Phoenix Wright : How to Breathe : Diego/Mia : Part 3 of 7
Title: How to Breathe
Genre: Drama, romance
Rating: PG-13
Pairing/Characters: Diego/Mia, Marvin Grossberg, Lana Skye, OCs
Summary: Mia couldn’t let Diego go without knowing what happened to him. She would risk everything-her career, her sanity, and her life-to understand why he was poisoned and bring down the woman responsible. Five chapters + prologue and epilogue.
Previous parts: Prologue, Chapter 1
Warnings: Spoilers for 3-1 and 3-4, unannounced flashbacks, smut, romance, and angst. Slight contradictions with canon where Mia’s magatama is concerned.
Notes: Lots of thanks to ggmoonycrisco for reading, reviewing, and making sure I didn’t trip over canon.
***
Chapter 2
“Hey, stranger,” Diego greeted when he opened the door and found Mia standing in the hallway outside his apartment, heavy suitcase in hand. “This place isn’t a hotel, you know.”
Mia grinned. “But I’m a lawyer, mister. I can afford to pay. Just name your price.”
“Ha…!” Diego drew her inside with a seductive arm around her waist, taking the suitcase with his free hand. “I’m sure I can think of something.”
It felt different walking through the door of his apartment this time-moving in, she thought, was an interesting experience. She had always expected she’d live on her own after leaving Kurain; it was part of the experience of starting her own life here in Los Angeles, one that didn’t include ghost channeling and chanting on one’s behind for hours a day and the dozens of women who formed one communal bond of strength and support-lonely as it was without those aunties and cousins and sisters surrounding her. After all, what didn’t kill you only made you stronger. But that had changed when she began seeing Diego, and realized that evenings (there were never enough hours, and she could not stay the night and hope to get to work on time the next morning) and weekends and lunchtimes and the file room-it was the only room in the office with a door that locked, for some reason-were not enough. She could never have enough of being at his side.
And anyway, Grossberg was getting suspicious about the file room.
“Let me give you the grand tour,” Diego offered, nudging the door shut with his toes.
“I’ve seen it all,” she reminded him, letting herself be steered away from the little foyer anyway and into the living room. One would know Diego’s profession just by looking at his apartment, or at least be able to guess. It was far nicer than her three-room hovel, nothing elaborate, just tasteful dark furnishings and wood molding and sleek modern appliances.
“The first sip of coffee is a new experience to the man who made it for himself. It’s your home too, now, kitten.”
And he was right, the place did seem different somehow-the living room with the l-shaped leather couch dominating the space and the painting on the wall she always admired, depicting a dark-skinned pair, a man and a woman, dancing together-the woman’s scarlet dress was a blur of motion-and the kitchen with its coffee machines on every counter (she knew well that Diego worshipped at the altar of his darkest roasts, but what one man did with thirteen coffee makers was beyond her), the bathroom he kept cleaner than anyone Mia knew-so much for bachelors being slobs-and the bedroom, with the thick carpet she loved to wiggle her toes in and the bed with which she was by now very intimately acquainted. The bedroom set was all dark, dark wood and earthy colors, homey and surprisingly serene.
It all reminded her of him, Mia realized. That was what made it home.
“I notice you saved the bedroom for last,” she said aloud.
“Did I?” Diego grinned and drew her closer, his hand sliding up her back to tangle in the hair at the nape of her neck. “Well, I’m sure we’d have ended up here again sooner or later.”
Mia smiled and closed her eyes and leaned against him, loving the feel of his hand in her hair, the way he stroked through the long strands with an almost reverential tenderness. It drew her into him like nothing else, this slow and loving seduction.
“Wait,” she murmured after a while, sleepy with pleasure. “Before we do anything else, my sister wanted to make sure I showed you this. She sent it from Kurain.” She brought Maya’s peculiar ‘housewarming gift’ out of a pocket of her jeans and showed it to Diego. “It’s a magatama. For both of us, Maya said.”
“Sweet of her.” Diego took the pendant from her hand. “What does it do?”
“It’s supposed to let you look into people’s hearts.” Mia was aware of how ridiculous that sounded, but there was no better way to put it. “Anyone can use it, according to Maya, but I don’t know about that. I’ve never been very useful around Kurain spiritual relics.” She cast the magatama a dubious look. “Just put it a drawer somewhere. We can thank Maya by taking her out to dinner when she finally makes it to town. Though I warn you, she has a stomach like a bottomless pit.”
Diego grinned and pocketed the magatama. “Forget the drawer, I’m leaving this out on the shelves in the living room. It’ll make little Maya happy.”
“That’s not necessary, really.” Mia wasn’t sure she wanted a reminder of Kurain bizarreness sitting out where she could see it. “Little Maya will be happy with dinner.”
“It’s for you, too, kitten.” Diego squeezed her waist. “Even the boldest birds sometimes want to return to the nest.”
* * *
August 30
Present Day
The bed, the sheets all smelled like Diego-that rich, dark, coffee scent of him-and that was what kept Mia awake, staring up at the ceiling in a trance between true alertness and true sleep. It was no good. She could not sleep here in this bed, in this apartment that reminded her of him, not when Diego himself was sleeping in the intensive care unit at Caduceus Trauma Center, so far away from her that she could not touch him, could not speak with him, could not watch his eyes watching her. It hurt. It was a physical pain that twisted her guts every time she thought of it, as though some terrible creature was trying to claw its way out of her belly.
She glanced at the clock; the glowing red face read 3:31 am. Sleep was a lost cause. She gave it up and got out of bed and pulled on some clothes in the dark, jeans and a black tank top and a pair of sandals-even in the middle of the night, the Los Angeles heat was fierce. Four hours from now, Grossberg would be heading to the district courthouse to reconvene with Heather Raleigh for her eight o’clock trial. Mia knew Grossberg had been right to insist on covering the trial in her stead; her mind on Diego, there was no way she’d have been able to concentrate enough to prove her client’s innocence. But she rather wished she could try, just to have something else to think about for a while.
She wanted to see Diego. Maybe some miracle would occur and he would be awake by the time she got there-weak and sick, yes, but with his eyes bright and laughing and a smile in his voice: “Don’t tell me you were worried about me, kitten.”
She took her purse and her car keys and left, driving to the hospital slowly under the flashing yellow lights of the streetlamps, alone in the dark of night, giving Diego time to wake before she got there.
Mia entered the hospital through the emergency room doors, where the sleepy security guards were good enough to do nothing more than look at her as she bypassed the emergency room for the hospital proper. Outside the intensive care unit, however, she did not have as much luck.
“Visiting hours are closed for anyone who isn’t a family member or a spouse,” the nurse at the reception desk told her, not unsympathetically, but firmly. “Are you Mr. Armando’s wife?”
Mia ground her teeth in frustration. Their conversation not fifteen minutes before Diego’s poisoning was the first time they had talked about marriage in any form. Diego had told her he didn’t care whether it was official, and neither did Mia; she was, after all, far from a stickler for tradition. But it seemed as though everyone else did care.
“No, we aren’t married. But please, I just want to see him, just for a few minutes. I don’t need any longer than that.”
The nurse shook her head. “I’m sorry, Miss, but hospital regulations are hospital regulations. I can’t-”
“Miss Fey?”
Mia looked up at the familiar, slightly-accented voice to see Rosario Littlemen approaching, wearing her usual lab coat and thick glasses. “Dr. Littlemen,” she said, bewildered to see Diego’s neurologist working a late night shift. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to inconvenience anyone, I just wanted to see-”
“Yes, of course. It’s all right, Fiona, I’ll take charge of her. This way, Miss Fey.”
Mia followed after her through the now-familiar ICU, surprisingly empty and quiet compared to the chaos of the daytime. The little rooms behind their glass doors were dark, their occupants sleeping or unconscious or dying. “Working late?”
“I’m covering a friend’s shift.” Dr. Littlemen didn’t ask what Mia was doing there so late, to her relief. “Normally we would advise patients’ families not to visit at night, as they need their sleep, but of course it doesn’t matter for your Mr. Armando.”
Mia’s heart sank-Diego was still comatose. She had known he would be, but even so, she had clung to her pretending, to the fantasy that he might be awake and waiting for her when she came. At the same time, however, she was aware of a warm glow of gratitude toward the neurologist. Diego’s family, Dr. Littlemen had called her. And truly, she was his family, perhaps the only family he had. She had been sorry to tell the doctors that there was no next-of-kin to notify about Diego’s condition; his parents were dead, and if he had brothers or sisters or cousins or any other relatives, she didn’t know it. It made her sad, and lonely for him, especially knowing that had their situations been reversed, Mia would have had a whole villageful of Kurain women in their purple robes and prayer beads and magatamas, filling the room with their chatter and bothering the doctors to administer herbal remedies and trying to channel her spirit.
The hospital room was the same as always. Mia approached Diego and smoothed her hand over his forehead, wishing more than anything simply to see his eyes open. After three days he still looked gray and weak, but his heartbeat was steady and his conditional stable; he would probably be moved out of the ICU soon. She stroked her fingers gently through his hair, the way he did with hers that she loved so much, and noticed something odd.
“Dr. Littlemen?”
The neurologist came to stand at her elbow. “Yes?”
“His hair…” Mia ran her fingers through it again and saw a few pure white strands, no more than half a dozen, but noticeable against the darkness of his hair.
“Stress,” Dr. Littlemen diagnosed. “Or a chemical effect. Some medication causes hair to turn white. It could be that the poison contained traces of those drugs.”
Mia gazed down at him and ran her fingers through his hair once more. They were trembling.
“Ms. Fey, if you have a few minutes I’d like to talk with you in my office,” Dr. Littlemen told her. “I have some documents and treatment options to discuss with you.”
Mia nodded, kissed Diego on the forehead and left the ICU with the neurologist, following her back the way she’d come to her office on the same floor. The walls there were painted a soothing forest green, not sickly the way Mia would expect in a hospital. Dr. Littlemen waved her to a modern-looking chair and took a seat behind the broad, pale wooden desk.
“Ms. Fey,” Dr. Littlemen began, steepling her fingers and tapping the tips of them together, “are you aware that Mr. Armando named you his medical proxy?”
Mia stared. “He did?”
The neurologist nodded. “Recently signed.” She opened a manila folder on her desk and took out a small pile of papers stapled together at the top. “Which, as I’m sure you realize, gives you full rights to make medical decisions-on everything from treatment to continuing life support-on Mr. Armando’s behalf.” She handed over the papers.
Mia glanced through them briefly. It was a typical contract, outlining the terms of the agreement between Diego and the clinic, naming her on several pages, all of which were signed and dated in Diego’s scratchy, angular script. Nothing unusual about it, except-
Mia’s sharp eyes, trained to look for the tiniest of details, focused on the dates next to those signatures. 8-20-11, they read, or August 20th-exactly one week before his poisoning, the day Diego had left Los Angeles for reasons he refused to explain.
In an instant a part of the puzzle came together in Mia’s mind. He knew he would be poisoned, she thought, dizzy with the realization. Or at least that he could be hurt. Whatever his reasons for leaving, whatever his reasons for not telling me-he knew that it might end like this. That was why he made sure to name me his proxy before he went.
Suddenly she was much closer to understanding why Diego had left town so abruptly, without telling his closest friends why-without even telling her, his lover, from whom he had never kept secrets before. “Honesty is a man’s first rule,” he’d told her on more than one occasion. “He’s not much of a man without it.”
Could he have been hunting down Dahlia? She was sure he had deliberately arranged the meeting with her. But why then, why after six months of fruitless digging for something that could link Dahlia to the death of Valerie Hawthorne? Mia had believed they would never find the answer. But Diego had to have some reason for meeting with Dahlia. Perhaps information that could get her to talk-perhaps information that would put her away for good.
And he had refused to share it with Mia. He had deliberately kept her out of the loop.
Mia was aware of a slow-burning, sizzling anger blooming deep in the pit of her belly. Who did Diego Armando think he was? What right did he think he had to keep her from her own target, to go and dig up information and meet Dahlia and get himself poisoned and try to keep her, Mia Fey, his partner and confidant and lover, in ignorance?
But Dr. Littlemen was speaking again, so she turned her mind from the unexpected breaking of trust to listen to the treatment plans and options that the neurologist outlined. She agreed to continue Diego on the course of treatment that the doctors had begun for him, signed a waiver to that effect, and then returned to Diego’s room to stand dispassionately at his bedside, looking down at him.
You think you’re something, Diego Armando, she thought with the slow-burning anger flickering in her insides once more, and then she shook her head and leaned down and put his mouth close to his ear.
“Don’t go thinking I’ll be your good little kitten and stay out of the loop, Armando,” she told him in a whisper. “I’m getting to the bottom of this whether you like it or not.”
She waited for him to grin at her temerity, or to laugh and tell her not to be so serious. He didn’t, of course. She sighed and leaned her forehead briefly against his.
“I love you, you cocky bastard.”
* * *
Mia drove aimlessly through Los Angeles, burning fuel, as the sky began to lighten with the onslaught of dawn and the air slowly went from hot to sizzling. At last, because she had nowhere else to be, because she wanted to see her client proved innocent and because the district courthouse was air-conditioned, she decided to go watch the murder trial of Heather Raleigh.
In jeans, tank top and sandals she was underdressed for court, but the bailiff recognized her and let her in anyway. Mia found a seat not far behind the defendant’s. Grossberg was already standing at the defense’s stand, while Winston Payne seemed to be substituting for Prosecutor Edgeworth today-not enough of a challenge, eh, Edgeworth? Mia thought. The trial got underway precisely at 8 am and was over by 9:30; Grossberg, with the help of Mia’s notes, competently burned holes in the witness’s testimony and swiftly established Heather’s solid alibi, which prevented her from being present at the film studio that day to murder the victim. It was all over and done with so quickly that Mia was almost disappointed, with no mishaps along the way.
“This is the way of most cases, my dear,” Grossberg had told her when she was preparing for Heather’s trial and expressed her surprise at how simple it all seemed. “Evidence is evidence, after all. Most of the time it’s solid enough to win the trial all on its own.”
“We lawyers are but the puppets that dance to entertain the audience,” Diego had added. “The most complicated routines are the most unusual, but the audience loves them best. That’s why they get top billing.”
When the trial was over, she found Grossberg and Heather Raleigh chatting in the lobby. Heather’s beautiful face was bright with happiness at being a free woman. “Ms. Raleigh,” Mia said nervously, approaching. “I just wanted to say how sorry I am to have been unable to defend you this morning…”
Heather smiled at her sympathetically. “Don’t be silly, darling. Mr. Grossberg explained, and I do understand.”
“Your role in this case was essential, Mia,” Grossberg reminded her gently. “Without your notes I would have been lost at sea.”
It was kind of him, of them both, to show her sympathy. Mia didn’t deserve it, not when she had so thoroughly failed the people in her life that she most wanted to protect-Diego Armando, first and foremost, and her clients, second.
She couldn’t stay here and let them try and comfort her. “I’m sorry again, Ms. Raleigh, and I’m very glad everything worked out well for you. Mr. Grossberg, do you mind if I take the rest of the day off? I’d like to stop by the police station.”
Mia in fact stopped by the police station all the time when she was working, and the trip hardly required a full day, but Grossberg didn’t hesitate to agree. He hadn’t said a word about the two days of work she’d missed already. She had tried coming in for just an hour one afternoon, the day after Diego’s poisoning, but hadn’t been able to keep her mind on anything for more than a minute at a time, and Grossberg seemed determined to give her as much time away from the office as she could possibly need.
She drove to the police station and went inside, hoping to find Lana Skye. She was in luck. Lana was chatting with a couple of officers in blue uniforms in the receiving room when she entered; she soon dismissed them and nodded to Mia.
“Welcome back, Mia. You look like you could use some sleep.”
“You’re right, but every time I try I can’t seem to turn my mind off,” Mia said wryly. At least Lana had the good sense not to ask her how she was feeling. “How is the-” She hesitated. “How is the investigation going?”
Lana gave her a brief and impenetrable look of scrutiny. “Let’s go to the break room to talk.”
It was like any other break room-cheap white counters, a cheap white table, a refrigerator and coffee maker and water cooler that had a switch for hot water. “Coffee, Mia?” Lana asked, gesturing her to a seat at the table.
Mia winced at the thought. “No, no thank you. Some tea would be good if you have it, Lana.”
Lana got the coffee maker going for herself, then filled a Styrofoam cup with hot water from the water cooler and put a bag of chamomile tea in it to steep. It wasn’t Mia’s favorite flavor of tea, but she knew she could use relaxing. When the drinks were done Lana carried them over to the table and took a seat herself.
“Our Miss Hawthorne’s got the boys wrapped around her little finger,” she said dryly, as though continuing a conversation they’d been having. “I can hardly trust them to interview her without lapping up every word she says.”
Mia clutched the cup of tea so tightly between her fingers that she bent the sides in. The anger in her was not slow-burning now; it was a boiling well. “Sangre de Cristo,” she said through gritted teeth, a favorite expression of Diego’s. “At this rate that snake will be out on her-”
“Not with our witness’s testimony,” Lana said dryly. “Believe me, even our most lovesick puppies won’t let her walk with what we’ve got on her.”
Mia sat straight up. “That’s right-who is this witness, anyway?”
Lana shrugged. “I can’t say right now. You know how it is-confidentiality and all that. But I can tell you that our witness was at the scene when the incident occurred, and that his or her testimony places Dahlia Hawthorne at a table in the cafeteria with your Mr. Armando.” She put her chin in her hand and stirred her drink absentmindedly, apparently recalling the details. “He was drinking coffee; Miss Hawthorne had no food or drink. They appeared to be talking intently and Miss Hawthorne looked ‘mightily displeased,’ in the witness’s words. Partway through the conversation, Mr. Armando suddenly dropped his coffee cup, breaking off a chip and spilling the coffee all over the table. He leapt to his feet, knocking his chair backwards, and reportedly clutched the edges of the table, looking as though he were gasping for breath. He also appeared to be in intense pain. At this point Miss Hawthorne got up and ran out, looking panicked. Mr. Armando fell to the floor in what appeared to be a violent seizure, and was convulsing for approximately-” She abruptly stopped, catching sight of Mia’s face. “I’m sorry, Mia,” she said in a low tone. “You didn’t need to know all that, did you?”
Mia’s hands were trembling; she clenched them into fists in her lap to hide it. “It’s all right.” Her voice wobbled dangerously, and she took a deep breath in an attempt to steady herself. “Well then. That sounds fairly conclusive.”
Lana nodded gravely. “We’ve got a few more things to check out before we make our report to the prosecution’s office, but I suspect we’ll be ready to take Miss Hawthorne to trial before long.”
Briefly Mia wondered whether Edgeworth would prosecute, how he would feel about putting away his former star witness. She rather hoped it was him; she knew him well enough to realize he would never fall for Dahlia’s feminine wiles.
“Thank you, Lana, really,” she said, rising to her feet. She had known in her heart that no one other than Dahlia Hawthorne could have done this to Diego; now she had a witness to back up her convictions. “You’ve done me some good today.”
Lana rose too, still looking concerned. “Glad to hear it. Call me if you need anything, Mia. I’m glad to help out an old friend.”
Mia actually smiled. “I appreciate it.”
She let Lana walk her to the receiving area of the police station and left her there, her heart beating a fast and exulting staccato as she walked down the steps and across the parking lot. You’ve dug your own grave, Dahlia Hawthorne, she thought elatedly. And I’m going to be there when you lie in it.
***
Continued
Genre: Drama, romance
Rating: PG-13
Pairing/Characters: Diego/Mia, Marvin Grossberg, Lana Skye, OCs
Summary: Mia couldn’t let Diego go without knowing what happened to him. She would risk everything-her career, her sanity, and her life-to understand why he was poisoned and bring down the woman responsible. Five chapters + prologue and epilogue.
Previous parts: Prologue, Chapter 1
Warnings: Spoilers for 3-1 and 3-4, unannounced flashbacks, smut, romance, and angst. Slight contradictions with canon where Mia’s magatama is concerned.
Notes: Lots of thanks to ggmoonycrisco for reading, reviewing, and making sure I didn’t trip over canon.
***
Chapter 2
“Hey, stranger,” Diego greeted when he opened the door and found Mia standing in the hallway outside his apartment, heavy suitcase in hand. “This place isn’t a hotel, you know.”
Mia grinned. “But I’m a lawyer, mister. I can afford to pay. Just name your price.”
“Ha…!” Diego drew her inside with a seductive arm around her waist, taking the suitcase with his free hand. “I’m sure I can think of something.”
It felt different walking through the door of his apartment this time-moving in, she thought, was an interesting experience. She had always expected she’d live on her own after leaving Kurain; it was part of the experience of starting her own life here in Los Angeles, one that didn’t include ghost channeling and chanting on one’s behind for hours a day and the dozens of women who formed one communal bond of strength and support-lonely as it was without those aunties and cousins and sisters surrounding her. After all, what didn’t kill you only made you stronger. But that had changed when she began seeing Diego, and realized that evenings (there were never enough hours, and she could not stay the night and hope to get to work on time the next morning) and weekends and lunchtimes and the file room-it was the only room in the office with a door that locked, for some reason-were not enough. She could never have enough of being at his side.
And anyway, Grossberg was getting suspicious about the file room.
“Let me give you the grand tour,” Diego offered, nudging the door shut with his toes.
“I’ve seen it all,” she reminded him, letting herself be steered away from the little foyer anyway and into the living room. One would know Diego’s profession just by looking at his apartment, or at least be able to guess. It was far nicer than her three-room hovel, nothing elaborate, just tasteful dark furnishings and wood molding and sleek modern appliances.
“The first sip of coffee is a new experience to the man who made it for himself. It’s your home too, now, kitten.”
And he was right, the place did seem different somehow-the living room with the l-shaped leather couch dominating the space and the painting on the wall she always admired, depicting a dark-skinned pair, a man and a woman, dancing together-the woman’s scarlet dress was a blur of motion-and the kitchen with its coffee machines on every counter (she knew well that Diego worshipped at the altar of his darkest roasts, but what one man did with thirteen coffee makers was beyond her), the bathroom he kept cleaner than anyone Mia knew-so much for bachelors being slobs-and the bedroom, with the thick carpet she loved to wiggle her toes in and the bed with which she was by now very intimately acquainted. The bedroom set was all dark, dark wood and earthy colors, homey and surprisingly serene.
It all reminded her of him, Mia realized. That was what made it home.
“I notice you saved the bedroom for last,” she said aloud.
“Did I?” Diego grinned and drew her closer, his hand sliding up her back to tangle in the hair at the nape of her neck. “Well, I’m sure we’d have ended up here again sooner or later.”
Mia smiled and closed her eyes and leaned against him, loving the feel of his hand in her hair, the way he stroked through the long strands with an almost reverential tenderness. It drew her into him like nothing else, this slow and loving seduction.
“Wait,” she murmured after a while, sleepy with pleasure. “Before we do anything else, my sister wanted to make sure I showed you this. She sent it from Kurain.” She brought Maya’s peculiar ‘housewarming gift’ out of a pocket of her jeans and showed it to Diego. “It’s a magatama. For both of us, Maya said.”
“Sweet of her.” Diego took the pendant from her hand. “What does it do?”
“It’s supposed to let you look into people’s hearts.” Mia was aware of how ridiculous that sounded, but there was no better way to put it. “Anyone can use it, according to Maya, but I don’t know about that. I’ve never been very useful around Kurain spiritual relics.” She cast the magatama a dubious look. “Just put it a drawer somewhere. We can thank Maya by taking her out to dinner when she finally makes it to town. Though I warn you, she has a stomach like a bottomless pit.”
Diego grinned and pocketed the magatama. “Forget the drawer, I’m leaving this out on the shelves in the living room. It’ll make little Maya happy.”
“That’s not necessary, really.” Mia wasn’t sure she wanted a reminder of Kurain bizarreness sitting out where she could see it. “Little Maya will be happy with dinner.”
“It’s for you, too, kitten.” Diego squeezed her waist. “Even the boldest birds sometimes want to return to the nest.”
* * *
August 30
Present Day
The bed, the sheets all smelled like Diego-that rich, dark, coffee scent of him-and that was what kept Mia awake, staring up at the ceiling in a trance between true alertness and true sleep. It was no good. She could not sleep here in this bed, in this apartment that reminded her of him, not when Diego himself was sleeping in the intensive care unit at Caduceus Trauma Center, so far away from her that she could not touch him, could not speak with him, could not watch his eyes watching her. It hurt. It was a physical pain that twisted her guts every time she thought of it, as though some terrible creature was trying to claw its way out of her belly.
She glanced at the clock; the glowing red face read 3:31 am. Sleep was a lost cause. She gave it up and got out of bed and pulled on some clothes in the dark, jeans and a black tank top and a pair of sandals-even in the middle of the night, the Los Angeles heat was fierce. Four hours from now, Grossberg would be heading to the district courthouse to reconvene with Heather Raleigh for her eight o’clock trial. Mia knew Grossberg had been right to insist on covering the trial in her stead; her mind on Diego, there was no way she’d have been able to concentrate enough to prove her client’s innocence. But she rather wished she could try, just to have something else to think about for a while.
She wanted to see Diego. Maybe some miracle would occur and he would be awake by the time she got there-weak and sick, yes, but with his eyes bright and laughing and a smile in his voice: “Don’t tell me you were worried about me, kitten.”
She took her purse and her car keys and left, driving to the hospital slowly under the flashing yellow lights of the streetlamps, alone in the dark of night, giving Diego time to wake before she got there.
Mia entered the hospital through the emergency room doors, where the sleepy security guards were good enough to do nothing more than look at her as she bypassed the emergency room for the hospital proper. Outside the intensive care unit, however, she did not have as much luck.
“Visiting hours are closed for anyone who isn’t a family member or a spouse,” the nurse at the reception desk told her, not unsympathetically, but firmly. “Are you Mr. Armando’s wife?”
Mia ground her teeth in frustration. Their conversation not fifteen minutes before Diego’s poisoning was the first time they had talked about marriage in any form. Diego had told her he didn’t care whether it was official, and neither did Mia; she was, after all, far from a stickler for tradition. But it seemed as though everyone else did care.
“No, we aren’t married. But please, I just want to see him, just for a few minutes. I don’t need any longer than that.”
The nurse shook her head. “I’m sorry, Miss, but hospital regulations are hospital regulations. I can’t-”
“Miss Fey?”
Mia looked up at the familiar, slightly-accented voice to see Rosario Littlemen approaching, wearing her usual lab coat and thick glasses. “Dr. Littlemen,” she said, bewildered to see Diego’s neurologist working a late night shift. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to inconvenience anyone, I just wanted to see-”
“Yes, of course. It’s all right, Fiona, I’ll take charge of her. This way, Miss Fey.”
Mia followed after her through the now-familiar ICU, surprisingly empty and quiet compared to the chaos of the daytime. The little rooms behind their glass doors were dark, their occupants sleeping or unconscious or dying. “Working late?”
“I’m covering a friend’s shift.” Dr. Littlemen didn’t ask what Mia was doing there so late, to her relief. “Normally we would advise patients’ families not to visit at night, as they need their sleep, but of course it doesn’t matter for your Mr. Armando.”
Mia’s heart sank-Diego was still comatose. She had known he would be, but even so, she had clung to her pretending, to the fantasy that he might be awake and waiting for her when she came. At the same time, however, she was aware of a warm glow of gratitude toward the neurologist. Diego’s family, Dr. Littlemen had called her. And truly, she was his family, perhaps the only family he had. She had been sorry to tell the doctors that there was no next-of-kin to notify about Diego’s condition; his parents were dead, and if he had brothers or sisters or cousins or any other relatives, she didn’t know it. It made her sad, and lonely for him, especially knowing that had their situations been reversed, Mia would have had a whole villageful of Kurain women in their purple robes and prayer beads and magatamas, filling the room with their chatter and bothering the doctors to administer herbal remedies and trying to channel her spirit.
The hospital room was the same as always. Mia approached Diego and smoothed her hand over his forehead, wishing more than anything simply to see his eyes open. After three days he still looked gray and weak, but his heartbeat was steady and his conditional stable; he would probably be moved out of the ICU soon. She stroked her fingers gently through his hair, the way he did with hers that she loved so much, and noticed something odd.
“Dr. Littlemen?”
The neurologist came to stand at her elbow. “Yes?”
“His hair…” Mia ran her fingers through it again and saw a few pure white strands, no more than half a dozen, but noticeable against the darkness of his hair.
“Stress,” Dr. Littlemen diagnosed. “Or a chemical effect. Some medication causes hair to turn white. It could be that the poison contained traces of those drugs.”
Mia gazed down at him and ran her fingers through his hair once more. They were trembling.
“Ms. Fey, if you have a few minutes I’d like to talk with you in my office,” Dr. Littlemen told her. “I have some documents and treatment options to discuss with you.”
Mia nodded, kissed Diego on the forehead and left the ICU with the neurologist, following her back the way she’d come to her office on the same floor. The walls there were painted a soothing forest green, not sickly the way Mia would expect in a hospital. Dr. Littlemen waved her to a modern-looking chair and took a seat behind the broad, pale wooden desk.
“Ms. Fey,” Dr. Littlemen began, steepling her fingers and tapping the tips of them together, “are you aware that Mr. Armando named you his medical proxy?”
Mia stared. “He did?”
The neurologist nodded. “Recently signed.” She opened a manila folder on her desk and took out a small pile of papers stapled together at the top. “Which, as I’m sure you realize, gives you full rights to make medical decisions-on everything from treatment to continuing life support-on Mr. Armando’s behalf.” She handed over the papers.
Mia glanced through them briefly. It was a typical contract, outlining the terms of the agreement between Diego and the clinic, naming her on several pages, all of which were signed and dated in Diego’s scratchy, angular script. Nothing unusual about it, except-
Mia’s sharp eyes, trained to look for the tiniest of details, focused on the dates next to those signatures. 8-20-11, they read, or August 20th-exactly one week before his poisoning, the day Diego had left Los Angeles for reasons he refused to explain.
In an instant a part of the puzzle came together in Mia’s mind. He knew he would be poisoned, she thought, dizzy with the realization. Or at least that he could be hurt. Whatever his reasons for leaving, whatever his reasons for not telling me-he knew that it might end like this. That was why he made sure to name me his proxy before he went.
Suddenly she was much closer to understanding why Diego had left town so abruptly, without telling his closest friends why-without even telling her, his lover, from whom he had never kept secrets before. “Honesty is a man’s first rule,” he’d told her on more than one occasion. “He’s not much of a man without it.”
Could he have been hunting down Dahlia? She was sure he had deliberately arranged the meeting with her. But why then, why after six months of fruitless digging for something that could link Dahlia to the death of Valerie Hawthorne? Mia had believed they would never find the answer. But Diego had to have some reason for meeting with Dahlia. Perhaps information that could get her to talk-perhaps information that would put her away for good.
And he had refused to share it with Mia. He had deliberately kept her out of the loop.
Mia was aware of a slow-burning, sizzling anger blooming deep in the pit of her belly. Who did Diego Armando think he was? What right did he think he had to keep her from her own target, to go and dig up information and meet Dahlia and get himself poisoned and try to keep her, Mia Fey, his partner and confidant and lover, in ignorance?
But Dr. Littlemen was speaking again, so she turned her mind from the unexpected breaking of trust to listen to the treatment plans and options that the neurologist outlined. She agreed to continue Diego on the course of treatment that the doctors had begun for him, signed a waiver to that effect, and then returned to Diego’s room to stand dispassionately at his bedside, looking down at him.
You think you’re something, Diego Armando, she thought with the slow-burning anger flickering in her insides once more, and then she shook her head and leaned down and put his mouth close to his ear.
“Don’t go thinking I’ll be your good little kitten and stay out of the loop, Armando,” she told him in a whisper. “I’m getting to the bottom of this whether you like it or not.”
She waited for him to grin at her temerity, or to laugh and tell her not to be so serious. He didn’t, of course. She sighed and leaned her forehead briefly against his.
“I love you, you cocky bastard.”
* * *
Mia drove aimlessly through Los Angeles, burning fuel, as the sky began to lighten with the onslaught of dawn and the air slowly went from hot to sizzling. At last, because she had nowhere else to be, because she wanted to see her client proved innocent and because the district courthouse was air-conditioned, she decided to go watch the murder trial of Heather Raleigh.
In jeans, tank top and sandals she was underdressed for court, but the bailiff recognized her and let her in anyway. Mia found a seat not far behind the defendant’s. Grossberg was already standing at the defense’s stand, while Winston Payne seemed to be substituting for Prosecutor Edgeworth today-not enough of a challenge, eh, Edgeworth? Mia thought. The trial got underway precisely at 8 am and was over by 9:30; Grossberg, with the help of Mia’s notes, competently burned holes in the witness’s testimony and swiftly established Heather’s solid alibi, which prevented her from being present at the film studio that day to murder the victim. It was all over and done with so quickly that Mia was almost disappointed, with no mishaps along the way.
“This is the way of most cases, my dear,” Grossberg had told her when she was preparing for Heather’s trial and expressed her surprise at how simple it all seemed. “Evidence is evidence, after all. Most of the time it’s solid enough to win the trial all on its own.”
“We lawyers are but the puppets that dance to entertain the audience,” Diego had added. “The most complicated routines are the most unusual, but the audience loves them best. That’s why they get top billing.”
When the trial was over, she found Grossberg and Heather Raleigh chatting in the lobby. Heather’s beautiful face was bright with happiness at being a free woman. “Ms. Raleigh,” Mia said nervously, approaching. “I just wanted to say how sorry I am to have been unable to defend you this morning…”
Heather smiled at her sympathetically. “Don’t be silly, darling. Mr. Grossberg explained, and I do understand.”
“Your role in this case was essential, Mia,” Grossberg reminded her gently. “Without your notes I would have been lost at sea.”
It was kind of him, of them both, to show her sympathy. Mia didn’t deserve it, not when she had so thoroughly failed the people in her life that she most wanted to protect-Diego Armando, first and foremost, and her clients, second.
She couldn’t stay here and let them try and comfort her. “I’m sorry again, Ms. Raleigh, and I’m very glad everything worked out well for you. Mr. Grossberg, do you mind if I take the rest of the day off? I’d like to stop by the police station.”
Mia in fact stopped by the police station all the time when she was working, and the trip hardly required a full day, but Grossberg didn’t hesitate to agree. He hadn’t said a word about the two days of work she’d missed already. She had tried coming in for just an hour one afternoon, the day after Diego’s poisoning, but hadn’t been able to keep her mind on anything for more than a minute at a time, and Grossberg seemed determined to give her as much time away from the office as she could possibly need.
She drove to the police station and went inside, hoping to find Lana Skye. She was in luck. Lana was chatting with a couple of officers in blue uniforms in the receiving room when she entered; she soon dismissed them and nodded to Mia.
“Welcome back, Mia. You look like you could use some sleep.”
“You’re right, but every time I try I can’t seem to turn my mind off,” Mia said wryly. At least Lana had the good sense not to ask her how she was feeling. “How is the-” She hesitated. “How is the investigation going?”
Lana gave her a brief and impenetrable look of scrutiny. “Let’s go to the break room to talk.”
It was like any other break room-cheap white counters, a cheap white table, a refrigerator and coffee maker and water cooler that had a switch for hot water. “Coffee, Mia?” Lana asked, gesturing her to a seat at the table.
Mia winced at the thought. “No, no thank you. Some tea would be good if you have it, Lana.”
Lana got the coffee maker going for herself, then filled a Styrofoam cup with hot water from the water cooler and put a bag of chamomile tea in it to steep. It wasn’t Mia’s favorite flavor of tea, but she knew she could use relaxing. When the drinks were done Lana carried them over to the table and took a seat herself.
“Our Miss Hawthorne’s got the boys wrapped around her little finger,” she said dryly, as though continuing a conversation they’d been having. “I can hardly trust them to interview her without lapping up every word she says.”
Mia clutched the cup of tea so tightly between her fingers that she bent the sides in. The anger in her was not slow-burning now; it was a boiling well. “Sangre de Cristo,” she said through gritted teeth, a favorite expression of Diego’s. “At this rate that snake will be out on her-”
“Not with our witness’s testimony,” Lana said dryly. “Believe me, even our most lovesick puppies won’t let her walk with what we’ve got on her.”
Mia sat straight up. “That’s right-who is this witness, anyway?”
Lana shrugged. “I can’t say right now. You know how it is-confidentiality and all that. But I can tell you that our witness was at the scene when the incident occurred, and that his or her testimony places Dahlia Hawthorne at a table in the cafeteria with your Mr. Armando.” She put her chin in her hand and stirred her drink absentmindedly, apparently recalling the details. “He was drinking coffee; Miss Hawthorne had no food or drink. They appeared to be talking intently and Miss Hawthorne looked ‘mightily displeased,’ in the witness’s words. Partway through the conversation, Mr. Armando suddenly dropped his coffee cup, breaking off a chip and spilling the coffee all over the table. He leapt to his feet, knocking his chair backwards, and reportedly clutched the edges of the table, looking as though he were gasping for breath. He also appeared to be in intense pain. At this point Miss Hawthorne got up and ran out, looking panicked. Mr. Armando fell to the floor in what appeared to be a violent seizure, and was convulsing for approximately-” She abruptly stopped, catching sight of Mia’s face. “I’m sorry, Mia,” she said in a low tone. “You didn’t need to know all that, did you?”
Mia’s hands were trembling; she clenched them into fists in her lap to hide it. “It’s all right.” Her voice wobbled dangerously, and she took a deep breath in an attempt to steady herself. “Well then. That sounds fairly conclusive.”
Lana nodded gravely. “We’ve got a few more things to check out before we make our report to the prosecution’s office, but I suspect we’ll be ready to take Miss Hawthorne to trial before long.”
Briefly Mia wondered whether Edgeworth would prosecute, how he would feel about putting away his former star witness. She rather hoped it was him; she knew him well enough to realize he would never fall for Dahlia’s feminine wiles.
“Thank you, Lana, really,” she said, rising to her feet. She had known in her heart that no one other than Dahlia Hawthorne could have done this to Diego; now she had a witness to back up her convictions. “You’ve done me some good today.”
Lana rose too, still looking concerned. “Glad to hear it. Call me if you need anything, Mia. I’m glad to help out an old friend.”
Mia actually smiled. “I appreciate it.”
She let Lana walk her to the receiving area of the police station and left her there, her heart beating a fast and exulting staccato as she walked down the steps and across the parking lot. You’ve dug your own grave, Dahlia Hawthorne, she thought elatedly. And I’m going to be there when you lie in it.
***
Continued