Fatal Rounds, page 22
This is cruel, I know, and I have no idea whether the police will believe Trey or not, but it’s too late to play by the rules.
He moans and leans against my car. Thankfully, he doesn’t cry. I don’t have time for that.
“Listen,” I say. “Someone will pay for Shelly’s murder, but it will be someone who deserves it, someone who’s not innocent at all.”
He stares at the key fob in my hand. He opens his mouth but then closes it without saying a word. Instead, he scratches the flesh near the neckline of his scrubs, first with one hand, then both, as if he wants to climb out of his skin.
I try to reassure him. “The less you know the better, but I promise you’ll come out smelling as clean as fresh laundry. In fact, if my idea goes south, I’ll confess my role in this whole thing. I’ll tell the police you were going to come forward about Shelly’s death from the start, but I wouldn’t let you. I’ll take the fall.”
He stops scratching. “I can hold you to that?”
“You can.” I mean it, too, because if my plan doesn’t work, all hope of catching Dr. Donovan will be lost, and I’ll be the one locked up.
Trey exhales, and his body seems to relax, making me question his sincerity about confessing in the first place. His nonverbal cues suggest he’s greatly relieved to have a way out.
I open my car door. “Twenty minutes,” I say. “Back here.”
I start my Civic, pull out of the lot, and drive a short distance to the employee lot closest to the surgical wing. I already located Dr. Donovan’s Highlander there earlier this morning. I confirmed the license plate number from the picture I took of it back when I staked out his house.
After grabbing the first parking spot I find, which is three rows down from his, I pull my hoodie up and put on the medical gloves I placed under the seat earlier. I get out and tuck my hands in my pockets. A quick scan of the area tells me I’m alone. I purposely chose this time of the morning because the seven-to-three workers are already in the hospital, and the overnight eleven-to-seven shifters have already left. Most residents and med students are here by now too. The last few stragglers would be late-arriving surgical attendings, but I doubt there are many of those.
Whether or not Dr. Donovan’s vehicle is in the eye of a security camera, I don’t know. I’ll have to risk it and hope that my plan works and that there’ll be no reason to check it in retrospect. In the meantime, I keep my face as hidden inside the sweater hoodie as I can.
I reach the black Highlander. With deliberate but casual moves, as if I’m simply opening the back of my own vehicle, I press the unlock button on the key fob. When the hatch raises, I retrieve the small plastic bag in my pocket. From it, I pull a few strands of Shelly’s blond hair and scatter them inside the trunk. Flecks of her scraped skin follow. Next I rub the chunk of tissue I cut from her Y-incision over the carpeted trunk floor, removing any particulates of tissue that cling there. The deposited clues should be inconspicuous on first glance, which is how I want it.
Even I’m enough of a sensibly minded thinker to know my actions cross a line, a low blow of the crudest kind. I mentally apologize to Shelly for this callous desecration of her remains. But at least this way you won’t die in vain, I tell her. This way, you’ll help stop a murdering psychopath.
The whole thing takes only a few seconds. I close the hatch, relock the car, and stroll back to my own vehicle as if I don’t have a care in the world.
A short time later, I stop at my apartment to change into shorts, a T-shirt, and sandals. I also pack a bag for another night’s stay at Home and Hearth Healing. Even though Dr. Donovan is at the hospital and should be there all day, I don’t like leaving my mother alone, not even for this brief amount of time. But I have things I need to do, including visit Shawna in the hospital, and since I don’t have a clone, I’m going to have to call my brother for backup.
I sit at my desk and unlock my phone. After three rings, Ned answers. “Hey, sis, this isn’t a good time.” A guitar strums in the background.
“Are you at the music store?” I ask.
“I am.”
“Can you get a few days off?”
“What’s wrong?” His pitch rises. “Is Mom okay? I called a couple weeks ago, and that doctor said she was messed up and needed her poisons upped.”
I doubt very much the eloquent Dr. Dhar used any of those words. “She had a medication adjustment, yes.”
“Why didn’t you call me? What’s wrong with her?” When I don’t respond, he says, “You gotta keep me informed.”
“I’m keeping you informed right now.”
“I’m keeping you informed right now,” he repeats in a robotic voice, which I assume is meant to be me. “Always so stingy with the emotions.”
I stop swiveling in my chair and slam my fist on the desk. “You want emotion? How’s this for freaking emotion? I need you to get your skinny ass over to Morganville and stay in Mom’s room for a couple days. Can you do that? Huh? Can you?”
Silence from the other end. I can almost see his narrow face blinking in shock. Then, “Wow, Liza, I’m sorry. Didn’t mean anything by it. I’ve got the dark fiend in me today, you know? I told you it wasn’t a good time.”
I soften. I shouldn’t have overreacted. As a doctor I understand depression, even though I might not always recognize it as a sister. My voice returns to its normal tone. “It’s all right. Sorry I snapped. Look. Mom’s okay. I just need you to spend some time with her.” I hesitate, wondering how to phrase it. “We’ve…had some threats. Nothing to worry about, but—”
“Threats? What kind of threats?”
“Mom should be safe at the center, safer than she’d be at my place, but I can’t guarantee it, and someone should stay with her for now, that’s all. I need to fix a few things to make the threat go away, and I can’t do that if I’m with her.”
“What kind of things?” he asks warily. His fear makes me remember my father’s advice. Watch out for your brother, tiger. He may be older than you, but he doesn’t have your fortitude.
“Nothing I can’t handle. Really. I’d just feel better having you here.”
With Ned, the less detail the better. He’d rather be oblivious, his guitar pick in one hand and the strings in the other.
“Come on,” I say, hoping to lighten my voice into something he won’t construe as robotic. “It’ll be fun. We’ll play board games like we used to. Home and Hearth Healing has a lot. Remember how much Mom liked playing Pictionary? And Boggle? She might be well enough now to play both.”
He sniffs. “Yeah, okay. I guess I can get away. Give me thirty minutes to pack a bag, and another couple hours to drive there.”
“Thanks, Ned.” Once again, he’s risen to the challenge when it counts.
“It’ll be good to see you, Liza Lou.”
When we disconnect, I return to my desktop computer. As it powers up, I reach for the plate of peanut butter cookies April delivered a short time ago. I was just putting my key in the door when she caught me. Jasmine was with her, giggling and pointing at the cookies. “I put the little peanut butter cups on top,” she said.
I told her they were the best part and shoved one into my mouth. After I swallowed, I said, “You and your mom should go into business together. You can call it April and Jasmine’s Delicious Delights. I’ll be a lifelong customer.”
They both laughed, and after I thanked them for the cookies and made sure Sinclair was leaving April alone, Jasmine asked me to solve the Rubik’s Cube again for her.
“Can’t right now. Too busy.” When her smile faded, I added, “Hold on a sec.” I went to my closet, retrieved the cube, and gave it to her. “Here, practice it in the meantime. Then you can do it for me.”
She giggled again, and we went our separate ways.
When my computer is fully booted, I open the folder containing Megan’s photos, the ones she took at Shelly Parson’s crime scene and subsequently deleted, but not before I sent some to myself. To be safe, I saved them on my hard drive and deleted them from my phone. I study the five I have. I go through them a second time. On the third run-through I find something. It’s in the photo Megan took of the small crowd gathering around the perimeter tape.
I lick my lips. Peanut butter cookie crumbs litter my keyboard. An excited tremor runs through me.
This is it. Jesus, this is it.
How did I not see it before? With a little help from me, this is exactly the catalyst the police will need to search Dr. Donovan’s property. A search warrant is only a call away. They’ll find nothing in his home, of course. He’ll have ditched the potassium chloride by now. But they’ll find something in the trunk of his car, that’s for sure. I get to work on the picture.
Ding ding ding. There’s the bell.
Round 8 to Liza.
31
Convincing Tam that the surgeon who saved her wife’s life yesterday is actually the one behind her accident will not be easy. The idea of even trying to ties me in knots. Tam could end up hating me. Though I wouldn’t like that outcome, I could live with it, but losing her as a resource to put Dr. Donovan away is unthinkable.
Hopefully, with what I carry in my satchel, she’ll have no choice but to pass the idea on to the detective in charge of Shelly’s case. That should get me one step closer to stopping Sam permanently.
At least Shawna is having a stable hospital course. That gives me some comfort as I exit the second-floor stairwell and press open the automatic doors that lead to the busy surgical unit.
The blipping monitors and pungent antiseptic smells take me back to my clinical rotations in med school, which, aside from the satisfaction of solving diagnostic puzzles, were my least favorite rotations. My poor bedside manner should surprise no one. It certainly didn’t surprise my psychiatrist. I remember Dr. Lightfoot’s expression when, as a seventeen-year-old, I told him I was pursuing medical school. If a look could be translated into words, his would have said, “Good God, please tell me you’re joking.” When I mentioned that pathology was my specialty of choice, he exhaled as if he’d been holding his breath for days. “Oh good. Yes, good. I think that could work. We might need some extra sessions during your clinical years though.”
When I find Shawna’s room, I pause outside. A wall-mounted defibrillator rests near my head, and a guard rail runs the length of the wall should I need help walking if Tam dropkicks me out of the room. Soft voices drift through the partially open door, along with a weird whirring noise.
It’s now or never, Liza Lou. The stupid nickname from my brother gives me a weird urge to laugh. Finally, I knock and push the door open.
My face immediately heats. I’m not often embarrassed, but I am now. Not only is Shawna’s right leg casted and suspended in traction, her upper torso is at a forty-five-degree angle and completely exposed save for the mechanical pump emptying both breasts and the surgical bandage covering her abdomen. That explains the whirring noise I heard through the door. Tam flips through a news magazine in a chair near the bed, her legs crossed and her shorts reaching her knees.
“I’m sorry,” I mumble and start to leave.
“Don’t be silly.” Shawna’s voice is hoarse and lacks her usual zing. “Come in. I was out of it when you were here yesterday. I still look a mess.”
Tam greets me with a nod. I stand there in front of them, not sure where to look.
Shawna lowers her own gaze to her chest, one hand on each plastic collecting bottle, both of which are a third full. “I can’t use any of this—too many drugs in my system—but I’m determined to keep up my milk supply.”
Tam sets the magazine on the bedside table, next to a pink emesis basin and a matching pitcher of water. “Good thing Seth weaned himself. Otherwise, when Angie brings him in, he’d be royally pissed to not get the goods from the best containers ever.”
While the wives smile at the joke, I stand there stupidly, hands at my side, satchel digging into my back. Lactation is not a world I care to know.
Shawna chuckles and then winces at the pain the motion causes. “Look at Liza’s face. It’s like she just ate roadkill.”
Tam laughs too, and my face grows even hotter.
Luckily, I’m saved by a woman entering the room. “Knock knock,” she says, seemingly oblivious to Shawna’s milk-pumping.
Her hair is long and loose, and her limbs are those of a dancer. I assume she’s their neighbor, Angie, because Seth is in her arms. He’s dressed in crimson shorts and a Morganville Police Department onesie that must’ve been custom-made. His chubby legs kick the woman’s side, and his teething ring takes a similar beating. Not only is his onesie soaked with saliva, so is the shoulder of Angie’s linen tunic. There may be some snot there too, and I’m suddenly grateful that sex isn’t a priority for me. In fact, I may never have it again.
“There’s my sweet baby.” Shawna’s shadowed and sickly eyes brighten. “Can you take him, Tam? As soon as I’m done pumping, I’ll see if I can hold him without too much pain.”
“You probably shouldn’t,” I say, the doctor in me surfacing. “He’s too active. He might kick your incisions. With a liver laceration and a splenic hematoma, that wouldn’t be good.” I’m recalling Dr. Donovan’s listing of injuries in the waiting room yesterday, and the fact he caused them makes the organs inside my own belly burn.
Shawna looks disappointed. We’ve been friends long enough that she’s pretty easy for me to read. “You’re right.” To Tam, who has just received the slobbering eleven-month-old, she says, “Just bring his head here so I can sniff it and kiss it.”
Weird, I think to myself. Did my mom ever smell my head?
Angie asks how Shawna is doing.
“It’s going to be a long road, but I’ll be okay.” Her eyes tear up.
I unstick my feet and step forward to awkwardly pat her left foot, which is tucked underneath the blanket. “You’re healthy. You’ll heal well.” It’s the best I can do.
“That’s what the surgeon said too,” Shawna tells Angie. “I’m so grateful he drove by when he did.” I notice neither she nor Tam look my way as she tells Angie about the “lucky coincidence” of Dr. Donovan’s arrival. “If he hadn’t found me at the side of the road and got an ambulance there so quickly, I could have—”
“Don’t even say it,” Angie counters. “You’ve got people who need and love you. It’s not your time yet. Have your parents come down from Maine?”
“They’ll be here shortly.”
As they talk more about Shawna’s surgery, I approach Tam and ask if I can speak to her in the hallway. Her body seems to tense. Clearly, she’s wary and has a pretty good idea of what our topic of conversation will be. With what seems like reluctance, she hands Seth back to Angie and tells them she’ll be right back. Together we exit.
Given Shawna’s room is not far from the nurses’ station and has lots of foot traffic around it, I lead Tam to an empty waiting area I passed on the way in. It’s a small room with a few chairs, a table holding magazines, and a countertop with a coffee and tea machine. We both take a seat.
The moment I reach into my satchel, Tam presses her lips together. “I know what you’re going to say.”
“What am I going to say?”
She falters for a moment and then brings an ankle up to rest on her other knee. “Okay, I don’t know what you’re going to say, but I know it’s something about Dr. Donovan.”
I glance around the windowless room, trying to find a way to phrase my words so she doesn’t immediately dismiss me. “I stumbled on something that I think implicates Dr. Donovan in Shelly Parsons’s death.”
Tam leans her head against the wall and closes her eyes. When she opens them, she turns to me and says, “You need to let this go. We’re worried about you.” When I don’t respond, she adds, “You’re talking about the man who just saved my wife’s life. You expect me to believe he’s a killer?”
I shift to the edge of my seat and pivot my body toward her. “That’s just it. That’s what he wants you to think.” My words sound delusional even to me, so I bite my tongue and shuffle things around in my head. “Look, don’t you think it’s a bit weird he happened to drive past after Shawna was hit?”
“If you’re asking me if it’s a coincidence, sure, but impossible? No. Waverly Boulevard is a pretty well-traveled road.”
“Then why didn’t anyone else spot her and call for help?”
“She was running close to the woods’ edge, as far from the cars as she could. The idiot who hit her must’ve swerved over.” A muscle in Tam’s jaw twitches. “Probably on his cell phone. Knocked Shawna clear into a thicket of trees. Even with her bright running clothes she might’ve been easy to miss.”
“Then how did Dr. Donovan spot her?”
“I don’t know, Liza, but thank God he did, don’t you think?”
“It’s just…hear me out…what if he was the one to hit her?”
Tam’s laugh is more a snort. “Ah jeez, why would he do that? It makes no sense. If he wanted her dead, he’d have left her there.” She makes like she’s about to get up. “Listen, I’ve been patient with you. I know how much you did for Shawna when she was younger, and I’ll always be grateful to you for that, but you’ve got to stop these accusations and—”
“But that’s the whole point, don’t you see?” My head is shaking so hard my cheeks wobble. Must look rational, I remind myself. “He wanted to save her with surgery first. That’s his M.O. He gives a life, and then he and he alone decides if he takes it back. He told me so himself, right before he warned me that if I keep looking into him, he’ll finish what he started with Shawna.” When I see her expression, which might be a cross between exasperation and pity, I add, “I know it sounds crazy, but no one can explain why psychopaths do what they do. They don’t think rationally, at least not when it comes to killing.”
I pause. My throat tightens, and I don’t want to admit the next part, but I do. “And it’s my fault Shawna is hurt. She could’ve died because of me. She could still die because of me.” I close my eyes and breathe.
