Deadly Diversion: A Medical Thriller (29 page)

“Bart was at work. And,” I said, “I still had the key.”

“What if someone saw you and called the cops?”

“I didn’t think about that,” I replied.

“You sure didn’t,” BJ said, as a waitress dropped off our menus and hurried away.

BJ squinted at me. “Just what do you think Rosan would have thought then?” When I didn’t answer she went on. “That you had something to hide, at the least, or that you’d killed the girl—or driven her to it—at the worst. What were you thinking?” she asked, slapping her menu on the table. “And I put myself on the line for you!”

Two women at the next table looked over at us.

I leaned forward and spoke softly. “BJ, I’m sorry, I just didn’t think.”

BJ’s eyes held their fix on me, and I knew how suspects felt when she had them in her sights. “You’re just lucky I didn’t let Rosan take you down to headquarters in a cop car. You know what that’s like?”

Mute, I shook my head.

“You’d have been locked in the back in the cage. It’d give you a taste of what jail is like.”

“Someone did see me,” I admitted. “Bart’s neighbor, the one I met last night.”

BJ laid her menu aside and considered me. Finally she said, “You’re lucky she knew who you were. Who did you think you were, some hotshot detective?”

“Remember when you’d told me about a crime scene? How thorough they are? What all they look for?”

“Like that made you an investigator. Cops go to school to learn how to do it and then they work with experienced officers, sometimes for years.”

“I figured out she meant her drugs were in the bag when she called me. If that was so, where was the bag? Or the vial of morphine? She had to draw it up from something. Where was it? If she had killed herself, wouldn’t the vial still be there?”

“Why do you care where it is or what she took? What difference does it make now?”

“I’m worried about where she got it. She’d been fired so she didn’t have access to drugs at the hospital.”

“Unless the boyfriend got it for her,” BJ said.

“I don’t think he would. From what she’d said he was mad about her using, and we saw how angry he could get. I don’t see him getting her drugs.”

“But what’s your point? Why does it matter to you where she got the stuff?”

I chewed my lip. “To tell the truth, BJ, I’m worried that someone else on the staff got it for her. Stole it, maybe.”

“Whoa, there, kiddo. That’s a different story. Then you’ve got somebody dealing drugs. Now we’re talking prison time, heavy time.”

“That’s why I have to find out.”

The waitress came back for our orders. BJ ordered French toast, and I chose scrambled eggs and a blueberry muffin. “How do you know the cops don’t have it?”

“I didn’t see them take it.”

“But you were outside. You couldn’t see everything with all the people milling around in there.”

“What if they missed it?”

“Cops don’t miss something like that. A woman overdoses and they’re going to look for a container of some kind. The first place they’d check would be the garbage,” BJ said as the waitress returned to pour coffee for both of us, leaving a warming pot on the table.

“I don’t see her putting it in the trash before shooting up.”

BJ shoved the coffee pot aside and said, “I’ll tell you what. If it will make you feel any better, I’ll check with headquarters to see if they bagged anything like that. If they did, I’m sure it’s been analyzed—or will be soon.”

“It was just.. .they were so nonchalant Friday night, so sure it was suicide.”

“Look. The girl killed herself. Maybe on purpose, maybe she didn’t mean to. We got too many others that leave no doubt they were murdered. One they’re working on right now—man stabbed in the back—he sure as hell didn’t do that to himself.” The waitress refilled our water glasses and hurried away. “Just what’d you think you’d find? What did you find?” she asked.

I didn’t answer.

“Of course you didn’t. What if you had found something? We couldn’t have used it, and you’d have been charged with B and E—breaking and entering,” she explained, “and you could be charged with theft if you took anything.”

“I left everything just as I found it.”

“Along with your fingerprints.”

I pulled myself up. “I wore gloves. I brought them from the hospital.”

“How about footprints? Fibers from your clothes? Dust off your shoes? A strand of hair?”

“Oh.”

“Well, don’t worry. It’s not a crime scene or they wouldn’t have let Bart stay there,” she admitted.

“I found her wallet.”

“I hope to God you left it there.”

“I did.

“And?”

“A few bucks, Kentucky driver’s license, two nursing licenses.”

“Two?”

“Nurses have to have a license for every state they work in.”

“So you found diddly,” she said, summing up my investigative career.

TWENTY-SEVEN

Sunday, 19 August, 2245 Hours

THIS TIME I THOUGHT AHEAD. If Lisa had taken her drug from the hospital, she would have tossed it in the trash.

After BJ’s lecture about breaking into Bart’s house, I’d run some long-delayed errands, then gone home to watch the ball game. I had fallen asleep on the sofa by the third inning, only waking up in time to hear the commentators rehash the highlights. I couldn’t stop thinking about the vial, though, and I had decided to try one more time to find it.

It was nearly eleven when I parked on a side street across from the alley that ran behind Bart’s house. The city of St. Louis places dumpsters in the alleys about every three houses apart. I figured Bart would’ve thrown his trash in one of the two that were closest to his house. I had waited until after he would have left for work; I didn’t want to run into him tossing garbage at the last moment.

I pulled a full plastic bag from my trunk and made my way up the alley. Streetlights illuminated the narrow passageway. Ambient sounds of traffic were muffled in the hot, still air. A dog barked somewhere ahead and a mother shooed a couple of young children inside as I passed. The next yard smelled of freshly mowed grass. A whippoorwill complained and then quieted. The first dumpster was bulging with bags, debris strung out over the edge; it reeked of rotting meat, greasy food wrappers and dog poop. I almost turned back.

Then I did what nurses always do when faced with bad odors—I breathed through my mouth—and pulled on latex gloves. I yanked out a white bag about the size of the one I’d seen in Bart’s kitchen, untied it, and clicked on the penlight I’d brought. Milk cartons, soda cans, egg shells and a jumble of chicken bones, but no medicine vial. The next bag was stuck under the lid but I brought it down with a jerk, its contents spilling out on my head. I jumped back, scraping potato peelings and coffee grounds off my T-shirt. Tomato sauce plastered my nose and I wiped it off with a slightly soiled paper towel and then sorted through the mess on the ground with a stick. Thinking a vial could have rolled away, I clicked on my flashlight and searched along the fence where grass was tangled in the chain link.

A light flashed on above me and I was caught in the proverbial spotlight. Had I been thinking clearly, I’d have done just what I did: stay just where I was, crouched down behind the fence. As it was, I stayed there because I was too paralyzed to move.

“Anyone there?” yelled a man I could see through the web of aluminum and weeds. He waited. My legs began to cramp and sweat rolled down under my arms. Something scurried behind me and I almost jumped up. Finally the door shut but the light stayed on. I looked around, didn’t see anyone, and slowly rose to a standing position, my knees creaking loudly. Casually, I walked down the alley. When I got to the next dumpster, I raised the lid and tossed my own bag of trash over the edge, hearing the soft plop as it landed. I peeled back my gloves and tossed them in on top of the trash. I strolled to the end of the street, saying a prayer that Black Beauty wouldn’t fail me tonight. She didn’t.

Even though I hadn’t found the vial, at least the bag of dope from Huey’s girlfriend was gone. It had gone into the dumpster behind Bart’s, buried appropriately in grass clippings.

TWENTY-EIGHT

Monday, 20 August, 0627 Hours

JUDYTH SMILED AS SHE greeted the management staff straggling through the door. She’d called the meeting for 6:30—before our shift began—and ordered us not to clock in until afterward, an action that was surely illegal. More than that, now I’d have to take vacation time to double back to the main police station downtown to have my fingerprints taken when I could have done it on my way in.

“I know everyone wants to know what Joint Commission said.” Judyth looked around to be sure she had our attention. “We have another six months. Not the best report. They were impressed by how much we’d done in such a short time. Especially with all the new hires I’ve added.”

Someone asked if they’d be back.

“No. We just have to submit a written report in another six months with an update on our staffing. If that is satisfactory, we’re approved for the full four years,” Judyth explained.

Another manager asked about the union vote. It was being tallied today, she told us. We’d have the results tomorrow.

I hurried out to my car for the drive down to police headquarters at Clark and Fourth streets. After several laps around the block without finding a parking spot, I gave in, pulled into a lot and paid the four dollars.

The building was old but it had a solidness about it that reflected the city’s longevity and its permanence. I made my way up the steps with more than a little trepidation. An officer at the information desk told me the fingerprint section was upstairs on the fifth floor. I joined a group waiting for the elevator. After my excursions into what BJ had called “breaking and entering,” and with my drug test results still unknown, the last thing I wanted was to have my fingerprints on file somewhere. But BJ had bet her job on my coming in this morning. Now, thanks to Judyth, I was late.

The officer behind the mesh-laced glass window told me to have a seat until they called me. The room was furnished with blond, sixties-era furniture that looked as if it had been there since then. A coffee table in front of a settee was scarred from cigarette burns and coffee cups; several names and messages had been carved into the wood. The room smelled of stale smoke, Pine-sol and sweat.

Two women sat next to each other on pink plastic chairs to the side of the settee. I chose a straight-back chair opposite them and picked up a well-thumbed garden magazine. It was dated last year.

One of the women, who looked about thirty but was probably younger, stared at the floor, her shoulders slumped forward and her hands gripped together between her legs. The other woman— she looked more like a teenager than an adult—bounced a baby boy on her lap and attempted unsuccessfully to occupy him with a set a keys. The baby squirmed around on his mother’s lap until she finally let him down on the floor, when he promptly crawled toward the door. With a heavy sigh, she grabbed him up and put him back on her lap. She dug through a torn diaper bag while the baby tried to pull on her hair. She shook her hair loose and plopped a bottle in the baby’s mouth. His sucking was the only sound in the room.

The officer knocked on the glass. “Hursch,” he yelled through the opening.

The older woman stood and shuffled over to the window. The officer said something to her and motioned her to a door that he then buzzed her through.

The baby had finished his bottle and lay back on his mother’s arm, his eyes drooping shut.

“Cute baby,” I said to her.

She gave me a shy smile, her hair dropping forward as she ducked her head.

Another officer came in and leaned into the opening in the window.

“How’s it going?” he asked his colleague behind the glass.

“The usual,” was the answer. “Lots of perps. None of them did a thing.”

They both laughed.

“I tell you about my daughter?” the officer asked, raising his voice and speaking to the room.

His coworker said something I couldn’t hear.

“I told that boyfriend of hers he better not forget I’m a cop,” he said with a laugh, checking to see if we’d heard him.

I studied my magazine until he had left.

“You here for somebody?” the young mother asked me.

“I just need to have my fingerprints taken.” I looked at the clock on the wall. I had been sitting here for twenty minutes. Damn. They wanted me down here early and now they were keeping me waiting. I needed to get back to work. I tossed the magazine on the table. “You?” I asked the girl.

She frowned. “For my boyfriend. To bail him out.” She shifted the baby on her arm. His eyes fluttered for a moment but he didn’t wake up. “Again,” she added.

“Everhardt,” the officer yelled.

The process didn’t take long. BJ had told me that the police department didn’t use ink to take fingerprints. Instead they used a computer program called Lifescan. After they’d been arrested, suspects put their hands flat on the horizontal screen and it recorded their fingerprints.

“Not in this situation,” the female officer said after I’d asked her about it. “We only use it for perpetrators. Too expensive to use for people who need their prints taken for work or, like in your case, to rule you out at a crime scene,” she said as she rolled my fingers, one at a time, on an ink pad and transferred the print onto a card identified for each finger and thumb. When she had finished she handed me a jar of goop and assured me it would take the ink off. Still, I stopped in the restroom and scrubbed my hands as if I were prepping for surgery.

BACK IN MY OFFICE I sat staring at the sixty-two unanswered e-mail messages and the mountain of mail overflowing the inbox on my desk.

“You busy?” Serena asked, poking her head around the corner.

“Come on in,” I told her, clicking my computer to standby. She plopped down in the chair next to my desk. “Can I ask you something if you promise not to tell anyone? Not anyone.”

“I can’t do that, Serena. Not if it’s something I have to pass on.”