Circle of Influence (A Zoe Chambers Mystery) (24 page)

“Fire’s out.”

Doaks swiped a hand over his face, and when he looked at the blood, he let out a yelp. “Holy shit. I’m bleeding.”

“Scalp wounds do that. Don’t worry about it.”

“
Don’t worry
? How much blood does a person have?”

“Enough. What have you had to drink tonight?”

“Nothing. I guess I hit an icy patch. One minute I’m driving along. The next, I’m spinning and—” He made an explosion sound and spread his fingers wide. Then he winced. “Ow.”

“Not a good night to be out,” Pete said. “Where were you headed?”

Doaks pressed a hand to his head. His face contorted with pain. He took a couple of shuddering breaths. Then he relaxed a bit. “I’m sorry. What did you say?”

“Where were you going that couldn’t wait for better weather?”

“I was supposed to meet a friend in Brunswick.” He made a feeble attempt at a grin. “You know. A female friend. Hot enough to melt all this snow. Damn. My head’s killing me.”

“Consider yourself lucky that your airbag deployed or that statement might be truer than you realize. As it is, looks like you’re going to miss your date.”

“I need to call her. Don’t suppose you’ve seen my cell phone?”

“You’d better wait until you get to the hospital for that.”

Pete left Doaks searching for his errant phone. As he lit and set out the flares, he heard a short blast of siren in the distance and a moment later, the ambulance had arrived.

“Matt?” Zoe was saying. “What the hell are you doing out here?”

Pete didn’t catch Doaks’ response.

Earl pulled a penlight from his cargo pants and checked their patient’s pupils. Zoe caught Doaks’ wrist, eyes on her watch.

Pete turned his attention to the red emergency lights sweeping through the veil of snow about a half mile down the valley. The throaty sirens of the fire engine echoed off the hillsides. A minute later, the truck braked to a stop behind Pete’s car. Seth pulled up behind them. Fire fighters swarmed around the wreck, conferring with Zoe and Earl and dragging equipment from the truck.

“Hey, Chief.” Bruce Yancy, captain of the Vance Township Volunteer Fire Department approached him lugging a Port-a-Power in one hand like it was a lunch box. He extended the other gloved hand toward Pete, who took it and winced. The big, burly man had a grip that could crush a steel beer can with minimal effort. “You responsible for putting out the engine fire?”

“Sorry if I invaded your territory.”

“No problem. We’ll just have to sign you up with the Fireman’s Association.” Yancy’s laugh matched his size.

These guys loved their work.

“Poor bastard did a number on that utility pole. Both electric and phone lines are down. Course that’s nothing compared to his car.” Yancy patted the Port-a-Power. “Especially after we cut it open to get him out.”

Seth, wearing a reflective vest over his parka and a fur-lined hat with earflaps, shuffled up to them. “Hey, Chief. What have we got?”

“Matt Doaks.”

The young officer swore. “Another township supervisor? How bad?”

Not as bad as Jerry McBirney. “He’s conscious and alert. Worrying about standing up his girlfriend.”

Yancy chuckled and slapped Pete on the back. “I’ll let you boys do your job, and I’ll go do mine. Maybe we can get him out of here in time to make his date.”

Not from the looks of that leg
, Pete thought as the fire captain hustled off.

Pete and Seth took up positions to direct the minimal traffic. Two more fire trucks arrived. Firefighters set up lights and proceeded to carve up Doaks’ car like a Thanksgiving turkey. From his post, Pete watched Zoe and her partner in the heart of the frenzy, working to stabilize and immobilize the patient. A shout went up as they wedged open the car enough for the paramedics to ease Doaks onto a backboard and the gurney.

Zoe and Earl started to push the cot through the snow, but Doaks waved one hand in a frantic gesture. Zoe leaned over him, her ear close to his face. Then she turned back to the car and leaned inside. After a moment, she straightened up and returned to Doaks.

Pete watched as she winged Doaks’ cell phone at him.

TWENTY-THREE

“The nerve of that bastard,” Zoe muttered after she and Earl deposited their patient into a cubicle at Brunswick Hospital’s emergency department.

“What’s frosted your ass?” her partner said.

That was a good way to describe how she felt. Only a few hours ago, Matt had been pleading for her to take him back. Claiming he was ready to settle down. Then he turned around and asked her to find his cell phone in the mangled wreckage of his car so he could call his
date
and let her know why he was a no-show.

“Just Matt being Matt,” she said. Earl already knew enough about her sorry excuse of a past with the jerk. She decided not to bore him with more recent developments.

“Is he hitting on the nurses already?” Earl grinned at her.

“Something like that. Do me a favor? Take care of the clean linens for the gurney, and I’ll make a coffee run. I’m buying.”

“Hey, I never turn down free caffeine. You’re not planning on detouring out to McCluskey’s Bar for a little vodka to add to it, are you?”

“Vodka? Hell, no. Whiskey.” Zoe winked at him as she headed for the double doors, slapping the square silver button on the wall to open them.

She made her way through the mazelike hallways toward the employees’ lounge, and reflected on the moment they’d arrived at the accident to find Pete covered in blood.
Not again,
she’d thought. One of the curses of working for a small, local ambulance service was pulling up to a scene only to discover she knew the patient. This week there had been Ted, and McBirney, and then Pete. On top of all that had happened, Pete being hurt was too much.

But, no. It wasn’t Pete. It was Matt. Yet another man from her past.

Another set of automatic doors swished open for her, and she made her way through the maze of hallways to a pair of elevators. As she waited, her mind drifted to Logan. Where was he on this nasty night? Was he safe?

Was he alive?

Zoe closed her eyes. Which was worse—Logan being found guilty of McBirney’s murder and sentenced to life in prison, or being dead?

The elevator dinged and her eyes flitted open. The doors parted. She stepped inside and pressed the button for the third floor.

A few minutes later, she entered a minimalist cafeteria and lounge. A half dozen assorted hospital employees sat at the Formica tables, eating, drinking, and chatting. A skinny young man with hollow eyes stood behind the counter by the cash register. Zoe contemplated buying him a cup of coffee, too. He looked like he needed it more than she or Earl did.

“How’s Doaks?”

Zoe spun to find Pete behind her. He wore a different coat…one that wasn’t blood-soaked. But this one looked too lightweight for the weather…probably an all-purpose spare he kept in his car. His hair was wet from melting snow, and she bit back an urge to reach up and brush away the lingering droplets. “They’re taking x-rays and running tests. It’s pretty obvious his right leg’s broken. His pupils were equal and reactive, so my guess is his head injuries are superficial.”

He motioned for her to step up to the counter. “How about you? I saw you chuck his cell phone at him. Not standard procedure for handling trauma victims.”

He’d seen that? How embarrassing. “Matt has a knack for knowing how to push my buttons. But I’m fine. What are you doing here? Do you suspect he was drinking?”

“Not really. I was coming into town anyway, and I wanted to check on you.” He nodded to the skinny kid. “Two large coffees. My treat.”

“Actually, I said I was buying for Earl, too.”

“No problem. Make that three.” Pete pulled out his wallet and counted the bills. The skinny kid made change and handed them three large foam cups.

They moved to another counter that held five coffee pumpers.

“Why were you driving into Brunswick in this weather?” Zoe said as she waited for Pete to fill the first cup.

“I’m still trying to track down Logan Bassi.”

Her heart leapt into high gear. “Did you hear something about where he might be?”

“No.” Pete handed a full cup to her and started on the second. “No one knows anything. It’s like the kid crawled into a hole somewhere and vanished.”

She hoped it was a warm, dry hole. “What makes you believe he’s in Brunswick?”

“Just a hunch. I’ve checked everywhere I can think of around home. So I thought about where I might go if I were a seventeen-year-old.”

“And?”

“I thought of the mall.” He handed her another cup.

Why hadn’t that occurred to her? Logan and Allison always met their friends at the Brunswick Mall.

Pete fit a lid on his coffee, and Zoe doctored Earl’s with half-and-half and sugar, gave it a stir, and snapped lids on it and on hers.

“I don’t suppose
you
have any idea where he might be?” Pete said.

“No.”

He gave her a look that suggested he didn’t believe her.

“Honestly. I don’t. I’ve been trying to find him all day, too. Rose is pissed at me, and I figure finding Logan might be the only way to get back into her good graces.”

He sipped his coffee as they headed for the door. “Why is Rose mad at you?”

Zoe froze. She was verbally painting herself into a corner with Pete again. But if Logan was guilty, did keeping their secret matter anymore?

Then she remembered something else. Not only was Rose mad at her. Zoe was mad at Pete.

She opened her mouth to give him hell, but nothing came out. Where to start? Should she accuse him? Or ask him why he betrayed her trust to that detective? He was just being a cop, after all. The person she should be angry at was herself for opening up to him. She clamped her jaw shut and plunged past him, into the hallway.

“Hey,” Pete called after her. With his long legs, he’d caught her in three strides. “What’s going on?”

She stopped again, this time spinning to face him. “Baronick questioned me this morning. He wanted to know about the night McBirney tried to rape me.”

Pete’s jaw tightened.

“You told him about what I said to you last night. How could you? I thought you were being a friend, but instead you were just being a cop.” The pain of betrayal poured from her. Afraid she’d burst into tears if she said any more, she stumbled away, heading back to the elevators.

Pete caught her again. “I didn’t tell Baronick anything. Whatever information he has, he didn’t get it from me.”

Zoe eyed him. Maybe she was once again being a sucker. But she needed to trust someone. And Pete had always been the most trustworthy man she knew. “Who then? Rose and Sylvia wouldn’t have said anything. Ted and McBirney are both dead. No one else knew about it.”

“What about Doaks?” 

“I never told him. He knows I despised McBirney, but he doesn’t know why.”

They reached the elevators. Thankfully, no one else was there.

“Maybe McBirney told Doaks?” Pete pressed the down button.

Zoe laughed. “McBirney claims—claimed—he did nothing wrong, but I still doubt he told anyone about that night.”
If for no other reason than no man would admit to another that he couldn’t complete “the act.”

The steel doors slid open with the chime of a bell.

“Someone else knew.” Storm clouds brewed in Pete’s eyes. “Marcy knew.”

They stepped into the elevator.

In the chaos surrounding McBirney’s emergency department cubicle last night, Zoe hadn’t processed everything Pete had told her. Now, she struggled to recall. Marcy and Ted weren’t having an affair. Ted was helping her because he knew what McBirney had done to Zoe. Ted must have told Marcy about it.

With Zoe’s head spinning, the reedy young man who passed in front of the elevator doors as they slid shut nearly escaped her notice. It took a second, then two, then three, before it registered. Even then, she doubted her own eyes.

Logan?

She dove for the open button , but with a cup of hot coffee in each hand, she was limited to jabbing at it with her elbow.

“What are you doing?” Pete said.

On a third attempt, she hit the right button and the doors slid open. She charged through them. Looked left, then right. Caught a glimpse of someone rounding the corner, heading away from her. “
Logan
,” she called.

Whoever it was didn’t reappear. Clutching the coffees, Zoe galloped after him, ignoring Pete’s shouts from the elevator. Brew slopped, burning her hand, but she barely noticed.

She skid around the corner to find a pair of nurses, heads bent over a clipboard one of them was holding. Startled, they looked up at her. “Did you just see a boy run past here?” Zoe asked.

They exchanged glances, shrugged, and shook their heads.

Between the nurses and Zoe were two patient rooms. She set both cups of coffee on the floor next to the wall and entered one of them to find only a frail, elderly gentleman sleeping, his mouth open, his dinner tray untouched. She turned and crossed the hall to the other room. Two white-haired women occupied it. One was watching television. The other had company—a younger couple with a pair of kids. Everyone gave Zoe questioning looks. She apologized, excused herself, and backed out. 

“Zoe?”

She wheeled, coming face to face with Pete.

“What’s going on?”

“I—” She swallowed. “I thought I saw Logan. I guess my eyes were playing tricks on me.”

Pete shot a questioning look toward the nurses, but they again shook their heads. “Looks that way. Come on. Let’s go back.”

Zoe collected her coffee and followed him back to the elevator. Clearly her imagination had conjured up the very person she so badly wanted to find. She took a deep breath to clear her brain. What had they been talking about? Oh. Yeah. “So you didn’t say anything to Baronick?”

The doors opened onto the hospital’s lower level.

“About you and McBirney? Not a word,” Pete said. “You didn’t kill him, did you?”

Zoe jerked her head up to find a grin tugging the corners of his mouth. “No. I didn’t kill him. I did assault him with a bit and bridle. And fly spray. But that’s the extent of it.”

“All right then,” he said and turned left off the elevator.

She paused a moment before following. Her mind wandered up three floors to that young man who looked so much like Logan. Once again, she dismissed it as tricks of a stressed mind. What the hell would Logan be doing at the Brunswick Hospital anyway?

Pete rolled out of bed and checked the clock. Not yet six a.m. He had Saturdays off. No reason to rise so early. But as usual, he hadn’t slept more than a couple of hours. Might as well be up and productive rather than lying around staring at the ceiling.

The mall idea had been a bust. Thanks to the snowstorm, the stores had closed early. The hallways were deserted. Metal gates barred most of the storefronts. He made a loop around the parking lot, checking on the few stranded cars, but nothing matched Bassi’s Taurus. He followed a PennDOT salt truck home along Route 15. The going was slow, but safer than passing it and battling the snow and ice.

The drive gave him time to ponder these two damned murder cases. And the one common thread that connected them.

Marcy.

Married to an abusive, manipulative bastard with a long history of violence, she definitely had a motive for McBirney’s death. Ted Bassi’s? She claimed they weren’t having an affair. She claimed they were friends, and he was helping her plan her escape from her husband.

But did Pete believe her? That question had nagged him long after he returned home and well into his sleepless night.

He shuffled into the bathroom and stepped into the shower letting the stream of hot water pelt his face, hoping it would wash his ex out of his brain. Mineral deposits coated the showerhead, and stray jets sprayed in various directions. Maybe he could spend his day off fixing it. He made a mental list that included a trip into Phillipsburg to the hardware store for plumbing supplies.

That plan had faded by the time he finished brushing his teeth and made his way to the kitchen. Sunshine flooded through the blinds, all that much brighter from reflecting off a good two feet of snow.

His phone rang when he was halfway through his second cup of coffee. The home phone, not his cell phone, which told him it wasn’t the officer on duty.

“Good morning, Chief. This is Matt Doaks.”

“How’s the leg?” Pete asked.

“If it weren’t for the pain killers, I imagine it’d be sore as hell. Hey, I wanted to thank you for helping me out last night. I really appreciate it.”

The standard reply, “Just doing my job,” rolled off his tongue without effort.

“The other reason I’m calling is to let you know we’re having an emergency supervisors’ meeting this afternoon. Two o’clock at the VFW. I thought you’d probably want to be there.”

“This afternoon? Are you up to it?”

“I’m not saying I won’t be under the influence. I’m not driving, by the way.” Doaks chuckled. He sounded
very
under the influence at the moment. “But the fact is we need to make some hard decisions now that Jerry McBirney’s gone. We don’t want the township left swinging in the breeze. Can I count on you to be there?”