The Nitrogen Murder (24 page)

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Authors: Camille Minichino

Tags: #California, #Lamerino; Gloria (Fictitious Character), #Missing Persons, #Security Classification (Government Documents), #Weddings, #Women Physicists, #Fiction, #Mystery & Detective, #General, #Women Sleuths, #Reference

BOOK: The Nitrogen Murder
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I suspected we all also felt an undercurrent of fear.
Because it might not be Phil, but a murderer waiting for Elaine? Because it
was
Phil, and he was a murderer? No one offered a conjecture.
I pushed the numbers for Patel’s phone. “We’re on our way,” I said to his answering machine—again, without a clear reason for what seemed like a warning to Elaine. I felt like the leader of a posse. The effect of being out west, I figured.
I navigated as Dana took a left from Claremont Avenue and eventually a right onto Woodland.
And into an emergency situation.
A sliver of sunlight made it through the morning fog and bounced off a bright red fire truck, a stark white ambulance, and the spinning blue lights of a police car, giving the scene a patriotic look. The emergency fleet took up most of the cul-de-sac in front of Patel’s house.
Dana gasped and slammed on her brakes, throwing us all forward, as if our bodies were mimicking our minds: stunned, doing double takes, straining to look more closely and understand what was happening.
I didn’t breathe again until I saw Elaine, in her familiar Burberry windbreaker, standing by a police car.
 
I stayed to the side, a few yards away, in the small, albeit slowly accumulating, crowd in the cul-de-sac. Mostly women in jeans and T-shirts, I noticed. I wondered if I was in the land of stay-at-home wives and mothers, though I didn’t see any children.
We’d arrived in time to see two paramedics push a gurney into the ambulance and lock it down. Matt joined the Berkeley police officers who were questioning Elaine, and so far they were letting him hang around. Dana talked to a uniformed young man she seemed to know. I didn’t see Inspector Russell in the contingent of two uniforms and two suits, and I couldn’t hear anything of the conversations. I was determined to keep out of the way and satisfied myself with the thought that I’d be briefed shortly.
After a few minutes, Dana climbed into the back of the ambulance, whether as the victim’s nearest relative—I assumed it was Phil’s feet I’d seen on their way into the bus—or as visiting EMT, I didn’t know. I caught Elaine’s pained expression as the imposing vehicle pulled away, sirens blaring.
I wanted to wave to Elaine, to make sure she knew her closest supporter was handy, but I held still, feeling helpless.
 
 
We convinced Elaine to leave her car in the cul-de-sac and ride with Matt and me in Dana’s Jeep. We seemed to have spent a lot of time figuring out car logistics on this trip.
“It was just routine out there, Gloria,” Matt said from the driver’s seat. Meaning,
You didn’t miss anything.
“They want us all down at the station in the next day or two.”
“The paramedics wouldn’t tell me a thing,” Elaine said, “except that it seemed to be a gunshot wound and that Phil’s alive.” She took a long breath. “I told the police about Howard Christopher. And I heard Dana talking to her cop friend about Julia and her scam. Phil had those invoices, and maybe Julia knew he was on to her. I’ll bet the police are sorry they didn’t listen to us before.”
We were all sorry for one thing or another, I thought. My biggest regret was that I might have led the shooter to Phil.
At some point I’d have to face that.
W
e sat in the stark waiting room of the trauma center where Lokesh Patel and Tanisha Hall had died.
And countless others,
I thought. I had an urge to ask the young Asian nurse at the desk if anyone left here alive. My heart went out to Elaine. An image came to me of Al Gravese, my own fiancé who died, and I tried to brush away the connection. Phil was still alive, I reminded myself. There could still be a wedding.
“I
had
to go over to that house, you know,” Elaine told us. “I couldn’t stand it another minute. I needed to know, was he in danger? Was he just having a crisis of faith in our marriage? Was he …?”
“It’s okay, Elaine,” we all said in different ways, from our multicolored plastic chairs. Dana was slumped in an orange one, her arms across her chest.
Elaine stared at the wall, at a landscape that even I knew was not fine art. “I got there and the front door was open. And I heard moaning from the living room or library, whatever it was. Phil was on the floor.”
I pictured the area I’d peeked in on from the side yard, with the bookcase full of matched sets. I tried to imagine what I would have done if I’d seen someone sprawled on the carpet of the elegantly furnished room.
Elaine choked back tears. “He was bleeding from his side,” she said, patting her own. She was in a dark green sweatsuit I’d
never seen, with rubber-soled shoes that also looked strange to me. Apparently Elaine had a whole separate wardrobe for slipping out of her house undetected.
Matt handed her a second bottle of water from the six-pack he’d picked up somewhere. I thought he might remember this vacation as one where his main function was driving strange cars and providing water and comfort to frazzled females.
Elaine took a long swallow and continued. “I panicked. I tried to talk to him, to find out who did that to him, but he didn’t answer. I guess he was unconscious. I didn’t know what to do to help him, so I just ran to the phone on a little table and called 911. Maybe I should have done something else. I had no idea how to stop the bleeding. I was so afraid if I touched him I’d make it worse, so I just threw a throw on him—” Here she was able to giggle at the idiosyncrasies of our language and help us all relax a bit.
“You did just the right thing, Elaine. You probably saved his life,” Dana said. Coming from an EMT and a doctor-to-be, the assurance had to make Elaine feel better.
The tables have turned,
I thought, with Dana comforting Elaine instead of vice versa.
I resolved to take a first aid course at the earliest possible opportunity.
 
We nearly force-fed Elaine cheese and crackers from the cafeteria. She’d taken aspirin, too, and declared that she was fine. I had the feeling this situation, with Phil in an intensive care unit, was only marginally better for her than not knowing where Phil was.
Dr. Brandon, the physician in charge of Phil at the moment, approached us. He was gray-haired and soft-spoken, and older than anyone I’d seen in a medical capacity lately. I had a flashback to the bouncing blond ponytail of Trish, Matt’s oncologist in Boston. Youthful energy aside, I preferred at least the appearance of wisdom and experience.
“He’s sedated,” Dr. Brandon said, taking Elaine’s hand. “He lost a lot of blood, but he’s stable now. I can’t tell you when
you’ll be able to talk to him. Your best bet is to go home and stay by the phone. But I’m sure you won’t want to do that.” He gave her a kindly smile. “So I’ll simply tell you the cafeteria is at the end of that hall, and there are more comfortable chairs in a lounge downstairs.”
“He’s so nice,” Elaine said. “He’s in good hands.” A little slip of pronouns, but Elaine’s grammar was not in the best shape this week, and we all knew what she meant.
Would I forget Newton’s Laws under similar stress? I hoped I’d never have to find out.
 
Matt and I left Dana and Elaine at the trauma center, with a plan for staggering the waiting room watch. We hoped to convince Elaine to go home for a nap, but we knew it wouldn’t happen too soon.
Once buckled into Dana’s Jeep, I let loose with the tears I’d been holding back. Matt knew immediately what was wrong.
“It wasn’t your fault,” he said.
“I led the killer to that house. Someone followed me to Patel’s, knowing it was a good bet that I was also looking for Phil.” I shivered at the realization that I’d put more people than myself in danger. I was over blaming my mother, Josephine Lamerino, for all my faults, tempting as it was. I let Josephine off the hook. “I’m responsible, Matt. And don’t give me that line about how it was the shooter who hurt Phil, not me.”
Matt was silent. Suddenly I wanted that comforting line. “Well?” I asked.
“Okay, you might have led the shooter to Phil. Or he may have found Phil himself. Or Phil may have called him, not knowing he was a shooter. Or a hundred other scenarios. But you’re right, one of them might be that you were followed.”
“Twice,” I said. “I went there twice. Just in case once wasn’t enough.”
 
 
By two o’clock in the afternoon Matt and I were back at our newsprint pad and charts. We had another event, Phil’s shooting, to account for in our scheme, but not any additional data.
“How does it feel to be working without access to police files or reports?” I asked him.
“You mean, do I like being reduced to a kitchen bulletin board?” He put his arms around me. “It’s useful to see how the other half lives,” he said.
Too bad we didn’t have the luxury of taking the rest of the day off.
I had many questions and directed them at Matt, my closest law enforcement officer. How soon would the police check the bullet from Phil’s side to see if it matched the one taken from either Patel or Tanisha? (Ballistics was on it, he was sure.) Was it time now to tell the Berkeley PD all the loose ends we’d been working with? (Yes, we were on our way, with full cooperation on both sides, he thought, once we talked to Phil.) What if the PD had the complementary evidence and could pull the whole solution together? (They probably did, and all this would be resolved in time for a glorious wedding.)
A phone call from Rose took me away from more theorizing, but I knew I’d put her off long enough.
“Your grandson’s a genius, Rose,” I said. My way of making up for my recent neglect of her.
“You can skip the schmoozing,” she said.
I laughed. “As long as you know I tried.”
“I’m waiting.” I pictured Rose, my diminutive lifelong friend, hands on her hips if she didn’t have to hold a phone, pouting slightly, frustrated that she was out of the loop on what had gone on since I left her neighborhood.
I summarized our week, with all the background stories. It drained me to talk about the events that took the lives of two
people, and to have to tell Rose that we still didn’t know what the prognosis was for Phil.
“Poor Elaine,” Rose said. “I can’t imagine. You weren’t kidding when you listed those disasters the other day.”
“No.”
In fact, I played them all down,
I thought.
I heard a long whistlelike sound, then maybe the longest silence in Rose’s telephone history.
“What’s new with you?” I asked.
Her laugh seemed to let out a breath she’d been holding in. “Well, nothing like you’re going through. But there was a break-in here. I didn’t want to tell you, once I realized
something
was going on with you, though you took your sweet time telling me. Not that I guessed it would be
that
big.” Another long whistle.
“There was an intrusion at the mortuary? Was MC at home?” I felt protective of my old apartment, and even more of Rose’s only daughter, my godchild.
“MC was there; it was the middle of the night. But they never got upstairs. And the best news is we caught them. Well, the RPD caught them. Even without Matt.” A teasing laugh. “So it’s over for now.”
I felt completely out of touch with Revere. I didn’t remember ever feeling so disconnected from Rose’s daily life, even in the thirty years we lived a whole country apart. “I’m not getting it, Rose,” I confessed. “What’s over?”
“The mortuary chain, Bodner and Polk. You do remember that part? That they were trying to put all us independents out of business?”
“I remember.”
Barely
.
“I faxed you the police report about the exploding hearse at O’Neal’s. Do you remember that?”
“I remember.”
Barely
. I was flunking my Galigani quiz.
“Well, you don’t have to worry anymore. Ever since all this started—the switched clothes and all?—we beefed up security at
our place. George Berger—you do remember Matt’s partner?” A laugh here, as sarcastic as Rose ever got. “He recommended this excellent service. I think they’re ex-wrestlers or boxers. Big, big guys. So when the goons broke in through the basement window, our guys were waiting. It was beautiful. It took about five minutes for the gorillas to give up their bosses. You guessed it. Bodner and Polk.” A pause, and then, “
Done.”
I pictured Rose brushing her palms against each other, as if she herself had taken on and cleaned up a messy situation, though I doubted either Frank or Robert would have let her anywhere near the “gorillas.”
“Rose, I’m sorry I didn’t get to—”
“Don’t give it another thought, Gloria. Now that I see what you’ve had to go through, I’m sorry I bothered you in the first place. I’ll bet you’ll be glad to get home.”
“Indeed I will.”
“I mean, you have just as much excitement here, right? And Matt probably misses being near his sister. And then there are those earthquakes you have to worry about.”
Matt’s sister, Jean, lived on Cape Cod, not exactly “near” her brother, by East Coast standards. Finally I realized what Rose was thinking. Each time I went to California for a visit, she worried that I’d stay there. Not paranoid on her part, since I did have a history of impulsive cross-country moves.
As for earthquakes, that was another matter. The worst one I’d been in had sent me under the conference table with my boss at the time, while books from the shelves on the wall tumbled over us. No harm to people that day, but the quake, a 5.3, left the physical plant a mess, and we all went home early.
I couldn’t keep my friend on the hook any longer.
“Rose, I’ll be
home
soon.”
“I know, I know. Just checking.”
It seemed a long time before I’d be packing, however. The
week ahead loomed in front of me, shadowy and unpredictable. I tried to imagine a wedding at the end of it.
The picture was very fuzzy.
 
Matt and I pulled up in front of Patel’s house for the sole purpose of reclaiming Elaine’s car, partly buried under the same trees I’d used for cover the day before.
I got out of Dana’s Jeep and started toward the Saab, which I was to drive home. I paused at the front driveway and glanced at the door, a few yards away. The graceful branches of large old trees couldn’t minimize the effect of stark black-and-yellow crime scene tape.
I stood there and looked back at Matt. He got out of the Jeep and walked up to me. He put his arm around my shoulder and led me toward the Saab.
“Don’t even think about it,” he said.
Obedient as an electron in a magnetic field, following a predetermined path, I got into the Saab and buckled up.
I had no intention of breaking through police tape.
It was much too bright out.

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