Of course. The prescription pad.
“And the doctor’s sig on it? Cicero Ruiz, MD. ” Hadley flashed me a humorless smile, like a shark’s. “Got to hand it to the doc. He shafted ’em.”
Hadley had been mistaken, earlier. There was no hostility behind the beating, no personal hard feelings, like he’d theorized. They had needed Cicero to write prescriptions for them. When he’d refused, they’d hurt him to break down his resistance.
Hadley spoke again. “The kids wised up and fled the scene just as the cops were getting there. There was a little footrace in the store, and one of the suspects fell. He’s in custody.” Hadley shook his head. “His friend left him behind. No honor among thieves.”
I barely heard him.
I could understand Cicero being targeted for his money. Everyone he’d ever treated knew he ran a cash business, plus everyone those patients might have spoken to about the unlicensed doctor in the towers. But the prescription pad-
“Sarah?” Hadley’s voice was impatient.
“Sorry,” I said.
“They’re holding the kid from the drugstore. The word’s going out to pharmacies to be on the lookout for the other guy, but we’ve just got a description, not a name. Only his friend can ID him.” Hadley slipped the cell phone into his jacket. “So let’s go lean on him.”
From the window of Hadley’s car, I watched the flow of traffic, pedestrians filing through the crosswalk, the sun glinting off the high buildings in the distance. I felt as if a membrane were separating me from the outside world. Crumpled in my hand was a piece of paper: my medical history, written in Cicero ’s hand. It had my full name on it and, had it been found in Cicero ’s place, would have been impossible to explain to my superiors. Even so, I’d felt cheap and petty when I’d retrieved it from the overturned filing cabinet, like I was betraying Cicero by doing so.
Hadley touched my hand with the backs of his ring and middle fingers, the lightest of touches. “Hey,” he said. “I think you’re taking this one too hard.” He looked away from the street just long enough to make eye contact, then veered around a furniture delivery truck. “Is it because this guy was a paraplegic that this bothers you so much?”
“No,” I said. “It’s just…” I hesitated. I had to say something, but I didn’t want to pierce the membrane and let my feelings out. “It seems like such a waste of a life.” I pushed the medical history into my shoulder bag. Please don’t let him want to talk about it anymore.
“I know,” Hadley said. “According to his neighbor, he was-”
“Can we talk about interrogation strategy, before we get downtown?” I interrupted.
Hadley swerved around a slow-moving Oldsmobile. “That’s probably a good idea,” he said.
It was a time-honored tactic: when two people commit a crime, get one to turn on the other. Give him a chance to get a jump on his partner, implicating him in everything. Appeal to his self-preservation, and imply that his partner would do the same to him, if the chance presented itself.
It was Hadley’s investigation; I’d agreed to let him take the lead. I was supposed to take the gentler, good-cop role.
The young man waiting in the interrogation room didn’t look like much of an outlaw: about five-seven, with hair the color of straw and a scraggly chin beard. The lower lids of his blue eyes drooped a bit, giving him a listless appearance, but there was a glint of hostile pleasure in his gaze, as if he were looking forward to not helping us. He wore oversized jeans of dark, coarse denim and a red hooded sweatshirt. A bluish tattoo hid in the webbed fold of flesh between right thumb and forefinger, and it seemed to crawl like a spider when he moved his hand.
When he saw us, the first thing he did was yawn.
“Don’t get too comfortable, Jerod,” Hadley said.
Jerod Smith, 19, of South Minneapolis. He had a prior for marijuana possession. That wasn’t a serious rap sheet. It was possible that his friend at large was, in fact, the author of Cicero ’s death.
“You want to tell us about Cicero Ruiz?” Hadley said.
“Who?” Jerod said.
“If you’re gonna lie, at least tell smart lies,” Hadley said, perching on the corner of the table. “Ruiz’s name was on the prescription you handed over to the pharmacist, so we know you know who he is.” Hadley took a deep breath, just for show. He was nowhere near losing his temper. “Ruiz is dead, and then you’re trying to fill prescriptions he wrote. That looks very, very bad. I think it’s time to cooperate.”
The boy shrugged. “He was fine when we left his apartment,” he said. Then his lips quirked, as if he were holding back amusement. “Maybe he fell out of the wheelchair and hit his head on something. Maybe he had some kind of seizure, like those people do.” Jerod raised his arm, with the hand flopped over, and banged it against his chest in imitation of a spastic.
I leaned forward. “Listen, you little prick,” I said, “do you think that you’re safe because Minnesota doesn’t have a death penalty?” I couldn’t stop myself. “That’s no cause for joy. Runts like you don’t have girlfriends in prison, they are girlfriends. By the time you get released as an old man, that jumped-up clitoris between your legs won’t have gotten any action for fifty years.”
Jerod’s eyes first widened, then heated, and his jaw set. Behind me, Hadley said smoothly, “You gotta admit, that’s something to think about, Jerod. Why don’t we give you some time to mull that over.” He stood, and I followed him out. I knew what was coming.
Out in the hallway, Hadley rubbed his forehead and said, “Okay, there was a lot of engine noise in the car and maybe I misheard, but I thought we were clear that I was going to be the heavy, and you were going to be nice and give him someone to confess to.” He didn’t sound as upset as I knew he was. He had the control over his emotions that you need in the interrogation room.
“I know,” I said, ashamed. “He pissed me off.”
“Well, now we have to regroup,” Hadley said. He watched as a file clerk rolled a cart past us down the hall. “All right, I’m just going to cut to the chase in there. Then you get impatient and give up, and I’ll agree. We’ll see if that works.”
Jerod looked mutinous as we came back in, but he didn’t actually sneer, and he didn’t say anything. Maybe he would crack.
“Okay, let me lay it out for you.” Hadley pulled out a chair and turned it backward, straddling it. “This is how it’s going to work. We need to bring in your partner. That’s our main concern. If you assist us with that, it’s going to help you a lot, in the eyes of a judge.”
I leaned against the wall as if bored with the whole process.
“Right now, we don’t know whose idea it was to go to Ruiz’s apartment. We don’t know who actually killed him. We don’t know if that was supposed to happen or not. All that’s up in the air.” Hadley held up a cautioning hand, as if Jerod had been about to speak, although there’d been no sign of it. “Now, I’m not telling you to say anything that isn’t true, Jerod. I’m just saying that we don’t know any of these things, and with Mr. Ruiz dead-”
Dr. Ruiz, I corrected Hadley mentally.
“- we’ve only got two people who were in that apartment who can tell us,” Hadley said. “Now, your buddy, back in the drugstore, he ran out while you got arrested. That doesn’t suggest to me a real trustworthy person. I’m just wondering, when we catch that guy, what kind of regard for the truth he’s going to have. I wonder what he’s going to tell us about who did what in that apartment.”