The Inquisitor (17 page)

"What's wrong with it? That's the count I got."

Susanne frowned. "Do you mind checking with me again?"

"Not at all."

Five minutes later they'd confirmed Jane's numbers were correct.

Susanne's frown deepened. "Shit!"

Jane couldn't remember her ever using the word. "What's the matter?"

"This morning I got fifty more than you did."

"Maybe you lost track? It's easy enough to do. Besides, how can you remember so exactly what you got?"

Susanne sighed. "Keep this under your hat, but I've been keeping a close watch on syringes that size."

"Why?"

"Because I think someone's stealing them."

"What?"

Jane spent the next fifteen minutes quietly verifying that none of the other nurses had grabbed a handful of needles from the storeroom to replenish one of the many bins they kept them in, ready to grab on the fly. As she worked, her mind wandered back to Susanne's unusually candid remarks about Father Jimmy and why she felt Jane should know that he could marry.

A crude attempt at matchmaking? No, that would go totally against Susanne's own fastidious insistence on privacy. Besides, she already knew about Thomas and seemed to approve. So what then?

"Because I didn't want you to feel uncomfortable about finding him attractive," Susanne explained when Jane asked her.

"But I didn't find him attractive."

Susanne laughed. "Then that would make you the only woman in the department who hasn't."

"But-"

"Relax. He's never indicated a willingness to date anyone he works with. But let's just say men and women give out subliminal signals about their sexuality in spite of themselves. On that front he's liable to seem as available as the next man. This is why I think he let the rest of us know he can have a woman in his life, so none of us would feel guilty about normal chemistry and an innocent, unspiritual 'what-if* or two. In anyone else, I'd call that kind of thinking the height of conceit. But with him, I figure it's just his way of keeping unnecessary tensions out of an already charged work space."

"Well, he needn't worry about me," Jane insisted, still not willing to admit she'd had her own moment of attraction to him. But finding out that he hadn't been sworn to celibacy somehow helped her feel a little less weird about what happened.

"Now how about my needle count?"

Jane shook her head. "No sign of the missing fifty."

Minutes before the end of her shift at three, a half dozen ambulances arrived within minutes of each other.

"Figures," she muttered, running into the supply room to find more IV bags. Grabbing them, she noticed that Father Jimmy had forgotten his specimen cup on the counter. Odd, it being what he'd come for in the first place.

That night, 11:45 p.m.

I let myself in the basement door and closed it softly behind me.

A piercing squeak in a hinge sounded inches from my ear, and I froze, listening for any response upstairs.

Standing in pitch darkness, I heard the soft purr of a freezer somewhere nearby, but otherwise the muffled silence of being belowground remained intact.

Then a slight creak came from the floorboards above my head.

The dog?

I held my breath not daring to move.

Nothing else stirred.

I strained to hear the telltale click of her claws on wood or linoleum.

Still nothing.

The freezer clicked off.

Now absolute quiet reigned.

I exhaled through my mouth, careful to make no noise at all, still alert for a hint of anything stirring, man or beast.

The house seemed reassuringly dead.

I snapped on a penlight and tiptoed to the foot of the stairs leading up to the kitchen, then paused.

The steady dry click of an electric clock ticking off the minutes came somewhere on the ground floor. Otherwise, the rest of the house remained as hushed as the basement.

I'd have to be extra careful if I didn't want to wake the dog.

I sat down on the cement floor and played my light around the room, looking for what I'd need, checking the diameter of the pipes overhead, and fine-tuning my plan.

Yes, this would work well.

Very well indeed.

Wednesday, July 9, 1:30 a.m.

Janet rose, unable to sleep, and pulled on her housecoat. She heard Muffy stir in the dark at the foot of the bed, then the soft sound of her paws hitting the carpet. The dog would routinely accompany her to the door when she left on a delivery, and be waiting there on her return. Earl, having trained himself to sleep through such nocturnal excursions a lifetime ago, didn't so much as vary his breathing.

Their bedroom remained pitch-black, the usual glow from the street lamps unable to penetrate a fog thick as silt.

She went down to the kitchen, made herself a mug of hot chocolate, and curled up on the living room couch. Despite the murk outside, she cranked open a window and let the sweet scent of her nicotinia bed waft through the darkness.

Muffy came up and gave her a puzzled look. After receiving a reassuring kitzle behind the ear, she plopped on top of Janet's feet and emitted a little groan.

"You getting stiff, old girl?" Janet said, working her toes into the dog's woolly coat.

A long canine sigh greeted her effort.

She'd decided. Not only would she stop work, but her leave would begin as soon as she could farm out her patients.

She tried to tell herself what had happened at the hospital last night didn't affect her, that her body had been telling her for weeks to slow down, that this pregnancy would be different, demand she rest more. And now she finally found the common sense to listen.

But something had changed. Her nothing-stops-me bravado wore a little thin in the face of what could have been if Susanne hadn't set the rescue in motion.

Remembering the iciness of the morgue, she shivered and clasped her cup with both hands so its warmth would flow into her.

A chill completely separate from the night air remained.

Hunching up inside her robe, she adjusted some throw cushions at her back in a vain attempt to get comfortable, and received a kick from within for her trouble.

"Sorry, little man," she murmured. Knowing her voice would sound like talking underwater to him, she started to hum. The random notes evolved into the tune for "Puff the Magic Dragon." His movements settled, and she giggled. "In another five weeks you'll hear your momma's real singing voice. That'll be a shocker."

He gave her another little nudge.

"Let you sleep, right?" she whispered, and quietly resumed the song, this time with words.

He settled again and stayed quiet.

Her thoughts drifted.

To Brendan, whose young eyes had ignited with delight when he found Mommy and Daddy at home after school. She would give him more of those days with her. Many, many more.

She stretched and rested the nape of her neck against the top of the sofa, savoring images of all the fun they'd have- setting up his old crib, preparing the tiny bedding, digging out all the stuffed animals that he still loved but carefully hid away so his six-year-old friends wouldn't see them when they came to play.

Smiling, she also experienced a hint of relief. For once he could be her little boy, she'd be his mom, and there wouldn't be the demands of an obstetrical practice competing for her attention. Maybe, she thought, just maybe, she'd be able to create a magic interlude for him, an oasis where he could store up on all he'd missed from not having her around. "Yeah, right," she said aloud, having counseled enough mothers through the demands of career and kids to recognize a guilt fantasy when she conjured one up for herself. Still, she liked the idea. A couple of months stretched like a lifetime for a six-year-old. Not that he didn't already feel safe, confident, and loved. But you can't ever have too much of that stuff, she thought, then laughed out loud.

Muffy raised her head and looked up at her.

"I've become exactly like my own mother," Janet told her. "Now, she was a woman who knew how to make you feel loved. Drove me and my two brothers crazy, never missing an opportunity to give us a big smooch."

Muffy put her head back down, not at all interested.

Of course Brendan could react the same way as her brothers, Janet thought, and find that Mommy turned into a big, embarrassing bore when she hung around him all the time. Wouldn't that be a kick in the head.

She took another sip.

As for Earl, he'd be relieved to get her out of the hospital. He was so fastidious about tiptoeing around the question, never intruding on her right to make the decision, but his studied neutrality practically shrieked, "Get the hell out of there, woman!" What's more, the lovable goof would actually believe he'd been the epitome of a noninterfering husband.

But she damn well intended to interfere with him. She'd known when he became VP, medical that the combination of his instinct to sniff out crap and a complete inability to let shit slide would suck him into a ton of trouble sooner or later. Yet she'd encouraged him to take the job. Not just because he'd be miserable under the kind of hotshot MBAs that ran hospitals these days, but because the work would take him out of ER now and then. She knew he needed the rush of extreme medicine, the exhilaration of "raising the dead," as some of them called it, but as magnificent as he'd become at it, that addictive allure sometimes frightened her. What of the day he couldn't do it anymore, once he flamed out like a lot of his colleagues? They'd been equally exhilarated by the job, but past triumphs didn't save them when they ultimately stayed on one year too many. That's why people in the business calling emergency "the pit" seemed so apt. It eventually consumed all who worked there.

She'd decided the best to be hoped for with Earl would be to slow the process down a bit, maybe buy time to wean him off what had become like oxygen to him. A new challenge with fresh demands seemed just the ticket. But the expanded responsibilities appeared to be engaging him quicker and more than she ever predicted. Between their lovely romantic interlude earlier in the day and Brendan coming home from school, she'd listened with unease as he explained why recent clusters of deaths in palliative care troubled him. Since his suspicions ranged from a nurse playing an angel of death to Stewart Deloram covering up stories of near-death experiences, and the five patients who might have shed some light on the matter were conveniently dead or in a coma, this problem meant exactly the sort of trouble that would eat at her husband. She'd lived with his doggedness long enough to know he wouldn't back off until he either proved or disproved his worst imaginings. She also knew to never attempt to divert him head-on. And most sobering of all, she'd learned to trust his damned uncanny instinct to read patterns where others saw only a maze of unrelated events. Because more often than not, whenever he sensed rot and dug after it, he found exactly that.

But he hadn't a clue of what he needed most now- a sidekick. Someone to carry out all that rooting around he felt so compelled to do himself, but who could fly below the radar of Hurst or Wyatt. Those two, if they guessed what he'd be stirring up, would make his life a living hell, and by extension, hers and Brendan's.

Earl in battle mode meant having Hamlet in the house, he became so preoccupied. Worse, if he had stumbled onto foul play, a backlash from an angel of death who felt threatened could be bloody dangerous.

Yes, she'd make a good sidekick, one with time to spare during her son's school hours and who also had her own authority to quietly snoop through nursing work schedules and death records. She would be just the perfect answer to keep him out of trouble. And if the focus of her inquiry should stray a little outside her usual realm of obstetrics, who the hell would know? Best of all, if by some slim chance she found he'd been on a wild-goose chase, they could all relax.

But first she'd have to convince her Lone Ranger to accept his new Tonto. Being brighter than most people around him, he had an infuriating yet deeply ingrained propensity to solve a problem, even in ER, by barging ahead on his own. Well, maybe she could make him want to barge after his wife for help.

She drained her mug and stared outside.

The fog had lifted slightly, thinning into tendrils that reached out of the darkness and curled through the light of the street lamps, tentatively exploring the muted glow with a cautious touch. Then a breeze caught the swirls, and they languidly drifted away, joining more of their kind to swim through the night like bad dreams.

Three days later,

Saturday, July 12, 12:45 a.m.

Palliative Care, St. Paul's Hospital

Earl pressed back into the darkness.

He had seen something move through the shadows at the far end of the hall.

His muscles ached as if someone had winched them tight, and he shifted his weight for the hundredth time since he'd sneaked into the room nearly an hour ago.

Yet he kept his gaze locked on the black recesses where a person could hide.

And waited.

He'd initially felt foolish coming here at all. But his idea about a cluster study hadn't yielded much so far. At least Janet hadn't found any obvious patterns in the duty rosters and mortality figures, but they had a ways to go.

The job had turned out to be huge, and thank God he'd been smart enough to ask for her help. The idea had come to him out of the blue while they were having breakfast a few days ago. Not only did it give him a big edge in processing a ton of data, the project turned out to be exactly the carrot that convinced Janet to take an early pregnancy leave. Best of all, she thought it was her own decision. Funny how things just turned out sometimes.

Too bad their results weren't as obliging.

No one nurse had worked significantly greater numbers of shifts that corresponded to patient deaths than anybody else, and Monica Yablonsky's record seemed least suspicious of all. From what they'd looked at to date, she stayed on after evenings to work a double no more frequently than once a week.

"So maybe Hurst got it right. Patients are simply being admitted sicker and dying sooner," Janet had said last night, almost hopefully, even though they still had months of data to check.

Or a self-appointed angel of mercy could have anticipated a classic cluster investigation, then dispatched her victims when she wasn't on duty, he'd thought. So he set out to see how easily anyone could get in here and move about with no one the wiser. He also realized this line of thinking bore a striking similarity to that of the hard-core conspiracy nuts who turned up in ER occasionally. But he figured his being aware of the likeness mitigated against total lunacy. Unless Janet found out, in which case he'd plead complete insanity.

Coming up the back staircase unobserved had been no problem. He'd calculated that no one would be there after midnight, as might someone intent on committing a mercy killing.

When he'd reached the eighth floor, he hesitated in front of the door. If he pulled it open, light would spill into the corridor on the other side, and any nurse who might be there could spot it. He stepped over to a triple set of wall switches and flicked them off, casting himself into near darkness. The pale glow of the illumination from landings below barely reached this level. Shouldn't attract much attention now, he thought, and turned the handle.

He'd managed to slip all the way up to his destination, the empty room where he now stood, but he could just as easily have stepped into any door and done as he pleased with any patient on the floor. And he still hadn't seen a single nurse, just heard their radio and them chatting in their work station near the elevators. Judging from the relaxed tone of their voices and occasional laughter, they remained as indifferent to the lowing cries that floated through the hallway as when he'd visited last Saturday evening.

He found the noises impossible to ignore. They permeated the air with a forlorn sadness yet had the same soft urgency that went with the sounds of making love.

The longer he stood in the doorway listening, the angrier he grew. Having proved that any fool could waltz onto the ward, he felt an urge to stick around and see for himself how long these alleged caregivers would let men and women lie unattended in their last hours. While he'd skin his own staff alive if they ever allowed anyone to suffer like this in ER, the bunch up here did worse than fail to treat pain. Their indifference conveyed a message tantamount to telling someone in his or her final moments, "You don't matter, not even so much as for us to hold your hand while you die."

By God, he would give these so-called nightingales thirty more minutes in which to hang themselves. He'd keep watch while holding the door open with the toe of his shoe so he could personally attest that not one of them had taken the trouble to check on their charges during his time here. Then he'd nail them.

At least that had been his plan until he'd seen the figure that now galvanized his attention.

The person glided from doorway to doorway, coming ever closer, faceless as a ghost. Yet light from the distant workstation caught the shape's eyes, causing them to glitter in the blackness.

Earl shivered, certain they were looking right at him. He slowly withdrew his foot and smoothly closed the door until only a crack remained for him to see through.

The figure crossed the hall and, moving faster, reached forward as if to come in the room.

Holy shit! Earl thought, and leapt backward, then continued his retreat, tiptoeing in reverse toward the bathroom. He'd barely made it inside when the door he'd just left swung open without a sound and the intruder stood silhouetted against the dark grayness of the corridor. Earl froze where he stood, hoping the inkier interior of the small space would conceal him.

The person entered, restrained the door from swinging closed too fast, walked over to the blinds, and used the cord to open the slats. An orange glow from the sodium lamps outside the window immediately lined the entire room with tiger stripes.

The intruder then turned, looked at the bare mattress, and seemed to be surprised, going dead still, as if transfixed by the naked emptiness of it.

The hammering of Earl's heart so filled his head, he imagined the sound must be as loud as drumming on a hollow log. This must be the killer nurse! he thought on pure impulse, and got ready to pounce, until he saw his own reflection in a mirror that hung opposite the washroom where he stood. The lateral bands of light and darkness on his cap, mask, and gown lit him up like a mummy, and he wouldn't get a step into the room before his target spotted him. The pause also allowed him to consider a more rational explanation: what if it was simply someone here by mistake?

Not daring to breathe, he slowly raised his right arm, intending to find a light switch and snap it on. He figured the surprise would cause the interloper to bolt, but not before Earl got a good look at her, or him. With all the shadows and the unisex nature of protective wear, he couldn't tell which.

Except his reaching movement showed in the mirror.

The figure stiffened, twirled, and charged him.

Earl took the brunt of the hit in his chest and, caught off balance, felt himself lifted by a firm shoulder, then rammed into the tile wall behind his back. The blow turned his lungs into a pair of bellows, his breath left him in a roar, and a white light exploded behind his eyes. He crumpled to the floor, fighting a tumbling sensation inside his head and struggling to keep himself from spiraling down a deep, dark hole.

But the blackness around him poured into his brain, and the high-pitched squeak of someone running on linoleum in crepe soles filled his ears. Like birds cheeping, he thought. Whoever it is mustn't be wearing paper booties.

"Would you be tellin' us what the devil you were doing here?"

Jimmy's alarmed voice penetrated Earl's skull like a drill bit. He opened his eyes to the brilliance of a ceiling light and saw the priest, flanked by two nurses, hovering over him. He moved to get up and found himself lying on the bare mattress. "Did you get him?"

"Get whom?"

Earl glanced at his watch. He couldn't have been unconscious for more than a few minutes. "The person who sandbagged me."

"I didn't see anyone- I just found you like this when I dropped in to say my usual good night to Sadie." He looked around at the two nurses. "Where is she, by the way?"

"I gave her a weekend pass," Earl said, managing to sit at the side of the bed. His head and back hurt like hell, even when he breathed. "Her son from Honolulu showed up a day early. As a surprise, he hired a private nurse and opened up the family home so he and Sadie could stay there a few days. When she couldn't reach Wyatt, and the residents didn't want to make the decision, she didn't know who else to call."

"But then what are you doing here?" The priest's tone continued to sound strained.

Earl looked past Jimmy and up at the nurses. The overhead light pierced his brain with the splitting force of a migraine. "With Sadie's room empty, I decided to conduct a spot check- see how often the night staff attended to their patients. Believe me, ladies, you failed to impress!" Not the whole truth, but enough to explain his presence. As his own thoughts raced to explain the intruder, he wasn't about to confess the far darker suspicions that had brought him here.

They reacted with predictable indignation.

"Why, how can you say such a thing?"

"We treat these people as if they were our parents."

Then pity poor Mom and Dad, Earl thought. "Tell me, were any of the nurses away on break during the last twenty minutes?"

They looked surprised.

The younger of the two had freckles to match the wisps of brown hair that protruded from under her surgery cap. "No! Hey, what do you want to know for?" Her voice still came across in a petulant whine. "You saying one of our people knocked you down?"

He ignored her question. "What about orderlies? Would any of them have reason to come in here now?"

"Of course not," the older woman replied, working a wad of gum under her mask with the sass of a street hustler. "We stripped Sadie's bed when she left. It will be made up just before she returns Sunday night."

"Cleaners?"

"At this time of night?" the younger one asked. Her eyes said, Gimme a break.

He looked over to the night table. It contained a calendar, photos of a tanned young man whom he assumed to be Donny, and assorted pencils. He pulled open a drawer, finding only a Bible, tissues, and writing paper. "Did she keep jewelry or anything else that someone would want to steal?"

"Probably took it with her," the chewer said. "After all, she knows there won't be many more times she'll get to wear it."

Earl gritted his teeth at the coldness of the remark.

"What about residents coming here to use an empty bed for a quickie?" the younger one said, sharpening her words with a twist of insolence. "Why don't you suspect them?"

"Residents?"

"Yeah, the cheapo kind that won't spring for a motel- you get my drift. You think that doesn't happen?"

Of course he knew it did. Except would someone waiting for a cheap grope react so violently to being discovered?

He'd about had it with the sullen resentment from these two, and pointed to the one with the freckles. "Get hold of security. Tell them to look for a person without shoe coverings." It would likely be a useless exercise. There were bins all over the hospital with supplies of protective wear. His assailant had probably pulled on a new pair within a minute of leaving the floor.

"Why would someone take off his or her paper boots?" she asked.

Jimmy did a Fred Astaire shuffle, his feet sliding easily on the floor. "For traction." He still sounded tense.

She nodded and left.

Earl got up off the bed, and Jimmy moved to help him.

"Thanks." He grabbed the man's arm for support as his head did a few twirls around the room. The wooziness persisted, and he sat back down.

"Maybe I should be takin' you down to your own ER and let them check you out?"

He must really be unnerved by what happened, Earl thought. The Irish lilt appeared only when he kidded around or got shaken to the core. "No, I'll be fine. I couldn't have been out more than five minutes, tops. Anything under twenty doesn't usually even warrant a CT." Not exactly true, but close enough to get him out of here. He wanted his own bed.

"Maybe we should ask how you got in here, Father," the one with the gum asked, her tone more sour than ever. "We didn't see you come in. Hardly ever do." She looked over to Earl. "Or is it only the lower ranks who make good suspects?"

Jimmy's eyes flared like stoked embers.

Earl leapt to his feet. "That tears it-" A sudden swirl inside his skull sat him down again. He steadied his head in his hands, only to watch in disbelief as Jimmy leaned toward her, his hands up like a prizefighter's but open, not clenched, fingers spread wide and pointed right at her.

"Ya don't see me because ya never take your noses out of your coffee cups or your minds off whatever important chatter constantly fills your heads. If so, you might not only catch me walkin' by, but actually hear what's all around you." He directed his fingers skyward. The muted wailing ebbed and surged the way it always did, steady as a distant sea. "If you listened, actually listened to what you've become deaf to, just maybe you'd be finding it in your hearts to comfort a tormented soul or two as they slip away, alone and afraid."

She recoiled, eyes wide with surprise. "Now wait a minute-"

"Because if you don't"- he moved a step closer-"when it's your turn, every one of those tormented souls will be circling, waiting for you at St. Peter's gate, ready to testify as to your good works and send you down."

She flushed as crimson as if scorched by a sunburn. "How dare you threaten-"

"Threaten? Oh, no, my dear. It's called old-time preachin'- puttin' the fear of the Lord into a miserable sinner to save her soul." His eyes crinkled into the accompaniment to a smile, but their flash was as hard as diamonds.

She chewed her wad of gum a few more times, appeared to roll it from one side of her mouth to the other, then retreated to the hallway.

"God forgive me, but she needed tellin'," Jimmy said, his jaw so bulging with tension it made his mask look a size too small.

"No doubt about it," said Earl. But he'd never seen the man so steamed.

Jimmy feigned a double take. "Well, what a difference a week makes. To think just last Saturday you were tellin' me to ease up on my fight with Wyatt and his crew. Now you're cheerin' me on."