The Scapegoat, page 26
“You must realize what you’re saying, Nathan.”
Her use of Marks’ first name caused him to pause and glance at Coombes.
“That I would never do what he says to Lizzie? That someone else did that?”
Coombes shook his head.
“What she’s saying, is that for your little retirement plan to work, Amy had to be dead. Otherwise, as soon as you release her she’d tell us who took her. Even if you skipped town, it would make the news wherever you went. Amy was like a daughter to Elizabeth. She’d turn you over to the police in a heartbeat.”
“Oh.”
His face fell. It looked real, like he’d never connected the dots.
“I just wondered again, Nate, if maybe Elizabeth got wind of your scheme and that you had no choice but to shut her up.”
“Stop saying that!”
“What would you think in my position?”
Marks’ face twisted awkwardly.
“The same as you. Why do you think we rushed the ransom demand?”
“Say I believe you, when did you first hear about her death?”
“It was just after we took Amy. Me and Cass were watching the news for developments we needed to know about. When I heard about Lizzie, I lost my lunch.”
“You don’t seem the type.”
Marks ignored that and continued.
“I realized you people would connect Amy and Lizzie, that you’d think they were linked. I almost released Amy just to get you to focus on the Lizzie case. I couldn’t be the reason that someone got away with murdering her, but I knew no one would believe me.”
“I’m going to level with you, Marks. We hear the same song in here all the time. It wasn’t me, it was someone else. Blah, blah, blah. The problem is that we’ve already got enough to put you in a cage for the rest of your life. Additionally, I should probably tell you that there’s a detective down the hall waiting to speak to you concerning the murder of Olaf Dekker. I’m pretty sure you’re good for that as well. Why not get it all off your chest? Tell us what happened to Elizabeth, her family and loved ones deserve to know. Lying about it is a further assault to them and to her memory.”
Marks tried to put his head in his hands, but the chain that was looped around both of his wrists stopped his hands short. After a moment, a wordless animal whine came out of his mouth. The sound became louder and louder until Marks arched his head back and brought it down fast on the sharp edge of the interview table.
Blood shot out in all directions and his arms and legs began to convulse. Coombes jumped back, almost falling out his chair, and slammed his hand against the panic button on the wall. A siren filled the air and blue strobes pulsed on the ceiling.
Marks’ body jerked against the chains and it took Coombes and Sato working together for close to a minute to unlock his handcuffs and get him to the floor and onto his side. The door flew open and Cahill and Gonzalez rushed in, weapons drawn. He looked up.
“Call a goddamn ambulance!”
Blood stopped pulsing out Marks’ nose and his body went still.
Coombes touched the other man’s neck. Nothing. He rolled him over on his back, tilted Marks’ head to clear his airway, and began CPR. After what felt like an eternity, he glanced up and saw that the detectives were still standing in the doorway with glazed expressions.
“WHY ARE YOU STILL HERE? CALL AN AMBULANCE. GO, GO, GO!”
The two detectives scuttled away.
“You’re not doing mouth-to-mouth on this clown, John.”
“Grace?”
“I won’t let you. He could have the virus.”
She meant Coronavirus, he thought, not HIV.
From what he’d seen on the news, Coronavirus was airborne. If Marks had it then he’d been filling up the room with it since he arrived. It was doubtless blood and saliva-borne too, it was the new bogeyman.
Every generation got a plague, this was theirs.
Whether it had any merit, her warning was enough to hold him off. Just the same, Marks would be long dead by the time any medics arrived. CPR was a sticking plaster, not a solution. He glanced up at Sato and spoke between chest compressions.
“All right…get the defibrillator…break room.”
Sato paused for a second.
“Promise me. No mouth-to-mouth.”
“I promise.”
She ran off, leaving him alone with Marks.
The positioning of the body beneath his hands made him think about how Marks must’ve crouched over Elizabeth Walton as he crushed her throat.
It would be easy for him to stop trying to save the other man. That’s what Harlan Tremaine would want; for him to just lift off the throttle and let nature take its course. Revenge as a by-product.
He couldn’t do it.
Coombes fought to keep him alive, not because Marks deserved to live, but because he had to pay for his crimes.
Sato reappeared with the defibrillator which she set up on the floor next to him. They lifted his T-shirt and applied the electrodes. Marks’ chest was covered in a thick black hair and the pads barely stuck down.
When the defibrillator finished charging, he moved clear and Sato pushed the button. Marks’ body lifted up off the floor and sank back down. The display showed no heartbeat and began to charge again automatically.
In the movies it always took three zaps to bring someone back, but Marks took only two, his heart returning at a leisurely 64 beats per minute, his breathing shallow.
Coombes sat back on his heels, his hands shaking.
“Help me roll him on his side, I’m beat.”
They moved Nathan Marks into the recovery position and Coombes got unsteadily to his feet. He saw arcing trails of blood everywhere he looked and somehow none of it had got on his clothes.
It took medics another quarter hour to arrive.
In that time, Nathan Marks still hadn’t regained consciousness.
41
Coombes picked up Korean take-out on the way back to his hotel and started to eat it before he was off the elevator. He’d hardly eaten anything all day and there was a tremor in his right hand. Not ideal for a right-handed shooter. He unlocked his door and let the automatic closer pull it shut behind him as he set his take-out and a six-pack of beer onto the room’s only table. The food was going to make the room smell bad for days, to say nothing of the effect it would have on his body, but the heart wants what the heart wants.
He put on the television and changed it from a classic movie channel he was watching the previous night, to one of the local news networks to see if there was any breaking news on the Nathan Marks arrest and the safe return of Amy Tremaine.
Commercials.
He took off his suit jacket, sat on the edge of his bed, and began to shovel the food into his mouth using chopsticks from a previous take-out.
One thing was for sure, his diet had gone to shit. It always did when he was on rotation, but this time it was worse because he no longer had Julie to keep him grounded.
After a minute, the news was back.
Over in China, the authorities were spraying something on city streets to hold back the virus. Thousands were dead, perhaps tens of thousands, and the cities were being locked down.
He saw people wearing protective suits with masks that covered the whole of their head. It looked like a scene out of a movie. What amazing foresight, he thought, that they would happen to have vehicles capable of spraying who-knows-what on the local population.
Coombes opened a beer and took several long pulls.
He liked to think he had a high tolerance for spicy food, but Korean food always cut right through.
The news segment ran on and on.
A lot of people were getting pretty worried about the virus now that it had made landfall in the US. He had finished both his fire chicken and the beer before they cut back to the studio anchor and another mini-summary of the day’s events.
Amy Tremaine’s rescue was front and center, as was her father, the former governor. Now that her story had reached the end and it was good news, the broadcasters appeared to have lost interest in it. Bad news, that’s where the ratings were. He saw a four-second shot of himself taken with a long lens and he raised a fresh beer in salute to the television.
His cell phone rang. Sato.
“Hey, Grace. What’s happening?”
“Where are you, Johnny?”
He heard laughter and voices talking over each other. She was in a bar.
“I was about to hit the shower, why?”
“You’ve not forgotten, have you?”
Becker’s retirement party.
“I’ll be thirty minutes, tops.”
“Skip the shower and make it fifteen. I’m surrounded by creepy cops and I’m worried that in my drunken state I might go home with one of them.”
“All right, take it easy. I’m pulling on my jacket.”
His Uber driver made conversation like that was part of the job. In his opinion, Coronavirus was a cover story for a nuclear disaster. The Chinese were spraying the air and the streets to wash out radioactive particles. Telling everyone to stay indoors so they wouldn’t be contaminated. Coombes agreed with the man just so he didn’t have to think about it.
After they reached their destination the driver turned to him.
“Watch yourself in there.”
“Why do you say that?”
“It’s a cop bar.”
Coombes nodded. “Thanks. I will.”
There was no sign of Sato inside the bar but at a little over five feet tall, she was an easy person to lose. He’d lost her once behind an office chair. The first person to find him was Becker who came over, a big smile on his face.
“Thanks for coming, John. I know your hands are full right now.”
“What you going to do? Wait for people to stop killing each other?”
“Ain’t that the truth, brother.”
To his surprise, Becker embraced him and slapped his back. Coombes slapped back, embarrassed. They had only worked one previous case together and had had minimal contact during their shared time together at Robbery-Homicide.
“L-T said you fought for me to be on the Ferryman case. You have no idea what that means to me. And now this, with Tremaine’s kid. To help save her. Thank you. There will be a place at our table anytime.”
“Forget it. I should be thanking you.”
“Regardless. I appreciate it.”
A silence fell between them, as silences often fall between men in bars. Becker did what he couldn’t, he took a long drink from the glass in his hand. Coombes noticed a bruise on his index finger as he lifted the glass. It was from firing a handgun with it pointed backward at his own head. Recoil had twisted it sideways.
“What am I going to do now, John? I’ve been a cop my whole life.”
“Did you see what Lester Crumb was charging?”
Becker’s eyes lit up. “A PI. That’s not a bad idea.”
“You’re going to need those sky-high PI fees to pay for your boat.”
“I told you about my boat?”
Coombes smiled. “What kind of cop would you be if you didn’t get a boat?”
“A cliché, huh? There’s a lot of those going about.”
His smile melted away. Even Becker had heard about his marriage.
“You heard about Julie?”
“Who’s Julie? I was talking about Grace.”
“Who told you?”
“Relax, John. Nobody told me. When she looks up at you it’s like a flower gazing at the sun. Don’t you know what that look means? I thought you were a man of the world.”
Coombes knew exactly the look Becker was talking about. He’d seen it, liked it, and thought no more about it. She was his partner first, before anything else, she was coming at him from a blind spot.
“Shit. I need a drink.”
He moved toward the bar but Becker put his hand on his chest.
“Do you know why I never made D-III?”
“I never thought about it. I suppose I assumed you’d been overlooked.”
Becker shook his head.
“It’s because I never wanted it. I made it clear that my wife was more important than the job and I never regretted it. After all these years, my wife still looks at me the way Grace looks at you. Do not choose the job over a life of happiness, that’s my advice. Now you can get your drink, I’m supposed to be mingling here.”
After Becker left, he scanned the room.
He’d visited the bar before he even served in the Army, it was part of him. But it wasn’t like it used to be, there was no cigarette smoke anymore. You could see everything in disgusting clarity. Sato wasn’t there. He wondered if she’d made good on her promise to go home with another cop.
If it was true, it would break him.
To his right, the crowd opened up and Wallfisch pushed his way through. Judging by his face, he was either furious or drunk. Maybe both. If they were ever going to have a fight, here would be the place to do it.
Cop bars were neutral territory in the blue religion and a fight would go on until someone stopped swinging, or furniture started breaking. He shifted his weight so that he was ready for anything that came his way.
“Look, Coombes, I got carried away talking shit about your wife. I’m sorry, that crossed the line. How about you and me bury the hatchet and start over?”
Coombes studied the other man, trying to gauge if he was earnest, or if this was a setup to further mockery. The fact was, he was bored with the hostilities and the energy required to maintain them. Wallfisch just wasn’t worth the effort.
“All right.”
“I’m hardly in a position to comment, I’ve been married five times. You know the divorce rate among cops is north of seventy percent? Being a cop’s wife is no pleasure cruise.”
“Back up. You’ve been married five times?”
Wallfisch shrugged helplessly.
“What can I say? I’m irresistible to ladies.”
Despite himself, Coombes smiled.
“I’m sure.”
“Just forgive yourself. Forgive her. When I married my first wife, I thought apple pie was the best kind of pie. Every chance I got, I’d choose apple, right? Why wouldn’t I? It was my favorite. One day out of the blue, I decided to try cherry. Let me tell you, my mind exploded. I became a cherry man until again I tried something else. Pecan. I was ready this time, I embraced it. Then there was peach-”
“Are you seriously comparing your wives to pie?”
“All I’m saying, is that when you fall in love it’s based on how you feel up to that moment, not how you feel later. It’s like pain, it’s on a scale and that scale changes depending on your situation. You get shot, you think that’s the most pain you’ll ever have, that’s your 10. Then maybe you have an arm blown off, your 10 changes, see?”
“Women really find you irresistible?”
Wallfisch laughed.
Behind him, Coombes saw Sato emerge from the restroom and stop as she saw who he was talking to. She diverted to the bar, which was a pretty good instinct.
He decided to try and get Wallfisch back on track so he’d get lost.
“So peach is your new favorite pie?”
“Right, no. That’s my point. I’m back on apple again. Sometimes all you really need is a break to make you realize how good something was.”
“Then that means-”
Wallfisch nodded somberly.
“I remarried my first wife. Turns out she was the right one after all.”
“Tell me something. How did you hear about my marriage anyway?”
“I was standing next to your desk when the kid came around with the mail. I saw you had a light green envelope. It looked familiar, so I turned it over and saw the name of a legal firm printed on the back. Two of my ex-wives used the same firm, so I joined the dots.”
Coombes sighed and said nothing.
This was the closest Wallfisch had come to actual police work in the whole time he’d known him. The envelope was still on his desk, he’d never got around to opening it.
He supposed this meant that Julie had started the paperwork on their divorce long before he’d caught her in bed with the lawyer.
“I hope you didn’t like your home, Coombes, because that’s hers now.”
“It kind of always was.”
Wallfisch gave him a knowing nod, then moved off.
Sato had a Sapporo waiting for him at the bar. It wasn’t his usual beer, but it was light and went down easily. He felt like he needed to put some drinks between himself and Wallfisch’s pie analogy.
Coombes turned to catch the eye of the bartender and found she was already looking at him, a friendly look in her eye. He indicated two more beers.
Under the bar, Sato let her hand rest casually on his thigh as she pretended to look around the room. The heat from her small hand soaked through the thin material of his pants and spread out across his skin.
“Did you speak to Gantz?”
“No,” he said. “Just Becker and Wallfisch. Why?”
“When they got Marks to the hospital a nurse checked his wallet to see if he had medical insurance, or a card listing any drugs he was on, or allergies they had to know about.”
His focus sharpened. “And?”
“They found a do not resuscitate card. There was also a folded legal document signed yesterday morning allowing a lawyer to take criminal action against anyone breaking the DNR in the event that Marks was incapacitated and unable to do so himself.”
“Grace.”
“I’m sorry, Johnny. He coded minutes later. He’s gone.”
Coombes looked away from her so that she didn’t see the anger in his eyes. This was why Marks kept saying nothing mattered, he had an exit plan. There would be no justice for Olaf Dekker, Mavis Kent, Elizabeth Walton, Cassidy Stone, or Amy Tremaine.
The single hour Nathan Marks spent in custody was all he’d ever serve. Coombes felt himself sinking into the dark space inside himself where he stored his demons.
