“Her first case for All Souls-a missing person investigation-was a bust. She just couldn’t find the guy. Then years later, on the day we moved to the pier, she was going through some boxes of her old papers, and found this last open file. So she read it, noticed something she hadn’t before, found the guy, and closed the case.”
“She never gives up, does she?”
“No. You shouldn’t either.”
“How’d you know I was thinking of giving up?”
Ted leaned toward her and patted her cheek. “Because, my dear, I am the Grand Poobah.”
Julia went back to her office and started plowing through the Dietz file again. She was halfway through when her phone rang.
“Ms. Rafael, this is Gloria Wickens. You called me earlier about Haven Dietz.”
Gloria Wickens-she’d held a higher position than Dietz’s at the financial management firm. “Yes. I’m reinterviewing people I spoke with earlier-”
“Well, I’m glad you called. I didn’t want to bring this up when I talked with you the last time because I didn’t think it was fair to Haven. But I saw in the paper that she was killed, and that makes a difference.”
Julia sat up straighter, reached for a pencil and legal pad. “Go on, please.”
“The audit of our firm’s accounts the year Haven was attacked turned up a shortfall of a hundred thousand dollars. This was ten months after she left the firm.”
It was the critical piece of information that might put everything together. “Did they suspect her?”
“I never heard anything to that effect. Another woman, Delia Piper, was under investigation, but eventually exonerated.”
“Is Ms. Piper still with the firm?”
“No. She quit, and I heard she moved to Hawaii.”
“And nobody ever questioned Ms. Dietz?”
“Why would they? She’d been gone a long time and besides, she was a trust-fund baby. A hundred thousand dollars must’ve been insignificant to her.”
Julia questioned the woman more, but received little additional information. After she ended the call, she thought about her conversations with Dietz: how her parents couldn’t help her after the attack because they were sailing across the Pacific in their “damn yacht.”
Okay, she’d do an in-depth check on the elder Dietzes.
It showed the yacht had gone down in a storm near Fiji with both of them aboard a year before their daughter was attacked; their estate had barely paid final bills and back taxes.
The things people say that you take at face value.
The things you overlook.
Haven Dietz: rich girl who all of a sudden wasn’t going to inherit a cent. Had a good job, but wanted more.
So what else, Julia wondered, had she overlooked?
MICK SAVAGE
Mick ran into Hy in the lobby of the Brandt Institute; Hy was in a hurry because he needed to take Mick’s grandma to the airport, but he paused long enough to tell Mick about the staff meeting to be held in Shar’s room the next morning.
“How is Grandma?”
“She carried on again this morning, and Saskia offered to accompany her back to San Diego,” Hy said. “It’s for the best. These histrionics…” He shrugged.
“What about Elwood?”
“He comes and goes. I don’t even know where he’s staying.”
“Well, he’s here for Shar.”
“Everybody’s here for her.” Hy paused. “She’s not good today.”
A prickle of alarm at the base of Mick’s spine. “How so?”
“Not responding much. Sleeping, and there’s a lot of rapid eye movement. This has happened a couple of times before, and she’s always rallied. I’ve alerted her nurse. See what you think.”
Hy left and Mick went to see his aunt.
She lay on her side facing the window. When he came around the bed, he saw that her eyes were dull and unfocused, her face pale and her breathing ragged.
“Shar?”
No eyeblink.
“Shar!”
No response. He ran out to the nurses’ station. Melissa, the night nurse, took one look at his face and together they rushed back to the room.
“She’s not responding, but her eyes are open,” he said.
Melissa moved swiftly to the side of the bed, looked at Shar, and grabbed the wall phone. She spoke urgently to the operator. “Get the Code Team and Dr. Saxnay to Room Three. Stat!”
“What’s happening to her?” Mick asked.
“Please step outside.”
“But-”
“Please-go!”
Mick left the room but stayed in the corridor close to the door.
Dr. Saxnay, the attending physician who had taken a personal interest in Shar’s case and seemed to live at the institute, rushed past him, barely beating the Code Team through the door. Mick followed, stopped just inside. He could hardly breathe.
“Damn,” Saxnay muttered after one look at Shar. He grabbed a tube from the crash cart while the team stood by.
“Get the chopper!” he said to Melissa. “She’s going to SF General. Now!” Without waiting for a response, he tubed Shar, handed the tube over to one of the team to keep the oxygen moving. “And don’t forget to alert the on-call neurosurgeon over there.”
Saxnay spotted Mick. “You! Call her husband and have him meet us at the hospital.”
Mick was shaking as he stepped outside, but not far enough to be out of earshot. He pulled his cell phone off his belt.
Saxnay muttered, “Bullet must have dislodged, caused more bleeding. That clot’s probably growing by the minute, putting more and more pressure on her brain stem.”
“What do you think her chances are?” Melissa asked.
“Her best hope is surgery.” Saxnay watched the team transfer Shar to a stretcher, cinch her in for transport. “I was afraid it would come to this. Surgery’s going to be tricky, but it’s that or lose her.”
Lose her!
No! That wasn’t possible. They couldn’t be talking about Shar.
Flapping rotors and the whine of the helicopter’s engine. Feet pounding from a rear entrance. Men grabbed the stretcher, pushed past Mick as if he weren’t there.
He watched, numb, as they took his aunt away.
SHARON McCONE
What’s happening to me? God, my heart’s pounding like it wants to break through my breastbone.
Light. The light’s fading, disappearing.
My sight, the only thing I have left… going, gone!
My mind…
Where is everybody? Where am I?
No sense of space, place, time.
Alone, so alone.
Rising. Falling.
Dark.
Falling.
Oh, bright flash… pain… roar…
Metal grazing my fingertips.
I see it!
No, I can’t. My sight’s gone. I’m all alone in the dark.
Falling.
The dark.
Falling, falling…
Help! Don’t let me die!
HY RIPINSKY
He sat in the waiting room at SF General, surrounded by distraught and anxious strangers, but as alone as if he were on a deserted island. He hadn’t called anyone; he couldn’t have stood the sympathy and the too-early condolences.
A door opened, a tall dark-haired man in scrubs strode in.
“Mr. Ripinsky, I’m Ben Travers. I’ll be your wife’s surgeon.”
“What’re her chances?”
“I don’t play the odds with people’s lives.”
“Meaning not good.”
“Meaning we don’t know.”
“What happened? She wasn’t good when I left her today, but she hasn’t been good a lot of days.”