Snapshot (33 page)

“Shit. I'll have to assign somebody. I can't wait around,” Mooney said.

“I'll stay,” Donovan said.

“Me, too,” I volunteered.

Mooney reconsidered. “I can give it a little while,” he said grudgingly. “Until the warrant comes through, anyway.”

Half an hour later, with Emily still asleep, a uniformed officer bustled in, a young guy I'd never seen before. He stopped at the nurses' station and held a whispered confab. A white-haired woman pointed him in our direction.

“Lieutenant Mooney?”

“Yeah.”

“We got a stiff. Nearby. Called it in, and Officer Triola said to get you on it right away.”

“Where?”

“Helping Hand. My partner and I caught the squeal. Doctor name of Muir. Important guy, I guess.”

Suicide, I thought, slamming my hand down angrily on a nearby seat back. Dammit to hell.

42

Donovan stayed at the Brigham. I trailed Mooney out to the cruiser and either he didn't notice or else he'd forgotten that I no longer worked for him.

The young cop sped the two hundred yards, siren blaring, lights flashing, and dropped us in front of the ER doors. Two nurses greeted us with a stretcher, but Mooney waved them off. Guided by the cop's directions, we boarded an elevator.

Someone had posted a hospital security guard on the fifth floor. He opened his mouth to question us. Mooney flashed his badge in response.

“Room five forty-six,” the security guard said excitedly. “Head of the whole damn hospital croaks. And not a thing they can do about it.” He sounded perversely satisfied, as if death's triumph over a doctor was something to cheer about.

Two uniformed cops controlled the scene.

“Randall,” one announced with a military snap, apparently recognizing Mooney.

“Talk.”

The man consulted a spiral-bound notebook gripped tightly in his left hand, began haltingly, then spoke with increasing confidence. “According to the nurse who found him, Doreen Gleeson—that's two
E'
s in Gleeson—this Dr. Muir was found in a supply room. Got a man there, but a whole medical team's already tramped through it. She, uh, Gleeson, yelled for help and another nurse sounded the alarm. Carried him in here and tried to resuscitate. Thought he'd had a heart attack or something. Used those paddle things, a defibrillator, right? A bust. Couldn't get his heart started. Gleeson, the nurse, goes back into the supply room and spots a syringe lying on the floor. I've got it safe in an evidence bag, but I had to practically threaten three doctors to make her give it to me. They wanted to send it to the hospital lab, have it analyzed here, can you believe it?”

“I'm surprised they bothered to call us,” Mooney said.

“Doreen Gleeson did that. After she saw the syringe.”

“Observant.”

“And she knew that other nurse who died here.”

Mooney said, “A syringe on the floor doesn't make it homicide. What's against the doc using the needle on himself and then dropping it? Or it could have fallen out of his arm or wherever when the medical team grabbed him.”

“Yeah, I suppose,” the cop said, his nonchalance not quite hiding an underlying excitement, “but I've got a witness—not to the moment of death or anything—but a witness who says he saw somebody leaving the supply room, kind of sneaking out, and he says he can describe her.”

“Her?”

“Yeah. A woman.”

“Crime-scene unit ought to be here by now,” Mooney said, checking his wristwatch.

“Yeah, well, they're on the way.”

“Witness?”

“Guy named Renzel. A doctor. But I don't know what kind.”

“He's involved, Moon.” That's all I had time to murmur before the man himself was in earshot. His tan had yellowed and paled, and behind his glasses he looked older, sunken, almost as old as Muir had looked the last time I saw him.

“God, I don't know if I can talk about this,” Hank Renzel said. “He was my best friend.”

Mooney gave me a long look. “Let's find a place to sit down,” he said.

He didn't tell me to stay away, so I followed. I figured he wanted me as a witness, in case Renzel decided to do any confessing about the phony drug setup. Juries prefer nonpolice witnesses.

We found an empty lounge across from the double steel doors of an operating theater, the kind of place where anxious relatives await word.

Renzel looked like he'd already heard the worst. He sank into a blue couch and Mooney sat next to him. I took a chair facing them both. Renzel gave me a single glance, didn't recognize me without my blond wig.

“I can't believe it,” he mumbled. “Muir. Like that. It was bad enough with the nurse …”

“Tina Sukhia.”

Renzel nodded at Mooney. He seemed surprised that he'd spoken loud enough for anyone else to hear. “Yes. Her. And now him. Who else, I wonder? Who else?”

He was silent so long I wondered if he'd fallen asleep behind his heavy frames and staring eyes. I took Interrogation 101 from Mooney. I know how reluctant he is to prompt a witness, but even he was finally forced to talk.

“Can you tell me what you saw, Dr. Renzel?” Mooney asked.

“I told the other officer.”

“Tell me. Sometimes, when you go over it, you remember something.”

“I'd never have seen anything out of the ordinary if I hadn't felt like taking a stroll. I pass that supply room on the way to the cafeteria. I wanted a brownie. They make good brownies. Sometimes the pharmacy workers bring them in for me. They know I like them …”

This time Mooney and I outwaited him.

“I saw a woman come out of the room.”

“How sure are you that she came out of the supply room and not out of one of the adjoining rooms?”

“Well, I'm absolutely sure of it because I thought to myself, why is she coming out of the supply room, what was she doing in there? You know, you read things where doctors have all these, well, sordid meetings, trysts? In magazines. Made-up things. I've never seen behavior like that at an actual hospital. Not here, anyway, and so I just took notice.”

Renzel paused. “Do you want me to describe her?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“She seemed to be a patient.”

“A patient,” Mooney repeated.

“Or else she was wearing a patient's johnny and robe,” Renzel said, sounding as if he'd just that minute considered the possibility of such a deception.

Had Muir and Renzel decided to keep Emily alive in case they needed a patsy for Tina's killing? Someone to blame for the death of the Cephagen Company's president?

Had Renzel alone decided to make use of her again? Why kill Muir? Why now?

I bit my lip. Why didn't the Chief of Pharmacy know that Emily was no longer trapped in her JHHI cell? Why hadn't Muir confided in his partner?

“I'd say she was forty,” Renzel continued, giving each word due weight and consideration. “Maybe older than that. Very fair skin. Blond hair, medium length. Not anyone you'd consider the criminal type.”

“What do you mean?” Mooney asked gently. “By ‘the criminal type'?”

“Well,” Renzel said in a low confiding tone. “Around here, in this neighborhood, it's the minorities who generally cause trouble.”

“Ah,” Mooney said. “Do you remember when I spoke to you before, right after Tina Sukhia died? You thought she might have been stealing drugs from the pharmacy. Was that, in part, because she was dark-skinned?”

“The woman I saw today was definitely Caucasian,” Renzel said quickly, defensively.

Was he going to try to sell Mooney some tale about Emily Woodrow admitting herself to the hospital under a false name? Feigning cancer, so she could get a good shot at Muir? How was he planning to explain “Thelma Hodges's” medical chart, with Muir's handwriting all over it?

My throat felt dry. I wished I'd paid closer attention to that chart. Undecipherable, that's what Donovan had said. Undecipherable.

Mooney glanced at me and I gazed steadily back at him. He didn't nod or smile. Maybe he moved a fraction of a second slower. Maybe his jaw worked.

Renzel slapped both hands to his head, then leaned abruptly forward. His hand smacked against Mooney's thigh.

“Oh, my God,” he said. “If I'd checked right then, gone to see what was going on, I might have saved him. I'll never forgive myself. Never. Muir was a fine man. A decent man. He treated me like a son.”

He was good, this Renzel guy, very good.

“What time was it?” I asked quietly, speaking to him for the first time, “when you saw this woman?”

“Not even fifteen minutes before Jerome—before his body was found in the supply room. She could still be posing as a patient. She could be anywhere by now. I know your man posted guards, but there would be no reason for her to stay once she'd done what she did—”

Hadn't he had time to check “Mrs. Hodges's” whereabouts? Doreen Gleeson, the observant nurse, must have discovered the body too soon.

“You know that a syringe was found in the supply room?” Mooney asked.

“I didn't. You mean …” He paused and licked his lips. “It's almost like the other one. I know this: Jerome got a threatening letter, an anonymous letter. I told Jerome he ought to take the letter to the police, but ignoring it would be more like him. He wouldn't want to make trouble for the poor woman.”

“The poor woman,” I repeated. “Then Dr. Muir knew who'd sent the letter?”

“He suspected the mother of a former patient,” Renzel said.

“Did he tell you her name?” Mooney asked.

How far would Renzel go? I wondered.

“I might recognize it,” he said, waiting for Mooney to name Emily Woodrow.

Instead Mooney said, “Dr. Renzel, I think we should continue this conversation downtown.”

Mooney didn't say a word about calling an attorney. He didn't do anything stupid like trying to cuff Renzel or read him his rights. It must have been in Mooney's eyes, the knowledge that he'd caught a killer.

“Don't move, don't speak, don't do anything,” Renzel commanded. He was staring at me as if Mooney's compliance was a foregone conclusion.

It was. Mooney sagged on the couch, his eyes unfocused, his mouth open. He was trying to speak, but he couldn't.

“What—”

“Shut up.” Renzel's hand came out of his pocket and I got a glimpse of the tiny syringe tight between his index and middle fingers. Mooney hadn't seen it at all. Had he felt the jab?

“Stand up.”

I did.

“Stand next to me.”

My feet moved.

“Walk to the elevator.” He grabbed my right arm above the elbow in a firm left-handed grip. The syringe, in his right hand, shrouded by the folds of his lab coat, was close to my side.

If it were a gun, I'd know. Know whether it was cocked, whether the safety was off, know what my chances were, what organs the bullet would pierce. I'd know whether it was a .22, which would give me a faint chance, or a .9mm cannon, which wouldn't.

But a syringe … what had its poison done to Mooney? Was it the same stuff that had killed Tina Sukhia? Jerome Muir?

“That cop
knew
. You knew,” Renzel said, his hand biting into my arm. “What did I do wrong?”

“Emily Woodrow's not a prisoner anymore. Didn't Muir get a chance to mention that before you killed him?”

“Where is she?” was all he said.

“Police custody.”

“Push the button,” he said. “Down.”

Most drugs, you have to hit the vein. Intramuscular's not as good. I learned that from junkies. Had he hit a vein with Mooney? How much time did Mooney have?

I stared at a silent loudspeaker, willing it to life. Code Something. Call the code for reviving a police lieutenant pumped full of a substance that might or might not prove lethal.

I didn't intend to get into any elevator with a maniac holding a loaded needle. Once inside, it would be too easy. A quick slap on the butt, a shot in the vein if he got fancy. Carlyle on the floor, and him out the door, and on the way to the airport.

My handbag hung over my left shoulder, occasionally bumping my hip. My handbag with my gun inside, the gun I'd taken because of Emily's insistent questions.

“Can you use it?”

“Would you do it again?”

Not when I can't reach it, dammit. Could I manage to swing the handbag, knock the syringe away?

I had a quick vision of Mooney, head lolling against the arm of the couch. How long before anyone strolled over to the lounge by the operating theater? How long before someone went looking for the officer in charge?

How long before they searched the elevators?

“Dammit. Why doesn't this thing come?” Sweat was beading on Renzel's forehead. Obviously, this wasn't his style, this immediate, physical crime. He preferred long-distance hits, where you never got to see your victim.

“I thought Muir was the boss,” I said. “But I guess it was your show all the way.”

“Shut up. We're going to try a staircase.”

That was fine with me.

Maybe security had turned off the juice to the elevators. That would mean someone had found Mooney, someone knew what was going on. They'd be looking for us.

The silent speaker suddenly boomed. Code Red.

Dammit, I thought they used numbers here.

“What's that?” I asked.

“They probably found your cop friend.”

“Did you kill him?”

“I'm not a killer,” he said.

“What do
you
call it?”

“Profit and loss. Business, that's what I call it.”

How much could the man see without those heavy glasses? How could I knock them off?

“It's hard to believe Muir never knew what was going on,” I said.

Renzel flushed, and I realized it was with pleasure. Pleasure at having duped Muir, the man who'd “treated him like a son.”