Heartbeat

by Joan Johnston

  He glanced at her over his shoulder, his lips curled in a bitter smile. “Thanks,” he said. “I’ll try not to embarrass you.”

  “I only thought . . . I wanted to help,” she said lamely.

  He hadn’t figured her for a snob, and he didn’t like the way she’d made him feel. He wanted to hurt her back and found the words to do it.

  “Watch out, Maggie,” he said. “You might turn out to be more like Victoria Wainwright than you think.”

  Chapter 7

  Jack spent the rest of the week interviewing Dr. Hollander’s colleagues at the hospital. On Friday morning, he headed to Austin to make his weekly report to Captain Buckelew at Ranger Headquarters. He could have done it by phone, but ever since Jack was nine, and his own father, also a Texas Ranger, had died in the line of duty, Harley Buckelew had been like a second father to him. The truth was, he enjoyed visiting the old man, which was a damned good thing, because he didn’t have much to report.

  During the sixty-odd-mile drive from San Antonio north to Austin, Jack went over every detail he’d learned about Hollander and his nurse, Isabel Rojas, in his head. All he managed to do was give himself a headache. He already had a fairly constant ache in his gut, or thereabouts, because Ms. Maggie Wainwright was stuck deep in his craw.

  I should still be on leave. I should be up in the Hill Country on the Guadalupe River, fly-fishing for some of those Colorado brown and speckled trout the Fish and Wildlife guys have stocked up there. I should never have let the captain talk me into taking this case.

  But Harley Buckelew was not only his captain, but a surrogate father. Jack wanted his captain’s respect. Even more, he wanted Harley to be proud of him.

  The captain had dropped off the folder of information the first day of Jack’s administrative leave and said, “I’ve got an assignment for you—investigating a possible serial killer.”

  “I’m not sure I ever want to pin my star back on, and you want me to track down a serial killer?” Jack had asked incredulously.

  “I need somebody to go undercover, and since that isn’t something we Rangers do a whole lot, you’re the man with the most experience. Putting on those lieutenant’s bars you just earned and settling in at a desk can wait a while. I need you on this.”

  “I’m on leave for a reason, Captain. Find somebody else.”

  “He’s killing kids, Jack.”

  Jack had felt the squeeze inside and knew Harley had him by the short hairs. He’d also heard the waver in Harley’s voice that revealed he wasn’t as certain of Jack’s response as he wanted Jack to think. And the warmth that showed he cared.

  “I’ll think about it,” Jack had said.

  Two days later, he’d agreed to go back to work. Jack wondered now if he’d made the right decision. He didn’t seem to have the distance from the case that would allow him to see the situation objectively. Maggie’s opinion of Hollander and his nurse mattered, even though it shouldn’t have been a factor in his investigation.

  As Jack neared Austin on I-35, he saw more results of the previous year’s drought. What should have been acres of bluebonnets and Indian paintbrush spreading a blanket of lavender and orange along the roadside had been reduced to patches of blue here and there amid the green. Without enough rain, the wildflowers—compliments of Lady Bird Johnson’s Texas beautification program—simply didn’t bloom.

  Once in Austin, Jack exited the interstate onto Lamar and caught sight of the large brown metal B bolted onto the side of the Headquarters Building, an off-white concrete two-story built like a bunker, so half of it was underground. He pulled into the lot and parked beside a Jeep Cherokee he knew Buckelew had claimed as his ride, even though the captain didn’t usually venture into areas where he needed four-wheel drive.

  Every time Jack entered Harley’s office, he wasn’t sure whether to chuckle or groan out loud. The captain collected Texas souvenirs—no matter how much in poor taste—just like a tourist. The Ranger’s wall boasted not only a legitimate eight-foot set of horns from a Texas longhorn steer, but the mounted head of a jackalope, a fictional Texas animal consisting of a rabbit head with tiny deer antlers.

  Once Jack was settled in front of the captain’s desk in a genuine black-and-white cowhide chair with arms and feet made of cow horns, Harley slurped tar-black coffee from a giant mug bearing the motto EVERYTHING IS BIGGER IN TEXAS and said, “What have you found out?”

  “Not a hell of a lot more than you told me in the first place,” Jack admitted. Maggie’s defense of Hollander had jibed with everything he’d discovered about the man over the past week. “Roman Hollander seems like a competent, dedicated doctor. Personally, I don’t see him killing kids, even as a favor to them. You’d have a hard time making even a circumstantial case against him because too many other people have access to the ICU, a needle, and potassium chloride.”

  Maggie’s defense of Isabel Rojas had turned out to be equally compelling in light of Jack’s investigation. “Hollander’s surgical nurse, Isabel Rojas, has been with him almost from the beginning of his career,” Jack continued, “and seems as dedicated to the doctor as she is to her job. But she doesn’t strike me as the type to run around killing kids, either. Are we even sure yet whether the other five deaths were murders?” Jack asked. “Maybe Laurel Morgan’s death was an accident. Maybe some nurse didn’t write it down when she gave the kid a dose of potassium, and somebody gave the kid another dose.”

  Buckelew shook his head. “I wish the Morgan case were an isolated incident, an accident. But we’ve heard back from the medical examiners in Houston and Dallas we asked to take a look at those five bodies we had exhumed. They’d all been embalmed, just like we figured, but one of the mortuaries left all the IV s and shunts intact, and massive amounts of potassium chloride showed up in the kid’s IV tubing.

  “Another one of the victims was a preemie with veins too small for an IV. A catheter was inserted in the shinbone to the marrow. By using bone from the uncatheterized shin as a control, the ME was able to document a lethal dose of potassium chloride in the other shin.”

  “Aw, damn,” Jack muttered.

  Harley swatted at a fly with a souvenir flyswatter the size of a paper plate, since even the flies were bigger in Texas. “We can’t prove the other three kids were murdered, but it’s a good bet they were. We’re dealing with someone ruthless enough to snuff kids,” Harley said soberly. “If Hollander’s nurse has been with him for years, she’s also a viable suspect.”

  Jack settled his booted ankle on the opposite knee. “The problem is, short of putting a video camera in the ICU—”

  “All right,” Harley said.

  “All right what?”

  “I’ll take care of the paperwork to authorize surveillance video cameras in the I CU. You tell the guys where you want them, and I’ll arrange to have them monitored twenty-four hours a day by local police.”

  “I count six deaths in seven years, Captain. We could end up with a helluva lot of videotape waiting for the murderer to show up.”

  Harley smacked a fly and shoved it off his desk with the flyswatter. “I guess I haven’t told you.”

  “What?”

  “Every one of those kids died between March 31 and April 6.”

  Jack glanced at the wall where the captain’s Texas-shaped yearly planning calendar was tacked up with Alamo stickpins. Each day that passed was stamped with a red boot. Today was March 28, Good Friday. According to Harley’s information, if the killer held to the previous pattern, he might strike as soon as Monday—and had a mere seven days in which to claim his seventh victim.

  “I don’t know whether to hope the doctor or his nurse try something or not,” Jack said. “What if we get them on video but can’t catch them in time to keep them from killing a kid?”

  “We do the best we can, Jack. We can’t save them all.”

  A poignant silence fell between them as they both remembered why Jack had requested an administrative leave.

  “You
did the best you could, Jack.”

  “My best wasn’t good enough.” Jack couldn’t look at Harley. His nose stung, and tears were too close to the surface. “I keep thinking that if I’d done something differently . . . kept my distance . . . or kept my gun . . . something . . . that little girl would be alive today.”

  “Hindsight is always twenty-twenty, Jack. You have to trust yourself to make the right decision at the time.”

  “That’s just it,” Jack said. “I don’t trust myself anymore. Are you sure you want me on this case?”

  “You’re the best there is in a hostage situation, Jack. I want you there if it comes down to that.”

  The silence grew uncomfortable again.

  “Is that all you have to report?” Harley asked.

  Jack nodded because he couldn’t talk past the Texas-size frog in his throat.

  “Then let me throw another can of beans on the fire,” Harley said, leaning back and threading his fingers over his belly.

  “What?” Jack croaked.

  “We have another suspect.”

  “For Christ’s sake! Why didn’t you say so in the first place?”

  “I’m telling you now,” Harley said, “if you’ll shut up and listen.”

  Jack pressed his lips flat.

  “The MEDCO investigator did a computer check of all common factors and identified another person with a link to all the purported victims in San Antonio, Houston, and Dallas.”

  “Who is it?” Jack asked impatiently.

  “Margaret Wainwright.”

  Jack’s heart jumped from a steady thump to full speed like a jackrabbit taking off from a standing start. “That’s bullshit.”

  “’Fraid not, son. The situation’s delicate enough with Hollander’s wife being an associate with Wainwright & Cobb. I can’t tell you how sensitive this case becomes if we start investigating one of the Wainwrights for murder.”

  Jack ground his teeth, thinking what a fool he’d been to tell Maggie Wainwright who he was. It was like announcing to a burglar when you were going to be gone from home so he could come over and help himself. He opened his mouth to confess to the captain what he’d done, but what came out was, “In what way is Maggie Wainwright connected to all of these deaths?”

  “She’s been counsel for the hospital in each and every case.”

  Jack heaved a sigh of relief and slumped back into his chair. “Hell, Captain. You had me going there for a minute. Of course she’d show up on the computer as counsel for the hospitals. That’s no reason to suspect—”

  “She wasn’t just counsel, Jack. She was there. She did her clerkship one summer in Houston for a firm that represented a MEDCO hospital, and she was recruited by a law firm in Dallas to work with a MEDCO hospital. After that she moved to San Antonio to work for Wainwright & Cobb and began representing MEDCO hospitals statewide.”

  “Are you suggesting she’s the murderer?”

  “She’s certainly one of the suspects.”

  Jack tried to laugh and couldn’t manage it. He rose and paced the cowhide that covered the floor. “I’ve met Maggie Wainwright, and I can tell you she’s not a murderer.”

  “Did you know she had a couple of kids who died?”

  Jack stumbled. It felt like all the air had been sucked from his chest. “What?”

  “MEDCO dug up the information from her health insurance records. She had two live births, but the investigator found out both boys drowned ten years ago, in 1987. Seems one of the boys was DOA, but the other survived on life support for a while. The family removed the kid from the hospital, and the investigator couldn’t find a record of what happened to him after that. At least no insurance claims were ever filed.”

  “Jesus.” Jack slumped into the horn and hide chair. “She never said a word.”

  “I don’t expect it’s something Ms. Wainwright cares to talk much about,” the captain said. “But her background definitely gives her a motive, Jack.”

  “What motive is that?”

  “The same one we’ve given the doctor and his nurse. Ms. Wainwright, of all people, would know how much a family can suffer in a situation where a child is on life support without much expectation of a full recovery.”

  Jack set his jaw and shook his head. “She’s not the one. It’s Hollander or the nurse. Or somebody else we haven’t tied to the victims yet.”

  “I take it you like the lady,” Buckelew said.

  “You could say that,” Jack conceded. He hadn’t realized until this moment just how much he liked Maggie Wainwright. Way too much. He knew better than to think they were headed for any kind of long-term relationship. After all, neither of them wanted to get involved. But he liked the look and taste and feel of her. He wasn’t done with her by a long shot.

  “Are you going to be able to stay objective about Ms. Wainwright, Jack, or should I assign somebody else to this case?”

  Maggie a killer? Jack tried to imagine it and couldn’t. He sorted through some of the things she’d said, things he hadn’t thought much about at the time—like the fact she believed as much in quality of life as Dr. Hollander. “Does that make me capable of murder?” What if she and the doctor and his nurse had formed their own mercy-killing society?

  Jack’s stomach churned, and he swallowed down the bile in his throat. “I’ll do my job,” he said through tight jaws. “If Maggie Wainwright is killing kids, I’ll be the first one in line to make sure she hangs for it.”

  It was easy enough to say he would stay objective, but Jack was having a hell of a time doing it. As he perused himself in the steamy bathroom mirror, straightening his cummerbund and adjusting the bow tie that had come with the tux he’d rented from Anthony’s, he looked like a man on his way to an execution.

  He’d been waiting all week for Saturday to come so he could spend the evening with Maggie. He had planned to hold her and kiss her and had certainly imagined making love to her. Right now he felt about as comfortable as a horse thief at a necktie party. What if Maggie was guilty? What if she’d used the information he’d given her about being a Texas Ranger to throw him off her scent?

  Jack hadn’t always been scrupulous about his bed partners, but he wasn’t ready to make love to a murderer. So where did that leave him? He was tempted to confront Maggie with what he knew and see what she had to say for herself. Unfortunately, he wasn’t sure that would solve the problem. What if she told him she was innocent? That didn’t necessarily make her so.

  He was still sorting through everything in his head when he arrived at the guard gate for the address off Broadway Maggie had given him, 200 Patterson. He waited while the guard called to make sure he was welcome, then drove past the black wrought-iron gate through what amounted to a manicured park surrounding the exclusive high-rise condominium.

  Jack left the keys in his truck when he got out at the etched glass doors under the portico and belatedly realized—when he saw the smirk on the parking attendant’s face—how awkward it might be for Margaret Wainwright to arrive at the Cancer Society Gala in a pickup.

  Hell, Maggie knew he drove a truck. If she hadn’t wanted him to pick her up in it, she should have said something. Except they hadn’t spoken all week. Jack was both nervous and anxious, two things he hadn’t felt because of a woman for a long time.

  On the way up to her tenth floor apartment in the elevator, he stuck a finger between his bow tie and his throat. The damned thing seemed to have tightened by itself. The door-man downstairs had called up to let her know he was coming, so he knew Maggie was expecting him.

  Still, when she opened the door to his knock, she looked surprised. “Jack. Come in. You look wonderful.”

  Does that surprise her? Jack wondered.

  Before he had time to be offended, she said, “I’m almost ready. Would you like a drink? There’s liquor on the bar in the living room and beer in the small refrigerator behind it. I’ll only be another minute.”

  She closed the door behind him without touching him and
headed down the hall to the bedroom before he could say a word. Not that he could have spoken to save his life.

  She had looked exquisite in a form-fitting, full-length black sheath which, he realized only when she turned her back on him, had no back. He could see the dimples at the base of her spine. The saliva pooled in his mouth, and he swallowed hard.

  “Jesus,” he muttered. That outfit was like the come-hither nicker of an eager mare. Jack told his body “Whoa,” but it was hearing “Giddyap.”

  He hurriedly stepped down into the sunken living room and headed for the wet bar in the corner. Maybe a good, strong drink would help.

  Maggie’s living room reminded him of the outdoors, with pale green carpet underfoot and a rose silk couch covered with a half dozen pillows that matched the same flowery print as a nearby overstuffed chair. A ficus stood in a Chinese pot in the corner and a profusion of wildflowers filled a basket on the mantel above a white-brick painted fireplace. He leaned over to sniff and only then realized the flowers were fake.

  She obviously liked cats, but the ones in her living room weren’t any more real than the flowers. She had tossed a pink, pillow-shaped cat on the chair, while a clear crystal one sat on the pine coffee table, and a sleek black ceramic feline reclined at the foot of the fireplace. With the one at her office, that made four fake cats she owned. Not that Jack was counting.

  As he got himself a Pearl beer from the small refrigerator behind the bar, Jack couldn’t help thinking something was out of kilter in Maggie’s apartment. He just couldn’t put his finger on what it was.

  Before he’d taken more than a gulp or two of the ice-cold Pearl, she was back. “That was quick,” he said.

  “I just needed to put on my earrings and some lipstick.”

  The diamond earrings dangled enticingly from her ears, and the lipstick was a bright red that had a lot more to do with GO than STOP. Jack figured if he didn’t get her out of there pretty damn quick, they weren’t going to leave at all.