Paranoid(105)

“It’s about the night Luke Hollander died.”

“What? Luke Hollander?” Moretti blanched a little. “That’s out of left field, isn’t it? I’m here because my son is missing.”

“But you were the doctor who attended to him that night.”

“That’s right. They brought him directly to St. Augustine’s. It served as an emergency room, or an urgent care for locals back then. I was on call and met the ambulance there.”

“You pronounced him DOA.”

Moretti paused a second, looked away, remembering. “Yes. That’s right. It was a chaotic night. The shooting at the cannery, all the kids involved, my boy included.” A muscle worked near his temple. “Ned came in. . . .” He let the sentence trail, remembering.

“Ned took Rachel to the station.” Which wasn’t protocol.

“Yeah . . . Everything was topsy-turvy that night. Nothing made any sense.”

“But Luke was dead when he got there?” Cade asked.

Moretti had been looking at the floor, caught in thought; now his head snapped up.

“That’s what you wrote in the report and on the death certificate,” Cade pointed out.

He nodded. “That’s right.” But he said it slowly, as if anticipating Cade’s next question.

“But the EMT who was attending swore he was still alive.”

“One of them,” Moretti said quickly. “The other agreed with me.”

“So why the discrepancy?” Cade watched the doctor carefully.

Moretti’s throat worked. He scratched his cheek. “As I said it was a crazy night. Kids being rounded up, some brought here, to this station, Luke dead, his sister having pulled the trigger. Ned Gaston, he was a mess.”

Cade didn’t doubt that. The night of Luke’s death was the beginning of the end of Ned’s career and had exacerbated the breakdown of his marriage. From the point that he’d brought his daughter into the station, his drinking had increased, his temper flaring more easily, his whole life seeming to crumble. Cade knew. He’d witnessed it firsthand during the tenure of his own marriage. “So what happened?”

The doctor’s back stiffened. “Luke Hollander died.”

“When?” Cade pushed.

Moretti’s mouth opened and closed.

“He wasn’t dead when he got there, right?”

“He . . . he was gone.”

“Tell me.” He wasn’t buying the doctor’s story.

Moretti’s eyes shifted away.

“What happened?”

“He was . . . he was . . . dead.”

“Was he?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. Good to know. Because I’m reopening the case,” Cade said, stretching the truth. “And the EMTs who brought him in, even a nurse on duty, I’ve already talked to them and they’re coming in later, to corroborate your story.”

“Why? When you have murders to solve and my son to find? Why would you bother?”

“Because it’s all linked together.”

“That’s ridiculous. Luke died twenty years ago.”

“And someone’s pissed now. The crimes are linked, Moretti, and your son is somehow involved.”

“Oh, Jesus. No. You don’t think Nate’s . . . He would never harm anyone. No, no, no . . .”

Cade just stared at him. The questions still hanging. “Okay, then, we’ll go at it through the staff that was at the hospital that night and the rescue workers. Someone will remember something and maybe, just maybe, it’ll help us find your son.”

“I don’t see how,” Moretti said weakly as the sound of footsteps could be heard through the partially open door. He glanced through the opening and his face collapsed as he spied his wife. In a second, he drew a breath. “I don’t want Janine to know,” he said. “Let me take her home and . . .”

“Now, Moretti,” Cade said and opened the door. To Voss, he said, “We’ll just be a minute more. Maybe you can walk Mrs. Moretti to the car.”

“Sure,” Voss agreed, giving him the what’s-up look but touching Nate’s mother on her elbow, then saying to her, “This way.”

“Richard?” his wife asked.

“I’ll just be a minute.” He offered her a weak smile as they passed.

Cade pushed the door closed. “So,” he said, “did you help Luke Hollander get out of this world, Doctor?”

Moretti’s knees started to buckle and Cade caught him.

“Did you?”

“Oh, God.” Moretti fell into a vacant visitor’s chair. “No,” he said, and shook his head vehemently. But his entire body had seemed to fold in on itself and he held his head in his hands. “But . . . but I didn’t do everything to save him. He was too far gone, he’d lost too much blood, his brain starved of oxygen, comatose, totally unresponsive. Had he lived, he would have been a vegetable.... When Ned said to ‘let him go,’ I . . . I wrestled with my conscience, with my oath as a doctor, with what was truly life and . . . oh, Jesus . . .”

“You didn’t do anything to save him,” Cade said, finally getting it.

“He was too far gone . . . and Ned said it would be a living death for Melinda to have her boy alive but not . . . unable to function. . . .”