“No,” Tag said. “She’d taken care of him, she tried to hide that he was sick so he wouldn’t be sent away, and she’d sing to him when he couldn’t sleep. I don’t know if Maria is involved in something criminal or having a break from reality, but she obviously cared for this baby.”
Tancredi nodded and wrote that down. Her pen scratched across the narrow span of paper from one side to the other in a wall of neatly rounded-off letters. Tag watched her for a second and then shoved his hands into his pockets.
“What does Bass have to do with this?” he asked. “Nico Sebastiani?”
It was a good name. Tag was caught between the old scrape of fear that he’d been played for a fool—Again, an inner voice that sounded a lot like Kieran noted—and idle curiosity about whether the name fit Bass or not. He tried to focus on the more important question.
“That’s nothing for you to worry about, sir,” Tancredi said. She licked her thumb and turned the page. “Did Maria mention any other names? Marc Gulliver? Nathan Cochrane.”
Tag gave her a started look. “What…. No.”
“But there’s something?” Tancredi said. “You know the names.”
“I’m a gentleman,” Tag said. “I try to remember the names of everyone whose internal organs I’ve stuck my fingers in recently.”
Tancredi stared at him for a moment and then gave a grudging nod. “Fair point,” she said. “Although if you weren’t a surgeon, that would be a very disturbing thing to say. But you never heard those names or anything like them from Maria.”
He could honestly answer no to that, and it seemed like Tancredi had finally run out of ways to ask the same question over and over. She tucked her notebook back into her pocket and scrambled up, vaguely graceless, from the chair.
“If you think of anything, call me,” she said as she handed him another one of her cards. “If you see Maria again, get in touch. She isn’t going to be in trouble.”
Tag took the card. He flicked the stiff edge of it with his thumb. “You don’t know that,” he said.
“No,” she admitted. “But I hope it’s true.”
Tag tucked the card in his pocket and turned his back on her as he stared at an old poster on the wall. In a series of useful vignettes, a cartoon heart encouraged people with depression to talk to someone.
“Are the Corpse Brothers MC involved in this investigation?” he blurted before he could think better of it. “Is that why you asked about Bass?”
There was a chance he’d missed her, that she wouldn’t hear him on her way out the door. He wasn’t sure if that would have made his life easier or not. Unfortunately he didn’t think his conscience would take “Well, I tried” as good enough. It didn’t matter anyhow because he heard the creak of the door as it swung back against her hand.
“That isn’t something I can comment on at this stage of the investigation,” Tancredi said. “Why do you ask?”
Tag gave the little heart a dirty look, as though this were its inspirational fault, and turned around. He hesitated uncomfortably as he weighed his loyalties. This was information he’d been told in confidence by one friend and that he knew someone he cared about probably wouldn’t appreciate him sharing.
“Why would Maria know Doctor Cochrane?”
“I don’t know if she does,” Tancredi said. “His name just came up in connection with our inquiries. Do you know something about him?”
“I don’t. I just heard some gossip. Somebody could have just made it up and passed it around.”
“Or?” Tancredi closed the door. “This can be in total confidence, Dr. Hayes. If there’s something you know that can help that baby, you have to tell us.”
“The rumor is that Nathan sold Shepherd prescriptions for pain pills to pay for his own addiction. The hospital hushed it up back then, but Nathan lost everything—his house, his wife, nearly his career. He had to sell everything to pay back the hospital and get Shepherd off his back.”
He’d meant it to be news. Tancredi just looked slightly disappointed, as though he’d built her up to expect more.
“Thank you, Dr. Hayes,” she said. “I appreciate the…. Wait, back then? When was this?”
“Before my time,” Tag said. “Ten, twelve years?”
Tancredi bit her lower lip as excitement sparked in her eyes. That was more the reaction he’d expected, although he wasn’t sure why the timeline mattered.
“That could be… useful,” she said. “Thank you, Dr. Hayes.”
This time it sounded as though she meant it.
TAG FELTa wash of relief as the social worker finally arrived after nearly a week to take Ribka to his foster home. It didn’t really make any difference to him, he supposed. The police had taken the carrier and the small bag of clothes that Maria had put together for the baby, so he had nothing to hand over. And just because he was the one to check the baby into the hospital, that didn’t give him any actual legal standing.
