Chương 10
She pressed her fist against her mouth.
Glass removed her raincoat and placed it over Elena’s shoulders.
“We need a statement,” the agent said.
“I need to go to the hospital.”
“You are not family.”
“No.”
“His attorney?”
“No.”
“Employee?”
“Possibly former.”
Glass studied her. “What are you?”
Elena looked at the ambulance lights disappearing beyond the trees.
“A witness,” she said.
She gave her first statement in the back of a federal vehicle while rain struck the roof. She gave the second at the hospital after Raphael was admitted under guard. She gave the third at eight in the morning, two hours after missing her pharmacology exam.
Each telling became more precise and less real.
The broken kitchen door.
The phone.
The ring.
The vial.
The message.
The hidden stair compartment.
Pike’s question.
Vale’s call.
Daniel’s name.
Agent Glass never told Elena she was brave. She asked times, distances, exact words, who touched what, and whether Elena had lost sight of any object. When Elena did not know, Glass wrote that she did not know.
It was the first official conversation about Daniel in which uncertainty was permitted.
At eleven, a doctor told Elena that Raphael was stable.
The doctor would not discuss treatment details because Elena was not family. Elena accepted this after arguing for four minutes, apologizing, then arguing once more in a quieter voice.
She sat in the waiting room wearing hospital socks, Pike’s jacket, and a pair of scrub pants a nurse had found in lost property.
A television played a morning talk show with the sound off. Someone had left a paper cup on the windowsill. The coffee inside had developed a skin.
Pike sat three chairs away with an ice pack against his face.
“Your son?” Elena asked.
“With my sister in Wisconsin.”
“Does Vale know?”
“He knows she lives in Wisconsin. He doesn’t know where.”
“Are you sure?”
“No.”
It was a better answer than certainty.
A federal agent stood near the vending machines. Two Lake Forest police officers waited outside Raphael’s room. Hospital staff walked past with carts and clipboards, irritated by the security obstruction. People continued having ordinary emergencies around them. A child cried because he wanted crackers. An elderly man asked the same nurse three times whether parking validation covered the garage across the street.
Elena’s phone held thirty-six messages.
Her clinical instructor had written: We need to discuss your absence.
Her classmate Nina had written: ARE YOU ALIVE? then, fifteen minutes later: Bad phrasing. Sorry.
The estate payroll administrator had written: Do not report for your scheduled shift pending further notice.
Her aunt had written nothing because no one had called her.
Elena opened the nursing-school portal. She had received a zero on the pharmacology exam.
She stared at the grade until the numbers blurred.
Pike said, “You can explain.”
“That does not guarantee they will let me retake it.”
“You were helping a poisoned man.”
“I left a secure location, handled unknown evidence without proper protection, entered an armed situation, and delayed calling emergency services.”
“You make it sound bad.”
“It was bad.”
“You saved his life.”
“I might have made his condition worse.”
“But you didn’t.”
“That is not how professional standards work.”
Pike lowered the ice pack. “You’re angry because people keep telling you the outcome excuses the risk.”
Elena looked at him.
He put the ice pack back. “I have heard a version of that argument before.”
At noon, Rachel Chen arrived with an FBI escort. Her jaw was bruised where Dominic had struck her. She wore the same dark suit and carried no legal pad.
She stopped in front of Elena.
“The key was in Victor’s briefcase,” Rachel said. “My father had described the drawer. I took it before dinner because I thought Raphael might need it.”
“You knew what he was planning?”
“I knew he had contacted Agent Glass. I didn’t know when he intended to surrender.”
“Surrender?”
“That was the agreement. He would provide evidence and enter custody.”
Elena looked toward the guarded hospital room. “He did not mention the custody part.”
“He rarely leads with the least flattering term.”
“He mentioned racketeering.”
“That may have been his version of intimacy.”
Pike made the same almost-laugh he had made in the cellar.
Rachel sat beside Elena.
“My father represented the Orsini businesses for twenty-eight years,” she said. “Near the end, he began copying records. He was not a good man who suddenly became good. He was a frightened man who realized the people he protected would eventually consume his daughter too.”
“How did he die?”
“Heart attack. Truly. For once, no conspiracy.”
Rachel rubbed the bruise on her jaw. “He gave Raphael the first ledger and Agent Glass’s name. Raphael spent nine months gathering the rest.”
“While continuing to run everything.”
“Yes.”
“So he gets credit for exposing crimes he was part of.”
“He gets evidence considered during sentencing. Credit is a moral word. Courts use narrower ones.”
Elena appreciated her immediately and did not trust her at all.
“Did he tell you about Daniel?”
Rachel’s expression changed.
“My father had a file,” she said. “Vale’s name was in it. Dominic’s too. Raphael’s signature appeared on the expansion order, but not the shipment authorization.”
“He covered up the murder.”
“Yes.”
“Will he be charged?”
“If the evidence supports it.”
“That is an attorney’s answer.”
“I am an attorney.”
“It is also an incomplete one.”
Rachel looked at her hands. “He should be charged.”
The hospital-room door opened.
A nurse stepped out and spoke to the federal agent. The agent looked toward Elena.
“Mr. Orsini is asking for you.”
Elena did not stand.
Pike and Rachel both avoided looking at her, which was almost considerate.
She waited another minute because she did not want Raphael to believe requests were commands again.
May you like
Then she went inside.
He lay beneath a white blanket with monitors attached to his chest and an intravenous line in his arm. Without the coat, the wrong buttons, the ring, and the people who moved when he entered a room, he appeared younger than thirty-eight and older than anyone should.
