“Hello,” he said. “This is Doctor Baldwin, I’m calling from St. Catherine’s.”
“Is this an emergency, Doctor?” It was a young male voice.
“No, actually I have a question about one of your upcoming events. The seminar on little Jesse Levine tomorrow.”
“Oh yes, Doctor. Would you like to be connected to the Obstetrical Department?”
“That would be fine. Thank you.”
“One moment, please.”
Click, buzz, click…a five-second wait and then: “Obstetrics and Gynecology,” said another bright-sounding voice, also human, female this time. What a class act, this hospital. Others had goddamn menus. Your call is important to us. If you’re bleeding to death, press-
“Hello,” he said again, re-identifying himself, sounding serious, repeating his opener.
“Ah yes,” said the friendly voice, a little rushed. “The Jesse Seminar. How may I help you?” Phones rang in the background.
“Well, my niece in pre-med is terribly interested. I was wondering if there was some way I could arrange for her to attend.”
“I’m so sorry. Our guest list is by subscription only, and is full, I’m afraid. Researchers coming from all over the world.”
“Ah, I should have realized. Well, is there any other way she could just be there? Stand in the corner or something?” Get pushy. Work it. “I’m sure she’d even be thrilled to wait tables.”
“It’s an idea but…” The voice turned awkward. “That’s not our purview. You might, uh, tell her to contact Banford Events. They handle all our affairs, graduation parties, that sort of thing.”
“What a wonderful idea.”
“Unfortunately, Banford hires only people with years of experience and top resumes. I wouldn’t want her to be disappointed.”
“I’ll tell her. Thank you so much for your help.”
“You’re welcome. And best of luck to your niece. If she’s so focused this young, she’ll do just fine.”
He thanked again and hung up, smirking to himself. Manipulating nice people is so easy.
He looked out the window at the quiet street, then read again the article he’d cut from the paper two days ago. Then turned back in his seat, went online, and found the website for Banford Events. Very fancy. A slide show of floral arrangements and fine china, illuminated tents, extravagant desserts. With a phone number, of course, at the top of the page.
He called it.
32
The clinic seemed frightening. Awful contrast to the third floor playroom and the babies’ Childcare that had felt so safe, so innocent and protected by caring people. But the clinic and its waiting room meant strangers, open to anyone who could just walk in.
The clinic meant back to reality.
All through running in and out of cubicles for physical exams and post-delivery checkups, Jill kept darting her eyes around, checking for security guards. Once she peeked out to the waiting room, saw grungy males blink up at her (relatives, no doubt), and rushed back inside, bumped into one of the interns also working the clinic.
“Oh! Sorry!” she said. “I can’t see straight I’m so uptight.”
The intern grimaced and said he was nervous too. “I saw David on TV chasing that guy. The killer, right? Jeez, right in front of the hospital.”
“Cam phones everywhere, huh?” Jill said gloomily.
At four o’clock, during a lull, she stopped with Jim Holloway and Gary Phipps for coffee before a vending machine. They were wound tight too, also talking about David chasing Haven and last night’s two tranny murders.
“He’s still out there,” Holloway muttered. “All those cancellations for the clinic - people are afraid to go out.”
By then Jill’s nerves were strung tight as piano wire. What would tonight bring? She thought desperately, Oh Jesse, we want to see you grow up!
Every unknown male seemed suspicious, like the tallish, bearded guy who’d just come to re-fill other vending machines. He’d heard their conversation.
“I have a gun,” he said. “Have to. I’ve been mugged, almost killed. Gun control’s a joke. Creeps get their guns like they get their drugs.”
“Yeah, on the street,” Holloway said. “The big gun underground.”
“Ha! Not so underground,” the bearded guy said and left, rolling his empty snacks bin. He looked back over his shoulder. “They get guns anywhere.”
Jill’s dread pressed down harder as her phone beeped. It was David.
“Extra hands needed up here,” he said. “I hear things are light in the clinic?”
“Yup. Cancellations. People are scared.”
“These babies on the way don’t read newspapers. Hustle, honey.”
Moments later Jill was scrubbed in and in a delivery room, helping David and an intern he was teaching with a multiple birth. The patient was nine centimeters dilated and groaning, her sheet-covered belly huge.
“Don’t push yet,” David told her, glancing up at the sonogram on an oscilloscope screen. Three babies looked crowded in there. “Wait till the next contraction.”
The patient moaned.
“Good size kids, only two weeks early,” he said, getting Jill up to speed as she stepped past a nurse and the intern, studied the sonogram, then came to the foot of the table. Multiple births tended to come early.
Jill breathed in with temporary relief. She was glad to be in this room of good people who preserved and brought forth life. It was also good to feel confident. She’d done this kind of birth before.
Don’t think of the other thing. Concentrate…
To the intern David said, “The first two are in a good position, head down. The third little guy’s gotta be different, he’s head up. We’ll have to deliver him as a double footling breach. Ever seen that?”
The intern hadn’t.
Minutes later and minutes apart, Jill delivered both babies and handed them to the nurse. David meanwhile had pulled on a long, to-the-shoulder sterile latex glove, and was telling the intern what to do next.
“Last one’s floating horizontally up near the fundus,” he said. “So you use this glove – it’s called a version glove – and reach in carefully like this, find the baby’s ankles, and carefully pull him down face down.”
“What if he isn’t face down?” the intern asked, watching David work.
“It’s so wet inside with amniotic fluid, you just feel around and rotate him by his ankles. He’ll turn easily.”
“Ah,” said the intern. “Like grabbing a fish by the tail and turning him.”
“Yeah, kinda.”
For an irresponsible second Jill wistfully pictured a placid lake and the idea of going fishing. Then caught herself and thought, Concentrate, dammit.
Gently, steadily, David slid the baby out by the ankles. “This turning technique is called an internal podalic version, it’s important to know how to do it.”
He held the child – a boy - up by the ankles, let amniotic fluid drain from his lungs, mouth and nose as the nurse used a soft rubber bulb to suction any residual fluid from his tiny mouth and nose. The baby took a breath and started to squall. David gave a hoot and laid him on his mother’s gowned belly as the nurse dried his face and body, then covered him with a soft, dry towel. Jill moved the towel a little, waited for the cord to stop pulsating, clamped it, and cut it.
“That’s number three, Mrs. Doyle,” David said. “You’ve got three little boys.”
The patient moaned again. “Three tuitions,” she said and then laughed.
Jill got busy with the nurse and the two other babies in their bassinets, while David delivered all three placentas and their amniotic sacs. Mrs. Doyle cuddled tiny Number Three wrapped in his warm blanket, and cried and beamed. “Huey, Dewey and Louie?” she asked. “Like those names?”
“How ‘bout Harpo, Groucho, and Chico?” David said.
Minutes later, he and Jill were back in the scrub room, foot-pedaling water into two sinks.
“You
did good in there,” David said.
Jill stomped harder on her water pedal, then on her soap pedal. Water splashed into her sink and bubbles rose. “Wish we could have stayed in there,” she groaned. “Wish we could go get Jesse and barricade the door and wait till the cops catch Haven and sound the all-clear.”
“I spoke to Simpson…” David started to say, but Jill seemed not to be listening. She was blasting water in faster than her sink could empty, and batting bubbles around.
Abruptly, over the water sound, she said, “I’m feeling guilty about something.”
“Huh? What?”
She resumed swishing more bubbles, less forcefully now. “I…didn’t get the chance to tell you. Beth has her gun.”
“Oh that. I figured.”
Jill stopped what she was doing and looked at him.
He gave a little smirk. “There was no need for her friend to bring those clothes in such a rush. I figured it was about the gun. I’m not worried, she’s trained.”
So they were back to talk of guns, mind-flashes of the killer. Jill felt fear and dread mounting their return and she blasted in more water; watched her sink full of bubbles rise.
“The police haven’t found Haven?” she said above the splashing.
“No. They’re still trying.”
The bubbles were pretty, actually. Jill started to toy with them, trying to calm herself, watching the fluorescents above reflect off their soapy surfaces. Refract off the bubbles’ curves – like planet earth - breaking their light up into rainbows.
“Pretty colors,” she murmured, pedaling the water off.
“What?” The room fell silent.
“Pretty colors on the bubbles.” She swished them around. “Look at this big one. The light refracts off it and makes its surface violet, red, blue…blue…”
David looked into her sink, worried.
She pointed to the bubble. “Blue like sapphires...” She blinked, looked at him. “The bubble looks like Beth’s brooch!”
He didn’t understand.
“Haven stole it, which means he got into her apartment.”
“We know that already.” He looked more worried.
“Which means he could get in again, feel safe ‘cause he knows no one’s coming back to it. Haven could be hiding there now.”
David’s jaw dropped. “My God,” he said. “Call the cops.”
The intern walked in, complaining the nurse chewed him out about something. Neither of them heard. Seconds later they were out in the hall with Jill calling Kerri.
“Where are you?” she asked when Kerri answered, holding the phone so David could hear.
“In Nina Cortez’s neighborhood, canvassing.”
“You’re in the wrong part of town.” Jill’s hands were shaking. “It just occurred. If Haven got into Beth Willis’s apartment once he may be back there now, hiding, knowing no one’s coming-”
“Oh fer Chrissake, why didn’t we think of that? Thanks, Jill. Again.”
Kerri hung up saying they were on their way.
David hugged Jill hard, lifting her off her feet. “What a leap of logic. I’m impressed.”
But she was back to fretting and squirmed back down. “Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe he’s not there.”
“And maybe he is.” David looked amazed, hopeful as he grabbed sterile towels for both of them. “The cops were getting nowhere - who’s going to recognize him? He keeps changing his appearance.”
33
I’m so smart, he thought, humming happily. It’s all gone so perfectly.
Still, he took another peek out the window, barely moving the curtain. Just a safety habit, but he’d been doing it compulsively. Probably his gut telling him he shouldn’t stay here long.
This shabby end of the tree-lined street showed the first few downcast wage slaves trudging home from jobs they hated, and one young woman pushing her bored-looking kid in a stroller. She was yakking on her cell phone.
The usual dreary nothing of most people.
He hurried, excitedly packing his duffle, congratulating himself on what an amazingly brilliant, fun, seventy-two hours he’d had. Ashley Cobb was the big game changer, a major adrenalin surge to the boredom that had threatened. Then last night, after the trannies and his penicillin shot – and thank goodness for that – he’d spotted a corporate type just leaving his gay pal, and followed him, mugged him still looking like Dolly, yielded of course to the rich guy’s bleating for his life, and just taken his wallet. Inside, eureka, over two thousand bucks! He wouldn’t even have to use Mr. Double-Life’s credit cards at an ATM.
Then he’d brought his duffel here, planning to sleep, catch up on his rest. But oh-so-perfect David and Jill pulled at him like a taunting magnet, made him grind his teeth, weighed on his chest with an unbearable pressure. He had to challenge David, had to show him he was better. An hour of pacing made him give up, unable to fight it. He’d craved that new, higher adrenalin surge and knew where to get it.
This place’s three flights of stairs had been dark and empty, as they’d been when he arrived, so he’d crept back down and jogged to the hospital.
Levine had fallen for it. Was easily lured out to play Catch Me – and what…a…rush that had been. Cops too! They were so stupid, disorganized. The traffic pile-up was a bonus.
Would he have killed Levine? Probably not that time, cat and mouse had been more fun. Even tackled in the middle of First Avenue he would have just winged the dear boy - as promised - but no…Levine had betrayed him! Continued leading the cops after him.
He could have killed him, that was the thing – but there would have been nooo satisfaction unless David knew it. Which provided the bonus rush, hearing Jill’s terrified voice, telling her it was just the dark in the alley that had saved her man.
He needed better light! How else could he get taped too, and blanket the media and YouTube? It was so glorious, mind-blowing, to have taunted Levine and gotten away, proved himself smarter.
He’d returned here and slept well after that.
Woke this morning refreshed …then dyed, cut and combed his hair differently, went out and got himself a temp job. They’d given him a plastic ID card and were really impressed by his fake resume. Never really looked hard at him, either. Don’t these people watch television? Did he really look that different?
Good. Time to take this show to a new level.
Now his duffel was full. Before his interviews he’d shopped for replacement makeup, fake teeth and some new clothes.
He zipped his duffel closed, and went to the window again.
Nothing. Just more wage slaves trudging home, a wide woman watching her wide dog squat, and…wait a minute.
A sedan pulling into the street, parking by a fire hydrant. Two blue-and-whites sliding in too, further down. And a TV repair van, double-parking where the neighbors would kill you for that. The SWAT team, no doubt.
Subtle, aren’t they?
“Shit,” he breathed.
He went and bolted the door. Why make it easy for them? Then carried his jacket and duffel through the small living room, past the small bedroom with its two single beds, into the bathroom.
He had just seconds.
He opened the window, pulled the shade down, and used a tube of lipstick to scrawl on it. Then took a last whiff of Beth’s sweet-smelling soap, climbed out under the shade and quickly went down the fire escape.
Good thing he was already in his sweats.
Coming out the back way, he started to jog.
One of them rapped loudly. “Mitch Haven! Police, open up!”
Nothing. Silence inside.
They’d given him five seconds and then their big guy rammed the door open. In they swept, crouched with guns drawn, fanning out in the small hall, the bedroom, kicking open closets.
From the bathroom came hollered obscenities.
The rest converged.
Ahead was a pulled-down window shade with a red-scrawled COPS STOOPID! Signed, CATCH ME, 5:55
p.m. Hard-squished lipstick underlined the time.
The sonofabitch was bragging he’d just scrammed!
Three men were out the window fast and racing down the fire escape. But which way to go? The alley opened onto crowded Second Avenue, alleys on both sides and yards from a subway stop.
More obscenities.
Frustration back inside the apartment, too.
“Slippery, too-damn-smart psycho,” Alex Brand growled, gloved and examining the slept-in bed, the floor strewn with frilly women’s clothes, blond wig, and stuffed bra.
“He bought new clothes,” Kerri Blasco said, kneeling and going through a wastebasket. She held up receipts from several stores. “And more makeup, a new beard and wig, and two different colors of hair dye.” She overturned the wastebasket and picked through more.
Brand cursed frantically. “Means he’s planning more soon, like tonight.”
A crime tech finished dusting the computer, and Brand sat before it, zooming through its history.
Kerri held up crumpled papers. “What’s this? He wants to be a waiter?” She read aloud. “…’have had extensive experience serving and bartending. Am friendly and courteous. Below are references from some of the finest restaurants…’ He makes this stuff up. God, he wants to shoot up a restaurant?”
“Nobody checks anymore. Hey, what a surprise, he’s been on Craigslist.” Alex scrolled. Then opened a Word icon on the desk top, and scrutinized its history. “Fake name, resumes contacting one events planner and six restaurants.”
He checked the Sent emails to be sure.
“Got the place names, contact info?”
“Yep, in the resumes. This is good. Restaurants are open at night. We can show them the flyers, tell them to be on the lookout.”
Kerri bagged her wastebasket finds, worried. “Restaurants are perfect places for couples.”
“And it’s night already. God help us.”
34
Jill was stunned.
“I wanted to tell you in the scrub room,” David said defensively. “But you’d gone ape over your bubbles.” He flinched at her look. “And your mind-leap to the brooch and Mitch Haven maybe hiding at Beth’s place.”
CATCH ME (EMBRYO: A Raney & Levine Thriller, Book 4) Page 15
