Chapter 19
April O' Neil pulled in along the curb across from the row of pastel-colored houses. She turned off the engine and swiveled to face the back seat. "This is it," she announced.
Donatello raised his head and risked a peek through the tinted roller shades that April had drawn down over the back windows. "Nice looking neighborhood. So...spacious."
After everything he'd been through in the last thirty-six hours, Michelangelo was barely himself; glum and melancholy, he'd said so little during the long drive that it made April fidgety and nervous. She was so used to Mike's near-constant chatter that the absence of it was like being in a forest with no birds. He groaned now, resting his forehead on the back of the driver's seat as he shifted from his uncomfortable position on the floor of her car. "Ughh... Do people really spend this much time in a car every day?" He added quickly, "I didn't mean to complain, April. I mean, it would have taken us forever to get here otherwise."
"Don't mention it." Begging off early from work and fighting traffic all the way down the NJ-3 E to Montclair, New Jersey was hardly her ideal way to spend an afternoon either. But she hadn't hesitated; the Turtles did not ask for favors unless they had to, and she could tell, from Michelangelo's subdued voice on the phone earlier, and the various fresh wounds her friends were sporting, that this was one of those situations.
Even so, and even though she was living proof that the turtles would defend even the lives of strangers, she'd been stunned by the explanation that Leonardo had given her earlier that afternoon. "So, you've never met her?" she had asked, studying the creased photograph.
"I don't need to." Seeing April's flabbergasted look, he had said, "Do you believe in karma, April? Last year, a man who had no reason to help us risked everything to do so, and I repaid him by drugging him and leaving him with amnesia." Leo's eyes had followed Mike and Don as they ascended to the alley where April had parked, but his gaze had been distant. "Maybe all this has happened for a reason. A life for a life - we're meant to repay that debt."
The tidy homes she looked upon now seemed an unlikely place to be mulling the hand of fate. Michelangelo asked, "So, how do we know this is the right place?"
"We don't," Don replied. "But there's only one New Jersey address listed for a Melissa Tzaras in the NYU alumni database. Now we need to find out if Holly Chambers is here."
"That should be easy," April said, unclipping her seatbelt. "I'll go ring the doorbell."
"Wait," Donatello said, putting a hand on her shoulder. "She knows her life is in danger. If she is here, she's not likely to come to the door and talk to strangers."
"It's worth a try though," Mike said. "Do you have a pen and a piece of paper?"
"What for?" April rummaged in her glove compartment and handed Michelangelo a Post-It note pad and a ballpoint pen.
He wrote a few words, pulled off the sheet, and folded it in half. "If she is there, you can give her this," he said.
April slipped the note into her pocket. She opened her car door and stepped out into the foggy early evening blend of orange streetlight and grayish sky. Crossing the street and climbing the three steps to the front door of the address Donatello had given her, she felt unexpectedly nervous. She glanced back at her car; no sign of anyone in it. She rang the doorbell.
A dog started barking from inside. She heard a female voice admonishing the dog, and then after several more seconds, footsteps, and the sound of the deadbolt being drawn back.
The door opened on a young, slightly heavy-set woman with an olive complexion and dark, curly hair. Not the woman in the photograph. "Hello," April said. "Are you Melissa Tzaras?"
"Yes," the woman said, pushing her cocker spaniel back with her foot.
"I'm looking for a friend of yours, Holly Chambers. Is she here by any chance?"
Melissa's face stiffened immediately, and she focused on April's face with obvious suspicion. "Here? No, why would she be here? She lives in Manhattan."
She's lying, April thought, and she's not good at it. "Holly might be in trouble, and I'm trying to help. Have you seen her? Do you know where she is?"
"No. No, I don't know. Sorry I can't help you." Melissa Tzaras stepped back hastily and started to shut the door.
"Wait," April said, quickly holding out Mike's folded note. "If you do see her, for any reason, can you please give this to her?"
The young woman hesitated. April pulled a pen from her coat pocket and wrote on the back of the note. "Here's my name and cell phone number. Tell her she can call me." She held it out again. "It's really important. Please."
"I said I don't know where she is," Melissa insisted.
"I understand. But just in case you happen to see her."
Melissa wavered. She snatched the slip of paper and closed the door firmly.
April walked back across the street and got into her car. She could see Melissa peering out from her window. "Stay down until I turn the corner," she said, starting the engine and pulling away.
"Well?" Don lifted his head as they left the street behind.
"She's there. If she's not, Melissa Tzaras knows where she is."
###
The motel room stank of stale cigarette smoke and the checkered bedspread looked as though it dated back to when the building had been constructed. April quickly drew the heavy gray drapes, shutting out the view of the freeway and unsettling thick layers of dust. She tried turning on the small television. It didn't work.
None of these things seemed to diminish Donatello and Michelangelo's discomfited gratitude. "April, you really don't have to do this," Don said, again. "It won't take that long for you to drive home. Mike and I can fend for ourselves."
"We're out in the 'burbs," she said. "Were you thinking I'd just drop you on a street corner and you'd find a place to hide and sleep outside?"
She could tell from their faces that was exactly what they were thinking. "We'd be fine," Mike said. "It'd be like camping."
April shook her head. Even though she knew her friends were accustomed to surviving under all manner of adverse circumstances, she just couldn't do it. She pulled the ratty bedspread aside and sat down on the yellowish sheets. "Well, pretend you're on vacation then," she said, not intending to sound sarcastic.
Donatello gave in and flopped down on the other bed, which sagged underneath him. Michelangelo pulled the Yellow Pages from the bedside table and paged to the pizza delivery section. "As long as we're living it up, right?" he said with a smile, picking up the ancient-looking corded phone.
"This place..." Donatello mused aloud, turning over and staring at the water stains on the ceiling. "No rooftops, no tunnels, no alleys... If Holly Chambers is out here, how are we supposed to keep her safe? We've got to get her back to the city."
"If she's even out here," Mike added, cradling the phone between his shoulder and head as he punched numbers on the phone pad. April noticed him adjust the receiver to avoid pressing it on the nasty jagged gash that was scabbing over under small stitches. The weak bedside table lamp illuminated one side of his shell; its rippled patterning stood out against the bare beige wall behind him. April found herself thinking of the unsmiling middle-aged receptionist in the motel lobby, who'd handed her the room key without looking up from Soap Opera Digest, and imagining her reaction if she knew that room 26 was occupied by mutant ninjas.
"We'll go back in the morning, before it's light," Don suggested. "Once Melissa leaves for work, we can get into her place."
Michelangelo rolled his eyes impatiently, gesturing to the phone and mouthing "On hold."
April's cell phone rang. She jumped for her purse and dug it out. "Hello?"
"Is this April O'Neil?" A woman's voice asked tentatively.
"Yes."
There was a long pause. "This is Holly Chambers."
"Holly," April said. Donatello sat up quickly and motioned urgently for Mike to hang up on the pizzeria. As calmly as she could, April said, "I'm glad you called."
"Who are you? Why have you been looking for me?"
"I know that you're in danger, and...I want to help."
"How? How do you know that?" The voice sounded scared and skeptical.
"It's complicated. It would be better if we could talk in person. Can I meet you?"
Another pause. "Okay. Tomorrow, then. Someplace public."
###
April turned over the sticky, laminated one-page menu and handed it back to the waitress. "Just coffee, please." The diner was sparsely populated at mid-morning. Slow-moving ceiling fans circulated greasy breakfast smells reminiscent of similar chain eateries everywhere. Her cell phone had two new voice messages: one from her boss, one from Casey, no doubt both replying to the rather short and unsatisfying messages she had left them last night. She silenced the phone and tucked it into her purse. She could deal with the fallout later. It wasn't as though this was the first time she'd disappeared unexpectedly on unusual business. At least Casey would understand.
She wondered where Don and Mike were now. Probably skulking around the back of the building, or up on the roof. They had both been edgy after leaving her car, parked two blocks away, behind an empty building that used to a be a furniture store. Daytime in the suburbs was nothing like nighttime in the city; the ease and stealth with which they navigated Manhattan did not apply here. Even so, when she'd looked behind herself after walking no more than ten paces, there'd been no sign of them.
They could not come in here though. They could not sit down in a diner, order a meal and meet the beneficiary of their efforts. She felt a familiar pang of injustice, but also allowed herself a small moment of pride. There were things that they needed her for after all. She knew that, of course, but it was nice to be reminded.
The door to the diner swung open, and the woman April had seen in the photograph stood in the entryway, craning her neck to look around the inside of the restaurant nervously. April caught her eye and Holly Chambers walked over to the table with a small, hesitant smile.
She's so young, April thought, as Holly slid into the seat opposite her and shrugged off her white coat. She studied the pretty face, wondering what this young woman could possibly have done to make someone want to assassinate her, then realized that Holly was looking back at her with equally dubious curiosity, no doubt wondering what sort of shady character she was. "Hi," she said, with what she hoped was a reassuring smile. "I'm April."
"Holly." She shook her head at the waitress who asked if she wanted anything. Then she pulled two pieces of paper from her coat pocket and slide them across the table. "Did you write these?"
One note was on plain, ruled paper, it's top edge perforated where it had been torn from a small spiral notepad. April recognized Michelangelo's large, slanted handwriting.
Your life is in danger. Leave right now and go somewhere safe.
A friend,
M
The second note was the yellow Post-It she had left with Melissa Tzaras yesterday afternoon. The same hand had written simply,
Trust her.
M
April set the two pieces of paper back down. "No, I didn't write them."
"But you can tell me who did."
April studied the inside of her coffee mug, carefully formulating her words before returning the woman's expectant gaze. "This may not make much sense to you, but I'll tell you what I can. Last year, your father did a good deed and helped some strangers who needed medical care. The people he helped... they usually keep their existence secret. But they haven't forgotten what he did for them. So when they learned you were in danger, they protected you."
Holly Chambers had an understandably bewildered look on her face. "My dad?" She swallowed hard. "Is he mixed up in anything...bad?"
"No, nothing like that. He just happened to be a doctor... and a kind person."
Holly had gone pale. "An awful thing happened to my dad last year. He woke up and couldn't remember anything from the past three days. He says it's a sure symptom of early onset degenerative brain disease. But so far all the tests he's taken have turned out negative." She hugged herself, shrinking away from April slightly. "These people you mentioned... did they do that to him?"
April hesitated, then nodded.
Holly looked as if she wanted to grab her coat and flee, but was fixed in place by the need to know more. "This is like something from a movie, right? Shadowy secret agents that control things and can wipe out your memory?"
A chuckle started to escape April's lips, but considering the woman's genuine distress, she hid it behind a sip of coffee. "No, it's not anything so... sinister. Your dad doesn't have degenerative brain disease. They gave him an amnesiac, only to protect themselves. And him. They help people when they can, but they have enemies too." She stopped. She'd said enough. Anything else was only going to make the poor girl more confused and cause her to press further. "I know it's not much. But it's all I can say."
Holly stared at her, incredulous. "You're right, it's not. You're not going to tell me anything else?"
"It's not for me to tell."
"Who are you?"
"Just a normal person, who happens to know them." April felt a sudden twinge of something connecting her secretly but profoundly to the woman across the table. She nearly added, I was just like you. Someone in trouble, in the wrong place at the wrong time. And they were there. Except that she had seen them up close, and they had had no way to erase her memory, and there had been no turning back.
It was clear from the look on Holly's face that she wasn't sure what, if anything, to believe. "So they sent you, to find me? Why?"
April leaned forward, lowering her voice. "To ask why someone would want to kill you."
Holly's eyes darted away, then quickly back to April, before dropping to her hands. Fear made her seem even younger and more vulnerable. "If you know so much, don't you already know that too?"
"No. Can you tell me?"
Another frightened twitch of the eyes. "I've barely slept since that note showed up in my apartment," she admitted in a voice that was barely above a whisper. "I don't know who I can trust."
With a pang of sympathy, April reached across the table and put her hands on one of Holly's. "The person who left you the note-"
"M?"
"M kept you safe that one night. These people I mentioned- they want to help. I want to help. But there's not much else we can do unless you tell me who's after you, and why."
"How do I know this isn't all a trick? Maybe that note isn't even true. Someone wrote it just to scare me into talking to you." A note of desperate, angry, hopeful denial rose in her voice.
April gave the young woman a long look, both serious and gentle. "Anyone coming up with an elaborate lie would be make it a lot more plausible than this, don't you think?"
Such truth made Holly Chambers sag in reluctant agreement. She studied April's face. Perhaps she saw something that gave her confidence, or perhaps she was just too tired of being afraid, but after a long moment, she started to speak, slowly at first, then with gathering speed. "I'm a medical student at NYU. I've been on an Emergency Medicine rotation, working at an urgent care clinic uptown. Last month, I was on a night shift and a patient was brought in who'd just suffered a brain aneurysm. We tried to save him, but those things happen so quickly...
"I know that losing patients is part of being a doctor, but I couldn't forget that guy, and not just because it was the first time it had happened right before my eyes. His case seemed so unusual. He was young, not even thirty, but his blood pressure was through the roof, so I thought maybe drugs were involved. I looked up his chart and found that he'd been admitted to the emergency room just a couple weeks ago with other symptoms: heart palpitations, difficulty breathing, jaundice..."
The waitress came by again with more coffee and April waved her away quickly. Holly continued, "Anyways, I needed to write a paper for school summarizing my rotation experience, and I kept thinking about that one patient, and whether there was anything more that could have been done for him. So I decided to search for other cases of brain aneurysms to compare outcomes. Hopewell Medical Group has a whole bunch of clinics in the metro area, so I searched through the files for recent cases and I discovered something really strange."
Glancing around the near-empty diner anxiously, Holly leaned in closer. "There've been three other cases of fatal brain aneurysms in the past three months. All of the patients were males in their twenties or thirties. All of them had other presenting symptoms similar to those of the man I had seen on my shift. There was definitely a pattern and it creeped me out. I showed the files to my supervisor, Craig. He was the attending doctor who'd been there that same night. He agreed that a formal review ought to be done, and brought to the attention of the regional health authority. That was over a week ago. I've been trying to get a hold of Craig for the last two days, but he hasn't answered any of my calls or emails. I called into the clinic and found out that he hasn't been at work either." Her voice quavered and she pressed her trembling hands together. "I'm afraid something bad has happened to him."
"Have you told anyone else?" April asked.
"Only my friend, Melissa. I didn't know whether to tell someone else at the clinic, or at med school, or to call the police or what. There'd be nothing for them to go on anyways, all I have is this strange note. But there is something really fishy going on, I'm sure of it. I just don't know what to do." Her last few words were barely audible, spoken to the table. Her eyes were moist when she raised them, and they searched April's face with such naked hope that April desperately wanted to promise her that everything would be okay.
Instead she said, "Can you come back to the city? Do you have a place you could stay, that's not your apartment?"
"My dad's out of town," she said. "He's on a trip to the Galapagos, one of the things he's determined to do now that he thinks he doesn't have long to live." She smiled feebly. "I have a key to his place though, I could go there."
"That's a good idea."
"Why? Seems safer to be further away..."
"If I could find you, others can too. It'll be safer for you, and for Melissa, for you to be in Manhattan rather than out here." Seeing Holly's skeptical expression, she said, "Trust me on this one."
"I already have, so I guess I have to go all the way, don't I? I can take the bus in this afternoon." She bit her lip as she looked at April uncertainly. "But then what do we do?"
"We're going to find out what's behind these deaths you discovered... and who wants to keep them a secret badly enough to threaten your life."
###
Fifteen minutes. She'd kept pointlessly glancing over her shoulder and up at the rooftops as she'd walked back, and now she'd been waiting by her car for fifteen minutes. April drummed her fingers on the hood, then pulled an old grocery store receipt out of her purse and started writing notes on the back of it. Hopewell Medical Group. Boss: Craig (last name?). What is the connection b/w the 4 men?
"April."
Donatello's voice right behind her made her jump. She really ought to be used to it now, how quickly and silently they moved. "Geez, Don," she said, putting a hand to her chest. "What took you two so long?"
"Tailing Holly until her friend picked her up," Mike explained.
"C'mon," April said, pulling the driver side door open. "I have a lot to fill you in on."
Donatello nodded as they got in. "Take us through the whole conversation. We could only catch snippets of it. The fan in that restaurant's venting system is really loud."
"You were...in there?"
Don waved dismissively. "Never mind that. What did she say?"
They hit traffic on the freeway almost immediately (in the middle of the day for no reason, of course) so she had plenty of time to take the turtles through everything Holly Chambers had told her. Michelangelo smoothed out the wrinkled receipt she'd written on. "Stevenson," he said. "Craig Stevenson. That's the name I saw on one of Snake's photos of his targets that night."
"So odds are he's dead," Don said, grim.
"Hopewell," Mike said to himself. "That name sounds familiar too..."
April glanced at them in the rearview mirror. "Are you sure it was a good idea, sending her back to the city?"
"We can stake out her dad's place, before she gets there tonight," Don said. "It'll be a lot easier to keep tabs on her. Someone has already tried to find her there, so hopefully they won't think to go back so quickly."
April said, "I can start digging into Hopewell. If I get the names of the four men who died, I can run checks on them too."
Donatello noticed the edge of excitement in her voice, and after a moment of concerned silence, he said, "April, you shouldn't feel like you need to get more involved. You've done a lot already."
"It's too late for that, Don. I'm the only one who's actually met her now. I don't want to see her killed, anymore than you do. Besides," she said, "admit it, with Raph and Leo occupied, you could use a hand."
Michelangelo gasped. "I know," he said. "I know where I've seen the name Hopewell Medical Group before. I was sent to break into their building. The same night that Snake was sent to kill Holly Chambers."