Snapshot (The Carlotta Carlyle Mysteries)

by Linda Barnes

  I avoided sitting on the nearby couch. Made me feel too much like a patient. I settled for a tall chair with its back to the window. From the expression on Donovan’s face, I’d copped his favorite seat.

  “I haven’t much time,” he said.

  “Did you and Emily Woodrow ever talk about the nurse-practitioner who was with Rebecca when she died?” I asked, skipping to the meat and potatoes.

  “Emily’s husband called me, all worked up—”

  “I’ve spoken with him. Any reason he’d expect to find Emily at your house?”

  “What do you mean?”

  Looking at his guarded face, I could tell he knew exactly what I meant. Lately, you open any newspaper, there’s a story about some therapist who’s getting sued for seducing a patient.

  “I mean what I said,” I responded. “Mrs. Woodrow calls you Keith. You call her Emily. I thought you might be close.”

  “You thought I might be sleeping with her? As part of her treatment?” He sounded amused rather than outraged.

  “Not really,” I admitted.

  “But you needed to ask.”

  “Unlikelier events have occurred,” I said.

  “She’s not my type,” he offered.

  “So what about the nurse?” I asked.

  “You don’t want to ask me what my type is?”

  “Not at the moment. The nurse.”

  “Emily talked about her,” he conceded. “Can I call her Emily without you drawing any cheap conclusions?”

  “Did Emily talk about her by name?”

  His raised eyebrows implied he’d be humoring me by answering such a ridiculous question. I hate that.

  “Did Emily use her name?” I insisted.

  “If you want to know the name, I’d have to check my notes—”

  “Tina ring a bell?”

  “Tina. Yes.”

  Dammit, I thought. “A last name?” I asked.

  “Is it important?”

  “Start looking at those notes. Did Emily ever seem to blame Tina for Rebecca’s death?”

  He made no move toward his desk or wherever he kept his files. “In the past three months, Emily has gone so far as to blame Congress for her daughter’s death,” he said with a twist of his mouth.

  “Have any congressmen been found dead today?”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “The body of a nurse named Tina Sukhia was found at JHHI this morning.”

  “Sukhia.” He recognized the name, all right.

  “And now Emily’s missing,” I said. “And that might be a coincidence.”

  “It would have to be a coincidence. What else could it be?”

  “I can think of a startling number of possibilities.”

  “Such as?”

  “Tina Sukhia came into some money recently. After she lost her job.” I left out the new job. I didn’t intend to discuss Cee Co. with Emily’s therapist. If she’d felt comfortable talking to him about it, she wouldn’t have invented a ruse to see me alone.

  “Maybe she quit because she came into money,” he said.

  “See. You can play the game, too,” I said.

  “Your turn.”

  “Emily has money. She could have used it to buy information.”

  “Such as?” Donovan asked.

  “The identity of the man who was in the room when Rebecca died.”

  “The man Emily says was in the room,” he retorted.

  I got the feeling he was less than happy with the present situation, that he’d much prefer to lean back in his own chair, above the fray, and ponder somebody else’s problems. “Another thing you can buy with money is silence,” I suggested.

  “So? Go on.”

  Could Cee Co. be some abbreviated form of the Ruhly department-store chain, the source of Emily’s wealth? Maybe the Ruhly empire consisted of a group of “Clothing Co-ops” or “Cecilia’s Corners.” Maybe Tina’s new “job” was to blackmail Emily Woodrow.

  “Is it possible that Emily could have monkeyed with a piece of machinery, done something that inadvertently caused her daughter’s death?” I asked. And that Tina might have seen her do it, I thought.

  Donovan removed his reading glasses from his pocket, tapped them against his thigh. “Emily feels a basic responsibility for the child’s death,” he admitted. “Of course, that’s not unusual.”

  “Do you think she could have deliberately killed her own daughter?”

  “You have a high opinion of people, don’t you?”

  “I earned it,” I said. “Do you know if the child’s life was insured?”

  “It would never have occurred to me to ask.”

  “I suppose the girl could have been wealthy in her own right,” I said. “A trust fund. Money from a grandparent that would revert to a parent on the child’s death.”

  “Whenever Emily mentioned money, which wasn’t often, she spoke of it as a given, as a matter of fact.”

  “Was she jealous of her daughter?” I asked.

  He paused long enough to swallow, and when he finally spoke, he avoided a direct response. “Women rarely kill,” he said softly. “And when they do, they almost always kill abusive husbands or boyfriends.”

  I was a woman who’d killed twice, once as a cop, once after. My ex was alive and well, far as I knew.

  I said, “Emily never discussed what happened in that room that day? Before Rebecca died?”

  “I think she’s told me every word she exchanged with her daughter, just remembering it, validating it, sharing it. She’s talked about the possibility of a medical mistake, never murder.”

  “Did she ever talk about suicide?”

  “About killing herself?”

  “Yeah,” I snapped. “She’s missing. People who go missing sometimes turn up dead. That’s what I mean.”

  “Let me put it this way: Most people who haven’t lived sitcom lives, at one time or another think about killing themselves.”

  “I’m not asking you about most people. Did Emily talk to you about wanting to do it?”

  “Have you ever thought about doing it?” The question came out wrong, full of sexual overtones. The silence in the room grew. He polished his glasses, restated himself carefully. “I mean, killing yourself?”

  When my mother died. The thought came so quickly I was afraid I’d spoken it out loud.

  “Don’t analyze me,” I said instead, my voice tight with anger. “Or patronize me.”

  “Okay,” he said. “I’m telling you this in confidence. Understood?”

  “I’m not a lawyer. It’s not a privileged communication. But I’m not a blabbermouth either.”

  He leaned forward, extending his fingers and steepling his hands. He regarded me for a long moment, as if he were gauging exactly how far I could be trusted. “Okay then. When I first saw Emily, she wasn’t sleeping. She said she never slept, or she slept for two hours and then roamed around the rest of the night. I prescribed Dalmane, a very common drug. Minimal side effects. She said it didn’t work. I tried another. Serax, I think, was next, more an anti-anxiety medication, with drowsiness as a side effect. Didn’t work.”

  “Is that unusual?”

  “Yes. I tried Xanax, a tranquilizer, then something else. She still seemed resistant. And then it hit me. I realized she wasn’t taking them.”

  “Huh?”

  “She’d get a two-week supply or a month’s supply, and stash it. I figured she was saving up, hoarding a lethal dose of sleep against the day she couldn’t take the pain anymore.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I cut her off cold. I spoke to her. She said she threw the pills away.”

  “Said.”

  “She seemed to be making progress.”

  “What kind of progress?”

  “Her retaliatory thoughts seemed to become more other-directed than internalized.”

  “Did she specifically threaten to kill this nurse?”

  “Whose side are you on here?”
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  “Do you have any idea where Emily might be?”

  “I’ve told my answering service to put through her calls night or day. That’s really all I can do.”

  “Psychiatrists not being interventionists,” I said dryly.

  “What would you suggest?”

  “Go through your notes, and try to get in touch with every person she ever mentioned.” I could see the protest in his eyes, so I added, “Or go through the notes and give me the list of people.”

  He nodded grudgingly.

  I went on. “With Emily Woodrow unavailable I need a way to get her daughter’s medical records. As Mrs. Woodrow’s shrink, why don’t you apply for the files?”

  “I suppose I could do that.”

  “Too interventionist?” I asked.

  “No,” he said defiantly. “Why do you need them?”

  “I want to know who was in that room at the end.”

  “I’ll try,” he said.

  “And let me run some names by you, people who’ve come up in my preliminary check.”

  “I can give you till the doorbell rings.”

  “I spoke to Dr. Muir.”

  “You did?” His voice dropped as if I’d had an audience with the pope.

  “Everybody tiptoed in his presence. Treated him like a national treasure. Except for one guy, an anesthesiologist named Pablo Peña. You know him?”

  “Never heard of him.”

  “A resident. Three-quarters asleep.”

  “That explains it. He was probably too exhausted to salute when he heard Muir’s name. You work a hundred and ten hours a week, you get tired.”

  “Tired enough to get confused? To panic and give the wrong drug?”

  “Anesthesiologists don’t give chemo.”

  “Think about it this way. Maybe he’s on duty, thirty-fifth hour of a thirty-six-hour stretch, and something goes wrong with Rebecca. Tina Sukhia calls for help—what do they say?—calls a code, and this guy, asleep on his feet, rushes in with a mask, but instead of attaching it to the oxygen outlet, he grabs some cylinder on the emergency cart—”

  “Stuff’s color-coded. A cylinder on a crash cart would be either oxygen or air—”

  “What if he intended to kill her?” I said. “Anesthesiologists have access to killer drugs.”

  “You’re thinking like a cop. Why would he want to kill her?”

  “Off the top of my head? Because he gets off on the power, the life-and-death stuff of putting people to sleep and waking them up—or not waking them up. Or maybe Rebecca saw something she wasn’t supposed to see. Heard something she wasn’t supposed to hear. Maybe the guy’s a child abuser, and he’d tried his act on her.”

  “Carlotta—can I call you that?”

  “Yes.”

  “Have you ever seen a code called?”

  “Yeah. I have. Very recently.”

  “There would have been a minimum of ten people in Becca’s room, within seconds. You think Peña would have killed her with all those witnesses?”

  “In a mob scene, with everyone focused on a specific task, he might have seized an opportunity.”

  “If there was anything odd about Becca’s death, Muir would have demanded an investigation.”

  “I’m not so sure about that,” I said.

  Donovan pressed his lips together and tried to hide his indignation. “You’ve met the man exactly once.”

  “Believe me, I was awed. But I got the feeling that he was a man who cared about his reputation. And his reputation is tied up with JHHI’s rep, right? Bound together with steel bands.”

  “Yes,” Donovan admitted.

  “Who wants to send a kid to a hospital where there might or might not be a killer loose? If I ran that place, I might be tempted to play my cards very close to my chest.”

  Donovan raised his eyebrows, gave me a look.

  “It’s happened before,” I said, egged on by his skepticism. “Hospitals can be a killer’s favorite place. Where else can you wear a mask and not get thrown in jail? Where else can you find such a helpless population? There was a nurse’s aide who split his time between Ohio and Kentucky, killed dozens before anyone even considered him as a suspect. Richard Angelo was a nurse who killed four on Long Island.”

  “And you’re ready to add Peña to the list? Just because he’s sleepy?”

  “I spoke with a guy named Renzel,” I said. “Chief of Pharmacy. He didn’t seem to think much of Peña.”

  “That figures.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m talking too much.”

  “Go right ahead. It’s all confidential,” I reminded him.

  “Renzel’s very close to Dr. Muir.”

  “Is that why Renzel dislikes Peña? Are they rivals for Muir’s favor? Is one of them going to take over when Muir retires?”

  “Nothing like that. Truly, I don’t understand the Muir-Renzel relationship. They’re friends. They travel together. Maybe Renzel’s a laugh-a-minute conventioneer. I feel like you’re asking me to do five-second psychiatry.”

  “That’s because I am.”

  “I have an impression—I wouldn’t call it more than a feeling—that Hank Renzel resents non-white physicians. Among men of a certain age-group, it’s not unusual.”

  “Alan Bakke,” I said.

  “Who?”

  “Wasn’t that his name? The white guy out in California who sued because he didn’t get into med school. Said they dumped him in favor of a less-qualified black.”

  “For some borderline white applicants, affirmative action was the end of the dream.”

  “For Renzel?”

  Donovan shrugged. “He’s a Ph.D. Not an M.D. And his father was a well-known surgeon. Almost as big a name as Muir. Medical careers tend to run in families.”

  So, I thought, Renzel’s comment about Peña—that he might not be as “up-to-date” in his methods as the WASPy-sounding Hazelton—could stem from pure prejudice.

  Donovan stared pointedly at his watch. His next patient was tardy.

  I decided to try a quick change. “Harold Woodrow. Does Emily know he’s having an affair?”

  He grinned and refused to bite. “Do you know? Or are you guessing?”

  “Let’s just say I wondered.”

  “Here’s a question for you. Do you ever feel you do more harm than good, digging around like this?”

  “I didn’t set this in motion,” I said.

  “Are you sure about that? Did you see this Tina woman before she died?”

  I only wished I had.

  “Can I ask you something else?” he said. “If you’ve run out of questions for me.”

  “Till the doorbell rings.”

  “You dating someone?”

  It must be something in the air. Now Donovan.

  “Yeah,” I said flatly. “I’m seeing someone.”

  “The someone?”

  “The someone who?”

  “The man you’re going to marry.”

  Good sex can blind you to a lot of character flaws, but even with great sex, Sam was not marriage material. Which was fine with me.

  “And then would I get to live happily ever after?” I inquired sweetly.

  “Where do you think this conversation’s headed?” he asked.

  “Nowhere.”

  “I was planning to ask you out.”

  “Because we have so much in common?”

  “Because you interest me.”

  “Clinically? As a subject for further analysis?”

  “I haven’t met many women who seem as comfortable with violence as you do.”

  “I’m not proud of it,” I said.

  “No?”

  “Let’s sit this one out,” I suggested.

  “Until Mrs. Woodrow turns up.”

  “We’ll see,” I said.

  “Just let it simmer?”

  “We’ll see.”

  The doorbell rang.

  I said, “Did you ever prescribe Halcion for Mrs. Woodrow?”r />
  “In moderation, under the administration and supervision of a doctor, there is nothing wrong with that drug.”

  “And it makes one hell of a criminal defense,” I said.

  “I have a patient.” He stood and walked quickly across the room, his face rigidly under control. “Good-bye.”

  20

  Tony Foley still didn’t answer his phone. When Tina Sukhia’s recorded voice cut in, I banged down the receiver.

  I dialed the phone again, hung up again. Maybe Tony was home, stubbornly resisting the telephone’s lure. Considering the statistics on boyfriends killing girlfriends, the police had probably grilled him past exhaustion. The reporters would be next in line, pursuing him for poignant quotes. Given similar circumstances, I wouldn’t answer my phone for a week.

  I sat at my desk and twisted a strand of hair, a childhood habit I’ve never outgrown. Most of my hair is silky, but the occasional kinky filament teases my fingertips. The game is to isolate a lone curly stalk and pluck it out.

  I’ll probably be bald before I’m thirty-five.

  I needed to ask Tony Foley some more questions. And stats aside, I didn’t see him as a valid murder suspect. Call me sentimental, but I figured he’d have waited until Tina paid off the VISA bill for the stereo.

  I debated phoning the Woodrows. Had Emily reappeared?

  I reached into the drawer for the photographs she’d sent me, dealt them face up on the desk: baby, toddler, little girl. All I’d ever seen of Tina Sukhia was a single photograph, a smiling image.

  Police photographers would have taken shots of her body, pictures that might hint at the circumstances of her death. But I wouldn’t see them, not unless I told Mooney everything, including my client’s name.

  Roz was momentarily handling the garbage-thief search. I hoped Lilia was looking after Paolina.

  I yanked, and six inches of curly copper wire came loose, a lone hair trapped between my thumb and finger. I wrapped it around the photos of Becca Woodrow and thrust them into the drawer.

  I took back roads to Buswell Street, avoiding Memorial Drive.

  Tony Foley wasn’t answering his doorbell any more than he was picking up the phone. I settled into a metal folding chair at a Laundromat half a block away and tuned in to the spin cycle. Read the Globe, focusing on the tiny paragraph concerning the discovery of a body at JHHI. Former employee. Identification delayed pending notification of kin. No cause of death implied. What would coverage be like tomorrow?