Arriving at the desk, he saw no sign of Amber, the receptionist who had been so helpful to him beforehand but instead noticed a brunette, who from the corner of her eye, had already seen the approaching Detective.
‘I am sorry. Is Amber on shift today?’
It was chance, a random shot in the dark. Lance suspected that Amber may have been on her break.
For nothing else, it allowed him to show the brunette, that they both had someone in common. Not keen for anyone to find out that he was a Detective, Lance played it dumb.
‘Amber.’
She said but remained to look at Lance, deducing his familiarity with her colleague.
‘Yes. Amber.’
Lance stone-walled her right over the desk.
‘I don’t believe that she is working this week.’
She lied and gave away so much with her miss-truth.
Lance now knew that she did indeed know who Amber was, but was just uncaring, in where she was. She knew her, maybe a little too well.
‘That’s not possible. She was on shift just a night ago.’
The brunette hurriedly leaned over and began to thumb through a duty roster. She bent over, and revealed her name badge, from beneath a cardigan, covering her work shirt.
Belinda.
‘Yes, she was on duty, and she is back on tomorrow morning. What is it all concerning?’
Lance played up to every fear and phobia that Amber had revealed on the previous night.
‘I am mediating between Amber and a Dr. Malawaty, over an internal matter. Is Dr. Malawaty on duty?’
Belinda nearly jumped out from her pantyhose. Lance then realized that Amber must have made her prejudices known to more than just himself. It would surely come as no surprise to Belinda, that someone had made a complaint against her colleague. She settled down and quite loudly said,
‘Dr. Malawaty is a fine man, and he has my full support.’
‘Thank you Belinda. Could you please inform him, that I would like to speak with him?’
Belinda couldn’t jump high enough.
‘Of course. And your name is?’
‘ Detective Lance Marshall.’
He turned and started to walk away, not thinking where he was going, and planning it all, turned back around to the desk.
‘What meeting room is free at the moment?’
Belinda clicked some buttons on her keyboard.
‘Meeting room number seven, on the fourth floor.’
‘Thank you, Belinda. Please tell Dr. Malawaty, that is where I shall be.’
She at once, began to place a telephone call, but this didn’t concern Lance. For all that he knew, she was calling a friend to tell them about how Amber was about to get her comeuppance.
Lance walked to the stairs and made it to the fourth floor with little concerns. He saw the multitude of security cameras that were on each floor, and each stairwell, and noticed them swiveling, looking at him. He knew then that security was active, making an identification of the killer more likely.
Marshall had options to go right and left, but some signs had taken the guesswork out of where he was going to go. Lance followed the signs, marked, four to eight, and walked down towards door number seven. Coming towards the door, he saw that it had a swipe key card access, but pushing it, found the door to be unlocked. He thanked Belinda, as he entered and closed the door behind him.
It took an hour and twenty-five minutes for Dr. Malawaty to answer his calling, but answer it he did, and as he came through the door, he knew that Belinda had been told a lie. Seeing Lance, drinking coffee and eating sandwiches, he exhaled a disgustful sigh.
‘Those are for Cardiologists, for a meeting that will take place in a half an hour.’
Lance swallowed the last of his egg and bacon and raised his hands up in apology.
‘I didn’t know. I’m sorry.’
The Dr. tutted, and sat down, across from Lance.
To the side of the room, by a window that faced out onto the street, there stood a trestle table, full of trays of sandwiches of every description. The coffee pots, besides the sandwiches, were all empty, apart from one, and would most likely, be all ready to be filled in the next twenty minutes. This one to one would be shorter than Lance had hoped for.
‘What do you want Detective? I told you everything that I know already. I also spoke with Detective Johnson already this morning.’
Lance ignored that last part. He had yet to receive any more updates from Ed Johnson.
‘I want to know more about Dr. Rahham. He is becoming a person of great interest to me.’
Dr. Malawaty looked disgusted and nodded his head.
‘He is a she. Dr. Mira Rahham, the most eminent Neurosurgeon in all of the East Coast.'
‘Are you known to one another, Dr. Malawaty?’ Lance raised an eyebrow.
‘For a time, many years ago, in London, but I do not understand why this is relevant. She was due to take annual leave, to go home to Pakistan to visit her sister. I drove her to the airport myself.’
Ishram had just laid down a spectacularly solid alibi for his former partner. Surely the Dr. would know, that for a Detective, all it would have taken was a phone call to confirm the story, that indeed Dr. Malawaty was in Pakistan. Lance would call the airport, be patched through to security and from the beautiful world of Homeland Security, he could access any flight manifest. If he really wanted to, he could have sequestered the CCTV from right outside the terminal that would have shown Dr. Malawaty pulling up and letting his former partner out of the car.
‘Can't you see why I would want to know this? That I need to make sure, that she isn't just somebody that's waiting to be found?'
Ishram took a moment to take all of that in and decidedly relaxed in his chair after he had realized that the Detective wasn't accusing the Dr's of anything.
‘Always, we face prejudice Detective Marshall. If I am Ishram Hamez Malawaty, then I am a foreigner, treated with suspicion and contempt. I cannot grow my beard, or people will think that I am a terrorist. This is the life of the sallow-skinned man in America, and especially in certain parts of Metro City,’
Ishram rubbed his clean-shaven face, and looked towards the ceiling, still talking.
‘But if I am Dr. Ishram. Well, then doors suddenly open for me. But, only just. I must book tables in restaurants as Dr. Ishram, make appointments to service my car as Dr. Ishram, sign my credit card receipts in McDonald's as Dr. Ishram,
Ishram was completely exhausted.
‘So you will forgive me when I think that you are accusing myself or Dr. Rahham of any wrongdoing.’
Lance leaned forwards onto his elbows. He had more questions for Dr. Rahham, but they would have to wait until she had returned.
‘When is Dr. Rahham due to return to work?’
‘In two-weeks time.’
‘And one more thing Dr. Is it usually the case that a physician will accompany a parent into the Park to console someone perhaps?’
The Dr. nodded in the negative, and then opened his eyes, and tried to escape from his soul.
‘Sometimes, it depends. Why do you ask?’
Marshall sensed the panic but decided not to chase after it. Something had spooked the Dr. It was clear that he was going to lie to whatever the Detective asked, so Marshall would need to wait until he had more evidence for his assumption to be true.
‘Thank you for your time Dr., And I am sorry for using Amber as a ruse for getting you to meet me.’
The Dr. looked confused.
‘I was just told that HR had wanted to speak to me and to come to this room. Is Amber Ok? That is the receptionist, correct?'
‘Yes. Dr. Amber is fine. Thank you.’
The two men stood and walked towards the door. Lance opened it, and held it, waiting for the Dr. to exit. But he stood his ground and offered out a palm, urging the Detective to leave first. Feeling awkward, Lance continued to hold the door.
‘After you.’
‘No, I insist, you first.’
Dr, Malawaty was behaving rather strangely and had started to sweat a little. Lance obliged, and went first, hoping that he had not upset the good Dr. The two men parted ways, but Lance walked ahead of the Dr, a couple of paces just ahead of Dr. Malawaty. The Dr. held back, slowing his steps, so as not to walk alongside the Detective, waiting until the stairs, where he continued to walk down the far corridor. Lance got to the third floor, and looked back up the stairs, hearing no footsteps approaching.
He casually walked down through the next couple of flights of stairs before emerging again in the lobby.
Looking around, he felt a presence on his shoulder, and panicked, as a steady hand grabbed onto him from behind.
ALL EYES ON HIM
‘Keep walking, down this corridor, quick,’ Lance recognized the voice, but not the urgency in it. He turned away from the reception and down a long corridor, surrounded by doors.
‘Keep moving, until its safe.’
He could feel the man starting to catch his breath and the pace beginning to slow. Feeling comfortable, but bold, Lance stopped on his right foot, turned away and then back, driving a hand into the neck of the man behind him. He pushed him, using the momentum from the stopped foot, and forced him into the wall.
‘Ed, what the hell is going on here?’
He gasped, more from the fast walking than the move his colleague had just pulled off.
‘People had started to spot you, as the guy who was working the case. There would have been a riot.’
‘And you, do they think, that you are some sort of dietitian?’
‘Unless it’s the hospital management, everyone thinks that I am a medical rep, selling wheelchairs.’
He held up a crudely made identification badge, with his tomato-flushed face on it.
‘That’s you alright,’ Lance said, releasing his grip.
‘What gives with the emails? We email everything right, for back up. Where are yours? No one is getting them.’
Ed scrunched his face up, really tightly.
‘Not getting them, that must be wrong. I read all about your reports from last night. And if you ask me, I think that the Richard’s Mom has something to hide.’
‘Whatever, just reply.’ Lance knew that Ed was a mess. His diet was a mess, his desk was a mess, and his life was a mess. Something would have been utterly wrong if his emailing system was a measure of perfection. The only thing good about Ed, was that he looked good. Handsome, but slovenly.
‘No problem boss.’
‘So what’s up with the crime scene, upstairs. Anyone been up there yet?’
‘Nobody. I was waiting for you. I have the building maintenance guy locked down in a meeting room on the fourth floor. It's a swipe key card access only, and he has been in there alone all morning.'
Messy Ed was cleaning up.
‘That's good. Let's get upstairs so we can let McIntosh in and then he can dust for prints.'
The men continued to walk down the corridor until they came to a space that widened out. There against the wall, was a large silver door, separated in two. An elevator door. Ed pressed the call button, and the door immediately opened. On the way up, Lance needed to know how things had gone since yesterday.
‘So, I didn’t get any reports from you yesterday, and though the rest of the crew say that they did, I need to know what happened with the Q and A’s yesterday.’
Ed leaned against a railing, as the elevator set off for the 10th floor.
‘Well, we door stopped everybody, patients, staff, you name it. I went with two uniformed blues, and we took it floor by floor,’
Lance just looked, so Ed kept talking.
‘We talked to everyone, including the people who were in rooms that didn't even look out over the Park, just in case they had seen anyone on the hospital wards that was acting suspiciously.'
‘Considering what happened last night, do we maybe need to go and ask those same questions all over again.’ Wondered Lance, as the elevator moved slowly up, the pulleys creaking with their combined weights.
‘The younger patients had their heads buried inside of their phones or iPads, and the older ones, ain't of the remembering kind,’ Ed didn’t mention anything about doing it all again.
Lance remembered a time, in the not too distant past when witnesses, used to walk around, looking up and noticing things that went on in the world around them. Nowadays, street ways and coffee shops were places that people could sit and look down. Nobody seemed up. Always down.
‘Apart from one guy. He is up on the 5th floor. A guy by the name of William Burges. He claims to have seen all kinds of goings-on in the Park over the past couple of nights. But, his Doctor told me, that he has serious problems with his vision, so I haven't looked into it much further.'
‘I need to speak to him. Take me to his room after this.’
The elevator slowed to a crawl, and after a few moments, the doors slowly opened onto the 7th floor, and towards one of two entrances onto the roof.
‘Ok, so it’s only from here on the South side of the building, and from an identical entrance on the North Side, those two are the only ways up, apart from climbing up on the outside.’
That had been immediately ruled out. The outside of the building was flat, made of mostly glass and brick and each window could at any random moment, have had a Doctor, a Nurse or a patient randomly looking outside. There were drainpipes, but those were light and made of a heavy plastic that would never have supported the weight of a child, let alone a grown person and a murderer of three people. The elevator opened out onto a flat brick wall, with a drop-down ladder, sitting neatly against the wall. Up over the ladder, was a chute, about the length of a body, and over that, a manhole-sized cover. Besides the cover and the parachute, was a latch, and inside the latch, an empty space, where once there sat a lock.
‘I take it that the other entrance on the North Side is still locked, and hasn’t been tampered with?’
‘Building security says it's been locked for two weeks since one of their guys accidentally broke a key inside of it. I took a look myself yesterday, and the story fits. I can see the key inside.’
Marshall examined the space, whereby the murderer would have had to climb up, to access the roof.
‘So I am presuming that the security guard that came up here, wasn’t wearing gloves when he climbed up these steps?’
‘Wrong. He always wore a pair of leather ones. He has some sort of a bugbear about dirty spaces.’
This greatly pleased Lance, as it meant if there were any prints, then they would be undisturbed, or at least, not entirely rubbed out. Still, he wondered, what exactly the security guard was doing.
‘I want to speak to him after we are done.’
‘No problem. He is in the office right now, pulling all of the footage in from last night.’
Ed handed Lance a pair of Blue Nitrile gloves, and after putting his own pair on, the two men set about climbing up towards the roof. Ed went first, going slow, and examining each step for any kind of residue. Lance kept a hand on the very next rung down and waited until Ed was through before pushing up and over himself. Ed popped the lid of the lid of the chute off with great ease, and climbed out, leaving Lance to follow. Lance noticed that the top of the small chute had been sitting inside on a secure ledge. It meant that if the wind ever picked up, the lid of the chute would always be securely kept in place.
The two men landed on a stone-lined, felt rooftop and crouched down low, to avoid a buffeting by a moderate breeze. The wind wasn't so loud to prevent a conversation, but still, they both talked in short bursts.
‘When the guard first looked over, he saw that all of the gravel had been disturbed, but he presumed that it had been done by some birds.’
Lance wondered if his presumptions had ruined the crime scene.
The two men stooped over towards a small shed in the center of the roof. The entire roof space had channels of cables, running
in packs of five and ten, and most ended up running into the shed.
‘What’s inside?’ Lance asked.
‘It is all housing units for the electrical cables, before they go down and into the building, no space inside for anything bigger than a meter thick cable. It's packed tight.’ Ed replied.
Lance started to crawl towards the edge of the building, hoping to see the Park, and hoping to come across the location of where the shooter had taken aim. He went to the edge of the building and found a perfect shelf, whereby the killer could have laid his weapon upon.
‘This housing for the cables makes for a perfect shelf,’ Lance shouted back, as Ed just nodded.
‘I want to get a closer look.’
Lance shouted across, as he then lay on his belly and crawled towards the edge of the building.
He looked towards the Park and saw the blue tent, small as a briefcase from up so high, and he noticed the pathways that separated the Park. He wondered to himself, as they intersected on one another in the middle, and up so high, he made out across in the design. On one angle, it could have looked like an X, but from where he lay, it looked distinctly like a Christian Cross. He had known this already, but from up so high, it reminded him of something.
Marshall wondered about this, and the meaning of all of it, when from the corner of his eye, a whip of black shot out from the edge of the hospital and back again behind the building. With another thwack, it flipped out, with a tremendous noise, and disappeared from view as it flew backward from where it came. Lance crawled towards the very edge of the building, where the visual disturbance was emerging from and saw a ten-foot long strap of black cable whipping about on the wind. Lance reversed backward and moved back to the little shed in the middle of the roof, where he met Ed, looking at him with blank features.
‘What is it?’ He asked.
Lance looked around the building and looked at all of the electrical cablings that ran around the edges of the roof. The housing for it seemed so neat and tidy, but somewhere, something was out of place. He set off again, on his belly, towards the edge of the building, but this time away from the Park. He smelled stone and dust, and felt dampness upon his trousers, as he crawled towards the source of the cable that swung from the building.
Marshall Law Page 12
