The Nitrogen Murder(81)

Would I forget Newton’s Laws under similar stress? I hoped I’d never have to find out.



Matt and I left Dana and Elaine at the trauma center, with a plan for staggering the waiting room watch. We hoped to convince Elaine to go home for a nap, but we knew it wouldn’t happen too soon.

Once buckled into Dana’s Jeep, I let loose with the tears I’d been holding back. Matt knew immediately what was wrong.

“It wasn’t your fault,” he said.

“I led the killer to that house. Someone followed me to Patel’s, knowing it was a good bet that I was also looking for Phil.” I shivered at the realization that I’d put more people than myself in danger. I was over blaming my mother, Josephine Lamerino, for all my faults, tempting as it was. I let Josephine off the hook. “I’m responsible, Matt. And don’t give me that line about how it was the shooter who hurt Phil, not me.”

Matt was silent. Suddenly I wanted that comforting line. “Well?” I asked.

“Okay, you might have led the shooter to Phil. Or he may have found Phil himself. Or Phil may have called him, not knowing he was a shooter. Or a hundred other scenarios. But you’re right, one of them might be that you were followed.”

“Twice,” I said. “I went there twice. Just in case once wasn’t enough.”





By two o’clock in the afternoon Matt and I were back at our newsprint pad and charts. We had another event, Phil’s shooting, to account for in our scheme, but not any additional data.

“How does it feel to be working without access to police files or reports?” I asked him.

“You mean, do I like being reduced to a kitchen bulletin board?” He put his arms around me. “It’s useful to see how the other half lives,” he said.

Too bad we didn’t have the luxury of taking the rest of the day off.

I had many questions and directed them at Matt, my closest law enforcement officer. How soon would the police check the bullet from Phil’s side to see if it matched the one taken from either Patel or Tanisha? (Ballistics was on it, he was sure.) Was it time now to tell the Berkeley PD all the loose ends we’d been working with? (Yes, we were on our way, with full cooperation on both sides, he thought, once we talked to Phil.) What if the PD had the complementary evidence and could pull the whole solution together? (They probably did, and all this would be resolved in time for a glorious wedding.)

A phone call from Rose took me away from more theorizing, but I knew I’d put her off long enough.

“Your grandson’s a genius, Rose,” I said. My way of making up for my recent neglect of her.

“You can skip the schmoozing,” she said.

I laughed. “As long as you know I tried.”

“I’m waiting.” I pictured Rose, my diminutive lifelong friend, hands on her hips if she didn’t have to hold a phone, pouting slightly, frustrated that she was out of the loop on what had gone on since I left her neighborhood.

I summarized our week, with all the background stories. It drained me to talk about the events that took the lives of two people, and to have to tell Rose that we still didn’t know what the prognosis was for Phil.

“Poor Elaine,” Rose said. “I can’t imagine. You weren’t kidding when you listed those disasters the other day.”

“No.” In fact, I played them all down, I thought.

I heard a long whistlelike sound, then maybe the longest silence in Rose’s telephone history.

“What’s new with you?” I asked.

Her laugh seemed to let out a breath she’d been holding in. “Well, nothing like you’re going through. But there was a break-in here. I didn’t want to tell you, once I realized something was going on with you, though you took your sweet time telling me. Not that I guessed it would be that big.” Another long whistle.

“There was an intrusion at the mortuary? Was MC at home?” I felt protective of my old apartment, and even more of Rose’s only daughter, my godchild.

“MC was there; it was the middle of the night. But they never got upstairs. And the best news is we caught them. Well, the RPD caught them. Even without Matt.” A teasing laugh. “So it’s over for now.”

I felt completely out of touch with Revere. I didn’t remember ever feeling so disconnected from Rose’s daily life, even in the thirty years we lived a whole country apart. “I’m not getting it, Rose,” I confessed. “What’s over?”

“The mortuary chain, Bodner and Polk. You do remember that part? That they were trying to put all us independents out of business?”

“I remember.” Barely.