by JA Schneider
No one did. Two EMTs removed their sheet draping the victim as a nurse produced a hospital sheet. “Weird writing on her,” said one EMT, pointing to the woman’s naked belly; and, “Cops are coming,” said the other, following his friend out.
Numbly, Jill swabbed blood from the woman’s face, still seeing the red letters though they were re-covered.
Then she stopped, blinking, a bright gauze pad in her hand.
“I know her,” she said incredulously.
David looked up from a nurse re-checking the blood pressure.
Jill’s face was white.
He stepped closer.
“I…we…know her,” Jill stammered. “She’s a nurse, one of ours. Kassie….”
Her heart was rocketing out of her chest. This poor woman…and…the red-scrawled HI J Jill had seen when they changed the sheet. The monster was in this cubicle, taunting.
“Kassie Doyle?” David said, stunned.
The night nurse next to him put her hands to her face. “I know her too. Oh God, we just thought she was late.”
24
Gregory Pappas studied Evan Blair. Early thirties, well built with brown hair, intense. Stiff with shock he sat hunched, his elbows on his knees, speaking rapidly. They were on a wooden bench outside Gyn surgery.
“Everyone liked Kassie.” Blair shook his head. “Who would do this to her?”
“Someone she knew, apparently,” Pappas said. “There were no signs of forced entry. She let the guy in and there were no raised voices heard.”
“No raised voices during a rape?” Blair screwed his face up for a quick glance.
“He jumped her from behind and wound a scarf over her mouth. A gash on her brow from a table corner means she fell forward. Or was heaved.”
Blair kept shaking his head in disbelief. Glanced anxiously across at another detective questioning a resident.
“I hear you’re a friend of Kassie’s?” Pappas asked. Blair had looked down again, seemed to be avoiding eye contact, was maybe aware that his pupils were slightly dilated. Cocaine can do that; also high emotion. Pappas scribbled.
“She’s a good friend,” Blair said feelingly. “She’s helped me a lot. Covered for me, taught me what I’d missed not paying enough attention in nursing school. I was already trying to study for the MCATS. Other nurses would yell at me; Kassie helped.”
“Did you ever date?”
Blair seemed surprised by the question. “No,” he said. “We’re just friends.”
Pappas flipped a page in his notebook. Without looking up he asked, “Anyone mad at Kassie? Have issues with her that you know of?”
“Mad at Kassie? Impossible.” Blair dropped his head again, wiped his hands hard on his knees. “She’s too nice, maybe. Likes helping people.”
“What about an orderly named Sandy Haig? We’re told she’s also friends with him.”
That made Blair’s lip curl. “She mother hens him. He’s inept, probably too…” he searched for a word…”sensitive for this kind of work. Freaked out once when he had to help me load a just-deceased patient onto a gurney and take her down to the morgue. Kassie calmed him. I didn’t, I was pretty disgusted. I mean, that’s part of what orderlies do.”
Pappas glanced over to Brand now interviewing a different night nurse. Then he looked back and said, “Morphine’s been found in Kassie’s blood.”
Blair jerked his head up. “No.”
“’Fraid so. Do you know anything about her involvement with drugs?”
A shocked silence. Blair frowned. “Only that her ex was an addict. Coke, heroin, prescription drugs. The coke made him crazy, abusive. They’re divorced now, he’s in prison I don’t know where. She didn’t like to talk about her past.”
“So her ex maybe got her hooked?”
“I don’t know. She never mentioned anything like that. Like I said, she didn’t like to talk about her past. Believed in starting life over, every day’s a new day…She used to tell me that when I got tired, frustrated.”
“You’re doing night nursing and med school, is that right?”
“Yeah. Crazy, huh?” A bitter smile. Unconsciously, his fisted hand wiped his nose.
“Sounds like you don’t sleep much.”
“True. I can usually get by on four hours, but when it catches up I’m blitzed.” Blair exhaled painfully. “Another reason Kassie took me under her wing. Right now I can’t even think. I can’t believe this.”
Inside the O.R., next to the hanging bag of antibiotics, a nurse hung a third unit of whole blood. The patient had lost three pints of blood; the human body normally contains eight. Sickened, the nurse injected the drip of new blood into the patient’s IV tubing.
The scrub nurse, at the foot of the operating table, handed instruments to David. This rape had been unbelievably brutal. The damage had thrust through the vagina into the peritoneum, the membrane lining all the organs in the abdomen and pelvis. Rupturing the peritoneum usually causes peritonitis, a deadly infection. The O.R. atmosphere was tense.
Gowned, masked, and gloved, David worked to stop the heavy bleeding from torn vaginal arteries and veins. He glanced up at the new unit of whole blood.
“Raise it to thirty drops a minute,” he told the nurse. “Jill, re-check the WBC.”
At the center of the operating table, Jill turned to read down the Complete Blood Count screen next to the heart monitor. She turned back. “White blood count is 8500,” she said nervously through her mask.
“Good so far.”
“Re-test when?”
“If her body temp starts to rise. That means infection’s starting.”
And that was the worry. Jill’s eyes filled above her mask. She was seized again by the compulsion to look at Kassie Doyle’s draped mid-section, knowing, as with Lainey Wheeler, what was there. HI D! HI J! tore at her heart. She gritted her teeth, wanting to cry and not for the first time… but it was a kind of furious wanting to cry.
Sonofabitch. YOU’RE GOING TO PAY FOR KASSIE AND LAINEY. You think you’re going to get us, BUT WE’LL GET YOU.
Easily said. The creep was out there, maybe near. Horror and fear collided.
A loud thump banged the O.R.’s swinging doors. Jill started, but it was just cowboy Len Akers, orthopedic surgeon, toeing one door further open and entering, all scrubbed.
“Knock, knock, can I come in?” he said.
David didn’t look up. “What’s the password?”
“Bones can wait.” Len looked annoyed. “You hotshots treat us orthopods like arthropods.”
“Sorry. Have I said that before?”
“Every time, dammit! Okay, where’s my X-ray?” One nurse was helping Akers into a sterile gown, mask and gloves, while a circulating nurse went to push an X-ray under the clips of the lit view box.
Len went to the view box for another look. His features turned sober.
“At least in this she was lucky,” he said. “Ulna’s fractured but it’s a simple fracture in a good position. No operative repair needed.”
He approached the O.R. table; stood next to Jill where Kassie Doyle’s left arm had been lightly splinted. Carefully, he started removing the gauze wrapped around the white plastic half cylinder under the arm. He winced behind his mask. “Black and blue. Hey David, someone’s gotta shoot this guy.”
“Got a gun?” David said.
“’Course I got a gun. I’m from Texas.”
Jill threw a quick glance at him. “Is it registered?”
“Yep. Cops up here are real picky about that.” He turned to the nurse mixing powdered plaster with water in a bowl. “More water,” he said. Then got cranky again.
“Jeez, you even made me bring my own plaster.”
“She couldn’t be moved.” David took another suture needle from the scrub nurse.
Mutter, mutter from Len Akers as he dipped narrow gauze sheets into the plaster mix and started carefully to apply them. “Not too tight and not to loose,” he said, almost sing-songy…and then he stopped.
“Her hand. What happened to her hand?”
“The cuts are from glass shards,” David said. “Looks like she was trying to hold onto a glass vial and it crushed. Rape kit got out the glass, swabbed the cuts.”
“No visual residue.” Akers looked away from the hand and resumed applying his plaster strips. “Now what comes in a glass vial so it won’t degrade…lemme guess.”
“Morphine was found in her blood. A vial of it recently disappeared from OB.”
“So her attacker was after her morphine, which means that he knew her.”
“That’s what the cops think.”
25
Charlie Ortega was asleep on the sagging couch. They all spoke in low tones.
The surgery was finished. Kassie Doyle had been wheeled into Gyn Intensive Care, with nurses told to check her temperature every two hours; a spike would indicate a serious infection starting. Round the clock police had also been posted outside her room, since, as Pappas said. “She’s the only one who knows the rapist, actually knows what he looks like. We don’t want him coming after her.”
Jill and David were with Brand and Pappas in a corner of the Ob/Gyn lounge. The detectives both had their legs crossed, the guns in their ankle holsters clearly visible. Their questions were what they were asking everybody.
What males in the hospital was Kassie Doyle friendly with? Have any kind of relationship with?
Jill asked, “You’ve already talked to Evan Blair? I think you said that.”
Terse nods from both cops.
She glanced at David, who drooped with exhaustion, and mentioned the orderly Sandy Haig, and Trey Raphael, a hospital P.R. guy she’d seen Kassie joshing with in the corridor. Very chummy.
“Chummy how?” Brand asked.
“Patting her behind chummy,” Jill said, deadpan.
Brand scribbled in his notebook. Pappas said, “Haig has an alibi. He’s been here on duty tonight.” He watched Brand for a second, then looked back. “Who is this Trey Raphael? Know anything about his background?”
“Some.” Jill was exhausted too, but hyped with fear. She rubbed her cold hands together.
“He’s a former successful artiste photographer now doing P.R. work for the hospital. Apparently considers it a huge comedown, financially and ego-wise. Used to own – rent, rather – a snazzy gallery in Soho. His hedge fund pals got slammed by the economy, stopped buying from him, and he lost his gallery. Still has a website, apparently.”
Brand scribbled faster and Pappas raised an eyebrow. “How do you know all this?”
“I eavesdrop.”
Pappas looked almost amused, then asked, “Anyone else?”
Jill swallowed, licked dry lips. “Kassie’s so friendly she probably knows lots of people. Blair, Haig and Raphael are the only ones I know of.” She paused for a moment, trying to remember her conversation with depressed Sandy Haig. “Blair and Raphael got acquainted through Kassie, when Raphael was taping one night. She just got them all talking about how much they needed to earn more money.” A pause; Jill inhaled raggedly. “Night duty’s easier to make friends. It’s quieter, there are more lulls, and Kassie seems…like that. She just gets people talking.”
David was leaning forward. He looked so tired…and troubled. “Did the attack happen in Kassie’s apartment?” he asked.
“Yes,” Pappas said. “Her building, like Ms. Wheeler’s, has no security and the neighbors heard nothing. Forensics found some trace evidence that’s being analyzed.”
David frowned. “Incredible that no one heard anything.”
Pappas pressed his lips together; nodded in agreement. “Oddly, her apartment was just partially ransacked, so something made the guy stop and scram. He definitely panicked. Wore gloves, condom and covered himself, but that was in his planning. Running out, he lost it. Probably thought he’d closed the door all the way, but didn’t. Didn’t even set the lock to snap-lock behind him, he was in such a hurry. Old hardware, the door popped open. A neighbor noticed the opened crack, looked in, and called us.”
David rubbed his cheek, his two-day stubble. “So he’s a careful planner but falls apart when things go awry. That’s typical of obsessives.”
Pappas inhaled; was thoughtful for a moment. “Back to the hospital,” he said. “The trail seems to start here with the morphine. Can you think of a possible drug connection to anyone else she knew?”
Jill shook her head. David said slowly, “In a hospital you can have a hundred acquaintances. People you sort of know, smile and nod to in the elevator. Outside of close friends, I don’t keep track. Who can?”
He lay his stubbly cheek on his hand. His eyes seemed to close involuntarily for a second, and he forced them open. The three-hour surgery had been draining.
Charlie Ortega yelled “Ergotrate!” and turned over.
Something occurred, and Jill changed the subject. “That phone call we emailed you about,” she said, her hands gripping each other. “Psycho told us, ’I want all of you dead. You and that freakazoid floating kid!’ Why the baby?”
“Jealous of the attention,” Pappas said. “Common among sociopaths.”
“But…floating?” Jill persisted. “Couldn’t that mean that he actually saw the fetus? That he’s in the hospital?”
David gestured. “If so, that could include everyone from maintenance people to med students.”
Jill fell silent, scowling in concentration. “The creep’s artistic,” she said finally, almost to herself.
They looked at her.
She ticked off items on her fingers. “The pink feather in his ski mask, he obviously already had it…and maybe others…before his attack. Then there’s the exotic grass mask of that first rape across town. And the maybe fake snake tattoo of Holloway’s mugger – who then called us!” She looked from Pappas to Brand. “He likes to…dress up, take on different personalities.”
Exhaustion and their questions had jumbled her thinking. Oh! she thought. Then quickly told the detectives about the children’s party. Shedding pink chicken puppets. Little pink feathers scattered on the floor. “Here,” she said, handing Pappas her iPhone showing the chickens photo.
Pappas stared at it, sitting up straighter. “Who was at that party?” he asked.
“Unfortunately, lots of people,” she said. “Parents plus Evan Blair, Trey Raphael taping, and Sandy Haig who Blair has tried unsuccessfully to teach ventriloquism to. Blair did the puppet thing in high school, did it once or twice for the kids here, was begged to do it again but can’t, doesn’t have the time. He’s been trying to teach others, too.”
“What others?” From Brand.
“Amateurs, volunteers, no idea who else beside Haig,” Jill said, looking at him, blowing air out her cheeks. She switched her gaze back to Pappas. “There were lots of parents there, and the closet they keep the puppets in has no lock…Oh, something else just came back to me.” She wracked her brain, trying to remember the name, and finally it came to her.
“Steve Walker,” she said. “A former hedge funder who lost his shirt, had paid a mint for one of Raphael’s photographs which bombed as an investment…nobody wants it. He seemed really unhappy.” More came back to her, and she frowned. “Come to think of it, Walker said he started out artistic, wanted to be…a painter, I think he said. Struggled for a couple of years, gave up and hopped on the grad school business train he thought would guarantee him success.” Jill inhaled. “So you could probably call him a frustrated artist too? Seriously down about his business having also gone bad.”
Brand scribbled the former hedge funder’s name too, and exhaled. “Long list,” he said.
David had been listening intently. “That Walker guy? I don’t think he fits the profile.” He frowned. “When Psycho called, his exact words to me were, ‘You owe me, you two. More than any amount of money or headlines could repay!’” David looked thoughtfully at both detectives. “Hedge funders go for money, not headlines.”
“Except for the social pages.” Papp
as stroked his jaw. His finger made a rasping sound. “The creative part,” he said, looking at Jill. “Did Walker seem still subtly creative? Flashy watch from the good old days? Flaunty dress? A lot of these guys can still afford silk ties.”
Jill shook her head. “Walker seemed…wan and weary. Worn-out shirt collar, clichéd speech.”
Pappas and Brand exchanged looks. Exchanged appraisals of the big amount of notes Brand had taken.
“Y’know?” Pappas said, grinning a bit. “This session with you two has given us more than mega skull sessions at the station. Seriously, you’d both make good detectives.”
David smiled wearily, gently bumped Jill’s shoulder with his fist. “She’s the detective.”
“Noo.” Jill looked at him. “I’m curious. Then we compare notes and David saves me from killing myself.”
Pappas smiled again, and got up heavily. “Psycho’s given away a lot thanks to you. He’s an artistic, obsessive planner who goes to pieces when thwarted, and has motives of imagined revenge and thwarted fame.”
Brand got up to leave, too. “So we’re nowhere but only temporarily, right? Hopefully?” He managed a tight smile. “You did good, you two. Keep keeping your eyes open.”
At the door, Pappas’ eyes went intently from Jill to David. “I fear he’s going to attack again, soon. Victims two and three were close.” The detective’s heavy features sagged with fatigue. “He may even be happy with just three rapes. Used those women like mail to taunt you, then couldn’t wait to call you.”
Pappas hesitated, swallowing. “You’re his real targets, so be careful,” he said. “Very, very careful.”
They sat, deep breathing for long moments, absorbing Pappas’ last words: You’re his real targets.
Mace? Get a gun permit after all? And a gun?
“Mace for sure,” Jill said, exhaling hard. “Wish I knew how to shoot.”
“Who would you shoot?”
“Anyone suspicious.”
“That’s what I was afraid of.”
David gave a weary smile. Fell silent for a moment, then muttered about Len Akers’ Glock 26.
