Hand of Fate (29 page)

"I always used to think that being a little bit pregnant was the stupidest idea," she said patiently. "You were either pregnant or you weren't. But that's exactly what I am. I'm in limbo."

On the third day, in her restless search for more information, Allison found the Fit Pregnancy magazine Marshall had picked up for her at the newsstand a few weeks earlier. On the cover, a woman in a yellow bikini, her dark hair flowing past her shoulders, rested her hand on her baby bump, smiling proudly at the camera. Allison had never even had much of a baby bump. She had kept her pregnancy a secret, and now she would suffer in secret. The stupid girl on the cover looked ten years younger than Allison. She could have a dozen more babies, easy.

But what about Allison? She might not ever have a baby. "Why, God?" she cried out. "Why? It's not fair!"

She whirled and threw the magazine across the room. It slapped against the wall and then fell to the floor. She picked it up and began to rip it apart, page by page. Pictures of bellies ripe with promise and adorable babies and pregnant women doing yoga and running barefoot along the beach.

Twenty minutes later, that's where Marshall found her when he came home at lunchtime to check on her. On her hands and knees, weeping amid strewn scraps of paper.

That evening the bleeding started. Heavier than she expected. Marshall sat with her as she lay on the bed, biting her lip. The TV was on, but neither of them paid any attention to it for more than a fe
w m
inutes, even when Cassidy came on and began talking about the Jim Fate case, pointing out that there were still loose ends. All Allison's thoughts were concentrated on the work of her body.

An hour into it, she suddenly felt panicky, breathless, and nauseated. Marshall ran out of the room and came back with a blue and white ceramic bowl, and before Allison could tell him not to be ridiculous, of course she was not going to vomit in the same bowl she mixed cookie dough in, she was throwing up into it.

The worst part was over by morning. She even managed to sleep a little.

When she woke up around ten, she felt as if she'd been emptied of everything. Of blood, of tears, of pain.

Of life.

Pastor Schmitz visited that afternoon. "We don't know why we suffer," he told Allison and Marshall gently. "Even Jesus said,'Father, take this cup from Me.' Suffering, and being with others who are suffering, is part of what it means to be human."

Allison nodded, but the word suffering seemed inadequate to describe the aching void inside her.

That evening Marshall brought her a bowl of potato and leek soup he had spent all afternoon simmering. She managed to swallow one spoonful, two, but then her throat closed, and she set the tray aside. He took it without comment and was back twenty minutes later. "There's someone here to see you," he said.

It was not even 6 p
. M
., but completely dark outside. How Allison longed for spring! She shook her head. "Marshall, I don't feel up to seeing anyone." Her physical strength was coming back, but her emotions were numb.

"I think you might make an exception." Before she could protest again, he opened the door a little wider. "Go on," he urged someone. "It's okay. Um, estd bien." Then a tiny figure slipped through.

Estella. Something in Allison cracked open at the sight of her grin.

A young Hispanic woman who shared the same plump cheeks and dark eyes as Estella stood in the doorway, smiling shyly. "Gracias," she said. "Thank you for helping my daughter."

Estella toddled over to Allison. One soft hand patted her cheek. "Hola," she said in a high, piping voice.

Looking at Estella's perfection, Allison felt the tears come again. But this time, they left her feeling cleansed.

The next day, Allison boxed up the few baby things she had allowed herself to buy. A tan, soft, plush rattle shaped like Paddington Bear. A pair of Robeez booties made of red corduroy. She had bought a couple of maternity suits, modeling them with the pregnancy-shaped pillow the shop offered, and those, too, went into the box. Pushing away the memory of how she had grinned with delight and amazement at the dressing room mirror, Allison carried the box down to the basement. It was surprisingly light.

She spent the afternoon paging through her Bible, finally finding comfort in the book of Lamentations:

"I have been deprived of peace; I have forgotten what prosperity is. So I say,'My splendor is gone and all that I had hoped from the LORD:

I remember my affliction and my wandering, the bitterness and the gall.

I well remember them, and my soul is downcast within me. Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope:

Because of the LORD'S great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail."

As the afternoon drew to a close, she started when the doorbell rang. Allison opened the door to find Cassidy and Nicole on her front step. They hugged her, a little awkwardly, and then Cassidy ran back to the car and returned with a basket of food from Elephants Delicatessen. There was a still-warm roasted chicken, green grapes, Italian cheese, salami, almonds, olives, and a fresh-baked baguette. And, of course, a huge chocolate brownie.

"We figured if you couldn't come out to dinner, dinner should come to you," Cassidy said, grinning.

Tears sprang to Allison's eyes. It seemed like anything and everything could make her cry. But it was better than being numb. "Oh, you guys, this is so thoughtful."

"I can't take any credit," Nicole said. "It was all Cass's idea."

Allison didn't let her expression change, but she thought it was the first time she had heard Nicole call Cassidy by her nickname. She sent up a quick prayer of thanks. Things were shifting among the three women. Cassidy was facing her problems, Nicole seemed to be opening up a sliver, and Allison had allowed her friends to see that she, too, was vulnerable. Even gathering in her home was a new step.

When Marshall came home twenty minutes later, there were hugs all around. Then he said, "I'm going to catch up on some work in my office." He put a little bit of everything from the basket--except for the brownie, which he knew was off-limits--on a plate.

Allison shot him a grateful smile. She waited until the door to his office was closed before she said to Cassidy,"I'm not the only one who's been going through things. How's it going getting off the Somulex?"

Cassidy bit her lip. "It's been hard. First I had to tell my primar
y d
octor that I had been going to two other doctors. He called that `drug-seeking behavior,' which made me kind of angry until I realized he was right. Anyway, he's slowly tapering me off. I won't lie to you. I miss the way I used to sleep back when I first took one pill and it would just knock me out for the night. Now when I try to sleep, my skin itches and my heart feels like it's going to come out of my chest.

"But the alternative? I'm sure that would have been worse. So thank you, guys. This is going to sound all sappy and everything, but lately I've been realizing I can always count on you." She turned to Nicole. "Nicole even took me to my first couple of meetings."

A rare smile lit up Nicole's face, but she still shrugged. "You would have done the same for me."

"How about you, Allison?" Cassidy asked. "How are you doing? Really?"

"Physically, I'm back to normal." Allison realized she was resting her hand on her now-flat belly. "Emotionally--well, first I was sad, then numb, then scared. I've also been angry, and depressed, and through it all I've been exhausted. Now I'm back to sad. But I've been praying a lot, and I feel like God is really walking beside me."

"How can you say that?" Nicole asked. For once it sounded like a question, not an accusation. "You had this horrible, horrible thing happen to you. How can it have anything to do with God? If He really loved you, wouldn't He have stopped this from happening?"

It was a question Allison had asked herself, and she tried to answer as honestly as possible. "You know what, Nic? I don't really have an answer. But I'm coming to terms with that. Life is full of mystery. Not everything folds up neatly into boxes. But I believe that God sometimes allows something to happen that in His wisdom and power He could prevent. I will probably never know why. Maybe

I'm not capable of knowing why. The peace I'm beginning to find isn't something I can explain in words. It comes from knowing that God is good, and from looking for the good that can come from this."

She watched Nicole as she spoke. Allison knew her friend wouldn't argue with her, not when she was so raw, but she was unprepared for the tiny flicker of vulnerability in Nicole's eyes. It was like she was really hearing Allison's words.

Cassidy said simply, "I'm so glad to hear that."

Allison added, "All I can do is get through each day the best I can. But I need something to focus on. That's why I'm going back to the office tomorrow."

Cassidy looked shocked. "You're not going back to work?"

"What am I supposed to do? Sit around at home and think about what happened? I feel like God is telling me to move forward. I'm tired of talking about me and thinking about me. I'd much rather think about my cases. Especially Jim Fate."

"You're not the only one who can't stop thinking about Jim Fate," Nicole said. "And I've got news for you. Right before I came here tonight, I got the lab results on his blood."

"And?"

"It was fentanyl after all."

Allison's mouth opened in surprise. "Fentanyl! Then Glover must have done it." Despite his claims, Chris must not be as good at telling voices apart as he had thought.

Nicole's nose wrinkled. "One odd thing was that the dosage was amazingly high. The lab people are still trying to figure out how Glover was able to concentrate it like he did."

"So what does fentanyl do to you when you inhale it?" Cassidy asked.

"They say it would have caused an almost immediate opioidinduced apnea," Nicole said. "Basically, he would have wanted t9 breathe, but his lungs wouldn't have cooperated."

Cassidy winced. "That sounds painful."

"Everyone says it only took a couple of minutes for him to die," Allison said. She didn't point out how long a couple of minutes could be. She had once won a conviction on a murder case by simply asking the jury to think about the strangling victim while she timed two minutes on her watch.

Two minutes had proved to be an eternity.

Chapter
40

Channel 4 TV

Monday, February 20

Allison Pierce is here to see you," the receptionist told Cassidy.

"Great. Could you send her down?" Cassidy wanted to get a little bit more work done before she took off. She didn't have any stories on tonight's news. Her entire day had been spent working on the half-hour special about Jim Fate--"Death of a Talk Show Host"--that was scheduled to air at the end of the month.

The special would have a beginning, a middle, and an end. But something about Jim Fate's death still felt like unfinished business.

"Hey," Allison said. "Are you ready to hit Nordstrom Rack?"

The plan was to do a little window-shopping and then grab a bite to eat, with Nicole joining them if she could. Cassidy guessed that Allison just wanted to check up on her and see if she was doing okay. But the joke was on Allison--Cassidy wanted to do the exact same thing to her.

"Give me a minute, would you?"

"What are you working on?" Allison leaned down to look over her shoulder. One side of Cassidy's computer showed the transcript of an interview she had conducted with a nationally known talk show host right after Jim's funeral. On the other was the script she was writing.

As Allison watched, Cassidy copied two sentences of the interview and pasted them into the script.

"That special on Jim. It's going to cover his life and times, as well as his death. I certainly have plenty of footage for the part of the story where Glover committed suicide rather than face the consequences of his crimes." She swiveled in her chair to look up at Allison. "The thing is, the more I think about Glover killing himself, the less clear-cut it seems. What if--and I know they've already put this case to bed--but what if Glover killed himself just because he was worn down and desperate, knowing he was probably going to jail for taking kickbacks?"

Allison straightened up and bit the edge of her thumbnail. "I've been thinking about it too, Cassidy. All the evidence we have is circumstantial. Glover hated Jim Fate, and he had access to both fentanyl and smoke grenades. But if hating Jim Fate was a crime .. :'

Cassidy finished the thought: ". . . then there are a lot of people out there who are guilty."

"And the fentanyl and even the smoke grenades aren't so unique that only Glover could have gotten his hands on them. And he never came out and admitted to killing Jim."

"I guess there's no way we'll ever know for sure." Cassidy sighed. "I'm almost done. Let me just check this B-roll footage of Jim at one of the governor's press conferences. I'm thinking I could use it to illustrate how good he was at getting people's goats." In a new window on her computer, she clicked on the file that held five-year-old footage.

The clip began to play. Allison leaned over Cassidy's shoulder again.