Laura Lippman - What The Dead Know

“I’m assuming the medical records are in here?”

“Such as they are.”

“What’s that mean?”

“Dave had some, um, interesting ideas about doctors. Less was more, in his opinion. No tonsillectomies for his daughters, and as I understand it, he was ahead of his time on that. But also no X-rays, because he believed that even small doses of radiation were dangerous.”

“You mean-” Fuck me .

“Right. The dental records include exactly one set of X-rays, taken when Sunny was nine and Heather was six. And that’s it.”

No adult dental records, no blood information on record, not even type. Infante didn’t have the tools he would have expected to have in 1975, much less 2005.

“Any advice?” he asked, putting the lid back on the box.

“If your Jane Doe’s story doesn’t fall apart in the face of the information in the file, then find Miriam and bring her back. I’d put everything on her maternal instincts.”

Yeah, and you’d probably like to get a look at your old crush, you being a widower and all.

“Anything else?”

Willoughby shook his head. “No, I have to-If you knew what I felt, just looking at that box. It isn’t healthy. It’s all I can do to let you walk out of here with it, not to beg to come along to the hospital with you and interrogate the woman. I know so much about these girls, about their lives, especially that last day. In some ways, I’m surer of the facts of their lives than I am of my own. Maybe I know them too well. Wouldn’t it be something if a pair of fresh eyes saw something that had been staring me in the face all those years ago?”

“Look, I’ll keep you in the loop. If you like. Up or down, I’ll call you, tell you how it turns out.”

“Okay,” he said in a tone that suggested he wasn’t at all sure that was okay, and Infante felt as if he were pressing a drink on a guy who swore he needed to quit but could never quite manage it. He probably should leave the guy be, if possible. He thought he would have been more intrigued, having the old case resurface. But Willoughby looked out the window, studying the sky, seemingly more interested in the weather than the long-gone Bethany girls.

“Heather…”

“Yes, Kay?”

Heather’s face filled with light at the sound of her name. Just hearing it was a homecoming, a reunion. Why had it been denied to her for so long? Where could she have been, what could have happened to her that she didn’t, couldn’t, reclaim her identity years ago?

“I hate to do this, but there’s so much that has to be straightened out. A discharge plan, insurance-”

“I do have insurance. I do . The hospital will be paid. But I just can’t tell you yet the account, the ID number.”

“Sure, I understand.” Kay paused, thinking about what she’d said, something she said every day, a phrase others used all the time. It was automatic. It was also seldom true. “Actually, I don’t understand, Heather.” That little beam of resurrection again. “Whatever happened, you’re clearly the victim here. Are you frightened? Are you trying to hide from someone? Perhaps you’d like to speak to someone on the psychiatric staff, someone with experience in post-traumatic stress disorder.”

“I talked to someone.” Heather made a face. “Strange little man.”

Kay couldn’t disagree with that assessment of Schumeier. “He administered a basic psych exam. But if you’d like to explore other…issues, I could arrange that.”

Heather’s smile was mirthless, mocking. “You speak sometimes as if you ran the hospital, as if the doctors did what you told them to do.”

“No, not exactly, it’s just that I’ve been here so long, almost twenty years, and worked in so many departments…” Kay was stammering as if she’d been caught in a lie, or at least in the very act of self-aggrandizement that Heather was suggesting. The initial psych report had indicated that Heather was sane by clinical definition, but not particularly empathetic or interested in people. Yet she noticed things, Kay was beginning to realize, picked up subtle details quickly. Strange little man . That was Schumeier in a nutshell. You speak sometimes as if you ran the hospital . She noticed things and used them against people.

Gloria Bustamante sailed in, the usual physical wreck, but her eyes bright and focused.

“What are we talking about?” she asked, settling in the room’s only chair. Her voice was brisk and not a little acidic.

“Discharge,” Kay said.

“Kay,” Heather said.

“An interesting topic,” Gloria said. “Discharge, I mean. Not Kay. Although Kay is fascinating in her own right.” Was her smile faintly lascivious? Had she misunderstood Kay’s solicitation of this favor? Did anyone really know what Gloria’s sexual orientation was, or were the rumors about her as groundless as the things said about Kay behind her back?

“I hit my head,” Heather said. Petulant now, her pouting-child act. “I fractured a bone in my forearm. Why can’t I stay in the hospital?”

Gloria shook her head. “Sweetie, you could have your head amputated and they’d be trying to get you out of this costly little bed, which they bill at the same rate as a suite at the Ritz-Carlton. And given that you won’t tell us your insurance carrier, the hospital is all the more desperate to get rid of you, lest they be stuck with the bill.”

“Indigent patients mean higher board costs for all,” Kay said, registering her own priggish tone. “It really is a waste of a bed. Under normal circumstances a patient such as Heather might have been kept overnight for observation, because of the head injury. But there’s no medical reason for her to remain here, and the issue needs to be resolved.”

“Everyone’s clock is ticking,” Gloria said. “The hospital’s, mine. The only person not worried about billing right now is Detective Kevin Infante. He told me this morning that if Heather declines to go before a grand jury, she could be held on the hit-and-run. The best I can do is push for home detention.”

Heather jerked up in bed, wincing in pain as she did so. “Where-not jail, not police custody. I’d die. I’d absolutely die.”

“Not to worry,” Gloria assured her. “I pointed out to the police that it would be disastrous, publicity-wise, to lock up the missing Bethany sister.”

“But I don’t want any publicity, so how can you use this as leverage?”

“I know that. You know that.” A sideways glance at Kay. “And now she knows that, for better or worse. I’m going to trust you not to run and tattle, Kay. I came here as a favor to you, so you owe me that much.”

“I would never-”

Gloria plowed on, indifferent to what Kay had to say. It would be interesting to know what a psych exam on Gloria Bustamante might reveal.

“The boy is not that badly injured, as it turns out. It looked awful, apparently, and they were worried about a spinal injury, but he’s been moved from Shock Trauma to ICU already.”

“The boy?” Heather asked, brow furrowed.

“In the SUV that tipped over after you sideswiped it.”

“But I saw a girl-I was so sure that I saw a girl, a girl in rabbit-fur earmuffs…”

“There was no girl in the car,” Gloria said. “It was a little boy who was taken to Shock Trauma.”

Heather sat up straighter in bed. “And I didn’t sideswipe anyone. The driver of the SUV hit me, and he overreacted. It’s not my fault.”

“That’s an easier case to make,” Gloria said dryly, “when you don’t flee the scene and leave your damaged car on the roadside. But we’re going to chalk that up to the head injury, try the Halle Berry defense.”