Authors: Duane Swierczynski
Bobby Ryall watches her as she emerges from the back, shy smile on her face. She gives Letitia the slip of paper the doc gave her. Letitia holds out her hand, waiting for the cash. She looks over at him, widens her eyes a tiny bit. Oh. Right. Bobby walks up to the counter, feeling like an asshole chump, and slides two twenties at the receptionist. Letitia takes it, puts one twenty in one envelope and another in the pocket of her scrubs. Finally she gives Sarie another slip in return—the actual prescription, he guesses. He wants to bolt, but he’s come this far. He can’t walk out of this situation empty-handed and forty dollars lighter.
But, man, he was right after all. He picked up the wrong girl.
The texts on her phone made that perfectly clear.
Letitia answers her cell. Before she has the chance to say anything, a young voice says: “Hey, someone might be coming for you.”
She recognizes the voice. Not by name, but by recent memory. One of the boyfriends in here not too long ago. The guy holding the girl’s books.
“Who is this?”
“Just consider me a concerned friend, okay?”
“You were just in here, weren’t you?”
Click.
Wildey can’t believe this. He and his CI are arguing over where to meet. He tells her somewhere on Drexel’s campus would be easiest. Pick a bench, he’ll be there. School’s in session, plenty of kids milling around everywhere. Best place possible to meet. What’s the problem? But of course Honors Girl has a problem. What if someone spots the two of them together? She can’t be outed. Not after what she’s read about.
“Who’s going to see us?”
“Jesus, anybody could!”
“Why are we meeting all the way out there, anyway?”
“It’s important. I promise, I’m not wasting your time.”
Wildey thinks he has it figured out. Her boyfriend, Big Red, attends a different school. Maybe they’re not as close as Wildey assumed. Maybe she needed to get him out into the open to find a vulnerability. If this is the case, extra points for Honors Girl. She’s finally come to her senses. Still, it would be a supreme pain in the ass to go out to West Philly … for what could be another Ryan Koolhaas–type disaster.
Honors Girl finally agrees to a meeting place—her own Honda Civic, parked on the next-to-top floor of a garage off Market Street right on the fringes of the Penn campus. Wildey sees her right away, pulls into the next spot, looks over at her Civic, then realizes that’s not going to exactly be a comfortable fit. He waves her over. Honors Girl’s shoulders slump—this is not what she wanted. But Wildey stays put. After a minute she climbs out of her car, thumbing the lock—as if someone’s going to boost it while they’re sitting one space over. He notices she has a white plastic CVS bag in her hands as she climbs into the seat.
“What’s that?” Wildey asks.
Honors Girl hands him the bag. “OxyContin, I believe.”
Wildey opens the bag, sees the prescription bottle, looks at the label. Her own name’s on it. The count says 50. Wildey gives it a shake. No way there’s 50 in there.
“Where’s the other half?”
“I had to give it to my contact.”
“Your contact? What are you talking about? Where is the motherfucker?”
“He left. But he’s not the target, though. It’s the doctor!”
“Slow down, slow down.”
Honors Girl slows down and starts talking. This whole thing is not what Wildey was expecting. At all. But as she explains step-by-step, Wildey has to admit: This sounds like something. And not another Ryan Koolhaas Klusterfuck. The pills in the bottle are real. The doctor’s name, Roosevelt Hill, is on the label. She didn’t just pull these out of her ass. He stops her every so often to clarify a point or a detail, but no … this is something. Not Chuckie Morphine, but Wildey is willing to put a pin in that for now.
“I’m going to have to check this out,” he tells her.
“Well, duh. But this is good, right? I mean, this is what you wanted?”
Wildey stares at her for a second. “You know this isn’t what I wanted.”
“I promised I’d find you a drug dealer. Someone dealing OxyContin. Which I did. Right?”
“So what—I’m supposed to go and arrest CVS?”
“But … you know this is more than just … seriously?”
She looks like she’s about to blow a gasket. It’s almost fun to watch. At least he knows she didn’t pop one of those Oxys. She’s too pent-up.
“Relax, Honors Girl. I’m going to check this out, see what’s what.”
“I can’t go back in there,” she says. “I mean, I was just—”
“I’m going in myself to take a look. If everything’s like you said, I’m going to talk to my lieutenant about the next steps. This could be big, this could be nothing. Maybe he prescribed you those things on a fluke.”
“That’s not what my contact says. He says that—”
“Yeah, yeah, I know what you said your contact said. Doesn’t do me a damn bit of good unless we observe it. We might need to build a case.”
“We?”
“Yeah. We might have you go in again, keep making buys for us.”
She slumps into the seat, head back, her skinny body appearing to deflate. Wildey almost—
almost
—feels bad for her. He reaches out, touches her shoulder.
“Hey. Give me a hand.”
She looks at him.
“With what?”
Turns out Wildey has a bag he keeps in the trunk of whatever car he’s using. I swear this is a different make and model than the shitbox we were driving around in this past Monday. Old shirts, caps, gloves, scarves, hoodies, whatever. He calls it his disguise bag. He wants to look like whoever would be in that waiting room.
—You need to be about a hundred pounds lighter.
—Is that a crack about my weight?
—No! But I’m saying, you don’t look like a junkie.
—What do I look like?
A three-hundred-pound suck on my life, I want to say. But I don’t know if that’ll come off as mean, and I feel like I’ve already started digging myself a hole with that weight comment.
—Forget it. Just go in there pretending you’re looking for your girlfriend or wife or something. There are lots of guys in there. You can probably sit for a while without anybody raising an eyebrow.
Wildey chuckles. I wonder if I should be insulted.
—What? What’s wrong with that?
—Nothing.
—Then … what?
—It’s just that you’d make a pretty good cop. You ever consider changing your major to criminal justice?
—Uh, no?
—Never mind.
The moment the big guy in the dark gray hoodie and ratty baseball cap steps into the waiting room, Letitia Braly knows he’s the one.
“Can I help you?”
“Yo, just looking for my girlfriend.”
Even if she hadn’t received that strange phone call, warning her, she’d like to believe alarm bells would have gone off anyway. The hoodie and cap don’t look right. Like he doesn’t wear them every day. She can tell by the body language.
This is why Dr. Hill hired her almost five years ago, to be the gatekeeper that he couldn’t be anymore. Not at his age. Plus, with their new sideline, the Good Doctor needed an enforcer posted out front. He paid for the training and license and everything. Dr. Hill assured her it would never come to this, that there were good people in this neighborhood. But Letitia knew this area better than that. Word had a way of spreading. Sooner or later, this was bound to happen.
She kept the Glock clipped under her desk, within easy reach.
“I’m sorry, but you’re going to have to wait outside.”
The Big Guy turns and sweeps his hand through the air, as if to point out the number of empty seats available. “Can’t I wait in here?”
“This room is for patients only. Now please step outside.”
“Those dudes over there patients? Thought this was a place for ladies.”
“Please …”
“Yeah, yeah, hold on …”
Letitia watches as his hand goes into the pocket of that hoodie. There’s a bulge there.
So many people shot in this city because they don’t know it’s coming. Letitia swore to never, ever be one of those people.
Which is why she pulls the Glock now, raises it over the counter, and begins to squeeze the trigger.
Of the many things Wildey thought might happen today, getting shot in the face wasn’t one of them.
As it turns out, that doesn’t happen.
But fuck—it sure comes close.
The receptionist, apparently some kind of Dirty Harriet, squeezes off a shot that goes a little high and wide and lands with a
thuh-chunk
in the drywall behind him. The people in the chairs scream and start to scramble. Wildey drops to the floor and rolls up against the underside of the reception area, betting (praying) that she won’t shoot through the wood blind.
“Police officer!” he shouts, pulling his own piece. “Drop your weapon!”
Wildey thinks he hears Dirty Harriet curse. Though it’s tough because of the sudden din in the waiting room—people cursing, praying, crying.
“Drop that fucking gun!” he shouts. “Now!”
Behind the reception area, a door thumps open. Hinges squeak.
Damnit, she’s running for it.
Wildey rolls, then scrambles to his feet. Kicks open the door leading into the receptionist area, kicks open the second door, leading to a hallway lined with exam rooms. Where did she go? Wildey’s been in gun situations before. Never been in a jam inside a building, though, and in such close quarters. Feels like he’s doing battle inside a fucking cereal box, with these flimsy dirty walls and flakeboard doors. Any second a bullet could come slicing through and nail him.
But there’s nothing in the exam rooms, as he clears them. Nothing in what he presumes is Dr. Hill’s office—including Dr. Hill. As Wildey moves deep into the building, he starts to see the bones of the place. This whole medical suite was built up in what used to be a small grocery store. There are still meat cases and, more importantly, two swinging metal doors leading to a cooler. The doors are still swinging slightly. Wildey feels like he has no choice. If they’re running scared, they’re up to some shady shit. This could be the break he needs. He goes in.
A few seconds later, Wildey wishes he hadn’t.
After what feels like five or six forevers, Wildey calls my burner.
—Go home, Honors Girl.
—What happened?
—I’ll catch up with you later. But for now just go home. Don’t talk to anybody. Just wait for me to call. Don’t watch the news, and if you do, don’t say or think anything until we talk.
—Seriously? You’re going to leave me hanging like that? What happened?
—Yeah. Seriously. I gotta go.
Whatever. I hang up and drive back to campus, even though the classes I’ve missed are long over. But I have to be back here, because I have to turn on my cell phone. And just in case Dad’s tracking my iPhone, I can’t be popping up in University City. I’m supposed to be in class.
When my phone comes to life, I see that he’s called four times and left three voicemail messages.
“HOUSE OF MEDICAL HORRORS” FOUND NEAR UNIVERSITY CITY
Dr. Roosevelt Hill Sought for Questioning
Anonymous Tip Leads Police to “Something Out of a Nightmare”
Wildey doesn’t even know which body parts are supposed to be which. They float in amber fluid, little flecks of skin and what appears to be … seasoning? No, couldn’t be, Wildey thinks. A deep voice bounces him out of his reverie. “Officer—your superior wants to talk to you.” The homicide dick hands the phone over to Wildey.
“Loot.”
“Jesus Christ, Wild Child—what did you step into?”
He isn’t sure if she sounds incensed or bemused. Kaz’s ordinary speaking voice sounds a little like both.
“You’re not going to believe this. Not entirely sure I believe it.”
“I don’t. But I want you to listen to our friends from homicide and let them take it from here.”
“Why? This is ours!”
“Wildey, I’d say the body parts of a dozen missing girls trumps the little Oxy ring you were investigating.”
The Roosevelt Hill case would soon become Philadelphia legend. Dozens of articles, three books, and a cable movie would be based on it. But it would not become
their
legend. In fact, NFU-CS wouldn’t be mentioned at all. They weren’t in it for the glory; they were in it for the busts. That’s the point, she reminded him. They’re the secret investigative arm that tees up the ball so the strike teams can swing the bat. Wildey’s involvement will be little more than a “tip to the police.”
“You want glory, you’re in the wrong business,” Kaz says.
Wildey watches the floating body parts for a while, wondering about the girls they belonged to, wondering what other kind of fucked-up shit was in closets and basements and back rooms all over town.
Don’t watch the news, Wildey warns me. Of course that practically guarantees that I am going to watch the news. The story begins to break online around 3:00 in the afternoon. “Horror in University City.” At first I don’t realize this is the same case—my case. But then the name practically leaps from my laptop screen and slams into my chest: Dr. Roosevelt Hill. The nice old drug-dealing man who saw me naked this morning. Whose touch lingered just long enough.
Apparently he likes to look at naked lady parts. So much so that he keeps them in big jars in the old cooler room behind his medical offices.
As I watch, I go numb all over. What was going through the doctor’s mind as he was looking at me? Why did he ask if I was pregnant? All I can manage is some muttered profanity, over and over again, repeated like a mantra.
—Holy shit holy shit holy shit …
—What?
I spin around. It’s Marty, standing on the stairs leading down to the den.
—Nothing.
I start to close my laptop, but quick as lightning he’s across the room, and he reaches out to stop me.
—You don’t have to do that. I’ve already seen it. That’s crazy, isn’t it? It’s like that Gary Heidnik case. Only this is worse because he’s like a doctor!
—How do you know about Gary Heidnik?
—Duh. Everybody knows about him.
Marty has a point. And he’s right, this is worse than Gary Heidnik, because Gary Heidnik never saw me naked. It all hits me even harder now. Today could have turned out so, so different. Marty leans over me, scrolling down to read more details. I push away from the desk feeling like I want to throw up.
Please, Wildey, tell me you got rid of my forms. Please tell me you ditched that prescription bottle with my name and Dr. Psycho’s name on the label. Please tell me I’m not going to be dragged into this mess.
And if you are, please don’t call during family movie night.
That’s why Dad was calling today—to make sure I didn’t have any plans this evening. With my luck, Dad’s probably rented
Silence of the Lambs.