Deadly Diversion: A Medical Thriller (27 page)

THUNDER WOKE ME UP. The TV was off and everything was dark. I tried the lamp by the couch but it, too, was out. Outside, torrents of rain tore at the trees next door, sending leaves scattering. A few plastered themselves against the window. Streetlights were out so the whole neighborhood was without power. I started to gather my quilt and pillow to head to bed when the scene at Bart and Lisa’s flashed back into my thoughts. I sat back down, thoughts tumbling over one another.

What had happened to Lisa? Had she felt so hopeless that she killed herself? She had stolen the drugs, I was sure, accounting for the shortages. Was her death an accident? A lot of addicts died that way, mistaking the dosage or forgetting they had already injected themselves. Mainlining directly into the vein—the ultimate high—allowed no time for a mistake. And how did she get morphine or meperidine or fentanyl or whatever she took now that she wasn’t working at St. T’s? Maybe she’d turned to street drugs; heroin was the opiate of choice for those without access to safe medicines. I’d seen her in withdrawal in Peggy’s office. She’d been begging for something to help her over it. By the time she called me, it was obvious she had found it.

Cat jumped up on my lap and began kneading the quilt. I slung her under my arm and we made off to the bedroom. The storm had dwindled to a steady rain. Good for sleeping, I thought, tucking Cat under the covers with me. For once, she didn’t mind being my security blanket.

TWENTY-TWO

Saturday, 18 August, 0530 Hours

THE RAIN HAD STOPPED and a lazy sun peeked through the leaves. The power was still out so I couldn’t start laundry or cleaning. Still wearing my old, nursing-slogan T-shirt, I pulled on my gray gym shorts, dirt-stained from gardening a week ago, and I headed toward Carondelet Park. I decided to take the long route around the park—just over four miles—and try to shake off the past few days.

As always, the sight of the majestic homes surrounding the park lifted my spirits. I didn’t know anyone who lived in any of the places that could rightly be called mansions. Built in the 1920s, they were designed to reflect the styles of that time in California, the builders hoping to bring a bit of Hollywood glamour to St. Louis. Each home was constructed with its own unique features.

One home on the corner was for sale, I’d heard, although for- sale signs were never allowed to deface the front yards circling the park. I came up to the house and stood for a moment, studying it. Neatly trimmed shrubbery framed the windows and front porch, and the multicolored blooms of pastel impatiens plants peeked out under the evergreens. Graceful ivy clung to the brick, and matching pots of red geraniums, an American flag stuck in each pot, stood sentry on the porch.

A third-floor turret held one round window, its glass distorted with age. I was picturing Sleeping Beauty inside, awaiting Prince Charming, when Lisa’s body came unbidden into my mind. I caught my breath and turned quickly, hurrying across the street toward the park. I turned onto the familiar walking path and watched a runner ahead with studied attention.

The rain had done little to cool down the heat. The air hung overhead like wet cotton, and an overcast sky promised more rain. Stepping over a downed tree, I tried to tell myself that all of my suspicions about Huey’s death and now Lisa’s were the result of my remembering the ICU death that actually had turned out to be murder only a few months before.

I passed under a tree where one limb hung precariously, sliced as neatly as if an axe had chopped it off. Lisa had killed herself, that much was clear. Whether it had been accidental or intentional, we probably would never know. Huey, however, should probably not have died so soon, and not in the way he had. Had something gone wrong? Had someone given him the wrong medication? Had it been an accident? Or, as the police seemed to think, had someone intentionally murdered him?

Water from an overhanging tree dripped onto my face and I swiped at it with my hand. As long as we were under this cloud of suspicion I would just have to keep trying to find out what had happened to Huey.

I stepped out from under the trees and onto the path that wound around the lake just as the sun emerged from the clouds. A wisp of steam rose from the water’s surface, gathering in puffs of mist.

I squatted down and watched a mother duck trailed by her six ducklings. They swam silently over to me, their mouths working.

“Sorry boys and girls,” I told them. “Nothing for you today.”

A fish plopped nearby and the ducks chased after it.

I sat down on the grass and pulled my knees up, wrapping my arms around them. A man in a straw hat sat on a wooden pier that jutted out into the water opposite me, his fishing line hanging into the barely moving water. I would have thought he was a lifelike statue, like the ones that had graced St. Louis’s public places a few years ago, had it not been for the occasional bob of his fishing pole.

Sunlight sparkled off the water, mirroring the trees behind me on its nearly still surface. Only a fountain spraying jets of mist high into the air at the far end of the lake kept the water, already dark with the summer’s sludge, undulating.

I dropped my chin to my knees and watched the sun play across the water, letting my worry drift along with the ripples. A whisper of a breeze stirred the water and lifted the mist until it dissipated in the air. The answer to why and how Huey died seemed just as elusive as the steam that had disappeared.

Back home, a blast of cool air greeted me when I opened the front door. The power was back on. Walking through the living room, I picked up yesterday’s paper and the remains of my snack, then tossed the trash away and piled my dirty dishes in the sink.

By the time I came up from the basement after depositing the last load of laundry in the dryer, Lisa’s death had intruded into my thoughts once again. If only Judyth had helped her, she would have been in treatment by now. Well, maybe, I admitted to myself. If she’d gone. And stayed.

While the kitchen floor dried, I unwrapped the morning paper, brought in the mail, picked up the overnight mail envelope tucked between the screen and front doors, and settled in my favorite easy chair. The chair had been my dad’s, and after he and Mom had both died, I’d had it re-covered in a cheerful red-and-blue plaid that never failed to comfort me. The Saturday paper spouted the usual miserable stories about bombings, threatened wars, and auto accidents. BJ had told me they didn’t call them accidents anymore. Human or mechanical errors caused what were now called “crashes.”

In the mail was a letter from the Missouri State Board of Nursing with my license that I had been late in renewing. I put it aside to take to the hospital on Monday. Human Resources had to have the original to copy for the files. That was the law, the accreditor had reminded us.

The overnight mail envelope had slipped down between the seat cushion and the side of the chair. Heavy cellophane tape covered the tear-off strip so I carried it into the kitchen and, using a sharp knife, sliced it open. I reached inside and pulled my hand out with a yelp.

I’d stabbed my finger on an uncapped needle.

TWENTY-THREE

Saturday, 18 August, 1035 Hours

RUSHING TO THE SINK, I ran my hand under hot water, scrubbing my finger with soap and milking it toward the tip. This was a nurse’s worst fear: a needle stick. HIV or hepatitis, both life-threatening. Holding my finger up to the light, I examined my finger carefully. The skin was intact.

The phone rang.

“I was just going to call you,” I told BJ.

“You were? Want to have lunch? Or are you too busy with your compulsive cleaning?” She laughed.

“Can you come over?”

“Trouble?”

A lump formed in my throat. She must have heard something in my voice.

“I’ll be right there.”

I poured myself some iced tea, put Cat on my lap and stroked her comforting fur until BJ arrived.

When the doorbell rang I jumped up, spilling Cat unceremoniously on the floor.

“I thought maybe I’d get a siren,” I said, smiling faintly.

“It’s that serious?”

I nodded.

“Tell me,” she said as I led her to the kitchen. I motioned her into a chair and then showed her the envelope, with the needle protruding out of it.

“Who’s it from?” She turned the envelope over, using a ballpoint pen she’d pulled from her pocket. “No return address.”

I looked at my finger, still pink but without a puncture wound, thank God.

BJ reached across the table and patted my arm. “Calm down, sweetie, this is just why they did this—to frighten you.”

“It worked.”

“Someone’s trying to scare you,” BJ said.

“What for?”

“Well, you have been asking a lot of questions about Huey Castle’s death.”

“So you think the murderer—if Huey was murdered—did this?”

“You don’t know anything about it, though, do you?”

“I wish I did but, no, I’m no closer to finding out what happened to him than when I started.”

“What about the nurse who died yesterday? Maybe she sent it.”

“And then killed herself? That doesn’t make sense, BJ.”

“No, I guess not.”

“She was trying to tell me something though.”

“Oh, that business about a bag?” BJ asked.

“Maybe she was referring to this envelope.”

“What about the boyfriend? He was pretty mad at you last night.”

“That was grief talking. I see it all the time. And I know from experience that he gets pretty excited about things. Overly so, in my estimation.”

BJ examined the envelope, back and front. “This wasn’t mailed.”

“What?”

“No postal stamp, nothing.”

“Then how’d it get here?”

“Did you notice anyone strange around this morning?”

“Oh, my God, BJ, you mean they brought it right up to my door?” I wrapped my arms around myself.

“It’s okay now. They’re gone. What about those union people?” she asked after a few moments. “I heard there are some muscle, hired muscle, in town. People who skirt around the edges of the law use guys like them to intimidate folks.”

I tried to talk but my voice came out in a squeak. “The Guardinos,” I said at last. “Maybe they’re the ones who gave Lisa bad drugs, or something worse.”

“Huh? Why would they do that?”

“To get back at Bart?” I suggested.

“I suppose, but they’d be more likely to run someone down on the street—something direct like that. And it’d probably be Bart they’d kill, not his girlfriend. Unless she happened to get in the way. And besides, how could they know about Bart?”

I pointed to the envelope. “Could they have sent me this?”

“Nah, that’d be way too subtle for them. They do something, they want you to know it’s them,” she said. “Anything else in here?” she asked, pulling on a pair of latex gloves.

“Only an empty syringe and needle,” I said. The syringe had been fastened to the inside of the envelope with masking tape so that the needle tip poked up along the top. The needle looked as if it was about a 21 gauge, one-and-a-half inches long, straight and sharp. It looked undamaged. Maybe never used.

She turned the envelope upside down and a folded slip of paper fell out. The words were hand-printed in heavy black marker. “STOP,” it said, “OR YOU’RE NEXT.”

I slumped in my chair.

BJ got up and came around the table to me. She wrapped her arm around my shoulders and hugged me to her.

“Well, he accomplished what he wanted.”

She gave me a reassuring squeeze. “Might be fingerprints on it, the syringe—although they’re probably too smudged—or on the envelope,” she said, sitting back down. BJ pulled a notebook out of her pocket, noted the time and asked me a few more questions.

“Do you really think you can find out who did this?”

“If he’s ever been arrested, I can. And if we get some usable prints.” Touching only the edge of the envelope, she picked it up and dropped it in the brown paper grocery bag I gave her.

“I’ll write this up right away and get this over to the lab this afternoon. And I’ll alert the guys on patrol. They’ll be driving by often. You be sure to call 911 if you see anyone around. Okay?” She gave me a quick hug. “And keep your doors locked.”

She was gone.

The house felt empty.

Housework forgotten, I stretched out on my bed.

The next thing I knew, Cat was meowing in my ear and parading back and forth on my bed. I swatted her off to the floor and rolled over to check the time.

Yikes! I was scheduled for the two to four o’clock shift to help monitor the union voting; it was one-thirty now.

I jumped up, untangling the quilt on the way to the bathroom. I splashed water on my face, pulled on some clean scrubs, ran my fingers through my tangled curls and dashed out the door.

A CLUSTER OF NURSES were gathered by the side entrance to the hospital. Even from a distance I could see an argument in progress. I swung around the demonstrators and pulled into the garage, bracing myself for what was to come.

Several nurses handed out literature while others stood around chatting, placards reading, “THINK OF OUR PATIENTS— VOTE UNION,” drooped on their shoulders. The line of nurses waiting to vote stretched around the comer. They squished themselves up close to the building to garner what little bit of shade there was. Most carried water bottles or soda cans, intermittently fanning themselves with copies of the handouts they’d been given. One woman poured water over her head and shook it vigorously, cooling her laughing colleagues.

Lucille, the former head nurse turned union activist, barked at the nurse I’d seen her within the gift shop. “Traitor,” Lucille screamed, shoving her colleague forward with crossed arms. Lucille towered over the woman who stumbled backward.

“I changed my mind, that’s all,” the woman said, pushing back.

“Yeah, I bet,” sneered Lucille. “What’d they offer you? More money? Better hours?” She gave the woman another shove.

“Nothing. Honest. I just thought about it and don’t think it’s the best way. We’ve got to give a little, that’s all.”