Ricochet

by Paula Gosling

  Ah, thought Pinsky. Ah.

  Miss Witten stood up. ‘I will see you are issued with the proper identification to allow you to go anywhere in the hospital and speak to whom you like. But I must ask you to try not to interfere with the efficient running of the various departments.’

  Pinsky stood, too, relieved that his bluff had worked. ‘I’ll try to be quick and discreet,’ he promised. And added to himself, I’ll interfere if I have to, lady. I’m sorry for your loss, but I’ve got a killer to find. If he’s here in your kingdom I’ll get him. No matter who he might be.

  Or, he amended, she.

  ‘They’ve located the husband,’ Neilson said, hanging up the phone. ‘He was in Indianapolis, on a selling trip.’

  Joe Muller looked confused. ‘What husband?’

  Neilson sighed. ‘Professor Mayhew’s husband. Remember? The lady professor who got shot in the eye in the bedroom in the early hours of two days ago? The case we’re supposed to be on?’ He spoke rather bitterly.

  He had not taken it well when, the previous day, Stryker had told him that he would be taking on Muller as his partner while Ned was on leave. ‘But why?’ he’d demanded. ‘He’s a rookie, this is a big case.’

  ‘Because he needs to get his feet wet,’ Stryker had said. ‘He can’t sit around on his ass reading old cases for ever. He’ll be fine, you’ll see. And he can learn a lot from you.’

  Hah, Neilson had thought. A little snake oil for the squeaking wheel.

  He glowered down at Muller, whose brain seemed to be picking up speed.

  ‘Oh,’ said Muller. ‘That husband.’

  ‘Yes, that husband. They’re bringing him back to Grantham this afternoon. He’s not a happy man. He says he didn’t kill his wife.’

  ‘What else would you expect him to say? That he did it and he’s glad?’ Muller asked, not quite innocently.

  ‘Very funny,’ Neilson snapped. He missed Pinsky already, felt oddly off balance without him. He hoped he would be back soon. Stryker had said he was taking a few days’ leave to rest. Neilson knew better and he had a feeling Stryker knew better, too. Ned was going to follow up on the Sanchez kid himself.

  He could get into big trouble if it got back to Fineman. But it was his own time and, as long as he didn’t abuse the badge, it should be OK. Neilson smiled wryly to himself as he led Muller out to watch Stryker and Tos interview Professor Mayhew’s husband. They would stand in the room beside the one-way mirror and Muller would have his first lesson in interrogation.

  Ned was good at interrogation. Ned would abuse the badge and anything else to get at the truth. As far as Ricky Sanchez went, guilt was driving him. While it was, his normal stubbornness was magnified beyond control. He’d find the truth if it was there.

  Ned Pinsky. Avenging angel.

  Was it justified? Neilson didn’t know. What he did know was that it was not a very smart thing to do if Ned wanted to earn his pension. Why couldn’t he let things rest?

  Because he was Pinsky.

  Because he knew he was right.

  Even if he was wrong.

  Donald Mayhew was indeed small, dark and handsome, exactly as his neighbour, Mrs Koslewski, had described him. He was also angry and upset.

  ‘I left on my trip Sunday evening the way I always do,’ he said, shifting in his seat as if his pants were too tight. ‘I wasn’t here on Monday. I don’t know what happened. They tell me my wife is dead and I’m wanted on suspicion of murder and they don’t even respect my grief, just throw me in a cell and then drag me back here. I want to see my wife’s body because I don’t believe it; there has to be a mistake.’ He wound down, finally out of breath. His eyes were bloodshot, his voice trembled.

  ‘There is no mistake, Mr Mayhew. Your wife’s body was identified by a work colleague and a neighbour, but of course we would like your corroboration as well,’ Stryker said calmly.

  ‘My wife is dead, you say my wife is dead. Isn’t that bad enough? I can’t believe this is happening to me. Why would I want to kill her? I loved Elise.’ Mayhew was extremely rattled, going from not believing his wife was dead to accepting it as a fact even though he hadn’t yet seen the body. Obviously the night in an Indianapolis police cell had had its effect – his clothes were wrinkled and he had a day’s growth of beard. Oddly enough, this gave him a more macho aspect than his delicate features would otherwise have indicated. His hair was thick and in considerable disarray. He looked like a male model for one of the more expensive aftershaves. He slumped into one of the chairs around the table. There was a silence while they assessed one another.

  ‘Look,’ Mayhew said after a minute. He had taken several deep breaths, but his voice was still unsteady and sounded odd in the bare interview room. ‘Could you just tell me what happened?’

  ‘You tell us,’ Stryker suggested.

  ‘But I wasn’t there,’ Mayhew repeated. ‘Jesus, can’t you get that through your heads? I was in Dayton all of Monday. I got there Sunday night so I could start fresh in the morning. I always do that.’

  ‘Leave the night before, you mean?’ Tos asked.

  ‘Yes, yes. I’d run my usual circuit for several days and then after my last appointment I would drive straight home on the last day, no matter where I was. It’s a routine I’ve always followed.’ He shifted in his chair, looked from Stryker to Toscarelli. ‘Listen, can I see my wife’s body, please?’

  ‘In a while, Mr Mayhew,’ Stryker said. ‘Let’s just go over your movements from Sunday night, all right? In detail.’

  Mayhew buried his face in his hands, then ran them through his hair, tumbling it about even further. A cowlick stood up on top and another fell over his forehead. Behind the one-way glass, Neilson marvelled at it – no matter what he did, the guy looked better and better. Except that he was very pale, very agitated and very, very strained. Very fashionable – definitely on for that dissipated European appearance they seemed to feature in all the ads.

  ‘Can I have a cigarette?’ Mayhew asked plaintively.

  Tos gave him one from a fresh pack he’d bought that morning. He’d abstained for several years – but he always carried them for just such situations. Tos lit Mayhew’s cigarette, then left the pack on the table.

  ‘So, you say you left home on Sunday evening,’ Stryker prompted. ‘What time?’

  ‘After dinner – around seven. I got to Dayton about ten that night, checked into the hotel, went to bed.’

  ‘Alone.’

  ‘Well of course alone. Three hours’ driving in the rain and you expect me to party?’ Mayhew asked resentfully. ‘Maybe you don’t remember, Sunday night was a bitch.’

  Neilson remembered. He’d got soaked going from bar to club to a girl’s apartment. Monday morning had been nice, though. He wished he could remember the girl’s last name so he could call her. He’d written her number down on a napkin, but had lost it. Beside him Muller shifted from one foot to the other, straining forward to hear every word.

  ‘What hotel?’ Stryker asked.

  Mayhew sighed. ‘The Belvedere. I always stay there.’

  ‘So they know you?’

  ‘Yes, they do.’

  ‘How often do you stay there?’

  ‘About once a month or so. I have regular circuits.’ He rattled off the names. ‘On this one I start in Dayton and work south and west.’

  ‘And what do you sell?’ They already knew, of course, having got his travel details from his employer.

  ‘If it’s in a doctor’s office, I sell it. From paper clips to computers,’ Mayhew said. ‘Furniture, too. The works. We have a big catalogue, lots of small clients and a few big ones. Mostly it’s stationery, that kind of thing, stuff that runs out. But when they want new chairs or examination tables or single-replacement computers, we want them to think of us first. That’s why it’s important to keep up the contacts. The persona
l touch. A lot of firms don’t bother with that any more, but we do. It pays off.’

  Especially if the doctors’ office managers are women, Neilson thought. Mayhew had it going both ways – he was handsome and he was small – they either wanted to bed him or mother him, or both. What had some girl told him once? She liked small men because they tried harder. Neilson, of average height and build, came nowhere in comparison. He was not inclined to like Donald Mayhew. Any more than he was inclined to like Muller, who was also small and rather pretty. Muller stood quietly beside him and Neilson gave him a glance before returning his gaze to the interrogation room. Muller was expressionless, making Neilson wonder whether he was awake in there or not.

  ‘So you got up and ate breakfast, and then what?’ Stryker persisted.

  ‘I saw customers all morning and a couple after lunch, then it was back on the road again,’ Mayhew replied.

  ‘A list would be good,’ Stryker said. ‘A list of the people you saw would be very helpful.’ He pushed a pad and pencil towards Mayhew. ‘Write them down and the times you saw them.’

  Mayhew suddenly went even paler. ‘You’re not going to contact them, are you? How’s that going to look? I mean, I’ve built up a relationship with these people, and then you go asking questions because my wife is dead—’

  ‘Because your wife was murdered,’ Stryker corrected.

  ‘Oh, God,’ said Mayhew and rumpled his hair again.

  An hour later they took him to the morgue to identify his wife’s body. Fortunately the ruined eye socket was on the far side, away from the viewing window, so the damage wasn’t visible. Even so, he moaned at the sight of the body, nearly gave way, but managed to whisper that yes, that was Elise.

  ‘You’ve got to find out who did this!’ he demanded when he’d got his breath back in the ante-room, sitting with his head low between his knees. ‘You have to.’ His voice sounded odd coming from below them.

  ‘Then you’ll have to help us, Mr Mayhew,’ Stryker said. ‘For instance, I believe Professor Mayhew was in the habit of having students visit your home. Is that right?’

  ‘Yes, she did. She believed in individual tuition for really promising graduate students. She wasn’t that far off being a graduate student herself and remembered how some professor had helped her then. She said it was payback time.’

  It was an unfortunate choice of words.

  ‘Do you know the names of these students?’ Stryker asked.

  ‘Not all of them, offhand. I know one is named Jerry, and another is Lois . . . but there were others. There’ll be a list at the office. They all seemed to be nice kids. Oh, except Jerry, who was kind of . . .’ He trailed off.

  ‘Kind of what?’ Stryker prompted.

  ‘Kind of pushy, edgy . . . she said he was a genius and I guess that was supposed to excuse his bad manners. I didn’t much like him, but he was probably OK. Lois was kind of quiet, mousy, but Elise really liked her; said she was a lateral thinker, showed real promise. It didn’t show to me, but I didn’t know a damn thing about Elise’s work so I’m no judge. You’ll have to talk to them, I guess. You’ll see what I mean.’

  ‘Anybody else used to come to the house?’ Tos asked.

  ‘What do you mean?’ Mayhew seemed puzzled.

  ‘Other instructors, professors, that kind of thing. Colleagues? Or friends? Did your wife have any special friends?’

  Mayhew sat back and frowned. ‘What do you mean by “special” friends, exactly?’

  ‘Oh, long-time girlfriends she might have lunch with, confide in, that sort of thing,’ Tos explained.

  ‘Oh. I don’t know. Maybe. I’m sorry, my mind is kind of everywhere at the moment, I don’t know if I’m coming or going. I didn’t sleep much last night and now, seeing her . . . it’s really true and I still can’t believe it. I really can’t.’

  And the handsome little man began to cry.

  ELEVEN

  Pinsky had to start somewhere, so he went to the radiography department which was just down the hall from personnel. He wasn’t crazy about hospitals, but it all had to be done. At least there was no blood on X-rays. No disgusting fluids on an MRI. No bleeding wounds, no screaming – well, hardly any: a broken leg can smart a bit, he conceded – but no real visible misery. It was all technical. He liked technical. It had sharp edges and clear lines.

  ‘Can I help you?’ asked the girl on the reception desk. She was about thirty, with a trendy hairdo and even features, but wore far too much make-up. Her voice was metallic and quite unpleasant. ‘Do you have a pink slip?’

  He suppressed the remark he could have made about never wearing anything but black. He produced his warrant card and shield. ‘I’d like to talk to the person in charge, please,’ he said.

  ‘She’s very busy.’ The receptionist was both unimpressed by his credentials and annoyed that he had no pink slip or any other important and necessary piece of paper that she could stamp, file, clip, pierce or otherwise deal with. ‘You’ll have to wait.’

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘I’ll tell her you want to talk to her.’

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘You can sit over there,’ she said, waving towards some rather uncomfortable-looking chrome and plastic chairs lined up against the wall.

  ‘Fine,’ Pinsky repeated. He had no illusions that this gorgon, for all her youth and good looks, was going to facilitate his interview with any speed whatsoever. Which was fine, as he had said. It would give him a chance to observe her. And the others. Because while he sat there, orderlies came and orderlies lingered and orderlies left, some with patients, some with papers, some with no visible means of support. Just hanging around, looking and listening.

  Just as Ricky might have done.

  Next Pinsky tried a medical ward. That meant nurses, lots and lots of nurses. Coming, as he did, from a household that included three women (his wife, his daughter and his mother who lived in a granny flat attached to the house), he felt comfortable with nurses who were mostly women after all. But trying to catch one and to make her stand still and talk to him was like trying to catch butterflies with a torn net. The white-uniformed creatures squeaked past him on rubber soles, hurrying here, hurrying there, all with the intent expressions of someone on a life-or-death mission, even if it was only with a bedpan.

  He finally caught one who, for a brief moment, looked unoccupied. He introduced himself and asked about Ricky Sanchez.

  ‘I’m afraid I don’t know anyone of that name. Is he a patient?’

  ‘No, he was an orderly.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘He was killed yesterday – you might have noticed it in the papers this morning.’

  ‘I’m about to come off night duty. I don’t read newspapers. You say he was killed?’ She was a heavy-set woman with greying hair cut short and piercing blue eyes.

  ‘That’s right. And we’re trying to trace his recent movements in the hospital.’

  The woman snorted. ‘Good luck. They’re everywhere, those orderlies, unless you need one. Then – they disappear.’

  Pinsky produced a picture of Ricky, supplied by Denise. It was a good likeness of the boy, it showed him to advantage. But the nurse shook her head. ‘Listen, they all look alike, orderlies. They come, they go . . . some work only for a while, others you do get to know a little . . . but if he worked mostly in the ER like you say, we wouldn’t have seen much of him here. Sorry.’

  And that was the story with most of the other nurses, too. It was daunting. Until he came across Agnes Morton.

  ‘Oh, Ricky. Sure, I know him. You say he’s dead?’ She seemed very shocked. She was a woman in her late forties, still fairly attractive, blonde, a little scattered in her manner.

  ‘Yes, he was murdered.’

  ‘Oh, dear God,’ she said, horrified. ‘He was a nice kid. I got to know him because he helped me with the compute
r – I just couldn’t get the hang of it and he spent about an hour with me once until it made sense. It was real nice of him, don’t you think?’

  ‘Don’t they teach you about the computers in nursing school?’

  ‘Back then they taught us about nursing,’ Agnes said. ‘The new young nurses are clued up, but us older ones, we’re expected to just know.’ She grimaced, wrinkling up the freckles on her nose. ‘I only came back to nursing a year ago. I guess I’m just kind of slow on the uptake. I have a lot of trouble with all the new equipment, too. I get there, but it takes me longer than the others. I think I was meant to be born in a different century or something.’ She grinned. ‘You know, past lives and all that.’

  ‘But you knew Ricky Sanchez,’ Pinsky persisted.

  ‘Yeah, like I said. He was real nice to me.’ She sighed. ‘It’s sad he got killed. Was he shot?’ She seemed to take a professional interest in the method used.

  ‘No, hit on the head with something,’ Pinsky said a little impatiently. Her question seemed a bit ghoulish to him. ‘At least, that’s how it looks. We’re waiting for the PM.’

  ‘Sometimes they find other stuff,’ Agnes told him sagely. ‘Like in Agatha Christie . . . some slow-acting poison or like that. Drugs, maybe. His hair wasn’t falling out, was it?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Oh, it was in one of her mysteries, how nobody knew why someone was dying but it was thallium poisoning. See, there was this nurse who noticed . . .’

  ‘His hair was fine,’ Pinsky said hurriedly. She was one of the most difficult kind of witnesses to interview, the kind who read lots of murder mysteries, and were full of half-baked theories and convinced of their own expertise in detection. They took longer to deal with than all the others put together. At least this one seemed to favour Agatha Christie. The traditionalists weren’t too bad as they tended to be fairly simplistic in their outlook and favoured motive over opportunity or method. It was the ones who read the current forensic best-sellers who were the worst. They ‘knew’ all the latest jargon, the equipment, the tests, everything. It was daunting – a lot of them knew more than he did about it. ‘His skull was shattered,’ he said. ‘Pretty straightforward.’