“Either way.”
“The closest place would be Shannons.”
Petra had never been to the Irish pub, but she knew where it was. Up Wilcox, just south of the Boulevard, a brief walk.
Barney said, “They’ve got a nice flat screen, sometimes they keep the news on when there’s no game.”
She racewalked to Shannons, sat at the bar, ordered a Coke. The flat screen was a fifty-two-inch plasma set like a window into the wall above the booze-rack. Tuned to MSNBC.
Nothing about the Middle East for one complete news cycle and the running banner at the bottom of the screen was cut off. She asked the bartender if there was any way to fix that.
“We format it this way on purpose,” he said. “You format the other way, it burns lines in the screen.”
“How about for a few minutes? Or maybe we can try one of the other stations.”
He frowned at her soft drink. No way that justified special treatment. But business was slow, no one else shared the bar, so he fooled with the remote and the banner appeared.
She endured financial news, a basketball finals recap, then the international stories: an earthquake in Algeria- the Middle East- but nothing Eric would call her about.
Why couldn’t he have just come out and-
The anchorwoman’s voice rose in pitch and Petra’s ears opened. “… reports that American military personnel may have been at least partly responsible for reducing the death toll from a suicide bombing in Tel Aviv…”
A beachside café on a restaurant-chocked avenue that paralleled the Mediterranean. People trying to enjoy themselves on a hot, sunny day. Israelis, a couple of German tourists, some foreign workers from Thailand. Unnamed American “security officers.”
Scumbag with a bomb vest under his raincoat approaches from across the street.
Scumbag’s black raincoat on a hot day would’ve tipped off anyone with the slightest powers of observation.
It had. He’d been wrestled to the ground, put out of commission before having a chance to yank the detonator cord on his plastique-and-ball-bearing-and-nail-stuffed vest.
Score one for the good guys.
Moments later, Scumbag Number Two saunters over, gets twenty feet away and pulls his plug. Turning himself to jihadburger. Taking two Israelis with him- a mother and her teenage daughter.
And: “Scores are reported injured…”
Two evil shit-heads. But for someone’s sharp eyes, it could’ve been worse.
Someone.
Scores injured could cover a lot of territory.
Eric had to be in good enough shape to call.
Why hadn’t he insisted on talking to her, dammit?
“Seen enough?” said the bartender. “Can I format it back?”
Petra tossed him a ten and left the bar.
CHAPTER 21
Back at the station, she ran upstairs to the locker room, flicked on the old Zenith, caught the four P.M. broadcast on KCBS. The Tel Aviv bombing was the third-ranked story, after the legislature’s credibility problems and a new bank fraud scandal in Lynwood.
Same bare-bones facts, nearly identical wording. What had she expected?
She entered the detectives’ room, nearly collided with Kirsten Krebs.
“There you are. He’s on hold.”
Petra ran to her desk and picked up. “Connor.”
“The irate detective,” said a mellow voice. Dr. Bob.
“Sorry about that, Dr. Katzman. It’s been a tough week.”
“I imagine you get plenty of those.”
You, too, being a cancer doctor. “Thanks for returning. As I mentioned, Sandra Leon was a witness to a murder and we’re having trouble tracking her down.”
“Unfortunately, I can’t help you with that,” said Katzman. “She’s no longer my patient. And I could never track her down either.”
“Where’s she getting her chemotherapy?”
“Hopefully nowhere, Detective. Sandra doesn’t have leukemia. Though she wanted us to think she did.”
“She lied about being sick?”
“Lying,” said Katzman, “appears to be one of her primary skills. I guess I misspoke when I said she was no longer my patient. She never was under my care in the first place. That’s why I have no problem talking to you.”
“Talk away, doctor.”
“She showed up last year with a letter from a physician in Oakland saying she’d been diagnosed with AML- acute myelogenous leukemia- was in remission and needed to be followed. The letter also stated that she was an emancipated minor living with some cousins and would require financial assistance. Our social worker sent her to all the right agencies and booked her for an appointment with me. Sandra kept her appointments with the agencies but was a no-show at Oncology Clinic.”
“What kind of agencies are we talking about?”
“There are several county and state programs set up for kids with cancer. They offer medication, transportation and housing vouchers, wigs when the patients lose their hair. Co-payment for treatment.”
“Ah,” said Petra.
“You bet,” said Katzman. “And once a child’s registered, the family also gets hooked into the general welfare system. Which gets you access to food stamps, et cetera.”
“So Sandra got goodies but didn’t show up for her appointment.”
“For the agencies it wasn’t a problem, technically. All they require is that a patient be diagnosed, not actively undergoing treatment. I found out later that on some of the application forms, she was listed as an active patient.”
“Forms Sandra filled out herself.”
“You’ve got the picture.”
“Did you ever see her?”
“Months after talking to the social worker. The first time she didn’t show, we phoned the number she listed on her intake form, but it was disconnected. That concerned me but I figured she’d moved. Or changed her mind and went to another doc. Then some of her forms came in for me to sign off on and I went back and checked and wondered what was going on. I sent the social worker out on a home visit. The address Sandra gave us turned out to be a mail drop.”
“Where?”
“I wouldn’t know,” said Katzman. “Maybe Loretta, the social worker, would.”
“Last name, please,” said Petra.
“Loretta Brainerd. So Sandra witnessed a murder?”
“Murders,” said Petra. “The Paradiso shootings.”
“I heard about that,” said Katzman.
“In Baltimore?”
“I left the day before it happened.”
“You finally saw her,” said Petra. “How’d you find her?”
“I had CCS- Children’s Cancer Services- send her a letter to the effect that she’d lose her benefits if she didn’t show up for her checkup. She was there the next day, right on time. In tears, all apologetic. Going on and on about some family crisis, having to travel suddenly.”
“Travel where?”
“If she said, I don’t recall. To tell the truth I wasn’t listening. I was annoyed because I felt she was jerking me around. Then, when she turned on the faucet, I wasn’t sure. She’s a pretty good actress. Most important, I wanted to check her out medically because I didn’t like what I saw. Her complexion was yellow, especially the eyes. Jaundice can be a sign of relapse- infiltration of the disease into the liver. I ordered a full panel blood workup. Depending on what that turned up, I was ready to do a bone marrow aspiration and a lumbar puncture- more intrusive tests, even the most compliant patients don’t like them. But when I mentioned that to Sandra, she stayed calm. That made me wonder if she’d ever been through them in the first place. I ordered the tests back stat, scheduled her for a five P.M. recheck that day. She said she was hungry so I gave her some money to get a hamburger in the cafeteria. She and her cousin.”
“Her cousin?”
“Another girl, around the same age,” said Katzman. “The two of them showed up with a man, some guy in his forties. He dropped them off at the clinic and left but the cousin stayed. The blood workup came back negative for leukemia but positive for Hepatitis A- viral hepatitis. Which isn’t as bad as Hep C but it should be followed. I was ready to admit her for observation but she didn’t show for the recheck. Big surprise. That’s when I phoned the doctor from Oakland. He’d never heard of her. Wasn’t even an oncologist- a family practitioner working out of some Medi-Cal clinic. She must’ve gotten hold of some stationery and forged the letter.”