Code Blues (33 page)

Man. I remembered what Tucker had said,
about Bob Clarkson being jealous of Kurt. Certainly, Bob seemed to
want to turn everything into "St. Joe's forever!" Still, it was a
stretch to get from there to murdering his rival.

To my surprise, Dr. Callendar said, "Kurt
was a good friend and a good doctor. I'll miss him."

Simple, but to the point. I found myself
nodding. Maybe the guy was gruff because he was in mourning. Then I
remembered, no, he was mean to me when I first met him, on Saturday
morning.

Dr. Callendar was sitting in the
middle of the first row. I tilted in my chair until I had a good
angle on him. He had black hair which, under the fluorescent
lights, was studded with silver. A sharply defined nose, arched
eyebrows, ears that curled under at the tops like they'd been
overheated on a stove. He was the only staff doctor wearing a white
coat. It couldn't have been because he needed to look
older.

Just then, Dr. Callendar's head swerved to
glare straight at me.

Affecting casual disinterest, I turned my
eyes back to Bob. But my heart was pounding. The man was freakishly
attuned to my moves.

It was paranoid to suspect all the doctors
and residents of murder. Tucker had pointed out it was just as
likely to be a nurse or RT. Maybe I should talk to him, see if he'd
found anything else out on that score.

Bob concluded, "Thank you. We'll miss Dr.
Kurt Radshaw and we will never forget him. If you need to talk
about him some more, please make an appointment to come by my
office. My door is always open." He clasped his hands and gave us a
sorrowful look, like a bad funeral director. "We'll take a ten
minute break before our talk on peripheral neuropathy. Ten minutes,
folks. We want to start on time."

People muttered and rose to pitch their
plates in the already-overflowing garbage. Now that I had my
kitchen boxes, I should unearth some Tupperware and use it instead
of disposable plates.

Tori said, "Do you want to go for a quick
walk?"

"Sure." I glanced at the doorway. Alex had
already disappeared. He was good at that.

We brushed past the people waiting for the
bathroom and the huggers in the front hall. No one wanted to leave
yet. A good third of the women were crying. Bob Clarkson's break
was unlikely to fit into ten minutes. I wondered if Tori wanted to
escape from all the emotion.

After we descended the front steps, I let
Tori take the lead. If we turned right, there was a parking lot, a
church, and the metro station; if we turned left, there was another
parking lot and the hospital. Straight ahead was an empty picnic
table.

Tori aimed toward the church. "That was
heavy," she said.

"Yeah." People spilled on to the front porch
behind us. I had to lengthen my stride to keep up with Tori. I
glanced around and lowered my voice. "Was Dr. Callendar always, ah,
so hard to get along with?'

Tori glanced up at me. "Yes."

"Oh." Yet another dead end.

Her eyebrows quirked. It seemed to be her
substitute for a small smile. "Why do you ask?"

"I wondered if his personality had changed
since Kurt died."

She shook her head. "He's notorious. The med
students try to avoid him. If you get along with him, he's
okay."

I knew that. I just had no idea how to get
along with him. I kicked a stray piece of gravel. We watched it
skitter across the parking lot and roll to a stoop under a
Jeep.

"Don't worry about Dr. Callendar." Before I
could ask why, she glanced at her watch. "We'd better head
back."

It seemed like we'd only just escaped. I
lagged behind, noticing for the first time the rusted, deformed
bike rack beside the disabled ramp at the front of the Annex. The
covered front porch was jammed with residents. I could see
Mireille's brown curls at the centre of the crowd. A few stragglers
squeezed by the residents, but they were too intent on their own
conversation to notice.

As we mounted the stone steps, Mireille
abruptly switched from French to English and faced us. Her cheeks
were cherry red, like I'd imagine in carbon monoxide poisoning. Her
eyes glittered. She said, "My sister just called. The police have
called Vicki in for questioning again. They think she killed
Kurt."

Chapter 19

One of the second year
residents, Sébastien, whom I didn't know well, shook his head.
"
Impossible
."

"Why not?" Mireille returned, in English.
"I've read that it is often the spouse. A crime of passion. Of
course, in this case, she was not the spouse yet and would never
be."

A soft snort escaped my lips. Everyone else
had said Vicki was the fiancée. Tori shot me a warning frown, but
it was too late.

Mireille whirled on me. Her mouth twisted.
"Oh, you don't believe me? Too bad. Really, a shame." She threw her
arms in the air. "They found the killer. Thank God."

She was more volatile than ever. Some people
have said this of me, that I hum with energy, that I seem angry or
anxious when I'm really just at my baseline. Observing Mireille, I
could see why. She was off the charts. A volcano. She made me look
like a Zen monk.

A white guy with dreadlocks, whom I hadn't
met yet, said to one of the second years, "Did Vicki have access to
insulin and succ?"

Mireille stamped her foot on the wooden
slats. "Of course she did."

The guy held up his hands. "Look, Mireille,
I'm just asking. She's an OB nurse, right?"

"Yes, but we all know how easy it is to get
drugs," Anu, of all people, piped up. Her face shone like an eager
student's. "They always draw up extra morphine and throw it out.
Plus on OB, they do spinal blocks and epidurals. A narcotic would
be no problem and they don't even count insulin."

The dreads guy nodded slowly. "Or she could
just take Kurt's extra insulin and swipe succ off the crash cart.
Okay. But I still don't get the motive."

Mireille said triumphantly, "Simple. He was
going to dump her and come back to me."

We all stared at her.

"That's what he told me. Friday night. The
night before he—" Her voice shook for the first time. She took a
deep breath. "Before she killed him."

The main door creaked open. We all jumped.
Stan called, "Time's up, folks. Dr. Lieberman is ready."

Mireille said under her breath, "She was at
the top of my list. I hope she rots in hell."

My eyes widened at the
venom in her voice.
Do not cross this
woman
. She turned and smiled at me, then
cut in front of Robin, so she could be the first one through the
door. Even in her grief, she was as bossy as ever.

While Dr. Lieberman tried to educate me on
peripheral neuropathy. I pondered life and death. If Mireille was
telling the truth, and Friday night was a joyful reunion with Dr.
Kurt, how had he ended up doing a face plant in the men's locker
room by 2 a.m.?

If Kurt was the person from St. Joseph's
she'd spent most of Friday with, that wasn't an alibi. He was dead.
Unless they'd been in public, with witnesses.

I tried to ignore the little voice that
whispered, If Kurt was her "one person from St. Joseph's in
particular," then she didn't spend Friday night on a sleepover with
Alex.

And Alex wasn't a complete
liar. Maybe he
was
getting over her. The thought warmed my cold, cold
heart.

I glanced at the door. Alex hadn't returned
for the small group lectures, but neither had at least half the
group. It seemed like everyone showed up for Grand Rounds and ate.
Then the attending staff and nurses left. Only the residents
remained for the next speakers, and I bet attrition took its toll
over course of the afternoon.

I doodled on the handout, which was filled
with differential diagnoses and clinical tests I'd never heard
of.

I was no detective. I'd never really
suspected Vicki.

Chairs scraped around me. Everyone was
filing toward Dr. Lieberman. I cast a glance at Tori.

She whispered, "He's showing us how to test
for motor weakness in carpal tunnel."

Belatedly, I stood to join them. Naturally,
Mireille was the first to push on Dr. Lieberman's thumbs. "Did I do
it right? Let me try again!"

He shook his hand and grinned. "Very good.
But try not to be so, uh, vigorous with your patients."

She giggled. I'd never seen her so giddy.
She was loving it. Her face was flushed, her shoulders down, a new
ease in her movements as she moved back to her chair.

Maybe I could turn her happiness to my
advantage. It was the best time to ask her questions. But not
alone, after the last time we talked one-on-one. I'd try to keep
Tori close and, if possible, Tucker.

But at the end of teaching, Tucker zoomed
out of the room à la Alex, with a quick, embarrassed wave at me. I
didn't have time to thank him for the éclair, let alone ask if he'd
help interrogate Mireille. But he was probably embarrassed enough
after Kung Fu fighting with Alex.

Too bad.

Most other people had regrouped around
Mireille. She tapped her cell phone. "We can call my sister if you
don't believe me. In a few hours, it's going to be on the Web and
in the newspapers. I bet they'll hold a press conference. The
police want to find the killer ASAP. It makes them look bad, too,
because they didn't think it was murder. But I knew. I always
knew."

Tori and I hung at the sidelines after I had
whispered my plans to her. I wanted Tori to be the one to invite
Mireille for coffee, but she just nodded along with the rest of the
group like Mireille was the new Moses.

Finally, I took a deep
breath. "Anyone want to go to a
térrasse
and talk there? It's a
beautiful day." I was taking a chance. If the whole gang came
along, Mireille would keep singing the same song. On the upside, it
was less likely she'd brain me in front of all our
colleagues.

The tone of the room faltered.
"Ah—no—sorry." One by one, they checked their watches and
scattered. In residency, it's all-too-rare to get home before
sundown. They had banks to go to, people to do. I waved off their
apologies. "Next time, okay?"

Robin was the last to leave. He said
solemnly to Mireille, "I'm sorry about Kurt. He was a smart man. He
had a lot of good advice. Not all the time—no one bats 100
percent—but most of the time."

I waited for him to go into evidence-based
medicine mode, but thankfully, he restrained himself for once.

Mireille glared at me for breaking up her
flock. Tori stepped in quietly. "It's too bad we never go out after
teaching. Everyone is so busy."

Robin flapped his shoulder bag closed and
fled. We could hear his dress shoes hastening down the hall. The
three of us were the only ones left in the room. Tori continued,
"Would you like to be alone, or would you like some company? Hope
and I were going to have coffee."

Mireille's shoulders tensed. She didn't look
at me, but it wasn't because of Tori. She said, "Well..."

She wanted me to beg off, but I'd hold my
breath and turn blue first.

Tori simply waited. She had such a calm
energy, like a pond with water lilies. In comparison, I was a
raging river and Mireille was Niagara Falls.

Mireille pressed a hand against her eye and stared at the
floor. "We could go to the
Brûlerie
St-Denis
."

I remembered seeing their sign on
Côte-des-Neiges: black lettering surrounded by drawings of coffee
beans. "Sounds good to me," I said, even though I don't drink
coffee.

We cut through the
mostly-deserted parking lot to the metro station. Mireille took a
deep breath, her face tilting up to the blue sky. "I really like
the coffee at the
Brûlerie
. Kurt and I used to come
here—" She stopped.

Tori said, "It's all right. You can talk
about him. We knew him, too."

I nodded vigorously.

After a long minute,
Mireille said, "Yes. I
would
like to talk about him." But she bit her lip and
took a deep breath and stayed mum until we reached the
Brûlerie
.

The
térrasse
tables were taken. Everyone
from a bald guy with a terrier to a bunch of laughing university
students had already staked their claim. Not unexpected on a sunny
summer day, but a bummer nonetheless. Tori said, "I'm sure there
are tables inside."

Mireille frowned.

Please don't make a scene, I thought. Just
then, two girls jumped up from a little round table next to the
building. They'd left their trayful of empty coffee cups and
lipsticked napkins, but Mireille rushed to plop her notebook on the
nearest seat.

"It's like circling the block five times,
and then a parking space opens up right in front of you," I
said.

Mireille gave me a genuine smile.
"Exactly."

Tori offered me the one other chair, but I
borrowed one from another table. The terrier wasn't using it.

The building's shade felt pleasantly cool. A
server, a young woman in a visor, cleared away the old tray and
handed us menus.

Kurt, Kurt, Kurt, I mentally urged Mireille,
but they scouted the menus before settling on coffee for Mireille
and a mochachino for Tori. I asked for a banana-raspberry
smoothie.

When the server left, Tori said simply, "I
thought Kurt might change his mind."

Mireille's face transformed. Her eyes glowed
and her expression softened. "You did? Why?"

Tori's eyebrows quirked. "I knew what the
relationship meant to you."