Shattered to Death, page 19
Rhys didn’t give any sign of why he had gone to Stanley. Or if maybe he had just been in that part of town and it had been a coincidence that Stanley had seen him out walking. It seemed too much of a stretch that it might have just been a coincidence. He had to have been going to Stanley for something.
“Did something happen, Rhys?” Zachary gazed into Rhys’s eyes. Trying to read him without any verbal communication. “Did someone hurt you? Kidnap you or abuse you…?” Zachary’s eyes again went to Kenzie. This time, probably to make sure he hadn’t managed to trigger her by mentioning kidnapping. The word still made Kenzie’s heart race and her gut clench, but she was stressed already and didn’t think that her response to the word was significant enough for Zachary to see it.
Rhys pulled his hand back from Zachary. They weren’t touching, and it was a definite withdrawal. Zachary looked back at him.
“It’s okay,” he reassured the boy. “Whatever happened, it’s okay. We’ll help you get through it. Okay? I’m not going to force you to talk about it. You know that. I can wait. Handle it however you want to. But you’re safe here. You’re safe here from whatever might have happened to you out there.”
You’re safe here.
Kenzie wished she could be sure Zachary was right. She wanted to reassure Rhys that everything was okay and that he would be safe at Persons and could take his time to tell his own story. But she had her doubts about just how safe it was.
32
Eventually, Zachary was all talked out. He wasn’t getting any more information from Rhys about what had happened to him and why he had been out wandering in the streets so late at night. And why he had lost his ability or will to communicate. Kenzie felt worn out just from watching the interplay between Zachary and Rhys, looking for the tiniest indications of what Rhys was thinking or feeling. She was sure that it must have been even more exhausting for Zachary, and probably for Rhys, too, who seemed to be tired now, at the brink of sleep. His eyes kept blinking, slower and slower, glazing over in the pauses between Zachary’s comments. Eventually, they both knew that it was time to go.
The staff had been keeping an eye on them and, when they exited Rhys’s room, an orderly or male nurse hustled over.
“All done? I’m not sure how you can have such a long visit with someone who does not want to communicate!”
Zachary looked at him. “What makes you think that Rhys doesn’t want to communicate?”
His name tag gave his name as John. He rolled his eyes. “Well, the fact that he doesn’t try. No words, signs, writing, nothing. He’s just completely blocking everyone out.”
Zachary shook his head. “Maybe he’s blocking you out.”
“Everyone else, too,” John insisted. “You’re nothing special. I know he didn’t say a word to you while you were in there. If you’re going to try to tell me that he was communicating with you telepathically, you’re just as disturbed as he is.”
“I am,” Zachary confirmed. “Maybe even more so.”
John looked momentarily confused, his brows drawing together. He looked at Zachary to see whether he was serious, then looked over at Kenzie, waiting for her to laugh or to give him some sign as to whether Zachary was teasing. Kenzie shrugged her shoulders, not bothering to give him any information.
“Would you mind showing us around a little?” Kenzie asked. “I was going to get a tour the last time I was here, but we ended up going too long with our interviews and had to get home.”
“Uh, I haven’t been authorized to do that.”
“I’m not asking about anything confidential or private. Just… the arts and crafts room, where the MDMA or talk therapy are held, if they aren’t in use right now. Any common areas, I’m not asking for trade secrets.”
John looked around for one of the doctors or administrators who could tell him whether this was kosher, but there didn’t seem to be anyone senior around to tell him. Kenzie gave him her most charming smile.
“Oh, come on, John. Are you telling me that the arts and crafts room is a secret? That there is something there I can’t be allowed to see?”
His neck was a little red. Kenzie cajoled, pleased to see that she was having an effect on him. “Please? I would really like to see some of the other areas. It doesn’t have to be anything to do with any studies or treatment options. You must tour prospective patients or families through here from time to time, as they are considering whether it is where they want their loved one to be admitted.”
He shrugged uncomfortably. “Well, yes.”
“Then I don’t see the problem in giving us the tour. As you know, our loved one, Rhys Salter, has just been admitted. And if you want more reason, maybe Zachary here would consider Persons the next time he needs a med review or supervision.”
John looked at Zachary, brows down, then back at Kenzie, not quite believing what she was saying. He knew that she was just trying to get him to give them a tour and didn’t think that she was serious about Zachary, even though she said it in a perfectly serious tone. People didn’t talk about their mental illness that way, or about their potential need to be hospitalized for it again in the future.
“Uh, what…?”
“I have seasonal depression,” Zachary said. “Some years, I end up needing to be admitted for a few weeks. Or longer, if there is a change made to my cocktail or something that needs more intense therapy.”
“You do?”
Zachary nodded. He raised his brows. The orderly cocked his head, brows drawing down, and shook his head slightly. “No…”
“I sometimes need extra support,” Zachary said. “Isn’t that what you’re here for?”
“Of course.” He nodded his agreement. Then he gave a shrug. “Fine, I’ll take you around, but it will be a short tour. There’s a lot going on today, what with…” He didn’t finish.
“The media attention this morning?” Kenzie asked.
“Yeah.” He rolled his eyes. “I don’t know what that chick at the ME’s office is doing, leaking that video to the press. Just what does she think she’s going to accomplish? All she’s going to do is ensure that there are fewer options available for people who really need them.”
Zachary looked at Kenzie, smothering a laugh.
“Maybe it wasn’t the ME’s office,” Kenzie said.
“It was.” He was sure of himself. “She’s been making all kinds of trouble here, coming around, interviewing people, making a pest of herself. Got everybody wound up over it.”
“You think she’s intentionally making trouble?”
He considered for a minute, then grimaced. “I don’t know. I mean… I can see how it looks bad, but sometimes, the only way to get a patient under control is to intervene physically. I don’t mean like that was normal, what you see on the recording, but you can’t hear what’s going on, you can’t see what happened the rest of the day. The guy was trouble. He was all over the place, unpredictable. He needed to be shown that there are consequences. You can’t just diss the staff and refuse to cooperate and think that everybody is going to serve you hand and foot. We’re not here to make the patients happy. We’re here to make them better.”
Kenzie nodded as if this all made perfect sense to her.
John looked at Zachary. “Like I said, that’s not usual. It isn’t like we go around beating up patients or physically restraining people who aren’t doing anything. You wouldn’t be like that. You would be cooperative and understand that sometimes there are rules that you don’t like, or you have to wait, or that it takes time to get meds adjusted. You wouldn’t be like that.”
Zachary nodded. “He was causing a lot of trouble?”
“He’d be like that, quiet, looking like he wasn’t going to be a problem for anyone, and wait until everyone’s attention was somewhere else. And then he’d suddenly explode, causing all kinds of trouble. It was deliberate. You couldn’t leave him alone, couldn’t assume that because he was quiet, he was going to stay that way. All it would take was one patient going over to talk to him, someone getting into his space, and he would go ballistic. You can’t tell from the video how crazy he would get. Everybody had to help get him under control right away, or we wouldn’t be able to.”
They walked in silence for a couple of minutes. John led them into a room that was clearly the arts room. Shelves lined with half-finished sculptures and tools, vertically filed portfolios and paintings, easels, paints, jars of paintbrushes, with some textiles work at the far side of the room, away from the paints.
“Oh, this is cool.” Kenzie walked around the room, looking at the works in progress. “It’s always so neat to see what everybody is working on. Did you ever do anything like this?” she asked Zachary. “Were you ever anywhere they had an art therapy program?”
He shrugged. “When I was a teenager, I remember a couple of programs. But nothing like that in the city psych ward. They just don’t have the funding. If they try to kick off an arts program, it’s just like… pencils and reams of copy paper. As cheap as possible. Pretty hard to get inspired with anything like that.”
“Yeah, that would be hard.”
“I’m not artistic,” he confessed. “My drawings are just about as good as my handwriting.”
Which was to say, unrecognizable to anyone but him. Unless he really spent the time and attention on it, like he did when filling out a form. But the personal notes he made to himself in his notebooks were dauntingly messy.
“You can be artistic in other ways. You have your photography.”
“That’s not really… well, yeah, I guess it is. Some of the stuff I see other photographers putting on display is very artistic, so I guess it can be artistic…”
“Yours is, too. I love having a peek at what you are looking at when you show it to Lorne. You never show it to me because you don’t think it’s good or that I would be interested, but I am. I think your photography is really good.”
He blushed. Kenzie laughed. They headed for the door to exit the art room. Kenzie glanced down at a garbage can she passed, with the remains of a broken sculpture in it. It looked like it had been really detailed, and she stopped to look at the feather pattern on a wing and to try to reconstruct the sculpture in her mind. A bird lifting its wings to take flight, or alighting on a fence post. She took a couple more steps before she heard Janice Martin’s voice in her head.
An eagle, on a branch, just lifting up its wings to take off.
She stopped and looked at the sculpture in the garbage again. Had Janice’s sculpture been broken accidentally? Had someone done it on purpose? Did she know about it?
Kenzie got an uneasy feeling, dread creeping up on her again.
33
What is it?” Zachary asked, instantly zeroing in on Kenzie and the worry that must have been written all over her face. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah. It’s just…” Kenzie couldn’t tear herself away from the broken sculpture and the worried anticipation making her heart race and her breathing quick and shallow. She looked at the orderly. “John… where is Janice Martin? Can you take me to her room?”
He scowled and shook his head. “No. I told you we can’t be bothering the patients. I agreed to show you some of the common areas and, if she is out doing something, you can see her, but—”
“I need to see her. Now.”
“You can’t,” he said flatly. “Now, let’s stop with all the demands. It’s time for you to go. We have too much else to do to be worrying about your questions. Okay? Enough is enough.”
“I want to see Dr. Richards.”
He widened his eyes at her. “I just told you—”
“Get her for me. Have her paged. Something. I need to talk to her.”
“Dr. Richards is very busy.” He looked at his wristwatch. “She’ll be starting a session soon and will be tied up for a couple of hours—”
Kenzie looked around. She started trying random doors, knowing that they were not in the housing wing, but intent on causing enough disruption that he would have to listen to her and call one of the doctors or security.
“Ma’am,” John said in exasperation, trying to stop her. But Zachary stepped in between them and, while he was far from being an imposing figure, he was like the short basketball guard who was always in your face. The orderly could not get past him to deal with Kenzie unless he really got physical, and he didn’t want to do that. Not after the media leak that morning. “Ma’am!”
“Get me one of the doctors,” Kenzie insisted. “I need to see Janice Martin. If I don’t see her, I will call the police.”
“The police? For what? We aren’t required to show you anything or anyone.”
Kenzie pulled out her Medical Examiner’s Office badge. “You see that? I’m law enforcement. And you need to show me Janice Martin’s room or let me talk to someone over your head in administration. Have you got that?”
He looked at the badge, confused and stunned. “What the…?”
She pressed it toward him. “Medical Examiner’s Office. And you know I have an active investigation going on here. So you need to listen to what I’m telling you.”
“But you…” His neck and face flushed a deep red, remembering how he had mocked her and called her out, not realizing who he was talking to.
Kenzie waved this away. “I don’t care what you said about me. I already knew what people were saying. It was on the morning news. Janice Martin’s room. Now.”
He shook his head and staggered away from them, not saying whether he was taking her where she had asked him to or back to an administration office. She followed him anyway. Either one would help. They turned into the housing wing, and he started to work his way down the hall, sticking his head into the doorways of the rooms that stood open to see which was which. There were no nameplates outside the doors, probably for privacy purposes, so a staff member had to either remember each occupant or look inside to see who was there. John was clearly flustered. He probably knew which one was hers when he wasn’t.
“Here,” he motioned to a closed door, “she’s probably having a nap or is out at a therapy appointment.”
With complete disregard for the patient’s privacy, Kenzie grabbed the door handle and pushed the door open. The door stuck and there was resistance as she pushed it open. On the other side, with part of a sheet looped around a corner of the door, Janice hung.
34
John shouted a curse when he realized why Kenzie had to put her shoulder to the door to get it open. He shoved her to the side while he tried to reach up to unhook the loop of the sheet and get Janice down. Zachary grabbed Janice by the legs and lifted her, muscles straining with the effort. Kenzie did the best she could to help the two of them get her down and, once Janice’s body was on the floor, Kenzie immediately took charge, checking for a pulse and starting chest compressions.
“Get help,” she told John. He darted out to the hall and raised the alarm, calling out code words to get the attention of any nearby staff. An alarm rang. Too late for Janice, Kenzie knew. She kept up the chest compressions, knowing how unlikely it was that she’d be able to bring the woman back. She didn’t have any equipment with her. No epinephrine. No heart monitor. Not even a stethoscope. But the woman was still warm, and Kenzie kept at it so she could at least tell Janice’s family that she had done everything she could.
Zachary stood back, white-faced, staring down at Janice’s body and Kenzie in her fruitless labor.
John returned to the room with others. Too many people for the tiny room. They squeezed through the half-closed door to gawk at Kenzie and make unproductive recommendations.
“We’ve called an ambulance,” John said. “They won’t take long to get here, even though we’re outside the city. We’re actually pretty close to the fire station.”
“It’s too late,” Kenzie told him.
He stared at her blankly. “But you’re doing CPR.”
“It’s too late. It’s not going to do anything. By the time they get here…” Kenzie trailed off, looking down at Janice Martin’s red face and the bruises around her neck where the sheet had been tied. She sat back on her heels, stopping the compressions.
“Aren’t you required to continue until the EMTs get here?” Zachary asked. “I thought that once you had started, you had to keep it up until…”
Kenzie shook her head. “I’m calling it. I’m a doctor. I declare someone dead or confirm death every time I go to a scene.” She looked at her watch and pulled out her phone. She started a voice recording and, announcing the date and her name, started dictating to the phone. After making her initial observations, she turned off the recording. “I need everyone out of the room. You need to clear out until any forensic evidence has been gathered. I’ll call in a couple of death investigators to help me out and arrange for transport.”
“What’s going on?” A woman’s voice cut above the babel of the onlookers, and Dr. Richards forced her way in as others were exiting. She looked down at Kenzie and at Janice’s body, and her face turned gray. She swore and stepped back as if she had been slapped. “Janice! No!”
Kenzie nodded. “She was hanging when we opened the door. I’m sorry. It’s too late for us to do anything for her.”
Dr. Richards sank down to sit on the bed, swearing. Kenzie nodded to her and spoke to Zachary. “Can you help the doctor out? She looks a little faint. But she shouldn’t be touching anything in here, potentially contaminating the scene. Just out into the hallway. She can wait there.”
