Raney & Levine

by J. A. Schneider

  Jill told her. David learned to shoot growing up in Denver, they give prizes to kids there for sharp-shooting. Then at sixteen he started getting into trouble, so to straighten him out his parents sent him to a kibbutz in Israel.

  She let herself smile. “He says everyone else weeded all day. He found an army base nearby, made friends, and did target practice with them. Then two years later he was hiking with friends, and shot the head off a rattler forty feet away. I’ve seen the news clippings from The Denver Post. He only showed them to me. Actually, he doesn’t like to talk about it.”

  Jill’s smile faded when she looked back to the snake bag. It had stopped moving.

  Brand hung up from his call. “Connor says Jenna’s brother just arrived. Sounds like a weird guy. They’re going to interview him upstairs.”

  “What about his wife?” Keri asked.

  “They’re trying to reach her. Left a voice mail.”

  Brand went back to going through Jenna’s wallet, pulled out a slip of paper and read it. “Interesting,” he said. “Jenna was headed here. She had a four o’clock appointment in your OB clinic.”

  He handed the slip to Jill. She read it, frowning. “With Jim Holloway,” she said faintly. “He’s a second-year resident.”

  “She was attacked in an alley off Second Avenue and Thirty-ninth. That’s four blocks from here. Whoever did this brought his snake and big pin with him, which means he planned, probably knew her, even knew about the OB appointment-”

  A pinging sound startled them. The tune to “Good Morning, Sunshine.” It was the ring tone for Jenna’s cell phone, which Brand answered.

  “Hello?”

  He listened. Said no, this wasn’t a wrong number, and identified himself. The female voice on the other end grew frantic, loud enough to make out as Jill and Keri leaned closer.

  “Where’s Jenna? Where’s Jenna?”

  Brand explained very briefly. The voice on the other end grew silent, then burst into tears. And a torrent of something Brand’s expression said he could barely make out.

  “Yes,” he said gently. “We’ll need to talk to you anyway.” He told the woman to come to the surgical floor, and hung up.

  He looked from Keri clutching her ballpoint to Jill, and inhaled heavily. “Jenna Walsh was the surrogate mother for this couple, named Sutter. It was the wife who called. They’d planned to meet her after her appointment.”

  “They’re coming to the surgical floor,” Jill echoed, to be sure.

  “Yes.”

  “I’d like to meet them.”

  Brand didn’t get the chance to answer. Jill’s phone rang. She was needed for a delivery, fast.

  She rose and explained.

  “Will you fill me in?” she asked. “I’d like to know about this surrogate couple; ditto Jenna’s brother and sister-in-law.”

  Both detectives agreed readily. Doctors can do things that cops need warrants and court orders to do. If only more were like Jill and David…

  Keri gave Jill her card, and Brand checked that she still had him on speed dial.

  She did. “Still near the top,” she told him.

  9

  In the OR, the anesthesiologist had taken off Jenna’s nasal oxygen mask from the E.R. and intubated her, sending oxygen directly into her trachea. He was checking her vital signs when the others, re-scrubbed, capped and masked, came in to be helped into their gloves and surgical gowns by a circulating nurse.

  “Ready?” David asked, approaching the surgical table.

  “Vitals still look okay,” the anesthesiologist said through his mask. “Have to keep an eye on her neuro signs.”

  “I’m on it.” Woody gently lifted Jenna’s right eye open, used his penlight to check her pupil, then checked her left eye.

  A nurse grimly hung a new unit of blood. Some cases threw her more than others. Hearing about this one upset her terribly.

  The ventilator whooshed as David made a long, mid-line incision of the abdomen. He reached in and, with Sam, their gloved hands together carefully pulled apart the abdominal muscles. Sam got in the retractors to keep the opening open, then suctioned blood out so they could see better.

  At seven months the uterus looked like a big, upside-down pear with the small end ending in the cervix.

  “No damage to liver or spleen,” David said, gently inspecting the organs.

  “She’s lucky.”

  “Hope so. There’s still her brain to worry about.” He didn’t look up. “Woody?”

  “Babinski reflexes okay.” Greenberg was at the foot of the table now. Had just run his thumb up the soles of Jenna’s feet; both big toes had tipped down, which was good. “How much else can you do when she’s out?”

  “Just the pupils and Babinski. Keep checking.”

  The scrub nurse handed David a new sterile scalpel. Now he made a vertical incision into the uterus, opened it, and blinked at the fetus. A little life that never had a chance, dusky-colored and awash in blood.

  Sam suctioned the uterine blood out with a gurgling, whooshing sound, muttering, “Son of a bitch who did this, I wanna kill him.”

  “Get in line.” David waited seconds until he got a clearer field. “Bleeding’s stopping,” he said.

  MacIntyre finished suctioning and looked back in. The torn blood vessels between the placenta and uterine wall had contracted and clotted.

  Now for the baby.

  David put in both hands and gently lifted it out. It was a boy, about four pounds, could have lived just fine if delivered prematurely. He held it for a moment, fighting anger, sadness, then handed the child to the grim-faced nurse, who likewise couldn’t help herself. Out of hopeful habit, she put the tiny body into the little bassinette, put on her stethoscope, and listened for a heartbeat. Silence. Awful, hollow silence in the tiny chest.

  Grimly, the others continued with Jenna.

  David started scooping out the placenta, which had already mostly separated from the uterus. He ran his fingers around its edge to finish detaching it, then tied off any tiny bleeders he saw.

  “I think we can save the uterus,” he said. “The arterial supply looks intact.”

  Sam irrigated the uterine interior with sterile saline solution, then suctioned it out again. They had a clear view. In its reddish uterine surface there were lacerations, which David sutured. Then he gently massaged the uterus, which responded by contracting, but not enough.

  “Ergotrate,” he said through his mask.

  Into Jenna’s arm, Woody injected Ergotrate to further contract the uterus and prevent any further bleeding.

  Before closing, they did one more quick inspection inside the abdomen. Everything looked okay: the liver, spleen, kidneys, stomach and intestines.

  “Time to get out,” David said, and glanced to Sam. “Want to finish? Make it as thin a scar as you can.”

  “The pupils! The pupils!” said Woody, back at the head of the table.

  The anesthesiologist also straightened and checked the monitor. “Sudden change,” he said. “Subdural must be enlarging, causing pressure on the brain. Get neurosurgery in here.”

  The circulating nurse made the call on her phone.

  David blinked, looked abruptly crestfallen. Leaned both hands on the table, and looked painfully down at Jenna.

  MacIntyre tried to stay positive. “Hey, she’s halfway there. You’ve done all you can. She’s off transfusion, back on dextrose and water - and she’s young, you even saved her uterus.”

  “She could’ve gone straight into the recovery room…” David’s voice trailed.

  “So they’ll wheel her out for a CAT scan. You’ll have to go with her anyway, right? Make sure she keeps recovering?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’ll come too.”

  10

  Detectives Ted Connor and Ray Zeinuc studied Brian Walsh. Agitated, early thirties with thinning light brown hair and intense round eyes.

  “Who would do this?” he kept saying. “Who would do this?”
He hunched over, his hands clenching and unclenching his knees. He seemed more uptight than sorrowful.

  Walsh was on a bench outside OB surgery. The detectives had pulled chairs from the nurses’ station and sat facing him in the wide hall. Zeinuc just stared at Walsh and tapped his ballpoint annoyingly. Connor leaned back, crossed his arms, and said nothing. Cop silence to get the other guy to talk.

  Walsh avoided his gaze, and twisted his body away toward the glass wall of the surgical suite.

  “Why can’t I see my sister?” he demanded.

  “She’s being operated on,” said Connor. “You already asked that question. Now will you answer mine?”

  Walsh turned back nervously, his darting, round eyes only brushing the detectives. He still gripped his knees.

  “We weren’t estranged,” he said. “She just hadn’t been speaking to me lately…”

  “And that was why?”

  Behind Connor, an orderly pushed a laden gurney, a nurse pushed an instrument tray, and then another nurse ushered Alex Brand, Keri Blasco, and a weeping couple into the doctors’ lounge. The cops avoided exchanging glances, but Brand propped the lounge door open. By prearrangement, Connor had positioned his chair so he could see through the door, judge body language, confer with Brand and his interview by phone.

  He looked back to Brian Walsh, who was shifting a bit less nervously, clutching his knees again.

  “Jenna said she was sick of me always trying to protect her,” he said slowly, begrudgingly. “It’s been like that since High School, she’d get into trouble and I’d get her out…”

  “That was a Catholic High School?” Zeinuc asked, scribbling.

  “Yes. I was the good one, and she hated that. Years passed and she kept…getting into worse stuff…” He swallowed, stopped abruptly.

  “What worse stuff?” From Connor.

  A frown. No reply.

  “When did you last speak to her?”

  More scowling over to the surgical suite. Without looking back Walsh said, “In June. I called her, tried to reason with her…” His voice trailed.

  “About?”

  “Family business. Private.”

  Zeinuc flipped a notebook page, and Connor leaned forward. “Care to be more specific?”

  “I told you.” Walsh wheeled on him. “Family business. We had issues.”

  Connor flicked a glance at the wall clock. “Where’s your wife, by the way?”

  “I don’t know. I called her, left a voice mail.”

  “That was twenty minutes ago. She hasn’t called back.”

  A shrug. “She will.”

  “Her name is Dara, right?”

  “Right.”

  “What does she do?”

  “Works nights in a convalescent home.”

  “Did you know Jenna had an OB appointment here?”

  Walsh’s eyes slid away. The detectives traded glances.

  “Did you know-”

  “Okay, yes.” Squirming and shifting again.

  “I thought you hadn’t spoken to her.”

  Dry-lipped: “My wife did. She called her once or twice, tried to be friendly.”

  “When?”

  “Recently. I told Dara I didn’t want to hear about it.”

  Connor’s phone vibrated and he answered, peered into the lounge at Brand who was turned a little away with his phone to his mouth. Keri was trying comfort a sobbing woman.

  Brand’s voice said low, “The couple’s name is Susan and Paul Sutter. Jenna was their surrogate mother because Susan’s a type 1 unstable diabetic.”

  Connor’s eyes went sympathetically to the Sutters. Paul Sutter, looking stricken, had both arms around his wife.

  Brand continued. “They don’t like Brian Walsh. Didn’t know about him when the pregnancy was IVF-initiated in March. Jenna was broke, needed the money, and they liked her. Sweet girl, they say. Later the brother started hounding her. She told them he’d become obsessed with the church over the last couple of years, warned her surrogacy was a mortal sin and she was going to burn in hell. She told them she just was a holiday Catholic, but he upset her. She finally told him to leave her alone.”

  Connor was taking notes. Glanced back into the lounge just as tearful Susan Sutter, pale with pale hair, maybe forty, looked up to him. Her eyes were red-rimmed and swollen in a face too ghastly white. Connor had known type 1 diabetics. They’d sometimes pass out in the street, at the wheel, be presumed drunk and nearly die. This was so depressing.

  Hanging up, Connor passed his notes to Zeinuc and glared at Walsh. “So you were trying to save your sister’s soul? Is that it?”

  A sullen silence.

  “You consider surrogacy a sin?”

  “That’s the Church’s position.”

  “So killing the child Jenna carried would save her from eternal hellfire?”

  “No! I never would have done that!”

  “Sure you would’ve,” Zeinuc said sarcastically, inventing like the good interviewer that he was. “Last June she was only three months along, so if you got her to abort, convince her to confess really sincerely, she could’ve been absolved, right? Isn’t absolution terrific?”

  “She hasn’t gone near confession in years.”

  An evasive non-answer.

  A nurse ran past them carrying orange juice for Susan Sutter, hovered over her while Paul Sutter used their glucose meter to prick her finger. The trio grimly checked the results. Susan drank; lay her head tearfully on her husband’s shoulder.

  And Connor’s phone vibrated again. A voice on the other end told him Walsh’s alibi didn’t check out. He worked in a Greenwich Village appliance store, but had taken an hour off for a “late lunch” around when Jenna was attacked. “Not very bright, huh?” the voice finished.

  Connor hung up.

  “Where’d you have your late lunch?” he asked.

  Cocky: “Phil’s Deli, I’m sure I’m on their surveillance tape.”

  The detectives traded looks again. Maybe a planner after all. Maybe he ate real fast…

  Connor gave Walsh a solid stare. “So you’re a devout Catholic?”

  “Yes.”

  “Your address here lists Macdougal Street in Greenwich Village. How long have you lived there?”

  Uncomfortable: “Five months.”

  “And before that?”

  “Staten Island.”

  “Ah! So five months ago you moved to the Village, which isn’t exactly known for its churchgoers. Why is that?”

  A shrug. “It’s where I found work.”

  “It wasn’t because your sister lived in the Village and you wanted to keep tabs on her?”

  “That’s ridiculous.”

  “There aren’t appliance stores on Staten Island?”

  “Nobody was hiring.”

  “But there are snakes, aren’t there? Lots of garter snakes in Staten Island?”

  For the first time Walsh locked eyes with Connor, screwing his face. “Snakes? What are you talking about?” He looked genuinely confused.

  Zienuc added helpfully, “Those snakes are common. They’re all over.”

  Connor fumed and took another tack. “Maybe this isn’t just about the baby,” he said sharply. “Jenna was hit hard on the head. So hard it surprised the doctors the blow didn’t kill her. So this was personal. You couldn’t control her anymore. That made you seriously mad at her, didn’t it?”

  “No.” A vein throbbed on Walsh’s temple.

  “It drove you crazy.” Connor started inventing too. “You’d assigned yourself to protect her soul, and failed. Now I’m a little rusty here, it’s been a long time since catechism, but doesn’t that mean you too failed in your holy mission?”

  “What? No!”

  “Sure it does,” Zienuc said, back to annoyingly tapping his ballpoint. “You failed to save her soul, which means she’s sent you to hell too.”

  “No it doesn’t.” Walsh’s face contorted. “You’re twisting everything! I didn’t do this!
”

  “Is your wife a good Catholic by the way?”

  “Of course!”

  The nurse just leaving Susan Sutter asked them to keep it down. Connor apologized, and said they were done anyway.

  “Okay Brian,” he said. “You can leave for now, but we’re not done with you or your wife. Tell her to come in to be interviewed, or we’ll come to her. You wouldn’t want that, would you?”

  11

  David slammed a locker door closed. “Please move in with me,” he pleaded, intense, uptight.

  “I’ve already moved in with you,” Jill said, just as tense. She yanked on a new scrub top, pulled her long dark hair out of it and let it drop down her shoulders.

  David exhaled hard. “I mean, full time. A few clothes in a drawer doesn’t mean you’re moved in.”

  They had showered and changed in the women’s locker room, where all such traffic had been directed during the police investigation. It was six-thirty and the place was nearly empty. Tricia Donovan had just left. Jill and Tricia had helped deliver their first breech birth, had narrowly avoided complications, and David was fretting about Jenna Walsh, just out of more surgery for a clot on her brain.

  Both were exhausted. Thoroughly spent and starving, and now having a go at each other.

  Jill put a foot on the locker room bench and started tying one of her running shoes. David leaned over her, his voice low.

  “There’s a new creep out there, sending us messages with snakes. Megaphone Guy called the hospital the devil’s workshop. Or maybe he just meant the OB department, or just us, the media’s faces for all this.”

  “Isn’t fame wonderful?” Jill’s hands shook.

  “Your apartment’s in a decrepit brownstone. A busted lock on the downstairs front door, for God’s sake.”

  “I only go back there for clothes.”

  “I’ll go with you. We’ll get them all-”

  “And I sleep at your place or in the on call room-”

  “With me. That’s bed’s really small, Jill.”

  She stopped tying her second shoe, frowned down at it for a moment. “I’m not a child,” she said unhappily. “Please…you gotta stop being overprotective.”