Her Lawman on Call Page 8

  Tony’d examined the orderly’s body as best he could, mindful not to disturb anything until after the crime scene investigators had had a chance to photograph everything and process the scene. There really wasn’t all that much to see. There was the note he’d seen on the previous two victims. Like the others, Lopez had been killed with a single bullet to the center of his forehead. Death had been instant. From all indications, a silencer had been used. That would explain why no one had heard the shot.

  But not why no one noticed. The body was still warm. That meant that the murder had taken place in the last hour. This was the post-surgical floor. How had the killer escaped notice?

  Perturbed, Tony rose to his feet. He exchanged places with a young woman from the crime scene unit. She was armed with a camera and immediately began taking photographs.

  “I want their lives gone over with a fine tooth comb,” he told Henderson as he stepped back. “The two nurses and the orderly. Everything they had in common. Where they shopped, who they saw. Any clubs they might have liked attending. Hobbies, vices. Anything,” he emphasized. There had to be something more going on than just working at Patience Memorial, he thought.

  Henderson pursed his lips, looking at the small, dark-haired man on the floor.

  “What?” He knew the signs. Henderson was chewing on something.

  “This could have been gang payback for something and they’re just using the other two murders for cover,” Henderson theorized, eyeing him carefully for his reaction.

  Tony scrubbed his hand over his face. The thought had crossed his mind as well the second he’d found out about Lopez’s former gang affiliation. “Yeah, I know. But for right now, let’s just think of Lopez as belonging to this very exclusive little club. I want to make sure we shut the doors before any more members walk through them.”

  Stumped, frustrated, Tony turned to see that the doctor was still standing behind him. She hadn’t said a word since they’d approached the supply closet and had actually listened to him when he’d told her to keep to the sidelines. There was pity in her eyes as she looked at the dead man.

  Tony walked over to her. “You knew him?”

  Sasha continued looking at the crumpled figure on the floor. Surprise was frozen on the handsome face. It all seemed so surreal, so bizarre to her. She’d seen more than her share of dead people when she’d done a rotation in the emergency room during her residency. Like everyone else at the hospital, she’d experienced the unnatural scenario of having a person talk to her one moment, then lapse into a deadly silence as their heart stopped beating the next. But she hadn’t actually known any of those people, not for more than a few minutes.

  She knew Jorge.

  What was going on in the hospital was far more personal. This was happening where she worked, where she lived a good portion of her life. She felt an overwhelming sadness. More than that, she felt indignant, because she felt violated.

  “He was always whistling,” she finally said in response to Santini’s question. “Not those reedy-sounding efforts you always hear where people sound as if they were blowing out cracker bits. I could hear springtime in his whistle.” She raised her eyes, aware that the detective was looking at her. “Jorge seemed very happy, like he didn’t have a care in the world. But he did care,” she added quickly. “He cared about his work, cared about the patients. Said that maybe in time, he’d become a nurse himself.”

  And then she smiled as she remembered. “He was always hanging around the OR, ready to do anything in order to be part of what went on in there, even if it was just cleaning up.” She turned to look at the detective. “Why would somebody do this?” The question wasn’t really directed at him, but at whatever power could supply some sort of half acceptable answer. It just didn’t seem fair.

  “That,” Tony told her, “is the sixty-four-million-dollar question.”

  He looked thoughtfully down at the slain orderly. The blonde from the crime scene unit had finished taking photographs and was now lifting something from the man’s shirt with tweezers. She placed it in a small plastic bag.

  Tony slanted a glance at the woman next to him. “Lopez wanted to be a nurse?” He saw the doctor nod in response. “Maybe this nut job has it in for nurses,” he theorized. But that didn’t explain everything, either. “But if that’s the case, what’s this bit with the note?” he wondered out loud for the umpteenth time.

  Tony was beginning to believe that the victims weren’t just picked at random, or murdered in order to get back at the hospital. His gut told him that they were chosen for a reason. Whoever was doing this was too methodical to select just anyone. The killer seemed to know everyone’s schedule. How else could he kill his quarry without being seen?

  Which meant that it was an insider, he concluded. That narrowed it down to roughly four and a half thousand people, give or take.

  “Maybe that’s the key,” Sasha guessed, still working with what the detective had just said. “Maybe whoever’s doing this is trying to make a point, teach a lesson.” She looked at the bullet hole in Jorge’s forehead. “He’s not just shooting them, he’s executing them.”

  Tony raised an eyebrow. “Your father bring his cases home?”

  A fond smile curved her mouth. “Sometimes. Not so Mama would see, but late at night, when she was asleep, he’d get up and sneak into the kitchen and spread his notes out on the table. Sometimes he’d sit there for two, three hours, trying to find something he’d missed.”

  It wasn’t anything he hadn’t done himself. More than a few times. “And you know this how?”

  “I used to hear him and get up, too. Sometimes he’d tell me about the case.” Usually after she’d begged and pleaded, she recalled. “I’m sure he kept the gorier details to himself, but he always told me enough to get me caught up in it, make me want to help him.”

  That would explain why she asked him so many questions, Tony thought. He stepped out of the way as the Medical Examiner arrived. Older, slightly overweight, the nature of his work had left C. S. Vaughn with a perpetual frown on his face.

  Without thinking, Tony slipped his hand around Sasha’s waist, moving her out of the way as well. Realizing that he was touching her, he dropped his hand. “So why didn’t you become a cop like your old man?”

  For a while, she’d considered it. But then she’d changed her mind. “I was more interested in life than in death. Besides, both my parents had their heart set on having a doctor in the family.”

  In light of what he’d learned, the comment made him laugh. “I guess that’s a case of careful what you wish for. All that money for medical school,” he elaborated when she looked at him quizzically. The cost of putting five daughters through college, let alone medical school, had to be staggering.

  “We all pitch in,” she reminded him. Education, her father had maintained, was a privilege, not a right. None of them ever forgot that.

  Tony was nodding when it suddenly occurred to him that he’d gotten distracted and veered from the case.

  First time that had ever happened. He upbraided himself for being so careless.

  Looking over his shoulder, he was relieved to see that Henderson was busy talking to the head nurse and hadn’t noticed his lapse.

  Still, that didn’t make it any less of a transgression in his own book, Tony thought, annoyed.

  He looked back at the doctor. “You work with this Lopez?”

  Lopez. The detective made it sound so impersonal, she thought. Jorge Lopez was a person, not simply a statistic. It was important to her that Santini think of him that way.

  “Everyone worked with Jorge,” she told him. “His supervisor would send Jorge anywhere he was needed. The man worked twice as hard as anyone else. It was as if he was trying to make up for lost time.”

  And now he didn’t have any time left, she thought sadly.

  Santini was writing down everything she was saying in the small notepad she saw him carrying with him. “He have a family?”

&nbs
p; She thought a minute, trying to remember. “He has a daughter with an ex-girlfriend. Monica. She’s almost six. And I think he’d started seeing someone recently.” Her memory became clearer and she nodded. “He showed me her picture. She’s a social worker. He thought she could have been a model.” She could remember the man beaming as he showed off the photograph.

  The woman had a good head for detail, Tony thought. It made his job easier. “Do you know her name?”

  If Jorge had mentioned it, she couldn’t remember. Sasha shook her head. “I’ll ask around.”

  Ordinarily he would have told her that they could handle it, but in this case, to varying degrees, she seemed to be interwoven in all three victims’ lives and because she was a hospital insider, he decided it was prudent to accept the doctor’s offer.

  “Thanks.” Tony made another notation in his notepad, then flipped it closed for the time being. He tucked it away. “I’ll get in touch with you later,” he told her.

  Tony stopped to confer with the crime scene investigator. When he turned around a couple of minutes later, the doctor was gone. And he was relieved.

  With her gone, he hoped his mind would clear.

  “We’re going to need more manpower,” he said to Henderson when the latter crossed over to him several minutes later.

  “I was just about to suggest that.” The wealth of data to be sorted through was increasing exponentially. It could easily overwhelm them. “Think the captain’ll go for it?”

  “He’ll have to.” Tony frowned. There was no doubt in his mind what they were facing. “Any way you slice it, we’ve got ourselves a genuine, dyed-in-the-wool serial killer on our hands. That means putting together a task force.”

  And quickly, he added silently. Before anyone else was murdered.

  If there was any doubt that a serial killer was loose, the next day’s edition of the New York Daily News vanquished it. The headline on the front page screamed Death Stalks Patience Memorial.

  The second Sasha picked up the paper from her doorstep, the telephone began to ring. She was alone in the apartment. Natalya had pulled an all-nighter and was still at the hospital while Kady had left half an hour ago, saying only that she was off to see a friend.

  For a moment, Sasha thought of pouring herself a bowl of cornflakes and ignoring the phone, but that lasted for only one ring. She knew who it was. Ignoring him wasn’t going to make him go away.

  Getting up from the kitchen table, she crossed to the telephone. One glance at the caller ID told her she was right.

  “Hi, Daddy,” she said, placing the receiver against her ear.

  “How you know that’s me?” the deep, heavily accented voice wanted to know as it rumbled in her ear.

  Her father had the Daily News delivered and read it religiously at breakfast every morning. He’d always been an early riser. She smiled to herself as she brought the wireless receiver back to the table and sat down.

  “I’ve known you for thirty years, Daddy. I pick things up.”

  Josef didn’t waste time beating around the bush. He never did where his girls were concerned. “What is this serial killer thing at the hospital that I am reading about?”

  She gave him a thumbnail sketch, although she knew he was asking for more. “Two nurses were killed in the parking structure at PM, and yesterday they found an orderly in the supply closet. He’d been shot like the first two victims.”

  She heard an impatient breath escape before he said, “I know. I can read, Sasha.” Concern throbbed in every syllable. “Do you know anything about these murders?”

  “Probably no more than you, Dad.” Given his nature and background with the police, she imagined that her father had probably devoured all the stories about the murders. Since he’d retired, time was now a commodity that hung heavily on his hands. The model kits he’d collected for the day he would retire held no interest for him once he was free to devote himself to their construction. So he read mysteries and got himself involved in his daughters’ lives. For his own good, and theirs, Sasha wished he’d do more of the first and less of the second.

  “They have found nothing?” he asked incredulously. Not waiting for her answer, he said, “Maybe I should call Larry.”

  Larry was Larry Collins, the chief of detectives. He was a man who had swiftly risen through the ranks, but to her father he would always be the wet-behind-the-ears kid he had been partnered with. The two families got together every Christmas, at which time her father and Larry would sit by the fireplace, talking over cases that had happened “back in the day.” She’d treated his wife on a number of occasions at the hospital.

  That not withstanding, she didn’t think that the chief of detectives would appreciate her father butting in when it came to official police business.

  “I don’t like you working there, Sasha,” he told her. “With a crazy person loose.”

  She laughed. That was definitely not a reason to change hospitals. “This is New York, Dad. There’re a lot of crazy people loose.”

  Sasha could almost see him scowling, his eyebrows drawing together, creating a formidable line above his hawk-like nose. He could look scary when he wanted to. But she knew that beneath it all was a soft marshmallow center.

  “But they are not killing people,” her father growled at her. The more he worried, the grumpier he tended to sound.

  “That we know of,” she pointed out, deliberately keeping her voice cheerful.

  There was silence on the other end. Her father was accustomed to these verbal sparring matches. Accustomed, too, to her stubbornness. “Cannot you and your sisters go on a vacation?”

  “No,” she answered pointedly with feeling. “Daddy, the police are on it. The detective handling the case seems very competent and I’m sure—”

  “You have met him?” he wanted to know, interrupting her.

  “Yes.” She realized that she was smiling and deliberately dropped the corners of her mouth. “He questioned me.”

  “Questioned you?” her father echoed, indignation rising in his voice. “Why for he question you?” And then he answered his own question, but not to his satisfaction. “He is thinking you are a suspect?”

  “Daddy, you know that they have to rule people out before they can get on with the case—”

  “But why you?” he pressed. He knew police procedure like the back of his hand. And he missed it more than he would ever tell anyone. “They are not talking to everyone at the hospital.” And then it hit him. And he didn’t like it. “Did you see something?”

  “No.” But that was only in the third case, she reminded herself. She’d always believed in being honest whenever possible. So with a resigned sigh, because she knew the kind of reaction to expect, she added, “But I called the police about the first two bodies.”

  “You?”

  Josef tended to be protective of his own and in his eyes, she and her sisters would always be his little girls, in need of caring. She supposed, given a choice between having it this way and having a distant parent who remained uninvolved in her life, she would have chosen the former.

  But that still didn’t mean she wanted to be smothered. “Dad, please don’t worry—”

  “Too late,” he informed her glibly. “You have children, you worry. God makes it work that way.” The sigh she heard told her he was struggling to keep himself in check. “But I thought you would be safe in the hospital.”

  “I am safe at the hospital,” she insisted.

  “With a madman loose, killing everyone?” He laughed shortly.

  She tried her best to reason with him as her cornflakes gradually became soggier, their wavy shapes being dragged down into the milk.

  “Daddy, you’re overreacting. He’s not killing everyone. Three people have died. Three people too many,” she quickly qualified, “but three people do not make an ‘everyone’ by any stretch of the imagination.”

  There was silence on the other end. For a second, she thought she’d won. She should have kno
wn better. “You know all the people?”

  “You mean the people who were killed?”

  “Yes.”

  “Yes,” she replied, wondering if she was headed for another minefield, “I know them.”

  “How?” her father pressed. “From seeing, or from working?”

  She was about to say that she knew the three victims from interacting with them on occasion, but then she paused to consider his question more carefully. Angela had been present for several of the babies she’d delivered, but off-hand, she couldn’t recall ever having worked with Rachel. As for Jorge, he might have been in the delivery room after the fact, but she was positive he’d never been there during a delivery.

  “Seeing, mostly,” she finally told him.

  “You know, your mother, she says I am making her crazy, hanging around, watching her. I think I am helping and she is saying I am not.”

  The information had come out of left field. But she knew her father well enough to know that he was not just meandering through a conversation. Everything he said had a reason behind it.

  “Where’s this going, Daddy?”

  “I am thinking,” he stretched out slowly, as if to give the impression of thoughts forming, “maybe I could become a security guard. Your hospital, it needs more guards now, yes?”

  Oh God, no. That was all she needed, her father following her around as she made her rounds, saw her patients. She knew he meant well, but that didn’t change the fact that she didn’t want him shadowing her every move.

  “Daddy, it’s a lovely gesture, but really, I’m fine.” And then, before he could say anything, she added, “Natalya’s fine. Kady’s fine.”

  “Those nurses and that orderly,” he said gruffly, “they were not so fine.”

  “No,” she admitted, “they weren’t.” This was a grisly matter and she couldn’t escape that. But she couldn’t let it hinder her, either. “Look, Dad, if you want to be a security guard, I think that’s great. But you know it’s never a good idea to be personally involved.” And if he worked at PM, he would be very personally involved.