Safe from Harm (9781101619629) (32 page)

Twenty-two

O
n Saturday, January twelfth, I got a call right before dinner. It was a nurse at Methodist Sugar Land Hospital. She had a patient there, very distraught. His name was Mark Pickersley. He was asking to see me. There had been a car accident and his passenger was dead. Could I come?

The seven-minute drive took me five minutes. I gave a prayer of thanks for the ample parking Methodist had built and checked in at the front desk. They gave me room number 5371. I tried to relax. It wasn't going to happen. I hate hospitals. I hated them before I got shot. I hate them more now. It's a problem because ministers visit hospitals all the time. It's part of my job. The elevator doors were closing when a man yelled “Hold!” and I caught the door before it could close. Wanderley stepped into the elevator.

“Mr. Wells.”

“Mr. Wanderley.”

“Detective.”

“Detective Wanderley.”

“You are here because . . . ?”

“I got a call. Part of my job.”

Wanderley showed me his teeth. “Me, too. Got a call. Part of my job.”

The elevator door slid open on the fifth floor and we both stepped out.

“After you, Bear.”

“After you, Wanderley.”

We set off together in the same direction, passed the small waiting area before the faces I saw in the alcove registered. I retraced my steps to the two old people who sat huddled next to each other like children trying to stay warm.

“Mr. and Mrs. Pickersley.” I took their hands.

“It's Mr. Wells, isn't it?” asked Mark's grandfather. “Don't let us keep you here. Go on to Mark. He needs you. We'll be fine, and Mark's folks will be here as soon as they can.”

Mrs. Pickersley raised her hands. “Those two motherless children! What will Mark ever do?”

Um. I guess that answered my unspoken question regarding who Mark's passenger had been.

I asked the elder Pickersleys where they were coming from and if they would like to spend the night at our house, but they said no, when they left the hospital they would be relieving the housekeeper and taking care of the twins until Mark's mom could get in from New Orleans.

Wanderley was with a nurse outside the hospital room. She was standing between him and the door.

“He's with his doctor,” she said like she was saying, “He's with the Pope.”

I asked the nurse, “How is he?”

“He broke his collarbone and fractured his right leg. He tried to go on and walk on that leg and that didn't help matters. He has some cuts on his face. He'll be okay.”

“But Lizabeth got the worst of it? Was anyone else involved?”

Wanderley said, “It wasn't the crash that killed Lizabeth, Bear.”

I looked at the nurse.

“No, they were out picnicking, and Mrs. Pickersley-Smythe had an allergic reaction. Her husband panicked and grabbed her up and got her in the car. They had the accident on their way here.”

“Unfortunately, in his
haste
”—Wanderley gave every word an emphasis that implied he meant the opposite—“Mark left everything behind at the picnic area, food, drink,
cell phones . . .”

“It was so awful for the man,” said the nurse. “He was all to pieces when he got here. But there wasn't a thing to be done. She was long gone. If it hadn't been for that farmer coming along on his tractor, they would be out there still, and it's supposed to get cold tonight.”

Here Pickersley's door swung open and a young, bald, doctor stepped out. He sized us up and faced me.

“Are you Mr. Wells?”

I was.

“My patient has been asking for you. I've given him some sedatives, but he's lucid. You know he's lost his wife? He tried to hike out for help on a broken leg.”

“Very devoted,” said Wanderley.

“Yes. Are you with Mr. Wells?”

“I am,” he replied before I could answer.

“Don't keep him too long. I gave his grandparents fifteen minutes. I'll give you ten. And sanitize your hands.” He was off in a flurry of hyperefficiency. We used the squirt and rub self-consciously while the nurse watched.

I pushed the door and stepped into the dim room. It smelled of antiseptic and plastic and metal. I'm sorry, but I was glad it wasn't me in that bed. I'd spent my time there and I don't want to do it again.

Mark lay half inclined, his eyes closed. He was pale and thinner than the last time I'd seen him more than two months earlier. His left arm was in a sling and his chest was wrapped in white tape. He had stitches trailing from his chin to his cheek and one eyebrow had been stitched together. Mark being Mark, though, the eventual scars would probably make him look rakish.

“Bear.” He reached out for me and I took his hand. “And Detective Wanderley?” Mark sounded gruff and sleepy. He patted his bedclothes, looking for something. He gave up. “Why are you here?” He was asking Wanderley, not me.

“Sorry for your loss,” said Wanderley, not sounding sorry. His eyes were bright.

“I
have
had a loss. A terrible loss.” Mark opened his half-closed eyes and gave Wanderley his stare back and added interest on it.

“Mark,” I said, “tell us what happened.”

“I'm going to want to hear, too, Mr. Pickersley,” said Wanderley when Mark hesitated. “Why don't you tell your story now to both of us?”

Mark fumbled for his plastic water jug and knocked a menu card and folded tissue to the floor. I poured him some water and bent to retrieve the card and tissue. Couldn't find a trash can so I stuffed the tissue into my pocket.

Mark drank from the cup, put it down and lay back again. He winced with the movement and closed his eyes—that doctor should have been more generous with the pain meds. “It's all my fault. All of it.”

“I was wondering if it might be,” Wanderley said. I gave him a warning elbow nudge. He stepped away from me.

Mark opened his eyes. They were clear and focused.

“I meant the picnic was my idea—if we hadn't gone on this picnic, Liz would be here now.”

Wanderley said, “Strictly speaking, she is here. She's downstairs waiting for her last trip to Galveston. You know, for the autopsy.”

I knew what Wanderley was on about. I knew he was insinuating that this hadn't been an accident. I thought he was acting pretty callously since he couldn't possibly be sure it wasn't an accident.

Mark hitched himself upright and grunted.

“Wait,” I said. I found the button on his remote control unit and the bed hummed as it inclined Mark to a sitting position.

Mark said, “Are you calling for an autopsy? If you are suggesting there may have been . . . if you think this was anything but an accident, then, please, yes, order an autopsy. I'm sure you could explain that to your superiors.”

Wanderley nodded his head, acknowledging Mark's point. Autopsies are expensive. “Tell us about the ‘accident.'”

Mark kept his eyes on the detective a moment longer, and then let his lids drift closed. “I don't think she suffered.”

That was a mercy, then.

Wanderley put his hands on his hips. “That right? Don't you suffocate when you have an allergic reaction? Your throat swells, right? And she would feel that happening, it getting harder and harder to take in air, until finally her throat closed tight. It takes three to five minutes to lose consciousness when you can't get air—all that time she knew no help was coming because
you
managed to lose both cell phones
and
her EpiPen—did I get that right? That's what I heard at the station. That's, whoooo, I'd say that's a long time. I'd call that suffering.”

Mark's eyes were open and as bright as Wanderley's. He didn't turn his head away from the detective's gaze. “The doctor said she was almost certainly in shock and not conscious.”

“Well, yeah.” Wanderley nodded and smiled, his eyes slits. “When I meet the victim's family, in the course of duty, I mean, I always say they didn't suffer, too. So go with that if it works for you.”

“What is wrong with you?” I asked him.

“Nothing. Nothing. Let's hear the story.”

“It's not a story, Detective, it's what happened.”

“Tell it, then. I'm interested. I really am.” Wanderley yanked a straight chair over, spun it around, and straddled it backward. He was wearing beautifully detailed black-cherry cowboy boots.

“Liz and I went for a picnic. I thought that would be a good idea—things have been tough since . . . after Phoebe died . . . we haven't had time for the two of us. Margot, she's the new housekeeper, agreed to watch the boys and I packed a lunch and we went for a drive. The weather has been so nice.”

The Houston area had been enjoying sunny days in the low seventies for a week. Today
would
have been a good day for a picnic.

“We went out George Ranch way. There was a private road and Liz wanted to see what was down there.”

“Liz wanted to,” said Wanderley.

“Yes.”

“It was her idea?”

“Yes.”

“Her idea to pass up Brazos Bend State Park—you would have driven right past it. Five-thousand-acre park—she didn't want to picnic there? Where there would have been medical help at the park center? That didn't have any appeal?”

“She wanted us to be off on our own, not picnicking with hordes of Boy Scouts and families. We left our own boys at home—we wanted time on our own.”

“Down a private road, you said? So, technically, you were trespassing?”

Mark gave a cough. “Uh, yeah, Detective Wanderley. Technically, I guess we were trespassing. You want to charge me with trespassing?”

Wanderley waved away the suggestion. “Hell, no. Not me.” A beat or two passed. “We'll see what the farmer has to say.”

I said, “Wanderley, what is—”

Mark said, “What if I tell the story to Bear and he can tell you later?”

“No. Go on. I won't interrupt.” Wanderley folded his arms over the back of the chair and rested his chin on them.

“You're sure?”

Wanderley nodded and gestured for Mark to continue.

Mark lifted his paper cup, found it empty, crushed it and tossed it in a pail in the corner. Nothing but net. “Liz found a good place to stop and we spread a quilt out. Yes,
Liz
found the spot—
she
chose it.” He watched Wanderley for a reaction but the detective stayed quiet.

“Right where we spread the quilt, there was a line of pecan trees alongside a stream—that's why Liz wanted to picnic there. We walked the line of trees until we saw the farmhouse and then we turned back. Liz was taking pictures with her phone, you know, the bare tree branches, the way the light hit the stream, and she got careless and dropped her phone in the stream. I went in after it, got my shoes wet, but it was dead. She didn't get too upset over that, but we didn't know we were going to need it, either.”

She must have been due an upgrade then. Liz didn't seem likely to take a three- or four-hundred-dollar loss calmly, even if it had been her fault.

Wanderley said, “And where was your phone?”

“At home. Last night, when I bathed Toby and Tanner, I dropped the phone in the tub. I ordered a new one this morning. We only had Liz's phone.”

“Perfect storm, huh?”

“A lot of things went wrong, yeah.”

There was a long, uncomfortable silence while Mark and Detective Wanderley stared at each other. I pulled the recliner over so I could sit down, too, but that put me too low to see Mark's face so I ended up perching on the arm of the chair.

“I didn't mean to stop you,” said Wanderley. “Go on.”

“We walked back to our quilt and everything was fine. Liz was in a good mood. I mean, it meant two new phones in a week, but—”

“But it's not like you couldn't afford it, right? Liz had you set up pretty good, right?”

I said, “Wanderley—” but Mark put up a hand.

“Yeah. Liz made a lot of money. We're comfortable. Oh, and then there's that extra bonanza we got.”

“Tell me about it.”

“Turns out Liz had taken out a life insurance policy on Phoebe. Term. You know, the one that rewards your estate when you die. She did it a month after we married. When Phoebe died, we got a million dollars. Yeah. We're comfortable.” He said “comfortable” like it was a curse.

Mark gave us some time to take that in. Wanderley patted his breast pocket, identified what he wanted, and slipped two fingers in to draw out a clear Lucite guitar pick. He put it in his mouth. Wanderley maneuvered the pick to the back of his teeth and said, “Well, for sure
you
are—you'll get everything now, right?”

“We had new wills drawn up after Phoebe died. See, after we got married, I took out a life insurance policy, too. For Phoebe, in case I died. The twins would be taken care of if anything happened to me. But somehow I didn't feel all that confident Liz would take care of Phoebe. You know that ‘your people will be my people' business in the Bible? That didn't work for Liz. She didn't consider Phoebe ‘her people.' I wanted to know Phoebe could go to school, or get some training—something. It was only a hundred thousand because I couldn't afford more. Not on the salary Liz was paying me. Not with the contributions I had to make to our living expenses.

“Liz came across the policy when she went through my desk looking for the papers on that trailer. She wanted Phoebe's grandfather to pay six hundred dollars a month to live in that trailer. I kept telling her the trailer wasn't ours, it was Phoebe's. Jenny got it in the divorce, then Phoebe got it when Jenny died. If Phoebe hadn't made a will, the trailer would've been mine. Not that I want it. But she
did
make a will. She'd filled out an online will form. There's not much to it, but it's legal and Mitch DeWitt has a place to lie down drunk for as long as he can make the two-hundred-dollar-a-month rent on the trailer space.” He looked at me. “I paid the space rent up to Christmas. I don't want any more to do with Mitch.” He touched the stitches on his forehead.