anymore.”
“Christine, Ms. Lemonopolous, she’s here a lot?”
“Yes, sir. She lives here.”
Oh-kay. A live-in nurse? Not sure where this is going. Christine is curvy and cute. Don’t know if she’s, you know, dating anybody or even whose team she’s playing on. So I just nod a little. Hope Samuel will give me more to work with. He does.
“Christine is just my home health aide. She doesn’t really have a place of her own, I guess, and can’t afford to find one because she quit her real job, so Mom let her stay here rent-free in exchange for helping me with my feeding tube and, you know, the seizures. She also does housecleaning, the laundry, and I guess you’d call it babysitting if Mom stays out late on a date. Stuff like that.”
“So, how long has Christine been living here with you guys?”
“About a year, maybe. I had somebody else before, but I like Christine better.”
I press on.
“So, what happened tonight?”
“I dunno. They both went totally ballistic. I was in my room. All of a sudden, I heard shouting. Then something crashed and glass shattered.”
I look to the floor. See shards of clear and green glass, not to mention a broken-off wine goblet stem.
“I rolled out here as fast as I could,” says Samuel, “and saw the two of them going at it. Christine was kicking at Mom. Mom was grabbing Christine’s throat. I told Mom to stop. She told me to, you know, ‘eff-off.’”
“That when you called nine-one-one?”
“Yeah. You guys got here fast.”
“We caught a break. We were in the neighborhood. You okay staying here tonight?”
He gives me a look. “What do you mean?”
“You sure you’ll be safe? If not, we’ve got places you could go …”
“Don’t worry. My mom isn’t going to strangle me, if that’s what you mean.”
“Okay. If you feel different, just call nine-one-one. Or, here.” I hand him one of my business cards. “Call me. I’ll come pick you up.”
Samuel cracks a grin.
“Will you turn on those sirens again?”
I grin back. “Roger that.”
Next up is Christine in the Kitchen with the Ice Pack.
We’re not playing “Clue.” She’s administering first aid to her neck wounds.
A pair of purple bruises-what Ceepak would call ligature marks-have blossomed where Mrs. Oppenheimer’s two hands used to be.
“Do you mind if I take a photo?” I say, gesturing toward her neck.
“No.”
I pull out a small digital camera.
“Can you hold your chin up a little?” I say.
Christine does.
I snap some very unflattering photos of her bloated and bruised neck.
“So, what happened?”
“We had … a disagreement.” Her voice sounds like she spent the night screaming at a Bon Jovi concert.
“About what?”
“Some issues. So, I tried to defuse the situation by walking out of the room. That’s when
I don’t react to that. “So, you live here? Take care of Samuel?”
“Yes. Part-time. He needs help with his G-I tube. And seizures. I’m basically on call all night long. Sleep in the guest room closest to Samuel’s bedroom with a baby monitor. On weekends I clean the house and do the laundry. Stuff like that.”
“You still do weekdays at Mainland Medical?”
Mainland Medical is the hospital on the far side of the causeway that operates our Regional Trauma Center. It’s where the Medevac helicopter took Katie Landry when a sniper who was gunning for me shot her instead. Christine was one of Katie’s emergency room nurses.
“No,” says Christine, kind of softly. “I left Mainland a while ago.”
“Really? What happened?”
“I’d rather not talk about it, Danny. Not right now. Okay?”
“Sure,” I say. “Stay here. I need to talk to Mrs. Oppenheimer.”
“She’ll lie, Danny.”
I nod and grin. “Thanks for the tip.”
Mrs. Shona Oppenheimer and Officer Santucci are waiting for me out on one of the decks hanging off the back of the house.
“Mrs. Oppenheimer?” I say. “What happened here tonight?”
“I wanted to print out a new diet I’d found on line for my sister, but Christine was hogging the printer with paperwork related to her position with Dr. Rosen.”
“Dr. Rosen?”
“Arnold Rosen, DDS. The retired dentist who lives in that big house up in Cedar Knoll Heights. It’s still the nicest piece of shorefront property on the island. It sits atop a bit of a bluff above the dunes, so Sandy’s storm surge didn’t swamp it.”
I nod. The folks in Cedar Knoll Heights were lucky.
“Dr. Rosen is ninety-four,” Mrs. Oppenheimer continues. “Not drilling too many teeth these days.”
Santucci chuckles. Guess these two had hit if off in my absence.
“Christine works at the dentist’s home during the day, seven to seven. She works here nights.”
“So,” I say, “you two were fighting over the printer?”
“Hardly,” says Mrs. Oppenheimer. “Apparently, some paper became jammed in the feeder, and Christine started using the most foul language imaginable in front of my very impressionable young son.”
“Your son was in the room with the printer?” I say because that’s not where the son said he was.
“No. He was in his room. But Christine was shouting so loudly, I’m sure he heard every word. That’s when I calmly asked Christine to leave.”
“But as I understand it, she lives here. Takes care of Samuel.”
“That was always a temporary arrangement. I can find other pediatric home health aides. In fact, I already have.”
“I can verify that,” says Santucci. “She called the, uh …”
“AtlantiCare Agency. They’re sending someone over right away.”
“So, you’re evicting Christine?” I say.
“You bet I am,” says Mrs. Oppenheimer. “She was like a wild animal. Charged at me. Kicked me in the shin.”
She rubs her leg so I know which one got whacked.
“I grabbed her by the neck to keep her at bay. But she kept swinging and trying to kick at me. I had to exert a great deal of effort to protect myself. I wouldn’t be surprised if I bruised her neck something fierce.”
I rub my face a little. “You know, Mrs. Oppenheimer, Ms. Lemonopolous told me a very different story …”
“Oh, I’m sure she did. But don’t let those big brown eyes fool you, officer. That woman is a crazed monster.”
3
