That made him pause. “What good will that do?”
“She’ll hear you. I’m certain of it. Talk to her and help bring her back.”
As he hurriedly returned to ICU he thought, sometimes even bossy people who treated him like an intern could give good advice.
Ten days later, Tuesday,
December 4, 10:00 A.M.
Seminar Room, Fifteen East,
New York City Hospital
Mark glanced at the faces of everyone in the room from where he sat at the head of the long table. Nearly all the people whom he’d invited had arrived.
But he quickly turned his attention back to Lucy, who sat at his side. She’d been given permission to get out of bed for the proceedings, though still in a hospital gown and tethered to an IV pole. “Just in case,” her doctors had said in the ominous shorthand physicians use with each other.
“Don’t look so glum, Mark,” she told him. “You and I both know the score. I’m fine.”
Yes. He knew the score. She had already beaten incredibly long odds. She’d been in a coma for three days. From what she remembered before going in the water, Mark estimated her submersion time had been ten minutes. When Dan and the air ambulance arrived, he had been in the well giving her mouth-to-mouth ten minutes more, though at the time it felt much longer. Even now her myocardium could overreact to the electrical impulses of its own conduction system and fly into overdrive. PAT, atrial fibrillation, ventricular tachycardia – everything Earl had had to watch out for – could now be hers, including the possibility of cardiac arrest.
“I’ve made it over the hard part, right?” she cheerfully insisted, reaching over and patting his hand as if he were the patient.
“Absolutely,” he said, forcing himself to give a delighted smile. Still, her condition worried him.
Earl himself, a few seats away, looked gaunt, his cheeks and eyes sunken from the ordeal of his infection. Cleared to go home later today, he’d be leaving fifteen pounds lighter, but with kidneys, pancreas, and brain intact. Janet leaned close to him, her hand resting protectively on his arm. A suitcase stood at the leg of his chair.
Opposite Janet, Dan Evans reclined comfortably, a slight smile on his face. It had been there for the last week and a half. He’d been the center of attention for every paper, news reporter, and talk show in Saratoga Springs, and one headline in the New York Herald read: Country sheriff and small-town coroner crack murder that stumped the NYPD for twenty-seven years. Mark had gladly let him make all the public appearances and deal with the media, Lucy being his sole concern.
A woman occupied the seat to Dan’s right. She had come forward in response to all the media coverage. In her late twenties, she wore a stylish gray business suit and had black hair drawn back into a single long braid. From time to time she’d laugh at something Dan said and touch his arm. Dan’s smile would widen, the way it usually did when someone appreciated one of his jokes. Mark had never met her before, but instantly recognized her voice when Dan introduced her.
Beside her sat Tanya Wozcek, dressed in jeans, opposite Dr. Roy, in whites as always.
Hunched over by himself a few places away, Detective William Everett, pasty-faced and sullen, played with a paper clip.
There were two no-shows – Walter and Samantha McShane.
Mark had expected as much since this wouldn’t be all about Samantha.
The one whose presence surprised everyone – Chaz Braden – occupied the far end of the table. Mark hadn’t faced the man since they’d hauled him off his father in the coffee shop. But he looked different somehow. The circles under his eyes sagged less heavily, but the change seemed more substantial than that. He possessed a steadiness in his gaze and a stillness in the way he sat that Mark didn’t remember seeing before.
Time to get under way. He snapped on the portable tape recorder he’d brought with him and placed it on the table. “Thank you for coming everyone. I remind you that what is discussed here must remain confidential, and it will be entered as part of my final report on the murder of Kelly McShane. I’ve already talked to you individually and gone over what each of you knows. I’ve also collaborated with my colleagues, Sheriff Dan Evans and Dr. Earl Garnet, to piece together the findings. What we ended up with is a story of murder and how trying to find out old secrets uncovered a trove of current ones. This meeting will give all of you a chance to correct any omissions or errors. I caution that for some, the testimony will be painful.”
He paused and glanced around at his audience, paying particular attention to Chaz. No signs of anger. So far so good. “Dr. Garnet will begin.”
Earl leaned forward, clasped his hands on the table, and looked around him with the easy assurance of a man used to addressing large groups.
“As most of you have seen in the media, I met with Kelly on the eve of her disappearance. While she had already confided in me her intent to end her marriage and drop out of sight, she kept the specifics of her plans private, other than mentioning she had some matters to take care of first. Such secrecy you may find strange, but she didn’t want me or any of her friends to search for her, in case we unwittingly gave away her hiding place.”
Prior to the meeting, Earl had indicated a willingness, albeit reluctantly, to explain his relationship to Kelly for the record, “So as to avoid any claims later that I’ve been less than forthright. Otherwise, some idiot’s liable to say I compromised the credibility of the whole inquiry by covering up my own role in what happened.”
“Don’t feel obliged to bring it up unless someone else does,” Mark had advised. “But anybody who can read a newspaper has already guessed the truth.”
Nevertheless, Earl paused, giving his audience every chance to question him, his gaze tactfully fixed on Janet, presumably to avoid the appearance of trying to stare down whoever might feel inclined to request that he tell all.
Janet gave him a smile of encouragement, as if whatever he had to say would be all right with her.
Chaz seemed to be holding his breath.
No takers.
“So despite her furtiveness, what do we know about Kelly’s actions on the last day of her life?” Earl continued. “Direct testimony gave us some leads, we deduced a great deal more from the evidence we gathered, and speculation will have to fill in the gaps.” He glanced toward Chaz. “One of those ‘matters’ she mentioned, we subsequently learned, involved a confrontation with her husband, Dr. Charles Braden IV, when she announced her intention to leave him. The encounter occurred in the street outside his office.”
Chaz didn’t so much as flinch an eyebrow at the disclosure. He’d been the source of this information, including it in his statement to the police. Everett then passed it along to Mark as a professional courtesy.
“By our investigation of phone records for that day we were also able to determine she’d made a call to Charles Braden III at his maternity center in Saratoga. Presumably at the time he convinced her to come and meet with him in the evening. She did, and, we think, confronted him about the irregularities in his statistics for the facility, specifically the impossibly low number of newborns with congenital defects.”
There’d been no statement out of Charles since his arrest other than asserting his right to remain silent. The only information Everett had been able to provide about him – “The son of a bitch sure looks good in an orange jumpsuit.”
“We also think it’s safe to assume that Kelly did not leave New York without confronting Melanie Collins…”
Earl went on to recount the saga of the digoxin toxicity cases.
Confront your fears, went the pop jargon, Mark thought, half-listening to the familiar account. Yet here a woman who’d run from confrontation all her life finally stood her ground, and got killed for it.