fifty-four

The T, on the bottom of one doll foot and chair in Bob’s diorama, stood for Terri. Frank and I watched as the real Terri, a middle-school girl pumped her legs hard, her swing soaring higher with each kick. Terri’s mother, a friendly woman with a gaggle of kids, was single and had been logging long hours as a home health aide when her daughter first got sick.

“I couldn’t afford insurance,” she said. “I was able to cover the medical bills for a few months, but eventually the money ran out. I tried the government website, but it kicked me out, and I got crazy frustrated. Terri had weeks, not months.”

“Did Bob Rooney approach you?”

“Barely,” she said. “He handed me a small slip of paper one day on my way out of the dialysis center.” She laughed heartily. “I thought it was his phone number. Like I’d call a guy thirty years older than me.”

I liked how she focused on Bob’s age and not his weight. “What did the paper say?” I asked.

“I thought it was information about an online support group. Too touchy feely for me, but I was pretty low at the time. I logged on using the instructions in the note, chatted with some computer generated person and the next thing I knew, an insurance card arrived in my mailbox. Every few months, a new one arrived. I thought, what the hell? Who cares if I get caught? My daughter was dying.”

Frank nodded. “And now?”

“Once Terri’s situation improved, I was able to go back to work. I recently got a job at a nursing home with coverage.”

Not every story ended like Terri’s. In all, Bob, Gayle, and Lonnie had helped over three hundred patients extend their lives. A third were still alive by the time the investigation came to a close. Many were in the United States illegally, some were turned down by their insurance companies, and others simply didn’t have insurance or couldn’t afford it. Frank, for the first time in his career, lied his pants off to keep Gayle’s role under wraps. In addition to the short conversation in the kitchen, he interviewed Gayle only once, about a week later.

“There were too many sick people,” Gayle explained. “At first Bob thought we could help like maybe fifty people, but the requests kept coming. In the beginning, Lonnie recycled cards from HA insurance holders who had passed away.” Gayle scrunched her nose up, and I could tell she was uncomfortable talking about dead people.

Frank helped her out. “I’m guessing he started to run out of dead people.”

“Pretty healthy bunch, those HA card holders,” she replied. “The old hard drives turned out to be a great source. That was my idea. It came to me after my Dad died and we tossed his computer.” She smiled like a child earning a gold star. “But then, we started to run out of computers at the recycling center too. That’s when Bob suggested the auctions.”

“Were you aware of the warehouse at HG storage?” Frank asked.

Gayle nodded. “The problem was the equipment was old, maybe too old, and we would have had to sort through it and then determine if the owner had passed away. It was too much work, and I’m not that good with computers.” Gayle took a breath and continued, “Then there was the jerk at the storage place. He wanted a lot of cash for the warehouse computers. Bob kept arguing that he could do the guy a favor. You know? Like cart it away for free? Then the guy got in trouble because the stuff was toxic. I think he thought Bob had ratted him out to the EPA.”

Frank didn’t take a single note. He didn’t want anything on paper, and he refused to bring Gayle into the station, instead opting for the makeshift conference room at Harbor House. Cheski and Lamendola had been a hundred percent on board and resumed their stationhouse responsibilities as if nothing had happened. For all the public knew, Lonnie Drummond had been running an insurance scam. He had attempted to source hard drives from the recycling center, but Bob Rooney, the friendly neighborhood garbage guy, got wind of the scam and reported Lonnie to the police. Luckily, Bob and Frank’s phone conversation provided the necessary evidence to establish contact between Bob and Frank only days before his murder.

“Did Bob notify anyone about the toxic e-waste?” he asked.

“No way. He didn’t want any trouble from the storage dude.”

“And Lonnie?”

“Lonnie fielded calls from providers.”

“So he lied to doctors about who used the cards?”

“Yeah, pretty much,” Gayle said. “Lonnie, my dad, and Bob met at the dialysis center where they were all receiving treatment. That’s where they cooked up the plan to reuse policies that hadn’t expired. I knew Bob because my dad and I used to see him at the recycling center and the dialysis place. I never actually met Lonnie. I knew he worked for an insurance company, but Bob wasn’t crazy about him and he didn’t want me too involved. The first time I saw Lonnie was at the recycling center when I went to meet Bob. I wasn’t even sure it was Lonnie at first.”

“Is that why you ran?” I asked.

Gayle started to cry. “If I had stayed, Bob might have lived.”

Frank put his arm around Gayle. “You’re a kid, try to remember that.”

“I wanted a way to remember my dad after he died. I sort of knew what he had been doing with Bob because in the end, when he was really sick, he just started telling me all this crazy stuff. He was so mad that ordinary people were dying just because they didn’t have insurance. After he died, I asked Bob if I could help. I showed him the Other Life site, and that’s how we started to safely communicate with patients and with each other.” Gayle looked sheepishly at us. “I liked it, you know? I felt like I had done something real.”

“But then the pressure kicked in,” Frank said.

Gayle nodded. “People really needed help, hundreds of them. Lonnie freaked out a few weeks ago. He was afraid to lose his job and his insurance and he wasn’t, like, a healthy guy. Then Bob started to worry that the storage guy had gotten suspicious about our interest in the warehouse computers. It’s a little weird to keep asking about a warehouse full of rotting computers.”

Frank nodded and turned to me. I said, “So Lonnie wanted Bob to shut down the scam?”

“Yeah,” she said. “He was afraid his boss had already figured it out, and he was afraid of the storage guy. He was afraid they were doing something criminal, and he’d end up in jail.”

It was quite possible they could have all ended up in jail.

“And you saw Lonnie push Bob?” Frank asked.

Gayle nodded. “But like I said, I don’t think he meant to kill Bob.”

I couldn’t bear the suspense any longer. “How did you find out about me?”

“That was pretty easy.” She smiled. “My aunt told me to be aware of anyone named Prentice. I figured if I had to be on the lookout, I might as well know who to look for. I read everything I could find about the Prentice family.”

“When do you get your homework done?” I asked.

“I’m failing,” she laughed, and then her face fell. “I wished I had found you first. Instead I made the mistake of finding your father.”

“Where did you find him?”

“He owns an apartment in the city. I went to your family’s house. Huge, by the way. I looked through the mailbox a few times, maybe I opened some stuff. No big deal.”

Frank rolled his eyes and added postal fraud to the list of his niece’s offenses.

“Anyway I realized pretty quickly he would be a problem for me, because once I made contact, he tweeked out.”

“Is that when you dyed your hair.”

“Yup.” She tossed her head a few times. “It sucks. I know.”

“So how did you get to me?”

“I raided my aunt’s home office and dug up everything I could find about the labs. That’s how I found Liz James.” Gayle rolled her eyes. “Five hundred dollars later, she gave me the information I wanted. I borrowed the money from Bob, but he made me tell him why first.”

“So he knew you and I were possibly related?” I asked.

“Oh yeah. He even drove me to Liz’s apartment to make sure it was legit.”

“What did he say when he found out?”

“You ever see his chin when he laughed?” Gayle said, spinning her finger from her chin to her chest.

The pinball tilt, I thought. What a wonderful memory to share with Gayle.

“I’d like to share something with you,” I said to Gayle.

“Shoot.”

“First, there was a wonderful man named Teddy who I believe is your biological father. He passed away, but he had a twin brother.” I nodded in Frank’s direction and Gayle’s mouth dropped.

“Okay,” she said slowly as she took in her biological uncle.

“You should also know that Dr. Prentice has a wife. My mother.”

“I have a grandmother?”

“Yes, and she’s a trip. You’ll totally love her.”

“If she’s that cool what did she see in Dr. Prentice?”

“Not a whole lot,” I said, and then paused. “That’s why he’s not actually my father.”

“Seriously?” Gayle seemed relieved. “I guess I’m glad about that. Will I meet your father too?”

I shrugged. “I’ve never met him.”

Gayle laughed. “This is gonna get good.”

the end