We can barely see each other around all the bags and boxes as we argue about what he doesn’t feel, and I know that at the root of his anger is his pain, and he’s crushed. He had feelings for Jaime that I’m aware of at some level, but I’ll likely never know the extent of them and whether he might have been attracted to her or was in love with her, and I know for a fact he had attached his future to hers. He was going to help her out, and he hoped to do so in this part of the world, where he likes the lifestyle and the weather. Now all of that is changed forever.
“Look,” Marino says, as the elevator stops on the top floor. “Sometimes nothing makes anybody feel better. I can’t stand what was done to her, okay? It makes me crazy that we were right there eating with her in her own damn living room and had no idea. Jesus. She’s eating poison right before our eyes and is going to die and we got no clue, and I leave and then you do. Goddamn it. And she was all by herself going through hell like that. Why the hell didn’t she call nine-one-one?” He asks the same question Sammy Chang did, the question most people would ask.
We are rolling our carts along the balcony that wraps around the hotel’s atrium, heading to a series of rooms that make up our camp, a suite for Benton and me, with a connecting room on either side: one for Lucy, one for Marino.
“She was drinking,” I reply. “And that certainly didn’t help her judgment. But the more relevant factor is human nature, and it’s typical for people to put off doing something as drastic as calling for an ambulance. Strange thing is, people will call the police quicker than they will ask for a rescue squad or the fire department, because we tend to feel ashamed and embarrassed when we hurt ourselves or accidentally set our house on fire. We’re much more comfortable siccing the police on someone.”
“Yeah, like the time I had the chimney fire, you remember that? My old house on Southside? I refused to call. Climbed up on the roof with the hose, which was stupid as hell.”
“People delay, they put it off,” I say, as we roll our carts along, and hanging vines growing from the balconies on every floor remind me of Tara Grimm and all the devil’s ivy in her office that she lets grow out of control to teach people a life lesson.
Be careful what you let take root, because one day that’s all there is. Something took root in her, and all that’s left is evil.
“They keep hoping they’ll feel better or can fix the problem themselves and then reach the point of no return,” I tell Marino. “Like the lady with the bucket. Remember her? She dies of CO poisoning while acting like a bucket brigade, house burns up and firefighters find her charred body next to her bucket. It’s worse for those who work in the professions we do. You, Jaime, Benton, Lucy, me, all of us would be reluctant to call police or paramedics. We know too much. We make terrible patients and usually don’t follow our own rules.”
“I don’t know. If I couldn’t breathe, I think I’d call,” Marino says. “Or you might take Benadryl or Sudafed or root around for an inhaler or an EpiPen, and when nothing worked, you probably wouldn’t be in a condition to call anyone.”
Benton must have heard us making our way along the open-air balcony, and the door to our suite opens before we get there. He steps outside, holding the door open wide, and his hair is damp and he’s changed his clothes, showered and fresh, but his eyes are clouded by what has happened and what worries him, and I imagine Lucy worries him most of all. I haven’t talked to her since I saw her last when I was on the elevator in Jaime’s building, on my way to discover an answer I would give anything to change.
“How are things?” It’s my way of asking him about my niece. “We’re okay. You look exhausted.”
“Like a train wreck. That probably would be a more apt description,” I reply, as he helps us get the carts inside, and I pause to take my boots off. “I’ll clean up in a minute, but let me get things set up and dinner started. I promise I’m safe. In non-air-conditioned vehicles all day, rained on, and I look like hell and don’t smell good, but nothing to worry about.”
As if they’ve never been exposed to me after I’ve been at crime scenes or in the morgue.
“Sorry I didn’t have access to a locker room when I left the apartment.” I continue to talk and apologize because there’s no sign of Lucy, and that can’t be good.
I’m sure she knows we’re here, but she’s not come out to see us, and I interpret that as a danger sign.
“But it’s almost a certainty it’s something Jaime ate,” I’m explaining. “I’m very suspicious of botulinum toxin in her food, possibly in Kathleen Lawler’s food. MGH should be testing Dawn Kincaid for it, but they’ve likely thought of that, and I’m sure they have access to fluorescent tests, which are highly sensitive and quick. You might want to mention it to someone up there. One of the agents working her case,” I reiterate to Benton.
“Apparently she hadn’t eaten anything when she started having symptoms,” he says. “I don’t think it’s believed she was poisoned with food, but I’ve passed along your suspicions about the possibility of botulism.”
“Maybe something she drank,” I reply.
“Maybe.”
“Possible you can get a detailed inventory of what was in her cell, of what she might have had access to?”
“It’s not likely you’re going to be allowed to have that information,” Benton says. “I’m probably not going to be allowed to have it, either, for obvious reasons. Considering what Dawn Kincaid has accused you of.”
“Your mistake was not hitting her harder with the fucking flashlight,” Marino says.
“Well, I certainly can’t be blamed for what’s happened to her now,” I reply. “What about the sushi restaurant? Do we know anything more about that?”
“Kay, who would be telling me?” Benton says patiently.
“Yes, everybody’s going to be secretive when all I want to do is stop the person from killing someone else.”
“All of us want the same thing,” he says. “But your connection to Dawn Kincaid, to Kathleen Lawler and Jaime, creates more than a minor problem when it comes to sharing information. You can’t work those cases, Kay. You just can’t.”
“The fact is I’m not going to transfer a neurotoxin like botulinum from my clothes or boots, of course, but I’m going to get out of them anyway,” I decide. “Unfortunately, no rooms come with a washer and dryer, so there was no way around that. If you could find the trash bags I just bought,” I say to Benton. “My shirt and pants are going in one, and I’ll send them out to be laundered or, better yet, pitch them. I might just pitch my boots, too. Maybe everything, I don’t know. Maybe you could get me a robe.”
“Believe I’ll go clean up.” Marino grabs two nonalcoholic beers, doesn’t matter that they aren’t chilled, and walks through the living room to his connecting door.
I find sanitizing wipes in my shoulder bag and clean my face, my neck, my hands, as I’ve done multiple times this day, and Benton finds a robe for me and opens a trash bag. I take off the uniform I’ve lived in since the sun came up, the black cargo pants and black shirt that Marino packed in a go-bag weeks ago when a plan was being hatched and it wasn’t what he thought. Jaime tricked all of us. I don’t know the extent of her deception or her motivation or ultimately what she had in mind. It wasn’t right or fair, and much of it was unkind, but she didn’t deserve to die and to die so cruelly.
The kitchenette has cupboards with dishes and silverware, and a refrigerator and a microwave, and I set up the butane stove and the toaster oven, and we begin to put away food and supplies. There is no sign of Lucy. Her room is off the dining area to the right of the living room, and the door is shut.
“What I didn’t get a chance to do was go to a pharmacy.” I unwrap cookware and pull tags off utensils I bought. “One with home healthcare, some things we should have on hand, but nothing was open after six, not the sort of pharmacy I have in mind that has home medical equipment and supplies. I’ll give Marino a list, and maybe he can pick up what I need in the morning.”
“Seems to me you’ve got everything covered,” Benton says, with a calmness that makes me only more unnerved, as if it portends a bad storm.
“An Ambu bag, I should at least have one of those. So simple, but the difference between life and death. I used to keep one in my car. I don’t know why I don’t do it anymore. Complacency is a terrible thing.”
“Lucy’s been in her room working on her computers,” Benton says, because I haven’t asked about her directly and he knows why. “She went out for a run and both of us went to the gym. I think she’s in the shower, or she was a few minutes ago.”
I wash a new cutting board and two new pots.
“Kay, you’re going to have to handle it better than this,” Benton says, as he places bottles of water in the refrigerator.
