Lucidity Read online

  “What?”

  “The last few years …”

  Her voice trailed off.

  “What?” he said.

  “I wanted to say something but I didn’t. But the last couple of years Jamie’s been coming to see me.”

  He blinked, startled. “Excuse me?”

  “We have dinner sometimes. When you’re teaching that six forty-five spinning class I take him to dinner and you don’t know. I’m sorry, I should have said something. He reached out. He wanted to talk. So I agreed to meet with him.”

  “What did he want to talk about?”

  “Your book.”

  “I didn’t say he could read that. He’s too young to read that.”

  “I know. I told him that. But he already did. I think he was curious. He’d met me a few times when he was younger but said he didn’t really remember it. So I agreed to meet him. And he asked a lot of questions. About you. About us. But then he just started asking questions in general. I think he just wanted to hear a female voice. That’s what I really came here to tell you. I knew you didn’t try to kill yourself, Max.”

  “You did?”

  “Look, I was concerned enough to call 911. I had to do that. But it wasn’t like you. It was sloppy. You’re not a sloppy guy, Max.”

  He wasn’t so sure about that. “I’m not?”

  “Sure, you seem like you’re winging it a lot of the time. But when it comes to the important things you’re meticulous. You want everything to be perfect. If you wanted to kill yourself, you would have done it right. All your affairs would have been in order. Remember what you used to say, ‘If you’re going to do it, do it with conviction. Always do it with conviction.’”

  “I still say that.”

  “Well, this lacked conviction.”

  She was right, of course.

  “So what was I really up to?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. Some guy feeling sorry for himself. Or being a pussy about his emotions.”

  He nodded. That made sense. He squeezed her hand a little tighter.

  “I’m going to go now,” she said. “But when you get through all this, I promised Jamie that the next time we go out you’d come with us.”

  “That’d be good,” he said, “I lost my spinning classes, you know. I don’t know if you’ve been reading the papers about this woman who was pushed in front of that car, but she—”

  “I know. She’s your client. I saw you on TV.”

  “I may have gotten out over my skis a little too far. This guy that pushed her, I thought he was innocent. Now I’m not so sure. And I roped my lawyer friend into this whole thing. I’ve got to raise some money for him. We’ve got to get him a proper defense.”

  “You also landed yourself in the hospital. What’d you take?”

  “I’d rather not talk about it. The whole thing is embarrassing.”

  Just then there was a knock at the door and his friend Bernstein came in. He looked startled. He wasn’t expecting to see Fremmer holding hands with a woman in a wheelchair, having a moment.

  “Hey, you made it,” Fremmer said.

  “You want me to come back in a little bit?”

  “No, it’s OK,” Denise said. “I was just leaving.”

  She introduced herself to Bernstein as she backed out of the room. Bernstein wasn’t much taller than Denise sitting in the chair. He was still in his scrubs, a trim forty-six-year-old who still had a full head of mainly dark hair that looked like it hadn’t been cut in a while. Fremmer knew him from his spinning class. He was a regular. They occasionally rode outside together, around the loop in Central Park or over the George Washington Bridge to New Jersey.

  “I’m the ex-fiancée,” she said.

  “Oh,” Bernstein said. “I have one of those. You’re a lot better looking than mine, though. Who broke it off?”

  Bernstein may have been the bluntest guy Fremmer knew.

  “I did,” she said.

  “I thought so.”

  After she’d gone, Bernstein said, “Something tells me you were engaged while her legs were working. What happened?”

  “Body-surfing accident. Mexico.”

  “C6?”

  “Between C6 and C7,” Fremmer said.

  “Bummer.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Was she really the one who called it off?”

  Fremmer nodded. “I handled things pretty well at first. And then I didn’t. I couldn’t accept it. She eventually got tired of the act and granted me my unconditional release. Put me on waivers.”

  “Mine was a banker,” he said. “Still walking and making lots of money. Didn’t like to give head. In retrospect, probably not my best life decision. Now I’m an underpaid middle-aged doctor working for sucky people at a sucky hospital trying to send three kids to private school with a wife who quit her job and stopped giving head after the kids started private school.”

  “Bummer.”

  “On a happier note, I do have some good news for you.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Your peds vs. car woke up a couple of hours ago. The attending just told me.”

  “She’s awake?”

  “Yeah, you wanna go see her? The daughter’s with her now. If she’s OK with it I can get you into the ICU.”

  “Let’s go,” Fremmer said.

  “Let me get you discharged first. You good with me telling them this was a revenge-jealousy-gay thing? That’s a language they understand. GHB and ass-fucking tend to go hand-in-hand. You throw a little homo erotica at them and everything suddenly becomes clear.”

  “Whatever it takes, man. Just don’t talk that way in front of my son when he comes back.”

  “I’m just kidding,” Bernstein said. “But I like your spirit. You’re hardcore, Fremmer. That’s what I like about you.”

  22/ Crime Drop

  THE FIRST CALL MADDEN GOT ON THE BENDER ARTICLE WAS FROM his old colleague at the MPPD. Jeff Billings had been the junior detective on their team of three detectives. Now that Madden and Burns had retired, he’d become the veteran of the team at the tender age of thirty-four.

  Madden was on the 101 near Belmont, heading back from Petaluma, when Billings called. He put him on speakerphone.

  “How long were you going to wait to tell me?” Billings said straight off the bat. No hellos or how-are-yous.

  “I figured you knew already,” Madden replied.

  “We did.”

  “The Palo Alto boys tell you?”

  “Why would they tell me?”

  “They saw me digging up a yard.”

  “You were digging up a yard?”

  “Yeah,” Madden said. “Bronsky’s old place.”

  “You find anything?”

  “Yeah, I found something. Just not Stacey Walker.”

  “I didn’t know anything about you digging up a yard,” Billings said. “But I did know you were working on the case. You know how I knew?”

  “No, how? Shelby?”

  Billings made the sound of game-show buzzer. “Wrong. Pastorini told us.”

  “He did? He wasn’t supposed to.”

  “Real smart, Hank. Tell a guy who had a serious stroke to keep a secret. Did you ever think that might not be the smartest move?”

  “Maybe not, but I hope you’re OK with me telling him you said that.”

  The line went silent for a moment.

  “Don’t do that,” Billings said.

  Madden smiled. He and Billings had always had a slightly adversarial relationship. Sometimes things got a little tense, but Madden appreciated that Billings treated him democratically, that he was an equal-opportunity taunter. Most of the ribbing was good-natured, only rarely mean-spirited. Madden and the other guys took shots at Billings’ vanity—he was something of a pretty boy, short, with sandy blond hair, the lean, chiseled body of a surfer, and a too-cool-for-school attitude. Billings would let it roll off him, or he’d accuse them of jealousy, which was partially true. Now that a lot of the
old guard had left he’d become insufferable, or so Madden had heard from his old friend Brian Carlyle, recently promoted to commander, one step below chief.

  “So if you knew, why didn’t you say anything?” Madden asked.

  “I don’t need to go down that rabbit hole. Look what it did to Pastorini. For what? Seven, eight years he didn’t spend Christmas with his family? I’ve got smaller fish to fry.”

  “What are you working on?”

  “Getting awards.”

  “Seriously.”

  “Seriously. You know we’ve got crime down forty-two percent in Belle Haven. We haven’t had a gang-related shooting in nearly four months.”

  “I heard,” Madden said.

  The Belle Haven neighborhood in East Menlo Park bordered East Palo Alto. Back in 1992 East Palo Alto had the highest per capita murder rate in the country. Belle Haven had long been Menlo Park’s little pocket of suburban blight and its main supplier of violent crime. That was changing, though. Fast. Insane real-estate prices pushed people to consider sketchier properties. When Facebook moved in across the freeway nearby, Belle Haven and East Palo Alto had seen their fortunes rise. Facebook funded one full-time patrol officer on the MPPD and had paid for the construction of a new service center at the cross section of Hamilton Avenue and Willow Road.

  More controversially, the department also had three cars equipped with automated license plate readers that went around capturing license plate data and uploading it to a server managed by the Northern California Regional Intelligence Center, part of the Department of Homeland Security.

  But Billings was taking full responsibility for the drop in the crime rate.

  “We Moneyballed that shit,” he said. “Came down to three houses creating eighty percent of the problems. I’ve been embedded, man. Vested and embedded, working with the neighbors to curtail anything that looks suspicious before it metastasizes into something nefarious.”

  “I miss you, Bills. So, now that you’ve eliminated crime, what’s next?”

  “Well, I wanted to talk to you about that.”

  Madden didn’t like the tone. It sounded like he was about to deliver some bad news.

  “What’d you want to talk about?”

  “I don’t know if I told you but I’m writing a book.”

  “About what?”

  “About the murder cases we worked on together.”

  “You know I’m working on a book,” Madden said, a bit shocked by Billing’s revelation.

  “Yeah, I know. But I heard it wasn’t going so well. And I was approached by someone to write it.”

  “Someone who?”

  “Your agent, I guess.”

  “To write my book?”

  “No, to write a book about the cases,” Billings said. “I was there, too. I was as much a part of it.”

  “Are you kidding me?”

  “Look, I’ve made a lot of progress. But it’s missing your point of view. I think it’s important for you to be a part of it, particularly since you’re the main character. I’d like to sit down with you—”

  “Sit down with me?”

  “Yeah, get you on tape. Interview you. I’ll make you a deal. We’ll help you out on the Walker case, get you whatever you need. You know, support your efforts. That’s going to be our official stance with the media. We’re taking the high road. The chief wanted me to tell you that. We’re all about collaboration these days. Working together with businesses, the community—”

  “I don’t need your help,” Madden said.

  “Yes, you do. There might be something you missed. We can be helpful, Hank. You know that.”

  He was right. Angry as he was, he didn’t take the offer for granted. He thought about it a moment, took a break, then said: “Look, I actually do need some help with something. It’s related. The guy, Bender, who wrote that article last night. I need you to investigate him.”

  “For what?”

  “I’ll tell you later. I’ve got another call coming in. It’s my wife. I gotta get it.”

  He ended the call and waited for his wife to click in.

  “Hey, hon,” he said, “How do you feel about selling the house and moving to Petaluma?”

  She wasn’t in the mood for jokes, even if he was half serious. “Hank, someone from the Chronicle newspaper is calling. She’s on the home line. What am I saying to her?”

  Though her English was good, she sometimes didn’t get her verbs—or their tenses—quite right.

  “Tell her I’ll call her back.”

  “What’s going on?”

  “Nothing. Just some unwanted publicity. Nothing bad.”

  Just then a text came in from Carolyn. “Chronicle calling me,” it said. “What should I say?”

  He didn’t usually text while he drove but this time he made an exception. “Wait,” he wrote, “on my way.”

  “Hank?” his wife said.

  “Yeah, I’m here.”

  “The money Shelby will pay you …”

  “Yes?”

  “How much is it? It says a lot.”

  Oh, no. She’d read the article. That’s the last thing he needed, his wife on his case.

  “Yeah, but I actually have to find her, which I don’t think is going to happen at this point.”

  “Why not?”

  “I’ve got nothing. I’m no closer to finding her than the day I started looking for her two months ago. Don’t believe what you read. It’s all a farce.”

  “What’s farce?”

  “A lie. It’s not real. People like Shelby don’t live in a real world.”

  23/ ICU

  THE INTENSIVE CARE UNIT ON THE SEVENTH FLOOR OF ST. LUKE’S HAD a horseshoe design, with a series of conjoined, glass-fronted rooms built around a central nursing station. A level-one trauma center, Bernstein had worked at the hospital for over ten years. Now that Mt. Sinai had taken over both St. Luke’s and its sister hospital, St. Luke’s–Roosevelt, where he also worked, Bernstein told Fremmer he was considering a move. They’d made too many big changes, including renaming the hospitals and reducing his salary.

  “It’s good they brought you here,” he said in a low voice as they rode the elevator to the ICU. “But you’d have been fine at Roosevelt. Your peds vs. car, not so much.”

  This hospital was about twenty-five blocks farther from both his apartment and the location where Candace had been hit. Even so, they almost always brought major traumas to St. Luke’s. Roosevelt just wasn’t equipped for it.

  “They brought John Lennon to Roosevelt,” Bernstein went on, not caring that there were other people in the elevator, including another doctor, who was looking straight ahead, pretending not to listen. “He wouldn’t have survived regardless, but he had no chance there. Zero. I know the guy who held his heart in his hand. He’s a good doctor. Good at what he’s good at anyway. But not the guy you want treating a gunshot victim who has minutes to live. Zero chance he was going to save him. Norman McSwain. Now that guy maybe. Ever hear of him? I worked with him in New Orleans during my residency. The man pioneered trauma. Saved people who couldn’t be saved. He was amazing. He might have been able to save Lennon.”

  The elevator doors opened on seven and Fremmer said goodbye to Jamie. Then he and Bernstein stepped out and into the ICU. Fremmer was on the approved visitors list, but Jamie wasn’t. Bernstein didn’t want to complicate an already complicated situation by trying to bring him. He would wait for them in the lobby.

  Fremmer noticed Candace’s daughter, Mia, standing against the wall with her face in her hands, crying. She was a sporty girl who went around in indoor soccer shoes with every outfit and was going to be very attractive one day, but was in a little bit of an awkward stage, gangly, with braces and some acne. Her friend’s mother Anna, the same woman who had helped him get access to Candace’s computer, was consoling her.

  Mia’s tears quickly gave way to full-throttle sobs. Fremmer thought something terrible had happened, that Candace had died. He kept h
is distance until Anna noticed him standing there and made eye contact.

  He didn’t know quite what to say, so he said nothing as she walked towards him. In her Athleta leggings and tight-fitting light blue sweat top, she looked like she was on her way to a yoga class. This was a woman who knew how to take care of herself, Fremmer thought. She was probably around fifty, but looked remarkably fit. Not a gray root was showing in her short strawberry blond hair, her skin was smooth and her makeup flawless.

  “Hey,” he said.

  “Hey,” she said back. She took his arm and led him further away from Mia. “She’s having a tough time. They tried to lower her expectations, but she just wasn’t prepared. I probably shouldn’t have brought her.”

  “What happened? I heard she woke up.”

  “She did. But she didn’t know who Mia was. They don’t even know if she even knows who she is. It’s like one of those Twilight Zone episodes.”

  Now she was dating herself a bit.

  “But she’s able to talk?”

  “Sort of. She didn’t say much. But apparently her speech center wasn’t damaged. It’s here somewhere,” she said, tapping the left side of her head. “In the frontal lobe. I’m learning a lot about how the brain works. She can see and hear. They say those are all good signs.”

  Bernstein came toward them and Fremmer introduced him.

  “You mind if I speak to the girl for a minute?” Bernstein asked.

  Anna was happy to offer her consent. She’d been eager to step in and help after the accident, but Fremmer sensed that she was starting to get overwhelmed. She’d thought someone from Mia’s father’s family would take over, but no one had come forward. Mia had been relying on her friends’ parents for support, definitely not a sustainable situation.

  “Hey, Mia,” Bernstein said. “Remember me? I’m Dr. Bernstein. I’m a friend of Max’s. I take his spinning class. I met you briefly the other day when you were visiting your mom.”

  She nodded.

  “Look, I know it’s tough but you’ve got to look at the bright side. Your mom woke up. She woke up now and that’s a good sign. I’ve seen patients who’ve been in comas for two, three months. Sometimes they never wake up.”

  Mia nodded.

  “This is going to be a long process,” he went on. “It’s going to take a while for her to get better. They may have to do more surgeries but eventually she’ll be moved to a special rehabilitation facility.”