Hour Game skamm-2

by David Baldacci

  The hospital personnel escorted them to Battle’s room. The dead man was lying there with the IV lines still in him and the ventilator tube down his throat, although all the life support machines and monitors had been turned off, their squawks and digital readouts no longer needed. Michelle found herself constantly looking over at Battle, someone she’d heard much about but had never met. For some reason, and not simply the manner of his death, he seemed as fascinating dead as he had been in life.

  The head nurse and attending physician gave a brief overview of what they’d discovered regarding the feather, watch and the hole in the IV bag.

  “This is all highly unusual,” said the doctor in the understatement of the year.

  “We were pretty sure it didn’t happen every night,” King said.

  Williams examined the watch. “Not a Zodiac,” he said quietly to Michelle and King. “But it’s set to exactly five and the stem is pulled out.”

  When Chip Bailey was shown the bird feather by Todd Williams, the agent’s reaction was palpable, but he said nothing until the doctor and nurse had left the room.

  “Mary Martin Speck,” he told them when they were alone. “A nurse; she was nicknamed Florence Nightinghell. The lady killed twenty-three patients in six states over a ten-year period. Speck’s currently serving a life sentence in a fed penitentiary in Georgia. Her calling card was a white bird’s feather; she claimed she was doing the Lord’s work.”

  “So we can expect another letter,” said King.

  “We haven’t even had time to get the one on Hinson,” complained Williams. “Why Bobby Battle? Why would the killer want to add him to the list? It was damn risky, coming in here like this.”

  However, as they quickly learned after consulting once more with the head nurse, coming in the rear door was not as difficult as they’d originally thought. The code was a simple one, 4-3-2-1, and hadn’t been changed in years. There were numerous people in the hospital who knew it and quite probably had let others know.

  “Do we have any idea of what was shot into the IV bag?” asked Michelle.

  “The lab will analyze and run tox on the contents,” said Williams. “Luckily, somebody had sharp eyes and discovered the hole in the bag before everything was taken down and discarded.”

  “Where’s Sylvia?” asked King.

  Williams shook his head. “Home sick as a dog. She finished up Hinson last night, caught a bug and is right now throwing up into the toilet. At least that’s what she planned to do when I hung up. She’ll be here as soon as she can.”

  Bailey spoke up. “The FBI too. This is the fifth connected death, at least that we know of. We’re going to take a more active presence, Todd. Sorry.”

  “Then maybe you can talk to Remmy. When that woman finds out about this, she’s going to have a piece of my hide.”

  King said, “I wouldn’t do that until we receive a letter from the killer. The presence of the watch and feather makes it seem certain Bobby was another victim, but we need to be absolutely sure before we open that can of worms with Remmy.”

  “Good point,” agreed Bailey.

  “Were there any items missing from Bobby’s room?” asked Michelle. “The guy we’re looking for took something from all the other victims.”

  “We really won’t know for sure until we talk to Remmy,” said Williams. “Now I want to nail down the chain of events.” He stepped out for a moment and returned once more with the attending physician and head nurse.

  “Can you run over the timeline again for us?” Williams asked.

  “Yes, sir,” the nurse answered. “Mrs. Battle was here from four until right around ten. She was in the room the whole time. Mr. Battle was alive and doing fine at a few minutes after ten when his nurse last checked him. There were no other visitors during that time.”

  “How about before Mrs. Battle got here?” asked Michelle.

  “His daughter, Savannah, came and stayed for a while early in the afternoon. I don’t know the exact times. And also Dorothea Battle came in after that, say around two-thirty.”

  “Did they come through the rear entrance?” asked Bailey.

  “Savannah did, Dorothea Battle came in the front,” answered the nurse.

  “We’ll need exact times on those visits,” Williams told them.

  “Fine, we’ll get them,” said the doctor stiffly. “Now, can you excuse me? I have other patients to attend to.” The man was surely contemplating the lawsuit that was heading right at his and the hospital’s wallets, thought King.

  “Hope you have better luck with them,” fired back Williams, who’d obviously read the same message in the man’s tone.

  After he’d left, Williams continued questioning the nurse. “So at ten-fifteen Battle’s condition changed.”

  The nurse nodded. “He went into cardiac arrest. He was flatlined when the first nurse arrived. The crash team tried to resuscitate but was unsuccessful.”

  King said, “So in the ten or so minutes between the nurse’s checking him and his flatlining, the killer struck and the poison, if that’s what we’re looking at here, took effect.”

  “Looks that way,” agreed Bailey.

  “I noticed that the room has a video camera,” said King.

  “They all do. That way we can monitor all the patients from the nurse’s station.”

  “But no one saw anyone else come in the room after Mrs. Battle left?”

  The nurse looked nervous. “Sometimes the nurse’s station isn’t manned.”

  “Like during shift change?” said King.

  “Yes. Now, if someone did come in after Mrs. Battle left, they had to come through the rear door, or else someone would have seen them.”

  “Understood,” answered King.

  “Pretty ballsy to do it with people all over the place,” commented Williams.

  “Well, if someone were going to try something like that,” said the nurse, “they picked the right time to do it.”

  “Yes, they certainly did,” said King.

  As King and Michelle were leaving the unit, King stopped at the nurse’s station.

  “Mind if I take a look?” he asked the head nurse.

  He went behind the large console and studied the live video feeds appearing on the monitors. “These aren’t on tape, are they?” he asked.

  “No. It’s not for security, just for the welfare of the patients.”

  “Well, you might want to rethink that philosophy.”

  “What was that about?” Michelle asked after they’d left the hospital unit.

  “It occurred to me that someone familiar with hospital procedure would also know about the cameras. You don’t want to be caught on TV when you’re killing someone; it really puts a crimp in your legal defense. In all the other rooms the camera was positioned such that the entire bed and all the apparatus on either side of the bed were shown. In Battle’s room the feed was only of the bed and the right side.”

  Michelle said, “The killer moved the camera so he wouldn’t be shown doing the deed in case someone was looking at the monitor.”

  “That’s right.”

  On the way out of the hospital Harry Carrick met them at the exit. Though it was very early in the morning, Carrick was neatly dressed in a tweed jacket and dress shirt with an open collar.

  “Harry, what are you doing here?” asked King.

  “Bobby Battle and I are old friends. Well, we were old friends. And I’m also the general counsel for the hospital. They called me at home. I’ve just finished meeting with them. It’s a conflict, that I readily admit. But there you are. Have you seen Remmy?”

  “No, she’d already come and gone by the time we got here.”

  Carrick said, “I know some of what was found in Bobby’s room. I’m assuming there’s more to it.”

  “There is. We just don’t know what really.”

  “Well, I won’t keep you, but we need to reconvene shortly on Junior’s case.”

  “How’s it going?”

>   “What you’ve discovered up to this point are things I needed to know but aren’t particularly helpful for our cause. I felt out the commonwealth’s attorney regarding a plea deal of some sort and got stone-cold silence for my troubles. Remmy is most definitely calling the shots. She was upset before, and now with Bobby’s death I don’t see her aggression abating.”

  “Probably increasing,” said Michelle.

  “Probably,” said Carrick glumly. “Well, I won’t keep you. If you hear anything more about Bobby’s death, let me know.”

  He turned and left them. They watched as he climbed into a perfectly restored British MG convertible and sped off into the reddish glow of the ascending sun.

  Michelle turned to King. “I really feel for Harry. He’s friends with the Battles, and yet he’s representing Junior Deaver and the hospital where Bobby died.”

  King nodded. “I definitely see a lawsuit coming Wrightsburg General’s way. Pretty ironic, suing a place that has your name on the outside of the building.”

  “I don’t think that would deter Remmy Battle in the least.”

  “I wasn’t thinking it would.” He stretched and yawned. “I’m debating whether to go to the office or back to the boat to sleep.”

  “I’m going to go for a run,” said Michelle. “Why don’t you come with me? Endorphins are good for the brain.”

  “Running! You just did kickboxing!” he exclaimed.

  “That was yesterday, Sean.”

  “God took a day off, you know.”

  “If he was a woman, he wouldn’t have.”

  “Okay, you convinced me.”

  She looked pleased. “You’re going to run with me?”

  “No, I’m going back to the boat to rest. If it was good enough for God, it’s good enough for me.”

  Chapter 30

  The post office was under strict instructions to immediately forward any suspicious letters addressed to the Gazette to the police. The Hinson letter came the day after Bobby Battle had been murdered. It was simply worded.

  One lawyer less, who cares? I trust you know who I’m not this time. See you soon.

  Meanwhile, Sylvia Diaz had risen from her sickbed and finally performed the autopsy on Robert Battle.

  At the moment she was sitting with King and Michelle in her office. Chief Williams and Chip Bailey had both attended the Battle autopsy, she told them.

  “I think Todd is now thoroughly comfortable with postmortems, unfortunately simply from sheer numbers,” commented Sylvia.

  “So what killed Bobby?” asked King.

  “I won’t know for certain until the toxicology screens come back in a week or so, but it looks like someone shot a large quantity of potassium chloride into his nutrition IV bag. In less than ten minutes it would work its way through the TPN solution, into the tubing and then into his body. As soon as that happened, his heart would go into ventricular fibrillation. In his already weakened condition the end would have been quick at least and painless.”

  “All that suggests some medical knowledge,” said King.

  Sylvia considered this for a moment. “It’s true that potassium chloride isn’t often used to kill someone. However, if the person did have medical expertise, he was a little sloppy.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Battle had the standard array of IV lines: the blood thinner heparin, a saline sugar solution, a TPN or nutrition solution bag, an antibiotic to combat the pulmonary infection he caught from being on the ventilator for so long and the drug dopamine to control his blood pressure.”

  “Okay, so what does that tell us?” asked King.

  “Well, if the person had shot the potassium chloride directly into the tubing instead of into the TPN bag, the same fatal result would have occurred, but it would have been undetectable. You have to understand that the TPN solution already has potassium chloride in it, and thus so did Battle’s system. I was able to determine that someone had placed additional potassium chloride into the bag only by comparing the levels present there to a normal TPN bag mixture. There was over triple the standard amount, easily enough to kill him.”

  “So you’re saying if the potassium chloride had gone into the tubing directly and not the bag, you never would have noticed it?”

  “Yes. The residue in the tubing would be insufficient to raise suspicion. In fact, it would have only been suspicious if there hadn’t been residue of potassium chloride. And as I said, Battle already had potassium chloride in his body. It’s naturally absorbed, which is why an autopsy alone wouldn’t have resulted in an overdose confirmation.”

  “So it was like the person had some medical knowledge but wasn’t an expert?” said King.

  “Or else,” said Michelle, “he wanted it to be discovered that Battle had been murdered. As if the watch and the feather weren’t enough.”

  “It almost wasn’t enough,” King reminded her. “The feather had fallen to the floor, and the watch was covered under the IV lines and hospital tags.”

  “That doesn’t make sense, though,” said Sylvia. “I mean, isn’t the first rule in murdering someone to try and make it like the perfect murder? And if so, how more perfect can you get than by making it look like no murder was even committed?”

  Michelle and King both shook their heads, unable to come up with a theory that would account for the killer’s behavior.

  Sylvia sighed. “Not that it matters, but Battle showed evidence of arteriosclerosis. There was also some unusual wrinkling on the surface of the aorta. He also had a small tumor on his right lung, perhaps the beginnings of lung cancer. Not surprising for a smoker of his age.”

  “What about Diane Hinson’s cause of death?” asked King. He quickly added, “Although it seemed pretty obvious.”

  “She died from massive internal bleeding from the multiple stab wounds. They severed her aorta and punctured her heart chamber and left lung. It would have been over in minutes for her too.” She added, “Though not nearly as painless as Battle’s death.”

  “Was she raped or sexually assaulted?” asked King.

  “No evidence of that at autopsy, but lab results are still pending. I heard about the Florence Nightinghell connection, by the way. I’ll guess we’ll get a letter to that effect.”

  “The Hinson letter indicated we’d see him soon, and we did,” said Michelle. “At least he’s a man of his word.”

  King added, “First an exotic dancer, then high school kids, then a lawyer and now Bobby Battle.”

  “It’s as though the killer is taking a greater risk with each one,” commented Sylvia.

  “To go from an exotic dancer he might have picked up in a bar and then shot and left in the woods to poisoning an immensely rich businessman lying in a coma in a hospital bed doesn’t make a whole lot of sense,” said King. “Not to sound callous, but how’s the guy picking his victims: one-night stands or the social register?”

  “Like I said before, this guy’s operating outside the box,” said Sylvia, rubbing at her bloodshot eyes.

  King looked at her closely. “You look like hell,” he said with a disarming smile. “You should be in bed.”

  “Thanks for noticing. I’ll try to get to that any week now.”

  “Where’s Kyle?” asked Michelle. “Can’t he pick up the slack?”

  “He’s not a pathologist; he can’t do the posts. And to answer your question, he called in sick. I wish that had been an option for me. I was hugging the toilet most of last night, and I have a full load of patients waiting. Thank God for antibiotics.”

  “What do you make of the killer’s choosing to emulate Mary Martin Speck?” asked Michelle.

  “Meaning a woman instead of a man?” Michelle nodded. “Well, I’m not sure what to make of it,” Sylvia said. “A woman could have killed Battle. It obviously takes no physical strength to shoot a solution from a syringe into an IV bag. However, I’d stake my reputation on the murders of Rhonda Tyler and Diane Hinson being committed by a man. A woman couldn’t have c
arried Tyler all that distance through the woods, and the knife wounds on Hinson were very deep. It was either a man or a woman so strong I’d hate to run into her in a dark alley.”

  “So,” Michelle began slowly, “it’s possible we have two killers here, a man and a woman.”

  “Not necessarily,” argued King. “The only evidence to that effect is the reference Bailey made to Speck and the bird’s feather. Until we get the letter, we won’t know if the killer was mimicking Speck at all. The feather may symbolize something else, something unique to the killer.”

  “That’s true,” conceded Michelle. Sylvia nodded in agreement.

  King looked at the two women. “Want to hear a really off-the-wall suggestion?”

  “I’ll bite,” said Michelle quickly.

  “Bobby Battle was a very wealthy man. I wonder who benefits under his will.”

  There was a long silence and then Sylvia said, “Are you suggesting a family member killed him for money and tried to make it look like one of the serial murders?”

  “It couldn’t have been Eddie. He was with us at the Sage Gentleman until after eleven o’clock,” said Michelle.

  “That’s right,” said King. “But Dorothea and Savannah were at the hospital earlier. They couldn’t have put the poison in then, because he would have been dead long before Remmy showed up. But suppose one of them stashed the potassium chloride in the room during their earlier visit that day, then snuck back in when she saw Remmy leave, did the deed and ran like hell.”

  “Eddie said Dorothea was at some function,” Michelle reminded him.

  “We’ll need to verify that.”

  “Well, many a murder has financial gain as the motive,” said Sylvia. “You might be on to something, Sean.”

  “While I’m at it, here’s another one to think about: Remmy was in the room with Battle for hours. Who’s to say she didn’t shoot that stuff into the IV bag before she left?”

  “What possible motivation would Remmy have?” asked Sylvia. “She’s rich.”

  “What if Bobby had taken up his old womanizing ways, and Remmy had simply had enough? There might not be enough money in the world to counter that.”