Fever Dream (12 page)

“Okay,” she said at last. And slid off her stool.

Chapter Seventeen

“What made you suspicious?”

She had her hands jammed in the pockets of her snug jeans as we walked along the riverbank on Second Avenue. Late afternoon shadows had crawled down from the hills on the far side of the river, a chiaroscuro backdrop to the low buildings still glazed by the summer sun.

“I wasn’t suspicious,” I said. “More like confused. Or curious.”

“You’ll have to explain the difference to me.”

Eleanor had put her sunglasses back on once we’d left Noah’s Ark and started walking south on foot. But it wasn’t to protect her eyes from the sun. It was to hide what was in them from me.

The gravel shifted and crunched beneath our feet as we skirted the riverbank. Railway timbers embedded length-wise to shore up the embankment were black with pitch and age. Radiating the day’s heat like great fire-charred logs.

There were no passersby down here. It was still too hot out for the homeless and train hoppers, and not yet dark enough for the panhandlers and drug dealers. Eleanor and I had this sun-baked, dusk-tinged world to ourselves.

“Look, I’m not accusing you of anything,” I said. “But if I’m going to be of any real use, to you
or
Treva, I need to know the truth.”

She said nothing, just kept her face pointed straight ahead as we walked. Not tilted down at the uneven earth, or even averted from my own gaze. Just straight ahead, her profile a smooth dark cameo backlit by the setting sun. Her beautiful lips pressed tightly together.

I took the plunge.

“Okay, I wondered if something was up from the first moment you contacted me. I knew that Biegler would’ve vetoed calling me in. And that Harry would give you all kinds of grief. Yet you called me anyway. Even though, as you yourself mentioned, there was already a departmental psychologist on scene.”

Still she said nothing.

“Then, when I was working with Treva, I noticed that your interest in her emotional state was more than professional. You seemed genuinely worried about her. Later, at the bank, after I told you I had to leave to accompany Treva to the hospital, I saw you make a cell phone call. Heard you repeat a phone number you’d been given. I recognized the number. Pittsburgh Memorial. And what do I find when we get down there? That somebody from the department had ordered Treva kept in ICU, for her own protection. Fewer visitors. Easier to guard.”

I let this sink in, though it was hard to gauge her reaction. I was beginning to regret having even ventured here with her. In a real way it was none of my business.

I went on anyway. “Not to mention your reaction to the detective assigned to her. Robertson. So maybe getting her stashed in the ICU was some sort of extra protection. Why?

“Which got me wondering: if you
had
been the one who’d had her put there, maybe you’d also asked that a detective be assigned to guard her. Though that made no sense either. By your own admission, the department’s stretched too thin. The manhunt for the gunmen is too important, politically and otherwise, to waste a detective on that assignment. As far as anyone knows, Treva’s in no physical danger. Not at the moment. Not since she’d been released from the bank. So any regular uniform could stand guard outside her room.”

By this time, we’d come to an old city bench that had been placed facing the water. Wood slats for seats, curved iron legs embedded in circular concrete pockets buried in the hard earth. Civic improvement, circa 1900.

Without a word, or even a confirming nod to each other, we sat at the same time on the bench.

I waited a moment, then turned to her.

“Treva’s not in some kind of danger, is she?” I asked. “I mean, not anymore. Right?”

Eleanor Lowrey gave a long sigh, then lowered her head as though its weight had finally become too much. Her chin rested on her chest.

“No.” Her voice was a hush. “Not that I know of. I just…well, I wanted her sequestered in ICU. Under guard. So that when she woke up…I mean, if I happened not to be there, she’d know I’d been thinking about her. Making sure she was safe. That she’d see another detective, like me, watching over her.”

She let a smile tug at her lips.

“Well, maybe not
exactly
like me.”

“Tell me. I don’t think Robertson would inspire much confidence in anyone.”

I saw the warmth return to her violet eyes.

“Why
did
you call me, Eleanor?”

“For the same reason I told you, Dan. Because you’re good. Better than the idiot shrink they had on scene. I’ve worked with him a few times, and believe me, calling him an idiot is an insult to
actual
idiots.” She paused. “I called you because I figured I could trust you with Treva.”

I waited. I’d talked enough—too much, probably—and now she needed to tell me about it in her own way. In her own time.

She took a breath. “When we found out the gunmen had released a hostage, Biegler sent me over to where the EMT guys were working on her. At first, with her head down, all wrapped up in that blanket, I almost didn’t recognize her. Then, when our eyes met…I mean, Treva was definitely out of it. In shock or whatever, like you said. But she knew who I was. She didn’t say a thing, but she knew. And I…well, all I said to her was that everything would be all right. That I was going to call someone who might be able to help her.”

A sharp bleat of a klaxon drew my eyes to the river, and the rust-stained pilot boat skimming along its surface. A squirrel’s tail of dark water plumed behind.

When I turned back to Eleanor, she was taking off the sunglasses. Folding them with a one-handed flip of her wrist and hanging them again from the deep V in her t-shirt. Then she gave me a frank look.

“I assume what I’m about to tell you is confidential?”

“I assume you’d know better than to ask. Unless you’re planning to kill someone in the near future.”

A brief smile. “God knows, I have a list. But no immediate plans, no…So you can rest easy.”

She looked away, and I watched her watching the pilot boat disappear under the South Tenth Street Bridge.

“I met Treva in college,” she began at last. “Up at Penn State, junior year. All I’d ever dated up till then were guys. Big dumb jocks I could talk rings around. So when I found myself attracted to her…I mean, what the hell? Some skinny little white girl? Who wrote bad poetry and was devastated when she didn’t make the cheer squad?”

“Must’ve been a confusing time for you.”

“Spare me the therapeutic talk, will ya, Dan? It wasn’t confusing, it was
great
. Treva and I were—well, I’d never been into someone so much in my life. And I figured she felt the same. Six weeks after we first hooked up, we moved into a shitty apartment off-campus. But it felt like heaven to me. We started skipping classes, just staying in together, days on end. Making love like we invented it. Listening to music and reading to each other and talking about living overseas someday. Some Third World country. Away from everybody and everything.”

Her eyes caught mine.

“Yeah, I know. Typical college romance. That kind of stupid love you only feel when you’re young but think you’re older. When you don’t have a goddam clue how the world works. How things really are.”

I nodded carefully. “What happened?”

Her face was unreadable.

“It ended. Treva left me. For a man.”

I followed her gaze back out to the river, its slow-moving current pock-marked by hundreds of troughs and shallow peaks. The last remaining sunlight danced across its surface in cascades of diamond-like glitters.

“I’m sorry, Eleanor.”

“Hell, it was all a long time ago. I’ve had lots of shitty relationships since then.”

A thin half-smile. “With men
and
women. Turns out, I’m not choosey. As long as they’re good in bed and will end up treating me like dirt, I’ll jump in with both feet. At least I used to. Now…”

“What about now?”

“Now my roommate is a Dobie named Luther. It works for me. I get all the testosterone, none of the bullshit.”

I had to ask.

“But why so secretive? I mean, about your prior relationship with Treva? Even if you told Harry and Biegler, the worst that’d happen—”

“—Is that I’d be put on a desk for the rest of the investigation. Conflict of interest. Too personally involved with a prime witness to a multiple homicide and armed robbery.” She frowned. “Not to mention the endless shit I’d get from the squad. The other guys. Not the most enlightened group on earth. I mean, most of ’em think female officers are just a bunch of dykes, anyway. Even after all that sensitivity training…”

Again, that thin half-smile. I was starting to see how her defenses worked. The cost of her cool self-assurance on the job, in what was still pretty much a man’s world.

I chose my words carefully. “Maybe putting you on a desk isn’t such a bad idea. Given how rattled you were by seeing her again after all these years.”

She stared at me. “Ya know, for a head-shrinker, you can be goddam clueless sometimes.”

“So I’ve been told.”

“I mean, okay, so I still care about her…” She stiffened. “You don’t stop loving the one love of your life. Ever. No matter how it ended. At least,
I
don’t.”

“Is that what Treva is? Was? The love of your life?”

“Did I say that?” A dark laugh that held no mirth. “Let’s get real, Dan. I’m a cop. I bench-press two-fifty. I can take down an armed meth freak with one hand and make him cry for his momma. I mean, Christ, I’m Harry Polk with tits. Do hard-asses like me go around bawlin’ about the love of their life?”

“So what exactly are you doing right now?”

She smiled then. A real one, this time.

“Bawlin’ about the love of my life. What’s it look like, mister?”

I took a chance and leaned in toward her. Gently touched her shoulder.

“You know, you’ve never struck me as a hard-ass, Eleanor. Dedicated, yeah. A solid cop. But you’re no Harry Polk. I mean, hell, I
like
Harry. As much as he’ll let me, I guess. But you’re something very different. You know it. And so does he.”

She looked as though she were going to argue the point, but then paused. Squeezed the tears at the edge of her eyes with her thumbs.

“So what now, Doc?”

“Up to you. You want to mention your past relationship with Treva Williams to your superiors, go ahead. If not, that’s fine by me.”

She heard the hesitation in my voice.

“But…?” she prompted.

“Look, the last thing in the world I’d ever do is tell you how to do your job. But I do think you need to ask yourself if you can still be effective on this case. If your feelings for Treva will get in the way.”

“They won’t.”

“But soon we’ll be going back to the hospital to interview her.”

“So?”

“So you’ll be asking her to relive—
again
—the terrors she experienced during the robbery. Not to mention what she went through in the ambulance. Waking up to find some guy she didn’t know wearing Vickers’ security guard uniform. Getting assaulted. Surviving a deadly crash. Frankly, I’m pretty concerned about her state of mind right about now. Worried about whether
I’ll
know how best to deal with it. I can’t even imagine how you’ll feel.”

She nodded slowly, thoughtfully.

“I get what you’re saying. And maybe you’re right. But maybe my being at her side when we talk to her will calm her. Make her feel protected by someone who really knows her. Who once cared about her. And still does.”

She got wearily to her feet. “Look, I know I’m tryin’ to make the case for myself…but I really think she’ll be more helpful to us if I’m there. That we’ll get more out of her. Stuff we can use to get these pricks.”

I stood up, too. Rolled the stiffness out of my neck and shoulders. Felt the damp sweat on my shirt collar.

“Like I said, your call.”

As we turned and headed back along the river’s edge toward Noah’s Ark, she put her hands once more in her jeans pockets. Then, abruptly, she took her right hand out and touched my forearm. Let it linger there as we walked.

I didn’t say anything. Didn’t know what to say. What signal she was sending.

“Thanks,” she said at last.

“For what?”

“Being a pal. Listening. Keeping secrets.”

“Hell, you just laid out my job description. Comes with the license.”

“You know what I mean. Just promise me something, okay?”

“Sure.”

“If, in your opinion, my feelings about Treva
are
getting in the way of the investigation, you’ll give me a heads-up. Let me know.”

“You can count on it.”