Night Shift

Chapter 24

Wednesday, December 8, 8:11 a.m.

Jack held the door to the stairwell open for Lou. They had delayed leaving the ID area so Lou could help himself to a quick cup of coffee. Vinnie had gone ahead to get everything ready for the autopsy. While Lou downed his needed shot of caffeine, Jack thanked him for his advice about not making waves at home, saying that he’d taken Lou’s suggestions and was feeling a lot better about everything. Lou was pleased, saying he wished he had followed his own advice years ago. He’d been divorced for more than a decade.

“Any more news on the Seton case?” Jack asked as he followed Lou down the stairs.

“Yes and no,” Lou called over his shoulder. “The handwriting experts at the crime lab finished their analysis, confirming their initial impression it had been written by the deceased. Have you thought more about the case? Does a final confirmation that the suicide note is for real influence how you are going to call it?”

“Of course I’ve thought about it,” Jack said. “But I’m sticking to my guns that the probability is overwhelming it was a homicide. But I have come up with another idea. Are you interested?”

“Let’s hear it,” Lou said.

“You said Paul’s father was already at the Setons’ apartment when the patrolmen arrived, which you rightly questioned because of the timing. What if the father were involved in a collusion between himself and his son? For that matter, what if it was a collusion between all three of them, sort of like Agatha Christie’s classic Murder on the Orient Express?”

“Well, I have to give you credit for being creative,” Lou said as he held the door to the basement level open for Jack, “but, Mr. Hercule Poirot, we’ve already confirmed that Paul called his father first before calling nine-one-one, and the father was at his home in New Jersey. We still don’t know why Paul called his father first, and it is a bit suspicious, but the father couldn’t have played any role in the actual shooting.”

It was Jack’s turn to hold the locker room door open for Lou. As Lou passed, he asked, “How are you doing with your Sue Passero case? Are you keeping out of trouble?”

“Interesting you should ask,” Jack said. He got scrubs for both of them and handed a set to Lou. “I’m leaning toward Sue being also an overdose. I’ll find out for sure today.”

“Well, that’s surprising, to say the least,” Lou said. “She certainly didn’t strike me as someone who might use drugs.”

“I couldn’t agree more,” Jack said. “But I have something more interesting to tell you. I spoke in person with this Cherine Gardener yesterday, who we are about to post.”

Lou stopped unbuttoning his shirt. He’d already hung up his jacket and tie in the locker Jack had provided for him years before. “Are you trying to pull my leg?” he asked, staring intently at Jack.

“I wish,” Jack said. “I spoke with her in the late afternoon, and I was anticipating speaking with her again today. I was almost as shocked to see her name on the autopsy folder as I was seeing Sue’s yesterday.”

“This is big-time strange,” Lou said. “Especially with my gut telling me that this Gardener woman wasn’t an overdose like we are supposed to think, even with a bag of powder conveniently in plain sight. The disarray of the apartment tells a different story unless, of course, she was in some kind of drug-induced psychosis. But we’re not seeing that like we used to, not with this fentanyl involved. What I can also tell you, with a high degree of confidence, is this woman was no druggie. It probably isn’t in your MLI’s workup, but we’ve substantiated that she’s been a mainstay frontline healthcare worker through this pandemic, working extra shifts and taking a master’s degree course in nursing at the same time. Does that sound like an addict to you?”

“Hardly,” Jack said as he got into his scrubs. If Jack was wrong about Sue, and both deaths were homicides, the chances that they were related, probably by being carried out by the same person for the same reasons, went up considerably, as did the possibility that a medical serial killer was on the loose at the MMH. This all stood to reason except for the fact that it depended on too many ifs.

Lou went back to changing into the scrubs that Jack had handed him. “Where were you supposed to talk with Cherine Gardener today?” he asked.

“That hadn’t been decided,” Jack said. “She was going to call me. She was scheduled to be off today, and I was going to suggest she come here.”

As Lou knotted the strings to the scrub pants, it was obvious his mind was in high gear. Jack’s was, too, as he debated how much of what he was thinking he should say.

“And where did you speak with her yesterday?” Lou suddenly asked. “Don’t tell me! Let me guess — you went back over to the MMH despite my warning not to.” He closed the locker and spun the combination wheel.

“I merely stopped in on my way home to pick up some papers,” Jack said, trying to sound casual. “That’s when I spoke with her, and she told me some rather interesting things, namely that the MMH was a kind of hotbed of intrigue and animosity.”

“That doesn’t sound good or safe,” Lou said. “That’s my point. Did any of this intrigue and animosity involve Sue Passero?”

“Absolutely. She and Sue and another nursing supervisor were partners, so to speak, all serving on the Mortality and Morbidity Committee and allied against three hospital higher-ups.”

“God, what a name for a hospital committee,” Lou said after he repeated the title. “Leave it to the medical profession to come up with a name like that to scare the bejesus out of us poor potential patients. But, never mind! More important, why the hell did you go over there when I advised you not to do so for your own good? Obviously, you were playing detective again.” He sighed loudly and shook his head. “You, my friend, are impossible.”

“I wasn’t there that long, and I was still involved only with the how,” Jack said, trying to excuse himself. “The problem is, if I’m wrong about Sue’s death being an overdose, I’ll be back to square one, at a loss for explaining the cause and mechanism.”

“That might be true,” Lou snapped, “but the only way you are going to solve such a mystery is by staying here and taking advantage of all the technological wizardry you guys have at your disposal. You certainly are not going to solve it by heading out and gallivanting around the city, snooping in the Manhattan Memorial Hospital, talking to God knows who, and putting yourself at risk like you have in the past.”

“Maybe you are right,” Jack said. “Okay, I’ll stay here.” He didn’t want to get into an argument, which he knew he would ultimately lose, nor did he even want to broach the serial killer possibility. There was a certain risk to visiting the MMH, Jack accepted that, but up until that point he didn’t think there was any other way of understanding what was going on, whether Sue’s worry that a medical serial killer was involved had any validity, which was now his main concern. If there actually was a serial killer, calling in the cavalry at this point, meaning Lou, would probably cause the guilty party to go underground.

Jack felt strongly that he needed just a wee bit more time, maybe even a single day, to find out the source of her beliefs. Since he wasn’t going to have the opportunity to learn the statistical details Cherine had alluded to, at least he had another source waiting in the wings... Ronnie. Jack was now counting on Sue having told Ronnie as much as she had told Cherine. On the positive side, using Ronnie as a source rather than Cherine would undoubtedly provide more details about the members of the triumvirate than Cherine would have because he worked closely with them, and from Jack’s perspective they all had to be what he called persons of interest.

“Does Laurie know anything about you going over there?” Lou asked as he took the personal protective gear Jack handed him.

“No, and I’d prefer you don’t spill the beans,” Jack said. “Give me one more day, okay? Then if you feel obligated to expose me, fine!”

“Hell!” Lou complained. “You guys are always putting me between a rock and a hard place, and this is a good example. If I tell her, you’ll be pissed. If I don’t tell her and something god-awful happens, she’ll be pissed. I lose in both directions.”

“One more day,” Jack repeated. He held up his index finger to emphasize his point. “And I’ll be extra careful and try to stay out of the MMH.”

“Shit. Being friends with you guys is a fool’s errand,” Lou said while throwing up his hands in a kind of surrender. “All right, one more day, but only if this Cherine Gardener isn’t an obvious homicide like my gut is telling me.”

“Fair enough,” Jack said. He was relatively confident that was going to be the case.