Уильям Макгиверн - Summitt

“Here’s Senator Lester,” Victoria Kim said.

Brett had already lifted the receiver in the kitchen.

“Selby? I’ve been here since we got the word, St. Anne’s in Philadelphia. A deputy chief called us. The Easton girl was in the operating room then. They’ve transferred her to intensive care now—”

“What happened?”

“They think she tried to kill herself, Selby. Looks that way now. She wrote your name out for an intern and spoke it clear enough to a nurse. She jumped — well, they’re not sure, jumped or fell from the terrace of her apartment. Hit a railing or ledge couple of floors down. Selby, if she wants to see you, it could be important to us. How soon can you get here?”

No mention of Jarrell, no mention of Summitt City or of Simon Correll, still the evasions and omissions.

“Will she be okay—?”

“Sorry, no... the doctors say too much is damaged. I’ll arrange a police escort to pick you up.”

“Never mind, I can get there faster on my own.”

He hung up. Brett stood in the kitchen doorway, small and bare-legged, still holding the extension.

“Tell Shana where I am and good luck,” Selby said. “Call me at St. Anne’s at your recess.” He opened the front door and turned up his collar against the raw river winds. “You were right, you know. It was the first thing I noticed. The light this morning, it was clear as I can remember it. Now lock this door after me.”

The doctor’s name was Kohl. He was short and stocky with a clipped moustache and calm, brown eyes. Dr. Kohl waited for Selby at the nurses’ station in the intensive care wing of St. Anne’s Hospital. A young policeman stood outside Jennifer Easton’s room.

“She’s not conscious now,” Dr. Kohl told Selby, “but you can go in. So far we haven’t located any family. I gather she was alone when it happened. Senator Lester is in my office. I’ll tell him you’re with her.”

Jennifer lay in a narrow bed beside a shuttered window. The room was gray with early light. “If your relationship with the patient is close” — Dr. Kohl paused to study her charts — “I’m sorry to tell you her condition is very critical.”

Her eyes were closed. Strands of blond hair showed from the bandages around her head. Jennifer’s lower body was held in a cast of mesh fabric. A neck brace forced her chin up and back with rigid pressure. Tubes stretched from her slack arms to bottles of liquid suspended from an IV frame.

Selby watched her features for any flicker of recognition. She looked like an old child now, her skin smooth and taut but her face tiny between the neck brace and head bandages. Only her full, somehow defiant lower lip suggested a remnant of stubbornness and will.

A tall nurse came in and out of the room several times to check the intravenous tubes and mark the charts. In the corridor metallic voices paged doctors and floor nurses over an intercom. The sun was glazing and warming the tall windows.

Court would be in session now, Selby knew, and Ace Taggart would be on the stand to swear to whatever lies were wanted from him...

Her lids fluttered, but Jennifer didn’t open her eyes. “Harry Selby?” She barely moved her dry lips.

“Yes, I’m right here.”

Her eyes opened, tried to find him; the neck brace held her head as fixed as an ornament on a pedestal.

“Harry Selby?”

“Yes.”

“Don’t play tricks... please. Are you Jarrell Selby’s brother... I can’t see you too well.”

“I’m Jarrell’s brother, Jennifer. I’m Harry Selby. You and I spent some time together at the edge of a lake. There was a baseball game.” Her eyes seemed to clear some and focus on him. “Yes, you’re his brother. I lied to you, Harry, lied... it bothers me... he was so frightened...”

“What did you lie about, Jennifer?”

“There were no horses to ride... no sailboats on the Sound... no flags. It was all different. I lied about all that...”

“You said he was frightened. You mean Jarrell?”

“Yes. I knew him... one night, two. He was afraid... I didn’t want them to hurt him, you know that...”

Jennifer’s curved fingers opened, her hand turned toward him. Tears were in her eyes.

“What, Jennifer? What is it? ”

“He’s dead... your brother, Jarrell’s dead.”

“What? When...?” Selby’s voice sounded in unison with the stroke of his heart. “Jesus... how?”

“It was—” she stopped.

“It was what? Who, for God’s sake?”

“All of them... they all killed him—”

“Who?”

“And I couldn’t stop it. I saw it but it was too late—”

“You saw them kill my brother?”

“Yes.”

“When, Jennifer? Where?”

“You wanted to help him, talk with him.”

“Who killed him?”

Her eyes were glazing over. “You listened to me, you were kind... you wanted to find me. You called the convent at Mount Olivet...”

Apparently she was confused... she had to be thinking of Goldbirn’s call to Mount Olivet... “Jennifer, do you know why Earl Thomson hurt my daughter? Do you know what they’re afraid of now?”

For several moments she didn’t answer. Then she said, “I couldn’t reach Jarrell, I had to sit and watch...” She closed her eyes. Selby held her hand gently and felt the desperation in the grip of her fingers.

Later Dr. Kohl came in and said, “We can’t do much more for her, Mr. Selby. She may regain consciousness again, but it’s hard to say. Harder to say for how long.” The doctor made a note on her chart. “The senator would like you to join him, Mr. Selby.”

But as they left Jennifer’s room a nurse stopped Selby. “There’s a call for you, sir. It’s a Dorcas Brett from East Chester. You can take it at the nurses’ counter if you like.”

“Thank you.”

Brett’s tone was flat.

“The officer they flew in from Germany, Captain Taggart, has given his testimony and I’ve finished my cross.” (Selby checked his watch, surprised how long he had been with the dying girl.) “Taggart,” Brett said, “swore under oath that he and Earl were together at Vinegar Hill in September, just before Taggart was shipped overseas...”

In the elevator going down to Dr. Kohl’s office, Selby realized from what Brett had told him that Derek Taggart had blown away one of the last remaining props of the case against Thomson. No past resentments had deterred the general’s son from doing his lying duty. Not the humiliating time he’d spent upstairs in Emma Green’s room shuddering with fear and impotence, of being stripped naked with a whore’s blood on his face. They had all been overlooked or forgotten in the service of the greater cause of saving fellow-soldier-in-arms Earl Thomson’s ass. And in the promise that if he didn’t it would be his ass...

Brett had described the scene. In a dress uniform with the theater ribbons and a Good Conduct Medal, Captain Taggart testified that he and Earl Thomson had been at his father’s farm in mid-September, which, of course, explained the presence of Thomson’s fingerprints in the garage.

Taggart’s story was a simple one. He had been on leave from his last post in Boston, had decided to look up his old friend and classmate. Furlough papers and motel bills and rental car receipts were introduced by Davic to support this.

The captain made a plausible witness, Brett told Selby. Polite, he had impressed the court with his sincerity.

The “old boys” from Rockland had talked the night away at Vinegar Hill, drinking wine and broiling steaks. Earl had dug around in the garage for the barbecue grill and charcoal. What emerged without embarrassment, with a certain indulgent good humor, in fact, was that Earl had got drunk on that occasion, overstimulated by the warmth of friendship and wine.