Mortal Remains

Chapter 9

That same evening, Monday, November 19, 6:00 P.M.

New York City Hospital

Earl huddled against the wind at the Thirty-third Street entrance, cupping the mouthpiece of his cellular with his hand. Horizontal needles of rain stung against his skin. Everyone else rushing by seemed to have an umbrella. He eyed a kid who had been selling them out of a garbage bag and signaled him to bring one over, all the while continuing his conversation with Janet. “I came up empty. The only significant thing is that Cam Roper, Mark’s father, might have looked at those same charts just after Kelly went missing. Except he probably didn’t find anything either, or he would have done something about it. I can’t reach Mark to tell him. His phone doesn’t seem to be working.”

“It’s still pretty bizarre, those records attracting his interest,” Janet said.

“If I’m right about Kelly trying to find evidence of malpractice to use as leverage against Chaz, then maybe Cam Roper had followed up on those suspicions, or at least started to before he passed away.” He fished five bucks out of his pocket, and gave it to the pint-sized merchant, who cut the gloom with a grin as bright as polished ivory. Popping open what looked as flimsy as a bat wing and was undoubtedly stolen goods, Earl instantly felt better, but had to speak up as the rain drummed on the black material, creating the din of a thousand impatient fingers. “Cam could have thought she’d confronted Chaz with some grievous error he’d made that would ruin his career, and he’d killed her for it. Except Roper Senior likely came to the same conclusion as the M and M reports. ‘Unexpected but unavoidable digoxin toxicity with no obvious cause.’ ”

Janet said nothing.

In the roar of the storm he thought the connection was gone. “Janet?”

“I’m here.”

“So what’s got your tongue.”

“I hesitate to say it, but there’s another possible scenario.”

A wave of static interrupted them. “Go on,” he said, when it cleared.

“Somebody could have tried to murder those patients by secretly injecting extra doses of the drug.”

“That’s pretty far-fetched.”

“But not impossible. It’s occurred in hospitals before.”

“But no one ever raised the possibility of foul play here. Certainly it was never mentioned in the charts.”

“That doesn’t necessarily mean it didn’t happen.”

He exhaled the way only a former smoker can – long, slow, and from the bottom of his lungs. “Being unable to talk with either of them means I may never know.”

“What about family?”

“I talked with the woman’s son this afternoon, but he never brought up anything of that sort. I can call him back and ask him outright if she ever mentioned having any enemies or suspicions of someone trying to harm her, but I think he would have mentioned it if she had. As for the man who died, he’d no next of kin, so there isn’t a hope of finding out more there.”

She fell silent again.

“It isn’t entirely a dead end,” he continued. “I’ve arranged to meet with the floor staff involved in her care. Maybe they can tell me if she ever mentioned anyone who might hurt her. And it turns out Melanie Collins continued to see the woman as a patient from time to time over the years, so maybe she’ll be able to fill me in on something I’m missing.” He’d already left several messages on her service, asking her to call, but she hadn’t gotten back to him yet.

This time Janet let out a sigh, minor-league compared to his own. “Good luck, love. Oh, by the way, I looked up divorce law on the Internet, and as far as I can see, she’d have gone offshore.”

Once Janet got an idea, she was relentless. “That may be, but the police found no record of any plane or boat tickets in her name.”

“That doesn’t mean she didn’t intend to go there. Maybe her killer stopped her before she could make the move. All I know is, find a woman’s divorce lawyer, and you find someone who knows a lot about the woman.”

Mark huddled in the bushes, trying to blend with the scrubby growth.

The man on the ridge looked up from his study of the ground and seemed to stare right at him. Then he looked in the other direction, and finally rose to his feet. If he’d seen Mark or the hunter below, he showed no sign, turning away and peering into the night.

The hunter must have been outside his line of sight, Mark thought. Otherwise, if they were together, why hadn’t he called to him? Even if they weren’t, he would still have reacted, possibly even mistaken him for Mark and taken a shot at him.

Instead the man walked off in the opposite direction, playing his light over the snow on either side of the spiny path.

Mark exhaled in momentary relief.

Looking down he saw that the hunter hadn’t budged, his dark form still visible, his breath coming out in well-spaced puffs. By counting the interval, Mark estimated that whoever he was, he’d controlled his respirations down to ten a minute, which took rock-solid nerve.

As Mark watched, the man slowly leveled the gun barrel as if he were about to shoot something farther down the slope. Again he seemed to be listening.

Mark heard nothing but the rush of the wind.

From within the darkness of the woods leapt a great amorphous shadow in what initially appeared to be a singular movement. Immediately it flew into pieces, the parts darting through the trees at the forest edge, each zigzagging around the trunks like formless gray spirits.

Three shots rang out, but, like smoke, the creatures had vanished.

Except for one.

Its antlered head twisted round, and it spiraled to its knees, staggered up on its legs, then pitched forward again. It writhed in the snow, kicking and thrashing its neck side to side as if to shake off what had felled it. Black stains pooled on the snow, and the writhing eventually slowed. It raised its head once more, as if straining to see the moon through the treetops, its mouth open and gasping. Then it collapsed, its mighty struggle giving over to lesser quiverings.

The hunter walked over and put a final bullet into the buck’s head.

Mark spun around in time to see the first man standing stock-still in the distance, staring toward the sound of the shot. He then scurried over the edge of the ridge and ran back down the way he’d come.

7:00 P.M.

Mark hated all-terrain vehicles. Gas-powered models were carbon-monoxide-spewing noise polluters. Battery-operated versions, though quieter, tipped, killed, and paralyzed just as many victims as their noisier cousins. But among hunters, especially the middle-of-the-night kind, they were the transportation of choice this time of year, before the snow got too deep.

Perched on the back of a red, four-wheel-drive minitractor, he said nothing of this to his grizzled driver as they bounced over the nonwooded sections of the valley. Rather he expressed profound gratitude for the ride home, especially given that the old guy had had to make a choice whether to haul Mark or the deer out first.

Mark had won, and got a shot of the man’s whiskey to boot.

He occasionally had to grab his host’s shoulders to keep from falling off. Under a blue-checked hunting jacket he felt muscles hard as tangled ropes despite a face etched with so many wrinkles they were like rings of a tree and gave an age near eighty. That made him from an era in which men took down deer to put food on the family table, not for sport.

When they pulled up to the back fence of Mark’s property, his driver didn’t give a name, and Mark didn’t ask. But the handshake between them felt firm, also from another time, when it would have been only natural for a man to help a stranger.

Mark watched him ride off to fetch his kill. The wind had chased away the storm, and the moon was at its zenith now, its light filling the countryside like clear blue water. Soon his rescuer was but a soundless dot churning a path back up the far slope.

Marked climbed the rickety log fence and headed over the field toward his house. The snow was barely six inches deep, and he had no trouble walking. All he could think off was a hot shower, clean clothes, and something to eat. Then he’d call Dan, and have him get his ass over to Chaz Braden’s place to ask some pointed questions-

His thoughts came to an abrupt halt.

The lights were on in his house.

And against the upstairs curtains he saw the shadow of someone walking about, moving from room to room.

Too incredulous to move, his brain clicked into action.

Braden!

That ambush and chase had been nothing more than a diversion, intended to keep him out of the way so the son of a bitch could search his house again.

“Well no goddamn way,” he muttered, sprinting for the back door.

He reached it in less than a minute, and, finding his key, let himself in as noiselessly as he could.

Sure enough, he could hear the floorboards above his head creaking as the intruder continued to walk back and forth.

He crept out of the kitchen, through the hallway to the stairs, pausing to pick up the baseball bat he’d put back in the front closet. He glanced outside, and to his amazement, saw a dark station wagon parked in his driveway. Bloody nerve, he thought, and, holding his weapon at the ready, crept up the steps.

The creaking seemed to be coming from behind the closed door to his guest bedroom.

Get ready to be welcomed, visitor, he said to himself, reaching the landing and weighing the heft of his weapon. He wanted it to be Chaz. Wanted to terrify the creep, confront him about the shooting, about Kelly, make him blurt out a confession or two.

He crossed the final few feet and, holding the bat in his right hand, slowly turned the brass knob with his left. He took a few slow breaths, preparing himself for battle.

“Freeze, you asshole!” he roared, flinging the door open and leaping into the room, the bat cocked over his shoulder.

A young woman with long black hair whom he’d never seen before clutched a bathrobe around her and let out a bloodcurdling yell the whole county would hear.

Before he could react, she pivoted on one leg and came at his head with a karate kick.

His skull hurt.

And his neck.

“I’m lucky I didn’t kill him,” a woman said.

“I’d say he’s the lucky one,” a man who sounded familiar replied. “Where’d you learn to kick like that?”

“At a karate school in Paris.”

He must have fallen asleep on his couch with no pillow – that would explain the pain – and left the TV on.

“Could you have fractured one of his vertebrae?” the man asked.

He knew that voice. Must be an actor he’d seen before.

“Not without breaking my foot. It feels fine.”

The woman’s voice he didn’t recognize at all.

“Well, I’m glad of that, for both of you.”

Wait a minute. That wasn’t an actor. It was Dan. What would he be doing on a television show?

Before he could open his eyes, someone pried his right lid up, beamed a white light directly into his pupil, and peered at him through the opposite side of an ophthalmoscope. “Stop it.” He moaned, and tried to move away from the glare, still feeling he had a hot coal buried in there. But a burning sheet of pain snapped up the back of his head and stopped him.

Then he remembered what had happened.

“Something has abraded your cornea, Dr. Roper,” the woman said from somewhere beyond the glare, “and I don’t think it was my toenails – wait a minute. Sheriff Evans, can you hand me my medical bag?” She removed the ophthalmoscope, leaving him momentarily blinded, but he could hear her rummaging around for something.

“What the hell’s going on?” he mumbled, unable to make his mouth move properly.

“Hold my light, please, Sheriff,” she ordered, and brought a tiny pair of forceps into view.

“Now wait a second-”

“Don’t move, Doctor.”

Before he could reply the white glare of the scope floodlit his eyeball again, and her fingers pulled the lids even farther apart.

He winced at a slight stinging sensation, then it was over.

“There,” she said, suddenly releasing her grip and allowing him to retreat back into darkness.

The hot coal sensation had vanished. He still felt a slight burning, but found it tolerable.

She studied the tip of the tiny forceps in her hand. “You had a piece of glass stuck superficially in the conjunctival membrane. Luckily it wasn’t embedded in the cornea and came out easy enough. Here, press gently with this,” and she placed a gauze pad over the eye.

“Who are you?”

“Lucy O’Connor. I’m so sorry, but when you leapt into the room like that, I acted on reflex.”

He tried to get up, but another spasm shot up from between his shoulders to the top of his scalp and changed his mind. As he flopped back down, the hard surface made him realize that he was still on the floor. “Lucy who?” he asked between gritted teeth as his neck muscles uncoiled.

“Lucy O’Connor, your family medicine resident for the next three months. I wrote you that I’d be arriving a day early.”

“Oh, my God. That’s this week?”

She ripped strips of tape off a roll and began to apply them across the gauze to hold it in place. “Of course I don’t know if you’ll still have me. I really am sorry, but you looked like a wild man, all dirty and wielding a baseball bat. Frankly, I thought you were going to kill me.”

Mark forced his good eye open and encountered the same tumbling black hair and white complexion he’d first seen on entering the room. “Weren’t you supposed to be someone named Paul?”

A frown overshadowed the deep brown eyes hovering inches from his own. “He and I switched at the last minute,” she said. “You didn’t know?”

He shook his head. Bad move. New spasms raced each other to the base of his skull. Wincing, he added, “And I thought he, I mean you, weren’t due until next Tuesday.”

“You’re sure you didn’t get a notice? The hospital moved everything up so I’d be back by mid-February to cover the floors when a lot of residents take a winter vacation.” As she talked, her hands continued to work with the tape. “The program director told me he wrote you about the changes weeks ago.”

His cluttered desktop leapt to mind. “Oh, God.” He groaned. “I haven’t opened my mail for the last-”

“You can let go now,” she interrupted, and deftly finished anchoring the improvised eye patch with a final strip of adhesive. Her fingers were firm as they worked, yet her touch was light. “There. That should hold until we find you a proper one.”

“I really am the one to blame, Dr. O’Connor-”

“Please, everyone calls me Lucy.”

“Of course. But how did you get in here?”

“I’m the guilty party on that one,” Dan said, hovering over her shoulder.

Returning her equipment to a worn black doctor’s bag, she smiled up at him.

It was a dazzler – what his father used to call a real string of pearls.

“Yes. Dan’s been most kind to me. When I couldn’t find anyone here, I asked around town where you might be and got sent to your office at the White House. Luckily, Dan had been working late, and after I told him who I was, he figured you wouldn’t want me waiting in the cold.”

Mark saw a flush of pink in the sheriff’s plump face.

“I dug up your spare keys and brought her back out here.” He gave a little shrug that seemed to say it was the least he could have done. “I knew you’d want me to.” Then he started to chuckle. “I sure didn’t expect this, though. Luckily I left her my cell number, and she called me after she coldcocked you. When I got here, she was standing over you with the bat.” He turned to Lucy, laughing even harder. “You should have seen your face when I told you who he was.”

She grinned back at him. “At first I thought you were kidding. Then when I realized you were serious, I felt I’d die.”

“Well, if he’d jumped out at me looking the way he did, I’d have shot him.”

They both had a good laugh over that prospect. Mark just held his head and gritted his teeth.

“But what happened to you?” Dan asked him. “You look as if you’ve been through hell.”

“You’re not going to believe this, but-”

“Before you two start chatting,” Lucy interrupted, “I need to examine Dr. Roper further.” Her fingers slipped behind his neck and applied gentle pressure to the tip of his seventh cervical vertebra. “Any tenderness there?”

“No. But I really have to apologize-”

“How about there?” she cut in, her fingers slipping up a notch.

“No. You see, someone broke in here last night, and I thought you were him-”

“And there?” Her touch found vertebra number five.

“Fine. I’m sure they’re all fine.”

“For the moment, I’m the doctor, Doctor.” She gave his fourth cervical vertebra the once-over. “Is there pain here?”

Pretty damn sure of herself for a resident, he thought. He found her exam uncommonly thorough. He also found himself wondering about her age. She looked older, leaner than the usual crop he got up here. Male or female, they all seemed barely out of their baby fat these days. She also had a hint of sadness in her eyes that the usual polished faces lacked.

Once she pronounced that he could safely stand up, he cautiously rolled on his side and managed to push himself to a half-sitting position without setting off the muscles in his neck again. With her on one arm and Dan on the other, he got all the way to his feet. He had a headache, but nothing else. “I’m glad you went easy on me,” he said, hoping to relax the worried look on his two helpers’ faces.

Lucy’s frown deepened. “Part of my reflex. If I hadn’t held back, you would have been dead.”

From the matter-of-fact way she said it, he thought she must be kidding. But her expression remained all business. In fact, she appeared downright calm for someone who’d just clobbered her teacher-to-be. He liked that, figuring she didn’t rattle easily. And now that he was upright, he also realized how petite she seemed, her head coming up only to his shoulders. Of course her being in bare feet and still clothed in an oversize bathrobe helped make her look tiny. But there had been no mistaking the strength he felt in her hands and arms as she supported him. “Now let’s see if you can walk on your own,” she said, very much in charge.

He made it to the doorway, no trouble. “How long was I out?” he asked, pivoting around to make the return trip. The general rule was that anyone who remained unconscious more than twenty minutes after a blow to the head warranted special observation for subsequent damage, including a CT to rule out a fracture or bleed.

“Don’t worry. I’d say five minutes, tops. No need for a CT. But I’ll wake you on and off tonight, just to be sure.”

This woman knew her stuff. “Thanks, but I don’t think that’ll be necessary – oh, shit.”

“What?” the two said in unison. Alarm creased their faces as they rushed to his side.

“Whoa! I’m fine. I just realized I hadn’t made arrangements for where you were to stay yet. Normally male residents stay with me, but the women I billet with a local family-”

“Dr. Roper!” Lucy’s concerned look vanished with a laugh, and her eyes lit up like sun-kissed earth. “For a young-looking guy, you’re certainly old-fashioned. I’ve been living in coed quarters for the last seven years, plus I grew up with four brothers, so if it’s okay with you, I’ll be fine right here.”

Mark felt at a loss for words. “Of course, if you like, you’re most welcome…” He trailed off at the sight of Dan rolling his eyes toward the ceiling and smirking at him.

“Great,” Lucy said, looking around the room. “I loved the feel of this place the minute I stepped inside. There’s a real sense of home in these old wooden houses. Reminded me of where I grew up outside Montreal.”

“Oh, you’re Canadian?” Mark said, all the while thinking he might not be old-fashioned, but Hampton Junction sure was. Nell would bust an artery spreading the word about this one. Dan, still behind Lucy’s line of sight, didn’t help matters any, shaking with laughter, his face red from trying not to make a sound.

“Originally,” she replied, “but I’ve been so many places, especially in the last seven years, I don’t know what I am anymore. Maybe a citizen of the world? Say, I checked out your kitchen. You obviously don’t eat in much, but there’s the makings for tea. I’d prescribe a cup for all of us. You two go downstairs and get it ready while I change.”

Obediently following her orders, Mark led the way. He used the opportunity to inform Dan of his ordeal.

“Jesus!” Dan responded, after hearing the story. “You could have been killed. And not just by that yahoo. Those poachers get so tanked up they’re liable to fire off a shot if a leaf rustles. You tearing up the ridge must have sounded like a whole herd of deer.”

“I don’t think it takes much guesswork to finger who it was-”

“Now, Mark-”

“My question is, what are you going to do about it?”

“One thing I’m not going to do is go into the Braden estate leveling accusations against Chaz without a shred of evidence.”

“Shred? Who the hell else would want me out of the way? Admit it. Or are you too afraid of them?”

Dan bristled, and his face went livid. “You’ve no cause to say that.”

“Then what’s the problem?”

“No problem! I’m always careful not to go off half-cocked with unsubstantiated allegations.” His tone of voice had turned icy. “But I learned long ago to be very cautious about taking on some people more than others.”

The hurt in his baggy eyes bothered Mark. But he wasn’t in the mood to pamper bruised feelings or allow reelection worries to sidetrack going after Chaz. “ ‘Unsubstantiated allegations!’ You saw how the guy went toe-to-toe with me in your office.”

“Any witnesses tonight?”

“Well, no.”

“Can you identify this figure you saw in the woods?”

“Of course not. He was too far away. With his hood plus cap-”

“So it could have been any drunk taking a potshot-”

“But he came after me.”

“Did you see him then? Maybe he realized he’d crossed the line, wanted to make sure you weren’t hurt?”

“Jesus, Dan, can you hear yourself?”

“It’s what Braden would say, or at least the army of lawyers he’ll hire would. What do you expect? I repeat, there’ll be no accusations against the likes of that family with nothing but your word against his. At least not by me!” Dan’s voice held rock steady despite the anger in it.

“Okay, so what are you going to do?”

“I’ll get two men out there tonight and make sure what’s left of your Jeep stays a secure crime scene. We’ll also take a look at the tracks you and he left, but just along the highway. I still have to consider the possibility it isn’t Chaz Braden we’re after, and won’t risk anyone else’s life by asking them to go into the woods after an armed drunken maniac who’s bored with deer and wants a crack at two-legged prey-”

“You’re not telling me you really believe this could be anyone but Chaz-”

“I’m telling you it’s my job to take into account every possible scenario just as you do when making a differential diagnosis as a doctor. What’s more, if you were thinking clearly, you wouldn’t want me to act rashly about Chaz Braden. I don’t know what it is between you and him, but you’re not exactly rational about the guy.”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re always on the edge of losing it around him. I thought you were nearly going to go at him in my office.”

Mark said nothing, but felt his own face grow warm. He fought off the urge to tell him he was full of shit.

“We nail him, it’s got to be done by the book, understand? It’s not fear that makes me more careful around the likes of him. It’s a fact of life you need a better case against Braden-type money. Otherwise, those lawyers will have Chaz free in a heartbeat, even if we do get evidence he’s the one. That’s American justice, bucko, so get used to it. Cool your jets, Mark, and let me do my job. You got no cause to think I won’t. And in the meantime, I suggest you take care of your own hangups about that family. They’re clouding your judgment.”

The burn in Mark’s face increased. “I just want a crack at him, to tell the son of a bitch that I know it was him. That ought to make him think twice before any other anonymous ‘hunters’ take a shot at me.”

“Will you listen to yourself? I’ve never seen you so readily jump to conclusions on a case before.”

His cheeks felt on fire. He didn’t often have disagreements with Dan, but when he did, the man could be a frustrating, stubborn opponent, especially when what he said had the sting of truth. He had to admit, the Bradens brought out the worst in him. He couldn’t just pin it on their preoccupation with the business and political side of medicine, though that did grate. But similarly inclined doctors elsewhere didn’t skewer his professional objectivity and make him run around “half-cocked.” No, this ran deeper. Just being around them got him on edge, yet he couldn’t quite put his finger on it. Nevertheless, he’d have to rein in those feelings if he was going to do his job as coroner. “Sorry, Dan. You’re right. I was out of line.”

The man’s broad face relaxed a little, but the pained darkness in his gaze remained. “Hey, we all have our peccadilloes-”

“Wow, you two look serious,” interrupted Lucy, sweeping into the kitchen dressed in jeans and a white shirt untucked at the waist. “Hope you’ve at least put the kettle on.” Before they could answer, she opened one of the cupboards and came up with a canister of tea leaves that Mark didn’t even know was there. In seconds she had them steeping, then continued to poke through the cupboards.

Fifteen minutes later they were refilling their cups and sitting down to a late supper of omelettes that she had whipped up from remnants of food she’d found in his refrigerator. “Only a month past the best before date,” she said of the ingredients, eating with the quick efficiency most doctors learn from having to grab a meal between calls. “And whatever kind of cheese you once had, it’s turned to a Roquefort look-alike. But I think we’ll live.”

“Mark keeps the take-out food industry going in this town,” Dan teased. “Even has his own table at The Four Aces.”

“Four Aces? Sounds like fun.”

“It’s Hampton Junction’s combination bar, home-cooking restaurant, and dance hall,” he added, giving Mark a wink. “I’m sure your host here will be glad to show you around.”

Lucy flashed that brilliant smile again. “That’d be fine. But my being here is bound to generate enough rumors as it is, so I’ll tell you right now, and everyone else in town, I’m strictly an aboveboard kind of woman. So you can assure folks their doctor will be safe with me. Besides, I’m engaged. My fiancé lives in New York.”

Dan blushed, his forkful of eggs halfway into his mouth. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to insinuate-”

“No offense,” Lucy said, waving off his apology and never missing a bite.

It didn’t make any difference to Mark. He’d no more think of dating a resident than his sister, if he had one.

That same evening

The Braden Country Home,

South of Hampton Junction

“What did I do to warrant such a moron of a son!”

Chaz Braden felt his head spin. The scotch he’d been nursing all afternoon had hit him hard as soon as he came in from the cold to the warmth of the house. Outside he’d kept himself just nicely topped off. “I only meant to scare the son of a bitch,” he said, trying not to sway in front of his father, loathing himself for feeling so beholden to him.

“Beware a father of spectacular ability,” Kelly had once told him in their early days together. “They never let you fail, always stepping in to take over, and that leaves you weak.”

He’d scoffed at the warning, having always relished growing up in privilege and figuring he deserved an edge in life.

He caught a glance of his hangdog face in a nearby gilded mirror. It reminded him of putty, and he immediately looked away. Yet he continued to stand there, fifty-five years old and pathetic as a fucking teenager being chewed out for screwing up again.

“You idiot. A bonehead play like that is so obvious. Who else will he think did it but you?”

It took all his concentration to come up with a reply. “Roper didn’t see me. And I had no car to spot. One of your men dropped me off – told him I just wanted to take a crack at the deer that hang around the ridge out there. On my way back to the highway afterward, I called him on my cellular to pick me up again, but closer to town. That way I made sure he didn’t see Roper’s wrecked Jeep.” Despite his best effort, he slurred his words.

“You’ll have left boot prints, tire tracks-”

“The woods are full of hunters with boots, and by morning the plows should have cleared the road-”

“It was stupid-”

“I know! But do you have any idea what I’m going through? The whispers at the hospital again. The other doctors shunning me again. Patients transferring out of my practice again. Secretaries and nurses afraid to be alone in a room with me. So to hell with you and your sanctimonious crap about what I should and shouldn’t do. Why shouldn’t I send the little fuck scurrying down the other side of the ridge with bullets at his heels?” The room pitched to one side, and he sat down on the nearest sofa. Christ, I shouldn’t have drunk so much, he thought, gripping his head between his hands and trying to stay the terrible swirling in his brain. In a few seconds it steadied. Without looking up, he could feel his father looming over him and sensed the man’s disgust. A wave of defeat swept through him as tangible as the effect of the alcohol. And as familiar. He’d mostly given up the latter, but had been succumbing to the former for years. “I’m sorry,” he muttered, defiance draining out of him. There was no point in fighting the man. Never had been, never would be. Nor of fighting to be free of Kelly. In the world’s eyes he’d always be her killer.

Between his fingers he could see the spacious room where he’d once believed he could be happy with her. Everything was decorated in beige, cream, and gold – the chairs, sofas, tables, lamps, even the walls and chandeliers – befitting a gilded lifestyle. Except it only reminded him of stale marzipan – ornate on the outside, hard and crumbly within.

His father sat down beside him. “Why, Chaz?” His tone of voice was surprisingly quiet, almost tender.

Good question. It had all been an impulse born of booze, lack of sleep, and being powerless to regain control over his life. “I’d gone off the wagon, had a few drinks, and listened in on the tap your men put on his phone. I heard Roper call that old busybody Nell and invite himself out there to ask her a bunch of questions about us. I lost it. It’s bad enough at work, but now, with him stirring up shit here…” He couldn’t explain the rage inside him. It was as if for that one moment Mark Roper had seemed responsible for all the innuendo, all the accusations of the last few weeks, and the temptation of taking a shot at the bastard, making it look like a hunter’s stray bullet, proved too hard to resist. Then seeing him take off into the bush, tail between his legs, it felt so damn good to have the upper hand, he couldn’t help but go after him. “Pow! Pow! Pow! All the way home. It would have been fantastic, having him in my sights, driving him like a scared rabbit. And I would have, too, if that other hunter hadn’t been there.”

“Thank God he was,” his father said, rolling his eyes at the ceiling. He stood up from the couch and, running a hand through his steely hair, started to pace. “Chaz, once you take over the family affairs after I’m gone, you’ll run things your own way, with the help of your mother if she’s still here. But there’s one practice of mine I advise you to adopt.”

Chaz groaned inwardly and sank back into the sofa, sending the contents of his skull into yet another death spiral. He couldn’t endure one of his father’s when-I-kick-the-bucket talks just now. And he couldn’t stand to hear him nonchalantly mention “mother,” the woman who had exiled herself to a permanent around-the-world cruise years ago rather than risk losing her share of the many family business interests in a messy divorce.

“Did you ever wonder why I only choose security people who are ex-military?”

“Because they’re trained to kill bad guys with a flick of their eyelashes?”

“Besides the obvious.”

Chaz said nothing, knowing his immediate role was to shut up and learn.

His father stopped by the fireplace, picked up a poker, and used it to stoke a bed of coals beneath a smoking log. “I find men whose particular skills were in special operations, the kind that involve entering premises by stealth and obtaining information with no one the wiser that they’ve even been there. That’s how we can keep abreast of potential problems like Dr. Mark Roper – with subtlety and finesse, not bullets and car crashes. Am I understood?”

Chaz just nodded, and sent the looping in his head to new levels.

“Did anyone see you come in just now?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Good. Now the first thing we do is get you back to New York. My chauffeur will drive you there tonight. No stops, and you come into your apartment through the garage so as to avoid the doorman. Tomorrow you make a big deal about having had the flu and returning to the city. My driver will say whatever we tell him, so we’ll fudge the time you left. Make it earlier, and he’ll attest you were well past Albany at the time in question.”

He nodded again.

“Before you go, have a look at these photos. Tell me what you think.” He threw a stack of large prints on the coffee table between them.

Chaz, still cradling his head with one hand, focused on the first image. He found himself looking at a medical record for Kelly dated July 1951. “How’d you get these?”

“Subtlety and finesse, remember?”

Chaz rubbed his eyes and strained to read the writing in the photo. “So she had cramps as a kid,” he said when he finished, “and her mother interfered then as she does now. What good does it do us to have this?”

“Keep going.”

He looked at the next set of pictures. Again he wasn’t impressed. “Cam Roper spent years talking with her. We knew that. He’s the bastard who put ideas of medical school in her head.”

“Oh, I think our Kelly had a mind of her own.” He reached over and handed the next photo to Chaz personally.

Chaz started when he recognized her familiar handwriting. The sight of it catapulted him back to the early years when she wrote him every few days about their plans, the wedding, the life they’d have together, and a bittersweet ache for squandered chances gripped his stomach. But as he read further, a fury as consuming and fresh as if he’d intercepted the letter the day it was written enveloped his chest and squeezed. “That bitch. That betraying, lying bitch…” Speechless with anger, he rose to his feet and let the photo fall from his hand. He’d loved her, wasted his life over her, his whole goddamned life, and it just kept getting worse.

His father walked behind him and gave his shoulders a squeeze, then started to massage them with his surgeon’s fingers, strong and penetrating. It felt good. “Easy, son. I know seeing this must hurt. But surely you had your suspicions.”

The roiling in Chaz’s stomach grew worse.

“The good news is it may finally be your way to get clear of her.”

“Nothing will ever do that, not after all this time.”

“It will if we can give the police her lover.”

The effects of whiskey and exhaustion left him slow to react. “You mean give the letter to the police?”

His father broke off the massage, exasperated. “Of course not. How the hell would I explain where we got it? No, we first find out who this man was, then hand him over. They get a new suspect, and you’re in the clear.”

His brain emerged from its misery. My, God! he thought, seeing the glimmer of a way out.

“Don’t you have any idea who it might have been?” his father asked.

Chaz felt an old resentment rekindle itself – no, the right word was jealousy. Jealousy over anyone she had befriended and seemed to have fun with. Not that he suspected an affair back then. He hated how her moving close to others meant she drew away from him. But now he could find the bastard who’d been screwing her and stick him with her murder. The idea lit a fire in him.

So which one had cuckolded him?

A guy in her class? Or one of the residents two years ahead of her. Hell, it might even have been a colleague of his, sharing consults with him during the day and banging her at night.

Someone outside the hospital?

Someone not even a doctor?

He ground his frustration between a fist and a palm. “We’ll never figure it out!”

“If we keep track of Mark Roper’s conversations we will.”

“I don’t understand.”

“He knows about this letter,” his father said, walking over and retrieving the copy from the floor. “That means he’ll be looking for the man as well. We listen in, and sooner or later he may end up talking to or about the guy. Then either he turns him in, or we do it for him.”

Chaz’s hopes stirred again. “That sounds as if it just might work.”

“I also want you to see the rest of these.” His father handed him the remainder of the photos from the file.

“What are M and M reports doing here?”

“I thought you’d tell me. Aren’t those your initials signing off the resident and student orders?”

Chaz had to hold the snaps just right to see the writing. “Yeah, but what have they got to do with Kelly?”

“Could they have been what your darling Kelly was trying to hold over your head so you wouldn’t go looking for her?”

“But it concluded here nothing was wrong. During my entire career I don’t recall ever being faulted for using digoxin incorrectly.”

“What exactly did she say to you the night she disappeared? Can you remember?”

Remember? How could he ever forget?

She had ambushed him as he left his Park Avenue office around five that Thursday afternoon. It was hot the way only New York could get in August, when the city sealed itself in its own bubble of dirt, exhaust, and exhaled CO₂ from eight million people.

Kelly’s white dress had seemed to float on the humid air as she walked out from under the awning of the next door coffee shop. He had no idea how long she’d been waiting there. The only warning of the extent to which she was about to shake his world was the ferocity of the expression on her face.

“I’m leaving you, Chaz,” she said, stopping while still five feet away, her arms folded across her breasts. “Tonight.”

“What?” The people pushing by on either side of them blurred, the traffic noises sounded hollow and distant. He stepped toward her, his hands ready to grab her arms.

“Don’t come any closer or I’ll scream!”

The sibilant command stopped him cold. He hated public scenes. No doubt that was why she had staked out his office and caught him in a crowd. Seething, he remained where he stood, aware again of the people jostling his shoulders and wondering if they heard her. “Damn it, Kelly.” He spoke through clenched teeth. “What do you think you’re doing?”

“Leaving you. And don’t try to follow me, or I’ll ruin your career – put a stain on your record that’ll never come out.”

“What are you talking about?” His cheeks burning, he took another step.

“I warn you,” she said in an overly loud voice. People turned to look at her. Some gave him funny glances. But no one stopped.

Except Chaz.

“Daddy’s little progeny headed to be Chief of Cardiology,” she said, her voice taunting and still far too loud for his liking.

“Well, forget about it,” she went on. “One patient dead, one near dead, both on your watch. I can make you equally responsible, or not.”

“What patients?” He could barely keep from lunging at her, as enraged at her slipping from his control as at what she said. But occasional passersby still seemed to be paying attention, especially to her.

“Think I’d tell you now, so you could make records disappear? Just know there’s a viper in your nest, and you missed it.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Stay away from me,” she said, louder than ever, “and I’ll clean it out so there’s no reflection on you. Come after me, and your dream of being top dog at NYCH or anywhere else that counts is over.”

“Kelly, for God’s sake-”

Kelly gave him a look of triumphant defiance, turned on her heel, and ran to a cab parked a few car lengths away. Before he could think to race after her, she jumped inside, and the driver pulled away.

“Chaz?” His father’s voice pulled him back to the present.

He found himself staring at his own clenched fists. He’d never told the police of the encounter. And gave only the sketchiest details to his father. He’d been too humiliated to say more.

“Chaz, I asked if you could recall exactly what Kelly said to you that last time you saw her. Didn’t she threaten you in some way?”

Before answering, he took a slow deep breath and forced his hands to relax. “Yes. But what she said to me, word for word, was ‘One patient dead, one near dead, both on your watch.’ ”

“So these two cases could be exactly what she was talking about?”

“I suppose so.”

He began to collect the photos. “Do you remember these two people?”

“Are you kidding? I’d have to see their full charts.”

“Of course.” He thought a few seconds. “But better you not ask for them. I’ll stay here tomorrow to greet our guests, then early Wednesday morning take the train to New York. I’ll slip into medical records and discreetly pull the dossiers myself, unofficially of course, and find out what you might be up against without tipping off Roper or anyone else that we know about them.”

A familiar fatigue engulfed Chaz as his father’s preemptive strike to take charge did its usual work and drained whatever reservoir of strength he might have called upon to fend for himself. As if that part of him ever had a chance to exist. It lay withered and shrunken, the way any organ would end up after a lifetime of disuse.

… Beware a father of spectacular ability… They never let you fail, always stepping in to take over…

Her words taunted him from the grave.

Tuesday, November 20, 6:00 A.M.

Bacteriology Laboratory,

New York City Hospital

Donna Johnson, third-year medical student and part-time lab technician, was sound asleep on the staff-lounge couch when a noise out in the lab wakened her.

What the hell? No one should be there.

She stayed curled up in the darkness, her black skin an advantage for once. If anybody found out she sneaked in here to sleep, it’d be, hello pink slip, good-bye job.

The soft whir of a computer fan started up, a musical chord sounded as one of the countertop units was brought on-line, and a ghostly blue glow seeped through the wraparound windows separating this room from the rest of the bacteriology department.

Definitely somebody there. Thank God whoever it was hadn’t turned on the overhead lights. The place where she lay remained in deep shadow.

Unable to see her watch, she’d no idea of the time. Without moving off the couch, she strained to see the wall clock out in the lab proper, keeping her head below the level of the sill.

She had trouble making out the numbers, and only then realized her glasses had slipped off as she slept. Hopelessly myopic without them, she felt around in the dark. No luck. They must have fallen down between the cushions. She again squinted toward the clock face, and figured it must be near six, the hands seeming to make a near-vertical line.

Shit. Let’s hope this early bird will be quick. The day shift would be showing up in an hour. And she had to pee something awful. She lay back on the couch and tried to ignore her bladder. That just made the urge stronger. She raised her head enough to see over the sill, praying the person would be gone.

She could make out the back of someone in a white coat hunched over a computer while writing on a piece of paper.

Hardly anybody had cause to do emergency cultures or gram stains in the middle of the night. ER prepared their own slides to look at under the microscope, and on the floors, except for life-threatening infections such as meningitis or septic shock, most samples could wait until morning to be processed.

So who the hell was keeping her from going to pee?

The individual clicked off the computer, plunging the lab back into total darkness, but the thin beam of what must have been a penlight snapped on. The user walked it toward the far corner of the lab, passing between columns of fluorescent digital readouts and rows of black microscopes barely visible in the ambient light. He, or she, paused by a rack of unused petri dishes – round shallow containers lined with bouillon agar used to grow bacteria cultures – and slipped one of them into the pocket of the white coat, then continued to where the incubators glinted in the dim illumination.

A click, and one of the counter lights came to life. The black silhouette pulled on a pair of latex gloves from a nearby box, reached into the hood, and began to retrieve stack after stack of petri dishes, laying them out on the counter so that the identifying labels would have been visible, then returning them to the incubator. After five interminable minutes – Donna was crossing her legs and gritting her teeth – the person laid a specific dish aside, carefully lifted off the glass lid, located a supply of culture tubes on the lab bench, and, using the sterile Q-tip from one, scooped up a good-sized chunk of agar. Retrieving the unused container pocketed earlier, the figure then ran the swab over its surface, presumably plating out whatever organism had been harvested. Returning the original sample to its place in the incubator, the silhouette then extracted a Ziploc bag from another pocket, sealed the newly plated dish in it, snapped off the gloves, dumped them into a wastebasket, and turned off the counter light. Once more the thin beam of the penlight cut through the darkness, moving toward the door. The snap of the lock opening sounded loud in the absolute silence, and the white-coated visitor, momentarily framed in the faint light from the hallway, was gone.

Pretty fuckin’ furtive, thought Donna, intrigued enough by what she’d just seen to forget the urgency of her previous problem.

She had her own small light to get around, a tiny red bulb on her key chain, and used it to make her way to the computer where the visitor had been working. Entering the access code, she clicked up the most recently viewed page.

Whoever it was had been after the preliminary culture results of specimens currently being incubated in the lab. Scrolling down the screen she saw:

Neisseria gonorrhea.

Streptococcus pneumoniae.

Staphylococcus aureus.

From her studies, Donna knew they were nasty bugs, but nothing out of the ordinary for a hospital.

Campylobacter jejuni.

A commonplace pathogen ingested from undercooked beef or chicken that could cause enteritis, or the runs. Easily treated with ciprofloxacin.

Salmonella.

Shigella.

More serious causes for the runs. Quick to act, would have victims shitting blood, but again, readily treated.

Escherichia coli 0157:H7.

Oh, oh. This one was trouble.

Her memory spit out the pathogenesis. As few as ten organisms could cause an infection. The symptoms were puking and pouring out bloody diarrhea within forty-eight hours. But it was the toxins released by these particular bacteria that could really hit the victim. Ten percent of the time they produced a nightmare condition called hemolytic uremic syndrome by attaching themselves to receptor sites on the inside surface of a patient’s blood vessels. This would cause red cells to rupture, platelets to fall, bleeding to increase, kidneys to fail, and the brain to seize. Once it got that far, the victim had a 50 percent chance of ending up on dialysis and at least a 5 percent chance of winding up on a slab in the morgue. For Escherichia coli 0157:H7 was the organism responsible for what the media called Toxic Hamburger Disease, but it could also be transmitted in water.

At least, that was what she remembered reading in her books.

Troubled, she went over to check out the incubator. Everything seemed in order. But other than going through each culture to see which had had a scoop removed, there was no way of knowing which dish had been sampled, or why, or even if there was anything amiss in what had been done. Perhaps it was only a graduate student doing research who needed a specimen of a particular organism for some project.

One thing was certain, she wasn’t going to say anything. Otherwise, she’d have to explain why she’d been in here.

Her beeper went off, and she jumped, the high-pitched signal splitting through the quiet like a burglar alarm. The tiny message plate indicated the telephone number for ER. They’d need bloods drawn and analyzed or urines spun and looked at under a microscope.

But first, she had to find a bathroom. And her glasses.