Johnston - Heartbeat (11 page)

“What if the patient isn’t going to die on his own?”

“People who dedicate themselves to saving lives aren’t purposely going to murder someone, especially not a child, just because that someone might be suffering.”

“You’re wrong, Maggie. Doctors and nurses do it all the time.”

“I suppose you have statistics,” Maggie retorted, pacing agitatedly behind her desk.

“Studies have been done.”

She stopped and stared at him. “You’re kidding, right?”

“When I got assigned to this case, I looked at a lot of literature on the subject. Twenty percent of the critical care nurses in one study admitted they had hastened the death of a terminally ill patient, usually by giving an overdose of painkillers.”

Maggie pointed an accusing finger at him. “There’s the flaw in your reasoning.”

“What?”

“You said they helped ’terminally ill’ patients to die. The kids in question weren’t going to die. Ergo your study doesn’t fit.”

Trust a lawyer to find the flaw in his logic. “Maybe not precisely, but—”

“Not at all,” Maggie insisted. “You need to find another reason for the murders besides mercy killing. Like a life insurance policy or selfish parents who don’t want to care for an invalid or—I’ve got it,” she said excitedly, “the money they’d get suing Hollander for malpractice.”

“A conspiracy of parents killing their children for malpractice settlements?” Jack said dubiously.

“It makes as much sense as believing Roman Hollander is killing patients so they won’t have to live a difficult life!”

Jack sighed. “Mercy killing made sense when Captain Buckelew suggested it to me.”

“You hadn’t met Roman then. Can you really believe he’s a murderer, now that you’ve seen him in action at the bioethics committee meeting? Now that you’ve spoken to him personally?”

“Neither of those meetings has changed my mind about the doctor, Maggie. Besides, I’ve heard of parents killing their children rather than watching them suffer,” Jack said. “Why not a doctor, especially a compassionate one, or his nurse?”

Maggie shoved an agitated hand through her fallen hair.

Jack was distracted when the sunlight caught it, turning wheat to gold. He imagined it spread across his chest or tangled in his hands as he angled her head for his kiss.

She looked up, caught his hungry stare, and rolled her eyes.

He flushed like a teenager caught with his zipper down and realized he’d lost his train of thought. “Where was I?”

“Saying some very disturbing things about Roman and Isabel.”

“Oh. Yeah. Closing your eyes to the truth isn’t going to make it go away, Maggie. If Roman Hollander or his nurse is playing God, I intend to find out and stop it.”

A phone call interrupted them, and Jack fiddled with a toy on Maggie’s desk—a bed of headless nails that took any shape he pressed into it—waiting for Maggie to finish.

She put the call on hold and said, “This is going to take a while.”

“How about dinner tonight? We can finish our conversation then.”

“I have to work late tonight. And every night this week,” she added.

“You’re avoiding me,” Jack said.

“I’m a busy woman,” she countered.

“I guess I won’t see you again until Saturday.”

“I guess not.”

Jack backed off. He could read a No Trespassing sign when he saw one. He was tempted to ease himself out of the picture by reneging on the Saturday invitation, but as he watched Maggie’s hands fidget, he realized she wasn’t as unaware of him, or as unmoved by his presence, as she wanted him to believe.

“What time should I pick you up on Saturday?” he asked.

“Eight o’clock.”

He turned and headed for the door. “I’ll be there.”

“Jack,” she said, catching him before he could leave. “It’s black tie. You can rent a good tux at Anthony’s.”

He glanced at her over his shoulder, his lips curled in a bitter smile. “Thanks,” he said. “I’ll try not to embarrass you.”

“I only thought . . . I wanted to help,” she said lamely.

He hadn’t figured her for a snob, and he didn’t like the way she’d made him feel. He wanted
to
hurt her back and found the words to do it.

“Watch out, Maggie,” he said. “You might turn out to be more like Victoria Wainwright than you think.”

Chapter 7

Jack spent the rest of the week interviewing Dr. Hollander’s colleagues at the hospital. On Friday morning, he headed
to
Austin to make his weekly report to Captain Buckelew at Ranger Headquarters. He could have done it by phone, but ever since Jack was nine, and his own father, also a Texas Ranger, had died in the line of duty, Harley Buckelew had been like a second father to him. The truth was, he enjoyed visiting the old man, which was a damned good thing, because he didn’t have much to report.

During the sixty-odd-mile drive from San Antonio north to Austin, Jack went over every detail he’d learned about Hollander and his nurse, Isabel Rojas, in his head. All he managed to do was give himself a headache. He already had a fairly constant ache in his gut, or thereabouts, because Ms. Maggie Wainwright was stuck deep in his craw.

I should still be on leave. I should be up in the Hill Country on the Guadalupe River, fly-fishing for some of those Colorado brown and speckled trout the Fish and Wildlife guys have stocked up there. I should never have let the captain talk me into taking this case.

But Harley Buckelew was not only his captain, but a surrogate father. Jack wanted his captain’s respect. Even more, he wanted Harley to be proud of him.

The captain had dropped off the folder of information the first day of Jack’s administrative leave and said, “I’ve got an assignment for you—investigating a possible serial killer.”

“I’m not sure I ever want to pin my star back on, and you want me to track down a serial killer?” Jack had asked incredulously.

“I need somebody to go undercover, and since that isn’t something we Rangers do a whole lot, you’re the man with the most experience. Putting on those lieutenant’s bars you just earned and settling in at a desk can wait a while. I need you on this.”

“I’m on leave for a reason, Captain. Find somebody else.”

“He’s killing kids, Jack.”

Jack had felt the squeeze inside and knew Harley had him by the short hairs. He’d also heard the waver in Harley’s voice that revealed he wasn’t as certain of Jack’s response as he wanted Jack to think. And the warmth that showed he cared.

“I’ll think about it,” Jack had said.

Two days later, he’d agreed to go back to work. Jack wondered now if he’d made the right decision. He didn’t seem to have the distance from the case that would allow him to see the situation objectively. Maggie’s opinion of Hollander and his nurse mattered, even though it shouldn’t have been a factor in his investigation.

As Jack neared Austin on I-35, he saw more results of the previous year’s drought. What should have been acres of bluebonnets and Indian paintbrush spreading a blanket of lavender and orange along the roadside had been reduced to patches of blue here and there amid the green. Without enough rain, the wildflowers—compliments of Lady Bird Johnson’s Texas beautification program—simply didn’t bloom.

Once in Austin, Jack exited the interstate onto Lamar and caught sight of the large brown metal B bolted onto the side of the Headquarters Building, an off-white concrete two-story built like a bunker, so half of it was underground. He pulled into the lot and parked beside a Jeep Cherokee he knew Buckelew had claimed as his ride, even though the captain didn’t usually venture into areas where he needed four-wheel drive.

Every time Jack entered Harley’s office, he wasn’t sure whether to chuckle or groan out loud. The captain collected Texas souvenirs—no matter how much in poor taste—just like a tourist. The Ranger’s wall boasted not only a legitimate eight-foot set of horns from a Texas longhorn steer, but the mounted head of a jackalope, a fictional Texas animal consisting of a rabbit head with tiny deer antlers.

Once Jack was settled in front of the captain’s desk in a genuine black-and-white cowhide chair with arms and feet made of cow horns, Harley slurped tar-black coffee from a giant mug bearing the motto
EVERYTHING IS BIGGER IN TEXAS
and said, “What have you found out?”

“Not a hell of a lot more than you told me in the first place,” Jack admitted. Maggie’s defense of Hollander had jibed with everything he’d discovered about the man over the past week. “Roman Hollander seems like a competent, dedicated doctor. Personally, I don’t see him killing kids, even as a favor to them. You’d have a hard time making even a circumstantial case against him because too many other people have access to the ICU, a needle, and potassium chloride.”

Maggie’s defense of Isabel Rojas had turned out to be equally compelling in light of Jack’s investigation. “Hollander’s surgical nurse, Isabel Rojas, has been with him almost from the beginning of his career,” Jack continued, “and seems as dedicated to the doctor as she is to her job. But she doesn’t strike me as the type to run around killing kids, either. Are we even sure yet whether the other five deaths were murders?” Jack asked. “Maybe Laurel Morgan’s death was an accident. Maybe some nurse didn’t write it down when she gave the kid a dose of potassium, and somebody gave the kid another dose.”

Buckelew shook his head. “I wish the Morgan case were an isolated incident, an accident. But we’ve heard back from the medical examiners in Houston and Dallas we asked to take a look at those five bodies we had exhumed. They’d all been embalmed, just like we figured, but one of the mortuaries left all the IV s and shunts intact, and massive amounts of potassium chloride showed up in the kid’s IV tubing.

“Another one of the victims was a preemie with veins too small for an IV. A catheter was inserted in the shinbone to the marrow. By using bone from the uncatheterized shin as a control, the ME was able to document a lethal dose of potassium chloride in the other shin.”

“Aw, damn,” Jack muttered.

Harley swatted at a fly with a souvenir flyswatter the size of a paper plate, since even the flies were bigger in Texas. “We can’t prove the other three kids were murdered, but it’s a good bet they were. We’re dealing with someone ruthless enough to snuff kids,” Harley said soberly. “If Hollander’s nurse has been with him for years, she’s also a viable suspect.”

Jack settled his booted ankle on the opposite knee. “The problem is, short of putting a video camera in the ICU—”

“All right,” Harley said.

“All right what?”

“I’ll take care of the paperwork to authorize surveillance video cameras in the I CU. You tell the guys where you want them, and I’ll arrange to have them monitored twenty-four hours a day by local police.”

“I count six deaths in seven years, Captain. We could end up with a helluva lot of videotape waiting for the murderer to show up.”

Harley smacked a fly and shoved it off his desk with the flyswatter. “I guess I haven’t told you.”

“What?”

“Every one of those kids died between March 31 and April 6.”

Jack glanced at the wall where the captain’s Texas-shaped yearly planning calendar was tacked up with Alamo stickpins. Each day that passed was stamped with a red boot. Today was March 28, Good Friday. According to Harley’s information, if the killer held to the previous pattern, he might strike as soon as Monday—and had a mere seven days in which to claim his seventh victim.

“I don’t know whether to hope the doctor or his nurse try something or not,” Jack said. “What if we get them on video but can’t catch them in time to keep them from killing a kid?”

“We do the best we can, Jack. We can’t save them all.”

A poignant silence fell between them as they both remembered why Jack had requested an administrative leave.

“You did the best you could, Jack.”

“My best wasn’t good enough.” Jack couldn’t look at Harley. His nose stung, and tears were too close to the surface. “I keep thinking that if I’d done something differently . . . kept my distance . . . or kept my gun . . . something . . . that little girl would be alive today.”

“Hindsight is always twenty-twenty, Jack. You have to trust yourself to make the right decision at the time.”

“That’s just it,” Jack said. “I don’t trust myself anymore. Are you sure you want me on this case?”

“You’re the best there is in a hostage situation, Jack. I want you there if it comes down to that.”

The silence grew uncomfortable again.

“Is that all you have to report?” Harley asked.

Jack nodded because he couldn’t talk past the Texas-size frog in his throat.

“Then let me throw another can of beans on the fire,” Harley said, leaning back and threading his fingers over his belly.

“What?” Jack croaked.

“We have another suspect.”

“For Christ’s sake! Why didn’t you say so in the first place?”

“I’m telling you now,” Harley said, “if you’ll shut up and listen.”

Jack pressed his lips flat.

“The MEDCO investigator did a computer check of all common factors and identified another person with a link to all the purported victims in San Antonio, Houston, and Dallas.”

“Who is it?” Jack asked impatiently.

“Margaret Wainwright.”

Jack’s heart jumped from a steady thump to full speed like a jackrabbit taking off from a standing start. “That’s bullshit.”

“’Fraid not, son. The situation’s delicate enough with Hollander’s wife being an associate with Wainwright & Cobb. I can’t tell you how sensitive this case becomes if we start investigating one of the Wainwrights for murder.”

Jack ground his teeth, thinking what a fool he’d been to tell Maggie Wainwright who he was. It was like announcing to a burglar when you were going to be gone from home so he could come over and help himself. He opened his mouth to confess to the captain what he’d done, but what came out was, “In what way is Maggie Wainwright connected to all of these deaths?”

“She’s been counsel for the hospital in each and every case.”

Jack heaved a sigh of relief and slumped back into his chair. “Hell, Captain. You had me going there for a minute. Of course she’d show up on the computer as counsel for the hospitals. That’s no reason to suspect—”