Authors: Michele Martinez
“You think he’s the Butcher?” Pauline asked.
“I don’t know. If he knew she was planning to expose his drug operation, and he’s as ruthless as he looks, maybe. But I’m not convinced. Wasn’t there a second suspect in the burglary, anyway? A plastic surgeon named Benedict Welch? Lorraine mentioned him.”
“Files were stolen relating to Welch, but I never really considered him a suspect. There’s nothing that jumps up and bites you like with our boy Miles,” Pauline said.
“Why take his files, then? Is there some connection between Dr. Welch and Miles Ortiz?”
“Not that I know of, but I never really checked.” Pauline was frowning, but not like she minded being challenged. More like she was annoyed with herself for not covering every base.
“Can I see what you have on Welch? Lorraine said Suzanne was working on a big story on him. Something damaging. She seemed more concerned about Welch than about Ortiz, actually,” Melanie said.
“Surgeon. Butcher. Could be. You never know,” Pauline agreed.
She pulled out a sheaf of notes held together with a black binder
clip and labeled
Benedict Welch, MD
in neat handwriting. The girl was organized, you had to give her that.
“Benedict Welch, M.D., PC,” Pauline said. “Fancy office on Park Avenue. High-powered clientele. Shows up in the society columns a lot. Sixty-four YOA. Caucasian male, blond hair, blue eyes. Born and raised in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Married, no children. Board certified and licensed by the states of Oklahoma and New York in dermatology and plastic surgery. Two complaints on file with the Board of Medical Examiners, both investigated, one ruled without merit and dismissed, the other ruled inconclusive, no finding issued, allowed to lapse.” She looked up at Melanie uncertainly.
“What were the complaints for?” Melanie asked.
Pauline shuffled through the pile, pulling a couple of blurry photocopies from the bottom. “The one without merit, for inappropriate physical contact with a patient rendered unconscious due to anesthesia. Not to put too fine a point on it, he groped a lady when she was under. The inconclusive one, for, um, hold on a second. For the same thing. Groping a different lady while she was under. Sorry. I guess I never focused on this. I was so busy with the Miles Ortiz angle.”
“Suzanne was raped by her assailant,” Melanie pointed out.
“I didn’t know that,” Pauline said, her eyes widening. “It wasn’t in the paper.”
They were silent for a moment.
“We should take a closer look at this Dr. Welch and see what we can turn up,” Melanie said.
“Jesus. I hope I didn’t miss something,” Pauline said, looking upset.
M
elanie called Dan O’Reilly’s
cell phone as she hurried toward her apartment from the precinct and, when he didn’t pick up, left him a voice mail. She told herself she needed to fill him in on what she’d learned today and check whether the surveillance of David Harris had turned up anything of significance. She also needed to schedule a team meeting. All of that was true. But deep down, she knew she’d really called so she could hear his sexy-as-hell voice. And let him know how much seeing him across the courtroom this afternoon had steadied her. And, okay, maybe ask if he wanted to stop by after Maya was asleep, when the next shift of surveillance guys came on duty. She was dead tired, and she imagined he was, too. But all the way home, she was thinking about how good his body felt next to hers in bed at night.
When Dan hadn’t called her back by the time she’d let her babysitter go home and given Maya her bath, she tried him again, and got voice mail.
“Hey, it’s Melanie…Uh, it’s about eight-thirty and…um, I’m just wondering what’s going on with the surveillance. Give me a call.”
She was too tired to cook, so she nuked some macaroni and cheese left over from Maya’s dinner and ate it at the kitchen table with her daughter sitting in her lap, snuggling and sucking her pacifier, her eyelids growing heavy. Maya’s little body was warm and compact in soft cotton jammies. The weight of her calmed Melanie’s frayed nerves. By the time Melanie had finished eating, Maya was asleep. Melanie got up gingerly and carried her to her room, putting her nose to her daughter’s silky dark locks as she walked, drinking in the fragrance of baby shampoo.
The nursery had white furniture and a wallpaper border of pink bunnies, and already it seemed too babyish for Maya. Melanie lowered the little girl into the crib and stood there marveling at how
long
she was. When had that happened? Time to buy a real bed.
The days are endless, the years fly by.
She’d read that somewhere, and it felt too true. Maya was growing up, and between work and the divorce and everything else, Melanie was missing too much of it. The thought depressed the hell out of her. She had another vision of Charlie Shepard, of his grief this morning, of how his life with his mother had come to such a brutal and unexpected end. What if that happened to her? Would she look back and feel like she’d spent her time in the right places?
“Snap out of it,” she whispered, and hurried back to the kitchen, where she cleaned up her dishes and settled down with a pile of photocopies from Pauline Estrada’s burglary file.
But the fact that Dan hadn’t called her back was nagging at her enough that she couldn’t concentrate. He always jumped right on her messages. Maybe something had happened on the case? If so, she needed to know. After pretending to read for a few more minutes, she gave up and went into the foyer to get Julian Hay’s card from her handbag. She’d page Julian. Maybe
he
would call her back.
About fifteen minutes later, she was sitting at the table with the
phone beside her when it finally rang. She grabbed it, eager to hear Dan’s voice.
“Hello?”
“This is Detective Hay. Somebody page me?”
“Julian, it’s Melanie Vargas.”
“Hey, Melanie. What’s happening?”
“Are you still out on the Harris surveillance?”
“No, some guys doing the four-to-midnight tour relieved us a while ago. Everything was quiet. No news. Harris just went back to his apartment after court and didn’t come out. They’ll page me if anything unusual happens.”
“Okay, good. Where are you now?”
“Home. I was thinking about getting a little shuteye and coming in real early tomorrow, but if you got something important…?” He trailed off.
Come to think of it, here was an opportunity to put Suave Pierre’s special expertise to work. Bernadette had said Detective Hay was useless at the grunt work of regular investigations, but a genius at drug buys. Melanie decided to be a smart supervisor and utilize her staff strategically.
“Actually, there
is
something I need you to do, although it can wait till morning. Turns out there’s a drug angle on this case.”
“Gimme the skinny, sister. You know that’s my specialty.”
She filled him in on everything she’d learned about Miles Ortiz. Julian took notes on Miles’s birth date, Social Security number, last known address, and the dates of all his arrests.
“So you want to know what he’s selling, and who to?” Julian asked.
“That’s right. And anything else you can find out. Who supplies Miles? Is he a small-time guy, or does he play with the big boys? Where does he stash? Can you buy from him? If we can arrest him, maybe we can get him to talk, and tell us whatever he knows about the murder.”
“No problem. Pierre’s on it. I’ll have something back to you in no time.”
She smiled. “Great. Thanks…Oh, and Julian?”
“Yeah?”
She knew she shouldn’t, but she couldn’t stop herself. “You don’t happen to know where Dan O’Reilly is, do you?”
“He went to visit somebody in the hospital. Out on the Island, I think.”
“Oh. He didn’t mention that.”
“That’s what he told me. You have a good night now, hear?”
“Yeah. You, too.”
She hung up, wondering who was sick and why Dan hadn’t said anything to her about it. Two hours later when she got in bed and turned out the light, he still hadn’t returned her calls. It took her a torturously long time to fall asleep. Whenever she looked at the clock, her eyes burning with fatigue, she assured herself it was Detective Estrada’s coffee keeping her awake, and not that she was in over her head with this guy.
I
t had been more than six years
since Dan O’Reilly’s wife walked out on him and went to live with a buddy of his from his football days, and he’d done a bang-up job ever since of pretending she didn’t exist. He kept so busy that he didn’t have time to remember her. Worked his ass off on the job. Hit the gym till his muscles ached. Worked construction on the weekends with his cousin Brian and the guys from Brian’s firehouse. So he could avoid any place she might turn up, he’d skipped pretty much every social event he ever got invited to, but what the hell, he wasn’t much for parties anyway. Lately, with Melanie in his life, his efforts had really paid off. He didn’t have to struggle not to think about Diane anymore. She just wasn’t on his mind. He saw a future for himself again, and there was somebody new in it.
Dan found a parking space at the hospital in West Islip and searched out the oncology floor. Two women were on duty at the nurses’ station, one middle-aged and heavy, the other young and heavy, both wearing brightly colored scrubs and gobs of makeup.
“What can I do for you, hon?” asked the young one, checking him out.
“I’m looking for Seamus Fields.”
“It’s after visiting hours. You a relative?”
“Son-in-law,” he replied, leaving out the “ex.”
“I don’t see a ring. You sure you’re married?”
Annoyed, Dan flashed his shield instead. “You’re sure fast with the questions. Maybe you should join the FBI.”
She tossed her head. “No thanks, but if you’re single, you can buy me a drink.”
Her colleague shot her a glance, snickering.
“What? He’s a hottie,” the young one shot back.
“I’d like to see my father-in-law while he’s still alive, please. From what I understand, that won’t be too much longer.”
The nurse’s eyes softened. “Sorry. We get a little crazy here on the night shift.” She checked her roster and gave him the room number. As he walked away, the two of them were giggling behind him.
Dan trudged down a long, brightly lit hallway, feeling like he was going back in time. Seamus Fields was one of the biggest reasons Dan had fallen for his daughter. That, and her angel face and unbelievable body.
Don’t think about Diane.
But it was hard not to, since he was about to see her.
Dan and Diane had known each other their whole lives. Their dads were both on the job, both important men, the main difference being that Seamus handled the stress by becoming humane and wise, whereas Frank O’Reilly had shriveled up inside. Dan had adored the big, bluff Irishman and taken every opportunity to spend time at Seamus’s house. It didn’t hurt that Seamus had a gorgeous daughter, either. Dan and Diane had been born on the same day. When they were eight, Diane told him the shared birthday meant they were destined to get married, and he’d believed her. When they were thirteen, he’d kissed her under the mistletoe at a Christmas party, his first kiss although not hers, as it turned out. When they were sixteen, they did it in a borrowed car on the night of the junior prom,
and he was careful not to ask if it was her first time. When they were twenty-one, they got married, and when they were twenty-five, she left without so much as a good-bye while he was dead asleep after a long surveillance.
Diane’s second marriage had run its course. Had fallen to shit, was a more accurate way to put it. They’d fought and cheated and bad-mouthed each other to the point where Dan couldn’t help hearing about it even though he tried not to. Just recently, Paul had left Diane for some twenty-two-year-old he’d met in a tattoo parlor. Another guy might’ve felt gratified, might’ve said what goes around comes around, but that wasn’t Dan. The past had too strong a hold on him. In fact, if he hadn’t been dating Melanie, he was pretty sure he’d’ve called Diane up to see if she needed a shoulder to cry on.
Diane’s sister Patty was leaning against the wall outside the hospital room scrolling through text messages on her cell phone. She looked up as Dan approached.
“Hey, Danny! Long time no see.”
“How you been, Patty? You’re looking good.”
Dan kissed her on the cheek. Patty was beautiful like her sister. All three of the Fields girls were beautiful, but none of them had managed to pull off happy. Patty had married a fire fighter who’d died in the World Trade Center, and her youngest kid was autistic. She had a decent job in human resources at a big company, and she was okay enough financially with the insurance settlements and all, but life had taken its toll. You could see it in her eyes. The oldest sister, Denise, was the black sheep—three kids by two different guys, never married, living at home. That’s what happened when you relied on your looks and never developed any other part of yourself. Eventually your looks faded and left you with jack.
“How’s he doing?” Dan asked.
“Not good. It won’t be long now. He’s sleeping, but you can go in. Diane’s in there. Mom stepped out to the chapel to light a candle.”
The thought of being basically alone with his ex-wife made Dan so nervous that his hands and feet went cold.
“I don’t know,” he said, taken aback.
“She’ll be glad you came. It’s more than Paul did. He’s in Atlantic City this weekend gambling with his girlfriend, piece a’ shit that he is.” Patty shook her head in sisterly solidarity.
“I came to see the old man,” he felt compelled to say.
“Sure. We know that. So go ahead.” She smiled wearily and went back to her phone.
Dan had to stifle a gasp when he saw Seamus lying lifeless in the bed. The guy’d been the size of a Mack truck and looked like he could’ve stopped a bullet with his massive chest. Now he was shrunk to a pile of bones, his normally pink cheeks sallow and waxy.
Ashes to ashes,
Dan thought.
We’re all dust in the end, even him.