Notorious D.O.C. (Hope Sze medical mystery) (31 page)

"Hope..."

"I
know. I know we have no idea what we're doing. But I've got to try." I
checked my pager, expecting the long-lost Tucker. Instead, it was the case
room.

Chapter
34

I tried to block out thoughts of Mike Martinez while I
snapped a single sterile glove on my right hand and swished my index finger in
clear Muco gel.

Mrs. Valdez clenched her teeth and arched her back while I
stood between her legs in stirrups. Her thin blue gown was the only shield
between us. I could smell briny amniotic fluid and the sharper, metallic scent
of blood.

Her husband murmured in Spanish while the nurse chanted,
"One. Two. Three..."

I glanced at the beeping fetal heart monitor, which flashed
one-ten, one-twenty. Normal. The heart tracing was reassuring. The single
fluorescent light at the head of the bed illuminated Mrs. Valdez's cheek while
our blurred shadows danced on the walls.

For once, I was
grateful for the switchboard's incompetence. They hadn't tracked me or my pager
down until Mrs. Valdez was hooked up to an IV and an epidural and, according to
the nurse, she was already seven centimeters dilated. Theoretically, I would
verify the dilation after she finished her contraction. but in all honesty, I'd
probably poke around and then repeat whatever the nurse had said. I didn't know
much 'bout birthin' no babies.

At last, Mrs.
Valdez relaxed. The nurse took her hand off the abdomen, where she'd been
palpating the uterus, and nodded at me.

I said, "Sorry about this. It will only take a
minute."

Mrs. Valdez didn't even open her eyes.

I tried to be gentle as I inserted my finger up the folds of
her vagina and probed the softened edges of her cervix.

Mrs. Valdez moaned. Mr. Valdez clutched her hand and glared
at me.

I retreated, stripping off the glove into the garbage.
"Seven. It won't be too long now." Although, for a primip (first-time
mom) and a baby estimated at over eight and a half pounds, that was debatable.

I eased my way out of the room, while the husband gathered a
few ice chips and handed them to my patient. She turned her head away from him.

The door swooshed closed behind me. At the nursing station,
a few nurses chatted over charts and coffee while the unit clerk avoided my
eye. Where did the OB residents and med students hang out?
 
Before I could ask, my pager went off again.
This time, it was a non-hospital phone number.

The unit
coordinator waved me toward a call room in the back hallway. I peeked in the
empty OR suite, a bathroom, and a dirty utility room complete with commodes,
before I found the call room.

There were
two single beds, one for a med student, one for a resident, one dirty window,
and a desk with a lamp and an old copy of William's Obstetrics. The med student
bed was rumpled but empty. Presumably its occupant was working or eating
dinner. Sometimes, housekeeping didn't bother making the beds for us, which was
pretty disturbing. I chose to sit at the desk to punch in the number.

Tucker answered. "I've got to talk to you
."

"About what? Why didn't you answer my calls?"

"I found the guy we were looking for."

Tucker didn't want to say Mike's name aloud. I wondered
where he was; I hadn't recognized the phone number. "I already found him.
Mrs. Lee and I interviewed him."

"What are you talking about?"

"Michael Martinez, a.k.a. Mike Martin. The guy Dr. Ven
thought was antisocial. Isn't that who you're talking about?"

"Yes, but how could you have talked to him? I was just
with him."

"When?"

"Met up with him half an hour ago."

I checked my watch. It had taken longer than that for me to
see my OB patient. "He saw us first, then. Did you pay him?"

A long, telling pause.

"Because we did." Mike Martinez was making a
killing off of us, no pun intended.

Tucker cleared his throat. "Anyway. I want to talk to
you about it."

"You want to bring it to the case room? My patient's
about to deliver."

He burst out laughing. "God, Hope. You never stand
still, do you?"

"Try not to. Are you coming?"

"See you in ten or twenty. Unless your patient's
delivering then."

"She's a primip at seven centimeters. I'll see you
soon."
I hung up with a
smile. I'd been worried about Tucker,
no matter how I played it.

I passed by the case room to make sure Mrs. Valdez wasn't
about to push without me. Her face glistened with sweat. The baby moved, making
a muffled noise on the monitor. The nurse adjusted the external monitor, which
was, as far as I could tell, a loudspeaker strapped to Mrs. Valdez's belly. I
backed out again. Not yet, but soon.

I felt twitchy with energy. I walked past the other labour
rooms, past the triage room, and past a woman waddling toward the elevator on
her husband's arm. I bent my head over the water fountain. Lukewarm, rusty
water was better than nothing. When I lifted my head, Tucker was lounging
against the wall, staring at me with a McGill clipboard tucked under his arm.

I almost shrieked. My hand did fly to my chest, as if I were
a Southern belle. In other words, a humiliatingly girly reaction.

Tucker laughed so hard, he thumped his free hand against the
wall and laughed some more.

"Shut up." I strode past him to the call room. He
followed, still chuckling. He was looking fine, in a short-sleeved blue denim
shirt that showed his distal biceps and well-muscled forearms, but looks
weren't everything. Personality and ability to answer phone calls counted for a
lot.

He shut the door. The room felt a lot smaller and quieter
than it had a few minutes ago, and I caught a whiff of dirty sheets or socks or
both. He'd probably think it was me. I stood by the door and crossed my arms.
"So what's your big news?"

Tucker dropped his clipboard on the desk and perched beside
it, nudging aside the phone with his rear end. I closed my eyes. Now was not
the time to notice his ass. "First of all, let me dazzle you with my
detective work. You know what I was doing last night?"

Tori, I thought, which was pretty unworthy of me.
"Dazzling detection?"

"Basically. Tori and I buttered up Dr. Ven, so he'd let
us take a look at Mike's file. He wasn't that keen on it because of patient
confidentiality, rah-rah-rah, but Tori convinced him we were doing a case study
on borderline personalities and needed access to the records."

"Tori did that?" I'd never seen her out-and-out
lie.

"Yeah." Tucker grinned. "I had no idea she
was so good at laying it on. She went on about the importance of psychiatry at
St. Joe's, and how we needed to improve our program here. I guess now we know
how she gets her stellar evaluations. Anyway, she convinced him. He took us
over to medical records at the Douglas, and let us take notes, but not
photocopy anything. So I got Michael Martinez's past contact info and his next
of kin. I managed to get his number through his cousin."

"Not his parents?"

Tucker shook his head, frowning a little. "It's a bad
story. Anyway, I tracked Mike down and convinced him to meet me tonight. But he
blew me off at the last minute. Later, he called me and said he was at
 
Côte
-des-Neiges,
if I wanted to come."

"He paged you?" How come Tucker had answered that
page and not mine?

He grimaced. "My pager died. I wasn't carrying it
because I'm not on call. I bought a temporary cell to use with Mike and I got
so caught up, I didn't check my home messages until I was on my way over here.
Sorry."

"It's okay." Not what you'd expect to hear from
someone professing true love and undying devotion, but I understood getting
caught up in an investigation. "Was Tori with you?"

He grinned, flashing a fine set of incisors.
"Jealous?"

I shook my head a little too hard. "Curious. She didn't
answer her phone, either."

His smile widened. "Nah, she's on call, and you know
Tori. She doesn't answer personal calls on call."

I bypassed his knowing attitude. "Okay. So you met with
Michael."

"Yeah. So did you, sounds like. You want to go
first?"

I shook my head. "Shoot."

"He's got an alibi for that night. There really was an
after-hours club called X-TC and he worked there. Ryan's tracking down the
contacts you gave him, but it looks legit."

I waited a beat before it sank in. "My Ryan? Ryan
Wu?"

"Yeah. I called your house first and he answered. Is he
a permanent resident?"

It was my turn to grin. "Jealous?"

"Hell, yeah." He smacked his fist into his palm.
"After I pummeled him, he agreed to be my data slave and look this stuff up."

I quirked an eyebrow. "Good job."

"Okay, fine, he was already on it. After he took care
of Mrs. Lee."

"Great." That was awfully quick care of Mrs. Lee,
but maybe she'd insisted on a ride straight home. That sounded like her. I felt
a surge of affection for Ryan, king of the computer. I kicked off my sandals
and sat on the clean bed, cross-legged. I glanced around the room to make sure
no one could overhear, and lowered my voice for good measure. "So have you
figured out who killed Laura?" I waited for him to say, No, who, you wise
woman?

He nodded. "I think Mike might have hired
someone."

Mike?
Qué?
"How'd you figure that?"

Tucker ticked the points off on his finger. "He stole
the car. Sounds like he admitted that to you and Mrs. Lee, from what Ryan understood.
But he was smart enough to get himself an alibi while someone else mowed her
down."

"Why would he do that?"

"This is the part I didn't tell you: he was sexually
harassing Laura, and she was threatening to go to the police."

Chapter
35

Tucker filled in my stupefied silence. "Mike was
obsessed with Laura. He came to the first meeting because his doctor made him,
but once Laura started heading it, he never missed a Monday. He started reading
up on borderline personality and suggesting group activities. When that didn't
work, he moved to asking her out directly. She told him she didn't date
patients. He dropped out of the group shortly thereafter. But you know those
calls Mrs. Lee said Laura was getting? I bet it was him."

It was certainly new information, but it went against my own
hypothesis. So I challenged him. "How'd you get all that? I bet he didn't
tell you."

"Dr. Ven. Laura told him someone was harassing her, but
refused to give the details. He didn't piece it together until afterward."

I pushed the pillow aside to lean against the wall while I
contemplated this. Tucker blew on his knuckles and pretended to polish them on
his shirt. I'd forgotten that move from kindergarten. I tossed the pillow at
him. "Why would he decide to kill her?"

"Isn't it classic?
'If
I can't have you, no one can.'
"

I chewed my lip. "He didn't strike me that way."

"You probably felt sorry for him."

I straightened, stung. But it was true. Part of me had
somehow sympathized with him.

Tucker frowned. "Don't get sucked in. That's what
happened to Laura."

I didn't like the implication that soft-hearted women like
us got run over by men who "loved" them. "I can look after
myself."

"I'm sure."

The speaker behind the bed crackled to life, making me jump.
"Dr. Zee? Are you there?"

Tucker gestured at me to press a red button below the
speaker. I fumbled for it. "Yes."

"Just checking. Dr. Zahrad called again."

It wasn't my fault switchboard hadn't been able to find me,
but Dr. Zahrad, the staff on call, obviously wasn't amused. "Okay." I
fluttered my eyelids at the ceiling and Tucker grinned.

The speaker blared again, "He said he'll be in when the
patient is at nine centimeters and that you should keep him posted."

"Thank
you."

A burst of
static replied. After it died down, T
ucker shook his head. "They
keep you on a short leash."

"No kidding. I gotta get back and show my face." I
did want to get back to Mrs. Valdez, but I also wanted to figure out all this
stuff with Michael Martinez, and I knew that if she got close to delivering, they'd
page me stat.

I tried to think. Was Tucker right? Mike had some sort of
motive and had at least contributed to the means. But whose blond hair was in
the car? Or was that a red herring?

Tucker said, "I'm going to call the police. They can
talk to Dr. Ven about it and check Laura's phone records for Michael's old
phone number. There's just one more thing I got from Dr. Ven that I have to
give back to him—well, Tori was the one who sweet-talked it out of
him." Tucker reached for his clipboard and slid something out from under
his sheaf of notes.