CHAPTER 2
Overhead, a rescue helicopter landed on the hospital's helipad and an old fisherman who had suffered a heart attack on board the tuna clipper "The Sea Witch" was rushed to the cardiac department. The other occupant of the helicopter remained inside it and it took off again to land some miles away at the Coastguard Station.
Already attached to a cardiac monitor with a plasma drip in his arm, the old man was quickly transferred to the emergency ward. The receiving doctor took the documents form the helicopter paramedic. "Hm. Emile de Sousa, Portuguese, aged 64, heart attack on board a fishing boat. Died but was resusciated. Right! He's critical."
"Sir?" the old man tried to catch the doctor's attention.
"You're gonna be all right, pop." the doctor assured him, touching his shoulder.
"No, not that. I want to speak to policeman! Something - important - I must tell!"
"Not just now, pop. Maybe in a day or two, when you're feeling better ..."
"No! Now! Very important! Please!"
The doctor looked at his patient, who was becoming quite agitated. He prepared a syringe to sedate the old man.
"No! No needles! Get policeman!"
The doctor held back and made a decision. Addressing an orderly, he said "Jack, get onto the Precinct - fast!"
An hour later a Precinct cop arrived outside the ward. He enquired of the whereabouts of the man he had come to see at the nurses' station. The Nurse Manager pointed the old man out, adding: "Be quick - he needs to be sedated to help his recovery. Make sure he doesn't get excited!"
Emile lay with his eyes closed. The monitors were beeping his heartbeats and displaying his vital signs. The cop touched him on the arm. "You wanted to see a policeman, sir?"
Emile opened his eyes, gave a sharp intake of breath when he saw the cop standing by his bedside. His heartbeat increased. "Yes! Yes, something to tell you - something important! I saw ... I saw ..." Pain in his chest hit him again - unbearable pain. The monitors called warnings to the nearby ward staff. They ran to the bedside, got the resuscitation equipment ready, gave him electric shock treatment for the heart, but to no avail. Emile de Sousa was dead.
---oo0oo---
Cleo Plowright was offered a hand by a crewman to assist her when she stepped down from the helicopter. Smothered in her mink coat and shoeless, she made an incongruous sight. A beautiful, black-haired woman with bewitching blue eyes, she turned heads as she walked like the model she was to the Coastguard's office. A young female Coastguard officer escorted her to the Chief's empty office, where she sat down awaiting his arrival.
While she waited, she recalled the chain of events that had brought her here. Why had it come to this? She was Jerry Plowright's second wife - his first wife had been killed in a car accident six years previously in which Jerry, who had been driving at the time, had been badly injured. As long as she had known him, he had always been a drinker. His War service as a Commander of a PT torpedo boat had had a lasting psychological affect on him and it had permanently changed his personality. He and JFK had been colleagues and his friendship with the President continued. When the memories of that time came back to haunt him, he would drink to forget, going on a binge for days on end. When sober he was affable, had a sharp sense of humour and generally was a wonderful husband, but when drunk he was moody, impulsive and often violent, as had happened a few - how many was it? - days ago.
He had been attracted to her when she was employed as a model in one of the Plowright family's department stores in Dallas, Texas. She was cautious at first, as he was 15 years older than her, but he threw lavish parties, gave her expensive gifts, and generally wooed and won her. He had been considered a "catch", as money was no object to him and she had been a poor girl from the city who was fortunate enough to be beautiful and highly attractive to men. She was the only one he wanted and she helped him recover from the grief he lived with daily following his first wife's death. The youngest of the three Plowright sons, he frequently had time on his hands and money to spend when he wasn't at work, running the LA branch of the family's chain of department stores. Unfortunately, he chose to spend a lot of the money on drink. This hadn't been the first time he had attacked her.
The door opened, ending her reverie. "Good afternoon, madam. I'm Chief Legrange. I gather you stowed away on "The Sea Witch"". There was a flash of amusement in his eyes. "Aren't you a little old for that kind of thing? What were you running away from?"
"M-my husband." Cleo stammered, eyes downcast. "I - I killed my husband! I'm Cleo Plowright." She looked back up at him, her eyes filled with tears, watching the expression on his face.
Legrange froze for a second, his memory racing. "Mrs Plowright, could you wait a moment, please? I'll be right back." and he left her alone again, a deeply worried woman.
He returned a few minutes later with a file in his hand. "Mrs Plowright, I have good news for you - your husband was discharged from Peninsula Hospital earlier today."
"Discharged? He's alive?" she asked, disbelieving.
"Very much so, Mrs Plowright, and he has been asking repeatedly to see you."
"I'll bet he has!" she said, before she could stop herself.
"You said you thought you had killed him. What happened exactly?"
"He - he was drunk - I had a headache, I wanted to go home, get a cab. Our boat is down on Huntington Beach. We went to bars and restaurants but he kept drinking, he refused to take me home. It was getting late. We went into a bar on the quayside and he was so drunk he couldn't dance with me when I asked him to. Instead he got a fisherman to dance with me. He danced me to the back exit. I escaped from the bar without Jerry seeing me go, went to a phone booth on the quayside and had started dialling for the cab when Jerry came, dragged me out, started hitting me, hitting me so hard he knocked me down. There was a piece of lead piping lying on the dock and, when he came at me again, I hit him on the head. He - he fell into the water and drowned - or so I thought."
"Hm. Do you have any witnesses to his attack?"
"Emile - Emile de Sousa, one of the crewmen on "The Sea Witch" - he saw it all, promised he would testify self-defence on my behalf."
"Where is he now?"
"Peninsula Hospital - he had a heart attack - that was who I came back off the boat with."
Legrange made a phone call. When he put the receiver down, his face was grim. "I'm afraid I have some bad news for you now, Mrs Plowright. Emile de Sousa is dead."
---oo0oo---