River Rules Read online

  Tomassi gave his head an almost imperceptible shake. In a split second, Kenny popped up in on Vic’s left in a pincer move General Patton would have admired.

  “Boo, enough already.” Tomassi got in Vic’s face. “No more cookies, no more little boy’s room. We’re going for an involuntary commitment for Nancy Yates. You got a problem with the blue paper, Vic?”

  “You’re doing a blue paper? Alright for now, Sergeant.”

  “What the hell does that mean? Speak English for the love of God,” Jeff said angrily after quickly joining the group.

  Vic took a second to explain. “It’s the form for involuntary commitment. It’s on blue paper. Don’t worry about it. We’re actually all color-blind, so it might even be purple.”

  “Vic, John, you suck. Kenny, you not so much. She should be in jail. She’s already arrested, so what’s happening now?” He looked at Tomassi who signaled him to hold on.

  “Jeff, yeah—she’s in custody. If Vic could just get his inner asshole to shut up.” Tomassi stopped talking and glared at Vic. “Have some compassion for the family.”

  Kenny jumped into the conversation. “She’s been assessed as a clear threat to others, possibly to herself. And under the law, we can get a temporary psych hold.”

  “She’s fucking nuts, and she assaulted my client. The blue paper only lasts three days. We’re going for the white paper next.”

  “Let me guess,” Jeff said. “The paper is white. And she’s gonna vacation in the psych ward.” Jeff’s frustration was barely contained.

  “Bingo. Genius brother here. I mean, sort of right.” Vic took a moment to think of better phrasing as Tomassi’s body language went from annoyed to angry. “They evaluate and find her incompetent. The hospital files for a court order to authorize psych hospitalization and treatment. Could be three months, could be much more.”

  Jeff exploded. “She could’ve killed him. Pete looks like he went ten rounds blindfolded with Mike Tyson in his prime. Where’s his justice?”

  “Look, just like Officer Johnson said. She’s on a blue paper because the police think she went off the deep end and could be a danger to others and herself, not just Peter. The medico-legal process takes over. And you need to let me do my thing.” Vic’s attempt at patience didn’t go unnoticed by Tomassi or Kenny, who looked at him like they had just discovered that dogs could play the piano.

  “Where’s Carmen?” Vic asked.

  “I don’t know. Ladies room? I gotta get to the truck right now.”

  Paco and Marco had been texting Jeff non-stop for updates.

  Carmen stroked an unbruised section of Peter’s face, gently running her fingers over his stubbly jawline. “I want to fucking kill her,” she said to Tomassi when he came into the room.

  “I get it, believe me. But, right now, the law views her as in acute mental distress. Like a really high risk because she’s not in her right mind. She’s being held in a psych unit.”

  “Don’t be such a fool. She served him up on a plate. What makes you think she didn’t want to finish the job?”

  He patted her on the shoulder and sighed. They watched Peter until the orderlies came in to take him for more tests.

  “C’mon, Carm. Let me treat you to something good from Great Full Bread. I know the owners.”

  Vic dispatched Ian to do some legwork. He particularly wanted Ian to get pictures of the Consortium’s parking lot and all the vehicles that exited entered for the next few days.

  “Hit the DMV database, cross-reference plates, get into the nitty-gritty. Let’s get profiles on who comes in and out.”

  “Good idea,” Ian said, taking notes on his phone.

  “Yeah, no kidding. Hop to it.”

  Jade insisted on tagging along even though Ian wouldn’t tell her what Vic wanted him to do.

  “So what’s our next move?” she asked. The strained silence between them had faded but not vanished.

  “Ours? Between you and Andre.’ He shook his head. “Well, I hope he’s having fun at Disney World with the kids.”

  “Come on, Ian. Let me help. And text Andre about Peter. He’ll be mad you didn’t tell him.” She reached into his sweatshirt pocket and took out his phone. “Here.”

  Ian looked at her quizzically. “You have severe boundary issues. Hands out of my pockets, Miss.”

  Jade tapped him on the head with his phone. “What about Andre’s clients? You’re supposed to be covering them. You won’t even be able to train your own regulars if you’re off investigating. Put me to work. Think of it as part of my journey’s healing process.” She flashed a winning smile at him.

  “I dunno. Jade, you are complicating my very simple life. I don’t like complications.” Ian stood up very straight as he faced her.

  “But?” Her voice betrayed a touch of uncertainty.

  “No but.” Ian reached for her hand and contemplated her palm.

  “You should be looking at your own if you want to read your life.”

  “I’m reading yours. Does this crease right here mean you drive a very handsome Brit crazy?” He ran his finger over the spot to see if he could smooth it out, but the skin held its pucker.

  “Exactly.” She closed her fingers over his and they held each other’s smiles until Ian brought her hand up to his lips.

  Rachel walked in on them. “How is he?” she asked shakily. “I’m so scared for him.”

  “Go see your dad, he’s over there. Vic’s got some tasks for us.” Ian pointed down the hallway. Jade gave Rachel a hug and murmured encouragement.

  Rachel barely held it together as she flung herself into Jeff’s arms.

  “Rach, he’s gonna be OK. Good doctors, good lawyers, good friends. Right now, we need to focus on Great Full Bread because he can’t. Hey, good family, too.” Jeff massaged her slim shoulders. “Rach, it would kill him if the business fell apart because of Nancy.”

  Rachel nodded. “I have to see him. I’m staying put.” She waited in his room, tidying up all the empty coffee cups and smoothing the sheets.

  “I’m really worried about her. It’s too much stress. I knew it,” Jeff said to Carmen out in the hallway.

  “They’ve always had a tight bond. Annie’s got to call around to get more help, especially now that her wrist is a mess again.”

  “Sean’s really busy. Rachel goes ballistic when I hover. Too bad Mike Tomassi and his buddy, Josh, aren’t around. They were good. Who else?”

  “Marco?”

  “Yeah, I gotta ask Marco to be a superhero. And maybe his mother will help.”

  Jeff texted Marco to meet him at the commissary. Marco was sorting ingredients when Jeff made his pitch.

  “You got it. I’m here for Coach, you, the business, Rachel. Just so long as you keep doing the numbers. Hey, maybe you teach me some day.”

  “Absolutely. I’ll show you when everything’s back to normal. Plus, you’re getting extra in your paycheck.”

  Marco found Rachel crying later that day right by the door to the commissary. “It’s gonna be OK. You gotta have faith. Ima get Mami to help. Today you got me.” He held up his hand for a high-five, but she cried even harder.

  “You already do so much. I just don’t want anyone to think I can’t do it, like the pressure’s making me crack. I really need Pete to be OK. He’s my rock.”

  “Mine, too.” Marco found a shredded napkin in his back pocket and smoothed it before offering it to her. He patted her awkwardly on the arm although he really wanted to give her a hug. Jeff would probably appear the minute he touched her, and Marco knew how Jeff felt about him getting too close to Rachel.

  “We need your mom.” Rachel wiped her face and blew her nose carefully on the driest part of the napkin.

  “She’s in. Come on, don’t cry.” He held the door for her as they went inside and grabbed aprons.

  “My dad’s always watching me like a hawk to see if I relapse. He’s gonna make me if he keeps up like this.” Rachel threw him a hairnet and put one o
n herself.

  “It ain’t happening, girl. I got you. No relapses. Coach being out of action is tough, but we gonna get through this. He’s strong, he’s gonna be fine.” Marco held out his fist for her to bump. “Gimme some gloves, jefe. Safety first.”

  Rachel finally smiled. She made a delicate fist and tapped his waiting knuckles.

  CHAPTER 64

  WHEN PETER CAME HOME FROM THE HOSPITAL, he still had terrible bruising on his face plus the twenty staples sealing the deep gash from mid-ear to his scalp. Rachel brought Marco and Paco over for their first real face-to-face since the attack.

  “You gonna get a mad scar, Coach.”

  “I guess my leading man days are over. Hollywood will never call.” Peter winced as he smiled. “Christ, that hurts. Don’t make me laugh.”

  “Yo, Coach,” Paco said. “They say laughing’s dope medicine. Here, have a paleta—mixed berries.” He inspected Peter’s face closely and whistled. “Damn.”

  “You could always play what’s-his-name. Frankenstein.” Marco sat next to Peter on the couch and gave a blissed-out Brutus an extended belly rub. “Twins, man.”

  “Get the hell out of here and make us some money, guys. You too, Rach. This monster needs a nap.”

  Lori, deeply tanned, and Marti, painfully sunburned, arrived at Peter’s house immediately after their flight landed. Their delayed honeymoon had been worth the wait, but they cut out a couple of days’ plans to get back to Bridgeville.

  “Hawaii truly is paradise,” Marti said. “New England looks like another planet.”

  “With alien life forms,” Lori added.

  “It is.” Peter tried to focus on them, but he felt exhausted from all the visitors.

  “We sent you happy positive energy every day. Could you feel it?” Lori patted him on the arm.

  “I thought it was just gas”

  “Very funny.”

  Marti showed him the T-shirt they’d bought him. And the picture frame made out of koa wood. “In questionable taste maybe, but we understood you needed a new one.”

  “Ha. Very true. Say, Lor, I know you were pulling the strings behind the scene. What’s going on. Vic wouldn’t say much.”

  “That’s out of character,” Marti observed.

  “Well, obviously the good news is that you’re not in jail.” Lori took a bulging folder from her bag and started sorting through papers.

  “Yet,” Marti said. “No, seriously—I’m kidding.”

  “Could still happen, right? Nancy’s in a locked psych unit. But, I gotta say, she seemed sane to me.” Peter sunk back wearily onto a pillow propped up on the couch.

  “What exactly is the status of the documents and flash drive?” Lori asked.

  “I burned the documents and smashed the flash drive to smithereens with a hammer.”

  “Good. Then what?”

  “Then nothing. I did absolutely nothing. And there’s a stinking humongous water bottling plant up at the reservoir.”

  “Yeah, but you’re OK. No evidence to discover.”

  “Except for what the Consortium’s got and Nancy’s testimony.” Marti picked at her peeling sunburned arms as she thought.

  “Can you believe they tailed me everywhere after Zenergy? I’m too stupid to even see someone spying on me for two years.”

  “Yeah, but who would ever suspect big-league intrigue in boring old Bridgeville?” Lori asked. “Cat and mouse stuff.”

  “No shit. I’m a regular dumbass mouse, looking for cheese and living a little mouse life.” Peter sighed. “The cat won, and Eautopia’s pumping our water into millions of plastic bottles.”

  “No.” Marti stopped picking at herself for a minute. “The cat won the war, but they didn’t get the mouse. Tell him, Lor.”

  “Harassment, Peter. They spied on you illegally for two years. They violated your civil rights, your constitutional rights and thought they could get away with it. We threatened to file charges, bad publicity, the works.”

  “Tables turned, baby.” Marti high-fived Lori. Peter sat there, stunned into silence.

  “Wow. Vic basically told me to back off and get well. That you guys had a playbook.”

  “Yeah, it’s called grab them by the short hairs and stomp on their balls.” Marti turned to Lori. “Although that probably isn’t the legal term.”

  Lori leaned over to kiss her. “You got it right, babe. That’s exactly the legal term.”

  “Your lips to God’s ears.” Peter surprised them by wobbling to his feet and holding his arms open wide. “Get in here, girls.”

  CHAPTER 65

  NANCY LEARNED THE WAYS OF THE PSYCH UNIT without much trouble. After she got out of the padded rubber rooms, as the patients called them, roommates came and went, some screaming, some scarily frozen in silence. Daily activities were written on the chalkboard, and some of them had to be earned through good behavior. Air conditioning kept the floor cold, so much so that staff always wore jackets or sweatshirts. If Nancy had earned bonus points, they let her watch TV cuddled in a small fleece blanket in the common room. But that happened only when an aide sat next to her and she kept her hands on top of the blanket at all times. Once she tried to keep the soft blanket and take it back to her room, and she lost major points. Plus, she got called out in Group Meeting.

  “Sorry,” she mumbled.

  “Now you’ll remember,” came the stern reply. “Rules have to be followed or own the consequences, Nancy.”

  She got surprising and immediate attention to her physical problems resulting from the surgical complications. Despite being medicated to the gills, Nancy quickly got schooled on her new superpowers as an inpatient in a major teaching hospital. No longer a lowly outpatient for her post-infection needs, she went from fumbling all alone to briskly efficient twenty-four-hour medical management. Hospital personnel poked and stuck her purposefully. They spoke to her. Nurses handled her IV nutrition and wound care. They put ointments on her itches and were kind when she wept.

  As a psych admit on a white paper, Nancy’s situation typically wouldn’t have been noteworthy. But as an older female potentially facing an attempted murder rap, she aroused considerable curiosity and interest. She had frequent visits from hospital residents and fellows. Nancy still wailed and cried in her twice daily individual therapy sessions, but almost never in group meetings where she felt called to mother. Her sheer presence, pathetic as it seemed to her when she could form a thought, seemed to comfort many of the younger patients.

  “Can we call you Mom?” asked several of them, some just out of high school, some as old as her own sons, who never visited. A few called her Mizz Nancy, showing respect for her age and status as the matriarch of the locked unit. Occasionally, she saw a detox inpatient, who acknowledged her with a sorrowful nod from the depths of abject misery and tremors.

  Nancy’s body shrank, but she didn’t notice unless she saw her reflection in the silver-toned paneling of the elevator. She wore nothing but baggy sweats and slippers. Her hair had a huge white skunk stripe of undyed roots. Her flesh hung in folds, even on her face. When she changed her sweatshirt, ignoring her drain and pendulous loose rolls of drooping skin, she hurried. She hated seeing all the rashes and hives everywhere on her body. Mushrooming itches and erupting welts demanded that she scratch at herself with long jagged nails. A sympathetic nurse on her team tried to stop Nancy as she raked her body.

  “It’s a side effect of the meds. You have to stop.” The nurse gave her an oatmeal bath, slathered her body with super-strong hydrocortisone and cut her nails. Nancy cried with gratefulness.

  But still, Nancy scratched.

  “You’re going to give yourself more infections. Then, you’ll never get out of here. Come on, focus on how much weight you’ve lost since your surgery.” Her primary medical nurse tried to get Nancy to smile. “Let’s check today’s number.”

  Nancy dutifully got on the scale. “What does it say?”

  “185. Wow, that’s forty pounds in like two mo
nths. You’re doing so great.”

  Nancy clapped her hands, and then started to cry. “What about my itches? I’m so itchy again, I want to scratch all my skin off. Help me, please.”

  “Honey, I’ll talk to your doctor, but you need to tell him, too. You’re having some kind of extreme reaction. But you can’t scratch so much, or you’ll end up here forever.”

  “Forever like never leaving?” Nancy took a while to compute that amount of time.

  At night, Nancy tried to remember to rub and irritate the skin underneath her folds, especially around her breasts and thighs. Soon she had a fungal infection. Then she worked on her underarms. One roommate suggested rubbing feces on the festering sores.

  Nancy shrugged. The roommate had been there before.

  “I’m playing the long game,” she said to herself over and over, not sure if she was speaking out loud or whispering in her head.

  In therapy, she swore she didn’t remember attacking Peter. They pressed her on why she would attack a lifelong friend. She told them she didn’t do it. Someone else did, if it happened at all.

  “No, they’re lying, everyone’s lying.”

  Her other stock phrase worked well, too.

  “No, I don’t remember.” She wailed almost at will.

  “We’ll work slowly, Nancy. We’ll get there,” the residents and fellows said. They prescribed more drugs, more cognitive and dialectical behavior therapy, more itch cream.

  But she recalled almost every detail of her confrontation with Peter. Her arrest was the blank area.

  Every now and again, she told her roommate. “Oh, I remember. He bled like a pig.”

  “Haha, a dead pig.”

  “I remember.”

  If her roommate blabbed, Nancy bet no one would believe her.

  “She’s nuts. I barely believe her if she says it’s morning.” Nancy said this to herself or so she thought. The psych meds had powerful side effects. Some were good, like deep sleep. Others not so good, like the nightmares she couldn’t shake and the sepia tones that now were the only colors she saw. People’s faces all looked the same, too, kind of blurry and blubbery. She tried to remember to keep scratching. She played the long game.