The Swick and the Dead

by Maggie Foster

  “I heard a rumor you were being sent to Austin. May I come in?”

  “Of course.” She showed him into the living room and watched him sink onto the sofa. The morning sun pricked out the shadows under his eyes. “Hard night?”

  He started to laugh. “You wouldn’t believe what happened. One of your colleagues has decided she likes me.” He described the scene in the cafeteria.

  Ginny started laughing. “Her fingernails?”

  “Yes. I’m going to have to keep an eye on her!”

  “Should I be worried?”

  “No,” he said, still grinning. “Anyway, that’s not why I came. Grandfather called me and said you’d be missing the ceilidh this week.”

  “Where does he get his information?” Ginny shook her head.

  “In this case, from me.” Her mother appeared in the door. “I told him about you being sent to Austin for the conference. Morning, Jim.” She set a tray down on the table in front of them. “I thought you might like some coffee.” She smiled, then retired, leaving them alone.

  “I want to go with you.”

  “Why?”

  He frowned. “I’m not sure. I just have a bad feeling about this.”

  Ginny shook her head at him. “I’ll be in the conference the entire time.”

  “We could eat together.”

  “Not breakfast and not lunch and not some of the dinners. It’s all included in the package.”

  He sighed, then leaned toward her. “The truth is I don’t like the thought of you going off on your own while this business about Luis and the drugs is unresolved.”

  “The timing is a little awkward, I agree, but I turned everything over to Detective Tran this morning. Call her if anything comes up.”

  He reached out and took her hands in his. “Will you call me?”

  Ginny felt a twinge of annoyance. “Jim, this is work. Just like a regular shift. I don’t call you to check in during those.”

  He looked at her seriously. “I just want to hear your voice. To reassure me you’re all right.”

  “I won’t have time to get into trouble. I drive down, check in, report for classes all day on Friday and Saturday and half of Sunday, then I drive home. If it will make you feel better, I’ll touch base with you once a day. I’ll be doing the same with Mother, so you can check in with her if we miss one another.”

  He nodded. “I can live with that. But—” He pulled her out of her chair and onto his lap, then wrapped both arms around her. “Before you go, I want to remind you what you’re leaving behind.” He bent to kiss her.

  Ginny felt her eyes close and her blood pressure rise, and lost track of time for a moment, but they were in her living room, with her mother in the kitchen. When she came up for air, she broke out of his embrace and pulled him to his feet.

  “Get some sleep. I’ll call you tonight.” She pushed him toward the door.

  “All right. I’ll go, but I hold you to your promise.” He turned on the threshold, kissed her again, then strode down the sidewalk, got in his car, and drove off.

  Ginny closed the door, turning to find her mother smiling at her.

  “Tuna for lunch all right with you?”

  “Yes, please.” Ginny could feel the heat rise in her cheeks, but her mother was already headed for the kitchen and didn’t see. She put the subject of Jim’s intentions aside and concentrated on her trip. There were still some things she needed to do. She hurried upstairs to finish packing.

  * * *

  Chapter 15

  Day 7 – Thursday evening

  Host Hotel, Austin

  The host hotel in Austin was crawling with attendees. Ginny checked into her room, then made her way down to the banquet hall.

  She approached the white skirted registration tables and found the section of the alphabet under which Forbes would be filed. She signed the sheet, told the attendant her name, and was handed a badge and a bag full of materials.

  “Breakfast starts at seven-thirty and the first lecture at eight. You’ll find banquet and two lunch tickets, one for each day, a voucher for one dinner in the hotel, and the break-out session room assignments behind your badge. Don’t lose it.”

  “I won’t,” Ginny promised.

  “No special dress code, but there will be photographers throughout the weekend. The Board wants this one documented. You have been warned!”

  Ginny grinned. “Thanks.”

  “The bar is that direction and the pool is heated, if you remembered to bring your suit.” The attendant ran a finger across the page, made a tick mark next to Ginny’s name, then frowned slightly. She looked up from her paperwork, the expression on her face changing abruptly. “Wait!” Her eyes narrowed, then widened. “You’re Ginny Forbes!”

  “Yes. Is there a problem?”

  “No! Gosh, no! It’s just we’ve all heard what happened in Dallas and you were there.”

  Ginny felt her throat tighten. “Heard what?”

  “About the murder, of course. You were right there. On the scene. You can tell us about it.”

  Ginny picked up her registration materials, forced a smile, then shook her head. “There’s nothing I can tell you that wasn’t already in the news.”

  “But—” The official looked at the woman waiting in line behind Ginny, then took a breath, smiled, and said, “I hope you enjoy the conference.”

  Ginny found an empty table, dropped her papers, then made her way to the bar. Ghouls! Was everyone going to take that attitude? Was she some kind of weird celebrity? The answer, as it turned out, was, yes.

  “Excuse me, but I couldn’t help noticing. May I join you?”

  Ginny looked up at the woman who stood smiling down at her. It was impossible to tell from her clothes, makeup, or jewelry, exactly what level of administration she belonged to, but there was a definite corporate air about her, with an underlying hint of something else.

  Ginny motioned to the seat across from her.

  “I’m Becky Peel, the Hospitality Chair. I hope your room is comfortable?” The hand she extended had a tattoo on the forearm, just above the wrist and Ginny recognized the symbol as that of the Navy Nurse Corps. A veteran, then.

  Ginny made polite noises, wondering what was behind her new friend’s enthusiasm for the company of a stranger. The woman came right to the point.

  “I expect you’re going to find a lot of people looking forward to meeting you.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Because most of us have seen dead bodies, but very few have found a corpse in a bathroom. There’s bound to be some professional curiosity. So tell me. What was it like?”

  Ginny felt her jaw tighten. She really didn’t want to talk about it, but she’d been instructed to make nice, so she obliged with a description of what they had found when they got the handicap stall door open and could see Phyllis’ body.

  Becky continued to ask technical questions about the subsequent police investigation, how they had handled the patient work load, who had been called in, and so forth. Ginny found an audience collecting around them as she answered these and other questions.

  The inquisition lasted for the better part of an hour with two free drinks appearing at Ginny’s elbow as gestures of appreciation. When she had exhausted the Q&A, the group fell into discussion about the incident, allowing Ginny to listen for a while.

  They made some good points.

  What they were concerned about, of course, was that it had happened to one of them, a nurse, while on duty, and in a restricted access area. If a murderer could get to Phyllis, he could get to anyone.

  “Who did it? Do the police have any leads?”

  Ginny shook her head. “There’s no useable forensic evidence. Every one of us has been in that bathroom a hundred times.”

  “But it must have been cleaned at some point. Wouldn’t they be able to narrow the field by seeing who was in there since the last time housekeeping came in?”

  “We’d like to think that, but, no. Th
ey don’t wipe down every surface every time. There were dozens of finger and handprints on the doors and walls. The floor had hair left over from people who haven’t worked there in a year. The ceiling fixtures had DNA from the maintenance crew and there were unidentified specimens that probably belonged to visitors. They took swabs from all of us, for comparison, but there was no way to rule anyone out.”

  A youngish woman with coal black hair wrinkled her nose. “Geez! Remind me to be more careful next time I use the restroom at work!” There was scattered laughter.

  “What about the cameras? Every unit has cameras these days.”

  Ginny nodded. “The police pulled all the video, but I don’t know if it showed anything. No one has been arrested.”

  “And the body? Anything left on it?”

  “Nothing, other than the wire. They think the killer was wearing Personal Protective Equipment, including shoe covers. They looked for footprints on the tile, to see if they could narrow it down to a man or a woman by shoe size or footwear tread, but there was nothing.”

  “A man? I thought it was the ladies’ room?”

  “It was, but with PPE on, everyone looks alike and the break room is used by both men and women. No help there. It could have been a tall woman, a short man, or a trained monkey.”

  The young woman with the black hair suddenly sat up straight in her chair. “They could use the inside of the discarded PPE! That would tell them who to look for.”

  Ginny smiled at her. “If we had it, yes. Housekeeping emptied the receptacles just before the end of shift. The bundles were collected and incinerated before we knew she was missing.”

  “Hrmph. Good luck for the murderer.”

  “Good timing, perhaps. He or she may have known about that routine.”

  They all nodded.

  “No skin cells under her nails, I gather. And no hair caught in the ligature.”

  Ginny shook her head. “Not the murderer’s anyway.” There had been traces of nitrile, undoubtedly off the gloves the murderer had used, but the skin under Phyllis’ nails had been her own. She had tried to claw the thing off before she died.

  “What I want to know,” Becky said, “is how the murderer, whoever he was, had the balls to kill someone in a hospital ICU, right under the noses of that many medical professionals. Suppose someone had heard or seen something? It was a very risky thing to do.”

  The conversation flowed on in this vein through dinner and dessert. The party broke up early, though, with murmurs of alarm clocks and early classes.

  “I’ll see you tomorrow.” Becky nodded goodnight.

  Ginny gathered up her possessions and went to her room. Once she was settled, she picked up her phone and called her mother, reporting a safe arrival, the room number, and the weather in the area. After that was done, she dialed Jim.

  “I’ve been waiting for your call.”

  “Well, there’s nothing to report.”

  “Really?” He sounded skeptical.

  “What?”

  “I knew I could tell you were lying if I was looking at you, but I’ve just realized I can tell from your tone of voice as well.”

  Ginny squirmed, unable to think of anything to say.

  “Ginny?”

  “Yes, all right. There was something.”

  “Tell me.”

  She recounted the cross-examination and her discomfort at discussing Phyllis in that manner. “I guess I’m over-reacting.”

  “No, you’re not. I can forgive the clinical interest, but someone should have realized how rude they were being.”

  “They’re worried. They all seem to think it could have been one of them.”

  “Well, they’re not wrong. I’ve been worried about letting you go back to work.”

  “Jim—” She started to remind him it was not his call, but he interrupted.

  “Someone my size wouldn’t need a wire, just his hands.”

  The thought made Ginny uncomfortable and she tried to turn the conversation. “Jim—”

  “All you’d have to do is let the wrong person know you were on to them and—”

  Ginny snapped. “JIM! That’s enough!”

  He burst out laughing. “That’s more like it!”

  His tone was warm with affection and Ginny found herself smiling in spite of the irritation she felt. “Remind me to punish you when I get home.”

  There was another rush of laughter. “That sounds interesting. What did you have in mind?”

  “I’ll think of something.”

  “I can hardly wait.”

  “Goodnight, Jim!” She hung up on his reply, but, on the whole, was satisfied with the exchange. If he felt comfortable enough with the subject to tease her, he must not be too worried and of the two, she’d rather he was teasing than hovering.

  Having kept her promises to her mother and Jim, Ginny now turned to her obligation to Detective Tran. She pulled out her phone, plugged in the earphones, and set about transcribing the recordings, moving steadily through two night’s worth of reflections about Phyllis, being careful not to alter the language and taking note of pauses or other breaks in the flow. Most was innocuous, some sentimental, but one comment caught her attention.

  Grace had said she and Phyllis had not seen eye to eye on political issues. She could not approve of Phyllis’ attitudes, and it was a shame she couldn’t be talked out of them. Ginny had asked for clarification and Grace had shrugged. “I just meant she believed in what she was doing.”

  Ginny closed the files, put the project away, and settled down with her bedtime book, but her mind kept wandering. What kind of political activity had Phyllis been up to? Had it gotten her killed? And why had the murderer chosen the ICU restroom? Surely there were safer places to ambush an enemy? At the mall, or the lake, or the hospital parking lot. Any of those would have been safer. Why had the murderer felt compelled to attack Phyllis in a place and at a time where the suspect pool would be limited to a couple dozen people? As Becky had pointed out, it was a very gutsy move. Either that, or very stupid.

  * * *

  Chapter 16

  Day 8 – Friday lunchtime

  Conference Hotel, Austin

  The speaker had a political agenda. Most people in Austin did. It was the state capital and chock full of people with causes, in this case, Mexicans.

  Texas was full of Mexicans, some here legally, others illegally, all with their own agendas. The speaker waxed poetic on how responsive Texas health care had been to the plight of non-English speakers in need of medical attention. The number of Spanish-speaking nurses was climbing, but was still far too low. So they (whoever ‘they’ were) had facilitated the recruitment of Spanish-speaking nurses from Mexico. She had statistics. Lots of them. And an enthusiasm the organizers apparently shared, though not all of the audience seemed to agree.

  Ginny looked around the room. There were eight nurses at each of the round tables, arranged in no particular pattern. Not all of the faces looked happy.

  When the morning session was over and the lunch buffet laid out, Ginny returned to her seat to find at least one dissenting opinion. She listened as a pair of nurses talked quietly about problems they were having in Houston in the long-term care facilities. Ginny made eye contact with them and was tacitly invited to join the conversation.

  “The number of errors is way up. They may speak Spanish, but not enough of them can function in English.”

  “Where are they coming from?”

  The older nurse shrugged. “Hard to tell. The organization that vetted them has a strong lobby in the state legislature and is insisting on confidentiality.”

  Ginny was puzzled, and said so. “Doesn’t the Board of Nursing need to know what school they graduated from?”

  The younger nurse nodded. “They provide all the necessary information for credentialing and are required to pass the licensure exam in order to practice in Texas, but there are far too many gaps in their education. It’s as if they crammed for the NCLEX, go
t the license, then forgot even the most basic material.”

  “That doesn’t sound safe.”

  “It’s not, but we’re not allowed to criticize. The people behind it are convinced that any nurse, especially one who can speak Spanish, will do, and it’s politically incorrect to disagree. But there’ve been enough incidents that the Board is starting to collect data. It will be interesting to see how many of the deaths correlate directly to this particular stream of foreign nurses.”

  Their discussion lasted for the remainder of the lunch break. Ginny listened, but with her attention split between it and the other people at her table. The topic, though serious, was only marginally relevant to the reason she was here. She would not be training new nurses to work in long-term care. She filed the comments away and concentrated on networking.

  * * *

  Friday noon

  Hillcrest Regional Medical Center Cafeteria

  Marge Hawkins collected her lunch tray and sat down at the table in the corner of the Hillcrest cafeteria, as she always did. She had a professional journal with her, open to an article on the mounting problem of fentanyl abuse in urban areas.

  “Interesting reading.”

  She looked up to find one of the hospital pharmacists sitting at the next table, his eyes on the journal.

  “Yes.” She went back to her reading.

  “I understand that most of it comes from Asia.”

  “So it says.”

  “Funny thing. With all that cheap poison available, it seems odd that someone is making fakes.”

  Marge raised her eyes to the pharmacist, her brow wrinkling. “Fakes?”

  He nodded. “We had something that looked like fentanyl patches come through here two days ago, but they were fakes. No active drug at all.” He had turned toward her, relaxed, comfortable.

  “I expect you’ll find they were from the School of Nursing supply.”

  He shook his head. “Nope. Thought of that. Those are all labeled as bogus. This looked like the real thing.”

  “What would be the point of counterfeit fentanyl patches?”

  The pharmacist shrugged. “Can’t imagine. You?”

  She shook her head. “If not for training, I have no idea.”