Promise Me Eternity (8 page)

“… We went to his place. As I said before, I
have never gone to bed with someone on the first night.” She wiped
away the tears swelling up in her eyes.

Sandra offered her a tissue. “Please go
on.”

“I can’t tell you much. I was in bed with him
when he suddenly froze. I felt something was wrong, so I opened my
eyes. I saw him staring at someone behind me.” She stopped,
reliving that terrifying moment. “He said, ‘Please, nooo!’ I don’t
remember anything after that. I’m sorry.”

“Are you sure there’s nothing else you can
remember?”

The girl put her hand to the large bump on
her head. “Sorry.”

“OK, this is the last question. Please answer
yes or no.”

The girl waited.

“Are you by any chance involved in
prostitution? I promise you won’t be prosecuted.”

The girl’s pale cheeks lit up in a moment.
“How could you even think that?” she said indignantly.

The agent replied sternly, “I told you to
answer yes or no.”

“Of course not,” the girl said in a defensive
tone, and sulkily turned away, adding, “I want to go home.”

“We won’t detain you any longer,” Sandra told
her, “but first you must be examined by a doctor. Wait here for
him.”

Sandra went into the next room, where three
men in white overalls were lifting the heavy body onto a
stretcher.

Steven followed her. “Male, thirty-four, name
of Patrick Gowan,” he said as soon as she threw him a questioning
look. “We have quite a bit of information on him. He started
thieving when he was still a child, and his parents washed their
hands of him. He was in a correctional center most of the time and
went to jail when he was twenty for trying to break into a small
clothing factory. Then he was probably involved in drug dealing.
After that, we don’t have anything on him. Once he was arrested in
the company of Brad Hont, who is now in prison for selling
drugs.”

The agents dug out their gloves and put them
on. Steven pulled a clear plastic wallet out of a dark-blue bag
lying on the table and showed her two cigarette ends. “Cigarette
butts again.”

Sandra took hold of the bag and had a
thorough look at the dirty cigarette filters. “You’re right. They
are covered in saliva, like the two we found a couple weeks ago. We
could be looking at the same murderer. Who could be that
stupid?”

“Obviously someone who isn’t scared of
anyone. I don’t think this case will be at all easy. I’d gladly
leave it to someone else. You know, it’s never good playing around
with the Mafia.”

Sandra bristled. Steven West was an extremely
intelligent special agent. He successfully solved most of the cases
that came his way, but he instinctively leaned toward easier tasks.
He most liked dealing with theft and most hated the murders with
Mafia involvement.

“Let someone else solve them,” he said
indifferently. “My salary isn’t worth risking my life. I’m not
stupid.”

In fact, something completely the opposite of
what he said had happened. Sandra had gotten into dangerous
situations with criminals twice. Without thinking, Steven had
risked his life in order to save her. She was most thankful for
what he had done, but then for the next six months had to listen to
him grumbling about how he had put his life on the line for
her.

She gave him a piercing look. “We’re going to
solve this case, just us. It’ll be easy. All we have to do is ask
around for who smokes these cigarettes. Then we’ll take a sample of
saliva and that’ll be that.”

Deep in thought, Steven stared at the
remnants of blood on the carpet. “What a weird pattern. It reminds
me of a swan.” He turned to Sandra. “I’m going to gain enemies
because of you. These Mafia guys never forget. Revenge comes sooner
or later. Why don’t we leave this case to Gibson?”

Gibson was their colleague who, being very
ambitious, was always after the difficult cases.

“No way. We are going to deal with it.
Otherwise the whole force will think we’re cowards.”

He scratched his head and pulled a face.
“Well, I am scared. I can tell you that and anyone else. Have you
forgotten about our old colleague, Bullock?" He paused for a
moment. “Have you forgotten the state his corpse was in? They found
thirty bullets in his body. His face was unrecognizable. And his
hand was cut off. That was a clear enough message for me.”

“I won’t argue with you. We’ll solve this
case together, full stop. I’m not going to humiliate myself in
front of Ross while you make up excuses that we’re too busy to deal
with it.”

He tapped his forehead a few times with his
index finger. “I’m going to get my head blown off one day because
of you, I hope you realize that. Luckily I don’t have any
children.” He looked at her reproachfully. “Actually I’m all alone
anyway, so it doesn’t matter what happens to me.” He hung his head
sadly.

Sandra didn’t know what to say. A short while
earlier she had been so angry with him but now, staring into his
boyish face, she felt she would like to stroke his short-trimmed
hair and hold him close. She cared about him.

But instead she said in a strict voice, “Stop
it, Steve. You’re feeling sorry for yourself again.” She was scared
that she’d soften him even more with kindness. That wouldn’t do for
a special agent. “Let’s get to work.”

He nodded and followed her into the next
room.

Chapter 14

_______________________

Simon stared absently at the picture on his
office wall, thinking through what Helen had said not long ago. He
couldn’t understand why she had changed so much lately. She used to
be fun and relaxed, but nowadays she complained and grumbled about
every little thing. She seemed to be prepared to argue to death
because of a vacation.
No, I won’t give in. If there isn’t the
money, we simply can’t afford such expensive getaways.

He slowly lifted his left arm to check his
watch: it was a little after eight in the morning. Having finished
his nightshift, he sleepily dragged himself out into the corridor
and walked toward the operating room.

After scrubbing his hands and, with the
nurse’s help, putting on his operating gown and surgical gloves, he
entered the room and greeted the team. He sat down on a chair next
to the patient, who was lying on his back.

“We’re operating on a trapped vein in the
wrist,” Dr. Patterson said. “May I make the first incision?”

All eyes turned to Anita, who nodded calmly.
“Yes, yes, the patient is already well under. We were expecting you
five minutes ago.”

He started to work without commenting on her
critical remark. He knew very well that she was angry because he
had rejected her.
She’ll get over it.

When he made the incision he thought the
patient was bleeding too much and wanted to ask Dr. Carter if his
blood pressure was OK, but he changed his mind. Not wanting to have
anything to do with her, he grimly carried on, knowing he would
have to make a bigger effort with the coagulation clamp to stop the
bleeding.

Most of the operation passed calmly enough.
No one spoke. Dr. Patterson operated while Dr. Jerry Duncan washed
the wound and aspirated the remaining blood. The operating room
nurse took care of the different instruments while Dr. Anita Carter
and Dr. Leon Whitman took care of the anesthesia.

From time to time another nurse, Esther
Green, wiped the sweat from Dr. Patterson’s forehead.

After sewing up the wound, he took a deep
breath and asked Dr. Duncan to disinfect it with iodine. He left
the operating room without a word. He collapsed onto the chair in
his office, leaned on his arm, and dozed off from fatigue.

Half an hour later, when he was fast asleep,
Anita Carter barged in, saying, “What do you think you’re doing?
We’ve been paging you for five minutes!”

He blinked a few times and shook his head.
“Wh-what? What happened? Obviously I was so tired I didn’t hear the
beeping.”

“What happened? The patient you operated on
half an hour ago has broken out in a rash and his throat is so
swollen he can hardly breathe. Right now Jerry Duncan is fighting
to save his life.”

He was up in a moment and rushed out of his
office. If he had turned around he would have seen her glassy eyes
with a hint of a smile in them. She was pleased. Everything had
gone as she had planned. She had deliberately accused him before
the operation of being late, so that he wouldn’t ask her any
questions. Anita knew that the patient was allergic to iodine and
had deliberately written it illegibly on the patient record card.
With that, her task was complete. As the head surgeon, Dr.
Patterson was responsible for the whole operation and it was his
duty to check the record card or ask about the patient. If he had
asked her she would have had to answer, but since he hadn’t ….

The man was in a worse condition than Dr.
Patterson had expected. His eyes were bulging like a frog’s and his
neck was becoming wider than his head. His body was covered in a
red-and-purple rash. He was hardly breathing, obviously struggling
for his life.

“Let me through!” he ordered Jerry Duncan,
who was doing his utmost to save the patient. “How did it come to
this?”

“The patient is allergic to iodine. We
shouldn’t have disinfected the wound with iodine.”

Simon Patterson was quick to react.

It took them more than an hour to pull the
patient out of serious danger. When Simon returned to his office he
was drenched in sweat. Dead tired, he collapsed onto a chair,
asking himself how this could happen. He had never let a patient
come so near to death out of carelessness.

Chapter 15

_______________________

John Melton lived two houses away from Dr.
Patterson. He was in his forties, thin, with an angular face and a
Roman nose. Standing in front of one of his rosebushes, he was
examining the flowers. He couldn’t understand why some of the
leaves were turning yellowish brown and falling off. The flowers
were smaller than those in the Pattersons’ garden, and black spots
were appearing on them. He asked himself what he was doing wrong.
He had read many books about gardening and spent at least two hours
in the garden every day tending them. Yet John wondered with envy
what Simon Patterson was doing to make his roses thrive so
much.

Some days John Melton pretended to be resting
in the garden, but he was actually watching Simon pruning. John was
sure it all depended on the length to which the stems were cut.
Unfortunately, he couldn’t see such detail with his naked eye. He
solved this problem by buying a new telescope and putting it in his
room. Then, every day he waited for Simon to come home from work
and hoped he’d go into the garden. He carefully watched the
doctor’s hands as he pruned and how he held each stem individually
before cutting it. Finally, everything was clear to him. He ran
into the garden and started pruning.

He had to wait for months for the roses to
start flowering. To his dismay, they were the same as the previous
year, while Simon’s were even more beautiful. He only just stopped
himself from digging them out of the ground. The more he watched
his neighbor, the more hatred and rage were visible on his face. He
decided to go into his house.

“I thought you were never coming,” said
Maria, his wife. “You know, Simon and Helen will be here any minute
now.”

John Melton gestured in an irritated manner.
“Need to pop to the bathroom.”

His wife watched him go, thinking how much he
had changed over the last five years.
He keeps moaning and
complaining. He acts as if he’s at least sixty.
Because he’s
not eating he’s lost a few pounds again. If he goes on like this,
he’ll wither away
.

Maria Melton had turned forty this year and
was slightly plump, with gentle, warm eyes, and she knew how to
listen. She had taught geography in school for more than ten years.
Her husband John also taught, but he came from a different field.
He taught economics to fifteen- to eighteen-year-olds. He kept on
complaining about them, that they were trying to get a rise out of
him, and claimed that his job could not be compared to hers. He
said that young children were more obedient than older ones, who
were not scared of anyone. Maria had to listen to how hard his job
was over and over again, every day. “Try listening to them,” she’d
say to him, “they aren’t that bad.” But he never took her words in.
He was confident that he was a good teacher and the problem lay in
the students, who were not interested in gaining knowledge. “That’s
all there is to it,” he would say.

The doorbell rang. Maria was glad that Simon
and Helen had finally arrived. With a smile on her lips she checked
if everything was OK in the oven. The roast goose was slowly
turning. Beneath it sizzled golden potatoes mixed with carrots and
broccoli.
What a feast,
she said to herself. She ran to open
the door.

“Hi,” Simon and Helen said together.

“Hi,” Maria said, with a genuine smile. “Come
in, please.” She showed them toward the dining room.

Simon gave her a lovely bunch of roses from
the garden.

“Oh, Simon, you shouldn’t have. They are
beautiful.” She removed the white paper and put them into a large
Chinese vase, which she filled with water. “Please sit down.
Dinner’s ready.”

The room was permeated by the aroma of roast
goose. “I can’t wait,” said Simon. “I’m starving.”

Helen shot him an angry glance. “Don’t say
that. I did offer you a sandwich when you got home from work.
They’ll think I don’t feed you.”

“Sorry, darling, I didn’t mean it like that.
I deliberately didn’t eat, knowing Maria would have prepared a
feast. Am I right?”