“Morgan? C’mon, sweetie. Let’s go.”
“Where are we?” I was groggy from the painkillers. Where was I? I looked around. In a taxi. In front of Nina’s brownstone on East Fifty-sixth Street, across from the East River.
“You’re spending the night with me,” she said, and she helped me traverse the sidewalk and get into the building safely.
Inside, she put me in the bedroom where I’d spent so many nights as a kid, and brought in a cup of hot milky tea laced with honey-a concoction that she never drank herself but foisted on anyone who was hurt or sick. I loved it.
More than that, the milk and the honey with the slight bite of the tea was what comfort and caring tasted like to me. I made the same drink for my daughter when she didn’t feel well, and she always drank it slowly, the same way I did, making it last, the way I was doing now.
Tuesday Three days remaining
Sixty-One
There wasn’t a moment when I was asleep and then awake. There was only the slow emergence from a complicated dream of a giant checkerboard, Noah standing in the middle of it, holding out both a red and a black checker to me, asking me if I was ready to play.
I had a hangover from the painkillers, a headache, and my wrist was throbbing.
Sitting up, I looked down at the pajamas I was wearing. I didn’t remember getting undressed. Nina must have helped me. I stood up, felt woozy and slowly made my way to the bathroom.
Navigating with one hand proved more complicated than I had imagined. It was difficult to pull the pajama bottoms down and then up with only my left hand.
It was going to be a long six weeks.
I found Nina sitting in the kitchen at a small table by the window that looked out into a winter garden.
“You must be in a lot of pain,” she said when she saw me. “Come, sit down. I’ll get you some juice and some pills.”
“It’s not that bad,” I said, maneuvering the chair.
“You’re not going to play martyr, are you?” She put a crystal glass of orange juice down on the table, along with a plate that had two white pills on it. Without thinking, I reached with my right hand for the juice, felt the stab of pain, grimaced, put my hurt arm back in my lap and took a deep breath.
“Where’s your sling?”
“I forgot.”
“I’ll be right back. In the meantime, take the pills.”
When Nina returned, she was holding a lovely silk Hermès scarf. It was black with large copper poppies on it. She draped it over my chest and tied it around my neck.
“I have a sling from the hospital.”
“It’s hideous.”
“Nina, you’re crazy.” I couldn’t imagine using something so expensive to hold my arm in place.
“You’re worth it.” She smiled.
After I’d finished the juice, Nina looked down at the plate, where the two pills still sat, untouched.
“Am I going to have to sneak these into your food?”
“I don’t need them.”
“Of course you do.”
I shook my head.
“You are the most stubborn creature. Aren’t you in pain?”
“I’ll get over it.”
“Morgan, you are not going to get addicted to pain pills if you take them for two or three days.”
“If you have two extra-strength over-the-counter painkillers, I’ll take those.”
We’d been over it before. About me. About what kind of medication I’d give Dulcie. I was afraid that we might have inherited my mother’s tendency toward substance abuse. She’d been on uppers and downers and muscle relaxants and pain pills, all washed down with vodka, during my short life with her.
Nina left for the institute at eight and it didn’t take much urging on her part for me to agree to let her cancel my appointments and stay in bed. I slept most of the morning, woke up about noon, ate some of the soup and sandwich she’d made for me before she left, and then spent the afternoon watching old movies on television, avoiding the relentless news coverage of the confession from Judge Alan Leightman.
There was a lot I had to work out, but the pain, as gripping as it was, had given me a short reprieve.
Sixty-Two
With Alan Leightman in jail, Jordain and Perez spent the morning catching up on paperwork. At lunchtime, Perez kept a long-overdue dentist appointment while Jordain stayed at his desk, and that’s where he was when Ken Fisher, one of the computer geeks, stopped by to tell him he finally had some new information.
“All the e-mail the women received from bob205 originated from a computer at NYU,” Fisher said.
“Makes sense. Leightman teaches at NYU. So now we know why there was nothing on his home computer.”
“Listen, Noah, I don’t want to tell you how to do your job, but there are some things that don’t match up now.”
“Tell me.”
“Okay, but you are not going to like it. Remember we said that at the same time the letter was sent to Debra Kamel, there was e-mail sent from Leightman’s computer that definitely went out through his own DSL line?”
“Humor me and explain what that means.”
“It means that if Alan Leightman was at NYU sending that mail, then he couldn’t also have been at home sending mail. I’m sorry, boss.”
“Don’t be. Not yet. Maybe his wife was using his computer at home and sending mail from her husband’s e-mail account. Isn’t that possible?”
“Sure.”
“So then it’s also possible that he was home and someone else-say, his wife-was at NYU using his e-mail account.”
Fisher nodded.
“Can you find out which computer at NYU the e-mail came from?”
“Sure, we can do that. Let me get back to you.” He turned and almost walked into Perez.
“Butler just grabbed me in the hall. It’s all over the news- Kira Rushkoff was just taken to Bellevue. Sounds like a nervous breakdown.”
Sixty-Three
Officers Davis and Lynds escorted Alan Leightman Uptown to Bellevue Hospital and took him upstairs to his wife’s room. They were about to take him in when he asked if he could go in alone.
Not much could happen in a hospital room, Davis figured. There was only one entrance. A nurse was there. Leightman was wearing handcuffs. They could watch Leightman through the glass in the door. Afterward, he or Lynds could ask the nurse what the judge had said.
“Sure, but we’ll be right here.”
Inside, Alan stood and stared at Kira, who was lying in the hospital bed, hooked up to an IV. She looked ravaged, as if she’d been deathly ill. As if most of the life force had left her. Was she sleeping? Awake? He couldn’t tell. Her eyes were open, but she hadn’t looked at him or said a word. There’d been no response when he’d said her name. He felt his knees go weak and held on to the foot of the bed. He waited until he felt a little stronger, and then asked the nurse if she would step outside for just a moment so he could speak to his wife alone.
She didn’t mind, shrugged and got up, stretching her legs and walking slowly. He watched her leave. When the door was closed behind her, he watched one of the cops walk up to the door, station himself in front of the glass window, and look in. Alan didn’t care about being watched. It was being listened to that mattered to him.
Sitting beside Kira, Alan took her left hand, the one that wasn’t hooked up to the IV, dipped his head down and kissed her palm. How was it possible that this woman, his wife, had committed such twisted crimes?
“Kira?” he whispered.
Nothing.
It was possible because he had driven her to it with his addictions. With his lack of empathy for what she had suffered when he turned away from her and turned on the computer every night.
Reaching out, he smoothed down his wife’s hair as he whispered her name again, but there was still no response.
Who do you blame when a child commits a crime? Only the child? Or the parent also? No, he wasn’t her parent, but he was just as responsible. How many cases had he heard in his career? How many pleas? He knew how to weight both sides of every issue.