Stress Test

by Richard Mabry

  Lou consulted his watch. “Give it another half hour.”

  Finally it was time. Lou checked to make sure the bulb was still gone from the car’s interior light. He took the keys from the ignition and placed them behind the sun visor. If they had to leave in a hurry, he didn’t want to have to hunt for them.

  Both men opened their doors and closed them without engaging the latches. They proceeded on rubber-sole-shod feet across the street, through the shadows, to the rear of Matt’s house. Lou extracted thin latex gloves from his pocket and passed a pair to Edgar before pulling on his own. They weren’t going to leave any trace of their presence.

  Lou eased a can of WD-40 from his hip pocket and sprayed it freely along the edge of the door where the hinges would be. He returned the can to his pocket and exchanged a glance and nod with Edgar. Showtime. He produced a key from his jacket, and the lock yielded silently. Once inside he stood in the darkness for a full minute, listening. The only sounds he heard were the hum of the refrigerator and the muted whoosh of air moving through the vents.

  Lou knew the location of Matt’s bedroom from his previous reconnaissance. He nodded toward the stairs, and he and Edgar mounted them single file. At the top they turned left toward an open door. A sliver of light from a distant streetlamp came through the window, casting shadows across Matt’s bedroom. Lou reached into the side pocket of his black cargo pants and unscrewed the top of a plastic bottle. He doused a cheesecloth pad and was almost sickened by the sweet smell of the anesthetic. He took a tentative step toward the figure on the bed. A board creaked and Lou froze, holding his breath. Before he could stop him, Edgar moved up beside Lou, producing an even louder creak.

  In a single motion, the man in the bed threw the covers aside, grabbed something from the bedside table, and pointed it at the two intruders. “Stop right there. Put your hands up or I’ll shoot.”

  It took only a split second for Lou to take in the situation and react. When someone already has the drop on you, don’t go for your gun. Beat it. And that’s what he did. He dropped what he was holding and made for the door at full speed, almost trampling Edgar, who was a step ahead of him. The unmistakable sound of a shot quickened his feet and the adrenaline dumped into his veins accelerated his heart rate. Both men took the stairs in three quick bounds and bolted out the front door, leaving it wide open in their wake.

  Lou had the car moving before Edgar had both feet inside.

  ELEVEN

  Elaine wasn’t at her desk to receive her morning coffee in person, but Sandra didn’t think much about it. In her office, she flipped the lid off her own paper cup, shed her shoes, and settled into her swivel chair. She picked up the pile of pink message slips centered on her blotter, but before Sandra could read the first one, her secretary appeared in the doorway. “The top message in the stack is from Matt Newman. Call him right away.”

  Sandra frowned. Could the police or the DA have contacted her client? She didn’t think there’d be any movement from them for a few days. And why was Matt calling her office? Her home phone was unlisted, but she always gave her clients her cell phone number. Why didn’t he—? Sandra pulled her phone from her purse, pushed a button, and felt her heart sink when the screen remained dark. She’d neglected to charge the battery last night.

  She lifted the phone from her desk, punched in the number, and waited through four rings. Anxiety progressed to apprehension as she pictured Matt being hauled off to jail in the middle of the night, unable to contact her. During the fifth ring, he picked up. “Hello?”

  When she heard his voice, Sandra exhaled, then took in what seemed like half the air in the room. “Matt. Sandra Murray. Elaine said your call was urgent. What—”

  “I tried to call you when this happened, but you didn’t answer. Don’t you—”

  “Let’s not spend the next five minutes on recriminations. I let my cell phone battery die. I’m sorry. Now, what’s going on?”

  She heard Matt’s deep inhalation, a mirror of the breath she’d just taken. “Someone broke into my house during the night and tried to kill me.”

  Sandra stood and began pacing back and forth behind her desk, tethered by the phone cord. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “You say they broke in. Did they break the lock, or what?”

  “No, they must have had a key.”

  Sandra found herself going into take-charge mode. “Your keys are in the police evidence room. No telling who has access to them. Call a locksmith as soon as we hang up. I want those locks changed before you leave the house again.”

  “I can’t afford—”

  “You can’t afford not to do it,” Sandra said. “Now tell me the rest of the story.”

  “They got into the house and were in my bedroom when I scared them off. But this proves I wasn’t lying. I really was kidnapped. Someone did try to kill me. And they tried again last night. Now maybe the police will believe me. I’m the victim here.”

  Sandra leaned forward and pulled a legal pad toward her. “Did you call the police when this happened?”

  When he answered, Matt’s voice was quieter, more measured. “No. I started to, but then I realized it might cause me some trouble. That’s when I tried to call you.”

  “I sense there’s something you haven’t told me yet. What is it?”

  “I said I scared them off. I didn’t tell you how.” There was a long pause. “I shot at one of them.”

  “I didn’t know you had a gun,” Sandra said.

  “Uh, well, that may be part of the problem.”

  Sandra dropped into her chair, slipped her feet into shoes, and grabbed her purse from the desk drawer. “Stay there. I’m on my way.” She started to hang up, but said into the phone before it hit the cradle, “Call a locksmith! And put on some coffee!”

  Sandra put her mug on the side table and pulled a legal pad from the briefcase that sat on the floor beside her in Matt’s living room. She rummaged in the case for another moment, extracted a ballpoint pen, and said, “Let’s hear it. Remember, you’re my client. Everything you tell me is protected by privilege.”

  Matt put his own mug to his lips, found it empty, and set it aside. “I think it would be easier to show you. My bedroom’s upstairs.” He hesitated. “Honest, this isn’t a ploy to—”

  “I didn’t think it was. Let’s go.”

  Once they were in the bedroom, Matt left Sandra in the doorway while he stood beside his double bed. He looked down at the rumpled covers and started to apologize for the mess, but thought better of it. Just get on with it, Matt. “I’ve been waking up two or three times a night, usually with a nightmare. Last night, I came awake about two a.m. and sensed someone in the room with me. A board creaked. When I opened my eyes, I could see two figures in the shadows over there.” He pointed. “I grabbed my pistol from the bedside table—”

  “Whoa!” Sandra held her hand up, palm out. “There’s that gun again. What gun? The police searched your house, and their reports didn’t mention any pistol.”

  “I know. I was worried that something like this would happen, so I . . . I contacted a former patient, somebody with what you might call connections on the shady side. I bought a revolver.”

  Sandra grimaced. “We’ll deal with that in a minute,” she said. “What happened then?”

  “I grabbed my gun and yelled for them to stop. Instead they turned and started running. So I fired at them.”

  “Apparently you missed, or we’d be having this conversation at the police station or the jail.”

  “No, I didn’t hit them. But there’s a bullet hole in the wall right beside you.”

  Sandra looked to her left and nodded.

  “And they dropped those.” He pointed to a plastic bottle and cloth pad next to the door. “You can’t smell it much now, but I can tell you that’s chloroform in the bottle. I think they were here to put me to sleep . . . permanently.”

  “So far I don’t see any hard evidence of a crime
having been committed,” Sandra said.

  “What about the chloroform?” Matt asked, his voice rising. “Won’t there be fingerprints on the bottle?”

  “Maybe, but I’m betting they were wearing gloves. And the bullet hole is simply evidence that you have a gun, one you bought illegally. By the way, if I were you, I’d patch the hole. If the police come back to your house, you don’t want them to wonder where that bullet came from and start looking for the gun that put it there.” She grimaced. “Sorry, Matt. This doesn’t prove your story.”

  Matt shook his head. “Well, it proves something to me. My kidnapping wasn’t something I dreamed up. Two people tied me up, threw me in the trunk of my car, and were going to kill me. And they’re still after me. This time they came to my house to finish the job.” His voice was almost a whisper as he added, “That’s what this means. They know who I am, they know where I live, and they want to kill me.”

  Matt’s breakfast roiled in his stomach, threatening to come back up a lot faster and more violently than he’d been able to choke it down. He shaved carefully, avoiding the beard on his chin. He’d leave it one more day before deciding the goatee question. Matt rubbed lanolin on the incision lines on his scalp, pleased they were less noticeable each day.

  He pondered his clothing choice before coming to the conclusion that it didn’t matter. ER patients probably wouldn’t give his appearance a second glance so long as he could take away their pain, stop their bleeding, set their broken bones, or perform whatever miracle they expected from the physician in the emergency room. Besides, he’d probably be in scrubs, so what he wore to the hospital made no difference.

  This afternoon Matt would start his new job as an ER doctor at Metropolitan Hospital. He’d never given much thought to the schedule for emergency room doctors there. There’d always been one or two on duty when he was in the ER, but he had no idea how that was arranged.

  “Basically, we have overlapping shifts, but don’t concern yourself with that right now,” Rick said. “For now, you’ll work a straight mid-shift, three to eleven p.m.”

  “Thanks,” Matt said. He’d try to leave the hospital before midnight. Exiting through those doors much later might bring back memories of the time he’d walked out of them and into a nightmare he was still living. Matt replayed that moment often enough in his tortured memory. He didn’t need further triggers.

  Try as he might Matt couldn’t figure out who could have engineered the kidnapping. Who would want him dead? And why? The more he thought about it, the more his uneasiness increased. And despite Sandra’s insistence that he get rid of the gun he’d used last night, he wasn’t sure he was ready to give it up.

  “Why don’t I keep it and apply for a permit?”

  “Because there’s no way you’d get one,” had been her immediate reply. “Not while the police consider you a ‘person of interest’ in a homicide. But I can turn it in to them without revealing who gave it to me.”

  Matt still wasn’t convinced. He’d feel better with the gun at his bedside, despite its quasi-legal status.

  After Sandra left, Matt had talked a locksmith into making a semi-emergency call to change the locks in his house. Whoever had been there the night before apparently had a key, and Sandra convinced Matt that changing the locks just made sense. He paid the man, thanked him, and pocketed two new keys. He’d keep one on his key ring, but wasn’t sure who should have the other. He guessed he’d give it to Sandra. Was that stupid? No, right now she was the only person he could trust.

  Well, that wasn’t true. There was Joe. But Joe was thousands of miles away. While he waited to hear back from him, Matt decided to compose an email and send it. He opened his computer and spent fifteen minutes pouring out his emotions, laying out his fears, venting to his brother. As he hit Send, Matt knew—as though hearing his brother’s voice—what advice he’d get in return for the message. “God’s in control.” Matt tried hard to believe it, but it was difficult.

  By noon Matt had worn himself out pacing the house. He wasn’t hungry but forced himself to eat half a grilled cheese sandwich, one tiny bite at a time. Fatigue descended on him, but he was smart enough to realize this was more emotional than physical, and no amount of sleep would overcome it. By an hour after lunch Matt couldn’t stand another minute at home. Rick had told him he’d need about an hour with the human resources people before starting his tour of duty. If Matt left for the hospital now, he might have some time to kill after meeting with HR, but anything was better than sitting around the house, his mind whirling with what-ifs.

  Matt’s sticker and gate card that allowed access to the doctors’ parking lot were in his own car, somewhere in the police impound lot. Fortunately Hector Rivera had left both these items behind, the former affixed to the back window of the gray Chevrolet, the latter tucked behind the sun visor.

  Matt still puzzled over how little anyone could tell him about Hector Rivera. All he’d been able to find out was that Rivera came to work, functioned adequately on his shift in the ER, and went home. And now Matt was about to do those same things, driving to the hospital in Rivera’s car, using Rivera’s gate card and parking sticker. It still felt weird.

  Once inside the hospital, Matt found that, although he knew his way around the clinical areas, he was a comparative stranger to the administrative section. He wandered around reading signs, unwilling to ask for directions, until he found the HR office. Matt entered a large anteroom and took a chair outside the office designated by a nameplate beside the door as that of Sheila Graham, HR Mgr.

  Matt sat and stared at the ceiling, unable to get interested in the tattered magazines strewn around the coffee table in the center of the room. Finally an elderly man stalked out of Graham’s cubicle. He stopped at Matt’s chair long enough to say, “I’m overqualified. Can’t pay me what I’m worth. What kind of an excuse is that?” He left, mumbling to himself.

  In a few moments an attractive, well-dressed African-American woman emerged from the cubicle and asked, “Did you need to see me?”

  “Yes, I’m Dr. Newman. I’m the new ER physician. I believe Dr. Pearson sent through my paperwork.” Matt followed her inside and took the chair she indicated.

  Ms. Graham flipped through a pile of papers and pulled out a stapled sheaf. “Oh yes. I’ll need some information first.”

  “Excuse me, but I’ve had surgical privileges here for several years. Don’t you have most of what you need?”

  Her look was one that adults turned on children to whom they had to explain a particularly simple point. “Doctor, it’s not that easy. As a surgeon, you were an independent contractor utilizing this hospital’s facilities. Now you’re going to be a part of Dr. Pearson’s group, one that has a contract with the hospital to run the ER. Different position. So if I could have just a few moments of your time . . .”

  Matt thought the process would go on forever. He told her his name, address, date of birth, Social Security number, next of kin, and a dozen other things. He confirmed his malpractice coverage, glad it hadn’t lapsed and making a mental note to call the company to give them a change in his status. The questions just kept coming, and Matt thought that if his hair were longer than a fraction of an inch, he’d be pulling it out by now.

  He could imagine someone in the information resources department sitting at her computer screaming, “Who processed this new hire, Matt Newman? We don’t have his father’s middle name. And when was his last tetanus shot? What size shoe does he wear? How are we supposed to run this place without information?”

  “May I see your medical license?” Graham asked.

  Matt had come prepared. He handed it over. The woman excused herself to make copies of the material she’d collected, leaving Matt to ponder what might lie ahead if he were indicted. He seemed to remember that the application for medical license renewal asked about convictions of a felony, not indictment. Then again, if enough mud was slung, some of it might stick. If it did, he might be forced to find a new ci
ty in which to practice.

  Ms. Graham bustled back into the cubicle and put Matt’s material down in front of him. “I think that does it.”

  “So, we’re done?” Matt asked.

  “One more thing, if you don’t mind.” Graham’s tone and facial expression told Matt she was going to proceed whether or not he minded. “Why are you leaving your private practice to come to work as an emergency room physician?”

  Matt had already thought this through. It wasn’t uncommon for physicians to leave a high-stress practice in favor of a job with regular hours. In the ER, the stress might be high during a tour of duty, the pay might be less than what a doctor could earn in private practice, but when he walked out the door he was through. Finished. Absolved of further responsibility until the next time he came on duty. And that made a much better story than, “I left my practice, but the position I was to take has been put on indefinite hold because I’m accused of murder.”

  After Matt finished the story he’d rehearsed, Graham looked up from her papers and smiled. “I think that’s about it. Do you have any other questions?”

  Matt had some, but he’d rather get the answers from Rick. He was ready to get out of here. “No, I’m good.” He rose, but stopped when Graham said, “I’m so sorry to see Dr. Rivera go. And wasn’t it terrible what happened to his fiancé? I worked rather closely with Cara, since she headed the Internet technology section and was helping us—”

  Graham stopped, put her hand to her mouth, and looked at Matt as though seeing him for the first time. “You! I didn’t connect the name at first. You’re the one they say killed Cara Mendiola. And now you’re going to work here in this hospital? How could that happen?” She picked up her phone and stabbed in a number, staring at him all the while. “This is Sheila Graham in HR. I need to see the hospital administrator immediately!”

  Matt eased out of his chair and left the room. He knew that Rick had cleared his hiring with both the administrator and chief of staff. He knew that in the American legal system you were innocent until proven guilty. He knew he hadn’t killed Cara Mendiola. But despite that knowledge, he had to fight the urge to run. He looked back twice to make sure no one was following him.