Omega Dog - 01

by Tim Stevens

A pretty girl. Late twenties, maybe, with auburn hair and blue eyes in an earnest face.

  ‘Consider it done,’ he said to Rosetti, and killed the call.

  Royle found a Vietnamese restaurant off Broadway and ordered supper. While he forked delectable salt-and-pepper squid into his mouth, he looked at the photo of his next victim again.

  He wasn’t often hired to kill women. Not that he had any qualms about doing so. It was just that most of his hits seemed to be business related, involving the elimination of a competitor, and there were more men in business than women.

  The victim’s home address was within walking distance of the restaurant Royle was sitting in right now. Royle decided to stretch his meal out to four courses, then do the hit afterwards. Three easy hits in one week. After he completed tonight’s one, he’d take a holiday. Florence, perhaps. Or Madrid. Or Rio de Janeiro. Somewhere he could relax, and soak up the culture, and read philosophy to his heart’s content.

  Life was good.

  Chapter 6

  It was days like this that made Beth wonder why she’d ever gone into medicine.

  Thirty hours into her shift, even the legendary autopilot every doctor discovers when they’re forced to keep going for prolonged periods without sleep was starting to fail her. Her eyes felt as if somebody had coated the insides of the lids with rock salt, her hair felt too heavy for her head and threatened constantly to bow it down, and her limbs felt draped with medieval chains.

  A nurse scuttled up to Beth and thrust a chart under her nose, saying something that as far as Beth was concerned might as well have come through several fathoms of ocean. Beth scribbled on the chart, not one hundred per cent sure what she was signing for but trusting the nurse all the same.

  Two more hours. One hundred twenty minutes. Then she could spill out the door and wade home, to her beautiful soft bed and blissful sleep.

  Yes, sleep. At least twelve hours of it.

  Oh, God. The thought of it was almost too much for Beth to bear. And it was still more than two hours away...

  She glanced around the ER, saw nobody clamoring for her attention, and made her way to the staff mess. Nodding to the handful of interns and nurses lounging on the couches, Beth poured herself a paper cup of coffee from the pot on the hotplate. The coffee was the consistency of tar and didn’t taste much better. Beth thought she could feel it stripping the enamel from her teeth.

  Still, caffeine was caffeine.

  Beth Colby was a third-year resident physician in internal medicine, with a particular interest in neurology. Like all doctors at her stage in their careers, she was obliged to work a regular on-call shift at the hospital where she was based. Being on call meant she was the senior doctor responsible for the medical inpatient wards, as well as being available to take referrals from the ER.

  Which was where she’d spent the majority of her shift.

  During the course of the last day and a half, Beth had been vomited on, bled on, and peed on. She’d had a patient with TB cough ropes of phlegm into her face, had a delirious patient leap off the table just as Beth was performing a delicate pleural biopsy, and had to help cut the stinking boots off a drunk vagrant with diabetic neuropathy in his feet. She’d been sworn at, threatened with death, been slapped in the face and had her hair pulled.

  And she’d had to tell a numbed young wife that her thirty-year-old husband hadn’t survived his cardiac arrest, a middle-aged man that his HIV test was positive, and a dying elderly grandmother that her family weren’t, after all, going to be able to make it to the hospital until next week. By which time it would be too late.

  On the other hand, Beth reflected, she’d also diagnosed a pulmonary embolism with atypical symptoms that would have killed the patient if it had been left for an hour longer. She’d seen somebody who was choking with edema from heart failure improve dramatically over twenty-four hours, thanks to her. And her quick action had stopped an anaphylactic reaction to penicillin from becoming fatal.

  So there were rewards. Big ones.

  It was just sometimes hard to keep your mind on them, in among all the chaos and the trauma and the disappointments.

  As luck would have it, an urgent case of septicemia came up to the ward fifteen minutes before the end of Beth’s shift. Resigned to leaving late – it wasn’t, after all, as if this hadn’t happened before – Beth pushed up her sleeves and set to work. But seconds later Rick bustled in, all boyish enthusiasm.

  ‘Beth, I hate to say it, but you look as old as my grandma.’

  She swatted his arm, but her heart wasn’t in it. Besides, he was probably right.

  ‘What we got?’ Rick asked.

  Rick was a fellow resident, slated to start his shift after hers. He was early, as usual. Beth began to summarize the case but Rick cut her off by holding up his hand.

  ‘Whoah. Back up a little. You just said the same thing, twice.’

  ‘Did I?’ Beth was confused.

  ‘Yeah. You need some sleep. Get outta here. I’m on it.’

  Beth swept a hand through her hair, overcome with gratitude. ‘Rick, thanks a bunch. I owe you.’

  ‘Damn right.’ He grinned, waved her away, and set to work on the patient.

  Beth stumbled to the locker room, shucked off her white coat, property of the hospital, and fired it at the laundry basket. Then she remembered her stethoscope, cell phone and pager were in the pockets, dragged the coat out again and retrieved the items. She got her purse and jacket from the locker, glanced at herself in the mirror inside the door – God, she looked a fright, with bags under her eyes like suitcases – and took off.

  At the elevators, waiting, she glanced at the clock on the wall. Four PM. Visiting hours were still in effect.

  She needed to get some sleep more than anything, but... a few minutes wouldn’t kill her.

  Instead of going down to the first floor, Beth rode the elevator up to the sixth. She stepped out and turned left, toward the oncology ward.

  The ward sister greeted her with a smile.

  ‘Hi, Sister,’ said Beth. ‘I’m Dr Colby, med resident?’

  ‘Hello, doc. Who’re you here to see?’

  ‘I’m off duty,’ said Beth. ‘But a friend of mine is a patient on the ward. I’d like to see her, if I may.’

  ‘Sure,’ said the nurse. ‘What’s your friend’s name?’

  ‘Luisa Perez.’

  The sister’s eyes widened. Her hand came up to her mouth.

  ‘What is it?’ said Beth, alarmed.

  ‘Dr Colby, I’m so sorry. Nobody told you?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Ms Perez died this afternoon.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Cardiac arrest. It was very unexpected. The crash team did all they could,’ said the nurse.

  Beth felt the floor tilting beneath her feet. The sister grabbed her arm to steady her.

  ‘Dr Colby, are you all right? Come and sit down.’ She led Beth to a swivel chair at the nurses’ station. Shocked, Beth allowed herself to be seated. Her thoughts were racing even as a cold numbness spread through her.

  Luisa was dead?

  But that couldn’t be. Beth had spoken to her just last night.

  Luisa Perez was an old college friend of Beth’s. She’d been studying law while Beth had been premed, and they’d met at a campus party and become close friends. Like Beth, Luisa had stayed in New York after graduation, and was working her way up to partner in a small but up-and-coming law firm in Nassau Street. They spoke on the phone at least once a week, met once or twice a month to go out shopping, had even double-dated a few times.

  Four months ago, Luisa had called Beth in tears, asking her to come round. Rushing over to Luisa’s Brooklyn apartment, Beth found her in a shaken state. After she’d fed her a little brandy and gotten her to open up, Beth learned that Luisa had just received some medical test results. She’d been feeling exhausted, listless, for the past few weeks, and was catching colds on a regular basis, as well as starting to bruise
easily. So she’d gone to her physician to get checked out, and he’d run a series of blood tests.

  Luisa had cancer. Chronic myelogenous leukemia.

  The good news, as Beth was able to tell Luisa, was that this was a kind of cancer that could be successfully managed with drugs, giving a normal life expectancy in the vast majority of patients. And Luisa started on the treatments, at first quite successfully.

  It turned out to be a highly unusual form of CML, as Luisa didn’t have the typical chromosome nearly all sufferers possess. As a result, the drugs didn’t work quite so well as expected, and a few days ago Luisa had fallen sick and had been admitted to the oncology ward.

  When Beth visited her during a break in her shift yesterday, Luisa was sitting up, looking pale and drawn but able to summon a smile. She was feeling better, her white cell count had stabilized, and the attending haematologist had said she could probably go home in a day or two.

  And now... this. Luisa, dead from a cardiac arrest.

  It didn’t make sense.

  Chapter 7

  ‘What happened?’ said Beth. She was sitting in the staff room of the oncology ward. The sister, Debra, had brought her a mug of sweet tea and she sipped it gratefully.

  Debra had gone to find the attending physician, who happened to be on the ward at the time. His name was Reissman, and he sat opposite Beth, looking gloomy.

  ‘It’s the damnedest thing,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘She was better. I’d swear it on a stack of holy books. No signs of infection. Cell counts stable, including platelets. Her EKG was completely normal. All set for discharge tomorrow. Then, around lunchtime, she goes into V-tach. Just like that. Crash team were there pronto, but they couldn’t save her.’ He ran a hand through his mop of black, curly hair. ‘There’ll be an autopsy, of course. Somehow I doubt it’ll tell us anything.’

  ‘She’s got parents. A brother.’ Beth felt the tears brim and spill over. She wiped her face on her sleeve, angry with herself. Doctors weren’t supposed to show emotion.

  ‘Yeah, I know,’ said Reissman, handing her a box of Kleenex. She grabbed a wad. ‘They’re on their way from San Diego.’

  Beth would make a point of coming in tomorrow to see them, even though it was her day off.

  ‘Dr Reissman?’ she said. ‘Will you let me know if you learn anything? About how she died?’

  ‘Sure, Beth.’ He jerked his head at the door. ‘Now go home. You look exhausted.’

  Usually after a grueling shift, Beth would take the subway home. Her apartment was in Lincoln Square, all the way across town from Kips Bay where she worked, and though she was physically fit and enjoyed exercise, there came a point when you just had to give in to your body’s demand for rest. Today, though, Beth stumbled past one subway station after another, not seeing the crowds around her, not taking in the crazy sights and sounds and smells of the metropolis she loved.

  All she could think of was her friend, normally so full of life and joy, now cold and dead. Unexpectedly, senselessly so.

  And Beth hadn’t had a chance to say goodbye.

  She walked the streets for an hour, roving in an approximate circle, somehow always finding herself back where she started. The fatigue was beginning to drain down into her legs, her very bones. Beth knew that if she didn’t get herself home soon, she’d end up being transported to hospital on a gurney. And she didn’t want to spend yet another night at her place of work.

  She headed for the nearest station, stopping automatically at a newsstand to pick up a copy of the New York Times. Cocooned in the hospital for a day and a half, it was easy to lose touch with what was happening in the world outside, and she was usually eager to catch up after her shift ended. This time, she needed something to distract her thoughts more than anything else.

  On the subway carriage, a kind elderly man offered Beth his seat, but she smiled at him and declined. She preferred to stand. Sitting down was dangerous, in her condition, as she’d discovered before to her cost. She was liable to nod off and miss her stop.

  She paged through the Times, barely registering the words, sleep clawing at her eyelids.

  Then something hit home in her brain. She stared at the print, trying to work out what it was.

  Nothing.

  Beth turned back to the previous page, and saw the picture that had caught her attention.

  It was the face of an African-American man, about five years older than Beth. Below the photo ran a short article. The headline read: Subway Fatality Named.

  Beth skimmed the article. Lawrence B. Siddon, 35, an insurance salesman from Queens, had fallen under a train as it was departing Metropolitan Avenue Station yesterday. He was killed instantly. There was no mention of possible suicide. He left behind a wife and two children.

  It was the kind of article that appeared all too regularly in the Times, and in itself there was nothing remarkable about it. But Beth found her gaze drawn again and again to the photo.

  I know you, she thought.

  But from where? He wasn’t someone she worked with, and although he might once have been a patient of Beth’s – sometimes it felt like she’d treated just about everybody in the Five Boroughs at one time or another – she didn’t think so. It felt like they’d had a more prolonged interaction. He certainly wasn’t an ex-boyfriend. Beth remembered each of them, however brief the relationship had been.

  Was she imagining things, in her sleep-deprived state? Misremembering connections that weren’t really there?

  No. She knew Lawrence B. Siddon from somewhere. She was sure of it.

  Carefully she tore the picture out of the paper and put it in her pocket. She’d take another look tomorrow, after she’d had some shut-eye.

  As Beth clutched onto one of the straps hanging from the roof, trying not to let the rocking of the carriage lull her into sleep, it suddenly occurred to her that two people she knew had died within the space of twenty-four hours.

  Despite the heat from the packed bodies in the subway carriage, Beth felt a chill run through her.

  Chapter 8

  Venn stripped the gun quickly, laying the component parts out expertly out on the table. It was a Glock 19, an efficient piece. He was familiar with it, though it wasn’t his handgun of choice. He’d always relied on his Beretta M9 when he was with the force.

  Still, beggars couldn’t be choosers, he thought bleakly.

  The magazine was empty. Venn wasn’t surprised. It’d have been foolhardy of Corcoran to hand him a loaded gun. Even though Venn’s chances of breaking out of a fully staffed police station were virtually non-existent, he might just have been crazy enough to try it, for all Corcoran knew.

  Venn reassembled the gun rapidly and slammed the empty magazine home. He aimed the gun and sighted down it, rehearsing the moves several times. It had been a while since he’d been on the range, still longer since he’d fired a weapon in a combat situation. But the instincts were still there, the honed reflexes that could turn him into an effective killing machine at the drop of a hat.

  Corcoran watched in silence. If he was impressed, he didn’t show it.

  ‘I’m surprised,’ said Corcoran. ‘I’d have thought you’d keep a gun at home.’

  So they hadn’t searched his apartment, Venn realized. That was interesting. If they had, they’d have located the Beretta in its case in the gun safe. Or at least, they’d have found the safe, and asked him for the combination. He’d asked for the gun as a test, and had gotten his answer.

  Why hadn’t they tossed the apartment of a man arrested for murder? It confirmed his suspicion, that nobody seriously suspected him of killing the guy in the alleyway. He’d been well and truly set up. Venn glanced at Corcoran, anger rising in him again.

  Bastard.

  Corcoran said, ‘You got what you asked for. A gun. Anything else?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Money?’

  ‘That’ll depend on what I find. Whether I have to take any expensive trips anywhere.’

&nb
sp; ‘Fair enough.’ Corcoran nodded at the cell phone on the table, the one he’d given Venn with Professor Lomax’s picture on it. ‘Keep that. There’s one number on the speed dial. It’s mine. Anything you require, any time you need to speak to me, call.’

  ‘Anything I require?’ said Venn.

  ‘Within reason.’

  ‘Manpower?’

  Corcoran shook his head. ‘I’m afraid that’s one thing we can’t provide. You’re on your own in that sense.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because,’ said Corcoran, ‘as I mentioned before, I don’t know who I can trust. I can’t very well send a bunch of cops or Federal agents into the field to assist you, when one or more of them might be involved in Lomax’s disappearance.’

  Venn pocketed the phone, and pushed the gun down the waistband of his jeans. It wasn’t loaded yet, so he wasn’t in any danger of blowing off anything sensitive. ‘When do I get some ammo?’

  ‘In a minute.’

  Corcoran spoke into his own phone, just a couple of words Venn didn’t catch. Then he said to Venn: ‘There’s one more thing. And you’re not going to like it.’

  The door opened and in came the same plainclothes guy who’d brought in the cell phone and later the Glock. In his hand he carried a metal object encased in black rubber, that resembled a bent-open ring.

  Venn knew immediately what it was. He’d seen them before, on more than one asshole he’d taken into custody as a cop.

  An electronic monitoring device, of the kind used to track the movements of a convicted sex offender.

  The man came over behind the table and knelt at Venn’s feet. Venn admired the guy’s cool. He was taking a hell of a risk, getting that close to Venn’s boots. The man pulled the leg of Venn’s jeans free from the boot and fitted the tag round his lower right shin. Then he snapped it into place, ratcheting it tighter until the fit was snug but not uncomfortable.

  Though it would probably itch like hell later.

  The guy straightened up, nodded to Corcoran, and walked out without glancing at Venn.

  ‘Insurance,’ Corcoran said, as if he’d been asked. ‘Thanks to the wonders of GPS, we’ll know exactly where you are at all times. So if you did happen to decide to skip town, we’d be all over you like a rash. Wherever you are in the world.’