Chapter 20
"He wants only to make her happy."
"Are you kidding?"
"Stop looking at me like that, Wick," Oren complained. "I didn't say it. She said he said it."
Wick had stayed in ICU for two days. For the past five, he'd been in a private room that afforded a view of the downtown skyline. He was able to lie on his back now. It still hurt like hell, especially when he was forced to get up and walk around, which was at least twice a day.
Each of those hikes, as he called them, was an ordeal equivalent to climbing Everest. It took him five minutes just to get out of bed. At first he was able only to shuffle around his room, but earlier today he had managed to make it to the end of the hall and back, which the nursing staff claimed was a major breakthrough. Big woo. They commended his progress. He cursed and asked them where they stored their Nazi uniforms. When he returned to bed, he was sweating and feeling as helpless as a newborn.
He looked forward to the pain medication that was regularly dispensed. It didn't eliminate the pain but made it tolerable. He could live with it if he didn't think about it too much and focused on something else. Like Lozada.
This morning he'd been taken off the IV.
He'd been glad to get rid of it, but then the nurses had begun bullying him to take in lots of fluids. They brought him fruit juice in little plastic cups with foil lids. He hadn't succeeded in opening one yet without spilling half of it.
"Are you eating?" Oren asked.
"Some. A little. I'm not hungry. Besides, you wouldn't believe the crap they try to pass off as food."
His cheek was still the color of an eggplant going bad, but the swelling had gone down enough for him to see out of both eyes. For instance, he could see that Oren's eyebrow was in its critical-arch position. "What?" he asked grouchily.
"How're your privates?"
"Fine thanks, how're yours?" For several uncomfortable days he had straddled an ice pack, but, as Rennie had promised, his balls had returned to their normal size.
"You know what I mean," Oren said.
"They're okay. Wanna check 'em out?"
"I'll take your word for it." Oren shifted his weight from one foot to the other. "I haven't had a chance to tell you. I'm sorry about your chin."
"Least of my problems."
"Yeah, but I shouldn't have hit you." "I struck first."
"Stupid of both of us. I apologize."
"Noted and accepted. Now get back to what you were saying about Lozada and his fixation on Rennie."
"I've told you already," Oren complained.
"Tell me again."
"Jesus, you're cranky. They haven't taken the catheter out yet, have they?"
"This afternoon. If I can pee they'll leave it out."
"What if you can't?"
"I can. I will. If I have to squeeze it out, I'll pee. No way are they putting that thing back in while I'm conscious. I'd jump out the window first."
"You're such a crybaby."
"Are you going to tell me or what?"
"I've told you. I've repeated it word for word several times. The neighbor said they looked cozy with each other. Dr. Newton says that Lozada was terrorizing her, that she was afraid to fight him off for fear that he would do to her what he'd done to Sally Horton."
Wick sank back into his pillow and closed his eyes. The reminder of what had happened to that girl was painful. He would never forget seeing her lying dead. While he'd been enjoying a shower, she had been killed in cold blood.
Leaving his eyes closed, he said, "She makes sense, Oren. Lozada's a threat to her. Especially if he thinks it comes down to a choice between him and me, and she's favoring me."
"I don't suppose she's talked to you about it."
"No. If you hadn't told me what went down the other night, I wouldn't even know about it."
He couldn't figure Rennie's attitude, and that was the primary reason he was so grumpy.
Yeah, he hurt. Yeah, the food was lousy.
Yeah, he was ready to be peeing on his own.
Yeah, he didn't like walking around bare-assed and feeble.
But what really had him bothered was Rennie's aloofness. She came in every morning and every evening, usually with her head down, her eyes on his chart rather than on him. "How are you, Mr. Threadgill?"
Always the same ho-hum inflection.
She gave his incision a cursory inspection, asked how he was feeling and nodded absently to whatever answer he gave her, like she wasn't really listening and didn't really give a damn.
She told him that she was pleased with his progress, then smiled mechanically and left. He realized that he wasn't her one and only patient. He didn't really expect preferential treatment.
Well, maybe he did. A little.
He'd been heavily medicated when he was in the ICU, but he remembered her sitting near his bedside and giving him sips of Sprite. He remembered her applying the lip balm. He remembered the way they had looked at each other and how long that look had lasted and how significant it had seemed.
Or had any of that actually happened?
Maybe he'd been so drugged out he'd been hallucinating. Had it been a pleasant dream he'd mistaken for reality? Possibly. Because that was, after all, the night Oren had caught her and Lozada in a "cozy" clench in her kitchen.
Damned if he knew what was going on with her.
"When she's on her rounds she's all business," he told Oren. "We haven't even talked about the weather."
"It's hot and dry."
"Looks it."
"She took that chief of surgery position."
"I heard," Wick said. "Good for her.
She's earned it." Oren continued to look at him meaningfully. "That doesn't signify anything, Oren."
"I didn't say it did."
"You didn't have to."
A nurse came in with another container of juice. "I'll drink it later," he told her. "I promise." She didn't look convinced, but she set it on the bed tray and left.
He offered the juice to Oren.
"No thanks."
"Cranberry apple."
"I'm fine."
"You sure? Forgive me for saying so, but you don't look too healthy yourself." Oren had arrived looking wilted not only from the summertime heat, but ragged out in spirit as well. "What's up?"
Oren shrugged, sighed, glanced out the window at the hazy view before coming back to Wick. "The DA called about an hour ago. The big cheese himself. Not an assistant."
Wick had guessed that Oren's glumness had something to do with their case against Lozada. If he'd had good news to impart, he would have imparted it before now.
Discomfort made getting bad news worse.
He adjusted himself to a more comfortable position that favored his sore right side. "Let's hear it."
"He says that what we've got on Lozada is weak. Not enough to take to the grand jury. In any case, he refused to."
Wick had guessed as much. "He came to see me yesterday. A pillar of goodwill and good cheer right down to his Italian loafers. Brought those." He gestured at a tacky bouquet of red, white, and artificially blue carnations.
"He went all out."
"I gave him a full account of what happened the night I was stabbed. Told him that as sure as I was still breathing, it was Lozada."
"How'd he react?"
"Let's see, he tugged at his turkey wattle, scratched his temple, rubbed his gut, frowned, expelled his breath through his pursed lips, and winced several times. He looked like a guy who had gas and was trying to figure out a polite way to fart. He told me that I was making some serious allegations. "Well, no shit," says I.
"Murder and attempted murder are pretty fucking serious." He had trouble looking me in the eye as he left. He didn't come right out and say it--"
"He's not a politician for nothing."
"But I gathered from all his seeming distress that he had problems with my story."
"He did."
"Such as?"
"I won't bore you with the details," Oren said. "God knows he bored me with them. For about thirty minutes he stammered and stuttered, and did that bellows bit with his cheeks, but basically ..."
"No soap."
Oren fiddled with the tricolored satin ribbon tied around the ugly carnations. He glanced at Wick askance. "You gotta look at it from his standpoint, Wick."
"The hell I do! Until he has to have six units of blood, until his nuts swell to the size of bowling balls and he's got a tube shoved up his dick, don't talk to me about his standpoint."
"I know you're gonna be pissed when I say this--"
"So don't."
"When it comes right down to it, he's right."
"If I could slug you right now, I would."
"I knew you'd get pissed." Oren sighed.
"Look, Wick, the DA plays it safe, yes, but--"
"He's a *!"
"Maybe, but he's justified this time. When you boil it down, we've got nothing hard on Lozada."
"Lozada," Wick sneered. "He's got everybody running scared, doesn't he? You think he's not laughing his ass off at us?"
Oren gave him several seconds to cool off before continuing. "Everything in our hopper is circumstantial. Lozada knows you. He knew Sally Horton. That's a link, but it doesn't provide motivation. If, by some weird fluke, the grand jury did indict him, we could never make a case out of that. I was given three days to come up with something. Same as always, he didn't leave a trace. I've got nothing."
"Except my word on it."
Oren looked pained. "The DA factored in your background with Lozada. He hasn't forgotten what happened. That reduces your credibility."
Arguing a point so blatantly valid would be futile.
Oren sat down on the green vinyl armchair and stared at the floor. "I've got no choice but to release him. It wasn't easy, but I got search warrants. We've tossed his place.
Nothing. Clean as a freaking whistle. Even his scorpions look sanitary. His car, same thing. Not a trace of blood, fibers, anything.
We've got the weapons, but they could belong to anybody. No eyewitnesses except you, and you've been discredited. Besides, by your own account, you
didn't actually see him."
"I was too busy leaking blood into my gut."
"His lawyer is already making a hell of a racket about police harassment. He says--"
"I don't want to hear what he says. I don't want to hear a goddamn word about that son of a bitch's civil rights being violated, okay?"
A long silence ensued. After a time, Oren glanced toward the corner near the ceiling. "TV work all right?"
Wick had muted the sound when Oren came in.
The picture was little more than colored snow, but images could be detected if you looked hard enough. "Sucks. No cable."
They stared at the silent program for several moments before Oren asked if it was a good show.
"Those two are mother and daughter," Wick explained. "The daughter slept with the mother's husband."
"Her father?"
"No, about her fourth stepfather. Her real father is the father. The parish priest. But nobody knows that except her mother and the priest. He hears his daughter's confession about boinking her mother's husband and freaks out. He blames the mother for being a bad influence, calls her a slut. But he's guilt-ridden because he hasn't been there for his daughter. As a father--I mean as a dad. He's been her priest since he christened her. It's sorta complicated. He went to her house, for christsake." Wick's last statement didn't relate to the soap opera, but Oren knew that.
"I can't rule out the possibility that she invited him there, Wick."
He didn't even honor that with a comeback.
He let his hard stare say it all.
"I said it's only a possibility."
Averting his head, Oren muttered something else that Wick didn't catch.
"What was that?"
"Nothing."
"What?"
"Nothing."
"What?"
"He was feeling her tit. Okay?"
He wished he hadn't asked, but he had.
He'd pressured Oren into telling him, and Oren had, and now he was gauging Wick's reaction.
He kept his expression as passive as possible. "She was afraid to fight him off."
"That's what Grace said too, but neither of you was there."
"Grace?"
"Oh, yeah." Oren gestured expansively.
"My wife has become Dr. Newton's number one fan."
"I knew they had met. All Grace said to me was that she was glad I was in such capable hands."
"I get slightly more than that at home. I get an earful about how I'm judging the doctor too harshly and unfairly. Grace thinks I'm holding a grudge because she served on that jury."
For the first time since Oren walked into his room, Wick came close to smiling. He liked to think of Grace giving his partner an earful. If there was anyone on earth Oren would listen to, it was his wife, whom he not only loved but also respected for her insight. "Grace is a smart lady."
"Yeah, well, she didn't see the romantic setting that I did. She hasn't seen this, either."
From the breast pocket of his sport jacket, Oren withdrew several sheets of paper that had been folded together lengthwise. He laid them on the bed tray next to the untouched juice. Wick made no move to pick up the sheets.
"In all the excitement of recent days you might have forgotten that Dr. Newton fatally shot a man when she was sixteen."
"It didn't escape your memory, though, did it?"
"Don't you think it needs to be checked out before we submit her name for sainthood? I contacted Dalton PD, along with the county sheriff's office. It's all in there."
Wick resented the incriminating sheets on the bed tray and was reluctant to read them. "Why don't you summarize it for me."
"Ugly. Very ugly," Oren said. "Daddy walked in seconds after the two shots were fired, Raymond Collier was dead. Died instantly.
T. Dan asserted that his big bad business partner had tried to seduce his sweet baby girl. She shot him to protect her virtue.
Clear-cut self-defense."
"It could've gone down that way."
"It could've, but unlikely. Especially since she'd been going down on Collier."
"Oh, good segue, Detective."
Oren ignored the remark. "A good question for her would be why she chose to protect her virtue on that particular day."
"Did anyone ask her?"
"I don't know. I doubt it. Because here's where it gets really interesting. No one was formally questioned.
There was no hearing, no inquest, no nothing. T.
Dan had deep pockets. Apparently he threw enough money around to bury the thing quicker than it took for Collier's body to get cold. His death was ruled an accident ... at the scene.
Case closed. Everybody went home happy, including Collier's widow. She left Dalton for her new, completely furnished condo in Breckenridge, Colorado. She made the trip in her shiny new Jag."
Wick thought it through, then said, "You talk about reduced credibility. I don't believe any of it."
"Why not?"
"The police department and sheriff's office admitted to sweeping a fatal shooting under the rug?"
"No. Their reports were brief, but official. There was no evidence to support anything other than an accident. But I tracked down the former cop who was first on the scene."
"Former?"
"He left law enforcement to install satellite dishes. But he remembered driving out to the Newtons' house that day in response to the summons. He said it was the weirdest thing."
"What?"
"Their behavior. Whether it was accidental or intentional, if you'd just shot somebody stone dead, wouldn't you be upset? A little rattled? Shed a few tears? Show some remorse? At the very least do a little nervous hand-wringing?
"He said Rennie Newton sat there cool as a cucumber. Those big green eyes of hers stayed dry. And she's sixteen, remember?
Kids that age are usually excitable. He said she never faltered as she talked him through what had happened.
"T. Dan and Mrs. Newton sat on either side of her. T. Dan lambasted Collier for attempting to rape his daughter. Just went to show, he said, how you never really knew someone as well as you thought you did. The mother cried softly into a hanky. She had heard nothing, seen nothing, knew nothing, and would the officers care for something to drink. The ex-cop said it was downright spooky, like being in an episode of The Twilight Zone."
Wick tried to imagine a sixteen-year-old Rennie giving a calm account of killing a man, even accidentally. He couldn't. He couldn't imagine the incorrigible teen Crystal had described either, or the nymphet who had enticed a married man. Nothing he had heard about her past life coincided with her present one.
Oren said, "I'd better be shoving off. Let you catch a nap. Can I get you anything before I go?"
Wick shook his head.
"I don't mind going down to the magazine shop and--"
"No thanks."
"Okay then. I'll come back with Grace tonight. Sometime after supper. Think you're up to a visit from the girls?"
"Sure, that'd be great."
"They've been bugging us to bring them to see you.
I promise we won't stay long."
Wick forced a smile. "I'll look forward to it."
Oren nodded and headed for the door, but he paused with his hand on the handle. "No bullshit now, Wick. Fair enough?"
"Fair enough."
"Man to man, not partner to partner."
Wick frowned with impatience. "What is it?"
"You've got it bad for her, don't you?"
Wick turned his head toward the window and the familiar view. "I don't know."
Oren swore softly.
"Just go, why don't you?" Wick said.
Suddenly he was very weary. "You've said what you came to say."
"Almost. I have a couple more things to say."
"Lucky me."
"Rennie Newton saved your life. No two ways about it. And I'll always be grateful to her for that."
Wick turned back to him. "What's the "b"'?"
"That ex-cop in Dalton? He said he couldn't believe that anybody could take a life, even the life of a bitter enemy, and be so emotionally detached from the act. She was so cold, he said, it still gives him chills to think about it."