Live to Tell (Detective D.D. Warren, #4)(108)

“Lightfoot told us he didn’t know Tika Solis, when he did.”

“And Greg said he’d never met Tika’s family, when he had.”

“Actually,” D.D. pointed out, “Greg never said he hadn’t met the family. He just said they didn’t visit the ward.”

Alex gave her a look. “You’re letting him off on a technicality? Remind me to wear more tight-fitting T-shirts and speak in a baritone.”

D.D. rolled her eyes. “Don’t get me wrong—Gym Coach still makes the most sense. After all, Lightfoot wasn’t working the night Lucy was hanged. Plus, there’s the matter of him being poisoned.”

Alex nodded. “Kind of wonder,” he said as they rounded the fifth-floor landing. “First we had no links between the families, now we have all kinds: the unit, an MC/respite worker, and the local spiritual healer. Begs the question, who else don’t we know about? Mentally ill kids appears to be a small and incestuous world. So maybe there are other experts—a psychiatrist, a therapist, a respite worker, a nurse?”

“Meaning we should check in with Phil and Neil: Phil, who’s running the background reports, and Neil, who’s making the list of all the employees who regularly visit the unit. Put those two items together …”

“See who else shakes out.”

D.D. liked it. They had four more flights to go, so she worked her cell phone.

She got Phil on the first ring. He sounded tired and hungry. Apparently, back at the ranch, they hadn’t gotten around to take-out pizza. Then again, HQ hadn’t dealt with a bunch of kids threatening to gouge out eyeballs. Win some, lose some.

So far, Phil had covered the basics: DMV records, employment history, and various criminal databases. Running the list of employees that Karen had supplied, Phil could report that no one had any outstanding warrants or history of arrest. Ed, the burly MC, liked to speed, and Danielle needed to clean up a few parking tickets. Greg, on the other hand, was clean as a whistle. D.D. supplied the MC’s sordid family history. Phil promised to dig deeper into Greg and his sister’s past.

“Though, by the sound of it, Sally was a juvenile and it never went to trial, so not sure what I’ll find in the system,” Phil warned.

“Let’s start with verifying that Sally exists, that her parents were poisoned with strychnine, and that her current residence is costing Greg an extra twenty grand a year.”

“That I can do.” D.D. could practically hear Phil cracking his knuckles over the phone lines. He loved a good data search.

“Have you heard from Neil? How’s he coming with the list of other hospital employees, contractors, etc.?” D.D. asked.

“He turned in a preliminary list of janitors, food service workers, deliverymen, and a few contractors an hour ago. Still working on those, though one name did jump out—the healer, Andrew Lightfoot. Guessing Lightfoot’s not a real name, because it’s not in the system.”

D.D. glanced at Alex, then remembered. “He mentioned in the first interview that he reverted to an old family name. Sounded better for business.”

“Well, if you want the skinny, get me better info.”

“Deal.” D.D. snapped her phone shut, turned to Alex. “More questions for Lightfoot,” she reported. “Starting with his real last name.”

Which shouldn’t have been too hard, except when they reached the main ward of the hospital, Lightfoot had disappeared.





| CHAPTER

THIRTY-SEVEN





DANIELLE


“Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked Greg.

“Why didn’t you ever ask?” he replied.

We were huddled at the interrogation table, confined to the classroom, under another detective’s watchful eye. The nanny detective was on the other side of the room, eating pizza and reading files. That gave us the illusion of privacy, though he probably had crack hearing and was writing down every word we said.

“I would’ve understood,” I said. I sounded petulant, even to me. Greg’s secrets angered me. I was the one with baggage. He was supposed to be an open book. Now I had to face the fact that Greg had his own tragic past, and was still a better-adjusted person than me.

Greg regarded me thoughtfully. “Why?”

“How can you even ask? Your family history, my family history. You could have told me about your sister. I would’ve understood!”

“Why?” he asked again. “For me to presume to know what you’re feeling, for you to presume to know what I’m feeling …” He shrugged. “Isn’t there some quote: ‘All happy families are alike, but each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way’?”

“Anna Karenina. Only line of the book I read. But still …” I sat back, hands tucked in my front pockets, still scowling. “Most people know who their families were, or what their families were. But we don’t. Our family history remains a question mark. Was your father that bad or was your sister that ill? Was my father that bad or did the drinking make him that ill? We don’t know. We’ll never know. And that kind of not knowing really sucks.”

“I miss my parents,” Greg said after a moment. “My dad was a good dad to me. My mom was a good mom. I wish they could see me now. I wish they could know that at least one of their kids got it right.”