“You could have had her committed,” Wade said.
“She seemed perfectly lucid at the time.”
“Like she is now,” Wade said and gestured to her. Jane was playing a make?believe violin and humming to herself.
“She wasn’t a danger to herself or to others,” Eddington said.
But she was to the hospital’s bottom line.
Community General had barely avoided bankruptcy once already, so Wade was sure that the employees were under enormous pressure to cut costs. The staff knew that they would never be reimbursed for the medical care she’d been given or the bed that she’d occupied. They didn’t want to risk the potential of any further costly involvement with her that might arise from committing her to a mental institution. And since no one seemed to care about her anyway, there was a simple, low?cost solution to their problem.
“So you called her a cab,” Wade said.
“I even paid for it out of my own pocket,” Eddington said. “As a courtesy.”
“Aren’t you sweet,” Charlotte said.
Eddington shot her a nasty look.
“Where did you tell the cab to take her?” Wade asked.
“I didn’t,” Eddington said. “I gave the cab driver thirty dollars and figured that would take her wherever she wanted to go in King City. You’d have to ask her where she told him to go.”
Eddington turned to walk away. Charlotte stepped in front of him, blocking his path. “Where do you think you’re going?”
“Back to work,” Eddington said. “I’ve got patients.”
“And she’s one of them,” Charlotte said, pointing at Jane. “She’s suffering from some kind of dementia.”
Eddington snorted. “So now you people are doctors as well as police officers?”
Charlotte got right in his face, their noses practically touching. “If you call us ‘you people’ again, you’re going to need a fucking doctor.”
Wade bit back a smile.
“We are a hospital, Officer,” Eddington said tightly, taking two steps back from her. “We are not an Alzheimer’s treatment facility or an old?folks home.”
“The law requires you to make arrangements for post?release care before discharging any patients,” Charlotte said. “We didn’t find any medications or paperwork on her.”
“Obviously, she lost them,” Eddington said.
“Here’s what I think,” Wade said. “You stuffed a senile old woman wearing nothing but a hospital gown into a cab and told the driver to dump her in Darwin Gardens instead of back in Riverfront Park so she’d be Blake Memorial’s problem if anything else happened to her. You didn’t want to incur any more costs. The mistake you made was forgetting to snip off her wristband.”
Eddington shot an involuntary glance at the nurse, who immediately looked away. She was in for some hell once Wade left. The doctor focused his attention back on Wade.
“She wasn’t ill, she asked to leave, and we discharged her,” Eddington said. “What you think is irrelevant.”
“She was staggering through the streets, incoherent and disoriented, and was nearly run over, which makes her a danger to herself and to others. So you’re going to take care of her.” Wade stepped close to Eddington and lowered his voice to a whisper that only the doctor could hear. “And if you abandon her in Darwin Gardens again, I’ll pick you up, put your naked ass in a hospital gown, and leave you there too.”
Wade turned and walked out. Charlotte followed. They got into the squad car and they sat there for a moment in silence, Wade in the driver’s seat, thinking things through.
Darwin Gardens had become the city’s dumping ground for unwanted souls-whether they were homeless, criminal, delusional, or in his case, disgraced.
Wade knew it was why he was there, and Charlotte was smart enough to know that’s why she was too. There was no place for a smart, liberal, African?American woman in Chief Reardon’s department. Billy was probably the only one who didn’t know why he was there.
It gave Wade and Charlotte, and even Billy, a kinship with the people in Darwin Gardens. They were all discards.
“My mom is a lawyer,” Charlotte said. “I’ll ask her to look out for that old lady.”
“She’d do that?”
“She would for me,” Charlotte said.
“You can’t make it personal every time you meet someone who needs help,” Wade said.
“It’s just this once,” she said.
“It’s your second day,” Wade said. “You’re going to see more and you’re going to see worse.”
“Aren’t you optimistic,” she said.
“I’m just saying that it’s possible to care too much in this job.”
“It’s better than not caring enough,” she said, glancing back at the emergency room.
On the way back to Darwin Gardens, they stopped at a hardware store so Wade could buy some motion?activated outdoor floodlights.
While he was inside, Charlotte called her mom, who agreed to represent Jane Doe, and she talked to her father, the shrink, who offered to do a psychiatric evaluation of the old woman and have her committed to a mental hospital for treatment if it was necessary.
Charlotte told him all of that once he returned to the car. How convenient, Wade thought. One?stop service for the needy, the homeless, and the senile. He wondered how many times she’d make that call in the next few weeks and when her parents would finally stop answering the phone.
She motioned to the outdoor lighting that he’d bought.
“What’s all that for?” she asked.
“Mrs. Copeland,” he said, and then told her about arresting Terrill in the alley. “I’m going to swap her the bullhorn for the lights and install them over the alley. It will keep the junkies away.”
“Aren’t you the same man who just told me not to make it personal every time I meet someone who needs help?”
“It’s only a couple of lights.”
“You’re right. It’s nothing,” she said. “It’s not like you’re moving into her neighborhood.”
They drove back to the station in silence, Charlotte smiling to herself. She knew she’d won that round and that Wade knew it too.
Chapter seventeen
Wade could see that something was wrong before they reached the curb in front of the station. The sidewalk was sparkling, the glow of the streetlight reflecting off thousands of glass shards.
He got out of the car and looked around. The Pancake Galaxy was closed, the lights off. There wasn’t a single person on the streets.
He walked up to the station, the glass crunching under his feet, and surveyed the damage.
The front windows were shattered, except for a few large, jagged panes either still clinging to the frame or caught between the wrought iron bars.
The counter had taken the brunt of the assault, shielding the computers on the desks and other equipment from damage. But there were bullet holes everywhere.
Charlotte stepped up beside him, her hand on her holstered gun, ready to defend herself.
Without a word, he unlocked the front door and went straight for the gun locker, opened it up, and removed a shotgun. He returned to Charlotte, handed her the weapon, and locked up the station again.
“What are we going to do?” she asked.
“What has to be done,” he said wearily.
Wade drove straight to Headlights in silence and parked out front. There were half a dozen cars in the parking lot and nobody on the street. He kept the motor running.
“Get behind the car and cover me.” He grabbed the shotgun and got out. She got out too.
“Whatever you’re about to do, I’m sure we shouldn’t be doing it,” she said as they passed each other in front of the car.
“It’s the only thing we can do,” Wade said. “Are you ready?”
“For what?”
“To back me up if people come out shooting,” he said.
She took her position behind the car, drew her weapon, and nodded. But he could see that she was frightened. It was one thing to draw your gun on a shooting range at paper targets, another on the street against real people.