Mercy

by Daniel Palmer

  A second later, the front of the Prius made a loud thud as it slammed without slowing into the man’s midsection. With a sound of folding metal, the man toppled over like a rag doll. His skull slammed against the hood of the moving vehicle hard enough to leave a dent. Then he vanished from view underneath the chassis, as if the Prius had swallowed him whole.

  The other man reached down, and with one hand managed to rip Julie’s foot off the gas pedal. The car rolled ahead, but slowed considerably. With his other arm, he uncorked a vicious strike that connected his elbow solidly with Julie’s temple. The blow left Julie dazed, and the man had no trouble ripping her from her seat. She and the man toppled to the road in a heap. The driverless Prius rolled ahead, and the man Julie had run over became visible on the ground nearby. He moaned, but did not move much.

  Stunned from the blow to the head, Julie was not moving much either. Her attacker took advantage and climbed on top of her. He pinned her arms above her head with one hand, and with the other produced a knife from his boot big enough to carve a Thanksgiving turkey.

  “I’m going to make this sting.”

  He cocked back his arm and Julie braced herself for the pain. She had treated plenty of stab wound victims over the years, and the anticipation was its own form of torture.

  A blur of motion rose up behind Julie’s attacker like a great dark wave.

  Max Hartsock barreled from the darkness, airborne, arms held wide as if he were making an open field tackle. He slammed into Julie’s assailant and knocked him to the ground. He then went tumbling, still entwined in Max’s massive arms, into the middle of the road. Cars in both directions came to a screeching halt.

  A small crowd had gathered, but no one came forward to assist. Plenty of people, however, were filming the fracas on their smartphones. Max and the other man tussled a moment, but the contest was very much one-sided. Max was the quicker and stronger of the pair, and soon had Julie’s attacker facedown with one arm wrenched behind his back at an unnatural angle. The man yowled in pain.

  “Max, come on, man, it’s me, bro. It’s Dominick.”

  The man Julie had run over recovered some of his sensibilities and took aim with his gun. Julie, aware of the danger, rolled to get out of his line of sight. He leveled his weapon, but blood loss made it impossible for him to keep a steady hand.

  The delay gave Jordan time to push his way through the crowd. He dove on top of the armed man, pried the gun from his hand, and with little effort had him pinned, and then had the gun to his face.

  Dominick continued his protest. “Come on, Max. Let me go. It was just a game, man. Some dude paid us to scare the lady. Nothing more. We got a grand to freak her out, that’s all. We wasn’t gonna do nothing to hurt her. Truth. Come on. Let it go.”

  Max answered by tightening his hold. Off in the distance Julie heard the wail of police sirens on approach. Her body shook from all the adrenaline. She locked eyes with Jordan. She and Jordan had the same thought: someone had paid these two—not to scare her, but to kill her.

  CHAPTER 40

  Lincoln Cole drove away before the police arrived, before they could start to question witnesses, before those two gang-bangers he had paid could identify him. He drove past a convenience store on his way out of town and thought about buying a pack of smokes, even though he had quit the habit years ago. The stress was starting to get to him. He was not accustomed to so many setbacks. He was not accustomed to killing, either. He had not thought it would have bothered him so, being a cop who had seen lots of horrible things, but at night Sherri Platt’s voice came to him like whispers from the grave. He heard her pleas, could see her trembling lips, the shake of her body in the grasp of an unimaginable terror.

  After Sherri called in sick to work, Lincoln put the gun to her head. He’d felt sick to his stomach when her eyes bugged out and her mouth opened in a silent scream. He told her to turn around. He could not look at her face and do the job he was paid to do. He told her not to scream. He told her she would be fine. He lied.

  The only thing Lincoln loved about taking Sherri’s life was the money. He would have taken Julie’s life for the same reason, but came up with what he thought was a better plan. It seemed like a stroke of genius to make Julie’s murder look like a carjacking. In hindsight, it was foolish to let those numbskulls orchestrate the attack. Lincoln passed a second convenience store and slowed. He imagined the taste of smoke dribbling into his lungs. The urge was almost impossible to resist, but to cave now would be a sign of weakness, an indication that events had spiraled beyond his control. Lincoln would show restraint and light up a fat stogie on the beach once this was all behind him.

  He pulled into the store’s parking lot anyway, but remained inside his van to make the call. He explained to his employer what had happened.

  “What now?” Lincoln asked.

  “You’ll have to leave that one to me.” The call went dead.

  Lincoln spat out a curse. He got out of his van and gave a stretch. His gaze turned toward the store’s warm interior. One pack of Camels won’t hurt anything, he thought.

  * * *

  THANKSGIVING WAS off, or at least that was Paul’s assertion. He had brought Trevor home and gone up to the apartment to see if Julie was really doing fine, as she’d professed on the phone. After hugs, Trevor retreated to his bedroom, supposedly doing his homework, with his headphones on as usual, which meant he could not hear his parents’ tense conversation.

  “I said I’m fine, Paul. I don’t need go to the hospital and I don’t need a knight in a jean jacket and ponytail to protect me.”

  Gingerly, Julie touched the red welt on her temple that continued to throb. She needed more ice, but would wait for Paul to leave just to make the point she really was okay.

  “Well, maybe you need this ponytailed knight to talk a little sense into you.”

  Julie picked up her cup of tea and glared at Paul from over the rim, but said nothing.

  “Since you’ve started on this path, you’ve been harassed, found a woman dead—shot in her home—and nearly got carjacked. All for what?”

  “The truth,” Julie said.

  Paul fixed Julie with an angry stare and spoke through clenched teeth in an effort to cage his temper.

  “The truth is William Colchester flexed his muscle to keep you from unnecessarily opening old wounds. The truth is a crazy zealot killed Sherri Platt because the courts wisely refused to let Brandon out of prison. The truth is you tried to pop some doc’s inflated ego and he got a bit snippy with you. And the truth is you put yourself in a very dangerous part of town where getting carjacked isn’t, I’m afraid to say, so damn uncommon.” Paul folded his arms as if he’d said all that needed to be said.

  Julie looked at him, incredulous.

  “You can’t possibly believe what you’re saying. Look at everything that’s happened, and you think there’s nothing to it? That it’s all in my head, is that it?”

  “Now you’re putting words in my mouth.”

  “I don’t need to do that, Paul. You’re belittling me perfectly fine all on your own.”

  “Well, that’s just great,” Paul said with disgust. “You keep making headlines and I’ll keep making sense.”

  Julie crossed her arms and glowered at Paul. Their argument seemed a reversal from the ones they’d had while married, with Paul accusing Julie of acting irresponsibly.

  “Listen to me, Paul. Thanksgiving isn’t canceled,” Julie said. “And I’m not going to take a leave of absence from my job, as you so strongly advise. And no way in hell am I going to stop pushing until I get some real answers here.” Julie smacked her hand against the kitchen table, the slap like a gunshot, her face red, hot with anger.

  Paul stood from the table, his face also in a rage.

  Before he could respond, Julie’s phone rang. It was Michelle calling. Julie ignored Paul’s glowering look and answered the call.

  “Oh my God,” Michelle said. “Julie, are you all right?” />
  “I’m fine, I’m fine.”

  “It’s all over the news. Keith and I are so worried about you. What do you need? What can I do?”

  “Nothing, Michelle, nothing. Thank you though for checking in, but really I’m fine. It was just scary, that’s all, and thankfully it had a good outcome.”

  “Well, I’m here if you need to talk.”

  “Thanks. But right now I’m actually talking with Paul. Can I call you later?”

  “Yes, of course, call anytime,” Michelle said. “Sending hugs.”

  Julie ended the call and met Paul’s furious gaze.

  “Just remember, Trevor’s my son, too,” he said, pointing to the bedroom. “So let’s say that you’re right. Not that I believe it, but let’s just say it, okay? Are you willing to put him in danger to find out if your fiancé died of some—some allergy?” Paul held up his hands as though they were the scales, options for Julie to weigh. “Think about it, Julie, while I go give my son a hug good-bye. I really hope you’ll give what I said some serious consideration. If you’re right, or I’m right, either way don’t you think it’s best to leave this matter alone?”

  * * *

  JORDAN SHOWED up for work at 8:30 on Tuesday, a day and a half after the attack, feeling sluggish, sore, and uncharacteristically unmotivated to cart around the dead. He’d had a horrible night’s sleep, plagued by disjointed and disturbing dreams. In one, Jordan rushed to Julie’s aid and took a bullet to the side from a mysterious gunman. In another, it was a knife to the gut. He felt out of breath when he awoke both times, body drenched in sweat, eyes darting about the darkness in search of hidden dangers.

  Jordan knew the two assailants; not personally, but by reputation. Dominick and the other one, who went by the name Lil’ P, were gangbangers, members of the notorious Wilcox Street Boyz. Tough as they come, with a rap sheet longer than any Jay-Z lyrics. The cops carted Dominick away in the back of a cruiser, but Lil’ P left in an ambulance. He had suffered major trauma—a broken pelvis and femur shaft fracture, Jordan suspected, and judging by the shallow and rapid breaths, a possible pneumothorax. But nobody asked the diener’s opinion.

  The police did have questions for Jordan, but those had nothing to do with medicine. He gave them his statement, but felt more perp than good Samaritan. The detective who jotted things down in a black notebook seemed strangely focused on what Jordan was doing with Julie Devereux in the first place, how he knew the woman who was nearly carjacked. It was certainly different for Max Hartsock, because he was a known commodity, a local hero.

  The press, vultures with police scanners, sped to the scene and had a field day with the story: “BC Quarterback Saves Local Doc Who Saved Him.” Julie being in the news so recently, with her discovery of Sherri Platt’s body, gave the press even more fodder.

  Jordan’s nightmares were certainly stress induced, but maybe they had hidden meaning. He would take bullets for Julie in every way because he believed in her, he trusted her, which was not something he could say about many people, including the police.

  Jordan had plans for the day. He would do his job, but sneak away during breaks to go on a hunting expedition. Somewhere in the vast medical archives was a connection between healthy hearts and hives that Jordan was determined to find. He made it down to pathology with only a few stops to recount the last night’s terrifying ordeal for curious colleagues.

  When he finally arrived at the lab he saw Lucy standing outside her office, speaking with a woman he did not know. The other woman looked far more suit than doc in her blue blazer and knee-high skirt. When Lucy saw Jordan, her expression did not brighten as it usually did. She appeared crestfallen, not a look he was accustomed to seeing from the typically phlegmatic doctor.

  “Mornin’, doc,” Jordan said with a smile.

  Lucy pursed her lips, clearly agonized by something. “Jordan, could you please come into my office for a moment,” she said.

  Jordan obliged, of course, and took a seat at the conference table at Lucy’s direction. Lucy sat as well, as did the woman she was with.

  “Jordan, this is Val Mesnik from our human resources department.”

  Jordan’s pulse ticked up. Something wormed in his gut, a feeling of impending doom.

  “I’m going to let Val explain what’s going on here.”

  From a leather workbag, Val took out a thin manila folder, which she splayed open on the table. She reached into the bag again, this time for her reading glasses. She scanned the first page.

  “Jordan, here at White Memorial we put a premium on patient privacy. The requirements outlined by the HIPAA act are quite specific when it comes to policies around individual medical records.”

  Lucy’s forlorn look only deepened, as if she knew the outcome of this conversation, and it would not be to anyone’s benefit. Jordan felt uncomfortable in his chair and the room seemed to get sauna hot.

  “I know about HIPAA,” Jordan said.

  Val pulled her glasses to the bridge of her nose and eyed Jordan sternly.

  “Do you now?” she said in a soft voice. “Well then, you’ll understand why the IT department was concerned about all the superuser access to the EMR system from locations that they couldn’t trace. Someone, it seems, was accessing patient records and intentionally trying to hide their IP address. You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”

  “Oh, cut the Nancy Drew crap, Val,” Lucy said with an eye roll. “Jordan, IT looked over the dates and time stamps in the logs of some of these sessions and matched it to security camera footage that shows you on the terminals at the time. There were other sessions they couldn’t match up, but they think those happened at a home using IP-masking technology and our one-time passkey.”

  Jordan’s body tensed. “You think I did it?”

  “I told Val, and her fellow hounds from HR, that it’s not conclusive proof of anything. And besides, I gave you permission to look at records as part of your employment here. In my mind, this is a nonissue.”

  “But you didn’t give permission for Jordan to mail Donald Colchester’s medical records to an inmate at Cedar Junction, did you?”

  “No, Val,” Lucy said, “because I told you, I did that myself.”

  Val glanced at her notes. “I see. Which you know is also a serious violation.”

  Lucy locked eyes with Jordan. “Here’s what happened. During a routine search of Brandon Stahl’s cell, they apparently found Donald Colchester’s medical records tucked inside a book.” Lucy put the word “routine” in air quotes. “Val here thinks you had something to do with it because of these superuser sessions. I, of course, told her that’s ridiculous. But evidently that wasn’t good enough for Val here, who wanted to fire you on suspicion alone, which I think is BS. So I told her the truth: I sent the files to Brandon to help with his defense because I thought he was innocent. You shouldn’t get in any trouble for what I’ve done.”

  Val cleared her throat. “Yes, well, that’s why I’ve asked for this meeting,” she said. “The computer access suggests the possibility of a different scenario, and I want to give Jordan a chance to state his innocence as a matter of record.”

  Jordan looked at Lucy, who nodded her head slightly, making it clear what answer she wanted him to give.

  “What’s going to happen to Dr. Abruzzo?” Jordan asked.

  “What’s going to happen is I’ll take care of myself,” Lucy said.

  “It’s a matter for the hospital to look into,” Val said. “But the hospital’s position on this sort of thing is very clear.”

  “Could she lose her job? Her medical license, even?” Jordan’s nervousness showed.

  “What happens to me is not your concern,” Lucy said.

  Val did not bother to answer Jordan’s questions, which told him all he wanted to know. For several long seconds Jordan gazed at his lap, deep in thought. When he looked up, he made eye contact with Lucy.

  “Dr. Abruzzo, after all you’ve done for me, I can’t let anythin
g happen to you. Not one thing. I’m sorry.”

  From the pocket of his scrubs Jordan fished out the thin, credit-card-sized passcode generator and put it on the conference table in front of Val.

  “I used this to access the records,” Jordan said. “And I’m the one who mailed Brandon those files, not Dr. Abruzzo. It was me and me alone.”

  Val smirked as she picked up the thin device.

  “Jordan, I’m afraid this is a very serious situation,” Val said.

  “He’s my employee,” Lucy said. “I’ll discipline him.”

  “If by discipline you mean fire, by all means, Dr. Abruzzo.”

  “I’m not firing Jordan.”

  “No. I suspected you wouldn’t. But that’s okay. Because I am. Jordan, I’ll need you to come with me.”

  Jordan got up from the table. Lucy did the same.

  “Jordan, this isn’t over,” Lucy said, a shake to her voice.

  Jordan came over and gave Lucy a long embrace.

  “I agree,” Jordan said to Lucy. “It’s not over by a long shot.”

  CHAPTER 41

  Julie had just finished her morning cup of coffee when she bumped into Michelle, who was on her way into the ICU. The two women embraced with a bit more intensity than a typical hug between friends.

  “Oh my God, Julie,” Michelle said, looking her friend over head to toe. “Are you doing okay? Should you even be here?”

  “I’m sorry, I should have called you back. I’m fine, really I am,” Julie said, sounding assured. “It was scary, but it’s over now.”

  “Yeah, like all over the news.”

  Julie made a half smile. “It’s a little weird, I have to admit, to have my name out there so much. I even got an e-mail from Roman Janowski.”

  “The CEO?”

  Julie returned a nod. “He was very sweet, very concerned, and didn’t seem at all bothered with my being so prominent these days. But still, you don’t like getting e-mails from the big boss.”

  “I’m sure. Say, can you meet for a late lunch? One thirty? I want to catch up.”