A crowd had already gathered. The police officers congregated in small knots, trading quiet comments and barbed attempts at grim humor. A TV news truck arrived from its studio on Television Hill just north of the park, which held the city zoo. It was a place Bob Preis often took his young children, and they especially liked the lion, not so originally named Leo, and the polar bears, and all the other predators that were safely confined behind steel bars and stone walls. Unlike some people, he thought, watching them lift the body and place it in a rubber bag. At least her torment was over. Preis changed rolls one more time to record the process of loading the body into the coroner’s station wagon. A Sun reporter was here now. He’d ask the questions while Preis determined how good his new camera really was back at his darkroom on Calvert Street.
‘John, they found her,’ Rosen said.
‘Dead?’ Kelly couldn’t look up. The tone of Sam’s voice had already told him the real news. It wasn’t a surprise, but the end of hope never comes easily to anyone.
Sam nodded. ‘Yeah.’
‘How?’
‘I don’t know yet. The police called me a few minutes ago, and I came over as quick as I could.’
‘Thanks, pal.’ If a human voice could sound dead, Sam told himself, Kelly’s did.
‘I’m sorry, John. I – you know how I felt about her.’
‘Yes, sir, I do. It’s not your fault, Sam.’
‘You’re not eating.’ Rosen gestured to the food tray.
‘I’m not real hungry.’
‘If you want to recover, you have to get your strength back.’
‘Why?’ Kelly asked, staring at the floor.
Rosen came over and grasped Kelly’s right hand. There wasn’t much to say. The surgeon didn’t have the stomach to look at Kelly’s face. He’d pieced enough together to know that his friend was blaming himself, and he didn’t know enough to talk to him about it, at least not yet. Death was a companion for Sam Rosen, MD, FACS. Neurosurgeons dealt with major injuries to that most delicate part of the human anatomy, and the injuries to which they most often responded were frequently beyond anyone’s power to repair. But the unexpected death of a person one knows can be too much for anyone.
‘Is there anything I can do?’ he asked after a minute or two.
‘Not right now, Sam. Thanks.’
‘Maybe a priest?’
‘No, not now.’
‘It wasn’t your fault, John.’
‘Whose, then? She trusted me, Sam. I blew it.’
‘The police want to talk to you some more. I told them tomorrow morning.’
He’d been through his second interview in the morning. Kelly had already told them much of what he knew. Her full name, her hometown, how they’d met. Yes, they had been intimate. Yes, she had been a prostitute, a runaway. Yes, her body had shown signs of abuse. But not everything. Somehow he’d been unable to volunteer information because to have done so would have entailed admitting to other men the dimensions of his failure. And so he had avoided some of their inquiries, claiming pain, which was quite real, but not real enough. He already sensed that the police didn’t like him, but that was okay. He didn’t much like himself at the moment. ‘
‘Okay.’
‘I can – I should do some things with your medications. I’ve tried to go easy, I don’t like overdoing the things, but they’ll help you relax, John.’
‘Dope me up more?’ Kelly’s head lifted, and the expression was not something that Rosen ever wanted to see again. ‘You think that’s really going to make a difference, Sam?’
Rosen looked away, unable to meet his eyes now that it was possible to do so. ‘You’re ready for a regular bed. I’ll have you moved into one in a few minutes.’
‘Okay.’
The surgeon wanted to say more, but couldn’t find the right words. He left without any others.
It took Sandy O’Toole and two orderlies to move him, as carefully as they could, onto a standard hospital bed. She cranked up the head portion to relieve the pressure on his injured shoulder.
‘I heard,’ she told him. It bothered her that his grief wasn’t right. He was a tough man, but not a fool. Perhaps he was one of those men who did his weeping alone, but she was sure he hadn’t done it yet. And that was necessary, she knew. Tears released poisons from inside, poisons which if not released could be as deadly as the real kind. The nurse sat beside his bed. ‘I’m a widow,’ she told him.
‘Vietnam?’
‘Yes, Tim was a captain in the First Cavalry.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Kelly said without turning his head. ‘They saved my butt once.’
‘It’s hard. I know.’
‘Last November I lost Tish, and now -‘
‘Sarah told me. Mr Kelly -‘
‘John,’ he said softly. He couldn’t find it in himself to be gruff to her.
‘Thank you, John. My name is Sandy. Bad luck does not make a bad person,’ she told him in a voice that meant what it said, though it didn’t quite sound that way.
‘It wasn’t luck. She told me it was a dangerous place and I took her there anyway because I wanted to see for myself.’
‘You almost got yourself killed trying to protect her.’
‘I didn’t protect her, Sandy. I killed her.’ Kelly’s eyes were wide open now, looking at the ceiling. ‘I was careless and stupid and I killed her.’
‘Other people killed her, and other people tried to kill you. You’re a victim.’
‘Not a victim. Just a fool.’
We’ll save that for later, Nurse O’Toole told herself. ‘What sort of girl was she, John?’
‘Unlucky.’ Kelly made an effort to look at her face, but that just made it worse. He gave the nurse a brief synopsis of the life of Pamela Starr Madden, deceased.
‘So after all the men who hurt her or used her, you gave her something that nobody else did.’ O’Toole paused, waiting for a reply and getting none. ‘You gave her love, didn’t you?’
‘Yes.’ Kelly’s body shuddered for a moment. ‘Yes, I did love her.’
‘Let it out,’ the nurse told him. ‘You have to.’
First he closed his eyes. Then he shook his head. ‘I can’t.’
This would be a difficult patient, she told herself. The cult of manhood was a mystery to her. She’d seen it in her husband, who had served a tour in Vietnam as a lieutenant, then rotated back again as a company commander. He hadn’t relished it, hadn’t looked forward to it, but he hadn’t shrunk from it.. It was part of the job, he’d told her on their wedding night, two months before he’d left. A stupid, wasteful job that had cost her a husband and, she feared, her life. Who really cared what happened in a place so far away? And yet it had been important to Tim. Whatever that force had been, its legacy to her was emptiness, and it had no more real meaning than the grim pain she saw on the face of her patient. O’Toole would have known more about that pain if she’d been able to take her thought one step further.
* * *
‘That was really stupid.’
‘That’s one way of looking at it,’ Tucker agreed. ‘But I can’t have my girls leaving without permission, can I?’
‘You ever hear of burying them?’
‘Anybody can do that.’ The man smiled in the darkness, watching the movie. They were in the back row of a downtown theater, a 1930s film palace that was gradually falling to ruin, and had started running turns at 9 a.m. just to keep up with the painting bill. It was still a good place for a covert meeting with a confidential informant, which was how this meeting would go on the officer’s time sheet.
‘Sloppy not killing the guy, too.’
‘Will he be a problem?’ Tucker asked.
‘No. He didn’t see anything, did he?’
‘You tell me, man.’
‘I can’t get that close to the case, remember?’ The man paused for a handful of popcorn and munched away his irritation. ‘He’s known to the department. Ex-Navy guy, skin diver, lives over on the Eastern Shore somewhere, sort of a rich beach bum from what I gather. The first interview didn’t develop anything at all. Ryan and Douglas are going to be working the case now, but it doesn’t look like they have much of anything to work with.’
‘That’s about what she said when we … “talked” to her. He picked her up, and it looks like they had a mighty good time together, but her supply of pills ran out, she said, and she had him bring her in town to score some ‘ludes. So, no harm done?’
‘Probably not, but let’s try to control loose ends, okay?’
‘You want me to get him in the hospital?’ Tucker asked lightly. ‘I can probably arrange that.’