Лиза Гарднер - Never Tell - A Novel (A D.D. Warren and Flora Dane Novel)

If everything had stayed on track, I would have attended Radcliffe, married some up-and-coming genius, maybe one of my father’s own research students, and gotten a string of pearls of my own to wear in a neighboring Cambridge home, where I would teach piano, or something equally respectable.

If everything had stayed on track.

“Squat,” the nurse says now.

I am completely naked. My clothes stripped off and taken away as promised, even my underwear. I stand alone with a female nurse, who—given my rounded belly, or maybe the lack of needle tracks on my arms—is doing her best to appear kind.

I still have that surreal feeling. This can’t be me; this can’t be my life. It’s three A.M. I should be home. With Conrad.

I don’t know what to do with my hands. Cover my belly, as I’ve been doing for months now? Or my bare breasts? My exposed pubis? I settle on my stomach. The rest of me already feels too long gone.

“Nothing but an unfortunate accident …”

She will come. She will come for me next. Then, the real adventure will begin.

“Honey,” the nurse says, snapping the glove on her right hand. “The sooner you do this, the sooner both of us get on with our lives.”

I nod. I squat. She inspects. Next order. I bend over, best that I can. She inspects.

I don’t cry. I’ve never been good at tears. My mom, she breaks into hysterics at the drop of a hat. Sixteen years ago, she did enough crying for the both of us. But me—under stress, loss, extreme pain?

I never cry.

I just … hollow out. A pit of anguish.

I feel it now, for my baby. Who will never grow up in an impressive Colonial in elite Cambridge, or even a well-intentioned fixer-upper in Winthrop.

Then I take it back. Because if I’m found guilty of shooting Conrad, if I go to jail this time, when my baby is born, they will take him or her from me. And there’s only one person they’d give my baby to.

I start shivering then, and I just can’t stop.

The nurse thinks I’m cold. Given my unclothed state, I don’t blame her. She produces the promised orange jumpsuit, along with voluminous panties. She steps back a few feet as I wrestle the clothing on. The underwear are just plain wrong, like granny panties met men’s boxers and tried to mate. The orange jumpsuit is also overly large, and scratchy from harsh chemicals. I can get it over my belly, but it swims around my upper body. The shoulders land somewhere around my ears. The leg length is intended for someone twice my height. The nurse takes pity on me and helps roll up the hems before I trip and fall.

We’ve already run through all my vitals. Physical description, date of birth, identifying tattoos. Foreplay before this main event.

Now it’s done. I’m in the system. Not a prisoner, yet, I’m told, as I’m in jail, which is considered temporary. It all depends on how good my attorney, Dick Delaney, is and what happens at the courthouse a mere few hours from now.

“You’ll be in your own cell,” the nurse tells me now, throwing away her gloves, picking up her clipboard. “How do you feel?”

She nods toward my rounded belly.

“Tired.”

She hesitates. “You’re entitled to a medical hold. If you have any concerns about your health, the baby’s health.”

I have a sense of déjà vu. Mr. Delaney asked me all these questions. I didn’t get it then. I don’t get it now.

“Your pulse rate is fine,” the nurse says now, looking straight at me. “Surprisingly strong, all things considered.”

I don’t have tears. Just an endless void of anguish.

“Your vitals are stable. In my honest opinion, I would stick to your own cell. But of course, you have rights …”

“What happens in medical?” I ask finally.

“The infirmary is a different ward. More like … a hospital. You’d get your own room there, as well as access to medical staff, twenty-four/seven. Are you depressed?” she asks abruptly.

“I’m tired,” I say again.

“If you have concerns, any thoughts of harming yourself, your baby …”

“I would never do anything to hurt my child!”

She nods. “This place, it’s loud. The pipes, the walls, the inmates in the wards above you. You’re going to hear noise, all night long.”

I smile; there’s not much of night left.

“But the infirmary … let’s just say, it’s its own special kind of shrill. It’s not populated by inmates with physical injuries as much as by prisoners with mental ones. The screazies, the other inmates call them—screaming crazies. But again, if you have any concerns for your or the baby’s well-being …”

I get it now. They all think I’m going to kill myself. Or the baby. Mr. Delaney, this nurse, they don’t want me on their conscience. Even if that means assigning me to a night surrounded by frothing lunatics.

“I’m okay,” I say again.

That’s it. A female CO reappears, leads me out of the medical exam room. I have a little baggie of toiletries, a clear toothbrush the size of a pinky, a small, clear deodorant, clear shampoo, and white toothpaste. On my feet, I wear the world’s ugliest pair of flat white sneakers, but at least they’re comfortable. Around my wrists, the CO has once again fastened the restraints.

The hall is wide and cold. Cinder block. Thick, but the nurse is right; I already hear the towering prison moaning and groaning around us. Thudding pipes, booming mechanicals, distant murmurs of hundreds if not thousands of caged humans, trying to get through another night.

We arrive at a cell. Cream-painted cinder-block walls. A molded stainless steel toilet, no seat. Thin foam mattress with single beige blanket.

I say nothing. Walk inside. Hold out my wrists. The female CO removes the cuffs.

She closes and locks the heavy metal door, with its cutout window so they can monitor me at all times.

I sink onto the hard platform bed. I pull up my legs with my tennis shoes still on. Then I close my eyes and wish it all away.

My father. Conrad. Beautiful Cambridge. Hard-fought Winthrop. Choices made. Cycles repeated. Around and around and around.

And now, growing determinedly in my own womb, the next generation of tragedy.

I need to do better. I have to do better.

Yet, locked inside jail, waiting to be formally charged with murder …

I don’t have any answers. Just distant notes from piano pieces I haven’t played in at least ten years.

Once upon a time, there was a little girl in a big house who loved her father so much she was sure he would never leave her.

But he did.

And now this.

I close my eyes and, curled around my baby, will myself to sleep.

Chapter 5 D.D.

FLORA DANE WAS DRIVING D.D. nuts. Which was why, D.D. thought for the umpteenth time, a smart detective should never recruit a wild-card vigilante to be her CI. Because D.D. had to follow rules and procedures, whereas Flora had absolutely no interest.

“You’re saying you recognize the victim, Conrad Carter. You spotted him in the company of Jacob Ness during the time of your captivity. Furthermore, you believe they might have had some sort of relationship. At least know each other.”

“I already told you that!” Flora was agitated. Pacing the sidewalk, rubbing her arms. D.D. had never seen the woman so rattled before. All the more reason to get her on the record.

“I need you to come down to the station and make a formal statement.”

“No!”

“Flora—”

“I will talk! But we both know it won’t be to you.”

Which was the other issue. Flora might have been a Boston college student at the time of her kidnapping, but she’d been on spring break in Florida when Jacob snatched her. Meaning from the first taunting postcard Jacob had mailed from a small town in the South to Flora’s mother in Maine, Flora’s abduction had fallen under FBI jurisdiction.