Life Support (35 page)

"You go now," he said, but not unkindly. Rather than a command, it was a gentle suggestion. "You cannot stay here."

"I don't have anywhere to go."

"You wish me to call someone?"

"There's nobody to call."

He glanced up at the sky. The rain had eased to a slow drizzle, and his brown face gleamed with moisture. "I cannot bring you inside," he said.

"There is a church three blocks from here. They have beds for people when it is cold."

"Which church?"

He shrugged, as if one Christian church was the same as another. "You go on that street. You will see it."

Shivering, her limbs stiff from the box, she rose to her feet. "Thank you," she murmured.

He didn't answer. Before she'd even made it out of the alley, she heard the door shut as he went back into the restaurant.

It began to rain again.

She headed in the direction the man had told her to go, devouring the bread as she walked. She could not remember tasting bread so wonderful, it was like eating clouds. Someday, she thought, someday, I'll pay him back for being nice to me. She always remembered the people who'd been nice to her, she kept a list in her head. The woman at the liquor store who'd given her a day-old hot dog. The man in the turban. And that Dr. Harper. None of them had a reason to be nice to Molly Picker, but they had been. They were her personal saints, her angels.

She thought of how nice it would be someday to have money. To slip a bundle of cash in an envelope and hand it to that man in the turban.

Maybe he would be old by then. She would stick a note in side, ThanAes for the bread. He would not remember her, of course. But she would remember him.

I won'tforget. I'll neverforget.

She came to a halt, her gaze focused on the building across the street.

Beneath the large white cross were the words, MISSION SHELTER. WELCOME.

Over the doorway a light shone, warm and inviting.

Molly stood momentarily transfixed by the vision of that light glowing in the drizzle, beckoning her to come out of the darkness. She felt a strange sense of happiness as she stepped off the curb and started across the street.

A voice called out, "Molly?"

She froze. Her panicked gaze darted toward the sound. It was a woman's voice, and it came from a van parked near the church.

"Molly Picker?" the woman called. "I want to help you."

Molly took a step backward, on the verge of fleeing.

"Come here. I can take you to a warm place. A safe place. Won't you get in the van?"

Molly shook her head. Slowly she backed away, her attention focused so completely on the woman that she didn't hear the footsteps closing in behind her.

A hand clapped over her mouth, muffling her scream, yanking her head back with such force her neck felt as if it would snap. She smelled him, then�Romy, his aftershave gaggingly sweet.

"Guess who, Molly Wolly?" he murmured. "I been chasing after you all fucking afternoon."

Squirming, fighting, she was dragged across the street. The van door slid open and another pair of hands hauled her inside and shoved her to the floor, where her wrists and ankles were quickly bound with tape.

The van lurched forward, screeching away from the curb. As they passed under a streetlight, Molly caught a glimpse of the woman sitting a few feet away�a small woman with quick eyes and short dark hair. She lay her hand on Molly's swollen abdomen and gave a soft sigh of satisfaction, her smile like the rictus of a corpse.

"We should go back," said Dvorak. "We're not going to find her." They had been driving in circles for an hour, had scanned every street in the neighborhood at least twice. Now they sat in her parked car, too weary to converse, their breath fogging the windows. Outside, the rain had finally stopped and puddles glistened in the road. I hope she's safe, thought Toby. I hope she's somewhere warm and dry.

"She knows the streets," said Dvorak. "She'll know enough to find shelter." He reached over and squeezed her hand. They studied each other in the dark, both of them tired, but neither one quite ready to end the night.

He leaned toward her and had just touched his lips to hers when his pager went off.

"That could be about Molly," she said.

He picked up her car phone. A moment later he hung up and sighed.

"It's not about Molly. But it does put an end to our evening."

"Is it back to work for you?"

"Unfortunately. Could you drop me off? I need to get to an address right up this street."

"What about your car?"

"I'll catch a ride back in the morgue van."

She started the engine. They drove north, toward Chinatown, along streets wet and shimmering with the multicolored reflections of city lights.

Dvorak said, "There�it's up ahead."

She'd already spotted the flashing lights. Three Boston police cruisers were parked at haphazard angles by the curb outside a Chinese restaurant. A white morgue van with COMMONWEALTH OF MASSACHUSETTS stenciled on the side was backing into Knapp Street.

She pulled to a stop behind one of the cruisers, and Dvorak stepped out.

"If you hear any news about Molly, will you call me?" she said.

"I will." He gave her a smile, a wave, and walked toward the barrier of crime tape. A patrolman recognized him and waved him through.

Toby reached for the gearshffl but then left it in park and sat back for a moment, watching the crowd that had gathered on the street. Even at midnight, the ranks of the curious had assembled.

There was a bizarre frivolity in the air, two men slapping palms, women laughing. Only the cops looked grim.

Dvorak was standing just beyond the crime tape, conversing with a man in plainclothes. A detective. The man pointed toward an alley, then flipped through a notebook as he talked. Dvorak nodded, his gaze scanning the ground. Now the detective said something that made Dvorak glance up with a look of surprise. At that moment he seemed to notice that Toby was still parked. The detective stared as Dvorak abruptly walked away from him, ducked under the tape, and crossed back to Toby's car.

She rolled down the window. "I just wanted to watch for a moment," she said. "I guess I'm as morbidly curious as the rest of these people. It's a strange crowd."

"Yeah, it's always a strange crowd."

"What happened in the alley?"

He leaned into the window. Quietly he said, "They found a body. The ID says his name's Romulus Bell."

She responded with a blank look.

"He goes by the name of Romy," said Dvorak. "It's Molly Picker's pimp.

" The body was sprawled on the pavement, almost hidden behind a parked blue Taurus. The left arm was bent under the body, the right was flung out, as if pointing toward the restaurant at the end of the alley. An execution, thought Dvorak, eyeing the bullet's entry wound in the corpse's right temple.

"No witnesses," said Detective Scarpino. One of the older cops, close to retirement, he was famous for his bad hairpieces. Tonight, the pelt looked as if it had been slapped on backward in haste. "Body was spotted about eleven-thirty by a couple coming out of that Chinese restaurant.

That's their car." Scarpino pointed to the blue Taurus. "The upstairs tenant came into the alley to toss out some trash around ten o'clock or so, didn't see the body, so we're guessing it happened after ten. ID was in the victim's wallet. One of the patrolmen recognized the name. He'd talked to the victim yesterday, when he asked him about that girl you were looking for."

l "Bell was seen at Boston City Hospital around nine o'clock tonight."

"Who saw him there?"

"The girl, Molly Picker. He came into her hospital room." Dvorak pulled on a pair of latex gloves and bent down for a closer look at the corpse.

The victim was in his early thirties, a slim man with straight black hair pomaded into an Elvis helmet. His skin was still warm, the arm that lay stretched out was tanned and muscular.

"If you'll excuse me for saying so, Doc, it just doesn't look right."

"What doesn't?"

"You driving around with that doctor."

Dvorak straightened and turned to face Scarpino. "Excuse me?"

"She's under active investigation. The word I hear is, her mother's not going to make it."

"What else have you heard?"

Scarpino paused, glancing up the alley at the crowd. "That there's new evidence being developed. Alpren's guys are checking pharmacies around town. He's chasing something solid. If the mother dies, it goes to Homicide, and that makes this look real awkward. You and her, driving up to a crime scene together."

Dvorak stripped off his gloves, suddenly furious at Scarpino. The hours he'd just spent with Toby Harper made him doubt she was capable of violence, much less violence against her own mother.

"Shit, there are reporters standing right over there," said Scarpino.

"They all recognize you. And soon they'll know Dr. Harper's face as well. They'll remember seeing you two together and pow! Fucking front page."

He's right, thought Dvorak. Which made him only angrier.

"It just doesn't look right," Scarpino said, emphasizing every word.

"She hasn't been charged with a crime."

"Not yet. You talk to Alpren."

"Look, can we focus on this case?"

"Yeah, sure." Scarpino threw a disgusted look at the corpse of Romulus Bell. "I just thought I'd pass on a little advice, Doc. Guy like you doesn't need that kind of trouble. A woman who beats up on her own mother�" "Scarpino, do me a favor."

"Yeah?"

"Mind your own fucking business."

Toby slept in Ellen's bed that night. After driving home from that garish scene in Chinatown, she'd walked into her house and felt she was entering an airless, silent chamber. She felt walled away. Buried.

In her own bedroom, she turned on the radio to a late-night classical station, playing it loudly enough to hear even in the shower.

She desperately needed music, voices�anything.

By the time she came out of the bathroom, drying her wet hair with a towel, the music had sputtered to static. She turned it off. In the abrupt silence, she felt Ellen's absence as acutely as a physical pain.

She went down the hall, to her mother's room.

She didn't turn on the light but simply stood in the semidarkness, inhaling Ellen's scent, faintly sweet, like the summer flowers she so lovingly tended. Roses and lavender.

She opened the closet and randomly touched one of the dresses hanging there. Just by its texture she recognized it, her mother's linen summer shift, a dress so old that Toby could remember Ellen having worn it to Vickie's college graduation. And here it was, still hanging in the closet with all the other dresses Ellen had kept through the years. When was the last time I took you shopping? I can't remember. I can't remember the last time I bought you a dress . . .

She closed the closet door and sat down on the bed. She had changed the sheets several days ago, in hopeful anticipation of her mother's eventual return home. Now she almost wished she hadn't done so, all traces of her mother had been stripped away with the sheets, and now the bed smelled blandly of laundry soap. She lay down, thinking of the nights Ellen had occupied this same space. Wondering if the air itself had somehow been imprinted with the shadow of her presence.

She closed her eyes, inhaled deeply. And fell asleep.

Vickie's call awakened her at eight the next morning. It took eight rings before Toby managed to stumble to her own bedroom to pick up the phone. Half-drugged by sleep, she could barely focus on what her sister was trying to tell her.

"A decision has to be made, but I can't do it myself, Toby. It's just too much on my shoulders."

"What decision?"

"Mom's ventilator." Vickie cleared her throat. "They're talking about turning it off."

"No." Toby came fully awake. "No."

"They did the second EEG and they said it's just as�"

"I'm coming in. Don't let them touch a thing. Do you hear me, Vickie?

Don't let them touch one goddamn thing."

Forty-five minutes later, she walked into the ICU at Springer Hospital.

Vickie was standing in Ellen's cubicle, so was Dr. Steinglass. Toby went straight to her mother's side and, bending down, whispered, "I'm here, Mom. I'm right here."

"The second EEG was done this morning," said Dr. Steinglass. "There's no activity. The new pontine hemorrhage was devastating. She has no spontaneous respirations, no�"

"I don't think we should talk about this in the room," said Toby.

"I realize it's not easy to accept," said Steinglass. "But your mother can't comprehend anything we're saying right now."

"I'm not going to discuss this. Not in here," said Toby, and she walked out of the cubicle.

In the small ICU conference room, they sat at the table, Toby grim and silent, Vickie on the verge of tears. Dr. Steinglass, whom Toby thought of as competent but detached, looked uncomfortable in his new role of family crisis counselor.

"I'm sorry to raise this issue," he said. "But it really does need to be addressed. It's been four days now, and we've seen no improvement.

Both EEG's show no activity. The hemorrhage was massive, and there's no brain function left. The ventilator is just . . . prolonging the situation." He paused. "I do believe it would be the kindest thing to do."

Vickie looked at her sister, then back at Steinglass. "If you really think there's no chance . . ."

"He doesn't know," said Toby. "No one does."

"But she's suffering," said Vickie. "That tube in her throat�all those needles�"

"I don't want the ventilator shut off yet."

"I'm only thinking about what Mom would want."

"It's not your decision. You're not the one who takes care of her."

Vickie shrank back in her chair, eyes wide with hurt.

Toby dropped her head in her hands. "Oh God, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to say that."

"I think you did mean to say it." Vickie rose from her chair. "All right, you make the decision, then. Since you seem to think you re the only one who loves her." Vickie walked out.

After a moment, so did Dr. Steinglass.