by E. G. Scott
“Thank you,” I say.
She lays a steak salad in front of Wolcott. “You boys all set here?”
“Yep. Thanks, Phyllis.” We speak in stereo.
“Freshen your coffee, doll?”
“I’m good,” answers Wolcott, passing a hand over his mug.
“Enjoy,” she says, walking back toward the counter.
He tucks into his salad as I salt and pepper my sandwich. “So, the mom’s a real piece of business, eh?”
“You got that right. Completely self-absorbed. And clueless. I explain to her that her daughter’s just been in a room with the dead body of a friend, and she reacts like the kid chipped a nail. Makes me want to give my own mom a very big hug.”
Wolcott swallows a bite of his salad. “Yeah, some icy personalities in the picture on this one. Thornton’s about a stone’s toss from a full-on psychopath.”
“That’s the truth,” I say. “So, how do you want to go into our interview tomorrow?”
“Well, Cyrano, I’m inclined to let you take the lead. Soften her up a little.”
“Really ridin’ that bit into the fuckin’ ground, aren’t you?”
“Hey, keep tiptoeing around that particular elephant all you want,” he says. “But I for one would love to get to the bottom of this case.”
FORTY-TWO
CHARLOTTE
“I’m going to pull the car around while they get your discharge stuff together.” My mother is freshly showered and coiffed and holding a coffee stirrer like a cigarette. She’s been popping in and out of my hospital room like a mosquito at a barbecue, unable to land on any one place for more than a few minutes before setting off to find a new person to annoy. Every time she leaves the room I feel my heart rate settle along with my blood pressure.
“Okay, Mom. Can you shut the curtain so I can get dressed?” I say to further encourage her exit, and she pulls the fabric along the hanging circular metal track, enclosing me in a hoop of ages-old polyester cream and mint green swirls. I’m halfway into my jeans when a booming voice carrying my name rings out.
“Dr. K!” I recognize Nurse Murphy’s voice before she’s halfway behind the curtain. I pull my other leg through the free pants leg and lean into her enormous hug. I feel tears welling up and gulp them back and smile big when we part.
“Murphy,” I say warmly.
“Honey. What are you doing here? I didn’t know you were staying with us or I would have been here yesterday! The only reason I knew was because I saw your mother flitting around the halls like a regular queen bee.” She pulls her glasses from the chain dangling around her neck to get a better look at me. “She hasn’t changed at all,” she says with the perfect balance of snark and sympathy.
In my short, miserable stint working here in Stony Brook Memorial Hospital after my Bellevue stay, Moira Murphy was one of the few people I interacted with beyond work matters. She saw that I was suffering right away and made a conscious effort to check in with me weekly. It took me a while to open up, but when I did we bonded over difficult parents; she was caring for her elderly mother at the time, who’d become increasingly prickly in her dementia.
“How’s your mom?” I ask her.
“She passed away last year. It was the best thing that could have happened. She only got worse as time went on.” Her smile betrays sadness through the stoicism.
“I’m so sorry. I should have been in touch. I didn’t know.” I squeeze her hands.
“Don’t be silly. How would you have? And I know how much you wanted to leave this place. I didn’t expect that you’d look back or end up spending the night here! What on earth?”
“Just a run-of-the-mill panic attack. I’m fine. I got a good night’s sleep and the world-class cuisine of Stony Brook Memorial Hospital.” I strive hard to keep things light and make it home before falling into despair and grief completely.
“Who is your doctor, hon?” She reaches an arm through the curtain and pulls my chart from the door before I can answer. She grunts when she sees the name. “Dr. Barron. Well, he’s a rotten apple, and one that should have been retired out years ago. He’s still telling dirty jokes to the nurses.” She balls her fists. “Nothing much has changed around here.”
“Luckily, I’ve had very little interaction with him. I think they just kept me overnight because the police brought me in—”
I’m interrupted by the sound of someone calling for a crash cart and a number of rubber-soled shoes moving quickly on linoleum.
“Lemme go see what this is about, sweetie. I’ll stop back when I can.” She ducks around the curtain and is out the door in a flash.
I realize my shirt is on inside out and I pull it over my head, turn it right side out, and have it three-quarters of the way on when I see the dark outline of a figure through my shirt’s light material and the curtain.
“Knock, knock.” I’m immediately disoriented by the sound of Jack Doyle’s voice in my hospital room. I pull my shirt the rest of the way down and pull back the scrim between us.
“What are you doing here?”
“Well, hello to you too.” He grins at me.
“Hi. Sorry. I wasn’t expecting you.” I look at my feet.
“I work here. The more pressing question is what are you doing here? And did you miss me?”
Not only is he a surgeon, but his place of employment is the setting of one of the lowest points of my life. Something about the two being conjoined bothers me deeply. I feel ashamed at the thought that we overlapped and he somehow was able to read my mind during that time.
“How long have you worked here?”
“Two years in January. I transferred from San Diego Memorial. My, uh, wife wanted to move back east to be closer to her family. That didn’t exactly go as planned, but I ended up liking the Atlantic Ocean more than I expected.”
“I see.” I feel uncomfortable with his bright eyes boring into mine, so I turn to look at my phone, which is on my bed. I’m surprised that my mother hasn’t called, impatiently wondering where I am. In the moment that I pivot away from Dr. Jack, he grabs my chart from the door.
“Hey!” I exclaim. I don’t want this near stranger looking at my info, and pull it hard from his grip.
He looks startled and then embarrassed.
“Sorry. Force of habit.” He lowers his hands to his sides.
I pull the chart to my chest and wrap my arms around it and myself protectively.
“Cardiology is never a good ward to be camped out in. What’s going on with your heart?” he probes.
“Are you a heart surgeon?” I ask him.
“I’ve operated on some hearts, but it isn’t my area of expertise,” he says without a trace of flirtatiousness.
“I’m fine. It was an acute panic attack. I thought it might be myocardial infarction when it was happening.” He raises his eyebrows and I realize I need to speak like a nondoctor or I’m going to have to explain myself. “They kept me overnight because the police brought me in and they know me here.” I’ve said way more than I should have and have no intention or patience to unpack any of the things I’ve just revealed about myself. I need to stop talking.
His eyebrows remain raised. “Police?”
“My best friend died.” The first time saying it out loud cuts my heart into pieces. “And I found her.” I pull my arms tighter around me. “When the police got there, I thought I might be dying. I felt like I was.”
His face takes on a quality of curious concern as he processes. He reaches his hands out and pulls the clipboard from my grip and places it gently on the bed, which I don’t resist. Once he does that, he takes my hands in his and looks into my eyes and through me.
“I’m terribly sorry to hear that you went through that.” My surprise melts into gratitude when he gathers me in his arms and holds me tightly. His breath and voice are low and warm t
hrough my hair and into my ear. “I’m so sorry, Charlotte.”
I easily melt into the embrace, the enormity of my grief emerging again and becoming bigger and bigger. We stand quiet, holding each other for a long moment, until I feel something vibrating in his pants.
“Dammit. Sorry.” He releases me and takes a step back. Frustration passes over his face when he unlocks the screen of his phone. “Shit. I gotta go. I’ll be back to check in on you when I can.” He’s out the door without my responding.
I pull the curtain completely open and take inventory of the contents of my purse versus what I remember being brought in with, and everything is accounted for. My phone is still quiet, so I sit on the edge of the bed and look out the window. A flock of southbound geese move together in the cloudless sky. I close my eyes.
“Please show me a sign that you are here, Rach.” I taste the salt running into the corners of my mouth from my eyes. I strain my ears to hear her in between the sounds of the hospital around me.
“All right, my love! I heard you were being set free on my way out of that defib scene, and I’m going to do your discharge.”
Murphy pushes a wheelchair into the room and looks like an angel in her pristine white scrubs and halo of bleached hair, crested in hairsprayed peaks of pin curls around her face. Her full cheeks are pink with heavy blush and some ruddiness, probably from many years of after-work drinks. Her immaculate white shoes and scrubs gleam against the beige walls of the room. She is one of the few nurses here who opted for the all-white look over the patterned or child-friendly scrubs, like teddy bears with balloons, most of the RNs wear.
I feel a swelling of gratitude that she’s come back, and I’m so relieved she is doing my discharge. She sees the pain in my face and takes my hand. “Let’s get you the F out of here.” She laughs. “Hospitals are no place for healthy people.”
She looks down at the packet of paperwork in her hand and back to me. “You don’t need me to go through this, do you?” I shake my head. She nods and wraps a warm arm around my shoulder. “Come on, time for me to roll you out.”
As she pushes me down the corridor and to the elevators, I crane my head toward her, a thought forming.
“Hey, Murphy? What floor does Dr. Doyle work on?” I turn back in the direction we are moving and avert my eyes from a few familiar faces I’d rather not interact with.
“Doyle?” She clicks her tongue. “No doctors here named Doyle, pumpkin.”
“Dr. Jack Doyle? I just spoke to him. He’s in surgery. Been here for two years,” I tell her.
“Baby, you know that I know everyone from top to bottom in this place,” she says proudly.
I press the down button when we reach the elevator bank and maneuver the chair to face her. “He definitely works here. He was in my room just minutes before you came for me. Dark reddish hair, around six feet. Very striking green eyes.”
“Handsome?” she teases.
“I suppose so,” I reply.
“Well, you could be describing John—Dr. Lyons. I love to tease him about how he’s always tugging at his beard. I haven’t seen him for a minute, though; we’ve been working opposite shifts lately.” She chuckles as the doors open and she pushes me to the back of the empty car. “He’s a sweetheart. Moved out here from the West Coast about two years ago. Just went through a divorce.”
FORTY-THREE
WOLCOTT
“Charlotte, thank you for coming in to speak with us today.” Silvestri deploys his most soothing, even tone. He sits across the table from me, our suspect seated at the head. A bottle of water sits in front of Charlotte. She looks rigid and squints slightly.
“Sorry about the lighting,” he continues. “It’s not the easiest on the eyes.”
She laughs, seeming to relax as she does. “It’s no worse than the hospital, honestly. I’m just relieved to be out of there.”
“I’m sure,” he says. “That’s never an enjoyable stay. Have you had a chance to stop home and get settled?”
“A bit,” she answers. “Although my mom is insisting on staying with me for a couple of nights. So that’s always a production.”
“Charlotte,” I begin. “We were wondering if anything may have come back to you since we last spoke. Any memories, or even snippets of detail. Anything that may have clarified itself in your mind since you’ve been out of the hospital.”
She concentrates on her hands. A look of frustration deepens as she takes a long, silent moment. Finally, she exhales slowly and deliberately. She looks me square in the eye. “Detective, I wish I could tell you more. Believe me. Ever since I got the phone call about Brooke’s body, I feel like I’ve been underwater. Everything has seemed hazy and out of focus. I just . . .”
“Take your time,” says Silvestri, cocking his head to the side as he looks at her.
“Thank you, Dennis,” she says. “But time doesn’t seem to be helping me any.”
I lean in, propping my elbows on the table. “Charlotte, may I go back just a bit in our conversation?”
“Sure,” she responds.
“When we were discussing Brooke Harmon a moment ago, you used only her first name.”
She looks at me, unsure of the question. “Okay?”
“It just seems like a familiar way to refer to someone you never actually knew during her lifetime.” I look at Charlotte for a long moment, assessing her response. Her shoulders tense up. “I’m correct in thinking that, Charlotte? You never actually knew Miss Harmon when she was alive?”
She squints hard and takes a deep breath. “I mean, no, not technically. But making the connection to her sister changed something in me. I feel so much closer to Brooke than I realized I could. I don’t know. Does that make sense? This case has brought up a lot of things from my past that I had really tried to leave there, you know?”
I sit with clasped hands, stock-still, staring at her. “It’s a funny thing about the past, though, Charlotte. What’s that old quote? ‘The past is never dead.’”
She leans back in her chair, crossing her arms. “How do you mean?”
“We spoke with your former mentor, Dr. Thornton.”
Her body tenses at the mention. “Is that right?”
“Very passionate guy. Really takes his work seriously.”
Her shoulders relax a touch. “Yes, well, the work that Henry and I were doing together was quite important. I guess he always maintained a certain intensity around that.”
Okay, time to thread the needle. “The work you did together? That’s an interesting way to word it. Makes it sound as if you were more or less equals in the OR.”
The rigidity returns to her body. “And why wouldn’t we be?”
I remove the notebook from my jacket pocket and flip open to the page I’ve dog-eared. “Well,” I say, reading back from my notes. “He discussed the neurosurgical techniques that he was pioneering. Mentioned how frustrated he was with the other members of the surgical team—how did he put it—uh, not being able to ‘keep up.’”
Charlotte stares straight ahead, cheeks flushing. “‘Keep up,’ eh?” The anger radiating off of her is palpable. “Wow. Only someone who’s ‘failed up’ so completely would have the nerve . . .” She trails off, the sentiment clear.
“Failed up?” I inquire. “How so?”
She lets out a breath. “You’re aware that he’s now chief of staff at that hospital?”
I consult my notes. “On the board of directors, as well.” I want to see how far we can take this.
“Of course.” She nods her head. “All I’m saying is, the anesthesiologist, the nurse, and I were all dismissed from our positions at the hospital. Only one person in that room managed to stay on staff.”
“I see. So, Dr. Thornton’s promotion was not merit-based?”
“The hospital needed to spin the situation as much as possible. The surg
ery that we were attempting was essentially experimental, and they had invested a lot of trust and resources in it, and in us. When things went the way they went, they were concerned about the optics, with the lawsuit and all. I was the junior physician on the team, Dr. Forester was aging out, and the nurse was a pill head, so they figured they could get rid of us and take Henry off the floor. That would appease everyone.”
“Well, not everyone,” I say. “What about you and Dr. Forester?”
“They made it worth our while,” she says, rolling her eyes.
“Oh?” I say.
“Basically, they paid us off to go quietly. And they took very good care of us. I guess it was worth it for them, to avoid the lawsuit and the bad press.”
“But isn’t it true that the Harmon family attempted to initiate legal action against the hospital, and against the individual physicians involved? And that Brooke Harmon was outspoken about your culpability?”
“That is true, yes. But the case was ultimately settled out of court.”
“I see. Now, that brings us to our next point. This woman, with whom you have a tragic connection, ends up living a few towns away, several years later, seemingly with an ax to grind. Then she turns up dead—poisoned, to be exact—and has you as her emergency contact.”
She takes a stab at speaking but comes up short. All she can manage is a weak shake of the head.
“On top of that, a close friend and colleague of yours—a woman you had recently been in a heated argument with—turns up poisoned as well.”
Her eyes go wide. She looks to me, desperation taking hold. “Oh God. Rachel was . . .” I study our suspect as she processes the information. Realization suddenly sinks in. “Wait, Detective. Do you think I killed these women? It’s just not . . . I could never . . .”
I lean in and soften my tone. “I want to understand where you’re coming from, but do you see how it looks, on the face of things? The similarities in these cases?” I take a beat. She’s reeling. “You’re sure that Brooke didn’t reach out to you or approach you in some way? I mean, I could imagine that the prospect of someone in her position coming back into your life might seem threatening, or—”
