Notorious D.O.C. (Hope Sze medical mystery) (27 page)

"You're absolutely right. I'm sorry,
I'll just need you to help me with some paperwork. Could you come with
me?"

"I said no!"

I stared at her until she blinked. Then I
said, as gently as possible, "She needs your help. Come with me to the
nursing station. It will only take a minute."

"You guys are so useless," she
said, but she let me lead her away while I formulated a plan. Maybe the
psychiatrist on call would talk to her. At the very least, Nancy would chat
with her in the ER. I didn't trust Wendy alone with Reena.

Chapter
2
7

I plastered the last of my notices around
St. Joe's and popped into the Renaud Bray bookstore. Most of the books were in
French, but I just needed to calm down. I tested mechanical pencils with fat
orange lead. I picked up notebooks shaped like cats. I found "
le consommateur
," this
yellow-covered guide to shopping in Montreal that both Tucker and Tori had
recommended, but I put it back down because I didn't want to be reminded of
them.

At last, I started walking back to my
apartment, ready to think about Reena. What was she really afraid of?
 
Was it really Wendy who was nuts the whole
time? Or, like Dr. Gatien had mentioned a week (a lifetime?) ago, was it some
weird
folie à deux?

What had Reena been about to confess?

When I passed
Péloquin
, I heard a woman yelling, "Dr. Zee! I mean, See! I
mean, doctor!"

The voice sounded dreadfully familiar.
For a second, I sped up.

I heard sandals slapping the sidewalk
behind me. "Doctor Sze!
 
Please!"

The "please" stopped me.
Reluctantly, I spun on my heel.

Wendy advanced on me with a pleading
look.

"Wendy! Aren't you talking to
Nancy?" The psychiatrist on call made me bring Wendy to emerg. Nancy
promised she'd give her some "crisis counseling."

Wendy shook her head. "Forget that.
Did you do this?" She held one of the Michael Martinez posters in her
hand.

I was so surprised, it took me a second
to recover my voice. My heart banged in my chest "Do you know him?"

"He's my ex."

I gave her a look.

"He was! That was
before—" She stopped herself. "Look. I used to go out with
guys. It's okay to experiment." She sounded like she was quoting someone.
"I mean, who cares. Do you want to know about Mike or not?"

Every time I saw this girl, she changed
on me. Right now, she was trying to be helpful, and if she hadn't gone psycho
on me twice already, I might have bought the smile. She even had dimples, deep
slashes in both cheeks that shouted, trust me! I'm cute!

I was starting to think she was the real
borderline, not Reena. I paused to think. Mrs. Lee would want any lead pursued
and if Wendy was talking to me, she wouldn't be terrorizing her foster sister.
"I do. But, like the ad says, we want the Michael Martinez who was in the
borderline group therapy at the Douglas—"

"Yeah, yeah, he was in Reena's
group. That's how I met him."

That silenced me. Could it be that easy?
Put up a few ads and we'd find the sociopath from eight years ago?

She smoothed the ad over her leg and
smiled at me again. "You're helping Reena, I don't mind helping you. How
much is the reward, anyway?"

Mrs. Lee hadn't given me the specifics. I
didn't really want Wendy bugging her, but I said, "You'll have to call the
number and ask. It's like Crimestoppers. We pay for information that leads
directly to him."

"I think I have his number. He's on
Tumblr." When I looked blank, she said, "It's a social networking
thing. Interested?"

She had me. She knew it. Her grin widened
to reveal perfectly white, even teeth. She jerked her head at the Nickels diner
across the street. "I'll tell you about him over a cup of coffee."

I followed her into the diner, where she
ordered black coffee and wanted to pay for my Orangina. "My treat, 'cause
I've been such a cunt," she said.

I tried not to flinch as I handed the
cashier some money. I wasn't taking anything from Wendy.

She laughed and paid for her own.
"You don't like that, eh?
 
You'd
probably call me, I don't know, something Latin. Or maybe you'd spell it out.
B-i-t-c-h?"

Now I knew she was just yanking my chain.
I dropped in a chair just outside the door, away from most of the crowd, and
asked, "Do you really know Michael Martinez?"

She leaned back in her chair, spreading
her knees like a guy. She cackled. "You can call him Mike, you know.
Everybody does. And he doesn't go by Martinez anymore. It's Martin. It's this
acting shit. He figures Martin is easier to remember and it works in English and
in French. I told him, it's easier to forget, too. You want to stand out on
your audition."

I waved all that away. "How did you
get to know him?"

She rolled her eyes. "You want my
c.v. or something? Just hanging out, I guess, with Reena and Jodi and, well,
the rest of the crew. He was cute, I had this thing for older men, boom, bam,
thank you, ma'am. Or I guess it should be thank you,
man
.
Now
it's
ma'am." She laughed again. She reached in the pocket of her short-sleeved
blouse and flipped open her cigarette pack. Her lighter was silver, not a
disposable Bic. It had an angel molded on the side, which would have been
cheesy except the angel's eyes were chips of red glass. She noticed me staring.
"Nice, huh?
 
It was a present. A lot
nicer than a bra or a bucket of KFC, eh?
 
So anyway, was that all you wanted to know?"

I shook myself. This information was
falling into my lap and I should direct it, but I needed to gather my thoughts.
"What did you think of him?"

"He had a big dick?" She
rounded her lips over her cigarette and managed to make it look phallic.
"No, seriously, it was about average. But he was a nice guy."

I rummaged through my brain for the
antisocial traits. "He was charming?"

"Yeah, I guess. He knew how to talk
his way into your pants, if that's what you mean." She tapped her
cigarette into the ashtray. I tried not to inhale, but enough other people were
smoking outside that her cancer stick hardly made any difference.

"Did he love you?" That just
popped out of my mouth.

She paused in mid-tap. Her fingers rested
on the ashtray. "Yeah, I think—yeah."

"What made you think he loved
you?"

She started smoking again, short, hasty
puffs. "What does that have to do with anything?" She was having
trouble meeting my eyes, all of a sudden.

"I just want to know."

She rested both elbows on the table.
"How much was that reward again?"

"You'll have to call the
number."

"You didn't say anything about
personal questions." She dug in her back pocket for the flyer. "Says
right here, 'for significant information leading to his contact.'"

"That's right." But I didn't
retract my question.

She traced the M of Michael with the
index finger of her free hand. Then the i. Finally, she said to the paper,
"Yeah, he loved me. He told me some shit he probably wouldn't have, otherwise.
Happy?"

"Sure. You said he's on
Tumblr?"

"Let me make sure I've still got
it." She scrolled through her phone.

A woman at the next table giggled and
pretended to hit her companion. They both laughed. A girl in tortoiseshell
glasses bent over her textbook. A customer dropped some change and other people
bent to help him pick it up, except a kid who grabbed a loonie coin and
wouldn't give it back.

"Got it," said Wendy.

I reached for the phone, but she held it
against her chest. "Why are you looking for him?"

"We think he might know
something."

"About Laura Lee?"

The name on everyone's lips today.
"Did you know her?"

She stubbed her cigarette out, mashing it
in the ashtray with unnecessary force before lighting another one. Instead of
smoking, though, she stared at the ugly angel on her lighter. "Not
really."

I wasn't sure whether to believe her or
not. I decided to go for the bird in hand. "Are you going to give me
Mike's coordinates?" That's what the French say,
coordonées
means contact info, and it seems to have rubbed off on
the anglophones, just like asking people to "close" the lights

Wendy said, more to the lighter than me,
"I guess so."

"Have you seen him recently? We need
current information." No way we'd pay for a phone number from 2003.

She shrugged.

Since she was the one who'd come to me
and she seemed more than a little nuts, I sucked up the last of my juice and
dropped a tip on the table. "Well, you've got the number if you decide to
call."

"Wait!"

I was already standing. I looked down at
her. Her knuckles blanched as she gripped the table, but as she noticed me
watching, she made sure to let go and light a cigarette, nice and easy.
"I'll tell you about Mike. What do you want to know?"

I played for time. "Why don't you
just tell me about him?"

"Well, he was the best-looking guy
I'd ever seen." She blew a plume of smoke toward my left shoulder. "I
think it was his eyes. They way he'd look at you. He really saw you, you know?
Not just thinking about himself and what kind of shit he could pull. When he
wanted you, he paid attention. You could've passed a lighter under his hands
and he'd just bat it away." She smiled to herself. "A lot of other
guys who were that hot, they'd think they were the shit. But he never did.
There was something, I don't know, kind of unsure about him that made me like
him even more, you know what I mean? The way he'd check for me if we were at a
party?"

I must have made a face, thinking of all
the jealous exes out there. But she shook her head. "Not like that. He'd
do his thing and I'd do mine. But once in a while, he'd check the room, looking
for me. Just to make sure I was there. I got a kick out of it. He needed me.
Me, piece of shit Wendy Redburn."

I felt my eyebrows press together in
sympathy.

She snorted and blew smoke out of both
nostrils. "Lose the lost-puppy look, okay? It's not that big a deal."

But it was. I'd been judging her by my
standards, but she was a foster kid with a past I couldn't even guess at.

She had to smile. "God, you're more
pathetic than me. So what else do you want to know?
 
He was tall. Well, everyone was tall to me
back then, but I'm guessing he was at least 5'10". Brown eyes, black hair.
Nice hands..." She started smoking again, faster. "Ah, forget it.
I'll just give you his number. You can call him yourself."

Chapter
28

I hurried home and called Mrs. Lee from
the hallway, almost before I kicked my sandals off. I figured she deserved it
after eight years. She was strangely muted while I rhymed off all the contact
info. Then she said, "We'll see if he knows anything, Hope."

"But this is the guy Dr. Ven thought
was the one! The sociopath!"

Her sigh gusted through the receiver.
"Let's see if the number works. But first, we need a plan."

She was right. We couldn't just go
blasting in and saying, "Hey, did you kill this woman?" even though
it would make for a better movie. I said, "Okay. Do you want to call the
police, or should I?"

She snorted. "They won't do
anything."

"They might. We could show them
Ryan's computer model." I checked my email while I was talking to her.
Ryan hadn't messaged me, but I plugged in the link on the

 
the guy's Tumblr account. It worked. I got a
mug shot of a guy with sharp cheekbones and intense blue eyes, like a Calvin
Klein ad, but under the heading Michael Martin. It even had his agent info.

Mrs. Lee clucked her tongue. "You
said Ryan would bring his model next weekend."

"Right, but we could tell the police
about it today." Even to myself, that sounded weak, but I was still
staring at Michael Martin's photo. I shook myself and remembered the tombstone
picture and my phone log. "I have to show them something anyway. They can
contact Michael and bring him in for questioning."

"They haven't done anything for
eight years. I don't trust them," she said.

I didn't like the note in her voice.
"Mrs. Lee. You're not going to call him yourself, are you?"

She snorted. "Do you think I'm
stupid enough to meet with a killer by myself?"

I hesitated. I would never underestimate
this woman.

"I'm an old woman. It's you who has
to be careful."

"I am."

She laughed and I joined in. No, I wasn't
exactly cautious these days.