Guilt By Degrees

84

They officially pronounced Gary at 2:41 p.m.

It was a long, hideous day and night at the hospital. Bailey and I gave our statements over and over again to a parade of officers. The other investigators, who’d gone to lunch that day, were nearly suicidal with grief and guilt. They couldn’t be consoled.

Bailey’s MRI showed no internal damage, and she was cleared for release. Now I was standing outside the small hospital waiting room where Bailey was giving her last statement to the reporting officers. Head down, I wrapped my arms around my waist and circled the room, suffering over the loss of Gary and the close call I’d had with Bailey. I paced in small, tight circles, glad that Bailey wasn’t here to complain. As always, my grief had turned to anger, and my anger had turned to a need for action. Unfortunately action required a plan, and I didn’t have one. That only added to my frustration.

I was finishing my fifty-second circle when Drew rushed in. He gave me a quick hug, then held me at arm’s length and looked at me closely.

“I’m okay.”

“Where is she?” he asked, looking up and down the hallway.

“In there, finishing her statement. Should be out in a second.” Seeing his worried face, I added, “She’s fine, Drew. Really.”

His expression turned thunderous.

“When they catch that son of a bitch, I’m going to-”

At just that moment, Bailey opened the door, saving me from hearing a statement that was bound to be incriminating if we ever did catch that son of a bitch. She shook hands with the detectives and turned toward us. I’d never seen her so ragged or drained. When she saw Drew, she moved straight into his arms. He gently folded her in close, and she held on to him. Neither of them spoke for several long beats.

Drew drove us back to the Biltmore, and we immediately steered Bailey up to the room and into bed. Then I took him out to the living room and told him the whole story.

Drew leaned forward and put his head in his hands. Finally he said, “I could’ve lost both of you today.” He shook his head as though he’d been hit with a weighted glove.

“You got anything to drink around here?” he asked.

I poured him a shot of the Russian Standard Platinum, and he tossed it back.

“Does…did…Gary have a family?” Drew asked, his expression grave.

“A wife and two daughters.”

He closed his eyes. I poured us both another shot, and we downed it in one gulp.

Half an hour later, Bailey emerged from the bedroom, moving gingerly, as though her head might fall off if she made any sudden moves. She cast a longing look at the bottle of vodka.

“Don’t even think about it,” Drew said.

Bailey rolled her eyes, but she didn’t argue. Drew settled her in on the couch. “He had to be after that bag,” she said. “How’d he know we had it?”

I’d given the question a lot of thought while I was waiting for Bailey in the hospital. “The woman. Remember that young woman in the reception area? She was on the cell phone when we said good-bye to Teresa. I think she was working with the guy who was driving the car.”

Bailey nodded. “So he was going to take Gary out and then come after us.”

We all fell silent. The man had succeeded with half the plan.

“But, if you ask me, the move was kind of amateurish,” I said.

Drew shook his head. “He may not be Blackwater, but it was good enough.”

His words brought us up short, and we all fell silent. Then I heard a faint beeping sound. It seemed to be coming from my purse. It startled me at first, but then I remembered it was the signal of an unretrieved message. Toni’s message. I never did listen to it. I meant to just call her-tell her what had happened-but I pressed the voice-mail button without thinking. What I heard was the quintessential last straw.

“What’s wrong?” Bailey asked.

“The press got ahold of Simon’s case. Lilah’s photo was in today’s paper-”

“Are you friggin’ kidding me?” Bailey said, her voice cracking with fatigue.

Drew spotted the newspaper that’d been left on the table in the foyer that morning and read us the brief story, then we all looked at the photograph.

“They’ve got to be in panic mode after what happened today, and now her picture’s in the paper too,” I said. “Lilah’s going to run.”

“I don’t know,” Bailey replied. “The story’s the bigger problem. That photo…there isn’t much detail. She’s in dark glasses, you can’t see that much of her. I wouldn’t count on her taking a powder just yet. She wants that evidence.”

I hoped Bailey was right. I wanted to find her and personally choke her to death. But at the moment, my eyelids felt as heavy as concrete. I yawned and started a chain reaction that ended with Drew doing a jaw-splitting rendition that almost managed to make us laugh. Almost. Exhausted on every level, we decided to call it a night. I left Drew and Bailey to say their good-byes in privacy and took myself, and the bottle of Russian Standard Platinum, to bed.