Chương 11
“Before anyone called emergency services?”
“Yes.”
“Who owned the phone?”
“We are tracing it.”
“Did Mason go to the motel?”
“No. He called Eli fourteen times.”
“The calls he ignored earlier.”
“Yes.”
Grace thought of Mason in the corridor, his face hollow after learning his son was dead.
“Was he acting?”
Ortiz closed the folder. “People can grieve someone they used. They can also be innocent of one crime and guilty of another.”
“What do you believe?”
“I believe Mason has withheld information.”
“That is not an answer.”
“It is the answer I can defend.”
Grace rubbed the seam of her apron. She had changed into borrowed sweatpants, but the pale gray dress hung over the back of a chair. She had not thrown it away.
“Adrian wrote that Mason knows.”
“Yes.”
“Then Adrian knew something before the shooting.”
“Or suspected it.”
“Has he woken up?”
“Briefly. Dr. Brooks says he may be able to communicate tomorrow.”
Grace looked toward the closed office door.
“If Mason thinks Adrian can identify him, he’ll try again.”
Ortiz’s expression did not change, but her hand moved toward her phone.
“What makes you say that?”
“Because the first attempt almost worked. Because Eli is dead. Because Nolan is missing. Because Mason has spent his whole life making problems disappear.”
Ortiz stood.
“We increased security at the hospital after the contamination.”
“Mason built Adrian’s security system.”
“That is not the hospital’s system.”
“He knew how to shut down the camera for four minutes.”
“Someone did.”
Grace rose too.
“Take me back.”
“No.”
“Adrian may talk to me.”
“He may talk to detectives.”
“He wrote to me.”
“He wrote two words while sedated.”
“He looked for Mason. He answered me about Lily.”
Ortiz studied her.
“You are not bait.”
“I’m not asking to stand in a hallway and wait for someone with a knife.”
“You are asking to enter an active attempted-murder investigation because you believe a hospitalized crime figure trusts his housekeeper more than the police.”
“When you say it like that, it sounds stupid.”
“It is dangerous.”
“So is waiting in a shelter while Mason decides whether my daughter remembers too much.”
Ortiz walked to the door, then stopped.
“I’ll speak with Dr. Brooks.”
Adrian was awake when Grace returned to the hospital the next morning.
The ventilator had been removed. Oxygen ran beneath his nose. His voice was little more than a scrape, and every breath pulled at the muscles above the new abdominal dressing.
Dr. Brooks limited the conversation to five minutes.
Ortiz stood near the door with a recorder. Another detective remained outside. Grace sat where Adrian could see her without turning his head.
“Lily?” he whispered.
“Safe.”
His eyes closed briefly.
Grace set the gray stuffed rabbit on the chair beside her. Lily had refused to come, which Grace considered the first sensible decision any of them had made.
“Who hurt you?” Ortiz asked.
Adrian looked at the detective, then at Grace.
“Mason knows,” Grace said.
He swallowed.
“Mason knew Eli was using,” Adrian whispered. “Knew Nolan owned him.”
“Did Mason order Eli to contaminate your wound?” Ortiz asked.
Adrian’s eyes shifted toward the monitor.
“I don’t know.”
Grace almost laughed at the phrase that had followed her for two days.
“What do you know?” she asked.
Adrian breathed through a wave of pain before answering.
“Nolan ran drugs through my trucks. Eli moved packages. Mason hid transfers.” His voice failed. Dr. Brooks offered a sponge swab, and he wet his lips. “I told Mason I was giving records to the government.”
“To save yourself,” Grace said.
Adrian looked at her.
“Yes.”
The admission carried no performance.
“And to stop Nolan?”
“Yes.”
“Why after all these years?”
A faint line appeared between his brows.
“A boy died.”
“Boys died before.”
He closed his eyes.
“Yes.”
Grace felt anger rise, hot and clean.
“So what made this one different?”
Adrian took too long to answer.
“He died in my car.”
The room went silent except for the cardiac monitor.
“Nolan’s men left him there,” Adrian continued. “Sixteen years old. They thought moving the body would attract cameras. So they parked the car in my garage and waited for instructions.”
Grace remembered a black sedan missing from the household fleet. She remembered Adrian burning a shirt in the outdoor fireplace before dawn. She had found melted plastic buttons among the ash.
“You covered it up.”
“Yes.”
“And then developed a conscience.”
“No.” Adrian looked at her. “I developed fear.”
“Of prison?”
“Of becoming unable to tell the difference anymore.”
Grace wanted to tell him it was late. She wanted to tell him Lily had known the smell of death sooner than every adult because the adults had spent years naming it something else.
Ortiz asked, “What did Mason know about Eli’s hospital access?”
Adrian’s eyes moved toward the ceiling.
“Eli called Mason after the shooting. Said Nolan wanted him to finish it.”
“Did Mason tell you?”
“No.”
“How do you know?”
“Eli came to the house the night before I was shot. I heard them argue in the garage.”
“What did Mason say?”
“‘You touch Adrian, you bury me too.’”
Grace leaned forward. “That sounds like Mason warned him not to.”
“It also told Eli Mason was afraid.”
Ortiz said, “Did Mason arrange the shooting?”
Adrian’s breathing became shallow.
“Nolan did.”
“How do you know?”
“Driver confessed.”
“Which driver?”
“Vincent.”
“Where is he?”
“Ask Mason.”
The monitor quickened.
Dr. Brooks stepped between them. “That is enough.”
Grace stood.
Adrian’s hand moved across the sheet.
“Grace.”
She paused.
“Don’t let Mason choose the ending.”
Dr. Brooks ushered her out before she could ask what he meant.
Ortiz sent officers to find Vincent Marr.
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He was discovered alive in the trunk of Nolan’s abandoned vehicle, sedated, dehydrated, and bleeding from a wound above his ear. The blood in the trunk was his.
At the hospital, Vincent told police that Nolan had organized the warehouse shooting. He also said Mason discovered the plan only afterward.
