Bad Medicine (2 page)

Tell the truth and run.

~Ibid.

Prologue

1995

Nobody noticed that there was something wrong with the mayor's press conference. It was a small thing, and the press was preoccupied with the breaking airline strike story at the airport, not to mention the ongoing investigation into morals charges against the Speaker of the House, on which most of them had sizeable bets. So they all slumped in the stifling room in the city hall waiting for Mayor Martell Williamson to announce who was finally going to be given the contract to open the casino on the St. Louis riverfront, and not one of them noticed who was missing.

The citizens of the St. Louis metropolitan area didn't notice, even though they were being dished up the news live with lunch. Most St. Louisans found politics tiresome—especially city politics. It wasn't even as if it was that important an announcement. During the two years the Board of Aldermen had carried on their public and often bitter debate over the contract, some thirty riverboats had already set up business on the nearby Missouri and Meramec rivers, which were much preferable places to park and wander than north St. Louis anyway.

Besides, it was hot out, and the people of St. Louis were far more interested in their weather than their politics. If they were even home to watch the news, instead of lurking half-submerged in one of the neighborhood pools to escape the humidity or at the stadium watching the Cardinals warm up against the Phillies, they were busy refilling their iced tea during the press conference so they wouldn't miss Wally the Weatherman telling them just when they could expect a break from the two solid weeks of hundred degree weather.

Harry McGivers and Peg Ryan would have noticed.

Unfortunately they were already seated at the Missouri Athletic Club Grille about a mile away, celebrating the news with their favorite scotch and pharmaceutical chaser as they waited for the star of the story to return from the press conference and fill them in.

That was the problem. The star of the story wasn't there. Up on Hodiamont Street where she lived with her mother, Pearl Johnson had the television turned to the news conference as she drifted off to sleep. Pearl was dressed in her best nightgown and robe, buttoned neatly to her chin, her hair brushed out, and her lipstick on. Her door was locked, and her Bible was at her side. Her pill bottles were lined up along her nightstand, and they were empty, each and every one of them.

Pearl knew what was wrong with the press conference. She was listening to her betrayal. But she wasn't really paying attention. She was too busy dying.

Chapter 1

The manner of death was not that unusual for St. Louis, but the tattoo certainly was.

"Incredible," the ER physician said as he considered the man laid out on his cart.

"Impressive," the respiratory therapist agreed.

A roomful of people nodded in awe.

Considering how busy the shift was running at the Grace Hospital emergency department on this hot summer night, there was quite a crowd in the trauma room, even for the extent of the injury evident along the left side of the victim's forehead. Possible gunshot wound had been the call. Definite gunshot wound was the diagnosis, as evidenced by the police report, the absence of a good portion of skin and bone from the young man's left temple, and the scattering of suspicious opaque objects visible throughout the man's skull films that were even now displayed on the viewer at the other end of the room.

But the attention at the moment was not on the method of injury or its obvious effects on the patient's cardiovascular system, which had shut down operations shortly after the introduction of a concentrated load of buckshot to his face. It was instead focused on the sight uncovered when one of the trauma nurses threw back the ambulance sheet in a vain effort to insert a Foley catheter into the patient's bladder . The nurse, a new graduate without much experience in the real world, let out a squeal. From that moment on, the focus of the trauma team wandered from the ABCs of resuscitation to the XYs of the chromosome.

For there, tattooed along the shaft of the victim's penis, ran brilliant flames of orange, blue, and red.

"Redefines the term hot rod," one of the paramedics offered.

"Smokin' good time."

The med nurse snorted. "Probably closer to flaming dick, you ask me."

"It's better than the question mark," the emergency department physician admitted.

All nodded, having seen the question mark no more than a week earlier under similar circumstances. A simple blue tattoo etched along the shaft of another once-working penis, it had raised, if nothing else, a host of questions.

"Is it a statement?" they'd all asked upon seeing it. Maybe a gang identifier. A gay identifier. A message to the owner's date, or a prediction of his talents. That young man with the tattoo had ended up being shipped to the medical examiner's office without answering any of the questions.

This time, the crew didn't think there was any question at all about what the statement was.

"Time of death?" somebody called.

"I think," the physician answered, "the proper term would be flameout."

The nurse nodded agreeably. "Time of flameout?"

"11:02 P.M."

"Do we know what MIG managed to shoot this young flier down?"

"Enemy pilot is in custody," one of the cops obliged as he recorded the time in his notebook.

Positioned by the door so that she could watch the entire room, Molly Burke made a similar notation on the code flow sheet that recorded this action for medical and legal posterity. "Would that be
his
wife or
her
husband?" she asked.

Molly was a petite woman with short mahogany hair, restless hands, and a wealth of crow's-feet crowding the edges of sharp brown eyes. Older than almost everyone else in the room by at least a decade, she considered herself an optimist because sights like the one on the cart still surprised her.

"His wife," the cop said. "Must have suspected something, because the girlfriend says she never heard the shotgun being racked. The wife must have locked and loaded before she broke open the door."

Molly nodded absently, a forearm up to wipe damp hair off her forehead. "I like a woman who thinks ahead. Are you going to have somebody break the news to her that he didn't make it?"

The cop laughed, a dry, knowing sound. "You kiddin'? She told
us
. And I quote, Now that whore-fuckin', scum-sucking son of a bitch ain't gonna hit me no more.'"

Molly looked at the remains on the cart, imagined the scene. Nodded. "Okay."

"I don't guess he's a lawyer," somebody said hopefully. They had had two lawyers come in dead in the last week. Since everything tended to run in threes, the staff was particularly interested in making this hat trick. Even though the other two had been suicides, no one really minded rounding out the count with murder. Lawyers were almost as popular in emergency departments as the man who invented managed-care insurance.

Molly considered the victim's long hair, bad teeth, and cracked, stained fingernails. "Not unless he went to the Wal-Mart School of Law."

"It's possible," the physician retorted. "I'm pretty sure that's where my divorce lawyer trained."

"You know how to tell a lawyer from a vulture?" Molly asked, going back to her notes. "Removable wing tips."

"Molly's ex-husband was a lawyer," the physician told the chuckling crowd.

"No," Molly demurred with feeling. "My ex-lawyer was a lawyer."

There was nothing left to do for the body on the cart except report his demise to the death investigator on duty for the city. Still, not any of the twenty or so people crowded into the littered, humid trauma room could seem to move. The intercom announced the arrival of two new patients, and outside the work lane door a security guard pounded down the hall. It wasn't enough to incite the team to action. Sasha Petrovich, on the other hand, was. Leaning her considerable blond self in the door, the evening charge nurse dispatched a withering glare on the assembled crew.

"I give up," she said. "We're posing for a commemorative stamp?"

"Look," the respiratory therapist said in explanation.

Sasha looked. Then she lifted an expressive eyebrow in comment. "If he were Russian," she said simply, "he'd have had room to include the logs and fireplace in that picture. Now, everybody come out and play."

It wasn't the order so much as the tone of voice. People began pouring out of the room like water over a dam break. The rookie nurse pulled the sheet back over the patient and the physician handed Molly the braided blue ball cap that designated him Code Captain, thereby officially ending his responsibilities. Molly set the hat on its official place on the crash cart, gathered her paperwork, and followed him out the door. She was the only one to catch Sasha grinning.

Whenever Molly thought of the ER, she thought of noise. Not sights or smells or actions. Just constant, ululating cacophony, like a rock concert. Tonight was the same. Babies wailing, kids on crack shouting, phones ringing, radios crackling, sirens worrying at the darkness outside. Half a dozen arguments raging along the hallways so the whole of it sounded like a Mozart octet on acid, everybody singing a different song at the same time, and you were supposed to figure out what was going on.