Fatal Hearts (27 page)

If that happened, he’d have to go home.

The thought filled him with a dark dread, but he didn’t know if that black feeling was for his failure to find some kind of justice for Josh, or whether it was the thought of leaving Hayden.

Man, he needed to crash and let sleep push his brain’s “Reset” button. But first he needed to text Hayden to let her know he was in for the night. He did it quickly, before he was tempted to dial her number. Given his strange mood tonight, he should not be talking to Hayden. Her immediate thanks told him that consciously or unconsciously, she’d been waiting for it. Just like she’d done with Josh. Thank God his scare in the parking lot hadn’t made him forget. He hated the idea of her worrying about him, even in a low-level, unconscious way.

He should call his parents too. He’d promised himself he’d be more faithful about that, now that his brother was gone. Except what was he going to say? How could he explain the day he’d had?
Guess what, Mom? I found an aunt and two cousins.

Yeah, no.
That conversation was going to have to wait so he could have it in person. A conversation where he fessed up about what he’d really been doing in New Brunswick these past days.

He wouldn’t go into the situation with Hayden. They wouldn’t approve, and they’d be right. He should have been stronger. Should have denied her. Kept his hands off her. Not that he thought for a minute that her career plan could be swept off course, no matter what she might or might not have come to feel for him. She’d never let that happen again, nor would he allow it. But it could leave her unhappier—lonelier—than he’d found her. And that would just suck.

Except these past few days had been some of the most amazing days of his life. If he had to do it over again, he knew he still could not resist her.

Physically, she was his idea of perfection. Athletic but not too much so. Strong, toned muscles blending into real feminine curves. And that hair! That curly mass of amazing, multihued golden hair. That golden skin and those blue, blue eyes. Lips so lusciously full, he couldn’t look at her without wanting to kiss them. He knew he’d never find anything more perfect.

Or more perfect for him, at least.

And her mind, her spirit, her passion for her job, her patients. And, yes, in bed. He’d been lucky enough to taste that passion, and when he left, she’d go back to saving it for someone else, once she achieved what she wanted career-wise. And he’d better goddamned deserve it. He’d better be worthy of her and not turn out to be a jerk who said all the right things until he got his hooks into her.

Damn, his brain was like a hamster on a wheel. On crack.

He thought about going downstairs and snagging that bottle of Macallan’s. Instead he took a long, hot shower. It took a while, but the hot water seemed to unbend him and wash away that slightly manic feeling. When he crawled into bed, all he was left with was the stuff he didn’t want to think about. But happily—or not—if there was one thing he was good at, it was shoving that stuff down and slapping a lid on it.

This time would be no different.

Thankfully, his new friend, insomnia, left him alone.

CHAPTER 27

Boyd killed the Skype connection and reached for his coffee. It was stone-cold.

Angela Wood had called and explained that her mother, who was really sorry to have missed him yesterday, wanted to Skype with him. Could he spare half an hour? He’d agreed, of course, but it had turned out to be more like an hour and a half.

It had been an informative conversation. Sandra Duncan had met Arianna in school in happier days, before Arianna and Sheldon lost their parents in a car accident. Sandra was closer to Sheldon’s age, and didn’t really know the older girl all that well, but Arianna had been a beauty, she assured Boyd. Beautiful, shy, and very sweet.

While Sheldon had been fostered out to a local family, Arianna was not. Sheldon liked to think that because his sister was so pretty and smart, her social worker set out to make sure she had more opportunities. For whatever reason, Arianna had ended up with a family in Fredericton.

Boyd braced himself to hear that his mother had been impregnated by her foster father or foster brother, but apparently his mother had lucked out. The foster family was really nice. A stay-at-home mom with a younger daughter of her own, and a dad who was a university professor. The prof had helped Arianna make her course selections in high school and helped her apply to university. She was accepted into the nursing program and was in her first year when she got pregnant.

Boyd assumed it was a fellow student, but Sheldon’s impression was that it was someone older, someone she met at her part-time job. She used to act as a hostess at an exclusive steak house in one of the hotels, to help pay her tuition.

Boyd was not impressed. A fellow student was one thing. He could understand kids getting carried away. But it sounded like his father was a rich older guy who seduced an innocent college student. What a douche.

Sandy went on to tell him Arianna had been sort of happy about the whole thing, Sheldon thought. Or as happy as an unwed woman could feel in her situation. She’d been looking forward to the babies’ arrival. But then she did an about-face and said she wasn’t keeping them. Sheldon saw her once after she’d given them up and was shocked by how distraught she was. He tried to get her to tell him who the father was so he could beat the piss out of him—
thank you, Uncle Sheldon
—but she wouldn’t tell. She kept saying it wasn’t his fault, that he didn’t even know. Sheldon convinced her to see a doctor about her depression. He’d had one telephone call from her after the meds had straightened her out. She’d said she was feeling much better and was going to try to get her kids back. Then the next thing they knew, she was dead.

Boyd had felt so crappy to hear that. The antidepressants her brother had talked her into taking might have restored her mental health, but they were clearly the “aggravating agent” that caused her sudden cardiac arrest. Of course, he hadn’t mentioned that. As far as he was concerned, the Duncans didn’t need to know that detail. It was clear that Sheldon Duncan had felt guilty enough for not being there for his sister, never mind that he’d been a minor in the foster care system at the time.

Unless . . . Could someone have killed his mother the same way they’d killed his brother?

No, that didn’t make sense. Morgan had accused Boyd of being a conspiracy theorist, but not even he could buy that one. First, someone would have to know she had long QT syndrome, which he doubted was widely diagnosed in small centers three and a half decades ago. Then they would have to give her a reason to take antidepressants. Taking her babies away would certainly do it, but he doubted that was part of a diabolically complex plot to get her to take medication. Hell, she might have had straightforward postpartum depression. It was a fairly common ailment, as he understood it. Then there was the brother who’d urged her to get those meds. Without his intervention, she might not have sought medical treatment at all.

And shit, did they even know about aggravating agents causing sudden cardiac death in LQTS cases?

But again, that went back to knowing she had it, the possibility of which he figured was slim to none.

No, her death must have been an accident. No villain could have controlled for all that.

Of course, maybe she didn’t have LQTS. Maybe Josh hadn’t had it either. Maybe someone could have just jammed her full of some toxic substance that would have induced cardiac arrest in anyone, regardless of their health status. Except surely a rigorous autopsy would have been done on a twenty-year-old woman and toxicological tests would have pointed to foul play, if it had been present.

Sighing, Boyd got up and dumped the cold coffee. What he really felt like was a beer. Maybe he’d walk to that pub downtown where Hayden had taken him when he first landed in town. He could almost taste that tall, frosty glass of Picaroons. He might as well eat too. It was close enough to suppertime.

Ten minutes later, with the pub in sight, his phone rang. His first thought was Hayden. No one else called him these days. But a quick look at the caller ID showed
City of Fredericton
.

That had to be the police department. Heart pounding, he hit the “Answer” button. “McBride.”

“Ray Morgan here. We got the toxicological report back from the forensics lab,” he said, confirming Boyd’s hunch.

“And?”

“There was definitely an aggravating agent present.”

Boyd couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t make a sound. Fortunately, Morgan didn’t seem to expect anything of him and plowed on.

“Specifically, an antidepressant.”

Antidepressant?
The word exploded in Boyd’s brain. “No way! There’s no fucking way my brother was taking antidepressants. Not voluntarily anyway.”

“Do me a favor and sit down, would you?”

“I’m standing on the fucking sidewalk, Morgan.”

“Okay, then just chill for a second. You’re going to scare the nice people if you don’t dial back the volume.”

He turned in a circle, phone still pressed to his ear. And, crap, people were crossing the sidewalk to avoid him.

“Okay.” He stepped into an empty alley. “I’m sorry about that. I’m cool now.” He pressed the bridge of his nose and leaned against the brick building. “Go on.”

“The report was waiting for us this morning. Testing must have been pretty much done, and then they fired it over here when Quig asked them to expedite.”

“And?”

“And when we saw he had antidepressants in his system, we started calling pharmacies. We found one where he’d filled a prescription, just over six weeks prior to his death. A three-month supply.”

Boyd gripped the receiver. This wasn’t happening. “Who?” he said, his voice shaking with rage. “Who was the doctor who prescribed the meds?”

“Dr. Gunn,” Morgan said.

Boyd pushed away from the brick wall. “That son of a bitch. He killed Josh.”

“Hang on, McBride. I don’t know that it’s all that cut-and-dried. Turns out Josh was a patient of Gunn’s.”

“What?”

“Gunn has a patient file for Josh dating back to a few months after Josh came here.”

“No way was he taking antidepressants,” Boyd insisted.

“You don’t get these therapeutic levels in your blood because someone slipped you a single dose, or even a handful of doses. Ask Hayden. You get these levels by carefully and consciously taking a prescribed dose every day of your life.”

“But it doesn’t make sense. He wasn’t depressed. He was happy with his life here. Hayden can tell you that.”

“You can’t be sure of that, Morgan. If you were being treated for depression, how many people would you tell?”

“I’m telling you, he wasn’t depressed. I talked to the guy often enough. I would know.”

“Would
he
know if
you
were depressed based on a weekly or twice-weekly phone conversation?”

“That’s different. I can be irritable and taciturn by nature. Josh never was.”

Morgan sighed. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe this medical file we found at Gunn’s is completely fabricated. Maybe the results of the blood work he ordered up to check on thyroid function is faked too.”

Boyd was a silent a few seconds. Could Josh have been depressed? It didn’t seem possible. “There’s really a file?”

“Yeah. It’s mostly about the depression, but there’s mention of an upper respiratory infection. Do you remember Josh ever mentioning something like that?”

Dammit, he had. Shortly after he’d moved to Fredericton. He’d blamed it on all the clean air. And he’d temporarily cut back the running so as not to suck the infection deeper into his lungs before it had a chance to clear.

Could Josh really have been seeing Dr. Gunn? And could he have been depressed? How could something like that slip under Boyd’s radar?

Okay, pretty easily, since Boyd never asked anyone about their feelings. But no way that little detail would have gotten past Hayden.

“You there, McBride?”

“Sorry, yeah. Just trying to work this through. And I still don’t buy it, Morgan. I just don’t believe it.”

“Well, the coroner’s office is liking it. They’re anticipating the genetic report will show LQTS. If it does, it’ll take them about ten seconds to declare death by natural causes due to cardiac arrest arising from undiagnosed long QT syndrome, brought to light by the presence of an aggravating agent, to wit, this antidepressant with the long-assed name. But obviously, no one’s about to go out on that limb without the results of the genetic tests.”

“What about you?” Boyd asked. “What do you believe?”

“I believe this medical record bears a little more scrutiny. For one thing, all the consultations seem to have been at night, at Dr. Gunn’s home.”

“What the hell?”

“Yeah, I know. Odd. I suppose it could be they’d formed a friendship. Everyone knows what a friendly guy Josh was. Or it could be Josh cultivated Gunn as a source of information about what was going on inside the health system. Gunn was active on some provincial committees and task forces. So, on the one hand, you can kinda see how that sort of relationship might have evolved. On the other, it seems convenient that the home visits make it impossible to cross-check the appointments against the receptionist’s appointment log.”

“Yeah, that’s pretty damned convenient, all right.” Boyd swore. “Okay, tell me this—why commit suicide then? If Gunn really had this relationship with Josh, and he legitimately prescribed the antidepressants, and Josh voluntarily took them and then died of an unfortunate accident, where’s the big guilt problem?”

“I don’t know,” Morgan conceded.

Boyd’s mind was racing toward another possibility. A bone-chilling one.

“Or shit, maybe Gunn somehow knew long before Josh did that Arianna Duncan was his mother. If that’s the case, he might have suspected Josh inherited the LQTS that likely killed our mother, in combination with those antidepressants. Maybe he set Josh up. Befriended him, convinced him he needed medication, then sat back and waited for the same thing to happen to him as happened to his patient, our mother. Maybe he killed Josh.”

“Jesus, there’s a horrifying thought.”

“Yeah. That would make it premeditated murder.”

“I get the premeditated business,” Morgan said, “but, technically, I’m not sure it’s murder. Even if you could prove malicious intent, that he prescribed drugs
hoping
they’d kill Josh, it probably wasn’t a sure thing that your brother would die as a result. Manslaughter, more likely. And hell, if Gunn didn’t have absolute proof that Josh had LQTS, maybe it wouldn’t even warrant that. Maybe it’s criminal negligence. Or administering a noxious substance. And for any charge to stick, you’d have to be able to prove mens rea, that he prescribed the stuff with a guilty mind. It would be up to the prosecutors to figure out.”

Boyd was in no mood to debate the finer points of a possible charge against a man who was already dead.

“You said there were hospital reports in the file? Lab work?”

“Yeah, to monitor levels of this antidepressant in his blood.”

“Can you confirm that they’re real? Josh would have had to go to the hospital or a clinic to have his blood drawn, right?”

“Presumably. And we’ll look into that. I’ll also have a personal conversation with the pharmacist who filled the script, see if he or she remembers Josh.”

“Good idea,” Boyd said. “Make sure it was actually Josh who filled the prescription. And couldn’t you also cross-check the appointment dates with Gunn’s Medicare billings? Josh was fully covered by provincial insurance, so you’d think Gunn would have billed for the consultations.”

“I thought of that,” Morgan said, “but when I thought about it, I could see why he might not have billed. For the office-based practice, I’m pretty sure he’d have clerical staff to do the billing for him, but if the consultations and the records were at Gunn’s home, they wouldn’t naturally feed into the billing stream unless Gunn took the trouble to do it himself. For a few bucks here and there, he probably wouldn’t have bothered.”

Damn.
“Makes sense, I guess. But it wouldn’t hurt to know one way or another.”

“Already on my to-do list,” Morgan said. “I just wanted to point out that by itself, that information might not carry much weight.”

“Thanks,” Boyd said.

“So now that you’re up to speed, can I count on you to be cool? Sit on the sidelines for once and let us do our jobs?”

Boyd dragged a frustrated hand down his face. What choice did he have? “Sure. I’ll stay out of your way. Just . . . get to the truth, okay? I need the truth.”

“We’ll do our best. Hang in there, McBride.”

Boyd pocketed his phone, then hauled it right out again. He had to call Hayden.