Authors: Shawn Grady
“So it’s not an easy buck.”
“Not if you want to do it right.” I straightened. “Therein lies the rub.”
Humbolt nodded. “Sounds to me that if someone didn’t care about doing it right, they could make a killing.”
Humbolt’s phone rang, one square of five on the bottom row blinking white.
He stretched to answer it. I scanned the room over the cubicle walls. A few heads faced computer screens. A woman in business attire crossed the far side with files in hand.
“I see.” Humbolt scribbled something on the yellow pad. “ Uh-huh. All right.” He hung up and stood. “Mr. Trestle.”
I stretched out my hand. “I won’t keep you any longer. Thanks for meeting with me, Detective.”
He stepped around the desk and buttoned his coat. He shook my hand. “You should know your rights.”
I nodded. “Definitely.”
He didn’t let go. A set of handcuffs jingled and glinted in his opposite hand. He clicked a bracelet on my wrist.
“You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say or do can and will be used against you in a court of law.” He placed one hand on my shoulder and bent my right arm around behind my back.
I twisted. “What’s going on?”
He shoved my shoulder into the cubicle wall.
“What is this?”
“Mr. Trestle, you are under arrest for narcotic theft.” He patted my pockets. “Anything in here that will poke or cut me?”
“What? No. Narcotic theft?”
“You’ll be escorted down to the detention area. A hearing will be scheduled for tomorrow afternoon.”
“Are you kidding me? This – I came in here to provide information that might help solve a murder – two murders – and you’re going to throw me in jail?”
“Hey.” He turned me around and looked me in the eye. “Remember that part about remaining silent? Keep it in mind. Let’s go.”
Who could I trust? As much as I wanted to, I dared not contact Naomi with my one phone call for fear of implicating her. But I had already mentioned Eli, so I reasoned that it was safe to call him. I had to hope he had his cell phone with him and that it was turned on. But he only carried it for “emergencies,” and as expected, I was sent to his voice mail.
In the basement I recognized the detention guard from the streets. A slow nod and laissez-faire expression fell across his brown features. His name tag read
Sonny Rysen
, but I remembered guys calling him Bad Moon. I wondered what had gotten him off the beat and assigned to dungeon duty.
I explained that there was no reason for me to be down there and that there’d been a huge misunderstanding, all the while thinking how cliché it must sound to him.
He raised a hand. “Hey now, I judge not, lest I be.”
He paid me the professional courtesy of a private cell, which, though itself not much, was much appreciated. It was windowless with a single bed along a white-painted cinder-block wall and a stainless toilet in the opposite corner. They’d taken my street clothes and given me orange scrubs and shoes without laces. I laid my head on a pillow that had all the cushion of a folded blanket and stared at the ceiling.
How many movies had I seen, how many books had I read, where the main character ended up in a similar predicament? Even Paul the apostle praised God with Silas from behind bars. The earth shook and their cell doors swung open. Seemed very much like fiction now, with my present powerless circumstance every bit real.
Cold like metal bars. Empty like whitewashed walls.
I have a memory of picking up my dad from jail. As a kid, jail is the ultimate punishment. That’s where they put the bad guys – pirates and thieves and scoundrels. Though sometimes Zorro or Jim West might end up in the predicament. But they always escaped with a knife hidden in a boot or a wagon tied to a barred window.
I shifted on the bed, mattress springs jabbing my flank.
To see my father, unshaven with his eyes half-glazed behind bifocals . . . It didn’t evoke images of an incarcerated hero. My mother didn’t say much. She didn’t try to explain. He hugged me, the stench of alcohol on his breath. My mother stayed stoic, never letting go of my hand, perhaps for fear that I’d somehow end up in jail as well.
I’d been asleep for some time when a familiar voice echoed down the hall. I blinked and propped up on my elbow.
“Yes. No. That I assure you. Thank you.”
“Right this way, then, Doctor.”
Eli.
Bad Moon signaled the duty clerk to buzz my cell door. A loud metal clank followed, and it slid open.
Bad Moon smiled. “Done found the truth for you, Jonathan. At least according to this man, you’re innocent. And so be it – free.”
I exhaled. “Thank you.”
“Ain’t nothing. Thank the fella who dropped some coin to bail you out.”
Eli walked up and grabbed me in a tight hug. He pulled away and gripped my shoulders. Fissures etched deep in his face, an angle of concern in his eyes. “I came as soon as I heard.”
I patted his arm. “Thank you.”
I changed back into my clothes, signed some paperwork, and followed Eli up to street level. The sky had shifted into shades of mauve.
Eli wiped his glasses with a corner of an untucked shirt. “Where did you park?”
I had to think about it. “I’m . . . right over here by the – ” I found myself pointing at a tow truck hoisting a Passat by an expired meter.
I ran into the street. “Hey, wait! Wait!”
The driver climbed in the cab. “Tell it to the company.” He grinded the truck into gear and drove forward.
I ran my hands through my hair.
A blaring horn and rushing air whipped past my hips. I looked both ways and walked back to Eli on the sidewalk, heart pounding and legs trembling.
“Come on.” Eli motioned. “I’ll give you a ride.”
We walked around the corner to High Street, and I pulled out my cell to dial Naomi. Eli fished keys from his pocket next to a burnished bronze, late-sixties International Scout II. A chrome roof rack perched atop the bone-white upper half of the two-door SUV.
“Where’d you get this ride?”
He grinned with a hint of Millennium Falcon pride. “Something I’ve been working on in the garage out back.”
Naomi’s line rang seven times before rolling over to voice mail. “Hi, this is Naomi. Sorry I couldn’t take your call. I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.” A beep followed.
“Hey, it’s me.” I looked around, searching the city, not sure how much was safe to say on a recording.
Eli climbed in.
I opened the passenger door. “So, I . . .”
Eli reached under the driver’s seat and produced an obsidian black revolver in a leather holster.
“Just give me a call.” I pulled the phone from my ear. “Doc” – I checked both directions – “what’re you doing? We’re right next to the police station.”
He flipped the bullet cylinder out, his index finger straight along the three-inch barrel. “Close the door.”
This was a new side to Eli.
My door squeaked, falling hard and fast against the car with the camber of the road. I watched him insert six thirty-eight-caliber slugs into the chamber.
He clicked the cylinder in place one-handed, holstered the piece, and tucked it between the gearshift and the four-wheel-drive levers.
“I’m sorry I don’t have another one for you.” He started the engine.
Do I need one?
We pulled into the street.
I couldn’t take my eyes off the revolver. “Where are we headed?”
“Out of here.”
“Out of where? Reno?”
“More is at stake than your job.” He threw me a glance. “We’ve stepped on a hornets’ nest, Jonathan.” Eli merged onto Interstate 80 West. “Open the glove box.”
I turned the knob and lowered the long rectangular door. A FedEx envelope lay inside, addressed to me.
“That was on your doorstep.”
“You stopped by my house?”
“Better me than you.”
I scanned the side-view mirror. “Are we being followed?”
Eli checked his mirrors. “It is possible.” He switched to the fast lane, increasing the hum of the Scout’s tires over the road.
“What made you think to go to my house first?”
“Before I got your message about being in jail, someone from the police department called. They gave a name and inquired about your whereabouts last evening, if you’d been with me, and if so, had you been showing any signs of being under the influence. I responded that no, you hadn’t been, and that I’d never once seen you in such a state from either alcohol or drugs.”
We began the uphill toward the mountains. Semis slowed in the other lanes. Eli glanced in the rearview mirror. “When I asked him to repeat his name, he hung up. That’s when I realized I had no way of knowing if that person was in fact from the police department. And I’d just told whomever it was that you didn’t have an alibi with me for wherever you were last night.”
“Or wherever somebody wanted to place me as being at.”
“Right. Something felt off. So I called your cell phone from the morgue but got no answer. I left work early and stopped by your house. When you weren’t there I turned on my phone and saw that you’d left a voice mail. That’s when I saw the envelope on your doorstep.”
“Had it just been delivered?”
“That’s what I gathered. I took the liberty of opening it once I was back in the car. I hope you don’t mind.”
I examined the envelope. “Of course not.” The first line on the return address read
AAMC: MCAT.
I pulled out a single sheet of paper on professional letterhead.
Dear Mr. Trestle,
It is with great regret that the MCAT review board must censure your recent exam results as required by our regulations. Recent video evidence has revealed that you did not adhere to the strict protocols set forth to ensure each candidate’s answers are entirely self-derived. The censure includes a four-year ban from retaking the exam.
We hope that a character of utmost integrity will guide your future endeavors.
Sincerely,
Ronald Smith, CEO
Association of American
Medical Colleges
I knocked my head against the seat. This couldn’t be happening. “Someone’s trying to frame me.”
“Not trying, son. In one fell swoop you’ve been marked as a thief, addict, and cheater.”
“ ‘Recent video evidence’?”
The car wandered into the corrugated median. The pistol vibrated on the center console until Eli corrected back into the lane. “I have received two death threats this week.”
“What? How?”
“First by phone. I was the last one at the morgue, finishing up reports. The call lasted ten seconds.”
“What’d they say?”
“It was a digitally modified voice. It said, ‘Leave it or join them.’ ”
I checked my cell phone to see if Naomi had called back. No messages. “And what about the other?”
“A note.”
“In the mail?”
“No.” He took a deep breath. “In a stomach.”
“In a – ”
“Man . . . his fifties. Homeless. The paramedics found him in an alley. No witnesses.”
“So an autopsy was ordered.”
“Right. When I examined the stomach contents, I found a tiny laminated note rolled up like a scroll and tied with floss.”
“What did it say?”
“Same message.”
Evening darkened the mountain canyons, obscuring the –Truckee River below.
I folded the MCAT letter. “Who doesn’t want us to know about the times?”
“What times?”
“Letell’s note contained dates and response times for Aprisa ambulances. When we compared them against Aprisa’s database, the numbers didn’t match.”
“Let me guess – Aprisa’s all fit neatly into their county mandate.”
“Exactly.”
He nodded. “Losing a lucrative contract – that could be motivation.”
“But enough to drive someone to murder?”
“Who stands to gain the most from Aprisa’s success?”
I leaned an elbow on the door and rubbed my chin. “Maybe we should be asking who stands to lose the most from its failure.”
“Fear is a powerful motivator.”
“Shintao caught me downloading run times last night.”
“Shintao?”
“The Aprisa accounting VP.”
Eli ran his thumb over the steering wheel. “So Shintao could be savvy to the fact that you know the times don’t add up.”
“Assuming he himself knows. Then yes.”
“And today you are arrested on false charges, your MCAT scores are discredited under false pretenses, and your hopes for medical school and a scholarship are stripped away.”
“Someone knew how to hit me where it hurts.” The mountainside raced past the passenger window.
“Who else knows about the scholarship?”
“Pretty much everyone.”
“How did you first get notice of it?”
“Dr. Kurtz.”
Eli’s cheeks tightened, as if he had tasted a tannin-laden wine.
Kurtz?
“Why would he want me out of med school? He’s been the main guy working to get me there.”
“He
is
paid by Aprisa to serve as their medical director, correct?”
“Yes.”
“What about profit sharing? Do employees have a buy-in with the company?”
I shook my head. “Aprisa is a Reno start-up. It’s not publicly traded.”
“Yet. Anyone not particularly fond of you?”
“You mean . . . do I have any enemies?”
“Put bluntly.”
“I happen to be a very well-liked individual, Eli.”
“At least you were.” He gave a quick smile. “Sorry.”
“I’ve found a new talent.”
“What’s that?”
“Turning public tide against me.”
“Who knew?”
I ran my hands over my face and exhaled. “Where are you taking us, anyway?”
“I have a small cabin in Tahoe. Emerald Bay. We can regroup there for a bit.”
“At some point I’ve got to talk to Kurtz. If anyone can clear this up, he can. He might be able to use his pull with Aprisa or maybe talk to someone about the MCATs. I’d like to see them produce that alleged video.”
Eli nodded. “Itself doctored, I’m sure.”
“Out of anyone, Kurtz’s position would be one of the most influential with both Aprisa and the MCATs.”
Eli rested a hand on top of the wheel. “But you said yourself, he’s been nothing but an advocate. Why undo what he’s done for you?”
I shook my head. “I’m calling him.”
“You sure that’s wise?”
“I need to ask him where the scholarship stands, if nothing else.”
“Jonathan, I – ”
“It’s ringing.” I leaned my elbow on the door with the phone in hand.
The line picked up. “This is Joseph.”
“Doc, it’s me.”
“Jonathan? How are you?”
“Oh, just great. Super, really. Let’s talk about baseball, or maybe the weather. Or, you know, why I am being framed for narcotic theft.”
“Hold on, now, Jonathan. You know I had nothing to do with that. The news came to me after the fact.”
“You had no idea?”
“You think I would just stand by and not come to you if I had?”
“I got thrown in jail, Doc.”
He sighed. “Jonathan, I am so sorry.”
“Sorry doesn’t help. I got a letter from the MCATs. That news to you too?”
“Look, let’s slow this down a bit.”
“You knew about the MCATs?”
“I received a phone call with an inquiry related to an investigation.” “So you knew about it. Were you planning on telling me?”
“Believe it or not, I do get those from time to time. I figured it was a random audit. I know several of the members on the governing board, and I assure you they are all top-notch.”
“Is that right? So you’re saying you believe them?”
“Believe them about what?”
“They accused me of cheating.”
“On what grounds?”
“Video evidence.”
“Jonathan, this is not good.”
“You want me to believe you knew nothing about this?”
“How could I possibly know? I understand you are upset and that this could have dire consequences for your scholarship.
But I do not appreciate your calling me out with an accusatory tone.”
I watched the yellow line of the road wind past the car.
Kurtz cleared his throat. “Look, why don’t you meet with me tomorrow, and we will see what options we have. Get a game plan going.”
I glanced at Eli. “All right. Where? At the med school?”
“No. I’m . . . I have a full schedule lined out. Let’s meet up at the Old Country.”
“That dive on Fourth Street?”
“I know. But it’s only a bar in front. If you park around back you’ll find some of the best German meals you’ve ever tasted. Tell you what, I’ll buy.”
“About what time?”
“See you at six thirty?”
I took a deep breath. “Okay, Doc. See you then.”