Deadly Diversion: A Medical Thriller (32 page)

Where was everyone? Why didn’t someone come along?

“Ever since I got here, you’ve been out to get me. What’s the matter, don’t you like men?” He snickered. “Want to know what’s in this?” Bart asked, his voice sly.

I felt a tiny prick on my neck.

“Succinylcholine.”

My knees buckled.

Bart jerked me back up and shoved me into the wall.

The drug wouldn’t kill me immediately unless he hit an artery. I’d be paralyzed and awake until the drug reached my respiratory muscles. Then I would no longer be able to take in even a single breath. It would be a while before I’d lose consciousness.

I stood completely still, barely breathing.

“You told the cops what Lisa said about the bag. They thought it was just another junkie off in la-la land.”

I took a cautious breath and very deliberately pushed my fear away.

“But you put it together. Who was it you told on the phone?” He pushed his arm into my neck.

I gagged.

“What’d Huey do to you?” I choked out.

“Him,” he said with a small shrug. “He threatened to tell Guardino’s family that I killed him. It wasn’t true, but we made a deal anyway. He wanted more drugs so I played along for a while. But after I learned who the Guardinos were... Well, let’s just say he got his drugs all right. And now he’s silent.” Bart shoved his face close to mine.

I had to keep him talking; someone was bound to come along soon.

“Where do you want it, bitch? In your neck, straight into the carotid? No, that’d be too quick. How about your butt?” He twisted me around by my shoulders and shoved my face against the wall, the tile cold on my cheek.

The door at the other end of the tunnel swished open. I heard hard-soled shoes striding purposely toward us. Bart glanced toward the sound and his arm loosened slightly on my back. I twisted out of his grasp, stumbling as I turned. But I righted myself and ran toward the footsteps. Bart was close behind me, his rubber soles squishing. I rounded a curve and slammed into Pete, the night guard. His eyes on Bart, Pete pushed me aside. I fell against the wall and sprawled on the floor.

I sat still, once more holding my breath.

Pete unsnapped his holster and placed his large black hand on the butt of his gun.

Bart looked around like a rabbit caught in the cross-hairs.

“You better give me that.” Pete’s voice was calm but carried a threat.

A siren screamed in the distance.

Bart looked at the syringe as if he didn’t know where it had come from. I thought he was going to drop it, but instead he plunged it into his own groin, going deep; he must have hit the femoral artery. His body arched back, arms flung out as he slammed to the floor, spasms twitched his arms and legs, and he banged his head on the concrete. Then he lay still, staring at the ceiling.

TWENTY-NINE

Wednesday, 22 August, 1830 Hours

I SLEPT MOST OF THE next day. Judyth called in the late afternoon to tell me that they’d inventoried the O.R. supply cabinet, which was supposed to be done weekly when new supplies were ordered. Because the staff had been constantly in a rush they had just looked to see what needed restocking and ordered that. A complete inventory hadn’t been done in months. Several vials of succinylcholine were missing. Also, Joyce in human resources had become suspicious after I talked to her about Bart, Judyth said, and had called the Kentucky Board of Nursing. Bart had never been licensed in Kentucky. And the nurses’ votes had been tallied: the union had been defeated, but the count was so close that investigators had been called in for a recount.

It had taken several hours after Bart’s death to finish with the hospital administrators and city police. BJ had been among the first to arrive, followed by the crime-scene investigators, police photographer, several other officers and Detective Rosan. Several administrators had come and gone; Judyth had not been among them. Detective Rosan had taken my statement, and Bart’s body had been sent to the morgue. BJ had driven me home in her police car.

When the phone rang again, I was awake, watching the sun play across the ceiling of my bedroom and willing myself to get up. BJ offered to take me to pick up Black Beauty, still in the hospital garage, and drop her at the service station for her needed tune-up. I’d showered the night before, trying to get the stench of hospital and Bart out of my nostrils, and dropped into bed exhausted, but I needed another scrubbing after tossing in sweat-soaked sheets most of the day. I grabbed shorts and T-shirt, shook out my curls and tossed a helping of Purina Cat Chow in Cat’s dish right before BJ honked.

Black Beauty had survived the night away from home, and we dropped her off at the service station. She was his favorite patient Harry, the owner, had often reminded me. I rode with BJ to the Shakes and Steak near my house. I’d walk home from there, I’d told her.

“So he never was a nurse,” BJ said when we were seated. A waitress hurried over to take our orders. We had taken the last table, and two groups of customers were waiting at the entrance. I ordered a double steakburger with cheese, fries and a chocolate shake. BJ had chili and a large Coke.

“He did go to nursing school, though,” I said, “but he never graduated.”

The waitress returned with BJ’s Coke.

“The hospital got a fax from the university,” Judyth told me. “Seems he flunked out—the critical care course to be specific.”

“How’d he do it?” BJ asked, tearing off the wrapper and waving her straw in the air. “How’d he get a license if he didn’t have one?” She stabbed the straw into her Coke and drank deeply, stifling a belch.

The waitress brought our food, asking if we needed anything else before she hurried away.

“He somehow copied his girlfriend’s license very professionally and put his name on it. I saw a copy in the file. His and Lisa’s were just one number different. Hers ended in a three and he must have closed up the loops to make his an eight,” I said, squirting ketchup on my French fries. “Apparently they didn’t make him provide the original like I had to do. He probably told them he’d misplaced it. He was pretty persuasive when he wanted something.” I nibbled on a French fry. “I suspected there was something wrong, maybe an investigation in Kentucky, but I never figured he didn’t have a license at all.”

“How’d he get into grad school? Didn’t they find out he hadn’t graduated?” BJ crumbled Saltines on her chili and took a cautious bite. “Hot,” she said, fanning her mouth. She downed a quick drink of Coke.

“Judyth told me about that, too. Seems they let him start classes before his transcript arrived.” I opened the steakburger and checked: onion, mustard and pickle, just the way I ordered it. “I think they need students as badly as we need nurses.”

“And the hospital took him on with just the Kentucky license, I suppose.” BJ blew on a spoonful of chili. “The fake Kentucky license,” she added.

“That was Judyth’s doing. She’d signed the authorization. I saw it in the file.”

“His prints were on your package. I just got the news a few hours ago.”

“They were?”

“Guess he thought that’d scare you off.” BJ tasted her chili. “Joyce in human resources must have told him I’d been in.” I’d forgotten to turn my cell phone off when we got to the restaurant, and it rang. “Nobody has this number except my staff,” I told BJ before I answered it.

When I didn’t say anything for a moment, BJ stared at me, her expression questioning.

“Uh-uh,” I said. “No, no, I don’t, uh, think so.” I straightened up. “No, that’s not a good idea,” I added, my voice firmer. I clicked off.

“Who was that?” BJ asked, smiling.

I shoved my phone down into my bag.

“Hey, I never saw you blush before,” she said with a laugh. “I’m not blushing.” I fanned myself with my hand. “It’s just hot in here.”

“Yeah, right. So, what gives? Who’s your mystery caller?”

“Just some lawyer.”

“And?”

“Guardino’s lawyer.”

“What’d he want?” She leaned back and crossed her arms. “I’m waiting.”

“Never mind.”

My phone rang again. I grabbed it and punched the talk button. “Don’t you understand I’m not—”

“Hold on there a minute,” Ruby said. “You’re gonna want to know this.”

“Sorry, Ruby.”

“I’ll tell you if you can be quiet a minute.”

“Get to the point,” I said, my voice drawing stares nearby. I turned away toward the window and lowered my voice. “Why are you calling?”

“She fired. Miss Nose-up-in-the-air.”

“Who? What are you talking about?”

“Your Ms. Lancelot. Ms. Judyth Lancelot. I told you about her. Right from the start I knew she was no good. Didn’t I tell you?”

“Why’d they fire her?”

“De-verted, is what they say.”

“Diverted? What? Drugs? Patients?”

“Money. She took money,” she said with a self-satisfied smack.

“Huh?”

“What don’t you understand about M-O-N—”

“What money? From where?”

“Here, of course.”

“I know, but how?”

“You know all those checks coming in that didn’t belong here? Peoples who quit?”

“She took them?”

“She did and she didn’t.”

“What does that mean?”

BJ put her finger to her lips.

I took my phone outside. “How did she do it?” I asked Ruby.

She told me.

“So she didn’t steal any money?”

“De-verted, like I told you. Just the same, they fired her ass.”

I went back inside. My food was cold but I didn’t care. I’d missed breakfast and lunch. I waved off BJ’s questions while I ate, thinking about what Ruby had said. I scarfed the last of my steakburger into my mouth and wiped my hands on a paper napkin.

I told BJ what Judyth had done. “She just didn’t do the paperwork to terminate the staff who’d quit. When their checks came in, she kept them so we’d look good when the accreditors arrived. It looked like we had more nurses than we did.”

“Think they’ll charge her?” BJ asked, brushing cracker crumbs off the front of her T-shirt.

“I doubt it. She didn’t cash them, and the hospital wouldn’t want the publicity.” I slurped the bottom of my shake cup, opened the lid and let the dregs slide down into my mouth. “You’d think they’d have figured it out sooner when those checks weren’t cashed, but Ruby said the finance office was short on staff, too.”

“So you’ll be getting a new boss.”

“Maybe. Some hospitals are cutting the chief nurse job.”

“How can they do that? Who’s in charge of the nurses?”

“They just assign the nursing staff to another administrator, someone who only looks at the bottom line and knows nothing about clinical care.”

“Think that will happen at St. T’s?” she asked.

“Bound to.”

“But you’ll stay, won’t you? You wouldn’t leave St. Teresa’s?” I was spared from answering when the waitress brought our checks and asked if we needed anything else. The crowd at the door had grown.

While we waited in line to pay, I mentioned Huey.

“Pretty stupid to threaten someone who’s taking care of you.” BJ pulled bills and change out of her pocket. “Once a con, always a con, I guess.”

“Bart didn’t even have to be there,” I said once we were outside. “All he had to do was mix the succinylcholine in the bag and leave. He diverted all suspicion onto Laura that way.”

A cop car, idling at the light, suddenly turned on his siren and scooted around the corner in a swirl of flashing lights.

I asked BJ if she knew anything else about Lisa’s death. When she’d called earlier she had told me that the cops were looking into Lisa’s death now that her boyfriend was known to have committed one murder already.

“She died from the same drug as Castle.”

“So he killed her, too,” I said, staring out into the street.

“It had traces of suck-see—however you pronounce that—in it.”

“So he substituted succinylcholine for her morphine, and ensured her silence as well. She saw him put the drug in Huey’s bag, and it makes sense that she didn’t want to report her boyfriend. In the end, though, her conscience won out.” A whisper of breeze lifted my hair.

“And it cost her,” BJ said.

“Her life,” I added.

BJ swung into her cruiser and rolled down the window.

I leaned in. “I told you, didn’t I?”

The engine purred. “Told me what?”

“A nurse couldn’t have done it.”

Also by Eleanor Sullivan

Cover Her Body
: A Singular Village Mystery (Bonus chapter follows author biography)

Twice Dead

Assumed Dead