Nothing Personal (33 page)

“And the lawsuit?” she asked.

“The hospital hasn’t said anything official, but between you and me, I believe they’re going to settle. I think you might share the information with your insurance company and your lawyer.”

Kate couldn’t do much more than nod.

It was over. She was being rewarded or bought off or both. She hated herself, because she was going to accept. But not without questions.

“Who made the final decision?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” Phyl said. “I just got word from Jane Mangelsdorf this morning.” Jane Mangelsdorf, the vice president over nursing. A link in the never-ending chain upward. “She said the decision had been reached sometime yesterday.”

Another nod. “Uh huh.”

Kate simply couldn’t offer any more than that.

Jane Mangelsdorf. Bland, almost faceless, now that she’d changed her nursing shoes for Papagallos. Someone aspiring to step up to the next rung on the ladder, not, Kate thought, to control the whole thing. She did her best to fit Jane’s face on the suspect she’d been trying to form. She couldn’t seem to do it.

“And one other thing,” Phyl said. “You’re being recommended for a special commendation. For helping the way you did.”

Kate had to get out of that office before she lost whatever acid she’d built up in her stomach all over Phyl’s much-too-neat desk. “Recommend away,” she said, getting to her feet, “but I’m turning it down.”

She didn’t go back to the lounge, at least not right away. The air was a little cleaner outside, where all she had to inhale was exhaust fumes, so she leaned against the beautiful white brick and she shook.

She’d just been set free of this place. Beholden to no one now that her medical bills were paid up, now that she had a hold over Administration. Over Phyl. Over everyone. That shouldn’t have made her so sick.

It did, because it had the terrible feel of manipulation to it.

She’d been right. There was something dark and ugly and evil here, and she’d recognized it in a gesture that should have been generous.

She heard the commotion the minute she walked back through the automatic doors. Three doors away from Phyl’s office, there was a crowd
spilling out of the nurses’ lounge, all eyes intent on what was going on inside. Kate headed for the action.

It was the TV news. The same KSTL reporter was doing a stand-up in front of the postmodern gray of Central Medical East.

“Are they kidding?” one of the techs was demanding, incensed.

“Guess not,” Dr. Mendoza retorted. “Well, at least we know our frozen wages went to a worthy cause.”

He had several pens thrown at him and one half-eaten orange.

“…In making the announcement of the merger between Central and Saint Simon’s today, the new CEO of Central Medical Centers Incorporated named Robert Fellows as new president of Saint Simon’s. Mr. Fellows has been acting administrator since the death of Leo Gunn. Mr. Fellows promises…”

And there they were, the Brooks Brothers. Fellows and the lawyer; what was his name? Both of them shaking hands and smiling as if they’d just hit the gold spike on the first intercontinental railroad. And there, standing just beyond the periphery of the camera lights, someone else. Someone Kate recognized.

“So, we aren’t Saint Simon’s anymore?” somebody asked.

“I think we’re Mr. Simon’s.”

“Central Simon’s.”

“Simon Says.”

“This Simon says we’ve been screwed again.”

“Well, at least now we’ve been screwed by the biggest hospital conglomerate in the bistate area.”

“Who’s that guy?” Kate asked, pointing to the vague, smiling face at the edge of the action.

Everybody looked.

“Who?” Mendoza asked. “The thin guy with the dark hair?”

The thin guy who had been sitting in the waiting room all those nights. Whom Kate had seen at the periphery of her vision and assumed was watching her for the police. Protecting her from the people who had been terrorizing the hospital.

“Yeah,” she said. “Him.”

Ramirez nodded. “I’m not sure. Doesn’t he have something to do with the new security team?”

“Yeah,” somebody else said. “Name’s Thompson, I think. I saw him around here the other day. Somebody said he’d been looking around. Sizing things up, I guess.”

Kate stood there awhile longer watching the crowd, watching the report, watching the sharks’ smiles, and thinking of how, as badly as she was seeing right now, that blur of a Young Turk with his dark hair could almost pass for a tall young woman with short hair in a baseball cap, given the right lighting.

She thought she was crazy.

But Mr. Gunn wasn’t supposed to have been on Sister Ann’s list. At least not yet. And certainly not with strychnine.

She had to talk to B.J.

She had to protect B.J., because if she was
right, he was in the most dangerous hospital in the city, and not just because it had bad hiring practices.

She was getting onto the elevator for the fourth floor to do just that when she heard her named called. In the mood she was in, she almost ignored it.

“Kate, hey, wait up! I need to talk to you!”

Kate turned to find Mary Cherry behind her, bouquet in one hand, Vuitton briefcase in the other. She was in full-dress suit, hair wrapped and sprayed, any remnants of the Wild West missing. In the time it took for her to realize who was after her, Kate went from one of the unhappiest women to one of the most relieved.

She held the door just long enough for the agent to join her in the otherwise empty elevator. “I thought you were spending quality time with the little dogies.”

Mary followed along, beaming like a kid with a good report card. “Not me. I was working. Did I hear you went to visit Sister Ann this morning? I thought I told you I’d take care of it from here.”

“I thought you guys were happy with the single bullet theory. It just so happens Sister Ann wasn’t the only one involved in sending me those notes after all. Wanna hear about it?”

“I already know about it. The report came back this morning. I thought we’d discuss it with you and B.J.”

The elevator reached the second floor, where it opened for the four people waiting there. Kate smiled, hit the
CLOSE
button, and kept them off.
“Medical emergency,” she said with a tight smile as the doors closed on their thunderous faces.

“Bitch,” was the answer.

For the first time in a long while, she didn’t mind. “So you agree that Polyester couldn’t have killed Tim?”

“I agreed all along. John and I thought we’d let you sit this one out, though. Since it seems you can’t, why don’t you guys help me figure out who did?”

Kate’s smile was truly satisfied. “I already know.”

“What do you mean, now we can leave it to the professionals?” Kate demanded, outraged. Her heart was pounding again, filling her chest with the enormity of her anger. Her head hurt and her stomach was threatening.

B.J. didn’t look much happier. “I mean you’ve done enough. You’ve put yourself in too much danger as it is.”

“Oh, yeah,” she retorted, only having to eye the IV he still sported to make her point. “You’re right. Tim’s dead, you’re still barfing up every third meal, and I’ve just had all my bills paid and my job secured into the twenty-second century. I’m in horrible danger.”

B.J. went red in the face. “You know what I mean.”

“No,” she insisted, on her feet, finger out at both B.J. and Mary, where they sat trying to take her out of the action again. “I don’t. What I know
is, I’m the one who figured out that Polyester was being used. I’m the one who figured out that it had to be somebody powerful enough to pay me off, to have access to the keys to the lockers and the staff apartment building, and to get hold of any number of drugs and equipment without anybody’s asking. I’m the one who figured out just how this guy operated. Damn it, Beej, I’ve had to pay all the penalties. At least give me the answers, too.”

“Not at that price.”

“I’m waiting to hear from John now,” Mary offered as quietly as she could, in her corner. “I think the police should probably handle it from here.”

“And do what? What evidence do they have that could get them a search warrant, much less an indictment? You think the prosecuting attorney’s going to go after somebody this big with only my say-so?”

“I think it’s a possibility. Nobody wants Sister Ann to pay for crimes she didn’t commit.”

“Nobody cares. She’s already admitted to three murders. What’s a couple more? After all, like John said, she’s not really going to pay. They’re going to put her away where she can do penance in peace, and this son of a bitch is going to get away scot-free with murdering Tim.”

Even pale and wasted and exhausted, B.J. could still be the most intimidating person Kate had ever known. At any other time, the fury in his eyes would have sent her running. But this time, she had nowhere to run. She had to know. She
had to find justice for every person in that hospital who had found their idealism pimped on the open market for money. She wanted to accomplish what Polyester had set out to do. She wanted to bring down at least one manipulator.

“I got a rise out of him the last time,” she insisted. “I can do it again. I can get him to tell me everything, I know it. Please.”

They shook their heads in unison. “No.”

They left her with no choices at all.

For the position, the office was subdued. Unlike Gunn’s with its chrome and slate and lithographs, this one bore no personal stamp at all. A couple of framed pictures of kids and dogs and a pretty, vacuous-looking blond woman in natural fibers. A lot of files and a bookcase filled with important tomes. Walls empty of everything except an aerial shot of St. Simon’s and another of St. Louis from the arch. Kate sat in one of the simple brown-leather chairs and waited, her hands clammy, her heart pounding, her stomach ready to empty itself for the third time in fifteen minutes.

She felt like hell. She wanted to go home. Now that she’d actually done it, she decided she’d been an idiot after all. Outside the window the sun was teetering at the edge of the highway, and the rest of the administrative offices were closed and empty. She’d made the appointment knowing that perfectly well.

Tough to get a confession with a secretary popping in every five minutes or so.

She might not have done it if Mary hadn’t managed to unearth that one piece of crucial information that afternoon. If Kate hadn’t finally known just what the stakes were. But she did, and she knew she could finally put a face to her monster.

So she sat very still and willed her body to behave. She listened to the distant hum of the hospital and waited for her monster to appear. She heard the soft tread of expensive shoes on the carpet outside and knew that, whatever happened, this time it would be over.

“I’m sorry I’m late,” he apologized in a quiet, smooth voice as he walked into the room.

Kate never turned to acknowledge him. “That’s all right.”

Her chest tightened and stumbled. Her heart wasn’t just racing anymore, it was tripping over itself.

“Actually,” he said, closing the door, “I’m glad you called me for this appointment.”

Kate finally turned to acknowledge him. Just in time to see him engage the lock.

Then he turned back to her and smiled, and she knew her challenge had worked.

“I thought you would be. Congratulations on your new appointment, Mr. Wurly.”

WURLY. HIS NAME
was Wurly. Kate would remember that now. She’d remember that he did look different from Fellows. His hair was neater. His eyes were brown, and his ears were tipped out at the top like an elf’s. His smile was absolutely cold and self-satisfied.

He eased himself down behind his desk and shot his cuff so he could check his watch. Nodded. “Sorry I couldn’t make it before now,” he said. “I’ve had so much to do. It’s quite a change in workload to be CEO of a network of hospitals.”

Kate curled her fingers around the arms of her chair to keep from wiping sweaty palms against her pants. She shouldn’t have fortified herself with so much wine before showing up here. It was making her sick all over again. “That’s okay. Your secretary let me in before she left. Your new title is quite a coup,” she acknowledged.

He smiled. “Thank you. I thought so. I’m really looking forward to making the Central Medical Centers into state-of-the-art institutions.”

“It really means that much to you?”

“I think you know that answer, Ms. Manion.”

“But why? This is medicine, not banking. Not…government or multinational investment.”

“It’s the only real growth industry in this town. Think about what the future is, with the population steadily aging and more and more resources being diverted to health care. With the chairmanship of CMC, I can gain my place on boards of all the really important organizations in town: the MAC, the Veiled Prophet Committee, the Regional Commerce and Growth Association.”

The real old-boy network. The real power in the St. Louis area. The biggest fish in not much more than a medium-sized pond.

Kate found herself nodding. If it had been anything else, she would have understood. If this had been a book she’d been reading, Wurly’s motives would be perfectly acceptable. But his greed was compounded here. He fed on the helplessness of others. Layers and layers of helplessness, and people she knew, so that in the end his big plans ended up seeming a bit of a disappointment. All that effort for something really just mid-level. The story of her life, she supposed. Her monsters were never as big as she’d thought.

“I imagine it’s an even greater thrill when you know that, if he hadn’t died, Mr. Gunn would have gotten the chairmanship and you would have been back to real estate deals.”

For a second, Wurly simply watched her, the smile absent. “Your sources are quite good. Not many people know that.”

“They will if you and I don’t come to some understanding.”

Another small silence. A waiting, as if the questions waiting to be asked presented themselves in some certain order.

“And Doctor O’Brien?”

She shook her head, praying she could hold it together. “He doesn’t know anything. He still thinks Mary Polyester did it.”

Another pause. A nod. “How did you realize?”

Well, Kate thought. At least there wasn’t going to be any feigning. Cards right out on the table.

“Molly,” she said simply. “I’ve never told anyone in the world except for Polyester. Who only told her priest.”

Wurly smiled again. “The mark of a good administrator is his ability to take advantage of opportunity. I couldn’t believe it when I walked past the chapel that morning and heard that crazy old woman babbling to herself about killing that nurse. Talk about a sign from God.”

Kate felt colder, emptier. Passion she understood, rage and frustration and desperation. This man was coloring his crimes with indifference. A simple means to an end.

“Why are you talking to me?” she asked. “Are you that willing to pay my price?”

Her question brought him back from his glow of self-congratulation. “I won’t have to. You’ll be dead.”

Kate laughed. “How? You gonna coax me up on a chair and talk me into hanging myself?”

“No. I’m going to wait about another twenty
minutes. I’ve been watching you today, you know. You haven’t been feeling well.”

Suddenly Kate understood B.J.’s chagrin when he’d fallen into her arms at her doorstep. “What?”

“You finished half a bottle of wine last night. You’re so predictable, really. Thompson told me it was that simple. I’m going to have to give him a raise.”

“Thompson told you?”

An eyebrow lifted. “You don’t think I’d do any of this myself? I’m a lawyer, Kate, not a murderer. Thompson, on the other hand, is very handy with things like poison and needles.”

“But I thought—”

“That I did everything? Hardly. I’m renowned for my delegating skills. Sister Ann took care of all the hard work, and the rest simply fell to Thompson. He was a security guard over at Central, which is handy. He does know how to look like he belongs places, you know?”

“And I bet he handles weapons pretty well, too.”

“Oh, you mean the gunshot? No, actually I have no idea who did that.”

Kate struggled to control herself long enough to find out the rest, the most important. “Wait, wait, wait.” She shook her head, trying to clear it. “What did he give me?”

“Oh, that. Quinidine and digoxin. A personal favorite of Sister Ann’s, I might add. I figure with the amount we put in those bottles—not to mention the fact that if you acted true to form you went home before facing me and downed at least
another glass of wine—your heart should just give out.”

Kate’s heart threatened to do that on the spot. Well, fuck me too, she thought with desperate silliness. All that work to change the locks, and they’d forgotten that the bosses always had the master key. “You’re nuts,” she said instead, terrified she wasn’t going to have the time for her answers. “How do you know I haven’t gone to the police yet?”

But Wurly didn’t appear particularly nuts. He seemed quiet and calm and methodical. Just the kind of person who might have gotten past the precautions the police had taken for her. The kind of man who would have organized something right to the last brown bead. She couldn’t believe it. She almost puked on the spot.

“Because I’ve been talking to Dick Trainor, and he can’t keep his mouth shut about anything if he thinks he’ll get something out of it. It’s nothing personal, Kate. Really. But you’ve outlived your usefulness. I figure that when they find the wine and the needle puncture in the corks and caps of your liquor bottles where the medication was injected, the police will realize that Sister Ann Francis left behind a little time bomb for you. You just happened to be sitting in my office when the medicine reached maximum performance, or whatever, and sent you into cardiac standstill.”

“My usefulness?” Kate asked, the adrenaline that washed her pushing up the half-life clock a little. “Wait. You never wanted me involved in the first place.”

“On the contrary. I spent an inordinate amount of time assuring just that. The police weren’t having any luck at the hospital. I needed somebody inside who wanted to help. Somebody who would have the brains and the tenacity to fly in the face of popular feeling and finger that little nun. And you do have a certain reputation.”

It was getting harder to think, harder to remember that she needed him to keep talking. “Wait. But why?”

“Several reasons. First, to catch Sister, of course. After all, if we let this go on too long, business would really suffer. Second, to create a certain amount of disharmony that would accelerate staff attrition. And finally, to get you out of our hair, especially with this Rashad thing ready to catch fire.”

“But you had to know I wouldn’t stop with Polyester.”

He nodded. “I knew. Which was why it was all so carefully planned. My timing had to be damn near perfect. You know I took a psych minor in pre-law? Amazing stuff. As for you, I needed a way to get your full and undivided attention. When Sister Ann Francis told her ‘priest’ what she learned about your sisters, I knew I had it. I couldn’t just threaten you, for you to get motivated; I had to threaten your friends. And it worked.”

Kate’s vision swam. Her chest hurt like hell. But she wasn’t sure whether that was medication or rage. Grief. “You mean Tim…”

Wurly lifted his hands. “I told you. It was
nothing personal. But you were taking too long, and I had to make an impression fast enough to get Gunn out of the way and the nun blamed for it. As it was, I almost lost Central twice. They were just a little fussy about all the administrators dying. Of course, between your fingering that nun and my getting Fellows to promise big changes, we got a better deal than we’d hoped. They really did need us more than we needed them, after all, no matter who was dropping dead.”

Kate didn’t even hear him anymore. Tim. Her sweet, caring, considerate Tim nothing more than a red flag. She wanted to kill Wurly on the spot. “You son of a bitch. You goddamn, stinking…” Tears pushed up and dimmed her vision entirely. “He was the best goddamn surgeon to hit this hospital in twenty years, and you hanged him?”

A shrug. “He was gay. How long did he have before he contracted something anyway?”

Kate found herself on her feet. She saw it now, the monster, the twisted, dark thing lurking in the depths of this whole nightmare. It lived in a perfectly normal middle-class male—a mid-level bureaucrat with deadly ambition. It had killed Tim for no reason, and that was the worst crime of all.

“Besides,” he said. “He didn’t suffer. We couldn’t chance any noise, so he was out from the barbiturates when Thompson lifted him up. The blow on the head was just for insurance.”

Kate’s ears were ringing. Her heart was slamming uncertainly against her ribs. Her knees were melting. But she couldn’t take her eyes off the man seated so calmly behind his desk. “I’ll see
you dead!” she hissed. Knowing it was over. Knowing it was time.

He checked his watch again. “Not before I see you dead. I figure I’ll wait just about ten minutes after you arrest. That way the code team won’t be able to get you back, and I can be sufficiently distraught over the whole thing.”

He didn’t seem to understand why Kate smiled, tears streaming down her face, her respirations ragged, her limbs shaking. “You mean you’re not going to do CPR on me?” she asked, knowing it wasn’t supposed to happen this way. Not caring anymore.

Wurly blinked. “What?”

“CPR,” she insisted. “You’re not going to do CPR?”

He tried to smile, but something was missing. “Why would I?”

When Kate laughed, he got to his feet. When she began to pull her scrub top from her pants, he stopped dead in his tracks. “Why, so you can see this,” she said, and showed him the wire John and Mary had taped to her chest. “Ollie-ollie-oxen-free!”

The quiet, colorless little monster suddenly roared with fury. Kate saw him leap the desk even as she sank to her knees. She heard the thunder of footsteps down the carpeted hallway and knew it had worked. It had all worked, and if she could manage to get over the embarrassment of being poisoned after B.J. had warned her and the police had protected her, everything would be all right. She kept thinking that as the door splintered in on
its hinges and people poured in to find her lying on her side on the rug.

“Up the rebels!” Kate intoned.

“Up the rebels!” the room thundered in answer.

Kate was back in a wheelchair, the IV still in, her energy level hovering somewhere around her knees, her full Pig Nurse on Parade color guard uniform on. Alongside her sat Jules and Sticks and Lisa Beller and Parker and about a hundred others, ready to celebrate Tim’s Irish wake. Back at McGurk’s to lift their glasses to him and to Polyester and to Kate and B.J., who had brought down William Wurly. The noise was incredible, the beer flowing like water. Completely ignoring her nurse’s threats as Kate had been swept out the door of her room, Kate partook of her own.

Up on stage, the band of the week was poised to play: Paddy O’Brien, bespectacled genius of the concertina; Martin Hayes, baby-faced fiddler and poet; Pat Broaders, bearded, earringed, and wry on his bazooki and pipes. And along with them, the freshly sprung wizard of the uileann pipes himself, Dr. Brian Joseph O’Brien. Gathered here to pay the kind of final tribute that would have had Tim wincing.

B.J. lifted an eyebrow. Kate nodded. It was time.

Bending to his fiddle, Martin kicked off the festivities. For Tim, Kate had chosen a simple rendition of Erik Satie’s
Variations on a Theme
. The
house fell quiet to the sweet poetry of the violin. Glasses were raised. People smiled. Kate thought of Tim, who had once spent an entire night studying a difficult case to the sounds of the piece. She smiled, too, and lifted her own beer with an unsteady hand.

B.J. followed Satie with the slow, moving Irish lament “Carrickfergus” on his pipes. Kate let the tears come. The rest of the people followed suit.

And then, just like an Irish version of a New Orleans funeral, the rest of the band, poised like a tableau for that last hovering note, swept into a jig called “Jerry’s Beaver Hat” and the place exploded.

“He would have hated it,” Jules assured Kate with tears streaming down her face.

Kate laughed with delight. “I know. But you can’t have a good Irish wake to Handel.”

“O’Brien looks pretty good, considering.”

Kate nodded, sipped at the bitter stout in her glass. “Yup. He does.”

“He ever forgive you for that stunt you pulled?”

“You mean holding them off till the last minute?” she asked. “He’ll never forgive me for that. Ask me if I care. I couldn’t let them all come barging in until I had all the answers.”

“But you don’t. You still don’t know who shot at you.”

“Superfluous. I might have shot at me too, if I hadn’t known any better.”

She’d ended up with a lot of enemies from all this. A lot of friends. A new share of secrets the powers that be would never know. Harve Pfieffer
wouldn’t find out that Jules had begun to look elsewhere for her affection, and no one would discover that in a moment of desperation six years earlier Lisa Beller had helped her sister die. Like Kate had said. All superfluous.

“You sure I can’t change your mind?”

Kate looked over to where Jules sat, her own Pig Nurse cap missing, since it had been officially awarded to Edna until a new one could be made. Even Mary had one on, which just made the snout and black stripe look like a fashion statement. “About B.J.?”