I said, “Who found her?”
Another pause, another blink. “A staff person coming on shift who’d parked nearby.”
I thought:Maybe a doctor or a nurse.
“How was she found?”
“By accident. She’d been left in an out-of-the-way spot, near a hedge behind an outer row of cars, and the person just happened to spot her feet. The lot was patrolled on a regular basis but you’d have to be poking around to find her.”
“No cameras?”
“Not right there. What a horrible thing to do to someone, Alex. She’s blind, quadriplegic, and cognitively impaired. Twenty-six years old and under full-time care.”
“God.”
“Apparently God wasn’t paying attention that night.” Her lips vibrated. “Twenty-six years old, Alex. Whoever did that to her is pure evil. Does it sound like your dead bad guy?”
“It sounds exactly like him. There was no police investigation?”
“Nope, that was part of the deal. There was a lot of pressure to deal with it quickly.”
I said, “What can you tell me about her?”
“That’s all I’m at liberty to say. The payout was huge and any disruption of the settlement would be disastrous. For the family and for the hospital. The place is already in financial straits, last thing it needs is a scandal.”
“The family had no interest in knowing who hurt their daughter?”
“I can’t speak for the family and I’m certainly not going to judge. My source wondered if a criminal case would even go anywhere, assuming they could find a suspect. Even if they did, the schmuck could claim she overdosed herself, he tried to take her to the E.R. but she fought him, ran away, and ended up behind the cars. Can you imagine what the media would do with something like that? The hospital gets screwed, the victim gets dragged through the mud, talk about a shitshow.”
She turned but looked past me at the passenger door. Wanting me gone but too much of a friend to expel me.
I said, “How about this: Give me her name and I’ll do my own research—nothing official, just basic internet stuff. If I learn something relevant, I’ll let you know, you can pass it along to your source and see what they think.”
“You’d hold back on your cop pal.”
“I would.”
“You wouldn’t go to all this trouble for some scumbag who rapes and dumps women,” she said. “So it must be the second murder that’s motivating you. Who’s that victim?”
“A musician murdered in cold blood,” I said. “And a third victim has just surfaced. A mother shot in front of her two-year-old.”
Her palms slapped together and remained fused. “Good Lord, Alex, how can you stand to live in that world, even part-time?”
A question I’d long stopped asking myself.
I said, “It can be challenging, Lee. But it’s not that different from the other work I do. From what you do.”
“Uh-uh, I’m sorry, that makes no sense to me.”
“Different tools for trying to fix the world.”
“That’s areallybig stretch, Alex—sorry, who am I to judge, your choices are yours.”
Neither of us talked for a few moments.
Lee said, “Got a local anesthetic?”
“For what?”
