Broken Hope, page 22
I tuck the ampules into my purse and close the crash cart drawer. Next month’s inventory check by Alice will reveal their absence, but it’s possible it could be written off as human error. Why would any of the staff take ampules of digoxin?
Why indeed.
Next I grab a syringe from a drawer by the sink. Then I turn off the light and exit the treatment room. My heartbeat is steady. No adrenaline rush. No second thoughts. No worries I’ll be caught. It’s liberating when you know you won’t be around for the consequences.
Back at my workstation, I power off my laptop, grab my purse, and head out the same way I came in.
It is now 7:40 p.m.
In less than twelve hours, Kim will get her tune-up.
39
At six the next morning, the physician parking ramp of Boston General buzzes from nearby street traffic and stinks of gas fumes. Although the sun is rising and light streams through the concrete openings, nothing but dark shadows hover in the corner where I wait for Kim Lombardi.
She should be leaving soon. The hospitalists pass off their patients at 6:00 a.m. to avoid the bustle of the nursing staff change at seven. According to the hospital operator I spoke to last night, Kim was on shift during the night.
One row over a door clicks open, and an engine starts. Soon a Prius rounds my way. It’s doubtful the driver can see me since I’m pressed against the wall in the shadows behind a pillar, but I make myself smaller all the same.
Kim’s Nissan Altima is close by. Finding her car took a few minutes of wandering the deck, but at least I knew what to look for. Back in residency when she was dating Dan Knudson and hunting for a new car, the two of them debated whether she should go with an Accord or an Altima. She decided on the latter, probably because Dan preferred the former. Once it was registered, he teased her about the license plate. Its first three letters spell MUF. To this day, he calls it the Muffmobile. Does that bother Kim? With her, you never know, but I do know that her license plate made the Muffmobile easy to find.
My clothing is dark—dark shoes, dark jeans, dark hoodie cinched around my face to reveal little of my features—but that’s the extent of my disguise. Kim knows me. She also knows it was me in Michael’s sneaky video. No sense pretending otherwise. A security camera hangs near the hospital access door, but it can’t capture me here against the wall behind the pillar. It might spot me once I approach Kim, but it will catch nothing more sinister than two women huddling near a car.
Inside my right hoodie pocket, my gloved hand clenches my stun gun. In the other pocket, a syringe contains the last of my sedative reserve. Roofies won’t work. No way can I get Kim to take them.
The duffel bag over my shoulder holds the rest of what I need. Duct tape, a few sharp tools for incentive, and—as a last resort—my syringe of pilfered digoxin. I can’t imagine it will come to that. Hopefully, I’ll extract the information I need from her—the names of the patients whose lives she has stolen—before the digoxin ever comes into play. Then I’ll turn her over to the police.
But if plan A fails and I have to use plan B, I will be forced to leave this world shortly after because I will become no different than Kim. I will no longer be worthy to breathe.
So far, only one physician has exited the building during my wait, although two have entered. The early-morning hour helps ensure an unpopulated deck. Still, the tension in my neck and shoulders won’t ease until both Kim and I are in her car, me driving, her slumped in the back seat.
At six ten, my palms start to tingle inside my medical gloves. At six fifteen my mouth tastes the sting of adrenaline. She’ll be here soon.
As if conjuring her with my thoughts, Kim exits the hospital stairwell. Even from across the parking ramp her understated form is recognizable despite the rest of her being forgettable. She wears a shapeless linen dress and pointed-toe loafers that tap softly on the concrete deck. Her highlighted hair with its darker roots is pulled back in a ponytail.
I shrink farther into the shadowed corner of the wall. I can’t act until she clicks open her car. My pulse ratchets up, and this is how I know I’ve done the right thing with Bo. The thought of hurting him sparked nothing inside me but regret. Stopping Kim sparks the opposite.
My gaze travels from her advancing form to the hospital door she just exited. No one else has exited behind her. When she is less than fifteen feet away, she clicks her key fob and unlocks the door. She returns her keys to her purse. When she is five feet away, she pulls her phone from her dress pocket, pauses, and reads what is likely a text.
I hold my breath. If she’s called back to the hospital, my plan will be ruined. By the time she comes out again, it will be too close to the seven o’clock shift change, and abducting her will be far too risky. Someone would notice something.
There’s always tomorrow, I suppose, but I have no idea whether she works tonight. Showing up at her house today is an option, too, but as soon as she sees it’s me, I’ll lose the element of surprise which might give her time to act first.
Now my heart is in my throat. I haven’t made a plan C.
But no need. She types a return message and then crosses the last few feet to her car, her gaze still on her phone. When she reaches for the door handle, I noiselessly leave my shadowed corner, pull out my stun gun, and slink up next to her.
In one smooth motion, I press the weapon against the side of her neck and zap. A breathy cry escapes her, and at first she struggles, but I hold firm, pressing her body against the car with my own. I administer a good four seconds of voltage. When her body weakens and no longer resists me, I hold her tightly in an embrace, as if we are merely friends having a good hug.
As a unit, we step back to the rear door, my feet moving, hers dragging. She is a couple of inches shorter than me and maybe ten pounds heavier, which makes the movements awkward, especially with her purse poking me in the chest, but within seconds I ease her into the car and close the door. Only when I’m seated in the driver’s seat in front of her do I scan the parking deck to see if anyone saw us.
No one. Only a guy in scrubs who is just now exiting the hospital door across the ramp. He turns right instead of continuing straight and soon disappears down the next row of cars. When he does, I pull the syringe from my pocket, uncap it, and turn around.
From the back seat, a temporarily disabled but twitchy Kim stares blankly at me. It’s not much different from her usual expression, so it’s difficult to know how much of her vacancy is from electrical stupor. Shocking her for as long as I did should net me at least five to ten minutes of incapacitation, maybe even more. Still, I don’t dare drive until she is sedated because it’s not like I can duct tape her to the inside of the car without someone noticing on the road, and I certainly can’t drag her out to the trunk. I took enough risk as it is.
Leaning over the seat, I inject the sedative into the crook of her elbow. Thanks to her lack of resistance, I manage to slip the needle into a vein for quicker onset of action, even without using the tourniquet in my pocket.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” I say as I depress the plunger. “Well, any more than this. Unless…” I narrow my eyes and, in a much crisper tone, add, “you don’t cooperate.”
When I finish, I snatch the ID badge still attached to her dress pocket and leave it up front with me. Then I return to a seated position behind the wheel and watch her in the rearview mirror, lowering it so I can get a view of her lying down. In my gloves, I’ll leave no fingerprints. When her eyes close and her breathing deepens, I put on my seatbelt and push the car’s start button. The keys in her purse are close enough to allow it.
Then I pull out of the spot, work my way down the ramp, and exit through the gate with her ID card, as if this were simply any other day.
40
A conked-out Kim sits strapped to the chair in the middle of my barn. Her head hangs low, and her chin hovers above her chest. Duct tape encircles her body, pinning her arms to her side and tethering her ankles to the wooden legs.
It is barely past eight in the morning, and already the air hangs like a sodden coat. Overcast daylight slips through the slats of the barn’s walls, and some crows have made the roof their home. It’s been Caw! Caw! Caw! ever since I got here, and it’s starting to grate on my nerves.
The scattered straw on the dirt floor smells pungent, made worse by the urine-soaked stain at the crotch of Kim’s taupe dress. Being on the receiving end of a stun gun can do that, especially when followed by a sedative chaser. Her humiliation brings me no joy. My goal is to make her stop killing people, not to debase her.
Seeing her tied up like that, I’m reminded of the wife beater nearly seven weeks ago. His was the last tune-up that brought me satisfaction. Gave me a reason to live. Made me feel like I was doing my small part for humanity. After that, everything got smeared with crap. I took too much sick pleasure with the dog abuser (although I did free Shelly—now known as Maggie—so that should justify it), and with the barista, I lost control and went overboard.
I stare at Kim from my cross-legged position on the ground. She’ll sleep for a while still, which is good because I need to pay a visit to her house in Brighton. First though, I need to finish snooping through her phone. Luckily for me, she has made her face-recognition setting less secure. Doesn’t require a direct, open-eyed gaze. My own phone’s setting is similarly disabled, but I’m rethinking that now. It’s ironic, the very thing meant to make a phone secure—face recognition to unlock it—makes it wonderfully helpful to those of us who cross questionable boundaries.
I already deleted Michael’s video of me, along with the screenshots she took from it. Although she claims to have another file of it on a thumb drive somewhere, I find nothing else ominous on her phone. Not that I expected her Notes app to have a bulleted list of the patients she’s killed, but her phone is as featureless as she is. Medical apps, shopping apps, a meal-delivery one too. Even her contact list is thin, mostly other physicians and hospital personnel she needs to connect with on a professional level. Very few names seem personal.
Her text messages are similarly job-related, save for one from her transplant-surgeon sister who sent no less than seven photos of herself posing with her recent award, and another one from her father asking if Kim has finally considered doing a fellowship program instead of remaining “just a generalist.”
I glance up at her sleeping form. “Jeez, you’re not kidding. What a bunch of assholes.”
After finding no other personal items on her phone, no pictures with boyfriends or girlfriends or even any pets, sympathy swells within me. Not enough to stop what I’m going to do, but enough to at least help me understand the woman’s motive. Even the sickest minds have a motive. It doesn’t matter if it’s illogical to us. Kim is a sociopath. She hates “perfect” people who don’t appreciate what they have. Or worse, they screw it all up. In her mind, that’s what Jasmine did. Got pregnant with another man’s babies and then lied to Michael about it, letting him believe he was the father.
“But that doesn’t make it right,” I say to her.
I’m not so dimwitted as to not realize someone could say the same to me. The wife beater certainly would. The dog abuser and the barista too.
Returning to Kim’s phone, I spot what I was hoping for: a home security app. I stand, my knees cracking, and gently pull her head back. Using her face once again, I unlock the app. From there I disarm her home security alarm.
I release her head, tear off a piece of duct tape, and press it against her mouth.
“Sorry, Kim,” I say, and I am, but I don’t want her screaming if she wakes up before I get back. Not that anyone but the crows would hear her.
After putting the roll of tape and Kim’s phone in my duffel bag, I check her pockets for any items that might help her escape. My fingers brush the wet patch on her linen dress, and I again feel bad she wet herself. When I find nothing beyond two tissues and a wrapped butterscotch candy, I put my gloves back on and return to her car, ducking the light rain that has begun. The keys are still in her purse, which I placed on the front seat earlier.
I pull out a wadded T-shirt dress from my bag and change clothes in the driver’s seat. The tan color and lack of a waist should help me pass as Kim. A shoulder-length wig comes next. It’s blonder than Kim’s highlights, but it’s the closest one I have to match her.
After a glance in the rearview mirror to make sure everything is in place, I pull out onto the dirt road next to my barn and drive to Brighton.
Even in the hammering rain, I can tell Kim’s neighborhood is older but pretty, with closely spaced homes and small yards. I approach her house, a sage split-level with a single-car garage and a narrow driveway.
The garage-door opener is attached to the passenger side visor. I press it open and drive inside, closing the door behind me. With this much privacy, I might not have had to dress like her. Things are working in my favor. I wonder what my neighbor Nathan would say about those odds.
Exiting Kim’s car with my duffel bag, I clutch her purse under my arm, adjust my wig, and straighten my Kim-ish dress. Then, with my gloves still on, I dig in her purse for the house keys and let myself into the side entrance, which dumps into a laundry room. Thanks to my foresight and her phone app, the security system is already disarmed.
Inside the laundry room, I slip off my shoes and wander into the home, taking in the surroundings. The living room beyond the kitchen and dining room is a study of neutrals, not that I’m surprised. The kitchen, too, is awash in beige tones, but both are neat and tidy, and the open space is cozy. I wonder if she or the owner before her knocked out a wall. The home seems too midcentury for such an open design.
A jigsaw puzzle spans the oval table, the box displaying two girls blowing bubbles while puppies prance around them. I imagine Kim fitting its pieces together, reruns of ER or Law & Order on the TV in the background. For some reason this rekindles my sympathy.
Knowing I don’t have all morning, I get to snooping. I’m not sure how long she will stay asleep, and I’m not such a monster that I want her waking up in the barn and being terrified for her safety.
The fact I feel this empathy reassures me I haven’t completely lost my way yet. Even so, I rummage through kitchen drawers and cabinets guilt-free. Her laptop on the sofa is next, but it is password-protected, and unless I find a cheat-sheet like Michael’s, I doubt I would be able to guess the code. I close it back up and move on to the bathroom vanities, followed by a spare bedroom that is furnished with a faux-distressed bedroom set and a treadmill. I end with her bedroom.
As a hospitalist, Kim makes decent money—although nowhere near as much as her transplant-surgeon sister and CEO brother—and she has no dependents, yet her bedding and furniture seem more Big Lots than Ethan Allen. Nothing wrong with being frugal, of course.
Unless you’re trying to blend in.
Because you do dirty deeds.
So far, I have found nothing to incriminate her. What did I expect? A dead body under the bed?
The walk-in closet is what I search next. Its racks of clothing show so few hues that I wonder if I’ve gone color blind.
I flick through her dresses. So much similarity between them. As I pull out one for a closer look, something catches my eye on the wall behind it. A small gap, as if a panel is crooked.
Why would there be a panel on a closet wall, a poorly cut one at that? The answer is an easy one. It’s the perfect place to hide something.
I spread the dresses apart and wedge my fingers through the gap in the drywall. I remove the makeshift panel.
And blink at what I find.
41
A collection of five-by-seven photographs stands up in the closet’s cut-out gap, behind which insulation and wood frame are visible. I remove the stack from the shallow hole. All my senses tingle—and not in a good way.
The top picture is a selfie of Kim with a patient. It appears to have been created by a home printer, the quality a bit off. The patient lies supine in a hospital bed, Kim’s face close to his, a slight smile on her lips. His eyes are open, but he’s not smiling. In fact, he doesn’t look right at all.
A quick flip through the other photos reveals similar selfies, all with a patient in a hospital bed, all of them wearing the same vacant expression.
It takes a moment for my brain to catch up with my eyes.
These patients are dead!
My body recoils in horror. Are these the people she’s killed? Are the selfies her…her trophies?
I do a quick tally of them, nine in all. In some, Kim looks younger—face thinner, hair cut short by her ears. Was this back in medical school?
I can hardly believe what I’m seeing. What I’m holding. It’s proof of her killings. At least it’s all the proof I need.
My palms sweat inside my gloves. I leave the closet for the better lighting of the bedroom and study each photograph more thoroughly. Men, women, younger, older. Kim did not discriminate. All wear a death mask, eyes open or closed, mouths slack or grimacing. Kim squats next to them, her face close in for the shot, her arm extended to capture it.
I stare hard at a picture of one of the women. Her onyx hair lies matted against the pillow, angst on her pretty but clearly deceased face. This must be Jasmine, Michael’s wife. The woman whose death tormented him so much he made it his mission to end me, not realizing until too late I wasn’t the killer.
A noise escapes me, and I struggle to swallow my emotion. I have spent the past couple of years feeling nothing but anger or apathy, but during this past month almost every emotion in the dictionary has exploded inside me. Every emotion but peace.
I notice something else. Jasmine’s photograph is the thickness of two pictures. I free it from the eight other images and flip it over.
