Healed to Death, page 17
“Maria?”
It was a minute before she reached them. She looked around as if they were surrounded by watchers, even though no one else was showing the least bit of attention to Maria or to Zachary and Kenzie. They were just people at the park, walking with their ice cream cones or bike. Enjoying the fresh air and bright green growth of Vermont.
“How did she find us?” Kenzie asked Zachary.
He just looked at her and raised his brows. He was the one who had been watching for people to follow them. Kenzie had said that he was being paranoid.
“Dr. Kirsch,” Maria greeted them a little breathlessly. “I’m so glad I found you. When you weren’t at the medical examiner’s office or at home…”
“How did you know I wasn’t either of those places? And how did you find me here?”
Maria swallowed. Her smile was strained, but determined. “I just… had a feeling that you would be here.”
Kenzie studied her. How? Zachary would have a raft of theories, she was sure. Starting with the one he had proposed a couple of days before, that someone was tracking Kenzie’s cell phone location. What had Zachary called it? A sand trap?
“You came all this way by bike?” Zachary asked.
Maria nodded. That was how she told them she got around, wasn’t it? She didn’t look like she had just traveled the highway all the way from Clintock. But she hadn’t said that’s where she had been. Maybe she had been staying in Roxboro since they had last talked.
“Things are happening,” she said intensely, wringing her hands. “I don’t like it. You have to be more careful.”
“More careful?” Zachary repeated. “What do you mean? We haven’t been doing anything wrong.”
“Kenzie was on the TV.” Maria pointed at Kenzie’s chest insistently. Kenzie felt like she would have pounded her finger into Kenzie’s chest to make her point if she thought she would get away with it. But Kenzie wasn’t going to be bullied and pushed around, and maybe Maria sensed that.
“I wasn’t on the TV. But they mentioned me on the TV,” Kenzie admitted.
Maria nodded. “I told you they were following me,” she said. “You should not have told them anything.”
“I didn’t tell them anything. What are you talking about?”
“Let’s go sit down,” Zachary suggested, encouraging them both over to a more secluded part of the park with benches where they could put their heads together and figure out what was going on.
Maria shook her head, but went with them, wheeling her bike along. The back wheel was reverberating, in need of oil.
“We haven’t told anybody anything,” Zachary told Maria. “What’s going on?”
Of course, that wasn’t true. Kenzie had talked to Dr. Cook and Detective Samuels, to the shelter and the clinic doctors and nurses, and to the homeless people they had tried to get information from. And also to Dr. Simon, who was still—as far as Kenzie knew—running the mobile clinic. A lot of people knew she had been asking questions and trying to pin down exactly what had happened to Jack Lane. Had word from one of them, or several of them in concert, gotten back to Maria? Or was the leak somewhere else entirely?
“Do you know what he is doing?” Maria demanded.
“Who?” Kenzie asked, as if she didn’t know.
“The Night Doctor,” Maria hissed, then looked around to make sure they had not been overheard. “It’s worse. It’s much worse than we ever thought.”
“Tell us about it,” Zachary said calmly. “We’ll do whatever we can to help.”
Maria’s eyes darted back and forth. “It’s worse than you could imagine. Oh,” she put both hands over her face, moaning, “You just don’t know, Zachary.”
“Tell me about it.”
“They are taking people’s parts!” Maria touched her stomach and poked and prodded at herself. “What if they took my parts when they worked on me? What if they are selling them to someone else, and my parts are in someone else on the other side of the world?” Her eyes were wide. “We can’t let them do that.”
“No,” Kenzie agreed. “We won’t let them. There are laws against trafficking in human organs. It’s okay. They can’t do that. I’m sure no one has taken your organs.”
Maria clutched at her body, worried. Kenzie looked at Zachary. Could he now see that she was paranoid and not quite connected with reality?
“You would be able to tell if they had taken your organs,” Zachary told her. “They didn’t. Everything is still where it is supposed to be.” He leaned closer. “Where did you hear that they were in the organ trade?”
Kenzie kept her lips tightly closed. She didn’t believe that any of what Maria had to say came from a place of reason and sanity. It was not unusual for a person with schizophrenia to believe that something had been put into or taken out of her body. It was a common theme, like bugs and aliens.
“That’s why they are treating the homeless,” Maria insisted. “They don’t have anywhere to go. They just keep taking more and more out of them. And then… they disappear.”
Venice, too, had said that people had disappeared. Kenzie hadn’t had a way to look into it. Missing person cases for homeless people were a nightmare. The police didn’t like to take them. Unless there was some way to show that something had happened to them and they had not just wandered off or taken a train—or bicycle—to the next town.
“Who disappeared?” Kenzie asked. “Do you have proof of this?”
“I don’t have proof,” Maria scoffed. “That’s why they do it!”
“If you can’t show us that, there’s no way for us to find out where they went.”
“You don’t really want to know,” Maria decided. “You don’t want me to be right. You think if you ignore it, it will just go away. Nobody has to worry about Maria or Ella or any of the homeless folk. You cared once,” she turned to Zachary, appealing to him, “You remember when you were on the street, trying to survive? You remember the people who helped you to get a leg up?”
“Of course I do,” Zachary said. “Look at me, Maria. I want to help. Don’t worry about anything else. Just pay attention to me.” He obviously didn’t want Kenzie to interfere with his handling of Maria. They didn’t need her logical, reasonable comments and questions.
Maria would need a referral to some kind of mental health program. Maybe an intake at the hospital. Kenzie knew a few people there now, thanks to Zachary. They would help her to find the right placement for Maria.
“Is all of this being done by the Night Doctor?” Zachary asked.
Maria nodded vigorously. “Yes. It’s him. It’s all him. We have to stop him.”
“We are trying to. Others have tried to, and he just keeps hiding and doing what he says. Have you seen him? Do you know what he looks like?”
Kenzie felt an electric buzz of excitement. Maria had apparently encountered the Night Doctor more than once. She could describe him and, even better, pick his picture out of a lineup. She could tell them whether or not Evan Hartfield was the Night Doctor and whether he was the one who had given Jack Lane a transfusion the night he had died. Then they could talk to Evan Hartfield and find out his version of what had happened that night and why he had disposed of the body the way he had. He could fill in all of the blanks for them.
“Of course I know what he looks like,” Maria told them, looking offended. “I told you he treated me. You think I am blind?”
“Well, it seems like he doesn’t want people to know who he is. I thought he might have worn a mask when he saw you. It would be easy for a doctor to hide his face from the people he treats.”
“Oh yes, it would be,” Maria agreed, obviously forgiving Zachary. “But he didn’t. I did see him.”
“Can you describe him?”
Maria fiddled with the beads at the end of one of her braids as she considered. “I suppose he is good-looking. Dark hair, blue eyes. Very young.” She shook her head. “I can’t believe how young doctors are these days. He’s got very nice manners. Patients like him.”
Kenzie nodded. “That’s what Dr. Simon said.”
“Dr. Simon?” Maria looked surprised. She glanced around the park as if looking for him. “I know Dr. Simon. He is good too, but not young like the Night Doctor. And he asks a lot of questions.” She sighed in exasperation. “So many questions!”
“Did the Night Doctor work with Dr. Simon once?”
“Did he?” Maria considered. “I don’t know. So many different doctors work with the mobile clinic. Different all the time.”
“That’s true,” Kenzie agreed. One of the problems the mobile clinic faced was that the doctors were changing all the time, depending on who was available. Since it was mostly volunteer positions, they couldn’t dictate when people came in.
Zachary was fiddling with his phone. Kenzie wasn’t sure what he was doing, but let him work on whatever it was while she talked with Maria.
“Which do you like better, the Night Doctor or the mobile clinic?”
Maria held up her hands, unable to decide. “It’s so hard to get a doctor when you need one. They only come into the community now and then. And there were so many people to see. The Night Doctor is much faster. And so sweet.”
She probably had a crush on him. Simon had said that he was popular with the patients. But being handsome and popular did not make him a competent doctor.
“Here,” Zachary offered. “Do you know any of these doctors?”
He flicked through a few pictures of doctors he had arranged in an album on his phone. Maria made an interested noise and leaned over. She studied them closely.
“I know this one,” Maria paused, looking at one of them. Leaning closer for a better look, Kenzie was surprised to see Dr. Cook’s familiar handsome face. She registered his general description, remembering what Maria had just said. Handsome, dark hair, blue eyes. Just like Dr. Cook.
Maria kept flipping through the pictures. “And this one,” she paused and looked at another man. Same general description, but not someone Kenzie knew. Those were the only two in the six or eight pictures that Zachary had assembled. Some of them, she suspected, were from stock photography sites.
“Is one of those the Night doctor?” Zachary asked.
Maria looked through them again, frowning. She paused at both Dr. Cook’s photo and the other young doctor she had recognized the first time. She flipped through them a couple of times, eventually settling on the other doctor. “This one.” She shook her head. “I told you, they are so young!”
Kenzie nodded her agreement. She remembered when she was a kid, how old all of the doctors who treated Amanda were. She had never considered any of them young, even the students. Now, even doctors who had been practicing for a few years hardly seemed to be more than teens.
Zachary took the phone back from Maria, checking the photo she had selected and giving Kenzie a subtle nod, which she took to mean that Maria had, in fact, picked out Dr. Evan Hartfield.
But her thoughts were stuck on Maria also knowing Dr. Cook. How would she know him? He was a pathologist. The substitute medical examiner. Was it just because he and Dr. Hartfield were so similar in appearance? Or was there more to it?
Dr. Cook had made it clear to her that he didn’t want to pursue the identity of the Night Doctor any further.
Was that just a coincidence?
37
They bought Maria a hot dog for her supper and offered to take her to the grocery store or anywhere else she needed to go before parting company with her. Maria shook her head, patted Zachary on the arm, and said he was sweet, but an old lady like her knew how to get around and get the things she needed. She still seemed somewhat aloof toward Kenzie, despite seeking her out. She clearly favored Zachary. Kenzie couldn’t say she blamed her.
Eventually, they said goodbye to her and watched her ride off on her bike. Children laughed and played a game of catch in a field nearby.
“Do you think she’s going all the way back to Clintock?” Kenzie asked.
“No, I doubt it. She probably has somewhere to stay here. If she is going back to Clintock, she’ll probably hitch a ride with someone with a truck most of the way there and just throw her bike in the back.”
That would explain how Maria could appear not to be sweaty and windblown after making her way from one town to the other.
“That’s dangerous. Hitchhiking like that. Especially for an old homeless lady nobody will even look for if she disappears.”
Zachary nodded his agreement. “But you can’t stop people from living how they want to, even if it is dangerous. Just like you can’t stop them from drinking or taking other risks.”
Kenzie pondered this. It was true. People made their own choices about how they were going to live.
“So what is my next step?” Kenzie asked. “Just reporting to Detective Samuels that Maria identified Evan Hartfield as the Night Doctor? Then let him run with it?”
“I can swear an affidavit with the pictures attached so he can see that we showed her a photo lineup rather than just a single picture. Better for any evidence that has to be admitted to court. You don’t want to prejudice a witness by only showing them one picture.”
“She hesitated about Dr. Cook. Said that she knew him.”
“I noticed,” Zachary agreed. “But she didn’t say he was the Night Doctor, just that she knew him.”
“Yeah. So you think that’s okay?”
“She might have run into him somewhere else. She didn’t say where, and I didn’t think it would be wise to inquire further and cement his picture in her mind.”
Kenzie nodded slowly. These were all considerations she never had to worry about in the cases she presented. Her evidence didn’t depend on the vagaries of the human mind.
“Will Maria have to testify in court?”
“It depends on what she saw. I don’t know yet. We’ll need to keep track of her.”
“That could be sort of hard, considering her lifestyle. What if, right when we need her, she disappears?”
Zachary shrugged. He was occupied with something on his phone. Some days, Kenzie really found herself annoyed at how easily distracted he was.
“Zachary, I know you know this world better than I do, but some things are outside our control. What if something happens and Maria goes missing? Or decides that she doesn’t want to talk to either of us anymore and drops out of sight?”
Zachary turned his phone around and Kenzie saw he had it open to a maps app. She studied it closely for a moment, then saw a triangle Zachary tagged with “Maria 1” and one overlapping it tagged “Maria 2.”
“Wait—you put trackers on Maria? Is that what this is?”
Zachary nodded. “Sure. You didn’t want me to just let her ride away from here, did you?”
“No! But I didn’t think to—I didn’t even know you had any trackers on you. How did you get them onto Maria? What if she finds them or changes her clothes? She won’t keep the same things on forever.”
“One in her bike frame and one in her bag. Either of those could get stolen, but hopefully not both at the same time.”
“How did you do that without either of us seeing?”
He smiled. He gave a little flourish like a magician making a coin disappear via sleight of hand and looked smug.
38
Kenzie worked her way through the emails and reports that had come in since she had been in the office last. It was amazing how much they could pile up in just a couple of days. But the office was as quiet as a—well, as quiet as a morgue, as she plowed through the work.
Unlike Zachary, who could not work without background noise to distract one part of his brain and keep it entertained, Kenzie preferred silence. She didn’t turn on a radio or something on her phone. She wouldn’t have any visitors from the public to talk through filling out forms on a Saturday when the office was officially closed. None of the other employees who drifted in and out performing their various tasks were there. Dr. Cook was in his office, but he had promised to stay out of Kenzie’s way, and said she was to pretend he wasn’t even there. When Kenzie had peeked in at him, he was hard at work, focused on his computer. The only other sign he was in the office was the fresh coffee in the break room, which Kenzie appreciated and helped herself to.
Her breath quickened when she came to a series of reports back from the lab with the file number for Jack Lane in the email subject line. Even though she knew what to expect, her heart thumped as she opened them up one at a time and downloaded the reports. Then she highlighted them and opened them all at the same time so she could browse quickly through them and see if there were any surprises.
The toxicology report was no surprise. The BAC on the alcoholic was through the roof. Whatever else had happened to him, he’d at least not been suffering any withdrawals the night he had died. He’d been well-dosed with his favorite medicinal aid and feeling no pain.
Though when she looked through the other reports and remembered the shape his stomach had been in, she doubted that he had been clear of pain. Even the quantity of alcohol he had consumed had probably not been enough to mask the agony of holes burned through his stomach, the membranes of his esophagus tearing with the force of his vomiting, and his dying, cirrhotic liver.
Kenzie read through the various blood tests that they had requested. It was all pretty much as she expected, until she came to the line with the results of the Direct Antiglobulin or Coombs Test indicating the presence of antibodies bound to the red blood cells.
Kenzie sat back, staring at it, her head whirling.
She had not been expecting that.
She read the lines again. She looked through the other reports and came back to it again. The words had not changed. They stood out as if illuminated by a spotlight. Kenzie swore.
Everything had changed in an instant.
She tried to calm her brain down and list the next steps in a logical order.
She called Detective Samuels. She didn’t expect to reach him, but had been hoping he would answer even though it was a Saturday and he was not supposed to be in the office. He still had a cell phone and, like Kenzie, could decide whether to take business calls on his day off. But he chose not to, so she left him a brief message to give her a call to go over urgent lab results, and hung up.
