, the two
Hawkings children, were still in intensive care. The two Messengers still had
IV’s in their arms for fluids, but normal color had returned to their faces.

Joshua
was studiously playing with some kind of handheld game, ignoring me, Ellen
Higgins, and the nurse adjusting his IV, but Nathan was restless. The ward
nurse said he was crying for his sister.

Back
in the hall Higgins debated letting me visit Emily. “She’s so withdrawn, we
were worried initially that she might have sustained some brain damage, but the
EEG looks normal.”

I
nodded. “She retreats behind a mask that looks almost retarded when she feels
threatened. Have the cops been to see her?”

“They
told me a very nice woman officer tried talking to Emily about her mother’s
death, but she became so agitated, we had to ask the officer to leave.

What
do the police think she knows about her mother?”

I
shook my head. “They don’t confide in me. They may think she knows something
about the murder weapon.”

“Oh.”
Higgins eyes grew round. “We had a psychiatric resident in because we wanted to
make sure she hadn’t been too traumatized by her time in the tunnel.

When
he asked her her name she said she didn’t have one, that she was a mouse
between two cats. She wouldn’t say anything else. He thinks maybe she’s had a
psychotic breakdown.”

“She
could just be too angry to want to talk to any more adults at this point,” I
suggested. “When she ran away from home last week she was on her way to see me.
She may trust me more than a strange man.”

Higgins
compromised by trying to page Dr. Morrison to ask her permission.

When
the pediatrician hadn’t answered after five minutes, Higgins decided to let me
into the room. Although most of the children were in rooms with four or even
six beds, Emily had been put by herself, Higgins explained, after her
hysterical outcry against Fabian. Dr. Morrison, the pediatrician, had worried
about the effect on other sick children if Emily had further outbursts.

When
I came into the room Emily was lying with her eyes closed, but the tension in
her neck and arms made me believe she was awake. Seven days underneath Chicago
had leached the roundness from her arms and face. An IV was stuck into one thin
wrist. Her frizzy hair lay bunched on the pillow like a badly wrung dish mop.

I
pulled up a chair next to the bed. “It’s Vic Warshawski, Emily. You were
looking for me the day you ran away from home, but your dad wouldn’t let the
school call me. I’m sorry. Sorry you couldn’t find me, and sorry you’ve had
such a terrible time of it.”

The
muscles in her jaw moved, but she gave no other sign of having heard me.

“I
hear you told the psychiatrist you didn’t have a name, that you were the mouse
between two cats. That kind of statement gets doctors all excited—they start
imagining the papers they can write about you in medical journals. Maybe you
should go back to being Emily while you’re here so they don’t exploit you.”

At
that she gave a snort that was half giggle, half sob. She didn’t open her eyes
to look at me, but spoke in a tight, defiant voice.

“I’m
not Emily. I am a mouse between two cats.”

I
licked my lips as I tried to think of how to talk to her. “I read your poem
about the mouse. You write in a very powerful way—it’s a gift that you should
nurture. But the poem also sounds as though you were tormented by your parents.

When
did you write it? After the dinner party your dad gave for Manfred Yeo? He
treated you in a very mean way that night. You know I thought so at the time.”

I
waited a long few minutes to see if she would speak further, but she remained
silent, her body taut, the tendons standing out on her neck and arms like
strings that would snap if pulled any further. I felt the back of my own neck
tense up in response. The tension reminded me to keep my voice calm. I shut my
eyes, trying to conjure up the events that ultimately drove Emily underground.

“You
wrote the poem after the dinner party. After I saw you, while Fabian and
Deirdre were in their bedroom fighting. It must have seemed as though they were
fighting over you, you poor little mouse.”

She
shuddered along the length of her body but still didn’t speak. I could feel the
intensity with which she was listening. If I could work out what happened, work
it out right, she might trust me enough to speak to me.