Angel Interrupted

Chapter 19
021
Maggie returned to department headquarters, the paper bag of evidence cradled in her arms as she fought through the phalanx of reporters camped outside the front door, there to witness the pathetic parade of suspects being hauled inside one by one to face questioning by the task force in connection with the abduction of Tyler Matthews. Registered sex offenders and online predators flagged by KinderWatch were being brought in for questioning, and it was not a pretty sight. Heads down, eyes averted, they darted into the building like human cockroaches fleeing the light of the cameras. They came in all shapes and sizes and from different economic levels. It seemed the only thing they shared was a willingness to give up their dignity as humans and the respect of others in order to indulge their compulsions.
I did not feel sorry for them. I had seen too many lives destroyed by the selfishness of men like these; I had arrested too many of their victims after they had grown up and taken their anger out on the world with guns and knives. If I could find a hallway to hell, I’d happily herd the whole lot into the eternal flames.
I guess my newfound compassion had its limits.
Maggie had retreated deep into the Fiona Harker case and did not notice the terrified creature that rode the elevator up with her, flanked by two detectives. He was a desperately ashamed man with rumpled clothes and unkempt hair who loosely fit the description of the man Robert Michael Martin had seen in the park, but his frightened expression and the sense of despair that emanated from him made it plain that, despite whatever urges fought to be satisfied inside him, he was not their man. He did not have the nerve.
The trio got out on the second floor. Dozens of detectives, plainclothesmen, and administrative staff hurried through the halls. Inside the conference room, I could see an immense table stacked high with case files and surrounded by federal agents barking orders or talking into their cell phones. This was the hub of the Tyler Matthews investigation and, from the looks of things, few had been spared duty on the task force.
Maggie had never been more alone.
I rode with her up to the fourth floor, rifling through her memories, searching for a way to let her know that Tyler Matthews was only miles away. I could find no way in.
The squad room was deserted. Every available man and woman had been pulled into the madness two floors below. I felt a twinge of sympathy for anyone burglarized or assaulted over the next few days; justice for them would be delayed as long as Tyler remained missing. The fact that their suffering would not wait meant nothing in the face of reality.
I think Maggie was grateful for the silence. She could work without interruption. She retrieved a diet soda from the break room before clearing her desk of all items. I watched this ritual with delight. Her desk had been my desk and, while once it had been a place of surrender where I waited out hangovers and pushed papers around in lieu of actually working, it was now a battleground where Maggie waged war against those who dared violate the rules that distinguished her world from chaos.
She had two large envelopes waiting for her in her mail slot and she placed these on one side of her desk, along with the slender case file on Fiona Harker. She put the grocery bag directly in the center of her desk, then sat down and stared at it. She was putting off opening it, afraid to risk disappointment if it held little of value. She glanced though the case file once again, fixing the timeline and death scene firmly in her mind, before opening the two envelopes marked to her attention. One was a ballistics report; the other held details on the autopsy. She spread both out across her desk and studied them intently. I perched on the edge of the desk, studying her.
Maggie’s face was plain at first glance, slightly broad with a wide nose and thin mouth that seldom curled in a smile. Her eyes were large and dark, hard to read to those who had nothing but the surface to go on. But it was a mistake to think that Maggie was plain. Those who looked closer, like me, quickly discovered that her face was a mercurial wonder, her expressions constantly flowing from one nuanced expression to another as she processed the world around her. Maggie did not take a single moment for granted. Not one.
She read and reread both reports carefully, making a notation to search purchase records for the gun that had killed Fiona Harker. The autopsy confirmed that the nurse’s death had occurred on a Wednesday morning and that she had been in excellent health before her death. There was no surprise pregnancy, no evidence of sexual assault. The medical examiner had found the carefully nurtured, perfectly healthy body of a thirty-three-year-old woman, cause of death a single gunshot wound to the head. Without that wound, Fiona Harker would probably have lived to be a very, very old woman. Which meant that someone had stolen years from her. I knew Maggie was thinking the same thing as she read through the report—and I could feel the anger in her rising at the fact that someone out there actually thought they had gotten away with it.
When Maggie was done rereading the reports, she picked up the phone and let the medical examiner’s office know it was okay to release Fiona Harker’s body to her family in California. It would take a long and lonely cross-country ride to be welcomed by grieving family and friends, but it was all essentially for show, as I knew that any trace of Fiona Harker had long since moved on. Her family was mourning an empty vessel. I wondered if her friends would hold a memorial service here in town. Had she even had enough friends to warrant holding one? Fiona Harker had been a solitary woman, as alone in life as she was now alone in death. But she’d had coworkers, and they clearly felt her loss keenly. They needed a resolution, an explanation for her death. I hoped her belongings would tell Maggie more.
Before she opened the bag that had been given to her by Fiona’s locker mate, Maggie inserted the ballistics and medical examiner’s reports into the case file. As an afterthought, she folded the drawing the little girl had given her in the hospital and inserted it into the file folder as well. It had been my only hope, but was now likely to be buried in other paperwork. At least it had not gone into the trash. She made a few notes about her interviews with Serena Holman and the nurses in the file, then took a deep breath, moved the paperwork to a side drawer, and opened the grocery bag.
One by one, she placed the items that represented Fiona Harker’s personal life onto her desktop, starting with a single tube of clear lip gloss and a pair of plain gold-hoop earrings. There was no other evidence of makeup or jewelry. Next came a framed photo of Fiona that was at least fifteen years old, showing her with an older couple who had to be her parents and another young woman who looked remarkably like Fiona. A mother, a father, and a sister to miss her. Their lives would never be the same, I knew; there would always be a hole in the place once occupied by Fiona and her love for them. Maggie then lifted spare clothes out of the bag, nothing more provocative than a plain gray T-shirt and a pair of jeans, extra socks, underwear, and black flip-flops. Fiona had not been an athlete, it seems: there were no workout clothes or tennis shoes. And then, finally, a peek into the kind of person Fiona Harker had been—a collection of books, mostly paperbacks, at the bottom of the bag. Maggie lifted the books out one by one and placed them on her desk: the poetry of Walt Whitman; another book of poems, this time by Gary Snyder; a biography of Helen Keller; a short story collection by Doris Lessing; and a hardback book entitled Hostage to the Devil by Malachi Martin. Whoa. Just seeing Maggie hold it made me want to destroy the book in a cleansing fire. Fiona Harker had not exactly gone in for light reading. She had lived an intense and brooding life, if her taste in books told Maggie anything.
That was it for evidence. There were no scribbled notes written in the margins of the books, no clues that might lead Maggie to her killer. Just more evidence of a solitary life by a very private woman who had spent her days battling death and, apparently, her nights trying to understand why. How had she ended up this way, with so few people and so little light in her life? I would never know, nor would the world ever know. The mystery of Fiona Harker’s heart had died with her.
Maggie did something odd with her disappointment. She spread her arms out over Fiona Harker’s belongings and put her head down on the desk, like a teenager sleeping through study hall. She closed her eyes and weariness swept through her. Maggie was tired, bone tired, but I could not pinpoint why. It had to do with Fiona Harker, I knew, and the sadness that permeated her life, but I did not want to accept the obvious explanation: that Maggie was tired from holding back the realization that her own life, too, lacked both human comfort and human contact. That she, too, was lonely.
I watched Maggie sleep. She fell deeper and deeper away from the waking world. Soon, I was able to follow her dreams as the living might follow a movie. She dreamed of a summer lake surrounded by longleaf pines, of a cedar cabin and a picnic table in the front yard. People sat around it, reading the books Maggie had found among Fiona Harker’s possessions. Noni Bates, the old lady from the neighborhood, was engrossed in the Doris Lessing; a young boy I did not recognize was plowing through Walt Whitman; and, with amusement, I saw Gonzales moving a finger over the lines in Gary Snyder’s book of poetry, silently mouthing the words as he read. At the far end of the table, an elderly Catholic priest sat reading the book about exorcisms, glancing up every now and then to stare disapprovingly at a dark-haired woman who lay motionless in the middle of the picnic table, as if she were dead or, perhaps, only sleeping. I could not find Maggie in her dream, though I saw it through her eyes—and heard it through her ears. In her dream, the buzz of a distant motor grew louder. A man in a powerboat was speeding toward Maggie from across the lake, plumes of water arcing in his wake. He arrived in a spray of cold water and offered Maggie a ride. His face looked familiar to me somehow. Who was he? Her father as a younger man, or was he a past lover?
I would learn no more from Maggie’s dreams. Her partner, Adrian Calvano, pulled us both abruptly back to reality. He was shaking her shoulder and calling her name.
“Yo, Gunn,” he said. “Wake up. What the hell? I’ve never even seen you close your eyes before.”
“Get off me,” Maggie said, swatting him away automatically. She was momentarily confused, unsure of where she was. “What time is it?” she asked.
“Time for you to wake up before the new shift gets here and you look like a complete loser.”
She yawned and drank deeply from her soda. I touched the can. It was warm. How long had I been wandering through Maggie’s dreams with her?
“You feeling okay?” Calvano asked with concern in his voice. He felt different somehow, I thought, less cocky and more, well, real.
“I’m fine,” Maggie said. “I’m just tired of hitting dead ends. I’ve got nothing. What about you?”
Calvano sat in the chair next to her desk and stretched out his long legs. He stared at his ankles. He was probably thinking, Man, those are sharp shoes. Meanwhile, I was thinking, What kind of an a*shole wears argyle socks?
“I need your help,” Calvano said.
“Now who’s acting weird?” She tossed her empty can into the trash.
“I mean it.” He sounded downright human. What had happened to the Adrian Calvano I loathed so well?
“What is it?” Maggie asked.
“I’ve been shut out,” he told her. “They’re not letting me get near the investigation. That license plate bullshit was just bullshit. It got us nowhere. Now they’re going through all the poor bastards on that KinderWatch list of pervs, pulling in anyone remotely local on the list, especially if they resemble that dude Martin claims he saw in the park. Even I know it’s not getting us anywhere.”
“I doubt there’s much else they can do,” Maggie said sympathetically. “I wish I could help, but I’m the only one around here who gives a crap about Fiona Harker’s death. Well, me and Gonzales.”
“Gonzales hates me,” Calvano declared suddenly, his voice sounding younger. God help me, I felt a flash of sympathy toward the cocky bastard. I realized that maybe he wasn’t kissing ass to get ahead; maybe he’d been trying to simply get attention from Gonzales. I wondered what Calvano’s father had been like. I knew what it was like to have a father who was too busy to give a crap about you.
“Gonzales doesn’t hate you,” Maggie said, sorting the evidence from Fiona Harker’s locker in preparation for sending it to the lab for processing. “He’s just covering his ass. You know how he is. If we get nowhere—and chances are good at this point that we are never going to find Tyler Matthews—then he wants to make sure the feds take the rap for it, not him or the department.”
“I could help,” Calvano said stubbornly. “I’m not an idiot.”
Maggie looked startled. “I never said you were.”
“I look like an idiot, of course,” he conceded. “I did go off the deep end a little about Martin, but, you know, I just wanted to find Tyler Matthews, and that Martin guy seems way too involved with a bunch of little kids he doesn’t even know. There has to be something I can do. I know this town. I’m a local. I can do things the feds can’t do.”
Maggie recognized something in his voice and sympathized. She’d been shut out a lot when she first joined the force, by people like me. Or, rather, like I’d been. “How can I help?” she asked.
“What would you do?” he said. “Just tell me what you’d do. You’re the best detective we have on the force.”
Maggie looked at him, flabbergasted. “What?”
“Oh, come on,” he said, annoyed. “You know you are. That’s why you’re Gonzales’s favorite.”
“I thought it was because we were sleeping together,” she said sarcastically.
Calvano waved a hand. “That’s bullshit. And I tell people so when they say that, which isn’t very often around me. They learn. You’re his pet because you’re better than the rest of us slobs. Yeah, you don’t have a life. But you’re smarter. And you got a knack. So, tell me: what would you do?”
Maggie sat back, considering it. “You said they’re looking at a list of suspects from the sex offenders’ registry and from the KinderWatch list?” she asked.
Calvano nodded. “There’s a lot of overlap.”
“Are they cross-checking to see who on those lists inserted themselves into the investigation?”
Calvano nodded again. “That’s the first thing the feds told us to do.”
“No one came up?” Maggie asked.
“Not yet,” Calvano said.
“But are they checking the volunteers?” she asked.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, you’re checking the list of people KinderWatch is tracking, right? But is anyone looking into the volunteers for KinderWatch, beyond Robert Michael Martin?”
Calvano sat up straighter. “I don’t think so.”
“How better to insert yourself into any investigation that might take place?” she explained. “You were right to suspect Martin, it’s just you focused on him and him alone too quickly. If I were one of those creeps, I’d want to know how close I was to being caught. What better way than to be a part of the group that’s trying to catch you? I mean, think about it. That colonel guy says he does a routine background check. But I bet you anything he doesn’t take the basic first step and verify that his volunteers are who they say they are. All you would need is someone’s name, someone you know who has a clean record, and maybe a driver’s license number, and you’re probably taken at your word when you volunteer.”
“Yeah,” Calvano said eagerly. I felt it again: that need to please, just like poor Robert Michael Martin. He leaned forward. “How do I follow up on that, though, without getting shut out again?”
“Christ, Adrian. Do I have to tell you everything?” She was joking, though. I could tell she was thrilled that Calvano had come to her and treated her like one of the guys.
“Just tell me what you would do,” he said. “You know I get . . .” He hesitated.
“Get what?” she asked.
“Too wrapped up in it to think like you. Too pissed off at the guy I think did it.” Translation: even Adrian Calvano knew his ego got in the way.
“I’d go back to Martin,” Maggie said. “Ask him about the other KinderWatch volunteers. He’d know who was a little off better than the colonel would. They’d act differently around the colonel, he’s the boss. If you want to know what they are really like, ask one of their peers. Ask Martin.”
“That dude is not going to talk to me,” Calvano said. “He hates me.”
Well, yeah, I thought. Who doesn’t hate you? But then I felt mean—a least Calvano was trying. I hadn’t tried for years by the time I died.
“Of course he hates you,” Maggie said. “You zeroed in on him and no one else. The guy wants to be a hero. The guy probably wants to be a cop. You treated him like shit. I wouldn’t want to help you either.”
“Come with me to talk to him,” Calvano asked. He was practically begging. I was starting to enjoy the show.
“I’m working on a case here,” Maggie reminded him.
“You said yourself that you had nothing. Just come with me. It’ll take half an hour.”
She rolled her eyes, but the chance to be included was too tempting for her. “Only if his lawyer is there, Adrian. They’ll crucify us if he’s not.”
“Whatever. Just come with me and, you know, set a friendly tone. Bat your eyelashes at him or something.”
Okay, so Calvano wasn’t going to be totally redeemed in a day. Neither was I, apparently, so that was something else we had in common.
“Let me get this stuff to the lab first.” Maggie accepted Calvano’s help in placing the items from Fiona Harker’s locker into plastic evidence bags. I was amused at the timid way Calvano assisted her, like a little boy trying to please his mother. But I was touched, too. A man humbled is a man who can learn from his mistakes. I knew that from personal experience.
“Call Martin’s lawyer now,” she reminded him. “Let’s talk to him at home, far from this mess. Make sure you explain why we’re heading over, that we just want his help and that he is in no way a suspect. That’s the only way Martin is going to override his lawyer’s advice not to talk. If he thinks we can’t move forward without him, he’ll help.”
“We can’t move forward without him,” Calvano admitted.
“Just let him know that.”
Calvano nodded agreeably. Had Maggie finally found a partner who wasn’t a total disaster? Gonzales had been smart to put them together.
Maggie packed the items back into the grocery bag, this time every object neatly bagged and labeled, then headed out into the hallway. Of course, I followed. If you had the choice between listening to Calvano bumble through a phone call or watching Maggie walk through the halls, you’d have followed her, too.
She had her head down, thinking of the interview with Martin to come, and when she rounded the corner in the deserted hallway, she nearly crashed into Christian Fletcher. She jumped back, startled, and stared at him. His doctor’s coat and hands were covered in blood.
How the hell had he gotten past the desk sergeant and the media looking like that?
“I lost three of them,” Fletcher said, sounding shell-shocked. I noticed a waterproof jacket folded over one arm. He had come straight from the hospital, throwing it on over his bloody clothes, desperate to get to Maggie. That’s how his bloody clothes had escaped attention from others.
“What?” Maggie asked, her hand inching toward her gun.
“I lost three of the crash victims,” he said hollowly. Gone was the confident saver of lives. Christian Fletcher looked, and felt, like a crash victim himself. “I saw you over by the elevator when they first came in. Two families. Three kids. One of the fathers is dead now, a mother, too, and one of the kids. God took one of each.”
“I’m not sure how much God had to do with it,” Maggie said slowly.
Fletcher looked down at himself, as if noticing the blood for the first time. He quickly unfolded his jacket and put it back on. “I’m so sorry. I came right from the hospital.” He looked up at Maggie with such naked need that even my envious heart ached for him. “I had nowhere else to go. I didn’t have anyone else to talk to.”
I could feel the confusion in Maggie. She was horrified: by the blood, by the deaths he had reported, by the raw need he was projecting on her. But she was filled with compassion, too, and she understood his need.
“Tell me what happened,” she suggested gently.
“One of the drivers swerved to avoid a cat that ran into the road,” he said. “He lost control and crossed the center line and hit another car head-on. He died and the mother in the other car died and one of the children, too. She was only three years old.”
“I’m so sorry,” Maggie said. “I’m so, so sorry. I know you did everything you could. I saw you.”
“They made me leave,” he said abruptly, slumping against the wall.
“What do you mean?”
“I’d been on for almost forty-eight hours straight, so they made me leave. Admin double checks all deaths. They acted like it was my fault those people died. That maybe I missed something when I treated them.”
“No,” Maggie said firmly. “I watched you working. You were amazing. I saw the other staff members there. They were looking to you. If you hadn’t been there, no one would have been saved. I’ve never seen anything like it.” A flame of jealousy licked at my heart. “They’ll tell whoever signs off on the deaths that you weren’t to blame. Surely you lose people in the emergency room all the time?”
“Yeah,” he said quietly. “We do. Just usually not so many at one time and I’m so tired and I can’t get Fiona off my mind.”
Maggie looked around, whether for backup or to see if they were being overheard I could not tell. I knew she did not want to bring Fletcher back into the squad room. When he saw Calvano, he’d shut right down. Calvano had that effect on other men.
“What do you mean about Fiona?” Maggie asked him quietly. He was sitting on the floor by then, his legs stretched out in front of him. She knelt by his side, her hand still resting on her gun, just in case, and spoke very gently to him. “What do you mean, you can’t stop thinking about Fiona?” she asked him.
“I had coffee with her a week ago,” he said in a distant voice. “The ER was slow and she asked if I wanted to take a break and I was hungry so we went upstairs. She was asking me all these questions about marriage and love and what it had been like to lose it all.” He looked up at Maggie. “I guess word had gotten out about me and my wife, and she wanted to know if I was okay, if she could help in any way.” He saw the look on Maggie’s face. “She wasn’t coming on to me,” he said in a rush. “She made that very clear. She just wanted to be my friend.” He ran a hand through his hair and seemed close to tears. “She got me talking, she was the first one I felt comfortable talking to about it, and I told her all about my marriage ending, how Serena had just announced it was over and I’d had no say.” He was quiet. “I’m not sure I ever had a say in anything. It hurt. I told Fiona that. I told her how much it hurt and she looked so sad for me. She was a good person.” He looked up at Maggie, eyes bright with tears. “She was a good person and she didn’t deserve to die that way and I can’t stop thinking about it.”
“Why didn’t you tell me about this earlier?” Maggie asked, fighting hard to keep her voice neutral.
He looked miserable. “I didn’t want to talk about my wife or my marriage to you. I wasn’t trying to hide anything. I just didn’t want to have to talk about it to you.” There was that naked need in his face again. I wondered if all of his strength went into fighting for his patients, leaving nothing left over to protect himself. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I just didn’t know who else to talk to about it or where to go. That little girl was only three and now she’s dead. She can’t have weighed more than thirty pounds. I could lift her as easily as a doll.”
“What’s going on?” Calvano’s belligerent voice killed the mood instantly. But I was relieved he was there. Fletcher seemed so close to the edge.
Calvano towered over them both, looking pretty damn competent in his tailored suit and Italian shoes. I had to admit it—Gonzales was right. Calvano had his uses.
“It’s okay,” Maggie said. “I’ve got it. He’s a background witness in the Harker case. He worked with her at the hospital.”
Calvano was not mollified. “Is that blood on his hands?” he asked, staring down at Fletcher. The doctor had ducked his head, hiding his face from Calvano, and placed his hands over the top of his head, as if to protect himself.
“He’s a doctor in the emergency room,” Maggie explained, getting annoyed at Calvano, which was not a good sign. Fletcher had showed up like a crazy person, covered with blood, and she liked the guy even more for it?
“They don’t have sinks in the emergency room?” Calvano asked, his voice still challenging.
“Give it a rest, Adrian,” Maggie ordered him. “I’ll be with you in a moment.”
“Actually, I think I’ll wait with you,” Calvano decided. He sank down against the wall and slid to a seating position beside the doctor. “How’s it going, dude?” he asked.
Fletcher looked over at Calvano and then abruptly stood. “I’ve got to go get some sleep,” he told Maggie.
“Don’t forget to shower,” Calvano called from the floor.
“I’m sorry I bothered you,” Fletcher told Maggie. “I shouldn’t have come.”
“I’m glad you came,” Maggie said. “I need to know more about your coffee with Fiona Harker. What she might have said about her life.”
“I’m off for the next twenty-four hours,” he said miserably. He was a man lost without his work. “Let me catch up on my sleep and I’ll call you in the morning.”
I just bet he would.
He stuck his bloodstained hands in his pockets and walked down the hallway, shoulders hunched, looking miserable.
“You’re an a*shole,” Maggie told Calvano as she hoisted him to his feet.
“Yeah, but I’m your a*shole,” he pointed out cheerfully. He gallantly took the grocery bag from her. “Carry your books to school?”
She rolled her eyes.
“Watch out for that guy,” Calvano warned her. “He’s got the hots for you.”
“That poor man doesn’t have the hots for anyone,” Maggie said. “He’s clinically depressed.”
“He may be depressed,” Calvano conceded. “But he still has the hots for you. Now, what do you say we both get some sleep and meet in the morning? Martin says he’ll see us then.”
That Calvano was starting to grow on me.