“There is no angel of death operating in this town. We would have heard something about it if there was.”
“These people can operate for years, cause dozens of deaths before they are caught.”
“You’re going to have to show me some kind of evidence. Show me the numbers. Show me the number of people who died before they should, and that it’s different than the averages. Give me bodies, Zachary.”
“I can’t.”
“Of course not,” she agreed. “Because there aren’t any. No one was murdered. One woman with cancer died before her family thought she would. That’s not a crime. That’s not a pattern. That’s just one person.”
“I know.”
Kenzie sighed. “I’m about ready to wrap everything up here tonight. Have you eaten?”
Zachary had been debating whether to ask Kenzie or not, puzzling over the complication Bridget posed. He hadn’t expected her to ask him.
“Uh… no… not yet.”
There were a few seconds of silence as Kenzie analyzed Zachary’s clearly hesitant tone.
“Do you not want to eat? Did you have other plans?”
“I could eat.” Zachary winced as he heard the pitch of his voice go up. He sounded too cheery. Too bouncy. Like he was trying to cover something up.
“You could eat. But you haven’t already. You sound weird. Is everything okay?”
“Yes. Everything is fine.”
“Do you want to hit Old Joe’s? I’m not really in the mood for buffet tonight.”
“Old Joe’s is great.” Zachary looked at the time on his phone screen. “Is seven too early? Do you need more time than that?”
“Seven would be fine. I’m already famished.”
“I’ll see you there, then. You don’t need to be picked up?”
“I’ve got my baby.”
Kenzie’s little red sports car was her pride and joy. Zachary smiled.
“I’ll see you at Old Joe’s.”
Zachary took his time getting to Old Joe’s, knowing that Kenzie had to get cleaned up and had farther to travel than he did. He took his time locking the car, checking the door handle to be sure the electric door locks had worked, and scanning the parking lot for anyone behaving suspiciously. He’d never had any trouble with his car in the parking lot of Old Joe’s, but he was still wary.
Zachary checked the locks one more time, then went in.
He was surprised to find Kenzie there ahead of him. She already had a drink and had started in on the basket of rolls on the table.
She had said that was famished.
Zachary sat down, smiling. Kenzie nodded to the bread basket to encourage him to take a roll for himself, her dark curls bouncing.
“I hope you don’t mind, I already ordered.”
“You said you were hungry.”
“I got you the prime rib and baked potato. That’s what you usually go for, isn’t it? We can tell them to change it, if you want something else.”
“No, that’s perfect.”
Kenzie nodded. “There’s something to be said for having a ‘usual.’”
Zachary agreed. The waitress brought over a Coke, also Zachary’s usual, and he accepted it with a nod and a smile.
“How long are you going to spend on this case?” Kenzie inquired. Her red-lipsticked lips were marred by a few white crumbs from her roll.
“Did you skip lunch?”
“Uh…” she considered, thinking back over her day. “Yeah, I think I might have. That would explain it, huh?”
“Yeah. You should keep granola bars in your desk or something. So you don’t have to starve if you aren’t able to get out to eat.”
“That would make too much sense. I should do it. Although, maybe substitute ‘chocolate bar’ for ‘granola bar.’ Admit it, you would too.”
“Uh-huh.” Zachary thought about the fridge full of healthy food he had no desire to eat. At least Kenzie had known better than to order him a salad.
“And the case…?”
Zachary tried to circle his thoughts back to Robin Salter. “What about it?”
“How long are you going to dig around looking for something that isn’t there? Sometimes people get sick and die. She was under a doctor’s care. They certify that she died from the cancer… and unless you’ve got proof otherwise, you’re going to have a helluva time convincing anyone to take another look.”
“You’re right. But sometimes… I have had success in cases that everybody says aren’t murder.”
“Lucky breaks?” she offered with a teasing smile.
“Hard work,” Zachary insisted. And she knew it was true. He had put a lot of time and effort into those cases. It was just when he thought he was at the end of the investigation and there was nothing left to find that everything fell into place. He knew better than to be put off by the appearance of an accidental or natural death. Sometimes, it wasn’t an accident.
Zachary took a sip of his cola thinking about this. Could there be an unseen hand tipping the scale in Robin Salter’s death? Someone malicious?
“Zachary?”
He blinked and looked at her. “Just thinking about the case.”
“Tell me some more. She had cancer. She was terminal. Was she suffering? In a lot of pain?”
“I don’t know. I know near the end, she was in more pain, that’s what the nurse said. But Bridget saw her and said she still seemed strong. She was still fighting it, and was still in good shape.”
“Bridget?”
“Uh…” Zachary looked at Kenzie, realizing he had let her name slip out. He hadn’t intended to tell her that. “Bridget knew her. They both had cancer.”
“That’s quite a coincidence.”
“Not really, they met in treatment.”
“No, I mean that Bridget happens to know this woman whose death you’re looking into. Just coincidentally.”
Zachary swallowed. He smiled and nodded. “She said she didn’t think it was Robin’s time to go. From what she said, Robin still had good quality of life.”
Kenzie stared at him and he waited to see whether she was going to challenge him about the origins of the case or whether she would focus on what he was saying.
“That puts a hole in your angel of death theory.”
“What? Why?”
“Because medical serial killers are usually one of two types. Either they see themselves as angels of mercy, releasing people from pain and suffering, or they like to be in the middle of the drama, part of reviving or trying to revive the person again.”
Zachary concentrated on what she was saying. “Okay. So you think they wouldn’t have done it to put her out of her misery if she wasn’t really suffering.”
“Right.”
“And they wouldn’t just let her die in her sleep if they wanted to be part of trying to save her.”
“Exactly.”
Zachary nodded, considering the possibilities. “The nurse that I talked to said they don’t take heroic measures to revive patients. Not when they are just going to die anyway. Maybe this angel of death is a new employee. Maybe they didn’t know that, and thought there would be a big drama if Robin died, but they were disappointed.”
Kenzie shrugged. “That’s a lot of speculation.”
A cheerful waitress brought them each their dinner orders. Zachary didn’t try to talk to Kenzie while she gave her full attention to her dinner. He picked at his prime rib and potato. He had hardly eaten, so he knew he needed to, and it was more appetizing than the rabbit food. Zachary took another bite of the rib as it finally occurred to him that if he wanted something particular to eat, then he’d better stock his kitchen, rather than expecting Bridget or Bowman or somebody else to provide what he wanted. He’d gotten lazy while he’d been living with Bowman, neglecting the things he needed to do for himself. Not that he’d ever been the best at self-care, but he could at least manage to go grocery shopping so he wouldn’t need to go out or order pizza every night.
He loo
ked up to find Kenzie studying him.
“Think of something?” she suggested. “About the case?”
“Uh… no. Things I need for the apartment.”
“Oh. I should get you a housewarming gift. What do you need?”
Zachary was flummoxed. He couldn’t tell Kenzie he needed groceries. The next thing he thought of was the couch, but he couldn’t tell her he needed that either. He needed something in between. Something small she could pick up in the housewares department.
“Oh… uh… I could use… a toaster.”
“A toaster? I could handle that. Anything particular? Wide slice, retro look, maybe a toaster oven?”
“No. Nothing fancy. Just… a regular toaster.”
“Consider it done.”
Zachary let out a sigh of relief.
“If you want to pursue this unnatural death angle, you need to have a suspect,” Kenzie said, slowing down on her dinner and considering the matter at hand. “Because it doesn’t fit an angel-of-death killing.”
“It could have been an accident.”
“Yes. But you’re going to have to get access to her charts and the hospital’s other records to prove that. If it was an accidental overdose of something like insulin, you’re going to need all of their inventory logs. You’d have to show that it was an accident before being able to get the evidence that it was.”
Zachary had a bite of potato and chewed it slowly. In spite of all of the toppings, it was bland and tasteless.
“You’re not going to get an autopsy based on baseless speculations, and even if you did, the coroner might not be able to find anything. Any insulin in her system would be gone. It could be another cause, but with the extent of her illness and her treatment, all kinds of things are going to be off.”
Zachary frowned, a tight band forming across his forehead. “What do you mean?”
“If she was diabetic because of her cancer or because of her treatment, then you can bet that all kinds of other damage had been done to her body as well. Chemotherapy is an attempt to kill cells without killing the person. Sometimes it is successful, but sometimes it causes too much harm for the person to recover from.”
“If that was the case… if chemotherapy killed her, that’s not considered a medical error?”
“No. The patient signs off on all of the risks. They are told that it could kill them. They’re given all of the stats and figures, and have to decide it’s worth trying. It’s not a medical error or even an error of judgment. You just don’t know how a person’s body is going to react and what complicating factors might be present.”
“Like diabetes.”
“Diabetes, anemia, heart problems. A compromised immune system means a simple virus or bacterial infection could kill you. Allergies to one of the medications. The body turning against itself and attacking its own cells.”
“That’s a lot that can go wrong.”
Kenzie picked at her vegetables, cutting a spear of asparagus into short lengths and impaling a few of them on her fork.
“You didn’t… go over any of this when Bridget was in treatment?”
“No.” Zachary’s cheeks heated and he stared down at the puddle of juices on his plate. “I tried to be there for her, but she didn’t really want me involved. She didn’t want me to come to her doctor’s appointments or to her treatments. It wasn’t long before she said she wanted me out of there, period. So… I left.”
Kenzie shook her head. “I really don’t understand her. I would think she would want the support. I can understand breaking up because your partner won’t be there for you or thinks you are overdramatizing your illness… but I don’t understand breaking up because you just don’t want them around anymore.”
“She blamed me for her getting cancer in the first place.”
It still hurt to say it. He remembered Bridget’s attack, her venom. It was his fault. His fault for being so needy and paranoid and obsessive. The stress of living with him was what had compromised her body’s defenses and allowed the cancer to take root.
“You didn’t cause Bridget’s cancer,” Kenzie said firmly.
“But the stress—”
“I’ve met Bridget, and let me say she has problems that existed long before she met you. I don’t know what her childhood or family situation were like, but I have no doubt that this anger she has didn’t start when she met you. It goes a lot deeper than that. She’s a toxic person. Maybe she’s toxic to herself as well as to you.”
“No,” Zachary protested. “She’s very loving. She has a lot of friends and she loves her family. Everyone is drawn to her. When we met, she was so kind and caring. It wasn’t until later that she got… angry.” He closed his eyes for a minute, trying to focus on the blissful days earlier in their relationship. Before he had screwed everything up. “It was just like my mother… she couldn’t deal with my behavior. She tried and tried, but in the end, she couldn’t do it anymore. She had to… expunge me from her life.”
“What your mother did was incomprehensible. And that’s not what Bridget has done. She keeps hanging around, coming back either to rail against you or to take care of you. Or now getting you involved in some nonsense case because she can’t stand for you to be out of her life. If you were the problem with the relationship, then why hasn’t she gone on?”
“She has.” Zachary put a big bite of potato in his mouth to give him a few moments to formulate his objection. “She has a new boyfriend. Gordon. They went home for Christmas, she met his family. They have a normal relationship.”
“I highly doubt it.”
“They do. She has moved on.”
Even though he said it, he wanted Kenzie to argue. He wanted her to insist that Bridget wasn’t over him and didn’t have a good relationship with Gordon.
“Bridget has most definitely not moved on.”
Zachary couldn’t help the warm, satisfied feeling that flooded through him at Kenzie’s words. If Kenzie was right, then Bridget keeping in touch with Zachary even when she insisted she didn’t want anything to do with him was a sign that she hadn’t let him go. Actions spoke louder than words. She could say all she wanted to that she didn’t want Zachary around, didn’t want him keeping tabs on her or showing up in any of their old haunts, but her actions said she was still interested in him. Their lives were still intertwined. Even though she was in a relationship with Gordon and claimed she and Zachary were over, there was still a chance at reconciliation.
“You think she still has feelings for me? That she cares about me?”
“I know she does.” Kenzie’s dark eyes were intense, her gaze so heated that Zachary had to look away from her. “She shows up at your house on Christmas Eve? Asks you to take on an investigation without any merit? I told you before, that level of anger she has against you when you do something she deems to be wrong doesn’t mean she hates you. She wouldn’t waste time being angry at you if she didn’t care for you. She’d just call the police.”
Zachary didn’t want Kenzie to start thinking about the mistakes he had made in the past. He was doing better at not being so obsessive about his relationships. He was past all of that. He didn’t want her starting to worry about it again.
“What about another suspect?” he questioned, changing the topic abruptly back to the investigation. “You think someone other than a doctor or nurse could have been the cause of Robin’s death? I met her mother and sister, but I don’t see how it could be either of them.”
Kenzie’s brows squeezed together in a scowl, scrutinizing him and undoubtedly worrying about the reason for his change in direction.
“It could be the same thing as an angel of death. Wanting to end the pain and sickness. Family members can be very sensitive to that kind of thing. Have you considered assisted suicide? Maybe Robin arranged her own death.”
“Wouldn’t that mean the doctor was involved?”
“Maybe, maybe not. Maybe he wouldn’t assist her. They might have just looked up methods on the int
ernet.”
Zachary sat back, considering it. Neither Vera nor Gloria had given him any reason to suspect them of being involved in Robin’s death, but if it was assisted suicide, or euthanasia without her consent, what would he have seen?
“I suppose it’s possible. The nurse said that Robin was in more pain before she died. Maybe her sister decided that it was too much…?”
“Only the sister? You’ve eliminated the mother as a suspect?”
“Well… yes. She didn’t strike me as being capable of pulling something like that off. She wouldn’t be searching the internet, she’s not computer savvy. And she struck me as being… forgetful. Not quite all there.”
“Dementia?” Kenzie suggested.
“Not quite… just… old. A little… vague.”
“Well, the sister then. Or maybe a boyfriend? Did she have someone?”
Zachary thought back to the pictures at Vera’s house. The man Robin had been engaged to, but then broken up with. The other man he had seen a picture of her with that Zachary hadn’t had a chance to ask about. He’d been distracted by Gloria’s arrival and had forgotten to pursue it.
“Yes… she might have. I’ll have to ask the nurse, or maybe Bridget. I did see a picture of her with a man.”
“I would suspect him before her sister. I think most women would ask a partner for help before a sibling.”
Zachary tried to imagine what Bridget would have done. If she hadn’t gone into remission and had been told her case was terminal; if she had been in a lot of pain and knew it wasn’t going to get better, would she have asked Zachary for help? Of course, she’d broken up with Zachary, so the situation was different. He couldn’t see her ever being desperate enough to ask him for help with something like that. But would she have gone to her family? He couldn’t think of a way to ask her.
Chapter Seven
Z
achary didn’t feel too badly about having to call Bridget up to ask her more questions about Robin and her possible boyfriend. Whether or not there was any chance it had been assisted suicide, he at least had a reason to call Bridget and discuss the case with her more fully. He considered the clock when he got home after dinner and decided she would still be up and it would not be too late for him to call her. They went through the usual ‘are you okay?’ and reassurances before Zachary was able to introduce his question.
She was Dying Anyway Page 6