He found a chair in the corner where he could be reasonably sure of not being disturbed. The place would soon fill up with people on their way to the seven o’clock shift, and he needed to think.
It had been a long road.
The evening when he’d killed her twenty-seven years ago burned as fresh in his mind as the night it happened.
When she’d called the maternity center that morning, he had no idea it would end that way. She was so abrasive, insisting he keep Chaz from trying to follow her and threatening vague revelations that would ruin their name. He had to find out what she knew, and convinced her to meet him one more time that evening. She took the last train to Albany, and he picked her up at the station, then drove her to his office. It was deserted at night.
She’d initially limited her threats to what Chaz would be blamed for – “failing to properly supervise a resident in a case where the patient died.” She hadn’t provided details, and he practically laughed at her, saying, “I’m afraid that happens all the time in a teaching hospital, dear. If that’s all you have to threaten me with, you’re out of luck.” He wanted to goad her, find out if she’d discovered more deadly secrets.
Provoked, she let slip she also had something on him – the odd irregularities about his records – and that Dr. Cam Roper knew, might even investigate the maternity center and the home.
He’d known at that instant she’d have to die, and Roper, too. Once either of them found out the gravity of his secret, there would be no bargaining. The two of them were too straight for that.
The nearest weapon he’d had on hand were the heavy metal stirrups his pregnant ladies put their feet into when he examined them. He grabbed one, came up behind her, and smashed her in the temple. She was unconscious but not dead.
He’d stripped her, tied her up, and taped her mouth in case she woke up. Putting her in the trunk of his car, he drove to his house, where he burned her clothes in the basement incinerator. In the boathouse he found an old anchor, chain, and padlock. After midnight he drove to Trout Lake and commandeered an old rowboat from one of the cottages. As he’d attached the anchor and chain with the lock, she’d started to regain consciousness. She cried as he rowed her to the middle of the lake, and he never forgot the terror in her eyes as he dumped her in.
He shuddered.
Now all he had to do was catch Melanie Collins in the act of finishing off Earl Garnet. Actually, a little after the act, then let Chaz present the evidence of what she’d been up to all these years. Thankfully, Kelly’s letter to Cam Roper suggested she’d found out about Melanie’s first two victims and intended to reveal her discovery. It would be an easy sell to convince the authorities she’d confronted Melanie, and that Melanie killed her to keep her quiet.
Too bad Earl had to die. It would have been possible to convict Melanie without having her kill him, useful even, if he had bought the idea of her guilt so completely he’d have been willing to declare far and wide that her conviction cleared the Braden name. But that had been naive. He obviously still harbored deep suspicions, starting with the break-in at Mark Roper’s house and ending God knew where. It became necessary to change strategy on the spot and goad Earl into yelling the same paranoid-sounding accusations that Mark Roper and Lucy O’Connor had been led to make – to help ensure he’d seem as off base as the other two and that anything any of them had said would be easier to dismiss in the aftermath – then serve him up to Melanie.
He took a long sip of the hot drink.
It scoured his esophagus and ignited a small fire in his empty stomach.
As for Mark and Lucy, they’d be frozen corpses by now. “So tragic,” he would say to reporters. “If only the man had listened to me. I tried to tell him just two days ago to be patient, that there appeared to be new evidence pointing to Kelly’s real killer, but obviously he barged ahead on his own. From the start he seemed obsessed with blaming her death on our family, to the point he began making up the most fantastic stories. That he lost his life trying to find nonexistent remains to support these allegations is a waste beyond words. And what did his futile search prove? Simply how wild and baseless his accusations were. That his resident died trying to save him makes it a doubly senseless loss. Two young lives gone for nothing!”
He smiled at how easily he’d sent Mark rushing off half-cocked. A carefully staged mention of smotherings and eugenics, combined with the young man’s lifelong resentment of all things Braden, and he assumed the worst, taking Lucy with him. Such a hothead, just like his father.
What better way to deflect an investigation that might discover his former baby business – purely a commercial venture, albeit illegal – than have his chief accuser run around making the charges so extreme no one would take them seriously? Just imagine, Charles Braden III as some crazed fanatic who had murdered deformed newborns, then buried them under the orphanage lawn. He chuckled at the outlandishness of it.
Of course, setting Mark up like that had been risky, but after O’Connor arrived on the scene he’d had to take the chance. A more sober questioning of the birth records might have revealed the truth.
Still, as much as it might be a masterstroke luring them to their deaths the way they had tonight, everything would have been over and neater had they died in the blast. For one thing, they couldn’t have saved the talkative old crone. Fortunately, she still didn’t pose much of a threat. According to one of his cronies at Saratoga General, she was a “likely,” as in “likely to croak.”
One reassuring fact – there would be such a media furor in the wake of charging Collins with so many murders, including Kelly’s, none of the recent events in Hampton Junction would garner much scrutiny anyway. His past secrets, and the present one at Nucleus Laboratories, should be safe.
As long as his men found the woman with Victor’s files. They’d been damn lucky to overhear that conversation.
He took another sip of espresso.
As he waited for the buzz to hit, he heard the thud of heavy rotors arriving over the hospital and raised his eyes.
Must be Chaz’s case, he thought.
Chaz huddled in the doorway leading to the heliport on the hospital roof. The blast of the rotors stirred up clouds of dust and debris, making it necessary for him to turn away, protect his eyes, and cover his mouth. Beside him the men and women of the ER team did the same. He stayed apart from them a little to keep out of their way as they would be the first to the helicopter. However, they were all puzzled by how little advance information they’d been given. All they knew from dispatch: they were receiving two hypothermia cases, a man and a woman, one of them a near-drowning victim in critical condition. Normally they would get vitals, names, and circumstances. Nobody liked surprise packages in this business.
The craft rocked to a landing on the pad, the rotors whined down, and the ER people, crouching low, ran for the doors. The crew already had them open and slid a stretcher halfway out the craft to their waiting hands. As nurses, residents, and orderlies crowded around their charge, Chaz, still hanging back, couldn’t tell if it was the man or woman. He was able to see that IVs were up and running through warming coils, that one of the attendants was ventilating the victim, that the oxygen passed through a tube immersed in what he assumed was a basin of hot water, a pretty good improvisation. Wires lead to an O2 saturation meter, a catheter bag dangling from a side rail indicated urinary output – Jesus, he thought, everything’s been done. There must be a doctor on board.
Someone still inside the ambulance handed out a half dozen tubes of blood, then a syringe wedged in a styrofoam cup overflowing with crushed ice, the standard way to preserve serum slated for acid-base testing. No doubt about it, a physician had gift-wrapped this case so it could bypass emergency and go straight to intensive care. Chaz stepped forward to take charge when a nurse lifted down a portable monitor that beeped out a very slow pulse. As she moved to secure the piece of equipment at the foot of the stretcher, the victim’s face came into view.
“Hold it right there, Chaz!” said a man’s voice over the noise of the helicopter. “Your services won’t be required.”
He looked up to see Mark Roper, wrapped in blankets but standing, being helped out of the passenger compartment. Stunned, Chaz yelled, “What the hell’s happened?”
Mark brushed off supporting hands and walked right by him, leaving the ambulance attendants shaking their heads in dismay.
“He ought to be on a stretcher,” one of them said to Chaz.
“Yeah,” echoed his colleague. “Instead, he took care of her the whole way.”
“I’m fine!” Mark yelled over his shoulder. “First I get Lucy to ICU.” He swung his gaze to Chaz. “Then you and I are going to talk.”
Melanie Collins ran across the parking lot toward the front door. She could still make this work. Her gaze traveled up to the floor where Earl lay sedated and helpless. Acutely psychotic patients had been known to possess super-human strength, enough to smash a window despite being drugged, and jump. An early-morning haze of dust, exhaust, and grime blurred the outlines of the building and would provide her with the cover she’d need to break the glass with a chair and shove him through. He overpowered my attempt to stop him, she could claim, appearing suitably shaken and distraught, maybe even verging on hysterical, after screaming for help.
But high overhead, a streak of azure showed through tattered gray clouds and tried to pin a blue ribbon on the start of an otherwise mediocre-looking day. It just might succeed, judging by how quickly the smog seemed to be dissipating. By the time she got to his room, there’d not be enough mist to conceal her from the street.
No, better stick to her original plan. She slipped a hand into the pocket of her lab coat and fingered the loaded syringe of short-acting insulin. It might take an hour to produce seizures, perhaps longer, but in the end would be neater. Convulsions were a natural complication of the E. coli 0157:H7 organism; it accumulated on receptor sites in the brain as well as in the kidney. And she’d be at the resuscitation stressing that fact, loading him up with antiseizure medication that wouldn’t work and dismissing the need to give him sugar if anyone suggested it. She didn’t necessarily need to kill Earl, just let the seizures knock off enough neurons that he would never talk again. Like Bessie.
Still, having to rush a case like this made her uneasy. She usually took days to plan her approach and pick her times. Even with Bessie, rushed as that was, she’d prepared carefully, substituting the contents of a multidose heparin bottle with just enough insulin that the nurse would draw up the shot, then throw the bottle away. The result – someone else gave the agent and disposed of the evidence. That’s how she liked doing things – cleverly, cleanly, and at a distance. Earl would be a hands-on operation.
At first the corridor was empty when she arrived, it being another twenty minutes before people would begin to show up for shift change. Then halfway down the hallway a nurse emerged from a patient’s room carrying a flashlight. She’d be conducting the last bed check before going off duty. “Body search,” the residents called it, since this was when the people who’d died in their sleep were usually discovered.
“Morning,” said Melanie. “Dr. Braden phoned me about Dr. Garnet. How is he now?”
“Out like a light,” said the woman.
“I’ll just peek in on him.”
“Want me to come with you?”
“No, I’m fine.”
The nurse shrugged and went on with her work.
Melanie paused outside Earl’s door, checked that no one else was near, and went in.
Charles Braden finished a second espresso and glanced at his watch. What was taking Chaz so long? He must be having trouble with his case, but they ought to be spending this time mapping out the best way to approach the dean.
Charles knew he’d have to coach his son through it, without appearing to do so. There couldn’t be any mistakes in explaining how they knew to suspect Melanie, such as the one he himself had made with Garnet – practically admitting he’d had access to Mark’s files. However, Chaz and he would now be able to claim that Roper and Garnet had showed them those reports during the investigation. There’d be no one to say otherwise, once Melanie took care of Garnet.
He glanced at his watch again. She must be in the hospital by now. How she’d get rid of him he had no idea. Any number of the tricks in the arsenal she’d built up over the years ought to do the trick. But he hadn’t heard a code blue over the PA system yet. Maybe she’d arranged for him not to be disturbed, and they wouldn’t find him for hours. Should he go back upstairs and recheck on Garnet himself, pretend he’d just dropped by, show concern after the man’s psychotic episode this morning-
The door to the coffee shop opened and in walked Chaz.
Good, thought Charles, until he saw the look in his son’s eyes. Even from the other side of the room he could see the pupils were far too big, the whites far too wide, the circles far too large. The rage in them pushed aside the rest of his face. “Chaz, what’s the matter-”
Mark Roper stepped into the room wearing OR greens. Behind him were three uniformed policemen.
The five of them marched forward, but Charles saw only his son’s horrible gaze as he descended on him. Oh, Jesus, he knows.
“Now, Chaz,” he said, getting up out of the chair. There had to be a way he could still bluff himself out of this, at least for long enough to make an escape. He didn’t know how Roper had survived, but there was nothing to implicate him, Charles Braden III, in what went on tonight. Ironically, all those wild accusations that he’d primed Mark to make might save him now, make the police hesitate. “Son, tell me, has something happened?”
Chaz’s hands shot out, his fingers splayed wide as if he were holding a basketball. “You! You took her from me. The one love I had.” He started to run. “I could have kept Kelly. You ruined that. Destroyed me. Let everyone think I did it.”
Charles stood his ground, certain he’d be obeyed. “Chaz, you stop this nonsense!”
“Oh, it’s not nonsense,” Mark said, his voice filling the room. “Sheriff Dan Evans has your men. The two that can talk are telling everything. Not just what they did on your behalf this last week. Seems they used their special skills at procuring information to ferret out all your past secrets, including the fact that you murdered Kelly and why, as insurance – in case they ever had to bargain their way out of a tight spot.”
“No!” said Charles. “They’re lying-”
Chaz leapt at his throat.
They crashed over backward as his son’s fingers closed around his neck. Charles tried to yell, but already the thumbs were crushing his windpipe. He attempted to claw them off.
“You never had faith in me,” Chaz screamed. “Never. You ruined everything I ever tried to do. But Kelly! How could you ruin Kelly?” He broke into a wail as raw and screeching as a wounded animal’s.
Charles struggled to draw breath and couldn’t. His hands pried and twisted at the fingers, but didn’t budge them. If anything they squeezed harder. A loud ringing filled his head, drowning out the shouts that rang through the room. His vision grew dark around the edges, and his son’s terrible, pained eyes, circles within circles, spiraled him toward two black pits.
Melanie found Earl lying flat on his back, the IV in his arm, a cardiac monitor attached to his chest. The latter surprised her. Had he already started to complain of palpitations? Deplete his potassium and give him a lethal arrhythmia – that had been her original plan. Too bad she couldn’t wait.
She walked over to the bedside and stood over him. His face hung slack, his mouth drooped open, and his respirations were shallow, the way she’d expect to see any patient who’d been brought down with a major tranquilizer. It gave her a sense of total control over him.
So look how we ended up, Earl. C
ouldn’t have guessed this when we were classmates, could you? Who’s the hotshot now? You’ll be remembered as Kelly’s killer, and I’ll be wringing my hands and saying, Who would have thought it?
She pulled out the syringe, uncapped the needle, and jabbed it into the side portal of the plastic tubing.
Still, you very nearly got me.
She pushed the plunger all the way down and opened the intravenous valve wide, flushing the solution into his vein.
Except it wouldn’t run through.
The normal stream of drops that should be dripping from the bag into the plastic tubing wasn’t there.
Was the line blocked?
She bent down to check where the tubing joined the angiocath that had been inserted into the vein. Usually the first sign of obstruction would be a backup of blood.
It looked clear.
Then the problem had to be the angiocath itself. It might have torn the vein, and the IV was simply seeping into the tissues of his arm, not through the bloodstream where she needed it.
Damn.
She’d have to change it. But most of the insulin would still be in the tubing. In a few minutes she could make the switch, run it in, and be out of there.
She quickly found an equipment tray on the counter, located a new angiocath, and broke it out of its package.
Then she stooped over Earl’s arm, removed the bandage anchoring the old one to the skin – and stared.
It had never been inserted in his vein. It lay taped to the surface of his skin, the needle capped.
“What the hell…”
She looked up, and saw Earl staring at her, eyes wide-open and alert.
The bathroom door opened, and out stepped a resident with red hair and the short-haired nurse who’d been taking care of Bessie.
Melanie felt warm, as if the room had gone on fire. “What are you doing here?” She mustered her most imperious tone, intended to make underlings out of anyone she used it on.
Mortal Remains Page 40
