Deadly Diversion: A Medical Thriller (26 page)

The screen door banged against my legs but I hesitated. What would I say if she was just sleeping? Or high? What if she called the cops? How would I explain breaking into her house?

I slipped the key in the lock and it turned easily. The door opened directly into the living room and the pounding music. Lisa hadn’t moved. The air smelled musty, as if the house had been closed up all day. I shut off the CD player. The sudden quiet startled me and I stepped back quickly.

“Lisa,” I said into the silence.

The constant drone of the air conditioner in a dining-room window was the only sound.

I repeated her name as I took the few steps to her side.

Nothing.

My heart was pounding in my ears. I shook her shoulder gently. The arm slipped off her face and Lisa stared at me with unseeing eyes.

TWENTY

Friday, 17 August, 1734 Hours

“YOU BROKE INTO THE HOUSE?” the young officer asked me. He had checked Lisa’s neck for a pulse and used his radio to call it in.

I’d stumbled around the living room until I had spotted a cordless phone on the floor and called the police. Then I couldn’t get out of there fast enough, slamming the screen door against the porch railing, as waves of nausea rolled over me. I’d dropped my head between my knees and took some deep breaths to settle my stomach as a siren screamed in the distance, becoming louder as it approached the house.

“I saw her through the window,” I said, following the officer back into the house. I tried not to look at Lisa but my eyes kept straying to her body. Her head had turned when the officer had pressed his fingers to her neck so that her eyes seemed to follow me even as I edged toward the door.

“She let you in?” he asked, a frown forming. BJ had told me that the last person to see someone alive was always the first suspect in a murder.

“Of course not,” I said with more emphasis than I’d intended. “How could she? I found the key in the mailbox.” I hurried on. “We work together. Worked,” I corrected. “St. Teresa’s. We’re both nurses.” No point in mentioning her stealing drugs. Her death made that all too apparent.

“I guess that’s where she got that,” he said, motioning toward the syringe under the edge of the sofa, its needle pointed outward. Lisa’s arm lay stretched toward the floor, her hand curled slightly as if reaching for something that had just rolled away.

Lisa’s red knit top was pulled up, revealing the navel ring I’d seen before. Tiny needle marks peppered the antecubal space inside her elbow, a slight bruising around it.

The officer answered a call on his radio, clipped it back on his belt, and told me to wait outside. I was glad to.

A white Crown Victoria pulled up, double-parked in front of the house, and a female officer dressed in street clothes stepped out. An ambulance drew up behind it and angled into an open slot. A paramedic jumped out and hurried up the steps with the cop.

I stayed out of their way.

“Everything okay?” asked a voice coming up the steps. The woman from next door.

An officer tried to block her view but she caught a glimpse inside. “Oh, my God,” she said, listing to one side. Pink scalp showed through her thin white hair.

“She lives next door,” I told him. “She’s the one who told me that Lisa was home.”

The officer grabbed her elbow and steered her back down the steps.

“Tell her to stay put. I’ll be over to talk to her as soon as we finish here,” said the detective who introduced herself as Deborah Rosan.

BJ sprinted up to the door. I had told the first officer that BJ was a friend of mine—this was in her district—and he’d passed the word along when he’d called it in. I followed her and the detective back in, steeling myself to treat this death like many others I’d seen, composed and detached.

BJ grabbed my arm and steered me back out. I sat in the rusty chair on the porch, but I couldn’t keep from watching through the window. A police photographer had arrived along with two men with Crime Scene Unit stamped on the back of their shirts. One tugged on latex gloves and wiped sweat off his forehead with the back of his arm. He picked up the syringe and held it up to the light. He placed it in a paper bag, folded the top down and taped it shut, careful to avoid the exposed needle protruding from one end. He squatted on the floor, pulled out the cap from underneath the sofa and put it in another bag. The photographer moved around the body, clicking shots from various angles while the detective made notes.

Another CSU officer was sprinkling black powder on a table- top. He twirled a brush on top and when he seemed satisfied with what he saw, he unrolled a length of plastic tape and pressed it down on the surface. He lifted it, studied the tape, and adhered it to a small, white index card. He moved on to another spot on the table.

So far no one had touched Lisa except the paramedic who had come and gone.

“How did you know the dead girl?” the detective asked me, coming out onto the porch. Detective Rosan was slightly taller than me and significantly heavier. She sat down on the concrete railing around the porch. Her cream-colored blouse strained to cover her ample bosom and a tight belt squeezed her tan pants closed.

The photographer came outside, took a few shots of the house from the sidewalk, and went back in.

I explained that I knew Lisa from the hospital, and Detective Rosan wanted to know why I had come here.

“She called me. She sounded drugged. I decided to bring over her paycheck and just check up on her. Her boyfriend’s hardly ever home because he works full-time and is going to school full-time. He works for me. That’s how I know her. Maybe if I’d gotten here sooner... She’d just been fired.”

“Oh?” she asked, looking up from her notebook. “You know why?”

I hesitated. “You’d better ask them.”

“You don’t know?”

“She didn’t work for me. Talk to the chief nurse.” I gave her Judyth’s name and phone number.

“You got here when?” she asked.

The photographer stowed his equipment in a weathered bag and made his way around the cluster of people in the room, sketching a wave as he went down the steps.

Detective Rosan repeated her question.

“About five.” I looked back inside.

The CSU officer continued on to other tables, collecting fingerprints. Another officer moved through the house. The refrigerator door opened and closed.

When were they going to do something with Lisa?

“If she was already dead when you got here, how’d you get in?” Rosan asked with a nod toward the door.

I told her about finding the key in the mailbox.

“What’d you do then?” She leaned back against the pillar and shielded her eyes from the sun that had dipped into the west.

“Uh, I checked to see if she had a pulse.” My hand shook as I wiped sweat off my forehead.

“So you touched the body?”

“Yes.” Was I a suspect?

BJ came out and stood off to the side.

“She wasn’t breathing?”

“No,” I answered.

“Then what?” Detective Rosan asked.

“I called 911.”

“You touch anything else?”

I shook my head.

“What about the phone?”

I nodded.

“You don’t have a cell phone?”

“I left it at work.”

“You said the neighbor saw the vic?” Rosan nodded toward the house next door.

“Yes. And she knew Lisa was home because of the music.”

“Music?” Rosan asked, glancing around.

“Loud music. I turned it off. The CD player on the floor.”

“Bag that player,” Rosan yelled over her shoulder to the officers inside.

A panel van pulled up, dislodging two men dressed in casual clothes. “Got one for us?” one of them asked. “Ready?”

“Anytime,” Rosan answered.

They returned with a gurney they’d pulled from the back, a limp black body bag on top. They rolled it to the steps, lifted it quickly onto the top sidewalk and then up the steps. Rosan followed them back in.

I stared through the window as they jockeyed the gurney into place next to the sofa and took positions at either end. “On the count of three,” one said, gripping Lisa’s shoulders. But before he had finished counting, the other man jerked Lisa’s feet up, pulling her out of his partner’s hands and sending Lisa’s head banging onto the floor.

I caught my breath.

BJ touched my arm.

They got Lisa onto the gurney, zipped the body bag shut, and handed Detective Rosan a clipboard to sign. BJ held the screen door open while one man backed out, holding the gurney level. Footsteps pounded up behind us.

Bart let out a howl. He pushed the attendant aside and grabbed at the body bag, pulling the zipper open before anyone could stop him. He fell on top of Lisa with a sob.

BJ pulled him off. “You can’t help her now,” she said, her voice soothing.

I explained who Bart was to Rosan.

BJ led Bart to the far side of the porch and motioned for him to sit next to her on the concrete ledge. She faced him away from the door, but as the gurney bumped down the steps Bart looked around, his expression pained.

“What happened? Someone break in?” Bart asked, his voice choked.

“I think it was an overdose, Bart,” I told him in the voice I used to tell families bad news about their loved ones.

Bart nodded and watched as the gurney disappeared into the van. He lowered his head to his hands and sobbed quietly.

“You say you came here because she called you,” Rosan said to me. It sounded like a question. “What did she say?”

“She mumbled something like ‘it’s in the bag.’”

Bart looked up.

“What’d she mean by that?” Rosan asked.

“I have no idea. Just the hallucinations of someone drugged,” I said. I gave Bart a small smile of apology. “It happens to patients sometimes when they’re coming out of an anesthetic. It doesn’t mean anything.”

An officer came out and Rosan nodded toward Bart. The man took Bart’s arm and led him into the house.

“We’ll need your fingerprints,” Rosan said to me.

“Why? Am I a suspect?”

“Just routine. We need to rule you out.”

“Rule me out for what? She obviously killed herself.”

“Looks that way,” Rosan admitted.

“What about him?” BJ asked, nodding toward the inside where Bart was standing, looking lost in his own home.

“His prints will be everywhere, so we can usually rule those out without much trouble.”

“Okay,” I said with a sigh. “Go ahead, take my prints.” Rosan snorted. “You need to come into the station. We’ll take you just as soon as we finish up here.”

BJ interrupted. “Can’t she come in later?”

Rosan frowned. “Standard operating procedure. I need to take you in.”

“Look, she’s not going to book,” BJ told her. “She’s a nurse at St. Teresa’s, she lives in the neighborhood, and I’ve known her all my life.”

I interjected into this conversation about me, “I’ll come in first thing Monday morning. I promise.”

“Well...” Rosan began.

“I guarantee she’ll be there.” BJ gave Rosan a long look.

“Okay.” Rosan shrugged. “Seven a.m., Sharp,” she said and turned on her heel and went inside.

I watched as she led Bart to a chair and spoke to him. He kept shaking his head as if he didn’t believe what had happened.

Finally the police left and I followed BJ back inside. I offered to call someone for Bart.

“I’ll be fine,” he said, his voice flat.

“Can I call her parents for you?” I asked, hoping he’d decline.

He did.

“I knew it, I knew it,” Bart said suddenly. “If she’d just stopped, dammit.” He slammed his fist into his palm. “I tried and tried and she kept promising and then it’d happen again. She’d say she was in pain and...” He broke off, choking. He sat down on the sofa and doubled over, moaning.

I sat down next to him and patted his shoulder. We stayed that way for a few moments until his sobs subsided. BJ had moved away and now stood looking out the door, shifting her weight back and forth.

Bart wiped his face with the backs of his hands, sniffed and gave me a small smile of thanks. “How’d she get it?” he asked. “I knew she’d been fired so she couldn’t have gotten it at the hospital.” He looked around the room. “She must have had some hidden. Why me?” he said suddenly, standing. “What will I do now?” He threw up his hands and let them drop to his sides. “How could she do this to me?” he asked, pacing back and forth. “Damn her!” He stabbed the air with a fist. “How could she?”

He had gone from sad to mad in the time it took to take a breath.

“Don’t act like you’re blameless,” I said when I could stand it no longer.

Bart’s face darkened. “Get out!” he screamed. “Get out now!” He lunged forward, but BJ pulled me behind her with one arm, her other hand on her holster.

Bart looked at her face and stood still, jaws clenched, then his face sagged. “Just get out,” he said, turning away.

On the sidewalk outside, BJ shaded her eyes against the sun. “Seems like you were right to be worried about her.” She looked back toward the house. “Why’d you come here anyway?”

“I knew she’d been on the unit the morning Huey died. It’s possible she saw something or someone.”

“And you think she’d tell you?” BJ asked. “You’re not a cop, Monika. You don’t know that people lie all the time about things they don’t even need to. And in her state, believe me, you’d have gotten squat out of her.”

TWENTY-ONE

Friday, 17 August, 2218 Hours

I FELL ASLEEP on the couch with the TV still on. BJ had followed me home, watched me go inside and waved goodbye before she went back on patrol. I had gathered Cat in my arms and hugged her until she wiggled away, then changed to shorts and my favorite T-shirt with “NURSING IS A WORK OF HEART” on the front, gathered what snacks I could find—potato chips, cheese crackers, some grapes beginning to go soft and a big glass of milk—and plopped on the couch. I’d shared my makeshift dinner with Cat and settled down to watch an old movie, determinedly putting the vision of Lisa’s body out of my mind.

Lisa had obviously needed help, but Bart seemed more worried about himself than about her and what she’d been going through. Besides, I’d told BJ, it was possible that he had supplied drugs for her, which might explain some of the missing narcotics. I’d seen him with some other drugs left over from surgery, but those weren’t narcotics, and Lisa wouldn’t have wanted them. I’m going around in circles, I thought, turning back to Gregory Peck issuing orders to his World War II troops.