by Cat Connor
“I see your point.”
I also had a feeling some kind of crazed religious belief system was about to crop up.
“Kurt always wanted lots of children …” she added. There was a wistful quality to her voice.
“Really, even as a teenager?”
I could imagine him as a randy teen but not talking about future children. I doubted Katrina knew of his loose behavior at college.
“We talked about having children, at least four.”
And yet I had the feeling he never did the deed with her. I’d have bet good money on her wearing a promise ring and being one hell of a tease. My mind was beginning to wander. I pulled it back.
“Four? That’s a lot these days.”
“I always knew he’d be a doctor or something, so four would be okay.”
I was hearing something else in her voice. She felt cheated. I needed to get her off the subject of Kurt.
“So, Doctor Neal? He stayed here?”
She shook her head. A patient appeared in the window above the desk. Katrina answered the woman’s query about waiting time as best she could. Once the woman shuffled back to the waiting room Katrina turned to me. “We dated you know …”
Hang on. She dated both of them?
“At high school?”
“No, while he was at college; he came home for the holidays and we dated. We were together for a year, long distance.”
“That must’ve been hard.”
She shrugged. “Harder for him, men have needs.”
Just men?
“When did you marry …” I searched for his name. “Chuck?”
She smiled.
“Five years ago.”
“That’s great.” From the corner of my eye, I saw Kurt wave me over. “Here’s my husband. Thank you for keeping me company.” I stood up and pushed the chair in.
“If you’re at a loss while you’re in town, just call me. We’ll have coffee.”
“Thank you.”
I bolted.
Kurt escorted me out of the ER and back to Grant’s office. I told him about Katrina. He grinned.
“She was very religious ... according to her parents.”
“Oh really?”
“Uh huh. Church every Sunday; bible class every Wednesday night; promise ring.”
“And the truth?”
“Skank.”
I channeled my teenage daughter and said, “You didn’t hit that?”
“Hell, no,” he replied.
I smiled. Had that one figured already. Katrina wasn’t just a skank though. She saw a way out of small town life by screwing boys with a future and it didn’t work out. Now she was a receptionist married to a plumber she didn’t like very much. Sucked to be her.
“There’s something about Katrina, I can’t put my finger on it but it’s like I’ve seen her before. A long time ago though.” There was a mental bookmark inserted before I could even react. I would check it out later. I felt it was important.
“You lived out in Mauryville. No doubt you’ve come across her at some stage. Small town.”
“Maybe.”
And there it was in my head. Mac’s voice with a resounding, “Maybe’s ass.”
Kurt scanned the whiteboard and my scrawled notes. “You’ve been busy,” he commented then turned to me.
“There is a pattern. Six is the trigger.”
“Six,” he repeated, his voice dull with tiredness.
“You’ve had a shit of a day. Let’s get out of here.” I picked up the whiteboard eraser and cleaned off all the scrawled writing. Just in case someone other than Grant saw it.
As an afterthought I picked up the black marker and drew a giant six in the middle of the whiteboard. There was a chance that it meant something and he just might know what.
Nineteen
Saturday Night
I saw the silver car a split second before I saw Arbab open the front passenger door. No hesitation. I reached inside my bag and pulled out my Glock. Kurt spun around. He must have detected my movement. Perhaps his superman terrorist alert tingled. A woman leveled with us, blocking my view, also unwittingly blocking me from being recognized. She looked at me and shrieked. Kurt lurched forward pushing me into the car. I scrambled into the seat as he swung the door shut. The woman stood in front of the door screaming, “It’s … it’s …”
There was no way for me to see where Arbab was or if he could see beyond her. She was three times my width and then some.
I craned my neck to see around her, to no avail. Kurt leaped in the driver’s door and floored it. As we took off from the parking lot I saw Arbab watching the hysterical woman with disdain. He turned and headed into the hospital. She stood rooted to the spot, tears pouring down her face, pointing after us as Kurt drove away. I shoved my gun back into my bag and wished I was wearing a holster. Guns shouldn’t be in bags.
Anxiety escalated into a clawing, vomit-inducing ball.
Arbab in Lexington. Why did he come back? Surely he would’ve moved on, after not finding me. Roanoke. He killed in Roanoke. It made no sense to go to Roanoke if he was tracking me. I needed to know more about the dead woman there. What the hell was that woman screaming about? Was it the gun? The screaming and the tears triggered a memory or four. I knew that scream. I’d heard that particular pitch before, usually from much younger women and usually when I was around Tony Sharron, Grange’s lead guitarist. Or Lee when he was mistaken for Tony. It wasn’t the sort of reaction I’d ever witnessed with Rowan. Fans tended to keep their distance when he and I were out and about.
“Was that him?”
“Uh huh.”
“Do woman often shriek and cry around you?”
“Not so much. First I thought she was reacting to my gun … but I think she recognized me as Rowan’s girlfriend.”
My phone rang and I considered letting it go to voicemail but the tougher, more together, part of me reached into my pocket and answered the call.
“Chicky, I’m coming down to Lexington,” Lee said without the need for pleasantries.
“Why?”
It seemed reasonable to ask, given that he and Sam were working on the case involving boxed meat in Washington.
“I started looking into the plumber who visited your house prior to the explosions. Also, the sniper at your place. I’m coming down. Will fill you in when I see you.”
I told him which hotel we were in so he could book a room in advance.
“Sam?”
“He’s working up here in DC; he’s roped in a few Delta B agents to lend a hand.”
“Awesome.”
“What name are you using there?”
I smiled. He was going to love it.
“Mrs. Rylee Henderson.”
Lee’s smooth laugh flowed into my ears.
“See you in a few hours, Mrs. Henderson.”
I pocketed my phone and noticed we’d stopped. After a quick look around it was evident we were in the hotel parking lot. Kurt was sitting looking at me with a quizzical expression.
“Lee is coming down, something to do with the explosions. Seems he doesn’t want to discuss it over the phone.”
“That can’t be good,” Kurt replied. “You okay?”
“Sure … is that the right answer?”
He smiled. “It’s the expected answer. Come on, let’s go inside. I’m going to call Grant and get him to find out why the president of your fan club arrived at the hospital.”
Nice to have fans. Clearly I’d prefer more attractive and fewer want-to-kill-me types given a choice.
A smile jumped to my lips without much effort. Kurt and I wandered arm-in-arm into the hotel lobby. No rush. We took the stairs instead of the elevator. I couldn’t help but wonder what I was going to find every time elevator doors opened; I was pretty sure Kurt felt the same way. A madman had left photographs in an elevator when we were in New Zealand, which weren’t horrific in themselves but they lead to some horrible discoveries. Life is a wonde
rful thing: Mine is ever so colorful most of the time. Elevators, like Post-it notes, became something to avoid where possible.
I felt an immediate sense of security inside the hotel room.
Kurt made coffee. He made surprisingly good coffee. Out of my team only Sam could do better.
I made a quick call to Carla.
“Mom!”
“Carla!”
Kurt looked over and grinned at my exclamation. He called out, “Hey, kid.”
“Tell Doc I said ‘hi’ back.”
I did. “Having fun? Being good?”
“It’s awesome here! It would’ve been gay at home.”
Delightful. “You’re having a good time?”
“I so am! Will you be away long?”
“Are you asking because you miss me, or because you don’t want me to come back too soon? By the way, if you didn’t want me to come home, that would be totally gay.”
She huffed, laughed, and then replied, “That’s not fair. It’s a trick question.”
I laughed. No flies on my kid. “I’m glad you’re having fun and it’s not gay. I’ll be home once we’ve solved this case.”
“Is it interesting?”
“Yeah, it really is. I kinda thought it’d be gay, but no, it’s interesting.”
Carla’s laughter tinkled. “Did you want to talk to Rowan?”
“Nah, he’s gay.” I could scarcely contain my amusement. “Tell him I’ll call later, I’m working right now.”
“Okay, gonna tell him you said he was gay too.”
I could imagine her poking her tongue out at the phone.
“Awesome, I shall continue mocking you later. Love you.”
“Love you too, Mom.”
I dropped my cell phone onto the couch and watched it bounce once. A tiny vibration moved outward from the impact zone.
Kurt sat opposite me on the other couch. “Gay? Rowan is gay?”
I cleared my throat. “Not that kind of gay. I was mocking the child. She’s forever saying everything is gay,” I replied, doing my best teenage impersonation.
“A lot of homosexuality going on in her life or is she really happy?”
“Neither. Teenagers!” I rolled my eyes. “If they don’t like something or it’s boring, or stupid … now it is gay.”
“Ah, I see.”
“English is evolving or maybe devolving? Gay has gone from happy to homosexual to boring. No wonder it is such a hard language to learn.”
“Talk to me about the six?”
“All the deaths so far have involved the number six. And I found another one, from six months ago.”
“Do you think that’s the first?”
“It could be. I have the file,” I told him and hoisted myself off the couch to get the file from my bag. I dropped it onto Kurt’s lap and waited for him to read it.
Ten minutes later he put down the file next to him.
“This could be the first.”
“That’s what I thought.”
“So tell me more about the ‘six’ connections.”
“Today is the sixteenth: Someone is going to die tonight. What’s more, the only day where someone didn’t die on the sixth, sixteenth, or twenty-sixth, was a Saturday.”
“The sixth day of the week,” Kurt said.
And on the seventh he rests.
“We need to go back over the rosters for the past several months and look at corresponding dates,” Kurt said.
“Yes.” I had a horrible feeling we’d find more deaths.
“We also need to find out what is so important about the number six.”
I nodded. “I have a woman I’d like to interview out in Mauryville; the daughter of Mrs. Abernathy. She might be able to tell us more. Kevin said she’s a nurse.”
Kurt picked up the file and looked for next-of-kin information. “Husband is down in here. No mention of a daughter but a familiar sounding address. I dated a girl called Dionne. She wasn’t an Abernathy though.”
“I wrote down her name in my notebook. Talking to her might be a good idea.”
If she was there when her mother was taken into the emergency room she may have seen something or heard something that could help. It’s amazing how much people remember if they’re asked. It’s all about triggering the right memories.
“When do you want to do that?”
“Soon as possible.” Anxiety had begun to mount. I shoved it down hard.
“Let’s wait for Lee,” Kurt suggested.
Good thinking. Especially with Arbab in the area.
Meanwhile we could eat and stay nice and safe within the hotel walls. Or – I watched Kurt unfold papers – we could work on finding the connection to the sixes.
We each had a laptop, it was time to fire them up and get down to the nitty-gritty investigating phase. I started by running the Abernathy’s daughter, Dionne Bailey, through our system. She was new to town, in that she’d recently returned and the killings started not long after she arrived. Seemed reasonable to check her out. I also put Katrina in the system, more for kicks than thinking she was a genuine suspect. I had the feeling when talking to her that she wasn’t the brightest. Scheming? Oh, hell, yes. But still not the sharpest tool in the shed. There was still a lurking sense of familiarity every time I thought about Katrina.
Kurt hunted for dates on the rosters and cross-referenced everyone working those days to time frames and compiled a list of potential suspects.
There was a hit for Abernathy’s daughter.
“Kurt, the Bailey woman.” I swiveled my laptop to face him.
He read the screen, looked at the driver’s license photograph, and then leaned back, like he was trying to get away from the picture. He knew her.
“College or high school?” I said, turning the laptop back around. That’ll be why he thought her address was familiar.
A small smile twitched in the corner of his mouth. “Dionne Simonson. High school.”
“Why the different name?”
“Her mother had been married before.”
“You were quite the player weren’t you?”
The small twitch became a full blown grin. “As tempting as it is to dispute that, I think you’ve already made up your mind. Dionne Simonson and I dated for three months in our junior year.”
“Three? Wow, that’s damn near married at high school.”
He nodded. “Everyone thought we would get married.”
“And?”
“And nothing really, summer came along. The big wide world beckoned.”
“And your whoring reached knew dizzying heights.”
He laughed. “You do know that Grant was the man-whore, as you so delightfully put it and not me …”
“Really?” News to me.
“Oh yeah. He was screwing anything with a pulse – at least I presume they all had a pulse. I was the fall guy.”
“Fall guy?”
He needed a fall guy?
“Thing with Grant was that he was often in relationships, and …”
“A cheating-bastard-man-whore?”
“Yeah, that about sums it up.”
“And he gave you a hard time because …” I was thinking about the Mrs. Henderson thing, then I got it. “Because it was so far from the truth, it was funny.”
He smiled.
I added Grant’s wife, Kim Neal, to the list of possible suspects. After all he’d no doubt been cheating on her; maybe he even still played the field. Leopards don’t change their spots.
It was difficult to remember what it was I missed from small town living. Everyone knew everyone else’s business and had no qualms about sharing it around. The price you pay to belong to a community. Nothing’s perfect. I lived in a quiet street in Oakton, my neighbors knew me by sight, but I didn’t socialize with them. My house blew up. I lived in Mauryville, knew all my neighbors, and I did socialize with them. My house blew up.
A beep from my laptop required attention.
A Messenger windo
w opened and sat there ready. I stole a furtive glance at Kurt. He seemed engrossed in whatever he was doing on his laptop. I typed into the window.
Otherwisecat: Hello
Galileo: Hey, Babe, Lexington?”
Otherwisecat: New case.
Galileo: It’s dangerous.
Otherwisecat: Yep. Now tell me how and why you were in New Zealand ten years ago as an FBI agent when you weren’t FBI then.
Galileo: It’s not important. You are in danger. Go back to DC.
Otherwisecat: You died with secrets.
A blue pop-up flickered on the bottom right of my screen. It said Galileo appears to be offline. Typical. Kurt looked at me. I smiled.
“What’s up?”
“Nothing,” I replied, closing the messenger window. “Nothing at all.”
I talk to dead people. Perhaps it was time to call in a priest.
“We have five nurses who had access to some of the dead patients.”
He’d been working. Impressive.
“Five and others – that’s not as definitive as it could be.”
“No, it’s not. It’s the patients dying on different wards that are causing the issue. That, and so far there is no one person with contact at the appropriate time to all of them.”
I closed my eyes. “What if it’s not a nurse?”
“I’m listening.”
“Visitors are probably out as visiting times don’t extend into the wee small hours. Apart from nurses, who can move around a hospital without attracting attention?”
“Doctors, radiologists. Maybe a therapist of some sort.”
“How much therapy goes on between two and six a.m.?”
“Good point.”
“How many of those patients would’ve required x-rays between two and six a.m.?”
“Doctor then?”
“How many doctors work in the hospital?”
Kurt picked up his phone, and then put it down. “Not a question I want to ask Grant.”
Yeah, not now he’s been ratcheted up the suspect list. But I knew how to find out. Katrina.
“Check the hospital website. If that doesn’t tell us, I’ll take Katrina a coffee. Pretty sure I can get her to dish dirt on docs.”
“Good thinking.”
The thought of a doctor killing people seemed so much worse than the notion that a nurse was responsible. I checked my watch. It was midafternoon. We had until two in the morning to find the killer or figure out how to protect the patients currently in the hospital.
