Her Lawman on Call

by Marie Ferrarella

  “Anyone else in the operating room?” Natalya wanted to know.

  Sasha shook her head. “No. Just the five of us. And Jorge.”

  “Six, with four dead,” Natalya reviewed, no longer smiling. No longer thinking about the scene she’d just walked in on. “Sasha, you’ve got to tell your hunk about this.”

  Sasha was already striding across the floor to the phone on the coffee table. More than anything else, she hoped she was wrong, that this really was just a bizarre coincidence. “I already told you, Nat. He’s not my hunk.”

  Natalya joined her at the telephone. “Then I’d let him down easy, because I think he thinks he is.” And she meant that, seriously. “And I wouldn’t tell him until after this psycho stalker, whoever he is, is caught. You’re going to definitely need that sexy detective for protection.”

  Sasha began to protest, then fell silent as she heard the phone on the other end of the line begin to ring. She waved her hand at Natalya, indicating that she should hold her tongue.

  A deep, sleepy voice muttered, “Santini.”

  She immediately felt guilty and would have hung up had Natalya not been right there at her side, watching. So she pushed on, telling herself that she was right to call. “Did I wake you?”

  She heard Tony let out a long breath, as if he was getting his bearings. And putting a lid on his temper. He didn’t answer her question.

  Instead, he responded to what he heard in her voice. “Something wrong, Doc?”

  So, they were back to that. To their job descriptions. She’d hoped they had moved beyond that. But then, she reminded herself, she had known going into this that he was the type who wanted to maintain his distance.

  “It might be,” she began slowly, trying hard to sound as if she was rational. “I’m not sure, but I think I might have found your connection between the dead people.”

  “I’m listening.”

  She could detect a note of electricity crackling between the lines. She’d gotten his undivided attention.

  “Three years ago, on the Sunday after Thanksgiving, we all operated on a hit-and-run victim.” She enunciated every word as if she as waiting for him to absorb them one at a time.

  “Hold it, hold it,” he ordered gruffly. He was certain his foggy brain had caused him to mishear her. Or at least he fervently hoped so. “You said ‘we.’ Is that a royal ‘we’?”

  Sasha took a breath before answering. That meant that she was in danger, too, didn’t it? She refused to allow her mind to go there, to deal with that thought.

  “No, it’s not a royal ‘we’, Detective. I was there, too. It was a hit-and-run,” she said again with emphasis. “The paramedics brought her in, a young woman about twenty-five years old. There was no one on duty that night who specialized in internal surgery. If we’d waited until a specialist arrived, there was a hundred percent chance she would be dead before the surgeon ever crossed the threshold.” Sasha paused.

  “Did you save her?” Tony asked the question for form’s sake. He had a feeling that he already knew the answer.

  The next moment, she confirmed it. “No, she died while we were operating.” Sasha sighed, remembering. Feeling helpless and awful. The woman had been young. And three months pregnant.

  He heard the sadness in her voice and ignored the urge to say something to comfort her. There were more important things at stake right now. There was nothing to be gained by feeling guilty about the woman’s death. It wouldn’t change the results. He was certain that Sasha had done all that had been humanly possible. At the moment, he was far more interested in keeping her and whoever else had been involved in that emergency surgery alive.

  “Can you remember if the woman was married or about to be married?”

  Sasha heard rustling on the other side of the line, as if Tony was moving around, getting dressed. She tried not to allow herself to get distracted by that thought, by the image of him slipping into clothes the way he had done earlier.

  Instead, she concentrated on his question. On the memory of an operation that was three years in the past. “Yes, she was. Her husband threatened to sue everyone.” She remembered that the man had been angry and abusive to her when she came out to break the news to him. She’d had the woman’s blood on her surgical livery and it had nearly sent him over the edge. “But in the end,” she said, struggling to regain her calm, “the whole thing just blew over.”

  Tony had a different view of it. “Maybe not. I’ll be right down there. In the meantime, try to remember as much as you can about the operation, who was there, what the husband might have said, things like that.”

  “You don’t need to come rushing over, Tony,” she protested.

  Maybe they weren’t back to square one after all, he thought. That should have bothered him, he told himself. But the exact opposite was true. “Is your sister back yet?” he wanted to know.

  Sasha glanced at Natalya, who’d remained only a couple of feet away from her during the entire phone call. Maybe he wasn’t worried about her. Maybe, since she’d woken him, he’d decided to come back for an encore. She could feel tiny nerve endings priming, sending off alarms. “Yes, but—”

  “Good. Keep the door locked and don’t let anyone else in until I get there.”

  He was worried. She could feel her uneasiness increasing even as she silently insisted she was making something out of nothing. “I might be all wrong about this.”

  “And then again, you might be all right,” he countered grimly. “Keep the door locked.”

  Ten minutes later, he was there, banging on her door and calling through it for her to let him in. Sasha all but flew to the door, taking the chain off even as she flipped the lock.

  “I didn’t realize you lived so close by.”

  “I don’t,” he told her, crossing the threshold. Turning, he closed the door and secured the chain. “One of the advantages of having a police siren in your car is that you get to use it once in a while to prevent crimes instead of getting there after the fact.” He nodded at Natalya, but his attention was completely centered on Sasha. “Was there anyone else in the operating room that night?”

  She’d thought and rethought that surgery the minute they hung up the phone. “Just Joshua Palmer. He’s a primary-care physician.”

  Tony frowned. He hated the labels that society had slapped on everything. He missed the days when a doctor like Palmer was simply referred to as a family physician and that was enough to speak volumes.

  “Anyone else?” he wanted to know. Sasha shook her head. “And everyone who’s been killed so far,” he repeated the names of all four victims slowly, “Angela Rico, Rachel Wells, Jorge Lopez and Tyler Harris, they were all in the operating room that night, too?”

  Sasha was beginning to feel hollow inside. And extremely uneasy. “Yes.”

  “Can you remember the woman’s name?”

  That she wasn’t liable to forget any time soon, Sasha thought. She nodded as she pressed her lips together. “You tend to remember the one you lose, no matter how hard you try to forget them. Her name was Gloria Jean Anderson.”

  The first order of business, Tony thought, after calling the captain and getting authorization for Sasha and the other doctor to have bodyguards posted, was having a talk with the late Gloria Jean’s husband.

  It felt good to finally have some kind of lead to work with. He nodded at Sasha as he took out his cell phone. “It’s going to be all right.”

  The optimistic promise surprised her.

  Chapter 13

  “Dr. Pulaski, have you seen the paper this morning?”

  The breathless question came from one of the newest nurses on the floor, Jennifer Cruz, as Sasha was quickly walking past the nurses’ station on the maternity ward the following morning.

  It was a little before nine and she was running behind. She always did her rounds at the hospital before going to her office. Today, mercifully, was a light day. Only three of the patients on the floor were hers, and one was goin
g home this morning as soon as she signed the discharge papers.

  Without looking, Sasha had a feeling she knew what Jennifer was referring to. “No, I didn’t have time.” She glanced toward the nurse. “I’m running late. Oh God.” The groan was an involuntary reaction to the headline that was splashed across the first page of the newspaper that the nurse was holding up for her to view. “Hospital Stalker Strikes Again.” The headline fairly vibrated. Sasha sighed. It didn’t take the media long. “Just what we need. More panicked patients.”

  Sasha saw the animation drain away from the nurse’s face. The next moment, she discovered why.

  “The medical staff isn’t feeling too good about this killer being at large, either,” Lauren James complained.

  The administrator came up behind her. The woman looked slightly harried beneath her perfectly made-up features. The board, Sasha knew, was not taking this well. Which meant that they were, in turn, taking it out on Lauren.

  Despite the differences they’d had, Sasha felt sorry for the woman.

  “Everyone’s looking over their shoulder. Patients are canceling elective surgeries, or postponing them.” For a moment, Lauren paused, as if debating her next words. It was a known fact that the woman had no friends. Up until now, Sasha would have said that Lauren felt she didn’t need them. But now, judging by the look on Lauren’s face, she wasn’t so sure. “The board is threatening to have my head.”

  Though she felt certain that the board was not happy about this unwanted publicity the hospital was getting, she had a feeling that the members were using the fallout as an excuse to make Lauren’s life difficult. Difficult enough perhaps to make the woman hand in her resignation of her own accord. It was no secret that, education and credentials notwithstanding, the woman was no one’s candidate for hospital administrator of the year. Or even the month.

  Still, Sasha felt obligated to lend a sympathetic ear. “They can’t blame you for these murders.”

  Lauren had purposely moved away from the nurses’ station and Jenny’s rather unsubtle attempt to listen in. She kept her voice low as she said, “Tell that to the board.”

  “Well, unless you’re responsible for killing these people—and everyone knows how you hate to get your hands dirty,” Sasha quipped with a wry smile, “there’s really no way that you could be behind this.”

  The icy blonde shrugged her shoulders as her lips curled into a deep frown. And then her eyes seemed to grow alert as she looked over Sasha’s shoulder. “Who’s that?” she wanted to know.

  Sasha turned to look. Lauren was referring to a man not more than several paces away. To the casual observer it was obvious that the stranger didn’t look like either an anxious husband or a happy one.

  She’d told Tony the man didn’t blend in, Sasha thought, frustrated. She’d left the apartment quickly this morning, hoping to ditch the detective assigned to her. She should have known better.

  “My police protection,” Sasha told Lauren.

  This was not going to work. Harry Ackerman had been introduced to her last night. Last night, she’d assumed that the detective would be outside her apartment, in his car, unobtrusively standing guard. It wasn’t just herself needing protecting last night.

  But today, it was a whole different story. Today the detective would only be getting in her way. And she couldn’t have that. Her first allegiance was to her patients.

  “You have police protection?” Lauren looked at her, stunned. “Why? What else has happened?” she wanted to know.

  But Sasha ignored the questions as she crossed over to the dour, slightly rumpled-looking man. He towered over her by almost a foot. He hadn’t been picked for his ability to blend in, she thought.

  “Look, Detective Ackerman, I’m sorry but this just isn’t going to work. No offense, but having you around is going to get my patients nervous. Not to mention that I’ve got exams to perform.” She looked up at him pointedly. “And you can’t be present.”

  “It’s Harry,” he told her. Willing to work within the situation he said, “Then I’ll be in the reception area.”

  She took a breath, knowing this was going to make her seem as if she were being difficult, but that wasn’t her intent. “Can I refuse police protection, Harry?”

  “Yes,” he allowed, saying the word slowly. “But I don’t recommend it.”

  It wasn’t his place to recommend that he not be around, she thought. Especially since Tony had gone through channels to obtain his services. But if she’d found the idea of having protection comforting last night, in the light of day, she knew that her own fears had to take second place to her patients’ needs.

  “Duly noted, Harry. And it’s not that I don’t appreciate it, I do. But I have to officially refuse protection.” She offered the older man an apologetic smile. “Tell Detective Santini thanks but no thanks.”

  “He’s not going to be happy about this,” Ackerman warned her.

  That she already knew. Santini was a headstrong man. But she was well acquainted with headstrong.

  “You’re sending the police detective away?” Lauren was still trying to fathom what was going on in her hospital.

  Sasha nodded. Returning to the nurses’ station, she went to the main desk and pulled a chart. “It wouldn’t work out.”

  “You didn’t answer me before,” Lauren reminded her. She rephrased her question. “Why do you merit special police protection while the rest of the hospital staff doesn’t? Is there something I should know?” Suspicion was all over her face.

  More than anything else, Lauren James hated being out of the loop. About anything. Annoyance creased her brow, creating tiny furrows of disapproval. Had she been of a different temperament, Sasha would have played the moment out for a while for her own amusement. But there was nothing to be gained by that.

  So she told Lauren, even though she knew she was probably opening up a can of worms. “Because the investigating detective thinks there’s a connection between me and the four victims, including the latest one.” She nodded toward the newspaper.

  “A connection?” Lauren echoed, clearly horrified. “What kind of a connection?”

  “We all worked on a hit-and-run patient three years ago. She died on the operating table. I was the surgeon, Tyler was the anesthesiologist. Joshua Palmer was the assistant.”

  “Three years,” Lauren repeated. “That was before I came to Patience Memorial.”

  And glorious times they were, too, Sasha thought, although her expression never changed. “Yes, I know. At the time I’d only been here, as an attending, for six months.”

  Making a notation in the chart, she closed it and placed it back on the desk. Ackerman, she noticed, was still lingering in the corridor, uncertain as to whether or not he should leave.

  As she came out of the nurses’ station, Sasha made eye contact with him. “Really, go,” she urged. “If there’s any heat, I’ll take it. Tell Detective Santini it was my doing, my choice.”

  With that, she put the matter of killings and stalkers out of her mind and walked into the first room. She had patients to attend to and that came before anything.

  “So,” Sasha said cheerfully, addressing the woman in the hospital bed, “are you and your beautiful daughter ready to go home, Sandy?”

  “The guy’s alibi checks out.” It was the second time Henderson had said the sentence to Tony. There was still no response from the man. Henderson leaned over his partner’s desk, peering at his face. “Santini, did you hear me? Gloria Jean Anderson’s husband, his—”

  Tony waved a hand at his partner. He and Henderson had brought Anderson in for questioning first thing that morning. The college professor’s haughty attitude had made it a case of instant dislike on his part. He’d grilled the man intently, getting his whereabouts for the time of death for all four victims.

  The alibis hadn’t been creative, but they’d obviously been genuine. Henderson had been checking them out for the remainder of the morning.

  “Yeah
, I heard you,” Tony grumbled. “I just didn’t want to hear you.”

  Henderson blew out an audible breath, leaning against the side of Tony’s desk.

  “Yeah, I know what you mean.” He shook his head. “It really looked like you were onto something there. But the guy was in Vegas for the first killing. And at some seminar for the college for the second. He was giving a lecture when Harris was killed. Lots of people saw him all those times.” Henderson flipped the pages of his small, battered notepad, as if he expected something magical to pop up, something that hadn’t been there all the other times he’d opened the notepad. With a helpless shrug, he tucked it back into the pocket of his hound’s-tooth jacket. “Maybe there’s something else that ties all those victims together. You came up with one operation, maybe there’s another. It’s a busy hospital.”

  He hadn’t come up with the operation. Sasha had. He would have liked nothing better than to take her out of the equation. Except that his gut told him she belonged in it. And that she was right about this.

  Tony didn’t liked the late Gloria Jean Anderson’s husband. A tall, rangy man with dirty blond hair, condescending brown eyes and a nasty disposition that had flared once he’d discovered he was being approached by a member of the police. An English professor who had no qualms about showing that he felt superior to everyone he spoke to, Simon Anderson blamed the entire police force for never apprehending the hit-and-run driver responsible for his wife’s death.

  A little delving into records showed that Simon and his late wife had had marital problems. The counsellor they’d gone to see had recommended Simon sign up for anger-management classes. The man had attended one class before dropping out.

  It took very little effort for Tony to envision Anderson plotting and exacting revenge for his wife’s death. Since he couldn’t find the hit-and-run driver, wiping out the medical team who had failed to save her would have undoubtedly been a close second.