Jonathan Nasaw - Fear itself

“Now you’re just trying to piss me off.” Pender swung his legs over the side of the bed, sat there for a moment with his shoulders slumped and his heavy head hanging. When he realized that his nausea was not going to subside, and that the next belch was likely to contain more than swamp gas, he made a desperate dash for the bathroom, where he knelt to assume the position known as driving the porcelain bus.

“You said as much yourself, last night,” Sid called after him. “In Jim Beam-o, veritas. Ten years ago-hell, five years ago-would you have just left her alone like that, somebody who fits the victim profile for an active serial killer? At the very least you’d have contacted the locals, let them know what was going on so they could keep an eye on her. Instead, you acted like a lovestruck teenager. ‘ Sid, whaddaya think, should I ask her out? I think I’m gonna ask her out, Sid. Sid, should I ask her out?’”

Pender, chalk-faced, reappeared in the bathroom doorway. Beard stubble, bags under his eyes, strap undershirt, pendulous gut, rumpled boxers, one sock. “You think I don’t know I fucked up, Sid? You think I don’t know it’s my fault she’s probably dead now? If she’s lucky? And now I’m supposed to pack it up and go home? Oops, mea culpa, so sorry, so long.”

“Precisely. You’ve already accomplished everything you came out here to do. Let the pros handle it from here.”

“But-”

“Ed, you can’t be half a cop and half a civilian. People get themselves killed that way-themselves and others.”

Pender couldn’t think of an answer. He turned and went back into the bathroom to brush his teeth.

“You look like shit,” he told the old, fat, bald guy in the mirror.

“Didn’t you used to be a famous G-man or something?”

“Used to be,” said the o.f.b.g. “I’m retired now.”

“Simon?”

Simon awoke, stiff and sore from a night in the uncomfortable burnt-orange side chair, and looked up at the clock on the wall. Quarter to six. He pushed himself up from the chair, stretched, crossed the room to Missy’s bedside, stroked the broad forehead tenderly, patted the back of her swollen wrist. She was badly sunburned, except for the elongated bluish white circles around her eyes, where her sunglasses had protected her.

“How you feeling, sis?”

“Thirsty.”

Simon glanced around. Every hospital room he’d ever seen had a pitcher of ice water on the bedside table. Not this one, though. What’s the matter with these people? he thought angrily, snatching up the call button and mashing it repeatedly with his thumb like a frustrated Jeopardy contestant. A thousand bucks a day and they can’t afford a glass of water?

“Yes?” A few minutes later the elderly night nurse popped her head through the doorway.

“My sister’s thirsty-could we get some ice water in here?”

“Sorry, no can do.”

As the old bat brushed by him to check Missy’s vitals and plump her pillow-all the little as-long-as-I’m-here-anyway nursing attentions-Simon caught a whiff of stale sweat. It didn’t seem right, somehow-nurses weren’t supposed to smell. He rose and pushed his chair back. “What do you mean, ‘no can do’?”

“Fluid retention. Doctor has her on a diuretic-the orders are no liquids by mouth until we get the edema down.”

Simon grabbed her by the arm, just above the elbow. She glared up at him; he glared back until he saw a flicker of fear, then released her. “Look here, I won’t have my sister suffering.”

“I’ll…I’ll bring some ice chips for her to suck on and some glycerine for her lips.”

“Would you?” said Simon, as pleasantly as an alcoholic who’s just had a much-needed nip. “We’d really appreciate it.” He turned back to Missy. “Ice chippos coming right upski.”

“Simon, I want to go home.”

“I’m going to be talking to Dr. Yo later this morning. Let’s see what she has to say, first.” The nurse returned; Simon took the carafe from her, held a sliver to Missy’s sunburned lips.

Missy didn’t have the strength to throw a tantrum-pitching a royal, Simon called it-but there were other approaches; when it came to getting her way, Missy’s IQ was in the genius range. Much as she wanted that ice, she turned her head away. “Home.”

“Honey, your poor lips, they’re all cracked and-”

“Home.”

“I’ll talk to Dr. Yo as soon as-”

“Home.”

Home. It took a few hours to work out the details, sign the waivers Dr. Yo required before she would discharge her patient, arrange for round-the-clock private nursing, then rush home to be there before the Home-Med techs arrived to set up the hospital bed in the living room (no stairs for Missy-Dr. Yo had been quite insistent on that point). None of it came cheap, but it was worth every penny-by noon, Missy and her day-shift nurse were playing Candy Land in the living room, and Simon, at long last, was free to visit the basement. By his reckoning, close to twenty-four hours had passed since Dorie had broken her nose. She ought to be ready for a game by now, Simon told himself. He certainly was.

Linda Abruzzi was a city girl, born and raised. Several times during the night she had awakened with the sense that something was terribly wrong; eventually she figured out that it was the quiet that was bothering her. It seemed unnatural, somehow-it wasn’t until the birds began singing in the gray faux-dawn light that she was able to get a few hours of uninterrupted sleep.

Unfortunately, the metallic burr of her windup Baby Ben alarm clock was among the noises that failed to interrupt Linda’s sleep, so she ended up racing through a truncated version of her morning routine, skipping her PT exercises and chasing her vitamins and supplements with instant coffee instead of a smoothie. Luckily, it wasn’t one of her Betaseron mornings (self-administered subcutaneous injection of.25 mg every other day), so she was spared that painful and time-consuming task.

She made it to the office on time. Pool handed her an old-fashioned pink while-you-were-out slip. It was the first such slip Linda had ever seen with every blank filled in-date, time, caller, reason for call, action requested, message taker’s initials-even though according to the time entered, the call, from Thom Davies, at the Criminal Justice Information System, had come in only two or three minutes ago.

“Great,” said Linda. Having struck out in her own attempts to locate someone from the PWSPD Association by phone, she was anxious to see what Thom had come up with. “I’ll call him right back.”

“I’ll get him for you.”

“No, that’s okay; I’ll call him myself.”

Fat chance-Davies was on the line by the time Linda reached her desk. “Thank you, Cynthia,” Linda called.

“No problem,” was the reply from the anteroom. “But please, call me Pool.” Then, before Linda had a chance to examine her feelings to see how badly they were bruised: “All my friends do.”

Linda felt absurdly better. “Thank you, Pool. Hi, Thom-whaddaya got?”

“Nuttin’-and plenty of it. Are you quite sure you haven’t hallucinated this entire PWSPD Association business?”

“Sure I’m sure-I was logged on to their web site just the other day. Phobia-dot-com.”

“Try it now-I’ll wait.”

Linda logged on. “I got a No URL.”

“Try a search engine-any search engine.”

She tried Yahoo, then Google. “No hits either way-not even cached pages.”

“Precisely. And I have access to some databases you’ve never heard of-and if you had, I’d have to kill you-that could tell me who your date was at the Junior Prom.”