Time of Death

26

Ren turned back to her computer and opened a celebrity gossip website.

‘Why do people take those kind of photos with their cell phones?’ said Robbie, leaning in.

‘I know,’ said Ren. ‘And why is it never the ugly, overweight ones that do it?’

‘Is that what you want to see?’ said Robbie.

‘Maybe…’ Ren paused.

She could see Robbie’s reflection nodding in the screen.

‘I mean, the thought of taking a photo of myself in my bathroom mirror…’ said Ren. ‘And is today my day for seeing photos of naked people?’

‘Guess who wants to hear the real story of the demise of Douglas Hammond?’ said Cliff, putting down the phone.

‘What real story?’ said Ren.

‘It was homicide,’ said Cliff.

‘No way,’ said Robbie.

Ren said nothing.

‘What happened?’ said Robbie.

‘Something was dicked with in the car,’ said Cliff. ‘And there was an accelerant used…’

‘By someone clearly not interested in hiding the fact that it was a murder,’ said Colin.

‘Something is rotten in the state of Denver,’ said Ren.

‘Colorado,’ said Robbie.

Sweet Jesus.

‘Glenn Buddy is sure earning his money right now,’ said Cliff.

‘Does he think Hammond’s death is linked to Helen Wheeler’s?’ said Ren.

‘I don’t know,’ said Cliff. ‘We didn’t get into it. Give him a call.’

‘No, no,’ said Ren. ‘I’ll leave him to it. He’s got a lot on.’

Her phone rang. It was Glenn. ‘Hey, Ren. I’m sure Cliff filled you in about Hammond. I just wanted to let you know that it’s obviously stalled things for a little while on Helen Wheeler’s case. A new judge will have to be drafted in. But I’m sure once that happens, it’ll speed on up.’

Why would that speed things up? ‘Why?’ said Ren.

‘Well, isn’t it a little unusual that the judge who was about to access patient files is killed the day before they’re due to land on his desk?’

‘I think it was unusual that patients were being looked at in the first place,’ said Ren. ‘There was no indication that this was linked to a patient. And none of those patients knew that their files were going to be accessed, right?’

Glenn let out a breath. ‘None of this looks good. I just need to work out how the hell it all fits together.’

‘I wanted to talk to you about something else,’ said Ren. ‘You guys went through Helen’s computer I presume.’

‘Yes.’

‘Just — was there any trace of her searching any book-related stuff?’ said Ren. ‘Like had she researched publishers of non-fiction or what length a book like hers should be, et cetera, et cetera.’

‘No,’ said Glenn. ‘But…it was early days.’

‘Even so, a doctor of sixty-two years of age is not going to even jot notes down without checking first if there’s a market for what she’s about to do.’

‘Maybe she didn’t care,’ said Glenn.

‘Yes,’ said Ren, ‘but it makes no sense for her to write a book about psychiatry if she didn’t plan to share it with people. It’s not like there would be a burning urge in her to commit something to paper. I mean, she had already done that by writing patient notes in the first place.’

‘But she had to have been writing a book — we found the notes on her desk. And Peter Everett confirmed that she was.

‘Well, I just don’t get it,’ said Ren.

But if it weren’t for the notes, no one would be able to access those files. They were the only thing on plain view on that desk. The book notes were the only route to the patient files.

Later that night, Ren sat on the sofa in her pajamas, surrounded by food wrappers. She changed channels, skipping past soap operas, reality television, pausing on true movies and ending up on a nature channel. Ren didn’t do nature. But what the hell is this?

A crocodile was lying in the sun watching a tiny bird flying in front of him. The crocodile opened its jaws wide. Ren sat up.

‘No, little bird, get away from him. Nooo!’

Ren closed her eyes and sucked in a breath. But there was no sound of flapping wings or piercing screams. Ren slowly opened her eyes. The bird was inside the crocodile’s open jaws.

What?

Ren turned up the volume and heard the deep voice narrate: ‘So can we call the plover bird brave?’

‘Yes, we can,’ said Ren.

The narrator continued: ‘No, because the plover bird knows that he is safe, because one of nature’s unspoken barters was in place before this tiny bird was ever born. This “crocodile bird” feeds on the scraps lodged between the crocodile’s teeth. And in return for sparing the bird’s life, the crocodile has house calls from a tiny winged dentist. Truly an extraordinary relationship.’

Ren turned off the television. And I thought I was nuts.

She went upstairs and started brushing her teeth. This is the way to do it. She thought of the strange dynamic between the bird and the reptile. Nature doesn’t always play fair. Some day, that crocodile would snap its jaws shut. Ren thought of Domenica Val Pando and the minions who did her dirty work. Some of them flew in, blindly trusting. Some of them flapped about, high on danger. And then there was Ren, always aware that those jaws were programmed to snap shut.

Domenica Val Pando worked by exploiting weakness. And once she had leverage, she could get people to do whatever she wanted. She had top accountants, legal experts, ex-military. She had links to border patrol agents, police and Mexican government officials. Domenica bartered. And the deal was always in her favor. She used illegal immigrants who needed money for medical bills or to pay ‘coyotes’ — the guides who would bring their families across the border. Ren knew she had given shelter to a businessman on the run from fraud charges.

At some point in her life, Domenica Val Pando had learned the value of leverage. And from then on, that was her personal drug of choice. Not heroin, not coke, not meth.

Leverage.