Dead Girl Walking: Absolutely addictive mystery and suspense (Jessie Novak Book 1)

by Roberta Gately

  The victims were all kids—teenagers who’d been speeding and had crashed into the unyielding concrete barriers on the expressway. The two boys in the backseat had been thrown from the car, both landing on the opposite side of the highway. One of them had died en route to the ER, the other had serious head injuries and facial fractures, not to mention the chest trauma he’d suffered. “Trauma One,” Jessie called, “and page Neurosurgery stat.”

  A frowning Tim Merrick appeared behind her. “It was too much to hope for a quiet night, huh?” And in the midst of the harried activity, she smiled. At least he was the same old Tim. He directed the next two patients to the trauma rooms. “Jess, will you keep an eye on everyone and keep me posted?”

  She nodded. “Blood bank is prepping uncross-matched blood and CT and the OR are ready for us.” This time, Tim smiled. “We make a damn good team, Jessie,” he called over his shoulder as he swung open the door to Trauma One. She moved from one trauma room to another, starting IVs, hanging blood and antibiotics, and grabbing the ambu bag to breathe for one patient while the resident got ready to intubate.

  She moved swiftly, checking the patients as Tim decided who’d be moved first to the OR and with which surgical team. It was a delicate balance, but she was relieved that Tim was in charge. For all of his quirks, he was the best in the business of trauma. She could hear him from the hallway barking orders, shouting at staff to move quicker. “Time,” he shouted. “Time! Let’s move.” And the first trauma room door swung open, the patient barely visible on the stretcher among the tubes and monitors and portable machines, as he was propelled along by the staff racing him to the OR.

  “Jessie, send Trauma Two up in thirty minutes. Ortho’s taking the patient in Trauma Three now,” Tim said. She nodded and turned and stepped into Trauma Two to help. She was drawing up antibiotics when Elena nudged her and pointed to the doorway. Out of the corner of her eye, she caught sight of Nick.

  “I need to speak with you,” he mouthed.

  She finished drawing up the antibiotics she was about to mix in an IV bag. “I’m busy, Nick. This is a bad time.” She shook her head angrily and turned back to her work.

  “I’ll come back later,” he said, ducking out of the room. “It’s important.”

  The next few hours were a blur; three of the patients were still in the OR and their parents gathered in the family room to wait for news. The parents of the fourth teen had been inconsolable and had required IV sedation. When Tony came to take him, Jessie asked him to wait. “Give us an hour or so, Tony. His family’s still saying goodbye.”

  “Anything for you,” he whispered. “Call me when you’re ready.”

  Her shift flew, her worries forgotten and at eleven-thirty, as she got ready to leave, Nick arrived. “I have to speak to you, it’s important,” he said, his eyes bright, a sheen of sweat on his forehead despite the frigid night.

  “Not here,” she whispered. “And not at a bar, either.”

  “I’ll come to your place, then.”

  “Okay, but fair warning—you can’t stay tonight,” she said almost too quickly. “I have an early morning.” Lies were slipping easily from her lips these days.

  “Okay. I’ll see you there in ten minutes,” he said as he turned to go.

  She watched as he left, his head down, his hands shoved into his pockets, and she wanted to run after him, to tell him it would be alright. But she didn’t know that for sure. So instead, she slid into her car and headed home.

  She wasn’t surprised to see Nick standing in front of her building, an uneasy smile on his face.

  Once inside, he opened the bottle of wine he’d brought and poured them each a full glass. “I’m in trouble, Jessie,” he blurted out. “I need your help.”

  She sank onto the couch and took a long swallow of her wine. “What is it?” she asked, though she was pretty sure she knew.

  “Homicide has learned that I knew Rob Hart. They think I’m hiding something. I have to go in tomorrow to headquarters to be questioned.” His words came out in a rush, his fingers tapping nervously on his knee.

  “Nick,” she said, moving closer, “you did know him. Just say that. You don’t have anything to hide. Just be honest.”

  “You don’t know how they twist things, Jessie. Internal Affairs, Homicide. If they put you in their sights, you’re screwed.”

  “They’re not out to get you. They’re trying to solve that murder, and if you can help, if you know something, anything, you have to speak up.”

  “That’s just it. I don’t know anything. I haven’t spoken to him in years—not since high school. He went to Harvard. I went to Iraq. I think I tried to call him when I came home, but I never heard back from him. It’s been years.”

  “He hasn’t been in touch at all?”

  He hesitated and dropped his head. “Nick?” she asked.

  He sighed. “He called me the night of the shooting. I didn’t know it was him. The number wasn’t one I knew, but I answered anyway. I wish the hell I hadn’t.”

  “What happened?” Jessie asked, her brain ticking off the little she knew.

  “Nothing. That’s just it. Nothing happened. I couldn’t really hear him. He said who it was. He sounded like he was in a hurry, the connection was lousy. I hung up. And I came to the ER to see you.” He drained the last of his wine and refilled his glass.

  She smiled in relief. “Just say that, Nick. Just tell them that.” She leaned back and felt the tension ease from her neck.

  “The thing is, I need you to back me up.”

  “I saw you there. Of course I can back you up. I thought you arrived with the ambulance, but I definitely saw you. You asked me to go out for a drink.”

  “Yes,” he said, his eyes shining. “Exactly. Just tell them I was there to ask you that.”

  “I will.”

  “I have one favor to ask, though. Could you just say I was there before the ambulance arrived? I was, you know. I was there.”

  “I believe you, but I can’t say that. Just trust that this will be okay.” She nestled against his chest and he ran his fingers through her hair, the skin of her scalp tingling with the pleasure of it. She pulled him closer and kissed him before pushing him gently away. “Now, go home and get some sleep. Call me tomorrow.”

  “I don’t know what I’d do without you, Jessie,” he said.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Jessie slept in the next day, waking only at eleven when her phone began to buzz and ping relentlessly. She knew if she didn’t answer, the noise would continue. She reached over and grabbed the device. “Hello,” she said in her haziest morning voice.

  “Oh, sorry, did I wake you?”

  That question, she decided, didn’t even deserve an answer. “Who is this?”

  “Sam. Sorry to wake you. I thought you’d be up by now.”

  “Well, you thought wrong. What do you want?”

  “Nick’s here. He says you can confirm that he was at the ER the night of the shooting.”

  “I already answered that yesterday.” But yesterday seemed like months, not just twenty-four hours ago. “He arrived when the ambulance did. He might have been there earlier, but I didn’t see him, so I can’t swear to that.”

  “I need an official statement, Jessie. You have to come in.”

  She sat up in bed, pushed her hair out of her eyes, and glared, though she knew he couldn’t see it. “What time?”

  “Whenever you can get here.”

  “Fine.” She hoped he heard the screw you in her voice. She took her time in the shower and over coffee, and two hours later, she pulled on scrubs, grabbed her backpack and headed out, thinking that maybe Nick was right. Maybe they were going after him because there was no one else. By the time she’d been given the okay to go to Sam’s office, she could feel the rush of heat on her cheeks. Her feet pounded on the stairs and more than one police officer turned to look. She didn’t care. Not one bit.

  She walked through the small area by Sam�
�s office; only one detective was there, and he was on the phone, his voice a whisper. He didn’t seem to notice as she pushed open Sam’s door. “I’m here,” she announced, standing rigidly. “And I have to be at work by three.”

  “Hello to you, too,” he said, looking up. “Have a seat. I’ll be right with you.”

  She sat stiffly, her back straight, her feet planted firmly on the floor. “Am I here to sign something?”

  “We can actually film your statement.”

  “Why?” And it hit her suddenly. They wanted it on film to show Nick, to squeeze him. “Nick knows what I’m going to say. Why are you guys so focused on him?”

  “We just need some answers.”

  “Is he still here?”

  “He is. It’s been a long day for him, and it’s not over yet.”

  Before she could stop herself, she wondered if it was possible that Nick had been involved. She swallowed the lump in her throat.

  “He has the union lawyer with him. We’re not after him. We’re after Hart. Nick just has to help us.”

  “You really think he knows something?”

  “We do. Turns out, he was the officer on the scene at a fender-bender involving Rob Hart in West Roxbury a few months back. He wrote the report so it was favorable to his old friend. Not sure why he wouldn’t just tell us that. He must have known we’d find it. He must have given Rob his number that night because Rob called him the night of the shooting, about fifteen, maybe twenty minutes before the nine-one-one call.” He paused as if he wanted that to sink in.

  Jessie fidgeted in her seat. She still trusted Nick, but that trust wasn’t as iron-clad as it had seemed just an hour ago.

  “We’ll be asking Nick for his phone. And just so you know, if he refuses, we’ll get a warrant.”

  She picked at her fingernails. “Just for the record, I don’t think he’ll refuse.”

  “Here’s hoping. I can type up your statement, have you sign it, and if we need you on film, you can come back another time. Okay with you?”

  She nodded.

  “Can you tell me again about the night of the shooting?”

  So Jessie started from the beginning, from the C-Med notification to Nick’s appearing when the ambulance did, but she wanted to help Nick, to put a wrench in Sam’s theory. “I can’t say for sure when he arrived at the ER, only when I first saw him. Once the ER had quieted, and I was leaving for home, Nick was in the ambulance bay, said he’d been waiting for me and asked me to go for a drink. I was tired and I said no. And that’s all I know.”

  Sam typed as she spoke and printed out her statement, passing it to her. “Sign there and there,” he said. “And then you’re free to go.”

  She scribbled her name and stood. “When will Nick be done?”

  “I can’t say. It’s up to him.”

  “Is he in one of those rooms with two-way mirrors where you can watch?”

  “No, we film it and have a live video feed into a television in a room down the hall. We can watch from there and pass in any questions that we might want asked.”

  “Any chance I can see it? See him?”

  Sam’s gaze flickered. “I assume you’re kidding, but the answer is no.” He held open the door and smiled.

  And she wondered what the hell she had ever seen in him.

  Chapter Forty

  Jessie went through the motions at work, never really noticing her patients or co-workers. She’d said once she could do her job with her eyes closed and tonight, she proved it. She triaged countless ambulance patients, started at least as many IVs, drew up meds, hooked up monitors and caught one old man just as he was about to fall from his stretcher, and she did it all without blinking an eye. She tried calling Nick more than once, but her calls went straight to voicemail. Jesus, she thought, could they still be questioning him?

  At nine o’clock, Elena took her aside. “I think you should go home,” she said. “You just don’t look good.” She rested her palm flat against Jessie’s forehead. “I think you might have a fever. Go home. Take care of yourself. We’ll be okay.”

  Jessie nodded. She was feverish, not with the flu, but with worry and anger, but she was glad to get out of there and get home, where she pulled off her scrubs, slid into a robe and curled up with the rest of the wine that Nick had brought just last night. She finished the bottle and lay there, the television flickering soundlessly, her head drumming with the beat of her own worrying thoughts. When her eyelids drooped with the onset of sleep, she pulled a blanket up and prayed that she’d find some peace.

  It was a loud banging that woke her. She bolted upright, her eyes still heavy with sleep, her mind still foggy with some forgotten dream. The banging stopped. But for less than a minute, and then it started up again, more insistent this time. It was her door. Someone was trying to break it down, at least that was how it sounded. She reached for her phone ready to call for help when she heard it.

  “Jessie, open up. Let me in!” It was Nick.

  She looked at her watch. Twelve-fifteen. She pulled the door open. “I was about to call nine-one-one. Keep the goddamn noise down,” she hissed. He walked in and collapsed onto the couch.

  “I’m in big trouble,” he said, his eyes bloodshot.

  “Have you been drinking?”

  “I had a few beers, that’s all, but I’d like to get good and drunk.” He spied the empty bottle of wine on the floor. “You’ve been drinking too, huh?”

  She might have been wrong, but he seemed to smirk. “I had some wine, hoping it would help me to sleep. What’s going on with you? What happened today?”

  “They’re trying to tangle me up with all this Hart stuff, that’s why what you say is so important. I need you, Jessie. You have to say I was with you at the ER before the ambulance arrived.”

  “I can’t say that. It’s not true, and anyway—I gave my statement.”

  “When?” He sat upright, his arms folded across his chest.

  “Earlier today. I went to headquarters. I said you were at the ER that night, but I couldn’t say when you got there, and I can’t. I saw you when the ambulance arrived. I’m sorry, Nick, I didn’t see you before that.”

  He stood and began to pace. “You can change your statement. Tell them you were confused.”

  “I wasn’t confused. How about you just tell them the truth?” She pulled the door open wide. “And how about you just leave?”

  He slammed the door shut and slid the deadbolt into place. “You have to change your statement. Otherwise I might go to jail. Do you understand that? Do you want that?” His eyes were cold as ice, his voice raw. A ripple of fear ran through Jessie’s veins. This wasn’t her Nick. She didn’t know who the hell he was.

  “What’s wrong with you?” she asked softly, hoping to appeal to his rational side.

  But he seemed to have no rational side tonight. “You’re going to change your statement, Jessie. Get a pen.”

  The whoosh of her pulse pounded in her ears. Her phone. She needed her phone. She had to call Sam or nine-one-one for help. She reached her hand for it. “My pen,” she said, hoping to divert his attention, but he was too quick and he knocked the phone away. Her heart began to race.

  “I can’t change it, Nick. Even if I write something new, they’ll know it’s a lie. I can’t do it. It will only make things worse for you.”

  “It won’t. Just listen to me.” His voice rose to a shout. “What don’t you get? You have to do this for me.”

  Jessie backed away. If she could get to her bedroom, she could lock the door and maybe he’d come to his senses and leave. “But…”

  He moved behind her and blocked her in. She tried to push him away but he stood firmly and she tripped and fell to her knees. “Nick,” she said, suddenly certain that he meant her harm if she didn’t do what he said, or maybe even if she did. There was no way out. She was trapped, and with nothing to lose, she did the only thing she could think of—she screamed, loud and long, and Nick reached down and grabbed
her by the hair.

  “Shut the fuck up,” he shouted.

  And she did. The quiet was deafening, and then she heard the soft knock at her door. “Jessie? It’s Rufus. You okay?”

  Nick put his finger over his lips to shush her, but she was beyond that. “Call nine-one-one,” she shouted, just as Nick pulled her up to her feet. By the time she was standing, Rufus had unlocked the door and was standing there, his trusty metal baseball bat in hand.

  “Get away from her,” he said, his voice steely, his hand gripping the bat tightly, his knuckles white with the effort.

  Nick laughed, and moved toward Rufus, and Jessie felt her fear melt away. She jumped onto his back, pulling his hair and scratching his face. He wrestled her away and they both fell to the floor, Nick on top, Jessie pinned beneath him. She struggled to free herself but he was in control. She could hear shuffling above them and the sudden whistle of the bat as it swung through the air and landed with a thud somewhere on Nick, who lay stunned and motionless. Rufus pulled him away and reached for Jessie as the piercing shrill of sirens filled the night.

  “I called nine-one-one before I came up, Jessie. That’ll be them now. You okay?”

  She could only nod and watch as Nick rolled himself over and sat up, his eyes red with tears. “What the fuck is wrong with me?” He dropped his head into hands and began to cry, his tears mixing with snot, his shoulders heaving. She tried to feel sorry for him, but she couldn’t.

  It was only minutes later that the patrolmen arrived, cuffed him, and led him away. Sam appeared just as they were leaving. He shook his head sadly as the procession passed him. Jessie had folded herself into Rufus’s arms and blinked away any hint of tears that threatened her composure. Never let them see you cry wove itself into her thoughts. Besides, it was anger she felt—at Nick, at herself. She could write a book on misjudging men.