Snapshot (The Carlotta Carlyle Mysteries)

by Linda Barnes

  “I told the other officer.”

  “Tell me. Sometimes, when you go over it, you remember something.”

  “I’d never have seen anything out of the ordinary if I hadn’t felt like taking a stroll. I pass that supply room on the way to the cafeteria. I wanted a brownie. They make good brownies. Sometimes the pharmacy workers bring them in for me. They know I like them …”

  This time Mooney and I outwaited him.

  “I saw a woman come out of the room.”

  “How sure are you that she came out of the supply room and not out of one of the adjoining rooms?”

  “Well, I’m absolutely sure of it because I thought to myself, why is she coming out of the supply room, what was she doing in there? You know, you read things where doctors have all these, well, sordid meetings, trysts? In magazines. Made-up things. I’ve never seen behavior like that at an actual hospital. Not here, anyway, and so I just took notice.”

  Renzel paused. “Do you want me to describe her?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “She seemed to be a patient.”

  “A patient,” Mooney repeated.

  “Or else she was wearing a patient’s johnny and robe,” Renzel said, sounding as if he’d just that minute considered the possibility of such a deception.

  Had Muir and Renzel decided to keep Emily alive in case they needed a patsy for Tina’s killing? Someone to blame for the death of the Cephagen Company’s president?

  Had Renzel alone decided to make use of her again? Why kill Muir? Why now?

  I bit my lip. Why didn’t the Chief of Pharmacy know that Emily was no longer trapped in her JHHI cell? Why hadn’t Muir confided in his partner?

  “I’d say she was forty,” Renzel continued, giving each word due weight and consideration. “Maybe older than that. Very fair skin. Blond hair, medium length. Not anyone you’d consider the criminal type.”

  “What do you mean?” Mooney asked gently. “By ‘the criminal type’?”

  “Well,” Renzel said in a low confiding tone. “Around here, in this neighborhood, it’s the minorities who generally cause trouble.”

  “Ah,” Mooney said. “Do you remember when I spoke to you before, right after Tina Sukhia died? You thought she might have been stealing drugs from the pharmacy. Was that, in part, because she was dark-skinned?”

  “The woman I saw today was definitely Caucasian,” Renzel said quickly, defensively.

  Was he going to try to sell Mooney some tale about Emily Woodrow admitting herself to the hospital under a false name? Feigning cancer, so she could get a good shot at Muir? How was he planning to explain “Thelma Hodges’s” medical chart, with Muir’s handwriting all over it?

  My throat felt dry. I wished I’d paid closer attention to that chart. Undecipherable, that’s what Donovan had said. Undecipherable.

  Mooney glanced at me and I gazed steadily back at him. He didn’t nod or smile. Maybe he moved a fraction of a second slower. Maybe his jaw worked.

  Renzel slapped both hands to his head, then leaned abruptly forward. His hand smacked against Mooney’s thigh.

  “Oh, my God,” he said. “If I’d checked right then, gone to see what was going on, I might have saved him. I’ll never forgive myself. Never. Muir was a fine man. A decent man. He treated me like a son.”

  He was good, this Renzel guy, very good.

  “What time was it?” I asked quietly, speaking to him for the first time, “when you saw this woman?”

  “Not even fifteen minutes before Jerome—before his body was found in the supply room. She could still be posing as a patient. She could be anywhere by now. I know your man posted guards, but there would be no reason for her to stay once she’d done what she did—”

  Hadn’t he had time to check “Mrs. Hodges’s” whereabouts? Doreen Gleeson, the observant nurse, must have discovered the body too soon.

  “You know that a syringe was found in the supply room?” Mooney asked.

  “I didn’t. You mean …” He paused and licked his lips. “It’s almost like the other one. I know this: Jerome got a threatening letter, an anonymous letter. I told Jerome he ought to take the letter to the police, but ignoring it would be more like him. He wouldn’t want to make trouble for the poor woman.”

  “The poor woman,” I repeated. “Then Dr. Muir knew who’d sent the letter?”

  “He suspected the mother of a former patient,” Renzel said.

  “Did he tell you her name?” Mooney asked.

  How far would Renzel go? I wondered.

  “I might recognize it,” he said, waiting for Mooney to name Emily Woodrow.

  Instead Mooney said, “Dr. Renzel, I think we should continue this conversation downtown.”

  Mooney didn’t say a word about calling an attorney. He didn’t do anything stupid like trying to cuff Renzel or read him his rights. It must have been in Mooney’s eyes, the knowledge that he’d caught a killer.

  “Don’t move, don’t speak, don’t do anything,” Renzel commanded. He was staring at me as if Mooney’s compliance was a foregone conclusion.

  It was. Mooney sagged on the couch, his eyes unfocused, his mouth open. He was trying to speak, but he couldn’t.

  “What—”

  “Shut up.” Renzel’s hand came out of his pocket and I got a glimpse of the tiny syringe tight between his index and middle fingers. Mooney hadn’t seen it at all. Had he felt the jab?

  “Stand up.”

  I did.

  “Stand next to me.”

  My feet moved.

  “Walk to the elevator.” He grabbed my right arm above the elbow in a firm left-handed grip. The syringe, in his right hand, shrouded by the folds of his lab coat, was close to my side.

  If it were a gun, I’d know. Know whether it was cocked, whether the safety was off, know what my chances were, what organs the bullet would pierce. I’d know whether it was a .22, which would give me a faint chance, or a .9mm cannon, which wouldn’t.

  But a syringe … what had its poison done to Mooney? Was it the same stuff that had killed Tina Sukhia? Jerome Muir?

  “That cop knew. You knew,” Renzel said, his hand biting into my arm. “What did I do wrong?”

  “Emily Woodrow’s not a prisoner anymore. Didn’t Muir get a chance to mention that before you killed him?”

  “Where is she?” was all he said.

  “Police custody.”

  “Push the button,” he said. “Down.”

  Most drugs, you have to hit the vein. Intramuscular’s not as good. I learned that from junkies. Had he hit a vein with Mooney? How much time did Mooney have?

  I stared at a silent loudspeaker, willing it to life. Code Something. Call the code for reviving a police lieutenant pumped full of a substance that might or might not prove lethal.

  I didn’t intend to get into any elevator with a maniac holding a loaded needle. Once inside, it would be too easy. A quick slap on the butt, a shot in the vein if he got fancy. Carlyle on the floor, and him out the door, and on the way to the airport.

  My handbag hung over my left shoulder, occasionally bumping my hip. My handbag with my gun inside, the gun I’d taken because of Emily’s insistent questions.

  “Can you use it?”

  “Would you do it again?”

  Not when I can’t reach it, dammit. Could I manage to swing the handbag, knock the syringe away?

  I had a quick vision of Mooney, head lolling against the arm of the couch. How long before anyone strolled over to the lounge by the operating theater? How long before someone went looking for the officer in charge?

  How long before they searched the elevators?

  “Dammit. Why doesn’t this thing come?” Sweat was beading on Renzel’s forehead. Obviously, this wasn’t his style, this immediate, physical crime. He preferred long-distance hits, where you never got to see your victim.

  “I thought Muir was the boss,” I said. “But I guess it was your show all the way.”

  “Shut up. We�
�re going to try a staircase.”

  That was fine with me.

  Maybe security had turned off the juice to the elevators. That would mean someone had found Mooney, someone knew what was going on. They’d be looking for us.

  The silent speaker suddenly boomed. Code Red.

  Dammit, I thought they used numbers here.

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “They probably found your cop friend.”

  “Did you kill him?”

  “I’m not a killer,” he said.

  “What do you call it?”

  “Profit and loss. Business, that’s what I call it.”

  How much could the man see without those heavy glasses? How could I knock them off?

  “It’s hard to believe Muir never knew what was going on,” I said.

  Renzel flushed, and I realized it was with pleasure. Pleasure at having duped Muir, the man who’d “treated him like a son.”

  “Muir’s a fool.” The Chief of Pharmacy’s voice seemed harsh, grating. How could I have ever thought it appealing? “He’s been losing it for years, but they all cover up for him. They know what his name’s worth.”

  Dr. Jerome Muir. An M.D. doctor, a medical doctor, like Renzel’s father, the well-known surgeon. Was that the root of Renzel’s delight? That he’d put one over on the substitute old man?

  If I survived, I’d ask Donovan.

  “Dr. Muir never knew you were holding Emily Woodrow prisoner? Even though you used his name,” I said, my voice full of pretended admiration.

  “I sign his name better than he does,” Renzel said.

  “But how did you manage the drugs, the medical chart? You’re not an M.D.”

  “I’m as good a doctor as anyone here,” he said. “Better than most.”

  Renzel’s glasses had sidepieces that curved firmly around his ears. It would take more than a quick sideswipe to dislodge them.

  “Now stop jabbering and walk fester,” he ordered.

  “Where’s the staircase?”

  “Keep going. There’s one around the next corner. Not many people use it.”

  We were walking down a broad, empty corridor. If someone had found Mooney, the place ought to be a hive of police activity. I imagined Renzel’s profile in cross hairs, a target for unseen sharpshooters. Suddenly I envisioned them everywhere, siting just a little off, high and to the right, at my head.

  “Backward,” I muttered, my mouth dry as dust, speaking to keep my mind off the shooters.

  “What?”

  “I got it backward,” I said. “Once I started to believe Emily’s statement, to accept what she’d seen—a man shoving a mask over her daughter’s face—I called it all wrong. I assumed the man—I assumed you were trying to kill Rebecca, not save her.”

  Renzel said nothing, kept walking.

  “Why did you bother?”

  “I don’t expect you to understand.”

  “I’d like to understand.”

  He swallowed. “It … the children here … Rebecca’s death was different.”

  “You ran into the chemotherapy room. You pushed Emily Woodrow out the door. You risked your entire operation.”

  “Look, the other stuff I do … No one cares. Everyone does it. I ship bogus high-tech drugs to sink-hole countries with no sewage treatment. Sick people—people who’d have died anyway, from bad water or third-rate physicians—die a little sooner. Keep it off the U.S. market and nobody cares. The profits are unimaginable. Millions. I would have gotten everything I wanted.”

  “What?”

  He stared at me blankly.

  “What?” I repeated. “What was it you wanted?”

  “Everything.” His eyes blinked rapidly behind his thick glasses. “Money,” he said carefully, as if he were explaining a difficult concept to a child. “Here we are. Now shut up and open the door.”

  The stairwell was cool. Silent. Gray walls. Gray steps.

  “You’re nuts,” I said.

  He held more tightly to my arm. I didn’t think he’d do anything while we were actually on the stairs. The landings, where he’d have better footing—I’d have to watch for the landings.

  “I would hate to have to kill you,” he said softly, his face so close I could feel his breath on my neck.

  “Like you killed Tina,” I said.

  “If she hadn’t taken the carton off my desk—if she’d followed standard procedure, none of this would have happened. But she was in a hurry and she grabbed the first carton she saw.”

  “Why was it on your desk? Why not keep the mess over at six thirty-two? Why risk contaminating your own hospital?”

  “I needed to check the bar codes, make sure the packaging was current. It was her error. Not mine.”

  “Why didn’t you kill Emily Woodrow?”

  “I could have. I found them prowling the hospital together: proof that Tina’d never keep quiet no matter how much I paid her. But it would have been too many deaths too fast. Even old Muir might have woken up and asked questions. And I had plans for Emily. You might call her a little pharmaceutical research project of mine. The police will probably find her quite willing to confess to Tina’s death. Any death. Even her daughter’s.”

  I studied the concrete-block walls, listened for approaching sirens, ascending or descending footfalls. Nothing.

  “The black nurse,” Renzel said confidingly, “Tina. Killing her … I have no regrets about it. No feelings. Except possibly …”

  “Yes?”

  “That I’d have preferred to kill a black doctor. Yes. A minority M.D. Someone my own age … But I do regret the children here. I regret Emily Woodrow’s child.”

  I stared down at Renzel’s feet, left, right, left, right. He wore brown loafers, well polished, expensive. Leather soles, I thought. No traction. I watched my own feet in conjunction with his. I couldn’t do anything obvious, but I tried to match my stride to his, to measure the distance my foot would have to kick in order to trip him up.

  “The doors are probably guarded,” I warned, just before we reached the landing. “You’ll need me. You’ll need me, as your ticket out.”

  I could feel his hesitation.

  “You might not be so lucky with your next hostage,” I said hastily. “Cops are very careful when a woman’s taken hostage.”

  “We’ll go out the ER,” he said.

  How many steps could I fall and still get up? How quickly would he have to stab with the syringe? Could I count on his impulse to throw out his arms and save himself? Would his damn glasses fall off?

  I watched and counted, felt his rhythm. When he was between steps with his right foot I lurched as far away from him as I could, hurled myself down the stairs.

  He shouted, toppled as well.

  Seven steps was all I wanted to fall. And I was ready for it. And it hurt like hell.

  When I dive on the volleyball court, my knees and elbows are padded, and the floor is level, forgiving wood. Dammit, dammit, dammit. The staircase was cold concrete and hard right angles. It’s the knees and elbows that get it every time. Knees and elbows because I was rolled in a ball to protect my head.

  He wasn’t holding on to me. Even as I was falling, I knew that. And somebody was yelling. Me.

  I grasped my handbag to my chest and hugged it. I could feel the outline of the gun.

  Would the tiny syringe break? Would he squeeze it inadvertently? Disarm it? Would he break his goddamn hand?

  We landed in a tangle of limbs and I found I could move. I threw myself on top of him and I kept yelling and thrusting my hand in my handbag until I could bring out my weapon and hold it at the base of his skull.

  I couldn’t see the syringe.

  “Just lie there,” I told him.

  He squirmed and I dug the barrel into his neck. “Don’t move!” I yelled, my mouth an inch from his ear.

  He lay still.

  “I can pay you,” he said.

  “Like you paid Tina Sukhia?”

  “Liste
n,” he said softly, like he was imparting a great secret. “There’s nothing you can’t fix with money.”

  “Yeah,” I said. My knees ached. I could feel wetness under one of them and hoped the cut wasn’t deep. I felt bruised and shaken. Time for some cop to open the door.

  “Nothing money can’t fix,” I said. “Be sure and tell that to Emily Woodrow.”

  43

  It took two days for the fallout to hit. I don’t mean the newspaper headlines; those were fast and immediate, and mostly inaccurate as hospital PR kicked into overdrive, handing out misleading press releases by the bushel. But the reaction to my role in Renzel’s arrest came more slowly.

  Part of the delay was due to Mooney’s hospitalization. Some of it was weekend inertia. Another element was jet lag, but I didn’t know anything about that until after my Monday morning summons to Mooney’s office.

  Mooney had taken a 1-cc intramuscular jolt of a drug called Ketamine. Hospitals don’t keep Ketamine under lock and key; you can find it on any anesthesia cart. It’s what they call a dissociative anesthetic. Keith Donovan told me about it.

  He stayed at the Brigham, camping outside Emily Woodrow’s door, leaving only to see his regular patients. I don’t know if he acted out of guilt; I don’t much care. I just liked the way he remained after others went home, noting the changing shifts of nurses and police guards, reading psychiatric journals, chatting.

  We talked about anesthesia, third-world medicine, general topics, skating-on-the-surface stuff. He brushed my hair back from my face once, when the arguing got a bit heated.

  He offered to see me to my Toyota when I left. In the descending elevator he asked if I wanted to talk about it.

  “What?” I said.

  “Did you feel tempted to use the gun? When you had him down on the floor, when you had him cornered?”

  I considered possible replies. I thought about dating, even sleeping with a very attractive guy who’d analyze my every move.

  I got in the car and drove away, watching Donovan grow small in my rearview mirror.

  The next day, while I was at JHHI waiting to visit Mooney, a bouquet of wilting jonquils in my hand, Pablo Peña, the sleepy anesthesiologist, told me more about Ketamine. They use it on kids. Horses, too, he believed. Unless given supplemental drugs to offset its effect, patients wake from Ketamine-induced sleep soaked in sweat, screaming of gruesome nightmares. A biker he’d once sedated had specifically requested Ketamine, asking for that “angel dust stuff.” He’d come down shrieking, “They’re ripping my flesh off! Man, I’m charred by fireballs!”