The Venus Fix

Tuesday Ten days remaining
Thirty-Seven

From the time Detective Jordain got the call from the hospital, it took him and Perez less than fifteen minutes to get there. Dr. Fred Klein met them on the seventh floor and briefed them. Tania was through the worst of it and was going to make a full recovery. They could talk to her for ten minutes.

Jordain sat by her bed while she slept. She was pale, but her breathing was even. Five minutes went by. Another five minutes. When she finally opened her eyes, he saw they were large and the color of the ocean during a storm. Her lips, though cracked and almost bloodless, opened to say something, but only a very faint whisper came out. He wasn’t sure, but he thought she asked him who he was.

Even in this sorry state, Jordain could tell how tempting she must have been to the men who watched her online, and before his mind went further in that direction, he said hello and introduced himself.

“Do you know where you are?” he asked.

She nodded. “I know…” She coughed. “Woke up before.” Her eyes searched the room and then blinked three times. He could read the panic. “My mother…?”

“She’s downstairs with my partner, Detective Perez. She’ll be right back. I told her I’d stay with you. You know, she’s been here since Sunday morning when you came in. She hasn’t left.”

Tania nodded and licked her lips.

“Would you like some water?”

She nodded again and he poured some from the plastic pitcher on her nightstand-the same pitcher that was in every hospital room he’d ever been in. How many times had he done this? Gone through the ritual of soothing the patient and waiting until he or she was comfortable enough so that he could ask his questions and disrupt the fragile recuperation process with the last thing the patient needed: prodding that forced him or her to relive the trauma.

While Tania was drinking her water, Perez came in.

Jordain introduced them, and Tania gave Perez a hello that sounded slightly stronger than the one she’d given Jordain. All the time, her eyes searched. “My mother?”

“I convinced her to have a little breakfast. She’s having some oatmeal. She’ll be back in about fifteen minutes.”

She nodded.

“We’d like to ask you some questions,” Jordain started. “Not too many and not for too long. Is that all right?”

“I guess so. But first will you tell me how ZaZa is? I asked the nurse but she doesn’t know who I mean.”

Perez gave Jordain a quick look that said he didn’t want to be the one to tell her.

Jordain nodded almost imperceptibly. Damn. Yes, he’d do it, but he had no idea how close the two women were. How was it going to hit her? He wished her mother had told her. Although, maybe even her mother didn’t know. If he told her, he might lose her for an hour, a few hours, a day, but he couldn’t lie to her.

The hesitation was enough for her.

“She didn’t make it, did she?”

“I’m sorry, no.”

“I already figured it out. We were both sick with the same stuff. If she was okay, even if she was as bad as I am, no one would have kept it from me. How stupid is this? Just like some dumb movie-” She stopped talking and closed her eyes. Tears rolled down her cheeks but she didn’t break down. “She died of the same thing that made me so sick, right?”

“Yes,” Jordain said.

“Do you know what it was?”

“Not yet. Not for sure. We’re doing tests. We need you to tell us what happened. Okay?”

Tania nodded, but now she was crying too hard to talk.