The Diagnosis is Murder (A Dr. Valorian Mystery Book 1)

by Steven Gossington

  “Not right now. That can wait.”

  She touched his hand. “Have you had breakfast, or coffee?”

  “I haven’t had an appetite. I’m not really hungry.”

  “Well, you need a cup of coffee at least. You know you can’t get started in the morning without a good, strong cup of coffee.”

  “Yeah, that sounds good. Fix it the way I like it. One cream, two sugars.”

  She laughed. “I know how you like your coffee.”

  Tina walked away with the officer, who led her to a small snack area away from the jail cells. She poured the steaming black liquid from a stainless steel coffee pot into a styrofoam cup and tore open packets of sugar and powdered creamer, adding their contents to the cup and stirring the liquid until the coffee turned a light brown color.

  “That’s how he drinks it,” she said under her breath. Nearby, the observing officer yawned aloud.

  Her task completed, Tina turned and walked back toward Blake’s cell, escorted again by the officer. She approached the cell, smiling at Sutcliff. “Here’s your hot java, just the way you like it.”

  Blake reached out to accept the gift. “You’re a lifesaver.”

  Before he could grasp the cup, a hand seized Tina’s wrist and another hand extracted the cup from her grip without spilling a drop.

  Tina shrieked, and the cup was gone from her hand before she could even react. She turned and stared wide-eyed at Alec.

  “You—why’d you scare me like that?”

  Alec stood still, his eyes appraising their quarry.

  Tina managed a weak smile. “Look, give it back to me. It’s Blake’s coffee.”

  She reached out for the cup, but Alec held it out of range.

  “What the hell is going on?” Sutcliff said.

  Tina’s body tensed and she stepped back, her eyes darting back and forth from Blake to Alec. Her face changed from crimson to deep purple.

  Alec nodded at the officer, who crept up behind Tina and held out his arms to grab her in a bear hug.

  Before the officer made contact, Tina rushed at Alec, screaming, her arms outstretched, “You give me that coffee, now.”

  Alec stiffed-armed her, like a running back protecting a football. Though she jolted him, he managed to absorb the shock and maintain the cup’s balance, and none of the liquid spilled.

  Alec’s stiff-arm stopped Tina in her tracks and knocked the wind out of her. She wheezed and staggered back into the officer’s bear hug. Even though she kicked and shrieked and wriggled her body with all her strength, she was no match for the bulky officer.

  Behind the cell bars, Blake Sutcliff stood mesmerized, his jaw hanging.

  Detective Judkins eased through the door and stopped near her. His face registered no surprise.

  Tina’s body wilted, and she began to cry.

  Alec looked up at Judkins. “I think you’d better book her for the murder of Dr. Roderick Preswick and the attempted murder of Blake Sutcliff.” He held the coffee cup high, at eye level. “I’m pretty sure we’ll find a lethal dose of designer drug in this coffee.”

  Blake glared at Tina. “What? You tried to kill me? You tried to kill me?” He shook the cell bars. “When I get out of—”

  “Calm down, Dr. Sutcliff,” Alec said, as the sobbing Tina was led away.

  ***

  At 11 p.m. that night, Alec steered his car into a parking space along Ohio Drive. He hoped to—once again—confront a scumbag of a human being, the sociopath Alec had previously trapped and sent to prison for attempted murder. The guy did his time, and then murdered Alec’s wife and son.

  At midnight, Alec strolled to a spot a short distance away from the Korean War Veterans Memorial on Independence Avenue, not far from the Lincoln Memorial. He stayed near trees and bushes for cover. A dark outfit and a ski cap pulled down over his forehead and ears helped him blend into the darkness. He stopped short of the Memorial and waited. Soon, he spotted the Park Ranger walking away from the Memorial, his shift over.

  Alec visualized the killer’s face and wondered what his weapon of choice would be—handgun, rifle, or something else? He scanned the soldier statues on the grounds of the Memorial. Spotlights highlighted the front of the soldiers and transformed them into ghostly apparitions, frozen in time while marching forward in their helmets and flowing ponchos.

  Holding high his trusty Glock 31 handgun, Alec sprinted to a shadowy vantage point near the lead soldier, with the other 18 men fanned out behind in formation. He crouched and waited, watching for any movement. Judkins was to approach the Memorial from the north. In the still night air, the only noise Alec heard was his own breathing. He turned his head and glanced behind him at times. After 15 minutes or so, his knees began to ache.

  He saw something out of the corner of his eye, near one of the soldiers deeper in the formation. Judkins? His heart pounded as he moved forward, staying close to the statues, darting from one soldier to another. He stopped at a soldier more than halfway along the right flank, not far from the movement he’d sensed. The buzzing in his ears intensified.

  A noise—a shuffle in the grass—a few feet to his left. Alec caught his breath and whipped his body and gun toward the sound. His trigger finger twitched back—and then eased off.

  “Hey, little guy,” Alec whispered to a small, wide-eyed rabbit. “Stay right there, so you don’t get hurt.” The rabbit shivered but didn’t move. Alec turned and focused again on the soldier formation.

  Trees crowded around three of the rear soldiers. Alec saw a movement out of the corner of his eye and heard a gunshot from the trees. A figure fell from behind a rear left soldier. Alec recognized the falling silhouette as Judkins.

  Damn, time to act. He moved ahead to the next statue along the right flank.

  Wait a second. Something’s not right. The buzzing screamed in his ears. He’d visited this Memorial before, and something was different. He knew how the formation was supposed to appear—how it had always appeared, until now.

  There’s an extra soldier in the trees. But which one?

  He was studying the rear soldiers when, about 20 feet away, one of the rifles moved. Alec shot at the moving rifle just as something whizzed by his ear. The statue crumpled to the ground. He crept toward the face-down, fake statue—ready to fire more shots. Feeling a pang of uncertainty, he stopped about six feet away from the head of the prostrate body. Alec knew this guy was tricky.

  The figure lifted its head and pulled up a handgun.

  As soon as Alec saw movement, he lunged to his right, fired twice at the man’s forehead, and then skidded and rolled in the grass. With his gun poised to fire, he stared at the fallen heap for what seemed like more than a minute. Seeing no movement in the figure’s cloth covering, Alec stood and eased over to the white clump, spotting the rifle in the grass about two feet away from the body. He stepped on the statue’s forearm, extracted the gun from its hand, and sniffed the end of the barrel. It hadn’t been fired.

  Alec eased the body over with his foot and touched the man’s chest. As he’d suspected, his first bullet had been stopped by a bulletproof vest. His second and third shots had found their marks, with entrance wounds at each side of the forehead, or what was left of the forehead. Alec detected no movement of the chest—no respiratory efforts.

  Lucky shots.

  Through the silver-white makeup and splotches of blood, Alec recognized the rest of the face, especially the nose, jaw and ears. It was the man who’d killed his wife and son. As Alec lowered his gun, he heard a groan from behind him.

  Alec ran over to Judkins. He was still, but his eyes were open.

  Alec crouched over him. “Ryan? Ryan?”

  “Hey, Alec. I think I’m hurt.”

  Alec saw a huge, gaping hole in Judkins’ left shoulder that was oozing blood.

  “I guess I need a larger vest,” Judkins said.

  Alec called on his cell phone for an ambulance. “Hang on. Stay with me. Help is coming.”

  “Did
you get him?”

  “Yes.”

  Judkins took a deep breath. “We did it. Two killers in one day.”

  “We did good. Now just relax. We can celebrate later.”

  Judkins grimaced with pain.

  “No talking. You’ve lost blood, and you need to take it easy.”

  “It keeps my mind occupied.”

  Alec surveyed the shoulder wound. “That’ll be a hell of a challenge for the surgeons tonight.”

  Chapter 33

  Tuesday, in the early evening, Laura locked the front door and jogged away from her house. With the first few footfalls, her legs almost buckled, and she was already breathing hard. As she turned at the street corner, she was settling into a more comfortable jogging rhythm. Despite the chest soreness, she’d been practicing the move she’d learned the week before in her self-defense class. Yesterday, she was flush with confidence. Today, she wasn’t so sure.

  She sucked in fresh, cool air and glanced toward what was left of the sun, low on the horizon. It was her usual running route, the first part of which led her down neighborhood streets toward the trail by the Potomac River. After a few blocks, her legs felt wobbly again and her heart was pounding. Laura wondered how far could she go with this plan? What if nothing happened? What if he didn’t show? What if Mr. Hamilton’s story about what he heard was just one of his delusions?

  As she passed close by tall bushes on her left at the side of the street, she heard a rustle. Skidding to a halt and turning toward the sound, she positioned herself to use her new technique—the circle throw—but her hands grasped only air, and she stumbled back a few steps. False alarm. She was alone.

  When her panicked heart and lungs were settling down, she took off jogging again along her route. She had to see this through. A few uneventful blocks later, her legs felt steady as she continued south onto the Potomac River trail. She hadn’t planned to go this far. After all, her previous assault had been on the street along the first leg of her route.

  The trail was more shadowy than the streets, especially in the fading light of dusk. Laura questioned whether she should just call it a day and turn back. She was feeling more vulnerable on the trail among the closer in, quavering trees. Evening breezes in the branches sounded like long, drawn-out moans.

  Laura’s heart leaped at an especially loud moan, which was accompanied by heavy footsteps. I’m out of here. She started into a u-turn as the moan became a scream. He was closing in fast—too fast. “Alec,” she yelled, whirling around and assuming a stance for the circle throw. For a split second, she saw furious eyes closing in. She grabbed handfuls of his shirt and fell backward onto the ground, pulling him over her and thrusting her foot straight up into his abdomen with all her strength, trying to penetrate all the way through to his spine. She heard an explosive wheeze from the man’s mouth, and his momentum, along with the support of Laura’s straining leg, propelled him straight over her. She didn’t release her grips on the shirt until he’d rotated 180 degrees in mid-air, and then he was airborne for several feet past her, crashing down to the ground and bouncing on his back. She jumped up as the man righted himself and caught his breath.

  “Alec!” she screamed.

  The man turned to her, shouting a string of obscenities, and charged her with his knife raised to strike. He was blocking her way back along the path, so she sprinted to the side and into the trees. She felt tree bark and branches tear at her skin. It wasn’t painful.

  Laura was dodging trees and bushes, sometimes squeezing between them, and could only hear the sounds of her own crashing through foliage. She stopped to catch her breath and looked around her. Shadows were melting into darkness, and she could just make out shapes of nearby trees. The moans were gone, the breezes stilled—eerie silence surrounded her.

  Laura flinched as someone screamed. She looked toward the sound, saw the glint from a knife rushing at her, and readied her legs and hands, once again, for her practiced maneuver. Then two—almost simultaneous—gunshots. Laura gasped as a figure wavered and then crashed to the ground beside her, the knife skittering away in the grass.

  A man stepped out of the trees with his gun raised in front of him.

  “Eric,” Laura said. “What the hell?”

  Eric crept over to the man on the ground and studied his face. “He’s not breathing.”

  Ten feet away from Eric, Alec walked out of the shadows, his gun at his side. “We both shot him. I got him first, though.”

  “Maybe,” Eric said. “But I don’t think so.”

  Laura raised her hands in front of her. “What’re you even doing here, Eric?”

  Eric kneeled down, rolled the body over, and pulled the sunglasses and ski mask off the man’s head.

  Laura studied the dead man’s face. Blood trickled from bullet wounds in the chest. A shiver passed over her, but she wasn’t surprised.

  It was the man she’d seen in the background that day, in the room with the child that was later killed by her mother. He was the father of the girl that Laura possibly could have saved from a child-abuse death.

  Eric stood up. “I owe you an explanation.” He pulled out his wallet and opened it to display a badge. “I’m FBI. I’ve been chasing this guy for a long time.”

  “FBI?” Laura said.

  “He identified himself to me a few minutes ago,” Alec said.

  Eric pointed at the body. “This guy was a serial rapist and murderer. He attacked and killed three women in different states, and we think he’s a child abuser as well.” He pulled out a cell phone and called the police and EMS, then turned to Laura. “Hopefully, they’ll just declare him dead and transport him to the morgue.”

  “I’m not sad it ended this way,” Laura said. “But you could’ve disabled and handcuffed him, right?”

  Eric sighed and looked to the sky. “He killed another agent, a good friend of mine. I’ve been looking forward to this moment for a long time, but I guess I didn’t know exactly how it would go down. I saw him come at you with the knife, and I reacted.”

  “Thank goodness for quick reactions,” Laura said. “You saved my life.”

  “That’s what I’m trained to do.”

  “Wait a minute,” Alec said. “I’m sure I fired the first shot.”

  Laura put her hand on his chest. “Then you saved my life, too.”

  Alec hugged her. “That was way too close.”

  “Where were you guys?”

  “We lost you when you left the street and ran onto the trail. We had to stay hidden. It slowed us down when we lost sight of you.”

  Laura turned to Eric. “Why didn’t you let me know you were FBI?”

  “I can’t trust most people with that information. I didn’t know you. You might’ve blabbed and blown my cover.”

  “How did you find me?”

  Eric looked down at the lifeless figure. “I was looking for him.” He touched Laura’s shoulder. “He was involved with that child who died, the one you treated.”

  Laura crossed her arms.

  “Sorry, I know that’s a painful subject,” Eric said. “He was bad news. You’re his type, and he knew you. So, I figured he’d come after you. I was right.”

  “I thought you liked me.” Laura smiled.

  “I did.” He glanced at Alec and Laura. “But I have other commitments.”

  Laura remembered something. “You met Mr. Hamilton?”

  Eric hesitated and cocked his head. “You are sharp. I have an informant in town that told me about Mr. Hamilton. He’s a bit mixed up in the head, but he knows things. He passed on to me this creep’s plans tonight.”

  Laura nodded. “Yes, he’s very perceptive, and he reads people well.”

  Eric chuckled. “He also warned me to leave you alone. He thought I was harassing you. He told me he’s your protector.”

  “With the way my life is going, I sure need protectors. By the way, what happened to your head?”

  Eric pointed to the dead man. “Six days ago, this
dude almost did me in. His bullet just grazed me. It’s just a flesh wound.”

  Laura palpated his scalp. “That was close.”

  “Yeah. Someone was looking after me. My brain’s okay, I think.”

  “Are you having headaches or nausea, or any other symptoms?”

  “No. It just hurts to comb my beautiful hair.”

  “You’re right. Your brain is just fine.”

  Laura, Alec, and Eric stood looking down at the inert body until the police and ambulance arrived. Paramedics examined the body and called Medical Control, and the decision was made to transport the body to the morgue.

  After the vehicles left, Eric said to Laura, “Sorry about deceiving you. You’ll be a very special person for some lucky guy.” He smiled at Alec.

  “I hope so,” Laura said. “Do you need a ride anywhere? Maybe to one of your commitments?”

  Eric laughed. “No thanks. My car is parked a few blocks from here.” He waved and walked away a few steps, then turned back to Laura. “I’ll let you know when I’m back this way, and maybe we can all do dinner.”

  Laura smiled. “It’s a date.”

  Later that evening, Laura and Alec relaxed on her living room couch. They had both showered and cleaned their abrasions.

  “How are you feeling?” Alec said.

  “Under the circumstances, I’m fine. Just a bit sore—especially my ribs. Nothing major.”

  “Good. Same here.”

  Laura took a deep breath. “I’ve been thinking about my assault. It’s a strange, helpless feeling—being violated.”

  Alec swallowed. “It stays with you.”

  “I guess you just learn to live with it and move on.”

  Neither one spoke for several minutes. Cosmo eased up to Laura and plopped a paw in her lap.

  Alec patted Cosmo’s head and began to regale Laura about his trap for Tina.

  “So, you suspected that Tina might try to poison Sutcliff?” Laura said.

  “It was a long shot. If Sutcliff was framed as he claimed he was, then Tina was the most likely culprit. If she did plant that vial in his trash, that meant she wanted to divert attention away from herself. But I think she was worried that Sutcliff would talk, especially if and when he figured out that she’d framed him.”