Lethal Practice

by Peter Clement

  When I stuck my head in the door, I saw Jones down the hall and overheard her quietly reassuring a very relieved-looking older woman that her son would be okay. The young man on the stretcher beside them was about thirty and didn’t appear too bad, but he was hooked up to a portable monitor, IVs, and an oxygen tank for the transfer to the ICU. The nurses were putting away the crash cart.

  “What’s up?” I asked the charge nurse, who was standing at the nurses’ station.

  “Another one of Jones’s miracles,” she said appreciatively. “He’s a dialysis patient who came in with florid pulmonary edema. I don’t know how she did it, but she kept him alive until the renal guys got here and dialyzed him.”

  She was obviously impressed, and so was I. Not many in the department were both good and aggressive enough to pull it off. I watched Jones give a final reassuring pat to the man’s mother, a few more supportive words to the patient himself, and then start back toward where the charge nurse and I were standing. The contented smile she was wearing faded a bit on seeing me, and I started feeling my usual ambivalence toward her.

  “Beautiful work, Valerie,” I said quickly. “Congratulations!”

  Despite the praise, she seemed genuinely, but not pleasantly, surprised to see me here on my day off.

  “I just dropped in after a meeting,” I explained without waiting for the question. I wanted to make sure she didn’t think I was checking on her.

  She hesitated, then started to smile again. “Thanks” was her only reply. She moved over to the work counter and started writing up her chart.

  “She’s a wonderful doctor.” It was the man’s mother passing us as she followed her son’s stretcher to the ICU.

  “Yes, she is,” I replied, finding it hard to reconcile the decisive clinician I’d just witnessed with the departmental brat she could sometimes be. Yet the only medical criticism I could make against her was that like most prima donnas, she was less enthusiastic about the smaller cases and left them more to the residents. I sometimes worried what subtle but serious problems might get overlooked this way, but in her case, so far, nothing of consequence had happened. Ironically, during the entire eight years she had worked at St. Paul’s, not once had I ever gotten a complaint about her behavior from a patient or a patient’s family. No one else, not even I, had that clean a record. I guess, with them, she was in control, and therefore secure.

  “Everything else okay?” I asked the back of her head while she continued to write. I really didn’t want an answer.

  I didn’t get one.

  I reminded myself I hadn’t called her in about Todd yet, but today—after Fernandez’s funeral and while she was on duty—definitely wasn’t the time. I promised myself once more I’d do it tomorrow.

  I left the hospital and located my car in the parking lot.

  Under the windshield wiper I found a card. Written on the back was “Please meet me at the Horseshoe Bar in thirty minutes.”

  It was not signed, but on the front was the logo of the Buffalo police, and printed on the bottom, “Detective G. Riley.”

  * * * *

  The Horseshoe was near the hospital, but it was a place I’d rarely visited. Ten years before we’d get a stabbing victim from that bar nearly every weekend, usually drug related. It was a student hangout for the university, but it wasn’t a watering hole for philosophy and suds like I’d known in the sixties. Kids went there to score hard drugs. I’d learned my toxicology on pretty teenagers with a thousand-dollar-a-week habit from this place. I’d asked one of those girl-women how she managed it. I’d just resuscitated her from a deluge of pills, cocaine, and booze. She’d been brought in naked and unconscious. Her body was young, breasts and hips maturing at odds with her still-present baby fat. After I intubated her and lavaged out her stomach, she was a bedraggled, coughing mess of vomit and the charcoal used to neutralize whatever she’d downed. Yet her face held the pudgy features of the little girl she’d once been.

  “How do you pay for it?”

  The hard eyes that flashed back were older than I’d ever want to be.

  “Guess!” she dared.

  A year later I’d pronounced her dead on arrival. By then she’d become so wasted I didn’t even recognize her until I saw my note from a year earlier in her chart. The stillness of her parents when I told them in our grieving room chills me still. There was not a move of either the father or mother toward each other, nor any show of feeling. The father, my age, had coldly signed for the body and left. The mother, dark like her daughter but with a face set hard long ago, walked out stiffly a few minutes later.

  Now the drug wars had spread throughout the neighborhood. The stabbings and ODs came from everywhere.

  The Horseshoe, its job done, had gentrified itself. The owner had put in a few plants, added some mirrors, and updated the green walls to a dark tone seen in a lot of home digests this year. It hid the blood and fitted the nineties, but it didn’t do it for me.

  As I entered, the stench of cigarette smoke mingled with the odor of stale beer. Four guys in raincoats at a booth looked me over as my eyes adjusted to the pink neon that lit the place. They looked like police, or soldiers for one of the gangs. Gloomy veterans from one side or the other toasting old battles and what-ifs. Riley was alone at the bar.

  “This place still active?” I asked as I joined him.

  “Only for old cops and crooks. Kind of a club. Has-beens telling lies and drinking booze to dull the memory. What’ll you have. Doc?”

  Hell. It had not been a good day. I needed something strong. “A Black Russian would be most welcome.”

  Riley looked relieved and approving. I guessed he felt more relaxed with a guy who took a real drink.

  He caught the bartender’s eye, a bodybuilder in a black T-shirt wearing a ponytail. He ordered doubles and downed the remnants of the amber rocket fuel he’d nursed waiting for me.

  The drinks arrived. We both stirred, sipped appreciatively, and settled back to face each other.

  I started. “What’s up?”

  He took another sip. My first was still burning its way down my belly, reminding me I hadn’t had lunch.

  Finally he began. ‘To start, I’d like to keep this meeting confidential and unofficial.”

  “Why?” I already knew, but I wanted him to say it, still unofficially, of course.

  He took a sip, raised his eyebrows, and went on. “Because my boss is a brilliant prima donna prick, and if he knew I was doing an end run round his legendary judgment, he’d put me back on the street directing traffic.”

  I smiled at his candor and toasted it with another sip. More burning. I remembered I hadn’t even had breakfast.

  “I can’t ignore the questions you raised earlier,” Riley said. “Your uneasiness with pinning the murders on Dr. Fernandez leaves me uneasy.” He paused, sipped, and continued. “Have you got anything hard you can give me to back up your doubts?”

  The glass was cold in my hand. The ghosts of all those pathetic kids who had poisoned themselves here were making me colder.

  “No,” I admitted.

  “Why are you so sure he didn’t kill Kingsly and the wino, just like Bufort claims? He had the motive. You know we found the artwork hidden in the attic of Fernandez’s cottage. His wife told us it had been hanging in their home until a few months before, when he suddenly cleared it out and claimed to have sold it.”

  “Because murder, for him, doesn’t make sense. Fraud, arrogance, and greed, yes. Then shame and a loss of face, that I buy too.”

  I stopped and looked around the deserted bar, then back at Riley. “And there was the search of my office at home. Fernandez didn’t need anything from me. Hell, what he had to fear was in Kingsly and Laverty’s files. You guys found them.”

  That was it. The biggest incongruity of all. I leaned toward Riley. “If Fernandez killed Kingsly for fear of exposure, why didn’t he search the files then and there and destroy what ultimately nailed him? The chaos of financial recor
ds in this place is legendary; nothing would have been missed. Why didn’t he search when he was alone in Kingsly’s office, middle of the night, after supposedly killing him and moving the body there?”

  “Maybe he did and couldn’t find them.”

  “How hard was it for you guys?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “For you to find the anonymous account and the art receipts. How long?”

  “Well, not too long. Remember, we didn’t know what we were after, and everything was such a mess anyway, but it took a few days.”

  I sat stirring my drink. Fernandez would have known what he was looking for. But he also would have known the confusion of records might make it hard for even him to dig out the incriminating material. No, he couldn’t count on even a hurried hour alone at night producing what he had to destroy to be safe. And what about Thomas Laverty? Surely as director of finance he was in on the embezzling as well? Wouldn’t he have to be silenced?

  Riley prodded gently, “I’d like you to let me in on your thoughts.”

  I smiled. Exactly what I always said to residents struggling to find the “right answer.” I wanted to hear their process as well as their conclusion.

  “Okay,” I agreed. “Fernandez didn’t kill Kingsly, at least not hurriedly without a better chance of it kicking up what Fernandez really needed, Kingsly’s evidence. Fernandez would have had to destroy those records and therefore needed time to find them. And to be consistent, if he was going to murder Kingsly to cover up their scheme, he probably would have needed Laverty dead as well, but there isn’t a hint of that kind of logic here. From Fernandez’s point of view, stabbing Kingsly with a cardiac needle and dumping him nude in his own office just doesn’t make sense; it wouldn’t achieve the result Fernandez would be after. Why not just make Kingsly disappear or, better still, search the office first, over several nights maybe, until he found the evidence, and then make him disappear?”

  “Maybe he was doing that,” answered Riley. “Kingsly staggers in, nude from a prowl, catches Fernandez in the midst of the search, and Fernandez grabs the nearest weapon at hand and stabs him.”

  “Come on, a psychiatrist doesn’t carry cardiac needles around. Hell, nobody does. They’re kept on a crash cart for arrests and in surgery.” Then I smiled. “Besides, Detective, you’re forgetting, there was no blood in his office. He was killed elsewhere.”

  Riley gave me a grin. “Just checking. Doc. You amateur sleuths have gotta be kept on your toes.” He began waving his empty glass around to catch the bartender’s eye. I was looking around the lounge again. They once sat here, all those ODs. “Empty chairs at empty tables.” It was a phrase from the musical Les Miserables.

  Except these dead students had poisoned themselves.

  Then I had it. “Poison!”

  My outburst startled Riley. “Poison?” He was perplexed. He gave a guilty glance at his still-unfilled tumbler and quickly replaced it on the bar.

  “Yeah, Kingsly wasn’t poisoned.”

  He frowned at me. “So? We know that.”

  “Precisely.” I paused, then leaned forward, enjoying this. It’s amazing what a few sips of a Black Russian with no breakfast can do. I lowered my voice. Cheap melodrama, but hey, I don’t get out much. “If Fernandez had murdered Kingsly, he would’ve poisoned him.”

  Now the detective was looking interested.

  “Elaborate for me.”

  “Fernandez was a psychopharmacologist.”

  “Huh?”

  “Sorry. That means he has special expertise in psychiatric drugs. More, he was a renowned researcher and was studying a number of new, unreleased drugs. He investigated their effects, therapeutic and toxic, as well as their properties when mixed with other medications or, better yet, with each other.”

  “Better yet?”

  “Better yet to murder with.”

  My Black Russian no longer burned. Or maybe my stomach was numb. Riley didn’t even notice the bartender slip a refill in beside his elbow.

  “Look, some of his studies found drugs too toxic to be released. I’m sure he found mixtures of drugs that were particularly lethal. Approved tricyclics used to treat depression can cause cardiac arrest when taken in excess. Who knows what other toxic effects he discovered in experimental drugs never released for public use? And while these formulas would be available to him for research, they would never be part of a pathology tox screen. A drinker like Kingsly would be a perfect target. But first Fernandez would find the evidence he wanted, then he’d coax Kingsly to take his favorite but final beverage. Heart attack, and who needs needles?”

  Riley leaned back. He rolled his glass back and forth between his hands as if he were trying to make fire. I knew he was also rolling my scenario around in his head.

  I downed my drink, waiting for his verdict.

  Finally he stopped rotating the glass, and I figured the movement in his head had stopped too. “You must be very careful. Doc.” He spoke quietly—too quietly. He then went on to say what even I, Black Russian and all, was just figuring out.

  “If you are right, and I’m afraid what you say makes more sense than the conclusions of the genius I work for, out there is a killer who thinks Fernandez’s suicide has closed the case. Right now this killer feels safe, which means for now, you’re safe. However, the instant you voice these doubts, all that changes. This killer will feel threatened again, and you, sir, will be a target again.”

  Chapter 14

  It was only 1:30 when I left the Horseshoe. The afternoon light had dimmed to premature dusk. I hadn’t seen the sun in weeks and knew how the dinosaurs must’ve felt at the end. Maybe we were having an eclipse. Hell, was there even still a sun out there behind all those clouds?

  Riley had done the bureaucratic shuffle as far as I was concerned. He’d made it clear he’d enjoy taking on his boss, but it was also clear that I’d have to provide him with more than hunches to get him to do it.

  As I got back to the hospital grounds the rain began falling again. It was cold, and the drops were like sludge on my glasses.

  I paused by my car and realized I had nothing to do for the rest of the day. I wanted to see Janet, but she was on call at her hospital. I unlocked the driver-side door, slipped the key in the ignition to activate my car phone, and dialed the case room. They informed me Dr. Graceton was busy in the OR. I called the vet and learned Muffy was sedated, afebrile, but still fragile. So, I couldn’t even drive over and give comfort to my dog.

  I sat staring out the windshield stained with rain. Without the women in my life, I was at loose ends. The parking lot was foggy, and I couldn’t see past the few cars parked nearby.

  But out there, somewhere, was a killer. Was I safe for now? Maybe. Maybe not. Probably not. Not until I figured out why I’d ever become a target. Fact was, I still didn’t even know how to “be careful,” as everyone advised.

  Again I thought of the ER stats. If I was a threat because of some information hidden in the those studies, then I wasn’t safe at all.

  It wasn’t only because I loved an excuse to go to the cabin that I did my computer work there. I was so electronically stupid that Carole wouldn’t let me use our office computer unless she was physically present. I’d once crashed a complete hard disk attempting to find something on my own. Since then she wouldn’t even trust me with the pass code. She routinely duplicated all departmental information with a separate set of disks formatted specifically to work on my clunker at the cabin. I knew how to work the routine programs for the terminals at the nursing station. In fact, any innovations there were tried on me, on the principle that if I could do it, anyone could. But getting into the hospital network without Carole to guide me, code or no code, was beyond my trying. Yet I didn’t want to call her in to help. This wasn’t going to be the conventional analysis of QA data she’d helped me with two days ago. Now I was going to use those numbers to go after a killer. She’d have to work along with me and know what I was doing, and until I fig
ured out what was going on, I wasn’t about to endanger her or anyone else.

  To be alone in the woods on this shrouded weekend was not a soothing thought, but I needed my own computer again. If I was going to unravel anything today in private, it would be in front of that forgiving relic in my beloved cabin. I pocketed my keys, got out of my car, and headed toward my office. The QA material was still in my trunk, but I needed some other disks for an idea I was getting.

  I stopped by the coatroom to check my mailbox. Behind the coat racks was a wall of open mail slots, each with a doctor’s name over it. For once I could see easily into mine. Usually the slot above, which was Jones’s, was so stuffed, the overflow flopped in front of mine. Today hers was empty. Mine held a notice for a hospital bake sale.

  Emergency was bustling, but the nurses were smiling. A steady stream of orderlies and nurses were pushing gurneys along the corridor to the elevators that would empty those patients into real beds upstairs. Hurst’s beds, finally. The vacated hallways and stretcher stalls had the debris from a week of crowded living. It looked like the morning after a wild party. A small group of cleaning people waited to move in.

  “Congratulations, Chief!” It was Sylvia, in for the evening shift, but three hours early.

  The nurses echoed their relief at the reprieve. I didn’t tell them it was only for a day.

  “Where’s Jones?” I asked. She should still be on.

  “She got a phone call, some personal business. She asked if I could come in early. Baby was asleep. Daddy was sitting around; no sense both of us watching the angel. Besides, someone has to put her through college.”

  Graceful as usual. I knew she’d love to have spent a few extra hours just watching their new daughter. Like most older parents, she and her husband treasured the additional joy of affirming and reaffirming that “Yes, it’s finally, really true.” I wondered if Jones’s lonely life left her incapable of realizing what she cost others.