Women's Murder Club [05] The 5th Horseman

by James Patterson

  The time had come to abandon my off-the-books investigation and make “the brass button case” official before a very large sinkhole opened under the Hall of Justice.

  I picked up the phone and called the chief, said, “Tony, I have to see you. It’s urgent.”

  The Flower Market Cafe on Brannan and Sixth is near the onramp to 280 south and a few blocks from the Hall. Any other day I would have appreciated the cozy ambience of the eatery, its pretty tiled floor, dark wainscoting, and view of the flower-market stalls down the alley.

  But not today.

  Tracchio and I took one of the small, round tables and ordered sandwiches.

  “Start talking, Boxer,” he said.

  I found that I was relieved to tell him every bit of it—about Yuki’s mom, the buttoned-up eyes of thirty-three dead patients, the rumors, the statistics, and the malpractice trial against Municipal Hospital to date.

  I also told him about Garza’s stinking track record at various hospitals around the country, concluding with a report of Jacobi’s surveillance and our off-duty interrogations last night after a patient had died.

  “Ruffio’s body was in the ICU waiting to be moved to the hospital morgue,” I said, “when someone put brass buttons on his eyes.”

  “Humph,” the chief grunted.

  “Garza left the hospital at six p.m. The patient died at just after eight,” I told him, “but I can’t say for sure that Garza wasn’t involved.”

  “If Garza wasn’t there, how do you figure he had anything to do with it?”

  “He has access to any place in the hospital. Maybe he overdosed the patient before he quit work for the day and it took a few hours for the medication to work.

  “Maybe he has an accomplice, or maybe he’s not our guy at all,” I admitted. “But, Christ, Tony, Garza could be a world-class monster! I think he probably is. At the very least, we’ve got to play ‘beat the press.’ The Chronicle put him on page three this morning.”

  The chief pushed his plate aside, ordered another round of coffee.

  “Yuki filed charges?” he asked.

  “Yes, but Claire’s autopsy of Yuki’s mom only shows that she was overmedicated. No evidence that she was murdered. I’m expecting pretty much the same report on Ruffio.”

  “So, bottom line, you’ve got a mixed bag of nuts and bolts that don’t add up to anything.”

  “It adds up to a real bad feeling, Tony. The worst. And it won’t go away.”

  “So, what do you want to do?”

  Thanks to closing the Car Girl murders, my stock had never been higher than it was today.

  “I want to saturate the hospital with cops,” I said. “Borrow some guys from Narcotics to go undercover. I’d put a detail on Garza twenty-four/seven, and I’d like to plant someone inside the hospital pharmacy.”

  Tracchio drained his coffee cup, no doubt thinking how he was going to stretch our already overextended manpower based on my “real bad feeling.”

  “For how long?”

  “Honestly? I don’t know.”

  Tracchio signaled to the waitress for the bill, said to me, “You can have four people for a week. Then we’ll reevaluate. Make sure you keep me up to speed, Lindsay. I want to know everything. No hiding the weenie.”

  I reached over and shook Tracchio’s pudgy hand. “I wouldn’t if I could.”

  Chapter 100

  JACOBI WAS IN THE PASSENGER SEAT of the gray car, staring up at the tall yellow house on Filbert, thinking how Dr. Garza had been home for about a half hour, probably settling down with the nightly news, when the garage door suddenly opened and a black Mercedes Roadster backed out, the tires squealing.

  Rich Conklin sat up straight in the driver’s seat. Jacobi called in a code 33 and stated their location.

  Beside him, Conklin waited a count of five, then pointed the unmarked police car down the steep grade of Filbert, ten car-lengths behind the Mercedes.

  “Take it easy,” Jacobi cautioned Conklin. “We’ve got plenty of backup.”

  “What the fuck?” Conklin said. “How do we know Garza’s even in that car?”

  “You want to go back and watch the house?”

  “Nope. I want to clone myself.”

  Jacobi snorted. “Is the world ready for two of you, Conklin?”

  Then Jacobi grinned, remembering when he was as green as Conklin, when he looked forward to every stakeout, every collar, and as wiped out as he was, Jacobi was getting that feeling now.

  Conklin took the hard left onto Jones, tapping the brakes at the stop sign on Greenwich, then driving past the Yick Wo Elementary School.

  Jacobi called Dispatch: “Black Mercedes sports coupe, Whiskey Delta Foxtrot Three Niner Zero, heading north on Jones,” he said as they crossed Lombard and Francisco, blowing through stop signs, braking on Columbus, calling it in again.

  The radio crackled as another unmarked unit picked up the Mercedes on Columbus, calling out the cross streets, saying, “Looks like he’s headed toward the Cannery South.”

  Conklin turned on the grille lights. He hooked a sharp right, then took the car on a straight shot parallel to Columbus. It was a back route to Garza’s probable destination, Ghirardelli Square.

  Jacobi told Conklin to park on Beach Street near the corner of Hyde. “He should pass by here any minute.”

  Traffic was sluggish at evening rush hour, and the sidewalks were still clogged with pedestrians browsing the vendors between the street and the beach.

  “That’s him,” Conklin said.

  Jacobi saw the sharp little Roadster pulling up to the curb ahead, parking, the man getting out all smooth in a cashmere Armani topcoat, dark hair flowing over his collar.

  He watched with dismay as Garza walked back toward their car. Damn it. He knocked on the passenger-side window.

  Jacobi buzzed down the window, gave the doctor a bored look.

  “Hang on, Inspector. I’ll be right back,” Garza told him; then he crossed the street over the cable car tracks and entered the beige stucco building with the red neon sign overhead, the Buena Vista.

  Jacobi could see Garza through the plate-glass windows, giving an order to the counterman.

  “What was that?” Conklin asked, incredulous. “He didn’t just make us, he’s calling us stupid. This is pretty bad.”

  Jacobi felt a headache coming on. Garza getting over on them hadn’t been in the plan. What to say to the kid?

  “Well, it’s a kick in the teeth, Richie,” he said. “But it’s early in the game.”

  Jacobi stared grimly out the car window as Garza left the café, waited for the light, then crossed the street, coming up to the squad car. He knocked on the window again, handed Jacobi two coffee containers in a cardboard holder.

  “It’s black and strong,” Garza said. “You’re in for a long night.”

  “Thank you. Very considerate,” Jacobi said. “I hope to return the favor sometime soon.”

  Jacobi watched Garza get back into his Mercedes, signal as he pulled back out into traffic. Jacobi called Dispatch, saying, “We need a car to pick up a surveillance. Suspect’s going south on Hyde, obeying all the traffic signals.”

  Jacobi hung the mike back in its cradle.

  “He’ll make a mistake,” he said to Conklin with more conviction than he felt. “These smartass pricks almost always do.”

  Jacobi opened one of the coffee containers, shook in a packet of sugar, and stirred. He took a cautious sip.

  Chapter 101

  IT WAS QUARTER TO 9:00 in the seamless, bright night of the hospital corridors. Garza had left his office many hours before, waving to me as though we were old friends, smirking as he slithered out through the pneumatic doors to the street. He’s having fun with this, isn’t he?

  As I haunted the halls between the ER and the ICU, I’d expanded my view.

  Maybe Garza wasn’t a killer.

  Maybe he just smelled like one.

  But if it wasn’t Garza, who could it be?

/>   I’d been stalking this same path for so many days, I’d blown my own cover.

  I sought fresh ground, took the stairs up to the third-floor oncology ward.

  I’d just stepped out of the stairwell when I saw something that made the fine hairs on the back of my neck bristle.

  A white male, about thirty, five eleven, 165 pounds, sandy hair under a blue baseball cap, a gray hoody, and black cargo pants, was talking to a weathered-looking white nurse in the hallway.

  The man’s posture felt wrong—the furtiveness as he exchanged conspiratorial looks with the nurse, an exchange that jarred me, my instincts saying, this is wrong.

  Cappy McNeil is a seasoned homicide pro. He’d worked for years with Jacobi and was now stationed on the floor below.

  I called him on my Nextel, and a minute later, we converged at the door to room 386—just as the sandy-haired man slipped inside the patient’s room.

  I stiff-armed the swinging door open, calling out sharply, “Stop right there.” I flashed my badge and, grabbing his arm, spun the suspect around. Slammed him against the wall, feeling it shudder.

  Behind me, Cappy blocked the exit with his two-hundred-fifty-pound bulk.

  “What’s your name?” I asked the young man.

  “Alan Feirstein. What is this?”

  “Keep your hands on the wall, Mr. Feirstein. Do you have anything in your pockets I should know about? Drugs? A needle? A weapon?”

  “I’ve got a toothbrush,” he hollered. “I’ve got car keys. I’ve got a box of Good and Plenty!”

  I patted him down, all ten pockets. “I’m removing your wallet,” I said.

  “Honey?” Feirstein half-turned his face, sending a pleading look toward the wan woman in the bed. “Are you awake?”

  Swags of tubes and electric leads ran from her arms up an IV pole, over to a cardiac monitor.

  “He’s my husband,” the woman said in a drugged, barely audible voice. “Alan’s my husband.”

  I examined Feirstein’s license, my stomach shrinking, my heart sinking.

  This guy wasn’t armed, had no buttons on his person. Shit, he even had the sticker for organ donation on his license.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked weakly.

  “I’m spending the night,” he said. “Carol has lymphoma. End-stage.”

  I swallowed hard. “I’m so very sorry,” I said to Feirstein. “What just happened was an awful mistake, and I can’t apologize enough.”

  The guy nodded, letting me off the hook, for which I was grateful. I told his wife, “You take good care, okay?”

  Then Cappy and I walked out into the hallway.

  “Man,” I said, “I feel terrible, Cappy. It sure looked like some kind of deal was going down. The guy was sneaking in to sleep on the floor! How could I have been so dumb?”

  “It happens, boss,” he said, shrugging. “Back to square one.”

  Cappy returned to his post, and I returned to the waiting room outside the ER.

  I was disappointed and embarrassed, but worse, I’d never had such a feeling of grabbing at smoke.

  Carl Whiteley, the hospital’s silky CEO, had stated repeatedly that the mortality rate at Municipal was within range for similar hospitals, and that the caduceus buttons were a joke.

  I’d gotten Tracchio to go along with me based on little more than my instincts.

  Risky for him. Risky for me.

  The vending machines in the corner of the ER waiting room hummed, ready to dispense cheerful colored boxes of goodies in this bleak, soul-sucking place.

  I dropped a dollar in quarters into the slot, stabbed a couple of buttons, and watched the orange packet of Reese’s Pieces clunk down the chute.

  I was here for the night. I wanted to believe that we were going to unmask a depraved killer and save lives.

  But there was an awful possibility that all I was doing was making an ass of myself. Jesus, that poor guy and his wife. What a disaster.

  Part Six

  THE VERDICT

  Chapter 102

  OF ALL THE DAMN DAYS to be late.

  Cindy grappled with her oversized handbag, shifted her computer bag to her left shoulder as she walked quickly up McAllister toward the Civic Center Courthouse, thinking how she hadn’t missed a day of court since the trial started four weeks ago.

  Now the grueling testimonies and scalding cross-examinations were over.

  Today O’Mara and Kramer would make their closing arguments whether or not she was on the courthouse steps when the doors opened.

  God.

  If she lost her seat to another reporter—it was a possibility too grim to consider.

  Cindy sprinted across McAllister against the light, crossing to the courthouse, a pale stone block of a building cut on the diagonal, facing the intersection of McAllister and Polk.

  Looking up, she was relieved to see the courthouse doors were still closed.

  And she saw Yuki standing at the edge of the crowd at the top of the steps, gripping the handle of her briefcase with both hands. Her eyes were fixed on the middle distance, seeming to see nothing.

  Cindy had an anxious thought about Yuki, her weight loss, her fragility. Also, the simple fact that she hadn’t gone to work since her mother died.

  The trial was consuming her, and it showed big-time.

  Cindy threaded her way through the mob standing on the courthouse steps. She called out to Yuki as she climbed.

  Yuki saw her at last, saying, “What happened? I was so worried about you.”

  “Breakdown on BART,” Cindy told her. “I was stuck between stations for half an hour. I almost went crazy.”

  The security guards opened the heavy steel doors, and Cindy and Yuki were swept along with the buzzing crowd pouring into the courthouse.

  A packed elevator took them to the fourth floor, where they got separated on their way to courtroom 4A. Cindy went directly to the last bench in the room, the one against the back wall reserved for the press.

  She scanned the courtroom as it filled, then booted up her laptop.

  She began to type.

  Maureen O’Mara wore a tomato-red Oscar de la Renta suit, Cindy wrote. This is her game suit, her fighting color, how she wants the jury to remember her summation.

  Chapter 103

  JUDGE CARTER BEVINS shook his wristwatch, then turned his bespectacled eyes on Maureen O’Mara. He asked her if she was ready to proceed.

  “Yes, Your Honor,” O’Mara said, standing, taking her position behind the small oak lectern.

  She put her notes in front of her, but she wouldn’t need them. She’d rehearsed with her partners again last night, memorized her key points, knew the tone and text of her summation inside out. She’d put everything she had into this case, and her entire future would spring from the results of this trial.

  She’d done great so far, and she knew it.

  Now she had to clinch it.

  She took a breath, smiled at the jury, and began.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, three years ago San Francisco Municipal Hospital was privatized; it was sold to a for-profit corporation.

  “Since then,” O’Mara said, “the number of fatalities due to pharmaceutical errors has tripled at the hospital.

  “Why? I submit that it’s because of errors caused by incompetence and overwork.

  “In the last three years, nearly three quarters of the staff have been replaced with less-experienced people who work longer hours for less pay.

  “The hospital makes a profit,” O’Mara said. “But at an unacceptably high cost.

  “You’ve heard testimony about the twenty people who died painful, senseless deaths because they came to Municipal Hospital.

  “It’s sickening and it’s outrageous. And the management of Municipal Hospital is fully to blame. Because they really don’t give a damn about their patients. They care about the bottom line.”

  O’Mara paced in front of the jury box, put her hands on the railing, her eyes connecting with
the jurors as she spoke only to them.

  “We heard from Dr. Garza last week,” O’Mara went on. “Dr. Garza has been head of Municipal’s emergency services for the past three years, and he doesn’t deny that during that time, the fatality rate of patients admitted through the ER has gone through the roof.

  “And Dr. Garza told us why that happened. He said, ‘Sometimes a bad wind blows.’

  “Ladies and gentlemen, there’s no such thing as a ‘bad wind’ in a hospital. But there is bad medicine. The legal term is ‘operating below the standard of practice.’

  “That’s what malpractice is.

  “When I asked Dr. Garza if he had anything to do with those patients’ deaths, he said, ‘I take the Fifth.’

  “Imagine. He declined to answer because he didn’t want to incriminate himself!

  “Wasn’t that an answer in itself? Of course it was.”

  No one coughed or seemed even to breathe. O’Mara pushed on, looking at each of the jurors in turn.

  “This isn’t a criminal case. No one’s going after Dr. Garza for a crime, even though he made this bizarre self-incrimination.

  “But we are asking you to hold Municipal Hospital responsible for this ‘bad wind.’

  “We are asking you to punish Municipal for putting profit over the well-being of its patients.

  “And we are asking you to award my clients fifty million dollars, a sum that will hurt the hospital, even though it can’t begin to make up for the loss of those twenty precious lives.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, this hospital must be stopped from practicing Russian-roulette medicine—and you can stop them.

  “Ask yourselves, if someone you loved was ill or injured, would you want them to go to Municipal Hospital?

  “Would you want to go there yourself? Would you even consider it after what you’ve heard?

  “Please carry that thought with you into the jury room—and find in favor of my clients, and those they have lost at Municipal. Award them the maximum amount of damages. On their behalf, I thank you.”