The Night Visitor Page 6

  “We just want to ask some follow-up questions,” Auburn said. “Mr. Tate, we’d like your assurance that you won’t leave town, at least for the time being.”

  “You’ve got it,” Richard said.

  Leland said, “I think everyone can agree that Richard did a courageous thing tonight. He saved Rory’s life and probably the lives of others. Several of your colleagues even congratulated Richard. He’s a hero.”

  Rodriguez and Auburn watched Declues, their expressions deadpan.

  Auburn said, “Mr. Tate, tell me where you were and what you did when you saw Danny go onto the stage.”

  Richard leaned back in his chair and propped his feet on his desk. He puffed his cigar and cradled the snifter. “It took me a minute to recognize that it was Junior Lara’s brother. Even before he grabbed Rory, I knew he was up to no good. I told Richie to get the women out while I slipped around the back and headed for my office to get my gun.”

  “Had Danny shown his weapon yet?” Auburn smoothed his thick brown moustache with his fingers.

  “No, but I didn’t think he was up there to let us know that he’d submitted a strongly worded editorial to the Pasadena Star-News.”

  He, Richie, and Leland chuckled.

  Auburn said, “Mr. Tate, what did you do after you got your gun?”

  “I positioned myself behind those hydrangeas in back of the stage.” Richard pointed through the panes of the French doors. “By that time, Danny had Rory in a headlock. What would you do if some guy were holding a gun to your daughter’s head?”

  “You saw him holding a gun on Rory?” Auburn asked.

  “Of course. I waited for a good clean shot. Took my time. Knew I’d have just one chance. Danny moved the gun away from her. I saw my chance and took it. It’s a sad thing. I wish it could have turned out differently.” Richard took another puff of his cigar.

  “The police hostage negotiator was trying to make contact with Danny,” Auburn said. “Why didn’t you wait for the police to do their job?”

  “Negotiate?” Richard said. “With a lunatic? Detective, I appreciate that you don’t want citizens taking the law into their own hands, but would you take the odds of the police talking a madman with a vendetta into putting down his gun or would you do what you could to save your child?”

  Auburn looked at Rodriguez. Neither responded to Richard’s question. Auburn said, “Gentlemen, thank you for your cooperation. We’ll be in touch.”

  The detectives left.

  In the garden, police were still working the crime scene as news helicopters circled overhead. Most of the party guests and staff had left.

  Rodriguez said, “If it was me in that situation, I’d feel justified in taking the shot.”

  Auburn drew in a long breath and looked at the city lights. “The DA won’t file charges. They’ll never find a jury that’ll convict Richard Tate.”

  “He acted in defense of his family and home.”

  “And he used the perfect assassination tool to do it.” Auburn turned his head and frowned into the distance, as if picking out the shimmering lights of one house in particular. “Let’s go to Eagle Rock and talk to Danny’s mom and his sister. They live in the same neighborhood. I’d been meaning to check in on them and see how they’re doing, but not like this.”

  18

  “Good morning. I’m Dr. Toshiko Ballard.” She was Japanese American and had a slight build and straight black hair cut into a bob. “Are you Rory’s mother?”

  “Yes, I’m Evelyn.”

  “Nice to meet you.”

  Evelyn thought Dr. Ballard looked like an eager college freshman, and that hardly inspired confidence. “A pleasure. This is Rory’s fiancé, Tom Fuller.”

  The doctor shook his hand. “Hello, Tom. We’ll talk in a moment. First, let’s see how Rory is doing.”

  She went to a dispenser of hand sanitizer on a wall and rubbed gel onto her hands before going to Rory’s bedside. She spoke softly. “Hello, Rory. It’s Dr. Ballard, here to bother you again.”

  With her thumb and forefinger, she pulled Rory’s eyelids apart and flashed a penlight in each eye.

  Rory tried to squirm away. “Nnn…Stop.” Her eyelids dropped closed when the doctor released them.

  The doctor flipped up the blanket to expose Rory’s feet. She scratched the bottom of each foot with the cap of her ballpoint pen. Rory arched her feet and withdrew her legs.

  “Rory, open your eyes.” The doctor repeated more slowly, “Open your eyes.”

  Rory opened her eyes.

  “Is your name Rory?”

  Rory stared at the doctor, her gaze confused.

  “Is your name Rory?”

  “Rory mmenta…lng…”

  “Rory, do you know where you are?”

  “Are?”

  “Do you know where you are?”

  “Whr…are.”

  Dr. Ballard stroked Rory’s long blond hair, which had been taken down from the updo she’d worn at the ball. Her hair was tacky with hairspray. “You’re doing great, Rory.”

  Rory’s eyelids drifted closed.

  The doctor rubbed Rory’s cheek with the backs of her fingers. Then she turned and crossed the room, saying to Tom and Evelyn as she passed, “Let’s talk outside.”

  They followed her to the nurses station in the center of the ICU.

  Dr. Ballard reached over the counter and grabbed a pad of paper printed with a pharmaceutical company’s logo. Taking a pen from the breast pocket of her white lab coat, she drew an oval and, next to it, a rough rendering of a human head in profile. She spoke as she drew.

  “When Rory fell, she hit the back of her head, causing blunt-force trauma here.” The doctor circled an area at the bottom of the oval and on the back of the profile. “The jolt jostled the brain, causing concussion. A concussion is typically a mild form of traumatic brain injury and usually results in temporary neurological changes. In a small number of concussion patients, there are more serious effects, as we see with Rory. Her CT scan and MRI don’t indicate skull fracture or hemorrhage, which is very fortunate. However, there is some swelling.”

  “That’s what Dr. Gaspar said,” Evelyn said. “Why does that happen?”

  “The brain, for all its magnificence, is a stupid organ in many ways. The only thing it knows to do when injured is to swell. Swelling can cause parts of it to die. Our job is to do what we can to stop the swelling, thereby preventing additional damage.”

  Jolt. Swell. Die. The doctor’s words were like chunks of ice that Tom swallowed one by one, making a frozen trail down his throat and dropping into a cold well in his stomach. He glanced at the patients who were visible at all times through each room’s sliding glass doors. The beds were surrounded by equipment, reducing each patient—someone’s beloved—to a biological organism.

  “The next twenty-four to forty-eight hours are critical in terms of managing the swelling. I’m treating it with a drug called mannitol. If the swelling does not go down, we’ll surgically make a small hole in the skull and insert a catheter to remove fluid and monitor the pressure. The drugs will hopefully be sufficient. We’re monitoring for seizure activity, and I’m administering a low dose of Dilantin as a preventative. She’s also receiving morphine sulfate for pain. We’ll do another CT scan in twenty-four hours to see if there have been any changes in her condition. Her condition could worsen if we can’t get the swelling under control or if there’s a secondary neurological event, such as hemorrhage in her brain.”

  Tom put his arm around his future mother-in-law and pulled her into the nook of his shoulder.

  Evelyn’s anxiety got the best of her. “Dr. Gaspar said that Rory was in a light coma. What does that mean exactly? She’s not going to be a vegetable, is she?”

  “Rory’s not in a deep coma, which is what most people think of when speaking of coma, but she’s not completely aware either. In a deep coma, the patient is in a prolonged state of profound unconsciousness and incapable of conscious behavior
. Most patients in a deep coma do wake up and resume some functional level. Some regain full consciousness. However, about ten percent enter another stage of coma, which we call a persistent vegetative state. These patients may have their eyes open, but they are still incapable of conscious behavior. The shorter the amount of time a patient is in a coma, the better the chances of that person resuming a normal life. The window of hope is a month. The odds go down after that. After a patient has been in a coma for a year, there’s nearly a zero percent chance of the patient returning to any functional level.

  “Obviously Rory’s level of consciousness is much higher than one finds with a deep coma, and hopefully it will improve. We use something called the Glasgow coma scale to assess brain injury and impairment. The GCS tests three areas: the patient’s eye response, meaning whether she opens her eyes in response to pain or verbal commands; her verbal response, whether she speaks and her responses to questions are coherent and appropriate; and motor or movement response, which assesses how she responds to pain stimuli and obeys commands. Rory’s GCS score is thirteen on a scale of fifteen, indicating a mild brain injury. Patients with a GCS of thirteen are generally able to resume normal life with perhaps occasional lapses in memory or coordination that only family or close friends might notice.”

  “When would you expect her to start to come around?” Evelyn asked.

  “We can’t predict when Rory will recover or whether she’ll have any aftereffects if she does. But Rory’s prognosis is promising. She’s young and in good health. Until Rory completely wakes up, we can’t assess whether there will be any lasting effects.”

  “Meaning brain damage,” Tom said.

  “Many patients who’ve had a concussion completely recover within a few days of the injury, although amnesia about events immediately before and after the injury is common. Some patients have issues that we call post-concussion syndrome, which can include headaches, anxiety, irritability, difficulty concentrating, fatigue, vertigo, insomnia, hearing loss, vision changes, and sensitivity to light and noise.”

  “The nurse, Joy, said that Rory might be able to understand what we’re saying to her,” Tom said.

  “She might. We now know that coma is not the black hole we once thought it was. There are people who have awakened from a deep coma who can repeat entire conversations that took place at their bedsides. I had a patient who awakened and was angry with me because I had said to her husband in front of her that she should lose weight. She told me she wanted to yell that she was clearly on a diet now.”

  Evelyn and Tom chuckled nervously.

  “So, it’s important to interact with Rory. Talk to her. Tell her about everyday things, about good times, friends, and favorite topics. Bring in her favorite music. The brain has many redundant cells. By stimulating the patient’s five senses, we encourage the extra cells to take over the functions of the damaged cells. When enough cells have been rewired, the brain will wake itself up, much like a computer rebooting. Try to do whatever you can to stimulate her mind and encourage her to come back to us.”

  “I’ll have Graehme clear my schedule,” Evelyn said. “We’ll create a human chain. Won’t we, Tom?”

  Tom nodded. “She won’t be alone.”

  They were startled when they saw Rory raise her head off the pillow and clearly call, “Junior!”

  19

  It was three-thirty a.m. Auburn and Rodriguez left the villa and drove meandering streets past the formidable homes that lined the Arroyo Seco overlooking the Rose Bowl. They crossed the Colorado Street Bridge. The bridge’s antique street lamps cast warm circles of light.

  Houses became more modest the farther west they traveled. The old L.A. neighborhood of Eagle Rock was being gentrified, but between the pockets of chic shops and restaurants were longtime businesses with hand-painted signs and barred windows.

  Auburn passed the giant rock shaped like an eagle’s head. He headed to the top of a steep hill and parked at the curb in front of a small house that was set back on a narrow lot like the others on the street. Hearty shrubs encroached on the windows.

  The detectives got out and went through a gate in a chain-link fence. A dog inside the house started barking. Bugs buzzed around a porch light. The drapes were closed over the front picture windows.

  Little had physically changed since Auburn had first approached that front door five years before. Through a gap in the drapes, he saw a TV’s flickering glow. Someone inside was channel surfing. Auburn guessed that Danny’s sister, Sylvia Torres, and her husband, Elias, had already heard about Danny on TV and were waiting for the police to come to their front door.

  Auburn pressed the doorbell. The button sank under his thumb and remained stuck in its casing without making a sound inside the house. The dog began to bark more vigorously. The TV’s volume dropped. Auburn heard Sylvia say, “Vanessa, go back to bed. Take the dog.” Two blinds in a kitchen window to his right parted almost invisibly. He looked in that direction and raised his hand in greeting.

  A bolt lock in the front door slid open.

  Elias Torres opened the door wearing sweatpants and a T-shirt. His thick black hair was rumpled. Sylvia stood behind him, clutching a fleece bathrobe close around her neck.

  Elias unlocked the screen and pushed it open. The couple moved back in tandem to make way. Auburn stepped into the living room followed by Rodriguez. Auburn opened his mouth to speak.

  Sylvia began shaking her head, as if trying to stall what he had come there to say.

  Auburn put his hand on her shoulder. She stepped beneath his arm and hugged him around the waist. He patted her back. Her husband circled his arm around her. Auburn patted Elias’s shoulder. “I’m sorry,” he said.

  20

  Sylvia sent her exhausted husband to bed and went with the detectives to her mother’s house to tell her about Danny.

  Thankfully, Fermina had gone to bed early, as usual, and hadn’t seen the TV reports. She took the news with remarkable serenity and expressed concern about the health of Rory Langtry. Fermina assured Sylvia that she was fine and sent her daughter home to get some sleep.

  Back at her house, Sylvia took Auburn and Rodriguez to Danny’s room in the garage. When she saw that Danny had left the padlock open on the walk-through door, she knew that he hadn’t planned to come back. When Danny had installed the padlock several weeks ago, it was physical proof of something that Sylvia had sensed for months: Danny had changed. He’d also put locks on the cabinets inside the garage.

  She’d asked him, “What’s up with the locks, Danny? We don’t lock things up from each other.”

  He’d said, “Guess we do now.”

  “Whatcha hidin’ in there, li’l bro?”

  “Snakes. Monsters. Don’t let ’em out.”

  “Show me.”

  “Can’t, Sylvie. Leave it be.”

  Something in his tone had made her step back, something different and disturbing.

  Forensic investigators and more police arrived to search the garage. They stayed until almost dawn.

  Sylvia went to bed after the police left. Her husband and two children were deeply asleep, but she was too rattled to even keep her eyes closed. She got up. Chiclets, the family’s terrier mix, rose from his bed in a corner of the master bedroom and followed her. In her robe and slippers, Sylvia went out the back door and across the backyard to the garage. When she opened the walk-through door, Chiclets ran inside past her legs. She felt for the light switch and turned it on. The concrete floor felt cool through the soles of her slippers.

  Chiclets hopped onto Danny’s unmade bed, which was a mattress and box spring on the floor in the middle of the garage. The dog lay there with his head against his paws, his furry eyebrows moving up and down as he watched Sylvia.

  Other than the bed, there were a few clothes hanging on a rolling rack and a handful of toiletries on an old table. An upended wooden crate served as a nightstand. On top were candles, an overflowing ashtray, an open pack of cigarettes, a
nd a Bic lighter. Candles also circled the floor around the bed.

  Weeks ago Danny had started giving away his belongings, even things he could have sold. He had given his niece, Vanessa, his iPod and his nephew, Georgie, his guitar and his letterman jacket.

  Sylvia had asked him, “The kids love the presents, but why are you giving away your stuff?”

  He’d raised his hands. “Don’t need it.” He’d pointed to his collection of trophies and school yearbooks. “Take those or give them to Mom.”

  “Danny, you’re scaring me. What’s going on?”

  Detective Auburn had remarked on the dramatic change in Danny. “Sylvia, how did Danny go from being a regular guy, an athlete, to this?” He had indicated the room. “He dropped out of college. Got fired from his job. He looked sick. He was emaciated.”

  Sylvia had sighed and made a face showing she didn’t have a clue. She hadn’t told Auburn about other disturbing changes in Danny. Like how he’d hardly slept. He’d stopped going out with his friends. He’d rarely come out of this garage, and when he had, he’d spent all his time in Junior’s hospital room.

  Sylvia’s eyes were dry. She hadn’t cried over Danny’s death. She felt empty. Like they’d lost him long before last night. He’d gone away little by little, day by day. She thought about how things get weird and you get used to it. Then they get weirder and you get used to that too.

  She’d shaken her head and gone about her business. With two kids, a husband, a house, and a full-time job, she had enough to worry about without dealing with Danny’s nonsense. Now, as she looked around at his austere living space, she wished she’d pressed him more. Taken him to a psychiatrist or a psychologist or whatever. Like they could afford that. Like he would have let her.

  The sole decorative item in the garage was a portrait of Danny as a young boy painted by Junior. It was propped on the seat of a straight-backed wooden chair beside the bed. Candles were in front of it on the chair’s seat, as was a bunch of dried mustard weed, which Danny had probably taken from the hillside behind the house.