Tell No Lies Page 23

  “Let’s consider anyone who played any role in that trial to be at serious risk,” Dooley said to the room. “Study coordinators, doctors, the principal investigator, secretaries, chief of staff, the hospital CEO. Put them on alert and get them out of the area. I don’t care if they bitch and moan—after Molly Clarke we are taking no chances.”

  “Where are we supposed to tell them to go?” Rawlins asked.

  “If they’re doctors, to their summer homes in Tahoe. If they’re broke, to the Motel 6 in Daly City under an assumed name. I don’t give a shit, as long as they’re not findable until we can get our arms around this thing.”

  “If the Tearmaker has an issue with some study that took place, why hasn’t he attacked the hospital itself?” O’Malley asked.

  Dooley said, “Lotta witnesses, lotta security, what with all the animal-rights crap and stem-cell research and abortions.”

  “No,” Daniel said. “That’s not why.” All eyes moved to him. “It’s because this is personal. It’s about individuals. ‘Admit what you’ve done,’ remember?”

  “So we’re back to the patients who croaked,” O’Malley called out, and Dooley cringed a bit.

  Most of the study participants had been fortunate like Cris—a testament to the treatment—but two had died. Rawlins was running down information on the deceased in case a relative was nursing a vendetta.

  Dooley crossed to a bulletin board and pointed to a row of mug shots—Big Mac, A-Dre, Fang, Martin, Lil, X. Every one of them captured in an unflattering light, pasty and dangerous, up to no good. In two dimensions, thumbtacked to cork, they looked so different—like suspects. Lines fanned from each picture like sun rays, connecting to lists of names broken into subcategories: relatives, known associates, cell mates.

  Dooley said, “I want every last connection checked until we find one that leads back to that trial. Understand?”

  Several mumbled assents and the room wound back into motion. After finishing his third cup of surprisingly decent office coffee, Daniel excused himself to go to the bathroom. He washed his face, stared at a reflection he barely recognized. He’d not fully considered the toll the past week had taken on him, and the physical evidence was appalling. Stress etched in each line of his face. His crow’s-feet pronounced. Bloodshot eyes. Two-day growth.

  When he returned to the beehive of the war room, he was shocked to see that all activity had ceased. The cops were transfixed in their chairs from some newly hatched revelation.

  Dread filled his chest. He said, “What?”

  Dooley was staring at her laptop. “Come here.”

  He did.

  “Look familiar?” She pointed at a PDF file—a scanned form, filled out by hand.

  MOTHER: viviana olvera

  FATHER: _____

  PATIENT NAME: francisca olvera

  PATIENT AGE: fore

  There it was. The handwriting from the death threats. The words that had set the machinery into motion.

  “Viviana Olvera,” Daniel said. “She filled out this form.”

  Dooley’s voice cut through the buzz in his head. “We got the writer of those death threats. But maybe not the author.”

  “Why’s the father not listed?” he asked.

  “Maybe she doesn’t know who he is,” Rawlins said. “Or he’s illegal, married to someone else, in prison, whatever.”

  “Mamá’s hitting up the free clinics, applying for financial assistance, so it was probably better not to document a man and a second income,” Dooley said.

  “But this is … this is good, right?” Daniel said. “There’s an address here.” He pointed farther down the screen.

  “Building was torn down in 2010. We ran her through the system. Which wasn’t helpful, given she’s not in the system. According to the doctor’s notes on the kid’s intake session, the mom’s illegal. That’s the problem with this. No marriage records, birth records all fucked up, family tree missing all the leaves and branches. Someone pops out a kid three feet across the border…” She rubbed her face with her palms. “And no father.”

  The blank line seemed to stare out at them: FATHER: _____

  Dooley shook her head. “So. The million-dollar question is, who’s the babydaddy? Because that masked motherfucker’s pissed.” She handed Daniel a sheet of paper, still hot from the printer, that contained a grainy photograph.

  A little girl with a spontaneous smile, brown skin, and beautiful almond-shaped eyes. Crooked teeth, some missing, some still growing in. Frizzy dark hair fought into a style of sorts, a rubber band securing a side braid. The thin neck of a fawn. She wore a stained plaid dress with a hole beneath the collar. She was in the throes of an awkward stage, but her energy was so pure, so earnest, that the sight of her was arresting. The kind of kid with music in her laughter.

  “Indistinct ethnically,” Dooley said. “Could be half black, half Chinese, half anything.”

  “Which means the father could be Fang,” Daniel said. “Or Big Mac.”

  “Or Martin or A-Dre,” Dooley said. “I know they’re alibied for certain nights, but I’m not ruling out anyone a hundred percent. A-Dre’s brother could be hooked into this, and you could’ve been rolling around with him in the restaurant storage room while A-Dre cooled his heels at his pad. Francisca Olvera could be a cousin, a niece, a friend’s kid.” She tapped a pencil on the table to accent each possibility. “All we know for sure is that the killer has some connection to the group. That’s all.”

  “You’re focused on the men,” O’Malley said. “But how ’bout Xochitl’s kid she gave up for adoption?”

  “They tested Viviana Olvera to establish blood type for transfusions,” Dooley said. “No question she’s the biological mother.”

  “The age doesn’t work out for X’s kid anyway,” Daniel added.

  O’Malley again. “Where are we with Lil’s convict ex-husband?”

  “Joined a biker gang in Montreal,” Rawlins said. “Gubitosi tracked him down. So Lil’s ruled out.”

  “Not ruled out,” Dooley said, her irritation making clear this line of reasoning had been cause for previous discussion. “Until we get something airtight—and I mean NASA-shuttle airtight—we don’t eliminate suspects. We”—and here the other inspectors joined in weary chorus—“reduce the likelihood of their involvement.” Dooley blinked, half annoyed, half amused. “That’s right. And we divert resources accordingly.”

  Daniel asked the question that had been scratching at him since he’d seen Francisca’s face. “How’d the girl do? With the medical treatment?”

  Dooley and O’Malley exchanged a look, as if just now remembering that Daniel had come in late. “She wasn’t in the study,” Dooley said.

  “What do you mean?” Daniel said. “The form you showed me. That was for the trial.”

  “She was enrolled,” Dooley said. “But at the last minute, she got bumped.”

  All the heat in Daniel’s body seemed to rush to his face. His hand dimpled the printout.

  “There was a scene,” Dooley said. “And guess which security guard escorted mother and child off hospital premises? Jack Holley.”

  “What…?” Daniel had to clear his throat and try again. “What happened to her? Francisca?”

  “There’s a morgue record in the database,” Dooley said. “January seventh, 2010.”

  Something curdled in his stomach, a sickness spreading up through his chest, out into his limbs. “Where was she treated?”

  “We’re still digging,” O’Malley said. “But as you know, medical records are tough. We’ll pull subpoenas, start serving every clinic and hospital in the city, but it could be a slog. You saw the crappy job Viviana Olvera did filling out that one form. These people are happy to take advantage of the system, but they don’t like being in it.”

  Dooley pushed back in her seat. “He’s right. Mom’s illegal and broke. Dad’s MIA. Records of the kid are gonna be sketchy at best.”

  Daniel’s voice, so hoarse he was having t
rouble getting words out: “That’s why she was the easiest one to drop.”

  He pictured the woman in the yellow slicker, braving rain and traffic, pointing up at him and Cris in their bedroom. Viviana Olvera. A grieving mother.

  Dooley stood, concerned. “What’s going on, Daniel? Do you know something about this?”

  Already he was running back to the bathroom, his gorge rising.

  Chapter 45

  Occupying the nineteenth floor of the Mark Hopkins Hotel, the storied Top of the Mark held a unique place in San Francisco lore. With its Art Deco flair and wraparound views of the city, the venerable sky lounge attracted rich tourists, pedigreed locals, and the occasional young couple willing to pay a cover charge for dim lights and fussy waitstaff. Many a merger had been lubricated here by offerings from the famed hundred-martini menu and more than a few engagement rings passed across the starched periwinkle tablecloths. John Barrymore had once brought his pet monkey here, the story went, to show him the view. The lounge was a sentimental favorite of not just simians but the Ladies Who Cocktail as well.

  True to James’s tip, Daniel found his mother there on an upholstered settee, facing the span of jetliner windows as if she were piloting the whole building in for landing on the choppy night waters of the Bay. A coiffed friend of hers whom Daniel half recognized sat in a club chair, two gimlets pinning down the roundtop to the side. Daniel said, “I need to speak to you alone.”

  “Darling, I—”

  “Now.”

  Stiffly, the other woman rose, fingertips adjusting her necklace and conveying offense at the same time, and then Daniel and Evelyn were alone. Evelyn sipped her gimlet, returned to the view. “That was forceful. Perhaps you should sit down.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Yes, you seem perfectly in control.”

  “The closed medical trial Cristina was in at UCSF, the one that saved her life. A child was bumped out at the last minute.” He paused, almost afraid to continue. “Did you do it?”

  “Maybe you should sit down.”

  “I don’t need to sit down.”

  A waiter came over, hands clasped, all impeccable decorum and curated blond hair. Most anywhere else in the city, you could glance around and feel like you were at the UN, but up here on the nineteenth floor, the clientele and staff were, save for the Hispanic barbacks, tennis-club white. “Is everything all right, Mrs. Brasher?”

  “He’s my son.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t recognize you, sir.”

  Daniel sensed the waiter’s retreat. He kept his stare on the side of his mother’s face; Evelyn craned her neck for no man.

  “I called Bill Emerald,” she said. “You remember Bill. Head of development for the hospital?”

  Daniel tamped down a surge of impatience that threatened to explode out of him. “And…?”

  “He told me that the trial was full. That he could get someone bumped.”

  His voice was shaking. “What did you say?”

  “Do it.”

  “Just … do it?”

  “Of course,” Evelyn said. “It’s what you wanted.” She granted him a brief glance. “I really think you should sit down, Daniel.”

  He sat.

  They looked out at the tycoon view, the night-lit towers of Grace Cathedral, the shiny Bentleys at the Pacific-Union Club across the street. To the north, the rotating beam from Alcatraz pierced the fog, an alien probe taking the measure of the land.

  “That’s not what I asked for,” he said.

  “You came to me for my help. You said, ‘I’ve never asked you for anything in my life. I’m asking you to help me save her.’”

  “But I never knew that someone would have to be…” He couldn’t finish the sentence.

  “You asked me to get it done. So I got it done. What did you think would happen?”

  “I thought they’d make room for her.”

  “There’s only so much room, Daniel. You knew that.”

  “I didn’t know that. I did not.”

  “Then why did you come to me?”

  “Because you…”

  Evelyn nursed her drink. “That’s right. Because I know people. Who are beholden to me. For favors. Do you have any idea how much money we have given—generationally—to that medical center? You must. There is an auditorium at that hospital with our family name stamped on it. Our money poured the foundations for half the institutions in this city. You grew up between our box at the opera house and Director’s Circle dinners for SFMOMA. And you claim not to know how this works?”

  He sat, leaden and speechless, part of the chair.

  “Everyone has a price,” Evelyn said. “Yours was the life of your fiancée.”

  “I didn’t know,” he said. “I never knew.”

  Evelyn touched the rim to her lips. A delicate sip. “Did you tell her?”

  “What?”

  “That you were going to come to me for help. Did. You. Tell. Her?” She waited patiently.

  “No,” he said.

  “Why not?”

  It wasn’t quite a rhetorical question, but it was clear that no answer would be required. When he’d gone to his mother for help, he hadn’t known the contours of the course of action she would take, but he’d known that Cristina would not like the shape of it. So he’d kept it from her.

  And, in some manner, he’d kept it from himself.

  Evelyn finished her drink. The waiter appeared to ask if she wanted another and she said, “Please.” It arrived sometime later, and she rested her hand on the elegant glass stem but did not lift it from the table.

  Daniel said, “So you did it just to lord it over me? To show me what a hypocrite I am?”

  She shifted in the chair, rearing slowly, shoulders squaring to him. “Is that really what you think?”

  “I don’t know what I think,” he said. “Why did you do it?”

  “I did it because no matter how shitty a mother I am and have been, you’re still my son. And when you came to me, broken and devastated and lost, I would have done anything to take away your pain.”

  He rose, his legs numb beneath him all the way to the elevator. The car sank down and down, and then he was out onto the street. The city looked just the same, of course.

  It was as it had always been.

  Chapter 46

  The ring of Daniel’s phone interrupted his stupor at the wheel. He’d called Dooley and given her the bones of the revelation, and from what she’d heard in his voice, she must have known he was in no shape to flesh it out at the moment. Then it had been ten silent minutes bumping over the hills of the city toward home, his dread mounting as he neared the conversation to come.

  And now the ring, shrill as a scream in the confines of his car.

  A voice, lined with annoyance and concern: “Where are you?”

  Kendra Richardson. His boss.

  A panicked glance at the clock showed 8:24 P.M. It was, he realized, Monday night. Session—long-forgotten session—was supposed to have started almost a half hour ago.

  “Got a group here waiting,” she continued. “Or did you forget?”

  “I’m not … I can’t … I can’t come in.”

  “Look, I know there was a gaffe last session. After how things ended, your timing to not show up isn’t exactly ideal.”

  “Move it to tomorrow night. I’ll be there then. Tell them for me.”

  “You know how essential consistency is.”

  “Kendra. You have to take my word for it. I cannot do this right now.”

  “You’ve never pushed a session.”

  “I need to tonight.”

  He hung up and turned onto his street. The block was throbbing—a valet in front of Ted and Danika Shea’s and several attendants waiting with champagne glasses on silver trays. Nearing his house, he slowed. A parked car blocked his driveway, and he felt his agitation and self-rage bubble over. He screeched to a stop and climbed out.

  “Take your car, sir?”

 
; “No—I need you to move that SUV.”

  “I’m so sorry. Is that your residence? I think that’s a VIP guest of the Sheas. She parked there before we showed up, so we don’t have the keys.”

  Daniel charged toward the side gate, past the officious staff—“Kir royale? Crémant d’Alsace?”—and into the crowded backyard. Aside from a spotlit cube of metal the size of an industrial dryer, the yard was mood dim, and Daniel had a hard time locating either host. From all sides he was assailed with gourmet-hipster fare wielded and announced with great aplomb—short-rib sliders, sustainable sea bass on risotto crackers, endive spoons smeared with lemon-herb goat cheese. Nostrils quivered over chilled Napa Valley whites. The conversations pressed in on him, about what people weren’t eating and wearing, what wasn’t cage-free or grass-fed or sweatshop-stitched. He pushed past a stocky gentleman announcing through a full mouth that he’d been working on opening his navel chakra, and he spotted Danika across the way, waving her arms like a well-heeled carnival barker, the event about to commence. A hush fell over the yard as a sculptor wearing strategically torn jeans threw a switch, and the large metal cube crumpled in on itself with, Daniel had to admit, some majesty. But the pointlessness arrested him. He knew that it was his own self-loathing turned inside out and vomited on everything around him, but he couldn’t help himself.

  Ted was shaking hands and clutching elbows as if he’d actually accomplished something himself, and Daniel neared, calling across the bobbing heads, “Ted. Ted! I need a car moved so I can—”

  “You made it!” Ted shouted, parting a circle to fold Daniel into its embrace. “Daniel’s a smart guy, used to work in finance—let’s ask him.” He shoulder-squeezed a lanky-haired man at his side. “Wes here runs a Web site on social and environmental awareness, and he’s started a boycott on gas stations that import from the Middle East. Until all our troops are home—”

  “Look, Ted, there’s a car blocking my driveway—”

  “Come on, Daniel. Take a second. This is important. You must see the value in a boycott like that.” Ted’s face was alcohol-flushed, and Danika had appeared at his side. The discussion was public now, and there were stakes. “I mean, isn’t it a wonderful—”