Once free of the helicopter, Tess began enjoying herself immensely. Girls were pouring from the house-one, three, five, eight, a dozen in all, all quite thin and frail looking. She thought she glimpsed Sarah’s furred face among the girls, but they looked startlingly alike. Behind them came the orderlies who had tended to Tess after her shipwreck, and behind them even more staff, all new to her. Finally, she saw the auburn-haired woman and the doctor.
“Capsize again?” This was the woman, Miss Hollinger, her mechanical voice as crackly as dry ice today, steam coming out of her mouth in the cool air, a coat thrown around her shoulders. The doctor was not so cool; he moved toward them, then started back toward the house, only to find state police blocking his way.
“Baltimore City police,” Tull said, showing his badge. “Homicide.”
“Homicide?” The woman’s puzzlement was sincere. “No one has ever died here.”
So you’re not surprised to find the police swarming over the lawn, but you are surprised to find out it’s related to a homicide. Interesting, Tess thought.
“One of your patients, Gwen Schiller, was killed after leaving the school.”
Miss Hollinger hugged her elbows, but said nothing. She was trying to keep her face empty, but Tess thought she saw an excited glimmer in the pale blue eyes.
“She was killed November sixteenth.”
Tess was right. The woman had to fight to keep from smiling. “I’m sorry to hear that. She was a lovely girl. But I don’t see how it concerns the clinic. Gwen checked herself out in January, when she turned eighteen.”
“Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t make myself clear,” Tull said, with deadly politeness. “Gwen Schiller died on November sixteenth of last year. Almost three months before you told her father she was missing. Do you bring a lot of people back from the dead here? Because if you do, I’d sure like to get in on the ground floor if you ever have a stock offering.”
“I don’t think I have anything I want to say to you,” Miss Hollinger said with an admirable, if infuriating, dignity. In her silk print dress and burgundy heels, head held high, she could have passed for one of the patients’ mothers. “Not until my lawyer arrives.”
Sarah Whittaker came down the porch stairs, her insubstantial frame lost inside a sweatshirt and leggings. She tugged at Tess’s sleeve to get her attention, then jumped back, as if fearful Tess might try to return her touch.
“How will you arrive next time? On horseback?”
“I don’t think there will be a next time, Sarah.”
The girl looked up at Tess. Her eyes were dull, like a dying animal, her skin chalky and dry. She could have been a dandelion gone to seed: One puff and she’d disintegrate, carried away by the wind. “They’ll have to send us home now, won’t they? I’ll get to go home for Christmas after all, go to Guadeloupe with the family.”
“I suppose so,” said Tess, who had no idea what would happen.
“Well, I’m not going to wear a bathing suit,” Sarah said. “No way. I’m positively gross.”
“Oh Sarah-” Tess assumed she was worried about the hair on her face and back, her pallor.
“I mean my thighs,” Sarah said, holding one forward, smacking the leg to make the nonexistent flesh jiggle. “They’re huge.”
Given the number of people involved, Tull and the other law officers decided to keep everyone at Persephone’s for questioning, rather than try to bring them into the state police barracks, or the Baltimore police department. The girls were of little help-none of them had been here the previous fall, when Gwen had run away-and the auburn-haired Miss Hollinger, who Tess thought of as Big Nurse, was coolly silent.
But the sour-breathed Dr. Blount was not as composed when Tull got him alone in the clinic dining room. The two sat across from each other, while Tess hugged the wall behind Tull. She wasn’t supposed to be there, but Tull wasn’t up for the scene that would result if he tried to have her removed.
“I should have a lawyer,” Dr. Blount proposed tentatively. It sounded like a question, and Tull treated it as such. The doctor had been Miranda’d, of course, recited the rights that most schoolchildren knew better than the Pledge of Allegiance thanks to television. But Tull, like most seasoned homicide detectives, believed there was some play in the clause about the right to counsel. Until the doctor emphatically and definitively held out for a lawyer, Tull was going to pick at him.
“You really want a lawyer? Because if you want one, you can have one.” Tull turned back to address Tess. “It’s funny, isn’t it, how the guilty guys always want a lawyer?”
“I’m not guilty of anything.”
“Oh.” Tull looked confused. “But didn’t you say you wanted a lawyer?”
“Well-I can have one if I want one, right?”
Tull sighed, hunkered forward, as if dealing with a sweet but very stupid child. The doctor had a little boy’s face, ruddy and fat-cheeked. “Look, you can pick up the phone right now and ask for a lawyer. But then I’m done talking to you, because he’s not going to let you say anything. So we can’t make a deal, can’t sort anything out. I mean, there are levels of illegal activity here, it probably wasn’t even your idea. But-you want a lawyer, call a lawyer. I don’t have a problem with charging everyone with the same thing, figuring it all out later. My only problem is where to lock you up for the night, here or in the city.” Tull pretended to think. “I guess I gotta take you back to city jail.”
“What kind of charges are we talking about, exactly?”
“Filing a false report-”
“We didn’t do that.” Dr. Blount’s voice held a note of shrewdness, but it only served to make him more pathetic. “The family did.”
“Based on information you gave them,” Tess said, unable to contain herself. “By the way, did you continue to bill them? I think that constitutes fraud. If an insurance company is involved, I feel sorry for you. I’d rather owe the meanest loan shark in East Baltimore than have an insurance company after me.”
Tull gave Tess a warning glance over his shoulder. But she wasn’t sure he had worked out the fraud angle. It had only occurred to her when she had seen the clinic’s patients arrayed on the front porch, and begun calculating how much money each one brought in at $2,000 a day.
“Who is she, anyway?” the doctor asked.
“Trainee,” Tull said. “An overeager trainee, but with a good point. I’m sure the files the state police are going through will show if Gwen Schiller’s family was billed after the date she walked away.”
“It was never our intent to defraud anyone,” Dr. Blount said. “We do good work here, important work. It didn’t seem fair to let a couple of people jeopardize it.”
“A couple?” Tull asked.
He hesitated. “Are you sure I don’t need a lawyer?”
“There’s a difference, you know, between keeping quiet while someone does something you know is wrong, and doing it yourself.”
Yeah, a difference of five-to-ten years. Tess was finding a perverse enjoyment in the scene. So far, the only interrogations she had been privileged to watch had put her on the doctor’s side of the table. Tull had a rep as an interrogator, and now Tess knew why. He was like a cat persuading a bird to take a nap between his front paws. Tull’s face even had a certain catlike cast, with his high cheekbones and glittering brown eyes.
“It was Sheila’s idea,” the doctor said.
“Sheila?”
“Sheila Hollinger. The redheaded woman. She’s the director here. I’m in charge of the medical division, but she’s the administrator. She keeps the beds full, and the waiting list long, so we don’t have to worry about meeting our monthly bills. I know it sounds like a lot, what we charge, but this is an expensive operation. When Gwen started kicking up a fuss, she could have really hurt us.”