Time Served Read online

  “What was she like?”

  I laugh roughly. “She was an awful mother. She was depressed. Drunk. She never wanted to live.”

  “And you did.”

  I hesitate. “Yes.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with that.”

  “I know.” But the tremor in my voice belies the statement.

  Baxter flips on his blinker and takes the Cranston exit. My heart pounds so hard I swear I can hear my pulse in my ears.

  “You going to make it?”

  “Is Sterling your father?”

  Baxter gives me a strange look, half smile, half perplexed. “Don’t tell anyone.”

  “Do you really like the Dixie Chicks?”

  “Is this revenge? I know your secrets, you need to know mine?”

  “Just for personal use.”

  “Yeah, I like the Dixie Chicks.”

  “Name three songs.”

  He rattles off twelve. “That’s just the first album,” he adds. “Should I go on?”

  “Do you think this woman is the one we’re looking for?”

  Baxter laughs. “If I knew for sure, I’d have started here.”

  * * *

  The Cranston Family Clinic is located in a small plaza just a short trip from the highway. We pull into the crowded parking lot and I take a deep breath, letting it out slowly as I scan the long, one-story structure. It’s changed little since I last saw it, the addition of a large grocery store on one end being the most notable improvement. The orange roof, post office, drugstore, fast-food restaurants and shops have gone untouched.

  Baxter squeezes past an abandoned shopping cart and into a space close to the plaza. My hand is clammy when I push open the door and step out into the humid air.

  “Am I crazy or is it much hotter here?” I wheeze, fanning myself as I feel sweat gathering at the back of my neck.

  “It’s hot. No mountains, no water sources... Why do you think they called it Riverside if there was no river?”

  We pause at the crosswalk to let a rusted pickup roll by and I consider the question all Riverside residents have asked at some point. The only time we saw running water outside was when a particularly heavy storm flooded the drainage ditch, sending pathways of filthy water winding through the park.

  “Marketing ploy, I guess.” I follow Baxter up to the clinic. He pulls open the heavy glass door, peeling letters identifying the three physicians regularly on call, Dr. Ash not among them.

  “After you.”

  I take another breath and step inside. Anxiety about being in Cranston mingles with my hope that this woman is the one we’ve been searching for and makes me particularly jittery.

  “Hi.” Baxter smiles at the tired woman running the front desk, her bleached hair pulled back in a tight ponytail.

  “Can I help you?”

  “Yes. My name is Adam Jones, I have an appointment with Dr. Ash at five.”

  The receptionist consults a file on her desk and nods at the crowded waiting area, three rows of plastic seats scattered with toys. “Have a seat.”

  I fix Baxter with a suspicious stare as we take a seat in the corner, moving magazines so we can sit side by side. “Appointment?” I echo in a low voice, ignoring the fake name.

  He shrugs. “No walk-ins.”

  “You said this was a spontaneous visit.”

  “It is. I had an appointment for Friday, but after the meeting in Springfield I called to move it up. My symptoms have worsened.”

  “I think I might know the problem,” I bite out. “You’re a huge liar.”

  He elbows me in the ribs. “That’s my job.”

  Walking in we’d garnered a few odd stares, Baxter’s colorful outfit and my “drinking wine on a moored boat” ensemble out of place among the denim shorts and T-shirts apparently favored by Cranston’s sick and unwell. By now everyone has returned to their own bored musings, staring idly at an infomercial playing on a flickering television, children fighting over cheap plastic toys.

  We’re in the row farthest from the front desk, and at the end of the aisle is a middle-aged man with a young girl in a wheelchair. I watch out the corner of my eye as he whispers in her ear, making her giggle and wave her arms in uncoordinated glee.

  “Are you going to tell me what’s going on?” I ask Baxter when a few minutes have passed. “I’m here, now spill. Who do you think contacted Dr. Cortez?”

  “Adam Jones?”

  “I’ll know for sure in a minute,” Baxter whispers, standing.

  I roll my eyes and cross my arms, glaring at his back as he follows a nurse down a dingy hall and into a waiting room. Because there’s nothing else to do, I sigh and pick up an old copy of Reader’s Digest, skimming the jokes and trying not to fidget too much. I don’t like doctor’s offices; I never have. This isn’t the one I’d visited on very rare occasions growing up, but it feels the same: small, cluttered and hopeless. I peer down the hall, willing Baxter and his fake symptoms to hurry up and find a cure so we can get out of here and back to our real lives.

  “I thought that was you.”

  I freeze, certain the comment isn’t for me, but the appearance of a denim-covered knee near my own defies that logic. I lift my head, guilty eyes turning to meet those of the man I’d assumed was middle-aged but who, it turns out, is just two years older than me.

  “Kurt Cafferty?”

  He smiles, revealing the chipped front tooth he’d gotten as a ten-year-old playing stickball with a rock after we’d lost our tennis ball in the weeds.

  “What are you doing here?” I ask stupidly. “No, I mean, that’s obvious—” I cut myself off, blushing furiously as I glimpse the wheelchair-bound little girl peering down the aisle at us. “What I’m trying—”

  Kurt shakes his head and laughs, a familiar sound, even as the wrinkles around his eyes and the receding hairline make the gesture seem odd and out of place. I know from Dean that Kurt has a wife and three children, one of whom is smiling at me from over his shoulder, waving at me with her pinkie finger.

  I paste on a smile and wave back, feeling ridiculous.

  “What the hell are you doing in Cranston?” he asks. He looks me over from head to toe, expression never changing. I feel like he’s committing my appearance to memory so he can tell people about it later, but I don’t discern any judgment in his gaze.

  “My friend,” I say weakly, gesturing down the hall. “He had an appointment.” This is technically true, so why do I feel like such a liar uttering the words? Knowing that Baxter and I are taking up time and space when so many people need it more? Are the walls closing in? Is that why I suddenly feel so hot and sick?

  “Are you living here now?” Kurt’s pale eyes flicker to the thin gold chain around my neck as though it contains the answer.

  “Ah, no. Chicago. You?”

  Kurt nods, still smiling. “Yeah. We rent a place in town. Ally’s working at—” He cuts himself off. “I guess you wouldn’t know, actually. Ally and I are married now, we’ve got three girls. Triplets.” He nods at the daughter who has gotten bored of us and is now watching television. “That’s Sabrina. She’s six. The other two are at home.”

  “Congratulations,” I say past the lump in my throat. I don’t know why I don’t tell him I know this, or maybe I do—I don’t want anyone to know about Dean. And I don’t want him to know that deep down, what I’m really thinking is, Thank God it’s not me.

  “Thanks.” He looks at me speculatively. “I’ve gotta tell you, Rachel, I never thought I’d see you again. We all figured you’d run off with some rich guy and made a new life for yourself.”

  The hypothesis isn’t that far-fetched. Ally and I had been best friends forever, born a week apart. We’d known Dean and Kurt all along, but it wasn’t until Dean and I got together that Kurt and Ally had been thrown into constant cantankerous proximity. Kurt’s interest in Ally was well-known, evidenced by him poking fun at her every time the opportunity presented itself, and her cursing him out with word
s I still don’t have the nerve to say out loud. He’d waxed poetic about the four of us growing old together, living side by side, our kids falling in love, all that romantic crap. Our futures were laid out for us, and sad carbon copies lined the cracked strip of asphalt we wryly referred to as “Main Street”: girls who’d planned for lives away from Riverside—New York and Hollywood, Miami and Dallas—anything but this. And then they’d meet somebody, think it was love and the next thing they knew they had a trailer of their own, a baby to feed and a shackle around their ankle, tying yet another generation to this wasted land. Ally always said she didn’t want to be one of those women, but she never said what it was she wanted instead. I’d kept my hopes to myself for the most part, but they’d always been there, the thing that kept me going, the thing that would ultimately take me away.

  “No,” I say with a forced laugh. “I ran away by myself.”

  The smile fades. “That’s good. That’s real good.”

  “I just...” I don’t know what to tell him. I didn’t want to turn out like you? I didn’t want to be anchored down to a place that was slowly sinking? “That’s all,” I say, shaking my head. “I don’t know what I was going to say.”

  Kurt looks as though he’s ready to add something, but Baxter interrupts. “Rachel,” he calls, drawing the attention of everyone in the room. “Ready?” He’s got the same tight, angry look on his face that he had this morning in Springfield. Whatever he’s found out isn’t good.

  I’m suddenly so dizzy it’s a struggle to stand, even though I desperately want to make a mad dash back to the car. “I’m ready.” I rise and turn back to Kurt. “It was great seeing you again,” I lie. “Say hi to Ally. Bye, Sabrina.”

  Sabrina flicks a hand in my direction, eyes glued to the television.

  “You coming back next weekend?” Kurt asks, halting my escape.

  I freeze, slowly turning, hoping I don’t look as guilty as I feel at the mention of the anniversary of my mother’s death. “Maybe. Work and stuff...” Why have I forgotten how to speak intelligently? Is this what happens when I get close to Riverside—my brain and common sense flee? “Maybe,” I repeat lamely.

  Kurt nods, glancing between Baxter and me. “Well then,” he says with another small smile. “Maybe we’ll see you.”

  My legs turn to jelly the second we exit the clinic and I clutch a parking sign for balance. Baxter grips my upper arm and drags me across the street, pulling open the passenger side door and stuffing me inside. I catch a glimpse of my appearance in the mirror. I’m as white as a ghost.

  “Oh God,” I moan, lifting a hand to massage my temples, aware that my shirt is sticky with sweat. “What’s wrong with me?”

  Baxter twists the key in the ignition, turns on the air conditioner and waits for the car to cool. “You’re having a panic attack,” he says calmly.

  I sit up straight. “What? I am not.” Then the car spins—or maybe it’s the parking lot that’s moving—and I slump back in the seat. “I’m just...hot. And tired. And hungry. Too much driving.”

  Baxter doesn’t argue, merely looks over his shoulder and backs out of the parking spot. I’m silent as he navigates his way back to the highway, pointing us toward home.

  “Thank God,” I murmur, watching Cranston shrink in the rearview mirror, feeling my pulse slow. “I think I caught something when I was in there. Maybe I need antibiotics.”

  “Valium, maybe,” Baxter answers, “but not antibiotics.”

  I shudder in my seat. “I went to school with that guy. We used to hang out all the time.”

  “He seemed to tolerate you okay.”

  “I’m never going back there.”

  “What about next weekend?”

  “Absolutely not.”

  “You said maybe.”

  I glare at Baxter out the corner of my eye. “I lied. Your ‘illness’ might be contagious.”

  He smiles, guilty as charged.

  “What’d you find out?” I ask, remembering that the visit wasn’t just about me. “Was that her?”

  Baxter nods, that angry tension filling his face again. “It was.”

  “And...she didn’t want to help?”

  He shakes his head. “Not quite.”

  “Then what?”

  He glances at me and sighs, irritated. “She’d already helped.”

  “What does that mean?” I sit up straighter. “The same...”

  “Yeah. The person who contacted Dr. Cortez in Springfield also contacted Dr. Ash in Cranston.”

  I have so many questions. “But who...? And why? And how? And what did she tell them?”

  Baxter runs a hand over his mouth as though tracing an imaginary moustache. “Do you know Derek Berry?”

  I frown, picturing a stern face with close-set eyes and a pug nose. “I feel like I should.”

  “He’s one of the other investigators at the firm.”

  “Our firm?” The question is rhetorical; now that he says it, I can see Derek Berry walking the halls with his short, squat steps and stupid fedora.

  Baxter nods. “Yeah. He normally works directly for the partners.”

  “Are you saying one of the partners sent Derek Berry—” Now I get the strawberry ice cream connection, “—to Cranston to interview Dr. Ash? Without telling me? Knowing that we’re looking for her too?”

  Baxter’s fingers tighten on the wheel, squeezing so hard his knuckles turn white. “No. Not a partner.”

  “Then who?”

  He glances at me then, and the look in his eyes tells me all I need to know. “Caitlin Dufresne?” I gasp.

  He nods again.

  “But how?”

  “Who else knows about Nunes and the doctor’s note?”

  “Just Parker. And Sterling. And I know she’s banging the partners—sorry—” Baxter shrugs. “But I don’t see Sterling telling Caitlin about this. Not when Nunes is my case and the note would confirm him as Patient Zero.” And then, even as I utter the term that Adrian coined, I feel a sharp pain in my stomach, as though he’d pulled that silver spoon out of his ass and stabbed me with it. “Adrian,” I whisper.

  “Ash had the voice mails from him and Berry on her phone,” Baxter confirms, changing lanes and picking up speed. “He asked about the note and left her Caitlin’s number in case she wanted to check his story.”

  “Did she?”

  “Yeah. She wasn’t surprised to get a call. She knew this Harco-99 shit was bad and people were covering it up, so she made copies of her patient records and brought them with her, just in case. And I guess she found Caitlin’s story pretty damn believable, because she dug the note out of her old files and sent her a copy.”

  My stomach drops. “You’re kidding.”

  “No. Caitlin got it yesterday. And if I’m not mistaken...”

  “She told the partners.”

  “Most likely.”

  “She’s trying to steal my case.”

  Baxter nods. “She doesn’t give a damn about Nunes or the doctor’s note. But if she’s on record as finding Patient Zero—”

  “Haines will give her second chair.”

  Chapter Twelve

  We hit traffic heading back to the city and it’s seven thirty when Baxter drops me off in front of the offices. We’d both agreed we were in no shape to see Adrian without ripping his face off, so I’d settled for sending Parker a text—Don’t trust that rat-faced fuck Adrian—and waiting out front for Dean, who I’d also texted to notify I was running late.”You made it.”

  I turn from watching Baxter drive off to see Dean approaching from a bench by the building.

  “Sorry I’m late.”

  As always he’s wearing sweats and a hoodie, and as always, he shrugs. “Thanks for telling me.”

  He’s got a dark bruise on his cheekbone and a cut on his lip. I want to ask about the fight, but know that I shouldn’t. So I hesitate, unsure of what to do next. “Do you have the letter from Reginald?” I ask finally.

  I can’t be
certain, but something flickers across Dean’s face, replaced almost instantly by that calm, cold mask. Disappointment, maybe?

  “Yeah.” He sets his gym bag down on the sidewalk and crouches in front of it, rooting around before pulling out a cream-colored envelope with several folded pages inside. I squint at the bag, spotting what looks like a binder and a tie jumbled among its contents, before Dean zips it back up and stands, staring down at me. “That all?” he asks.

  I hold the envelope in my fingers, recognizing the logo as that of another large Chicago firm. Why would Ruthie send fake legal papers when she had a real lawyer? Or did she only hire them after hearing from me?

  “Rachel?”

  I blink and look up at Dean. “Sorry,” I say at the same moment my stomach growls. Loudly. I blush. “Sorry,” I echo.

  He nods, watching me.

  “Um...” I look around at the people rushing by, suits and briefcases, high heels and manicures. No one notices me, but plenty of eyes linger on Dean, drawn to his size, his casual attire in a sea of businesspeople. “Are you hungry?”

  The predictable shrug. “I could eat.”

  “Okay. I know a place.”

  He falls into step beside me, careful to keep space between us so we don’t touch. I don’t know how I feel about the distance he’s deliberately keeping, but I’m too distracted by my fury at Caitlin and Adrian to dwell on it. Baxter had suggested we use the car ride to vent our frustrations and after nearly two hours of rather extreme cursing and venomous, creative insult manufacturing, I’m spent. Or I should be. The mere recollection of their betrayal makes me simmer with renewed rage.

  “This is it,” I say too sharply, stopping when we nearly pass the restaurant. Zadie’s is a small bistro that looks deceptively casual but attracts a decidedly upscale clientele. It’s always packed with businessmen and women, and the partners at the firm love it. I’d represented the restaurant in a wrongful dismissal case my second year at the firm—which I’d won—and I now merit a prime table every time I drop by.

  George, the manager, spots me—well, he spots Dean—when we enter, and approaches with a smile. “Rachel!” he exclaims, kissing me on both cheeks. “Long time.” He gives Dean a curious once-over.