Under the Knife

by Tess Gerritsen

  “That’s our man,” Pokie said with grim satisfaction.

  A wan sergeant in plainclothes brought her a cup of hot coffee. He seemed to have a cold; he was sniffling. Through the glass partition, she saw him return to his desk and take out a bottle of nose spray.

  Her gaze returned to the photo. “Who is he?” she asked.

  “A nut case,” replied Pokie. “The name’s Charles Decker. That photo was taken five years ago, right after his arrest.”

  “On what charge?”

  “Assault and battery. He kicked down the door of a medical office. Tried to strangle the doctor right there in front of the whole staff.”

  “A doctor?” David’s head came up. “Which one?”

  Pokie sat back, his weight eliciting a squeal of protest from the old chair. “Guess.”

  “Henry Tanaka.”

  Pokie’s answer was a satisfied display of nicotine-stained teeth. “One and the same. It took us a while, but the name finally popped up on a computer search.”

  “Arrest records?”

  “Yeah. We should’ve picked it up earlier, but it kind of slipped by during the initial investigation. See, we asked Mrs. Tanaka if her husband had any enemies. You know, routine question. She gave us some names. We followed up on ’em but they all came up clean. Then she mentioned that five years back, some nut had attacked her husband. She didn’t remember his name and as far as she knew, the man was still in the state hospital. We went to the files and finally pulled out an arrest report. It was Charlie Decker’s. And this morning I got word from the lab. Remember that set of fingerprints on the Richter woman’s doorknob?”

  “Charlie Decker’s?”

  Pokie nodded. “And now—” he glanced at Kate “—our witness gives us a positive ID. I’d say we got our man.”

  “What was his motive?”

  “I told you. He’s crazy.”

  “So are thousands of other people. Why did this one turn killer?”

  “Hey, I’m not the guy’s shrink.”

  “But you have an answer, don’t you?”

  Pokie shrugged. “All I got is a theory.”

  “That man threatened my life, Lieutenant,” said Kate. “I think I have the right to know more than just his name.”

  “She does, Pokie,” agreed David quietly. “You won’t find it in any of your police manuals. But I think she has the right to know who this Charles Decker is.”

  Sighing, Pokie fished a spiral notebook out of his desk. “Okay,” he grunted, flipping through the pages. “Here’s what I got so far. Understand, it’s still gotta be confirmed. Decker, Charles Louis, white male born Cleveland thirty-nine years ago. Parents divorced. Brother killed in a gang fight at age fifteen. Great start. One married sister, living in Florida.”

  “You talked to her?”

  “She’s the one who gave us most of this info. Let’s see. Joined the navy at twenty-two. Based in various ports. San Diego. Bremerton. Got shipped here to Pearl six years ago. Served as corpsman aboard the USS Cimarron—”

  “Corpsman?” Kate questioned.

  “Assistant to the ship’s surgeon. According to his superior officers, Decker was kind of a loner. Pretty much kept to himself. No history of emotional problems.” Here he let out a snort. “So much for the accuracy of military files.” He flipped to the next page. “Had a decent service record, couple of commendations. Seemed to be moving up the ranks okay. And then, five years ago, it seems something snapped.”

  “Nervous breakdown?” asked David.

  “Lot more than that. He went berserk. And it all had to do with a woman.”

  “You mean a girlfriend?”

  “Yeah. Some gal he’d met here in the Islands. He put in for permission to get married. It was granted. But then he and his ship sailed for six months of classified maneuvers off Subic Bay. Sailor in the next bunk remembers Decker spent every spare minute writing poems for that girlfriend. Must’ve been nuts about her. Just nuts.” Pokie shook his head and sighed. “Anyway, when the Cimarron returned to Pearl, the girlfriend wasn’t waiting on the pier with all the other honeys. Here’s the part where things get a little confused. All we know is Decker jumped ship without permission. Guess it didn’t take long for him to find out what’d happened.”

  “She found another guy?” David guessed.

  “No. She was dead.”

  There was a long silence. In the next office, a telephone was ringing and typewriters clattered incessantly.

  Kate asked softly, “What happened to her?”

  “Complications of childbirth,” explained Pokie. “She had some kind of stroke in the delivery room. The baby girl died, too. Decker never even knew she was pregnant.”

  Slowly, Kate’s gaze fell to the photograph of Charlie Decker. She thought of what he must have gone through, that day in Pearl Harbor. The ship pulling into the crowded dock. The smiling families. How long did he search for her face? she wondered. How long before he realized she wasn’t there? That she’d never be there?

  “That’s when the man lost it,” continued Pokie. “Somehow he found out Tanaka was his girlfriend’s doctor. The arrest record says he showed up at the clinic and just about strangled the doctor on the spot. After a scuffle, the police were called. A day later, Decker got out on bail. He went and bought himself a Saturday-night special. But he didn’t use it on the doctor. He put the barrel in his own mouth. Pulled the trigger.” Pokie closed the notebook.

  The ultimate act, thought Kate. Buy a gun and blow your own head off. He must have loved that woman. And what better way to prove it than to sacrifice himself on her altar?

  But he wasn’t dead. He was alive. And he was killing people.

  Pokie saw her questioning look. “It was a very cheap gun. It misfired. Turned his mouth into bloody pulp. But he survived. After a few months in a rehab facility, he was transferred to the state hospital. The nuthouse. Their records show he regained function of just about everything but his speech.”

  “He’s mute?” asked David.

  “Not exactly. Vocal cords were ripped to shreds during the resuscitation. He can mouth words, but his voice is more like a—a hiss.”

  A hiss, thought Kate. The memory of that unearthly sound, echoing in Ann’s stairwell, seemed to reach out from her worst nightmares. The sound of a viper about to strike.

  Pokie continued. “About a month ago, Decker was discharged from the state hospital. He was supposed to be seeing some shrink by the name of Nemechek. But Decker never showed up for the first appointment.”

  “Have you talked to Nemechek?” asked Kate.

  “Only on the phone. He’s at a conference in L.A. Should be back on Tuesday. Swears up and down that his patient was harmless. But he’s covering his butt. Looks pretty bad when the patient you just let out starts slashing throats.”

  “So that’s the motive,” said David. “Revenge. For a dead woman.”

  “That’s the theory.”

  “Why was Ann Richter killed?”

  “Remember that blond woman the janitors saw running through the parking lot?”

  “You think that was her?”

  “It seems she and Tanaka were—how do I put it?—very well acquainted.”

  “Does that mean what I think it means?”

  “Let’s just say Ann Richter’s neighbors had no trouble recognizing Tanaka’s photo. He was seen at her apartment more than once. The night he was killed, I think she went to pay her favorite doctor a little social call. Instead she found something that scared the hell out of her. Maybe she saw Decker. And he saw her.”

  “Then why didn’t she go to the police?” asked Kate.

  “Maybe she didn’t want the world to know she was having an affair with a married man. Or maybe she was afraid she’d be accused of killing her lover. Who knows?”

  “So she was just a witness,” said Kate. “Like me.”

  Pokie looked at her. “There’s one big difference between you and her. Decker can’t get to you. Right
now no one outside this office knows where you’re staying. Let’s keep it that way.” He glanced at David. “There’s no problem, keeping her at your house?”

  David’s face was unreadable. “She can stay.”

  “Good. And it’s better if she doesn’t use her own car.”

  “My car?” Kate frowned. “Why not?”

  “Decker has your purse. And a set of your car keys. So he knows you drive an Audi. He’ll be watching for one.”

  Watching for me, she thought with a shudder. “For how long?” she whispered.

  “What?”

  “How long before it’s all over? Before I have my life back?”

  Pokie sighed. “It might take a while to find him. But hang in there, Doc. The man can’t hide forever.”

  Can’t he? wondered Kate. She thought of all the places a man could hide on Oahu: the nooks and crannies of Chinatown where no one ever asks questions. The tin-roofed fishing shacks of Sand Island. The concrete alleys of Waikiki. Somewhere, in some secret place, Charlie Decker was quietly mourning for a dead woman.

  They rose to leave and a question suddenly came to her mind. “Lieutenant,” she asked. “What about Ellen O’Brien?”

  Pokie, who was gathering a pile of papers into a folder, glanced up. “What about her?”

  “Does she have some connection to all this?”

  Pokie looked down one last time at Charlie Decker’s photo. Then he shut the folder. “No,” he answered. “No connection at all.”

  * * *

  “BUT THERE HAS to be a connection!” Kate blurted as they walked out of the station into the midmorning heat. “Some piece of evidence he hasn’t found—”

  “Or won’t tell us about,” finished David.

  She frowned at him. “Why wouldn’t he? I thought you two were friends.”

  “I deserted the trenches, remember?”

  “You make police work sound like jungle warfare.”

  “For some cops, the job is a war. A holy war. Pokie’s got a wife and four kids. But you’d never know it, looking at all the hours he puts in.”

  “So you do think he’s a good cop?”

  David shrugged. “He’s a plough horse. Solid but not brilliant. I’ve seen him screw up on occasion. He could be wrong this time, too. But right now I have to agree with him. I don’t see how Ellen O’Brien fits into this case.”

  “But you heard what he said! Decker was a corpsman. Assistant to the ship’s surgeon—”

  “Decker’s profile doesn’t fit the pattern, Kate. A psycho who works like Jack the Ripper doesn’t bother with drug vials and EKGs. That takes a totally different kind of mind.”

  She stared down the street in frustration. “The trouble is, I can’t see any way to prove Ellen was murdered. I can’t even be sure it’s possible.”

  David paused on the sidewalk. “Okay.” He sighed. “So we can’t prove anything. But let’s think about the logistics.”

  “You mean of murder?”

  He nodded. “Let’s take a man like Decker. An outsider. Someone who knows a little about medicine. And surgery. Tell me, step by step. How would he go about getting into the hospital and killing a patient?”

  “I suppose he’d have to…to…” Her gaze wandered up the street. She frowned as her eyes focused on a paperboy, waving the morning edition to passing cars. “Today’s Sunday,” she said suddenly.

  “So?”

  “Ellen was admitted on a Sunday. I remember being in her room, talking to her. It was eight o’clock on a Sunday night.” She glanced feverishly at her watch. “That’s in ten hours. We could go through the steps….”

  “Wait a minute. You’ve lost me. What, exactly, are we doing in ten hours?”

  She turned to him. Softly she said, “Murder.”

  * * *

  THE VISITOR PARKING LOT was nearly empty when David swung his BMW into the hospital driveway at ten o’clock that night. He parked in a stall near the lobby entrance, turned off the engine and looked at Kate. “This won’t prove a thing. You know that, don’t you?”

  “I want to see if it’s possible.”

  “Possibilities don’t hold up in court.”

  “I don’t care how it plays in court, David. As long as I know it’s possible.”

  She glanced out at the distant red Emergency sign, glowing like a beacon in the darkness. An ambulance was parked at the loading dock. On a nearby bench, the driver sat idly smoking a cigarette and listening to the crackle of his dispatch radio.

  A Sunday night, quiet as usual. Visiting hours were over. And in their rooms, patients would already be settling into the blissful sleep of the drugged.

  David’s face gleamed faintly in the shadows. “Okay.” He sighed, shoving open his door. “Let’s do it.”

  The lobby doors were locked. They walked in the E.R. entrance, through a waiting room where a baby screamed in the lap of its glassy-eyed mother, where an old man coughed noisily into a handkerchief and a teenage boy clutched an ice bag to his swollen face. The triage nurse was talking on the telephone; they walked right past her and headed for the elevators.

  “We’re in, just like that?” David asked.

  “The E.R. nurse knows me.”

  “But she hardly looked at you.”

  “That’s because she was too busy ogling you,” Kate said dryly.

  “Boy, have you got a wild imagination.” He paused, glancing around the empty lobby. “Where’s Security? Isn’t there a guard around?”

  “He’s probably making rounds.”

  “You mean there’s only one?”

  “Hospitals are really pretty boring places, you know,” she replied and punched the elevator button. “Besides, it’s Sunday.”

  They rose up to the fourth floor and stepped off into the antiseptic-white corridor. Freshly waxed linoleum gleamed under bright lights. A row of gurneys sat lined up against the wall, as though awaiting a deluge of the wounded. Kate pointed to the double doors marked No Admittance.

  “The O.R.’s through there.”

  “Can we get in?”

  She took a few experimental steps forward. The doors automatically slid open. “No problem.”

  Inside, only a single dim light shone over the reception area. A cup, half filled with lukewarm coffee, sat abandoned on the front desk awaiting its owner’s return. Kate pointed to a huge wallboard where the next day’s surgery schedule was posted.

  “All tomorrow’s cases are listed right there,” she explained. “One glance will tell you which O.R. the patient will be in, the procedure, the names of the surgeon and anesthesiologist.”

  “Where was Ellen?”

  “The room’s right around the corner.”

  She led him down an unlit hall and opened the door to O.R. 5. Through the shadows they saw the faint gleam of stainless steel. She flicked on the wall switch; the sudden flood of light was almost painful.

  “The anesthesia cart’s over there.”

  He went over to the cart and pulled open one of the steel drawers. Tiny glass vials tinkled in their compartments. “Are these drugs always left unlocked?”

  “They’re worthless on the street. No one would bother to steal any of those. As for the narcotics—” she pointed to a wall cabinet “—we keep them locked in there.”

  His gaze slowly moved around the room. “So this is where you work. Very impressive. Looks like a set for a sci-fi movie.”

  She grinned. “Funny. I’ve always felt right at home in here.” She circled the room, affectionately patting the equipment as she moved. “I think it’s because I’m the daughter of a tinkerer. Gadgets don’t scare me. I actually like playing with all these buttons and dials. But I suppose some people do find it all pretty intimidating.”

  “And you’ve never been intimidated?”

  She turned and found he was staring at her. Something about his gaze, about the intensity of those blue eyes, made her fall very still. “Not by the O.R.,” she said softly.

  It was so quiet she
could almost hear her own heartbeat thudding in that stark chamber. For a long time they stared at each other, as though separated by some wide, unbreachable chasm. Then, abruptly, he shifted his attention to the anesthesia cart.

  “How long would it take to tamper with one of these drug vials?” he asked. She had to admire his control. At least he could still speak; she was having trouble finding her own voice.

  “He’d—he’d have to empty out the succinylcholine vials. It would probably take less than a minute.”

  “As easy as that?”

  “As easy as that.” Her gaze shifted reluctantly to the operating table. “They’re so helpless, our patients. We have absolute control over their lives. I never saw it that way before. It’s really rather frightening.”

  “So murder in the O.R. isn’t that difficult.”

  “No,” she conceded. “I guess it isn’t.”

  “What about switching the EKG? How would our killer do that?”

  “He’d have to get hold of the patient’s chart. And they’re all kept on the wards.”

  “That sounds tricky. The wards are crawling with nurses.”

  “True. But even in this day and age, nurses are still a little intimidated by a white coat. I bet if we put you in uniform, you’d be able to breeze your way right into the nurses’ station, no questions asked.”

  He cocked his head. “Want to try it?”

  “You mean right now?”

  “Sure. Find me a white coat. I’ve always wanted to play doctor.”

  It took only a minute to locate a stray coat hanging in the surgeons’ locker room. She knew it was Guy Santini’s, just by the coffee stains on the front. The size 46 label only confirmed it.

  “I didn’t know King Kong was on your staff,” David grunted, thrusting his arms into the huge sleeves. He buttoned up and stood straight. “What do you think? Are they going to fall down laughing?”

  Stepping back, she gave him a critical look. The coat sagged on his shoulders. One side of the collar was turned up. But the truth was, he looked absolutely irresistible. And perversely untouchable. She smoothed down his collar. Just that brief contact, that brushing of her fingers against his neck, seemed to flood her whole arm with warmth.