Chapter 6: What the Paramedics Saw
The paramedics were two women and a man, and they were professional in the way that people are professional when they walk into a room and immediately understand that something is wrong beyond the medical emergency they were called for.
The first one — young, dark-haired, a name tag that said REYES — stopped inside the doorway and took in the room in about three seconds.
The torn portrait on the floor.
The broken frame.
The four folders under Marcus's arm.
Susan at the window.
Vincent near the wall.
The open elevator doors.
"Sir?" She was looking at Marcus.
"You called for a medical assist?"
"My father.
In there." Marcus stepped aside.
Reyes and her partner moved to the shaft.
Arthur raised one hand — a small, deliberate gesture, the kind a man makes when he wants to be seen as composed.
"I'm all right," he said.
"Dehydrated.
My wrists."
"We've got you, sir.
Can you tell me your name?"
"Arthur Carrow.
I'm seventy-two.
No cardiac history.
I take a blood thinner, the name is in the cabinet in the upstairs bathroom."
Reyes's partner glanced at the binding marks on Arthur's wrists.
He did not say anything.
He looked at his colleague.
She gave him a very small nod.
The third paramedic had stopped near the doorway.
He was looking at the room the way Reyes had — cataloguing it.
His eyes went to the folders.
To Vincent.
To Susan's posture at the window.
He stepped back into the hallway and made a call.
Marcus watched him do it.
He did not stop him.
"Dad." He crouched beside the shaft again while the paramedics worked.
"When they take you out, I need you to tell them everything.
From the beginning.
Don't leave anything out for my sake or for Susan's."
Arthur looked at him.
"I know."
"I mean it.
All of it."
"Marcus." The old man's voice was quiet.
"I wrote it down.
I've been writing it down since June.
There's a notebook.
Top drawer of the desk in the study, under the insurance files.
I put it there in August before — before I couldn't get to it anymore." He paused.
"Everything is in there.
Dates.
Amounts.
The name of the attorney.
The name of the bank." Another pause.
"The name of the person at the bank who helped them."
Marcus stood up.
He looked at Susan.
She was still at the window.
She had heard.
He could tell she had heard because her hand had gone back to her watch, turning it, and she had stopped turning it.
"There's someone at the bank," Marcus said.
She didn't answer.
"Susan.
Is there someone at the bank who helped you?"
"You should talk to an attorney before you say anything else," Vincent said.
He was looking at Susan, not Marcus.
"Both of you.
Right now, before—"
"Vincent." Susan's voice was very quiet.
"Stop."
He stopped.
She turned from the window.
She looked at her father being helped onto a stretcher, Eli standing close, one hand on Arthur's arm.
She looked at the portrait on the floor, the torn paper, the four generations of Carrows in their hot clothes on the front steps.
Then she looked at Marcus.
"His name is Deller," she said.
"Raymond Deller.
He's a branch manager at the Hudson Valley Savings and Trust on Route 9.
He processed the account changes in July.
He knew the power of attorney was — he knew it wasn't right.
Vincent offered him twelve thousand dollars."
Vincent sat down in a chair.
"Susan—"
"It's over, Vincent."
"You don't have to—"
"I said it's over." She looked at him, and something in the look was not cruel and was not kind.
It was finished.
"I'm not going to make it worse."
The third paramedic came back in from the hallway.
Behind him, through the open front door, Marcus could see another set of headlights coming up the drive.
A different shape.
Not an ambulance.
Reyes looked up from the stretcher.
"Sir, we're going to transport your father now.
Can someone ride with him?"
"I will," Eli said immediately.
Marcus looked at his son.
Eleven years old, maroon sweatshirt, sneakers still dusty from the gravel.
Standing next to his grandfather with his hand on the old man's arm like he had been there the whole time.
Because he had been.
"Okay," Marcus said.
"Go with him.
I'll be right behind."
Eli nodded.
He looked at Susan once — not with anger, not with fear.
With the same careful, counting look he had worn all evening.
Then he took his grandfather's hand and walked out with the paramedics.
Susan watched them go.
The car coming up the drive had stopped.
Two doors opened.
Marcus could hear voices outside, low and official, and the crunch of shoes on gravel.
He picked up the four folders.
He picked up the handwritten letter, refolded it, and put it on top.
"I'm going to the hospital," he said.
"When they come in, tell them the truth.
All of it." He looked at Vincent.
Then at his sister.
"It will be better for you if you do."
He walked out.
Behind him, Susan sat down in the chair across from Vincent.
The brass clock kept going.
The amber lamps threw their low light across the dark oak panelling, across the long table, across the heap of torn paper on the floor where the portrait used to be.
May you like
Neither of them spoke.
The front door opened.
