Saving Max (15 page)

“Couldn’t she have gotten in somehow?” asks Sevillas.

“Who knows?” grumbles Doaks. “All I know is that so far we got squat. At least it’s early on.”

Sevillas coughs and riffles through some papers. Doaks stares at him. “What’s up? Why ain’t you lookin’ at me when I’m talkin’ to you?”

Sevillas glances first at Doaks and then at Danielle. “Well, I’m afraid I have more bad news. I got a call from the court clerk late this morning. The judge has moved up the State’s motion on the bond and proof-evident hearing for next Tuesday.”

“What?” Doaks splutters. “Are you outta your ever-lovin’ mind? I just got finished tellin’ you we got
nada.
Do I gotta translate that for you?”

Sevillas shrugs. “It’s Hempstead. You know what that means.”

“Who is Hempstead?” asks Danielle. “The judge?”

Doaks rolls his eyes. “She’s the judge, all right. Well, strike three and you’re out.”

Danielle feels a flare of panic. “What do you mean?”

Sevillas takes a deep breath. “The judge who drew your case is Clarissa L. Hempstead, the youngest and toughest judge
on the bench. She takes a very, shall we say, active role in her cases. Which means that if she wants a hearing on Tuesday, we’ll have it on Tuesday. Don’t worry, Danielle, we still have a few days to dig in and solidify our legal position.”

Danielle gives him a worried look. “How much will it hurt us if we don’t have at least one viable suspect?”

“We can still raise the specter of other patients and staff,” he says. “She knows it’s early in the case. Obviously it’s not good that the only suspect is Max. I won’t kid you, Danielle. The fact scenario is terrible. What worries me even more is that we don’t have a single witness to call.”

Danielle’s heart sinks. The only one who can really tell them what happened is Max. And he doesn’t remember a thing. Her heart quickens. They need exonerating evidence, and they need it fast. And, she prays, she has exactly that. “Tony, I think I have something that will help us.”

“Saints preserve us,” mutters Doaks.

Danielle picks up her purse and puts it on her lap. She had not planned to divulge the fruits of her foray into Maitland until she had a chance to send off the medication and blood sample to an independent lab and could present Tony with concrete evidence. But given the drastically shortened timetable, she has no choice. She pulls a small plastic bag from her purse and holds it up. The bright blue capsules catch the light.

Sevillas gives her a quizzical look. “What are those?”

“The medication Fastow has been giving my son,” she says. “And probably to Jonas, as well. I believe this is what has caused Max’s violent behavior. I don’t know about Jonas or how it might have contributed to his death.”

Doaks takes his feet off the chair and moves closer to inspect the contents of the bag. Wary gray eyes meet hers. “What makes you think that?”

“I know Max’s behavior changed drastically after he came to Maitland.”

Sevillas raises his eyebrows. “Where did you get those pills?”

Danielle thinks fast. “I took a few from the bottle when the nurse wasn’t looking.” She shrugs at Sevillas’s quizzical look. “They didn’t look like anything Max had taken before. I took some photos of them with my iPhone and sent them to one of Max’s doctors in New York. He’s never seen them before—either the color or the odd, asymmetrical shape.” She hands him the Ziploc bag.

Sevillas stares at the pills. “So,” he says slowly, “this has no bearing on the physical evidence against Max vis-à-vis the murder. It only has relevance to Max’s allegedly erratic behavior at Maitland and your theory that Fastow, and supposedly Maitland as well, are using experimental drugs on their patients.” He pauses. “And that’s only if—and it’s a big if—it turns out to be true that this is a medication not recommended by the FDA, which, I must say, is so unlikely as to be highly improbable.”

Danielle fights the anger that wells up inside her. “I agree with you about the legal ramifications. I do not agree with you about the medication. That’s why I need you to send it off to a lab to have it analyzed.”

Sevillas and Doaks exchange a look. Doaks shrugs. “I think it’s a waste of your money, but I’ll do it.”

“Before Tuesday?”

Sevillas shoots a look at Doaks.

“Yeah, yeah,” he says. “I’ll pull some strings.”

“Fine,” says Sevillas. “But how do we prove they were given to Max?”

Danielle chooses her words carefully. “I think I’ve solved that problem.” She slowly extracts the vial of blood that she
has kept in her refrigerator all night and packed in a freezer wrap she bought from the drugstore.

Doaks grunts. “What’s that? You bringin’ us Popsicles now?”

Danielle gently unwraps the test tube and hands it to Sevillas. “This needs to go to a lab, along with the medication.”

Sevillas holds the test tube up to the light and then turns and stares at Danielle.

Doaks looks over Sevillas’s shoulder. “Man, is that blood? Whose blood?”

Danielle clasps her hands. “Max’s.”

“How the fuck did you get Max’s blood?” Doaks’s eyes are narrow slits.

Sevillas holds the test tube as if it is nitroglycerin. His face is as grim as his voice. “Danielle, I think you better tell us what’s going on.”

She nods. “While Doaks was in with Nurse Kreng yesterday, I went into Max’s room and found the pills and his medication chart. Max was practically unconscious and had needle tracks up and down his arms. I don’t know if they’re drawing his blood to take levels or injecting him with something. That’s why we have to have the pills analyzed. Once we find out what’s in his blood, we can go to court with our evidence and demand that the M.E. analyze a similar sample of Jonas’s blood. We’ll finally know what Fastow is up to.” She takes a deep breath. “I don’t think it’s a far leap from there to legitimately suggest that Fastow was conducting some form of clinical trial with experimental psychotropics on Max and that they caused Max’s violent behavior.”

Doaks looks like a rocket about to explode. “Goddammit! I knew you were up to somethin’! Tellin’ me the car was in a different place because the sun was in your eyes—my ass!
Do you have any idea what kinda numbnut stunt that was? I oughtta pick up the phone and turn your ass in.”

Sevillas places a hand on his arm. His words come out like bullets. “Stop it, Doaks. Sit down.” Doaks does as he asks, muttering and gesticulating all the way.

Sevillas turns an angry gaze on her. “This is unbelievable. Do you realize you’ve jeopardized everything we’ve been working for? How am I supposed to keep you out of jail if you take insane risks like this?” He stops short. “How did you get the blood sample? Was it lying around in his room, too?”

Stung by his anger, she shakes her head. “I drew it. There was a syringe packet there and I—”

Doaks smacks himself on the side of the head. “Great! Hempstead’s gonna love this. The murder suspect’s loving mother sneaks into the hospital, flips up a middle finger at her bond and T.R.O., and then takes blood from her own kid—violatin’ yet another court order to stay away from him! Could we be any more fucked?”

“I said stop it, Doaks,” says Sevillas. “She knows exactly what she’s done and what she’s risked.” Sevillas continues to stare at her. The silence between them is torturous.

“No one saw me,” she says quietly.

“Right.” Sevillas’s voice could cut glass.

“What about the cameras?” asks Doaks. “You think of that, or are we gonna be lucky enough to have your felony on tape?”

“No,” she says. “I disabled the camera.”

“How?” asks Doaks.

“I put my jacket over it.”

“Like the killer done on the day of the murder?” snaps Doaks.

“That’s enough,” says Sevillas.

Danielle takes the test tube from Sevillas and wraps it in its
frozen nest. She hands it back to Sevillas with shaking hands. She knows she has betrayed his trust, but she also knows she is right. “I know you’re upset with me, Tony, but you have to admit one thing. At least now we have a murder suspect.”

Sevillas looks at her, his eyes filled with sadness. “I don’t think you understand, Danielle. They’ve had one all along.”

Danielle sits on the floor of the small, impersonal apartment Sevillas has rented for her. She wears her old gray sweat suit, and her feet are bare. Strewn around her are reams of paper from which she has culled three orderly stacks. She glances at her watch. It is 8:00 a.m. She rubs her eyes and sighs. She has worked all night.

When she left Sevillas’s office yesterday, she took the accordion file of Jonas’s records, an enormous stack of documents Maitland produced yesterday in response to Sevillas’s subpoena, and the contents of the black box. She has pursued her quest for evidence to exonerate Max, but has ignored all documents relating to him. They lie in a heap underneath the cheap, laminated coffee table. Throughout the night, however, waves of doubt have plagued her. Without warning, they would grip her and rivet her bleary eyes to the pile of papers. Her heart tells her this morning that she is simply afraid to read them—afraid of what they might tell her that is worse than what she already knows.

So far the other documents have turned up nothing. Danielle stands and stretches. She should get some sleep. She has one more stack—a supplemental response by Maitland that Sevillas received just before she left his office yesterday. She walks over to the cheap Formica counter and pulls the even cheaper coffee pot from its coiled burner. As she pours herself a bitter cup, she tries not to think about Sevillas’s last
comments. He was adamant about one thing: that he and Doaks were going to continue to prepare for the hearing—which as of this morning is three days away—and she is to stay in her apartment. In other words, she is to let them do their job—and not commit any other felonies. She prays that when Max’s blood and the pills are analyzed, they will confirm her claim that Max’s behavior—whatever it was—had been beyond his control. Although Doaks told her it would take at least a week to get the results—particularly if the medication was experimental—she has little else to hang her hat on. She lifts the cup to her lips. It tastes like tar.

She picks up the last stack of documents provided by the State, which Sevillas has copied for her, and walks over to the small sofa that is covered in some kind of florid Navajo print. Her black reading glasses are perched on her nose. Slowly but surely she makes her way through the stack. A line in one of the application forms catches her eye. There it is again, the note about Jonas’s referring doctor in Chicago. She flags it and reads Jonas’s application to Maitland more closely. This one lists his place of residence as Reading, Pennsylvania. Danielle is almost positive that Marianne told her she had moved back to Texas before coming to Maitland. Even if that were not the case, why would Marianne live in Pennsylvania and have a referring physician for Jonas in Chicago?

The insignificance of the discrepancy reminds her that she has found nothing to disprove the overwhelming evidence that continues to stack up against Max. She studies the paper. Dr. Boris Jojanovich is probably some specialist Marianne took Jonas to. Maybe he can shed some light on whether or not Jonas was suicidal. The medical examiner did say that the angle of the wounds was such that they could have been caused by Jonas—even though it is an extremely remote possibility. If she can find some factual basis for this,
perhaps it will counterbalance the preponderance of evidence against Max.

Her earlier excitement about Fastow as a primary murder suspect has waned. As it stands, it doesn’t matter that when Max’s blood is analyzed it will show that Fastow’s strange blue capsules are in his system. Or that an outside expert might conclude that the meds have caused Max to have psychotic episodes. Even if Tony is satisfied with that defense, she is not. All it would prove is that Max had a
reason
for killing Jonas, not that he
didn’t
kill him. It meant that Max will still be locked up somewhere for an untold period of time—in another kind of prison. But what if he is truly psychotic and the meds had nothing to do with it?
No.
She can’t think about that. She grasps Jonas’s application form tighter. It may be all she has.

She sighs, picks up her cell phone and calls Doaks. “Fuck off, whoever you are,” growls the sleepy, familiar voice.

“It’s me, Danielle. I’ve found something you need to check out.” She explains about Jojanovich and gives him the doctor’s Chicago address.

“Forget it,” he mutters. “I’m up to my elbows in alligators.”

“But it’s important.”

His voice softens. “Come on, Ms. P., we’re already trying to pull a zebra out of a Pekinese’s ass. Don’t be makin’ any more waves right now.”

“John, please, do it for me.”

He sighs. “Baby, I would if I could. There just ain’t time to check it out before the hearing.”

“I know,” she says sadly. “I just want to…”

“Do anything you can to help your kid,” he says softly. “Just sit tight. You gotta trust us on this one.”

She feels tears well up. “I’ll try.”

“Hang in there, kid,” he says. “I’ll call you if somethin’ new kicks up.”

She mumbles a few words and rings off. Frustrated, she paces the room. Now all she can think about is Max and whether or not he is all right. How
could
he be, given the last time she saw him, pale and practically unconscious? She hasn’t been allowed another phone call and she hasn’t heard from him, despite her text messages to him. They must be watching him very closely. It’s as if all of the air to her lungs has been cut off.

She will keep her promise to get him out of there. She has to follow every lead, no matter how improbable. She flips open her cell and calls Jojanovich’s office. Given the early hour, she leaves her name and number on the answering machine with the message that she is a new patient who urgently needs to see Dr. Jojanovich.

Exhausted, she goes into the bathroom, takes off her clothes, and turns on the shower. Maybe this will relax her enough so she can get some sleep. As the hot water pounds on the back of her neck and the steam rises around her, she hears the brassy ring of her cell phone in the other room. She wraps a towel around her and rushes to the phone. She flips it open and punches the talk button again, but the call is gone.
“Damn.”
Hair dripping, she waits until the icon appears on the tiny screen and goes through the machinations required to retrieve the message. She listens to it. Her mouth drops. She listens to it again. The tinny voice confirms that there has been a cancellation, and if she is available, Dr. Jojanovich will work her in sometime tomorrow.

Danielle snaps the phone shut and paces around the room. Her bare feet are soundless on the carpet, but the noise in her mind is deafening. What should she do? She can’t call Sevillas. He will absolutely forbid her to go. Again. She looks at the
ugly gray box on her ankle that holds her prisoner. She is no different than a lab rat with a microchip planted in its brain. She paces back and forth, her heart beating wildly. She has to do something.

She stops dead in her tracks. It could work. She flings the cell phone down on the sofa, races into the bedroom and yanks her laptop out of her briefcase. She sets it up on the coffee table and plops down on the floor, legs crossed. She scrolls through a list and highlights an icon in the appropriate directory. There it is: the
Reynolds
case file. She clicks it open and selects a document. The plaintiff, Sheila Reynolds, sued Danielle’s client, Langston Manufacturing, Inc., for eight million dollars for design flaws involving a prosthetic device that malfunctioned when she fell down a flight of concrete stairs in her office building. She sustained serious brain injuries as a result of her fall, and the family had brought suit on her behalf.

“Come on, come on,” mutters Danielle. She is searching for the affidavit of the partner of Langston Manufacturing, the small company that supplied component parts to Langston. She hits pay dirt.
Prosthetics, Inc.
“How original,” she mutters.

The Plano telephone directory is about one-inch thick. She sits on the sofa and rifles through the negligible Yellow Pages section. She finds a likely candidate under Medical Supplies, a store about two blocks away from her. She checks her watch again. It’s nine o’clock. Maybe they’re open. She makes the call. They’re open, all right. After a few seconds she flips the phone shut and sits back. Her heart is pounding.

She goes into the kitchen and takes her purse off the counter. Inside her wallet is the card she was given on the day she was released from jail. She squints at the number on the bottom of the card and punches it into her phone.

“Plano Sheriff’s office,” says a nasal female voice.

“Yes,” she says. “My name is Danielle Parkman, and I’d like to speak to someone about my ankle bracelet.”

“Identification number?”

“Excuse me?”

Her voice is weary. “Should be a seven-digit number on the back of your bond card.”

Danielle searches the card, front and back. “There’s nothing there.”

“That can’t be right,” she says. “You sure?”

Danielle looks again. A thought strikes her. “Oh, wait. Mine is one of the new kind.”

“One of them experimental jobs?”

“Right,” she says, “and I’m having a problem. I’m sitting in my apartment, but the anklet beeps nonstop.”

“Oh, hell, it’s always something around here,” she says. “Hold on a minute!” Danielle hears the receiver clatter down on the desk. “Otis?” Her voice is shrill enough to make Danielle hold the receiver slightly away from her ear. “You got to go fix one of those newfangled bracelets. Nobody else is here yet.” There is a pause. “Okay, okay. I’ll find out.” Danielle hears another clatter, and then the woman is back on the line. “Otis—Officer Reever—says he’ll be on over to bring you a new one this morning. You going to be there, or you want to come down here?”

Danielle’s answer is quick and firm. “I’ll be here. My address is—”

“It’s 4578 Lilac Lane, Apartment 4S. Over by the new mall, right?”

“Yes, that’s it,” says Danielle. “Do you know when he might be here?”

“Saw him grab his keys off the hook, so I’d guess he’s about to go have breakfast down at Ernie’s. Knowing that crowd,
I’d say he should be rolling into your place in about an hour and a half.”

“Perfect.”

“You have yourself a nice day, now,” says the woman.

“Oh, I plan to,” says Danielle.

After a lot of huffing and puffing, Officer Reever squats in front of her. His face is so red, she is afraid that myocardial infarction is but a labored breath away. She raises her foot with the anklet on it a bit higher so he won’t have to bend over so far. He nods his thanks as he takes an unusual tool with a jagged blade from a plastic case and slices off the polyurethane band. “Now,” he says, “I’ve already deactivated the doohickey on the box. Normally that’d raise six shades of hell down at the station, but Lily knows I’m over here replacing your anklet, so it’s okay.”

Danielle nods as she leans down to rub her freed ankle, which peeps out from under her slacks. It is enclosed in a thick cotton sock. “I wonder if it would be all right if you put the new one on my other ankle?”

Officer Reever grunts. “Yeah, I know them things wear on you a little.”

Danielle raises her other foot. “Do you think you could put it on over my sock?”

He looks up at her, his wide expanse of belly between them. “No, ma’am. We’re supposed to put it on right next to the skin, you know, so you can’t take it off. I can give you about an inch and a half wiggle room, though. That ought to be a little more comfortable for you.”

“Thank you, Officer,” she says. “I’m always so cold that I wear socks every day, no matter how hot it gets outside.”

He pushes down the sock on the other leg so that it pools at the top of her foot. After first approximating the amount
of space he plans to leave between her leg and the device with his short, stubby thumb, he attaches the new ankle bracelet. When he finishes, he sits back on his heels and begins the grunting and puffing that finally elevates him to a standing position. He slaps his belly. “Well, ma’am, that should do it.”

She lowers her pant leg and escorts him to the door. “Thank you again, Officer. You’ve been very helpful.”

He tips his hat. “You be good, now. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”

She smiles at him. “Of course not, Officer. You’ve taken care of that.”

After he leaves, Danielle walks swiftly into her bedroom.

She pulls a slender cardboard box from under the bed. The white label marked
Prosthetics, Inc.
is torn where she ripped into the box this morning. She pulls off her shoes, pants and thick cotton socks. Her left leg, the one sporting the new ankle bracelet, looks markedly different from her right. She reaches down and slips off the anklet as easily as taking a halter from a horse’s head. She hangs it on the hook on the back of the bedroom door. She then rips open the Velcro tabs that join behind her knee and slips off the lifelike covering, pulling away the special foam layer that clings to her leg. She throws everything into the cardboard box. She sees the insert that describes her purchases.

“How right you are,” Danielle murmurs. She smiles as she recalls the quizzical look the saleswoman at the supply store gave her when she told her she only wanted to buy the prosthetic covering, not the prosthesis itself. She shoves the box back under the bed, puts on her pants and shoes, and goes to the hall closet. Inside are her packed bag, purse, laptop, papers, cell phone and her freshly printed, computerized plane ticket.

At best, she may find exactly what she needs to raise reasonable doubt in the jurors’ minds: that Jonas was self-inflictive and suicidal before he went to Maitland. She can also find out why Dr. Jojanovich referred Jonas to Maitland—and why Marianne chose Jojanovich in Chicago if she lived in Pennsylvania. He may be aware of other psychiatrists who will be able to support her theory. At worst, she will be back tonight in time for the hearing tomorrow, with no one the wiser. Her cell phone will not reveal her whereabouts should Sevillas or Doaks try to call her, and if they want to see her, she can plead illness. She makes a quick call to Georgia and begs her to fly down from New York that evening. Georgia tries to make Danielle explain why she needs to come and what is so urgent, but Danielle puts her off, telling her that she can’t explain now, and that Georgia just has to trust her that her presence is crucial. Apparently the desperation in Danielle’s voice convinces Georgia. She agrees to catch the next flight.