Marcia Muller - Locked In

“But she’ll be all right?”

“Ultimately that’s what we’re hoping for. The important thing is that she’s alive and cognizant.”

Hy leaned heavily against the elevator wall. “I don’t care how long it takes for her to recover. Just so she does.”

Travers looked as if he wanted to say more, but the elevator door opened. He led Hy through a large circular area of rooms arranged around a central nurses’ station. Each room had a window and its door was open-so the nurses could monitor the patients from the desk, Hy supposed.

Shar’s head was swathed in bandages and she was hooked up to monitors that kept blinking on and off, providing running strips of information. Her eyes were open, and they lighted up when she saw him.

Hy kissed her cheek. “Welcome back. You’ll be all the way back in time.”

Doubtful look.

“Don’t try to talk now. You need your rest.”

Hy studied her face. The skin below her eyes looked bruised and her complexion was sallow. There were lines around her mouth that he hadn’t noticed before. But she was alive, and that was everything to him-everything.

She regarded him with a long, intense stare.

“They removed a blood clot and some bone and bullet fragments. No more pressure on your brain stem now.”

Still she stared at him.

“Dr. Travers, your surgeon, will explain more fully later on.”

Still staring.

“You want to know about the investigation. Is that it?”

Blink.

“You’re insatiable.”

He explained that everybody was working 24/7, gathering data. Once they had all they could get, they’d pool their information and present it to her. Another eyeblink. Then her lids closed and stayed that way.

Hy kissed her again and slipped out of the room. In the corridor he faltered and steadied himself on a railing. The constant emotional highs and lows had left him exhausted-but he wasn’t ready to give in to it yet. He’d go back to the waiting room and talk with Elwood. Then he’d begin to make phone calls.

“Now you realize her strength, Son.”

Nobody had called him “Son” since his daddy tangled with those high-tension wires in his beat-up old crop duster. He guessed he’d qualified as family with Elwood.

“Oh, Hy! My baby’s all right! Did you hear that, Saskia-our baby’s all right!”

Kay started wailing. Why the hell hadn’t Saskia or Melvin answered the phone?

“You know what I’m gonna do tonight? Clean this house. We can’t have Shar coming home to a dirty place.”

Well, maybe John would finally get rid of the empty beer bottles.

“You’ve reached Charlene and Vic…”

“Patsy and Evans are heading for the Bay Area. If this is about restaurant business, please call 801-2345 and speak with Nora.”

“Rae Kelleher. Please leave a message.”

“This is Julia Rafael. I’m sorry I can’t answer the phone…”

“This is Ann-Marie. I’m not available…”

“Hank Zahn here. Leave a message, and I’ll get back to you.” Dammit, people had cell phones so they could keep connected. Then they turned them off at a critical moment.

“McCone Investigations, Ted Smalley speaking.”

Finally-a real voice again.

“It’s Hy. Shar’s awake, not locked in any more. They think she’ll eventually be okay.”

“I knew it! I just knew it!”

“I’ve been trying to tell everybody, but most’ve them are unavailable. Is anybody else there?”

“Craig and Mick are, and if you can leave Shar, I think you ought to get over here. Something ugly’s about to go down.”

I ’m still alive! And I’m not going to be a vegetable after all. Just days ago, the future looked so bleak, but now…

Tears again. One thing that hadn’t changed was the roller-coaster ride of emotions.

I could see nurses moving around hurriedly, checking on other patients, carrying medicines. No downtime on the floor of an ICU. Nurses-I’d never before had so much respect for individuals in any single profession. Well, except for doctors or cops or firemen or, come to think of it, anybody who put it all on the line for others.

Hy had been here. I could see the relief and happiness in his eyes. Now maybe he wouldn’t do anything crazy.

Yeah, right…

I looked around. The lights were low, but my monitors flashed in a hypnotic rhythm. Blip, blip, blip… My throat felt raw from the breathing tube.

I’d sustained a lot of damage, the doctor told me. I was going to have to work hard at therapy. Well, I could do that. Given what I’d already been through, I could do anything.

I knew I shouldn’t be worrying about a triviality at a time like this, but they had had to shave my head-twice. Would my hair grow back right?

Did it matter?

A nurse popped in, checked the monitors. Went away, leaving me alone.

Fuck the hair. I’m still here. Probably bald as the proverbial egg, but I’m still here!

The scene he walked into in Shar’s office at the pier was tense in the extreme. Mick sat in Shar’s desk chair, and Craig leaned against a file cabinet-positions of power. Diane D’Angelo was in one of the clients’ chairs; from the way she clutched its arms, and from her tightly crossed ankles, she looked as if an invisible rope bound her there.

Craig said, “Join us, Hy. We’ve been having a very interesting conversation with Diane. I mean Susan. Susan Angelo, an investigator formerly of New York City, and a good friend of Jim Yatz.”

“Susan was just telling us that Yatz hired her to infiltrate our offices,” Mick added. “Seems he was concerned about an investigation Shar conducted for Amanda Teller last year. And there were problems at city hall that he wanted to put a good spin on by coming up clean in an additional investigation by us.”

Hy looked at the woman he’d known as Diane D’Angelo. She kept her eyes down.

He said, “I’ve read that file. Background checks on the Pro Terra Party, its chairman, Lee Summers, and State Representative Paul Janssen. Nothing incriminating, as far as I could tell.”

“But Yatz didn’t know that until Diane-Susan-delivered it to him. She deleted it from the agency files, but kept a copy in her own blocked files.”

Hy said, “Diane, Susan, whatever-why did you stay on here after you turned over the information on the Teller investigation to Yatz?”

Silence. Then, “Jim told me there was a potential scandal brewing at city hall, and that he might need me here. Besides, the pay and benefits were better than what I was getting in New York.”

“How the hell did you get around the agency’s background checks?”

No reply.

Mick said, “Shar hired her provisionally, because Thelia was totally swamped at the time, and Jim Yatz had highly recommended her. She asked Derek for a check, but the request never got to him. Someone”-he glared at Susan Angelo-“intercepted it, and wrote Shar an excellent report.”

Hy thought about that; his wife pretty much accepted her operatives’ reports at face value because she knew and trusted them. Angelo must’ve accessed some of Derek’s other background checks and copied his style.

He raised an eyebrow at Craig. “This city hall investigation-you put her on it?”

“Right. And she turned up nothing. Couldn’t’ve, because Yatz set up a smoke screen involving disappearing files and memos. But in reality, there was only one memo that went away-from Amanda Teller to the mayor.”

“Saying what?”

“Sit down, Ripinsky, and I’ll tell you what the boys and girls at city hall have been up to.”