Code Blues (36 page)

He grinned. "Yeah, imagine how bad it'll be
after we've known each other a whole month." He got up on his hands
and knees and crawled toward me, pressing a tender kiss on my
lips.

His lips were smooth, but the unshaved
stubble around his mouth marked my face as pressed more deeply,
more hungrily. His hands grabbed my shoulders. He spread his lips,
straddling my hips.

I tried to break the kiss. He reached up to
cup the back of my head. I had to wrench my lips away. "Alex."

He pressed kisses along my jaw line, down to
my chin. "I've never told anyone before. Anyone except Kurt. You're
the best, Hope. You fuckin' rock."

I had to laugh. "Alex."

"Sorry. I mean, you're amazing, you're
superb—" He ran his tongue along my ear.

"I liked fantastic," I offered, a little
breathless.

"That too." I could hear the smile in his
voice.

"But, uh, I don't want to fall into bed
again."

He went very still. Then he said, "Okay. You
seem to like this hallway. I'm game." He slipped his hand under my
shirt, running up my back.

"Alex!" I pulled away so we were
face-to-face, even though he wouldn't let me out of his arms. "We
were talking."

"Right. I talked. You listened. Now you know
all about me. We're square, right?"

Right. I wanted to say it. I wanted to
inaugurate my front hall and let him sweep me away. But I shook my
head.

He closed his eyes. "What the hell do you
want from me, Hope."

I laid a finger on his chin. "I know it was
hard for you to tell me."

"Damn straight."

"But it's hard for me, too." Hesitantly, I
curled forward and laid my head against his chest. His hands rose
to circle my waist, so he wasn't irretrievably angry. "Yes, I'm
happy you told me. But it's like there's a skeleton in your closet,
and you gave me a glimpse of the ankle bone and said, 'See? Now you
should understand everything. Let's do it.' But I don't understand,
Alex. Not even half of it."

He withdrew, dropping his arms. "So what
you're saying is, not good enough."

I grabbed at his hands, tried to catch his
eye, but he was already rising to his feet. I said, "No, Alex, I'm
saying, thanks for the ankle bone, it's really good, I just
need—"

"What?" he spat at me. "You need to study
the skull, the pelvis, the clavicle and humerus? You'd like to
probe my internal organs? You'd like to drip fluorescein on my
eyeballs or do a rectal exam? I've already given you everything,
and it just isn't good enough for you?"

I drew myself to my feet. "Alex—"

He threw open the bolt on
the door. "Hope, I'm sick of playing by your rules. 'Earn me.'
'Tell me.'" His eyes glittered. His cheekbones were sharp under his
skin. "I'm never good enough. Well, fuck this noise. If you want
me,
you'd
better
come earn
me
."
With that, he slammed the door shut behind him.

Chapter 22

When I woke up, grey light filtered through
my white blinds. It was morning. I threw off my fuzzy yellow
blanket, grabbed my phone receiver and listened to the dial tone
hum steadily in my ears. No messages.

I'd slept fitfully the whole night. I'd
called a med school friend, Ginger, to ask what she thought of the
whole mess. She was doing peds at Western. I caught her post-call
and explained, "It's just, I don't trust him. I'm glad he told me
his secret, but I still remember how he kicked me out and lied
about Mireille." I sighed. "Maybe I should give him another chance.
I always blow up at people too quickly and then carry grudges. I
should have been more sensitive about his story, I guess. I should
have been happy he'd told me part of it. I should have been
satisfied with the ankle bone."

She yawned. "That was the strangest thing. I
expected you to say 'Medial or lateral malleolus?'"

"Yeah, well. What do you think about me and
Alex?"

She sighed. "I'm too fried to think. Look.
If it'd been me, I would have dumped him after he took off in the
café. But you didn't. You hung in there, even slept with him. It's
not like you."

"Yeah, I know. He brings out the worst in
me."

She laughed. "I don't know about that. You
were past due."

"Ginger!"

"It's true. I'm sorry. No great insight from
me. I'll call you tomorrow, okay? Are you off tomorrow?"

I was so disappointed, my chest hurt. "Yeah.
I'm on evenings."

"I'm doing the ward days. Crap. But I'll
call you." She digested my silence. "Hope, I'm no relationship
guru. But you know what I think? It's like what we tell women in
threatened abortions. In a few days, it will declare itself."

Great. Just great. When pregnant women come
in bleeding during their first trimester, we examine them and do a
blood test and an ultrasound, but basically, within a few days,
either they'll lose the fetus or they'll keep carrying it. It will
declare itself. "Thanks a lot. Do you really say that to your
patients?"

"Of course not." She sighed. "I'm terrible
company right now. But I don't think it's so bad, Hope. Really.
I've dated worse. Remember Rick?"

I sighed. We all remembered Akido Rick. It
was small comfort not to have a pregnancy scare and have my martial
arts boyfriend dump me. I let Ginger go to sleep and tried to
follow her example.

When I couldn't, I turned on the radio.
Vicki had been questioned and released. The homicide squad had no
comment at this time.

I started an Excel sheet on my laptop,
listing all the residents and staff at St. Joe's, and their alibis
and motives. It was a pretty thin list. I was a terrible
detective.

Something was bugging me, though. About
Kurt's office. It was all sealed up now, as per homicide procedure,
but I'd gotten a peek inside. I had the feeling I'd missed a
clue.

My clock blinked 11:20 p.m. I wanted to go
online and look up all the details of Kurt's murder, but my Net
access wasn't up for another week. I'd have to go to the
hospital.

The temperature dropped at least ten degrees
at night, so I slid on a pair of jeans and a light pink T-shirt.
One good thing about not having a functional kitchen for ten days,
I'd lost weight.

St. Joe's felt much quieter at night. I
found a parking spot right on Péloquin. No one was on the street,
but I could peep into people's lighted rooms in their duplexes. The
hospital's brick face was clothed in darkness except for spotlights
highlighting its name. The wind rustled through the trees and
crickets whirred. I ran across the street and cut through the
flowerbed hill in front of the hospital. My feet sank into the
dirt.

The main doors were supposed to be locked at
night. Everyone had to go through emerg and pass the guard, but as
I neared the main doors, a woman in pink scrubs pushed a door open
and held it out for a colleague, so I stepped inside.

The murderer could have slipped into St.
Joe's undetected. Sure, a guard hung out behind the counter, but
tonight he was chatting with a friend and didn't look particularly
alert or watchful. There might not even have had a guard by the
door on June 30th, before Kurt died and the newspaper editorials
questioned St. Joe's security. The murder might have been an
outside job.

I was able to walk down the main hall, past
the elevators and up the stairs, without running into anyone else.
Most visitors and staff were in the next wing, for the ER, or
ensconced upstairs, on one of the wards.

This must have been how the murderer came
in.

The second floor looked and felt deserted.
The white tile floors, the cavernous white halls, and the white
ceilings gleamed under cold fluorescent lights. I couldn't hear or
see another breathing organism. The office bureaucrats had long
since departed for the day, the cafeteria was closed, and the
library never had traffic at the best of times. I suppressed a
shiver and clicked open the combination of the residents' room.

The room smelled of day-old chop suey. As
usual, someone had left the remains on the table behind the
computer. A medical student was watching the news, his feet propped
up on the coffee table. "How's it goin'," he said, barely turning
from the TV.

"Good." My premonition of danger fled in the
face of such mundanity. "What are you on?"

"Medicine," he said. His pager went off. He
groaned and walked across the room to the phone. "Hi, are you
paging—? Yeah. She fell? An incident report? Uh, okay?" He hung up
and cast me a quizzical look. "They're calling me from the eighth
floor. Mrs. Bruyère fell."

"You just have to check if she's okay," I
assured him, even though I hadn't fielded many of these calls
myself.

He grabbed his stethoscope from the coffee
table. "Okay. See ya."

For me, the timing was Hollywood-perfect.
Before the door clicked closed behind him, I sat down at the
computer. Someone had changed the background to a sunset with palm
trees. I brought up Yahoo again and tried to crack Dr. Radshaw's
password.

I had an idea. After a few permutations,
"stjoes" made the login screen blank out. I held my breath.

I was in. "Inbox (66), Bulk (191)..."

I clicked on his Inbox first. It was mostly
junk. Spam, solicitations to attend conferences, Aeroplan. Bob
Clarkson had sent a few nondescript memos. Robin had replied to a
forwarded article on partner abuse with "Can we talk about this?"
More comments from Robin on stalking articles: "I don't believe the
methodology was valid." "Observational study." "Does not generalize
to the Canadian population." "Is abuse in gay populations
statistically significant enough to warrant mention?" What a
brown-noser. He'd even sent back some articles on drug abuse. I
started ignoring the Robin e-mails. They were legion.

Dr. Callendar, whose first
name appeared to be Morris, wrote on June
29
^th
,
"Need to talk to you." Vicki had written on the afternoon of the
30th, "Thinking about you. I love you." And Mireille had written on
July 1
^st
, "I can't wait. xo xo xo Mireille."

I kept glancing over my shoulder to see if
someone was coming in, but I should hear their footsteps and the
lock click first. I marked each message as unread after I read it,
but I knew if they were checking, the police would soon discover
someone had logged into Kurt's account.

He had an entire folder called "abuse." I
clicked on it. Articles and references on partner abuse. Nothing
personal.

I went to "saved mail." A bunch of names I
didn't recognize. I clicked on one with no subject. "Dr. Radshaw,
can't stop smoking. Can you help me????? You're secretary won't
give me an appointment. R." Obviously a patient with a smoking
addiction and an imperfect grasp of grammar.

I went to the folder marked "Personal." Most
of the messages were from Vicki, all along the lines of "Tell me if
you can't make it to the restaurant tonight. I love you. Bye." Not
great love letters. I wondered why he saved them. Paging back, I
found one from Mireille. No salutation, just

"I can't talk to you. It hurts too much.
Don't call me. Don't email me. I can't be friends with you right
now."

It was dated May
13
^th
.

I heard steps in the hall,
signed out, and shut the window just as the combination lock
clicked and the knob turned. I turned, trying to appear casual.
Mireille's large figure stood framed in the doorway. Her eyes
bulged at me. "What are
you
doing here?"

"Nothing." I stood up, knocking the chair
back with my knees. I felt like a thief. I'd read her private
e-mail. "Just leaving, actually."

She advanced on me. "Checking your
e-mail?"

I nodded. "Nothing good, though. I guess
everyone's busy." With any luck, she didn't pick up the slight
tremor in my voice.

Her hands settled on the chrome back of the
chair. Her hands were meaty. "Well, if you're done, I'd like to get
on there."

"Sure thing." I ducked around her with a
tight smile and strode toward the door. "See you!"

My hand was already on the cool metal of the
doorknob when she called me back. "Hope."

I spun on my heel, my hand still resting on
the knob. "Yes?"

She recovered her own smile. Her cheeks were
plump with satisfaction, her slitted eyes were unreadable. Only her
hands, gripping the edge of the desk, revealed a trace of
uneasiness. "I heard you're investigating Kurt's death."

I searched for my vocal cords. "Well. Who
told you that?"

She blew her breath out through her
nostrils. "It does not matter. I have only two words for you: don't
bother."

Technically, it was three words, including a
contraction, but I was in no mood to quibble. "Yeah? Why's
that."

Her smile widened. Her teeth gleamed.
"Because I am going to solve it."

I struggled to keep my jaw
from dropping. She laughed outright. "You like that? After Alex had
accused me? Well, it's true. I loved Kurt. He was
mine
. No one else will
bring his murderer to justice. Not the police. Certainly not
you
."

Contempt and anger warred in her voice. I
fought back my own retort. Let her talk.

She tilted her head in amusement. "I already
know who did it."

"Yeah? You thought it was Vicki. The police
don't seem to agree."

She rolled her eyes. "Of course it was not
Vicki. Still, I enjoy them questioning her."

She was the one siccing them on Vicki? My
head whirled.

She shook her head. "You poor lamb." Her
voice oozed with false sympathy. "You have no idea. The murderer is
much more intelligent. Cunning, I would say. However, he may have
been lulled into a false sense of security."