by Lori Avocato
I walked into the office door without seeing anyone. Come to think of it, there weren’t any cars in the parking lot. This time I’d used the front door instead of going to the back as I had when following Tina.
I unlocked the outer door and walked through the waiting room, down the hall and into the lounge. There it was in Linda’s office, on the desk. My camera. Yes!
I went over and took it. This time I made sure to stuff it into my purse. Then I walked out into the hallway.
Just to double-check, I leaned over and looked deep inside my bag. There it sat. “Good,” I said, then straightened up.
And screamed.
Twenty-six
I think I broke something in my throat from screaming so loudly.
Vance stood there, glaring at me.
“Wha … wha …” That was it. Either I’d been so traumatized that I couldn’t speak, or I really had broken something important. “Oh, thank goodness it’s you,” I finally squeaked out in pain.
“What the hell are you doing here, Pauline?” He took my arm and led me into his office.
Charts were scattered across his desk. Vance was more anal than Miles and never left a mess, so I knew he’d been working. I assumed he had come to review patient records to help in his decision of whether to stay or leave here.
“Sit down.” He walked to the sideboard and poured me a glass of water.
I took it, nodded a thanks, and drank some. Maybe it would lubricate my larynx and it’d work again.
Vance sat across from me in his fine black leather chair. “So? What are you doing here?”
I shut my eyes and opened them. My heart rate was still about three times the speed it should be. My hands shook so that droplets of water danced out of the glass, landing on my Steelers parka.
“Pauline? Answer me!”
My father’s voice came out of Vance’s mouth. At least the stern tone did like when my brothers and sisters and I had done something wrong. Then, as if animated, I started to talk. No, I started to ramble. “I came to follow Tina, I had to get more pictures. She … shredded. The papers on the floor, jumped from under the desk. I left my camera. Well, I didn’t know I had.”
Vance stared at me. The familiar eyes that I’d known for so many years had me feeling as if I could ramble on without being interrupted.
“At the mall, I didn’t have my camera. I shoved the janitor overalls in the Dumpster. Then I came back here to get … Oh , Vance. Linda’s book!”
He leaned near. “What book?”
“She … your signature. Forgery. Morons. She forged … for MRIs, X-rays … Lord only knows what else. No wonder someone … someone found out, Vance. That’s why they killed her.” I sucked in a huge breath and shouted, “She forged your signature. I found the insurance forms that said you ordered the tests when you didn’t… .”
Vance’s eyes grew dark.
Now I’d admitted repeatedly that I could never read Jagger’s facial expression. But Vance had always been an open book.
Anger.
Disgust.
No … Wait . What was it now?
Coldness.
His expression grew cold. It hadn’t felt eerie being in the empty building before, but now, sitting across from a man I’d known and dated for years—and had slept with—an ominous feeling crossed over the mahogany desk to stab at my heart.
I swallowed. “Linda … didn’t forge your name.”
Vance stood. “She did forge all the other doctors’ names though.” He came around the desk.
I started to stand. He shoved me down with a force that I would never expect from someone wanting to protect his hands. He lifted a few strands of my hair, let them run through his fingers.
I shuddered.
Vance had never been repulsive to me, or I wouldn’t have slept with him. I wasn’t that desperate.
But now he was. Repulsive, that is.
He leaned close to my ear. I heard him say, “You should have stayed at Saint Greg’s.”
Speaking of staying somewhere, I damn sure couldn’t stay here. I pushed at his arm. He yanked me close to him, bending my arm behind my back.
This wasn’t the Vance I knew.
“Let me go. You’re hurting my arm.”
“Soon … you won’t feel any pain.”
Now that was something a girl could go her entire life without hearing and she’d be fine. “What do you mean?” Although I had a pretty good idea.
Linda didn’t feel any pain now.
Neither did Eddy.
Before I knew it, Vance was dragging me around his desk. I tried to elbow him, but he knew his bones all right and snapped my arm with such force, even his eyes lit up. That’s when the pain shot up to my shoulder. I screamed. I looked down to see the bend in my arm. “You … broke … it,” was all I could wail.
Vance opened his desk and pulled out a gun. Yikes. I didn’t know a .357 Magnum from a Glock 33 other than from the movies, but I did know that his having broken my arm and now brandishing a gun at me, no matter what kind, was not a good sign.
I ignored the pain and begged Saint Theresa to have Jagger be outside the door.
Vance pointed toward the hallway. “Go.” He released his hold on me and pushed me ahead of him.
I stumbled but regained my balance. “My arm. It hurts. Can’t you cast it …”
Vance hesitated. Good sign. I appealed to his mercy or his Hippocratic oath. Then to my dismay, he said, “You won’t need it. Go.”
I walked to the door. “You don’t have to shove the barrel in my back. I know you’re armed.” I held my arm to immobilize it as much as I could. Nausea had bile seeping up my throat. “I’m going to—” Before I could finish, vomit splattered the hallway carpet.
“Christ, Pauline.”
“You’re the one who broke my arm!” Tears trickled out of my eyes. Partly from fear. Partly from pain. But no matter the cause, I refused to let them flow—and give Vance any satisfaction.
He took my other arm and led me out into the hallway. No janitor. No Jagger. If I lived, I vowed to charge the battery on my phone daily.
“I didn’t mean to hurt you, Pauline.”
“Only kill me?”
“I … Some things can’t be helped.”
“Oh, right. How foolish of me to cast any blame on you.”
He dragged me to the elevator.
If I thought my heart was pounding before, now it was doing double-time.
Vance pressed the button.
“So, tell me, Vance. Why did you kill Linda if she wasn’t forging your name?”
He looked at me. I could see an old familiarity in his eyes. We’d known each other a long time. I guess he, too, remembered that, and opened up to me. “I didn’t kill her. Charlene …”
I slumped against the wall. “Charlene killed Linda?”
“She had to. After Linda found out Eddy had ratted on us. He actually bragged about it to Tina when he was drunk. Charlene had his—”
“Air bag tampered with,” I whispered.
“How did you—”
I waved my good hand. The pain had dulled since I had supported the break as best I could. Then again, maybe impending death had trivialized a little thing like a broken arm. But I was feeling a bit shocky. “It doesn’t matter.”
Or did it?
With nothing left up my sleeve, I said, “The practice is under investigation for medical insurance fraud.”
Vance’s eyes widened. “You never were a good liar.”
“That’s true. Only this time, I’m not lying. Eddy squealed to the right people.”
“I’ve always known you were smart, Pauline, but now you’ve gone too far. Now you have to—I should have put an end to this when you were jogging this morning.”
Goldie being there had saved my life.
“You’ve been following me.”
“Then fucking Tina and Donnie show up here and interfere yet again.”
“They’re in on it with
you?”
He merely looked at me.
The elevator door opened.
“Shoot me here. I won’t go in.”
Vance touched my cheek. In his defense, it was quite tenderly. “I told you two years ago to seek some professional help for your claustrophobia. Maybe now you’d be more cooperative if you had.”
I shook my head, now more pissed than scared. “Just what I want to do. Make it easier on you, you prick.”
“Don’t get vulgar, Pauline.”
He caught me off guard and before I knew it, we were in the elevator. “No!” I reached out to grab the door.
Vance shoved my hand away just before the door hit it.
The sweat that had beaded on my forehead was now trickling down my face in telling drops. “Thanks for nothing.”
He pushed the button to go up. I could barely think. “Vance, I … can’t … breathe.”
“Don’t get hysterical on me, Pauline. That was Linda’s downfall. Just like her greed. She wore that stupid ruby ring that reminded me of her greed every day. She’d claimed it was a token to remind all of us of what we could have if we worked together, but that’s not how I saw it. She freaked when we found out Eddy had squealed. I had told her to be calm, cause once Eddy was out of the picture everything would be fine. We would take our money and—”
“You were having an affair with Linda?”
He looked at me as if I were insane. Me? Yeah, right. Look who’s calling the kettle black.
“Linda wanted to have an affair with Charlene. Charlene didn’t swing both ways. Pissed Linda off.”
Suddenly I ignored my claustrophobia as best I could. I had to hear it all. “I’m confused,” I said.
I played my ace, knowing Vance couldn’t stand stupidity and had very little patience for someone not understanding something he thought was perfectly clear. That’s why he could never work with interns and residents.
“Pauline, I thought you were smarter than that.”
“Apparently I’m not.”
He looked at me with a hint of his old affection. “I guess I owe it to you to explain.”
Just as I nodded, he hit the emergency stop button on the elevator.
Oh Lord, not again.
This time, though, my life really was at stake. I ordered my brain not to believe that just because the elevator was stopped and the door was closed that I would panic and die.
The gun in Vance’s hand, however, was good reason to believe I might.
So, I sucked in the already stale air of the elevator, ignoring the familiar scent of Vance’s expensive cologne and said, “After all we’ve been through, all you’ve meant to me, I think you do too.”
He looked at me and laughed.
Uh-oh. I think the guy just cracked.
He stopped long enough to say, “I never meant anything to you other than a good fuck.”
No sense telling lies on my deathbed. “It never was that good. I’m surprised you never said anything before.”
“We fulfilled a need for each other. And I … I love …”
I shouldn’t feel sorry for someone who broke my arm, ouch, made me puke on the floor, and forced me at gunpoint into an elevator, but I did. I actually felt sorry for Vance. I really had to toughen up. “You love me?”
He curled his lips. “No, Pauline. I love Charlene.”
“What?” I didn’t mean to sound like a jealous woman, but shoot, he loved Charlene? “Now you really owe me an explanation.”
The walls closed in.
How I wished it wasn’t so late, and that the building hadn’t been shut down for the investigation. Normally, it would be crawling with people. Doctors and nurses who could cast my arm and maybe stop the bleeding after Vance … shot me.
“I met Charlene when I was an intern—”
“Then why date me?”
“Well, if you’d let me explain.” He dropped the gun to his side.
I couldn’t take my eyes off it, until I ordered myself to. He couldn’t see me staring at it or he’d tighten his hold and be more cautious.
“She was married. I wouldn’t come between someone and their spouse.”
But you’d commit fraud and murder. I thought better than to say that. Vance was on a roll. I let him go on as I kept glancing at the gun and wiping the sweat from my forehead.
“Then her marriage became rocky. I only meant to comfort her, but … things happened. You know how that is. I needed you to take any suspicion off of Charlene and I being together.”
“Glad to have helped.”
“Thank you,” he said, then continued in a monotone. “She had two kids, and her ex left town. Bastard of an ex. Left her high and dry. So, I couldn’t get openly mixed up with her.”
“Daddy wouldn’t approve.”
He nodded.
I cursed his father for messing with Vance’s mind.
’Cause look where it got him.
“But I still wanted to be with her even if secretly. That’s why you and I didn’t go out that often.”
No great loss there, buddy. I looked at him and nodded.
“But with her kids, and paying off huge debts her husband had left her, Charlene wasn’t financially well off. Even for a doctor.”
“That’s why you didn’t marry her.” It wasn’t a question. I knew Vance. Even though he loved her, and I didn’t doubt that, he would be a failure in the eyes of his father if he didn’t become wealthy. A woman and two kids needing that much money would be a drain on that plan.
“So you decided to commit fraud to get more money?”
He gave me a “What? Are you stupid?” look. “No, Pauline. Don’t interrupt. Charlene and Donnie came up with the idea. They attended a medical seminar back in ’98 over in England, where some consultants, who were subsequently caught and charged, discussed medical fraud, the fools. They actually would teach doctors how to commit fraud, under the pretense of teaching you how to watch out for it. Charlene and Donnie started out small. One claim here. A false claim there. One night when Charlene and I had finished making love …” He looked at me.
I yanked my eyes from the gun.
“Sorry. I don’t mean to rub our sex life in your face.”
“No problem. I understand how you felt about her.”
“Feel.”
Yeah, right. And he’d proposed to me a time or two. I’d never really been in love and now I was dying to tell my mother that she was wrong about me marrying Vance after all the numerous times she’d tried to talk me into it.
I only hoped I would get the chance to tell her.
I’d started to feel a bit dizzy either from shock or claustrophobia or Vance. But I bit my lip a few times, figuring the pain would keep my mind clear.
“Anyway, after sex she’d told me about the money she and Donnie were making. I couldn’t believe how easy it was.”
“So that’s why you came to this practice.”
“You are smart. But it did take me a long time. I do have a conscience, you know, Pauline.”
Had one. “I know, Vance. But, really, you broke the law and two people are dead.”
“It was their own fault. Eddy squealed and Linda had a fight with Charlene. Linda secretly loved Charlene, and when Charlene wouldn’t … go for her … Linda threatened to report all of us. Charlene had to inject her to end the threats.”
“By inject I’m guessing you mean with a deadly drug.”
“Pavulon.”
I gasped. “A neuromuscular blocker? Without a respirator, a person dies.”
He sighed. “That was the idea.”
Linda had suffocated when her muscles relaxed so much that her lungs didn’t function and her diaphragm didn’t work. How awful. Yet clever, since it wouldn’t be easily traced. Paralyzed to death with a simple injection.
“What about Tina and Donnie? Weren’t you afraid they’d tell someone?”
“Ha! They’re up to their eyeballs in debt. They need the money a hell of a lot more than C
harlene and I.”
“So Tina was shredding evidence so you all wouldn’t get caught?”
He looked confused.
“Oh, hell. I was following Tina. My new job is as a medical insurance fraud investigator.”
He laughed. “How ironic.”
“I’m glad you see humor in that.” I rubbed my arm.
“If I had my bag, I’d give you a shot of morphine for the pain. I figured you were snooping around for something. I thought you suspected me of something. Actually, I thought Eddy had told you about all of it. I’d seen you talking to him and that other man, whoever he is, far too often.”
He was softening. Maybe I could catch him off guard. I didn’t allow myself to think of the “other man.” Jagger. “So you tried to scare me with the stuffed Spanky.”
“Spanky never liked me.”
Good taste.
“So I thought it was appropriate to put a note of warning on his little collar, telling you to give up this job. I thought it would scare you enough never to come back here.”
“Good thinking.”
“Why didn’t it?”
Oh, hell. “Because I never got to see it. The police have it. They’ll get you eventually, Vance.”
“With you out of the way, they’ll have no proof. I used surgical gloves. They’ll never trace the note to me. And … whatever I tell you will go no further than these walls.”
He might be right if Jagger wasn’t on the case.
“Why couldn’t you have gotten scared off when I followed you near Tina’s house that day? Would have been to your benefit, Pauline.”
“You own a green parka.” I’d never suspected Vance to be a stalker. Not his style. Guess greed changed people.
He smiled—no, he grinned, a very clichéd sinister grin.
“I don’t understand why Tina faked an injury—”
“Fat greedy bitch. If they had let me control things, and had listened, we’d all be millionaires and no one would ever have known.”
Again, not with the likes of Jagger around.
Jagger.
“They never listened to me. Even Charlene has her faults. I told her running you over would be a mistake—”
“That was her at the restaurant! And that guy in the Steelers hat zooming out of here was her too.”
“She had to get away after injecting Linda. No one was going to use the X-ray room that morning, so it was a perfect setup.”
