Ricochet

by Paula Gosling

  ‘Professor Torrance said you lose a lot of science students to other departments.’

  ‘That’s true, that’s true. Especially to English, which is seen as an easy route. Or art – well, they’re all crazy in the art department, that’s a given. A lot of latitude allowed and so on. Students come full of their parents’ desires for them to become doctors or lawyers or scientists and many just aren’t up to it. There’s a tremendous drop-out rate in the first year. Even Ricky was wavering. More interested in the dead than the living.’ Bulstrode gave a small grunt. ‘I can think of a dozen students I would rather have lost than Ricky. Does that sound cruel?’ He answered himself. ‘I suppose it does. I just mean . . . it’s a bigger loss when a naturally gifted student washes out or dies. They do die, you know. Not murdered, but they do die now and then. And it always seems to be the good ones, the promising ones. Perhaps it has to do with stress. Must look into that.’ Bulstrode’s eyes went to the clock on the far wall of his office. ‘Well, if there’s nothing else, I have a luncheon appointment . . . ’

  ‘Thank you, Professor. If there’s anything else we need to know I’ll get back to you.’

  ‘Fine, fine.’ Bulstrode heaved himself out of his chair and followed Pinsky out, locking his office door behind him. They shared the elevator down to the ground floor, then Bulstrode left him. When Pinsky reached his car he saw him going into a nearby bar.

  That was all Ricky’s teachers except Professor Mayhew.

  And he couldn’t talk to her.

  An hour later he was in a small coffee shop sitting across from his new partner in detection. ‘Well?’ Pinsky asked eagerly. ‘Did you learn anything new about Ricky?’

  Dr Dan Waxman sighed. ‘Yes and no. Some of the nurses didn’t like him because he got in the way all the time, being nosy, stuff like that. He was a good kid, willing to work, but if there was nothing for him to do he was underfoot all the time. Then suddenly, nobody could find him anywhere when he was needed. Turned out he was spending a lot of time lately in the pathology department, talking about bones.’

  ‘Bones?’

  ‘That’s what they said. He was nuts on bones. Not new bones – old bones. Dead bones. He said they told stories.’

  ‘Mayhew,’ Pinsky said suddenly. ‘He was taking a class in physical anthropology from Mayhew. That’s bones.’

  ‘Really?’ Dan was too weary to ask who ‘Mayhew’ was. Obviously some professor or other. ‘Well, that’s what they said.’

  ‘Anything else?’

  Dan considered. ‘One thing. Ann-Catherine, my chief nurse, said that one day he was watching her take some blood for typing and cross-matching, and he said something to the effect that anybody in a white coat could do that and nobody would notice. Usually phlebotomists do that, but we rarely have time to call up to pathology for one.’

  ‘Pathology,’ Pinsky said with some satisfaction.

  ‘He – Ricky – said that if you put on a white coat and had the blood work-up tray and everything, you could just walk into a patient’s room and take blood. Patients accepted that anyone in a white coat was official and just stuck out their arms and looked the other way.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So, well, it bothered him, apparently.’

  ‘Bothered him how?’

  ‘I don’t know, dammit.’ Dan felt as frustrated as the man sitting opposite him in the diner booth. ‘Ann-Catherine said he just announced this, as if it were some big discovery. She told him he was crazy, that everybody wore name tags and all it took was one patient to object, and anyway, who would want to take blood from people? What good would it do them? It’s not as if they were taking a pint – just a vacutainer full, enough to test. Maybe four, five ounces at best. Not enough to satisfy a bat.’ He raised his hand. ‘And don’t start talking to me about vampires. That’s what she said. Maybe Ricky suspected vampires were walking around the hospital drawing blood from folks for snacks.’

  ‘Ricky wasn’t like that.’

  ‘No, well . . . that’s what she said, as a joke. I don’t put too much on it myself. She loves horror movies and so on, and has a great imagination.’

  ‘But it was a funny thing for Ricky to say.’

  Dan nodded. ‘Yeah, it was. Make of it what you will.’

  ‘What about special friends on the staff?’

  ‘Nobody special. Ricky was liked, Ned, but he was just a bit pushy. A bit cocky. That doesn’t go down well with everyone, you know.’

  ‘Pushy? Cocky?’

  ‘They all said he was a nice kid, but nobody claimed him as a friend.’

  ‘Yes, he was a nice kid,’ Pinsky agreed. ‘Now he’s a dead kid.’ He leaned forward. ‘Was that all? Just the pushy, the cocky and the question about taking blood?’

  ‘And the bones.’

  ‘Oh yeah – the bones. See, he had a course with this professor who was murdered . . .’

  ‘Another murder?’

  ‘Yeah, and—’

  ‘There’s a connection with Ricky?’ Dan suddenly felt a little frisson of discomfort. Maybe this was getting a little too serious. ‘Two murders?’

  ‘It wasn’t like he was a special student or anything. It was only an introductory course,’ Pinsky said. ‘He would have been one of hundreds.’

  ‘Even so . . . it’s a connection,’ Dan pointed out uneasily.

  ‘Yes, it is. But Mayhew is dead and we can’t talk to her.’

  They sat in silence for a while, staring at the table and moving the condiments around. Then Dan spoke. ‘My brother said something about looking for the money.’

  Pinsky frowned. ‘What?’

  ‘That maybe it was nothing to do with medicine and everything to do with money. Don’t you have people in the department who can look into fraud and so on?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Well, could some of them check into that possibility?’

  Dan asked. Pinsky just looked at him. ‘Oh,’ Dan said, ‘I forgot. You’re on your own.’

  Pinsky ducked his head. ‘Somebody would have to make an official complaint.’

  ‘Not me,’ Dan said quickly. ‘I don’t mind going around making an idiot of myself asking questions, but—’

  ‘But you don’t want to get involved,’ Pinsky stated wryly.

  ‘Hell, I’m already “involved”.’ Dan thumped the table with the mustard container. ‘I just wouldn’t know how to go about making an “official complaint” to the police.’

  ‘Does it have to be the police?’ Pinsky asked. ‘Don’t you have people who handle finance at the hospital?’

  ‘Well, yes . . .’ Dan considered for a moment, then began to smile. ‘I know one Rottweiler you could stir up. She works in personnel and if there’s one thing she’s afraid of it’s scandal.’

  ‘I’ve met the lady,’ Pinsky told him. ‘I’ll have a quiet word with her.’

  ‘Sort of like pushing a stick into a hornet’s nest to see what flies out?’

  ‘Welcome to police work.’

  SEVENTEEN

  Boomer Boynton took a hard tackle from behind and went down, but came up smiling. Pinsky, standing on the sidelines, watched and winced as the practice session continued. The sky was blue but the wind was cold, and he had taken to walking up and down and slapping his arms to keep warm.

  At the end of the practice session Boomer came over to where Pinsky waited. ‘I hear you want to talk to me.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, I gotta shower. I stink. Come on.’

  Obediently, he followed him down the tunnel to the locker room which was redolent with testosterone and sweat both old and new. There was a great deal of loud banter and slamming of metal locker doors, and he waited patiently until Boomer had satisfied himself that his shower was complete. The kid was enormous – nearly as tall as Tos but much, much wider across the
shoulders and chest.

  ‘Whad’ya want to know?’ Boomer asked, as he pulled a sweatshirt over his head. ‘My high school record – I was a full-back and—’

  ‘I’m here to talk about Ricky Sanchez,’ Pinsky interrupted. ‘I’m a cop.’ He showed his shield.

  Boomer looked around to see if anyone noticed and lowered his voice to a small roar. ‘I thought you was a reporter,’ he said, his eyebrows drawing together into a monobrow as he frowned.

  ‘No,’ Pinsky said patiently. ‘I want to talk about Ricky Sanchez.’

  ‘That punk.’ Boomer was dismissive. ‘I’m not surprised somebody beat his damn brains out.’

  ‘You didn’t like Ricky Sanchez?’

  ‘Little nerdy know-it-all,’ Boomer growled. ‘No, I didn’t like him, but I didn’t kill him, if that’s what you want to know. Thought about it a few times, though.’

  ‘I’ve talked to a lot of people and they all liked Ricky Sanchez,’ Pinsky said innocently.

  ‘Yeah? Well, that’s them and this is me. He was a show-off and an egghead. A real nerd. Always answering questions before anyone else, always talking. Some of the rest of us, we would have liked a chance to answer now and then, you know? And the girls . . . the girls were crazy for him, can you believe it? He was short, he was scrawny, but they thought he was great.’ Boomer was singing the song of the large man who thinks size is everything. He seemed baffled that someone like Ricky Sanchez would be attractive to women, when all through high school it had been the football players who got the girls. College seemed to be different and apparently it genuinely puzzled him. ‘I mean,’ he went on, ‘I could understand it if it was the brainy girls, but it was all of them, practically. Especially that Denise. She could have had anyone, but she chose him. Crazy.’

  Ah, thought Pinsky. Another one who’d fallen into Denise’s rainbow web. He was torn between being proud of having a beautiful daughter and wanting to punch Boomer out for speaking about her like that. ‘Did Ricky have other enemies?’

  ‘Enemies?’

  ‘Did other people dislike him? Anybody you can think of?’

  ‘No, no.’ Boomer was suddenly uneasy. ‘Hey, listen, I wasn’t his enemy, I just didn’t like him. Like, there’s a difference, you know?’

  Pinsky nodded. And waited.

  Boomer continued, ‘If you think I had anything to do with killing the guy . . .’

  ‘No, I don’t think that,’ Pinsky told him. ‘Although it would help to know where you were on Tuesday afternoon.’

  ‘Where I always am – here, at practice.’ Boomer raised his voice: ‘Do I miss, guys? Do I miss?’

  ‘No.’ ‘No.’ ‘No,’ came a chorus of answers. Obviously the conversation was being monitored. It occurred to Pinsky, abruptly, that Boomer’s team-mates were being protective and he wondered why. He suddenly felt intimidated on his own. He wasn’t a midget himself, but he felt dwarfed in this room of giants.

  ‘So I was here,’ Boomer said flatly. ‘And I didn’t like Ricky Sanchez, but I am not glad he’s dead because he was a young guy and young guys shouldn’t get killed before they can do anything with themselves, you know? He might have straightened out eventually.’

  ‘How do you mean, straightened out?’ Pinsky asked.

  ‘Well, learned to keep his mouth shut. He bragged and he was a smart-ass. Nosy, too. I asked him back once, why do you want to ask so many questions? And he said how else would he find out stuff? I mean, nosy or what? Who needs to know everything about everything, anyway? Jeeze.’ He leaned forward confidentially, casting a large shadow. ‘He knew a lot of stuff about a lot of people, you know. He could have been blackmailing somebody. What do you think of that?’ He straightened up with a look of triumph, having produced a genuine theory out of his own brain.

  ‘It doesn’t seem to fit with what we know about him,’ Pinsky said cautiously.

  ‘Yeah, but that’s the clever part. Maybe he had like two personalities, one a nice guy who was just interested in everything and the other the one who used the stuff he found out.’ He lowered his voice. ‘He wore good clothes, drove a nice car, stuff like that. I don’t think he has a rich father, that’s for sure.’

  ‘He didn’t have a father at all,’ Pinsky said. ‘His father was killed a few years ago.’

  ‘Oh.’ Boomer was a bit taken aback by that. ‘Well, that’s tough. But maybe he left big insurance?’

  ‘Maybe he did,’ Pinsky agreed.

  ‘Otherwise, where did Ricky Smart-ass get his money?’

  ‘He worked,’ Pinsky pointed out.

  ‘Oh, yeah?’ Boomer was surprised. ‘When did he have time to work?’

  ‘The same time you have for football practice. Nice talking to you, Boomer.’

  ‘Yeah, it was,’ Boomer agreed and walked away.

  ‘I think I might have a match for you,’ David Waxman told Kate. He’d rung her at home after getting no reply at her flat. ‘Well, actually, I have two possibles and a probable.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘I think it would be better if you came over and had a listen yourself. To be really sure, I’d like a friend of mine to have a look, too, if that’s all right with you.’

  ‘OK. Can’t give me a hint?’

  ‘Better you should hear for yourself. I’d hate to accuse anyone on my own.’ There was a pause. ‘Liz said the other day that your partner is a cop.’

  ‘Yes, that’s right.’

  ‘Is his name Pinsky?’

  Kate was surprised. ‘No. Stryker. How do you know Ned Pinsky?’

  David chuckled. ‘My brother is an ER doctor at the hospital and he’s apparently helping this Sergeant Pinsky out in the investigation over there. I guess it would have been too much of a coincidence.’

  ‘Oh, I know Ned,’ Kate said. ‘He works with my . . . with Jack. But I thought they were investigating the murder of a Professor Mayhew. Nothing to do with a hospital.’

  ‘I suppose he thinks homicide is more important than vicious phone calls or he’d be tracking your guy down himself.’

  There was a moment of silence at the other end, then he heard Kate clear her throat. ‘Actually, he doesn’t know.’ She went on with a rush, ‘I didn’t want to bother him with it when he’s on a big case, you see. There are only so many cops and so many hours in the day.’ Kate sounded defensive. ‘This problem may seem big to me, but it wouldn’t be much to him. He works too hard as it is. But he hasn’t said anything about any Sanchez case lately. He’s definitely working on the murder of Professor Mayhew. Did you know her?’

  ‘Vaguely. The music department sometimes gets tapped by anthropology about musical instruments, chants, that kind of thing. Wasn’t she small and blonde, kind of intense?’

  ‘I don’t know, I never met her,’ Kate said. ‘English doesn’t get consulted much by anthropology. And I don’t think she was ever on any of the interdepartmental committees I’ve been on.’

  ‘It’s funny how departments are so insular; a shame, really. Humanities tries to bring music, art and literature together with history. I think we should do more of that.’

  ‘I agree.’ Kate was pleasantly surprised at his willingness to interact and relieved to leave behind the subject of Jack. ‘Although I don’t think you have much free time, what with people coming to you for voice comparisons and so on. To say nothing of your composition.’

  ‘I enjoyed doing it,’ David said. ‘I got some interesting vibes and noises from the voices when I took them apart. Could be used musically, as a matter of fact. I was thinking of going to the drama department and recording some of their voices. They’re trained to be flexible – there could be a lot of material there.’

  ‘You mean you’d use voices in musical composition – lyrics and so on?’

  ‘No, no . . . just the noises in the voices. Whole different thing. When you come over
for the tapes I’ll show you what I mean.’

  ‘OK. When would be convenient?’

  ‘I’ll check with Abbi. Come for dinner, you and Liz. Abbi will call you to say when.’ David hung up and frowned. Dan hadn’t mentioned a cop named Stryker – just this Pinsky. He shrugged. Well, it wasn’t his problem. There were always plenty of murders to go round.

  He would stick to voices.

  EIGHTEEN

  As Dan was going to the cafeteria, Barney Schoenfeld caught up with him. ‘Hi, Barney,’ he said.

  Barney did not deliver his usual smile. ‘Thanks a lot, Waxman,’ he said in a snide voice.

  Dan looked at him in surprise. ‘For what?’

  ‘For sicking finance on to me.’ Barney was very angry and his voice shook a little.

  ‘I did what?’

  ‘You had some theory about financial fraud in my department?’

  ‘Oh . . .’ Dan faltered. That had been quick. ‘My brother did, actually,’ he said defensively and knew it was a coward’s comment. ‘I only mentioned it to someone as a possibility. Nothing to do with you personally, Barney. He meant anywhere in the hospital.’

  ‘Well, in my department it’s all to do with me,’ Barney said grumpily. ‘I handle the budget allocations, I do all the work on the grant forms so the others can be free to do the lab work. If I were you, I’d watch out for Fitz.’

  ‘Fitz?’

  ‘Yes. Because the guys from the financial department took all my paperwork for review, he’s not going to get his grant application in on time. It was a close-run thing as it was, but we thought it would be OK, and then the accountants swarmed in and began messing things up.’ Barney took a tray and began to slide it along the runners in front of the steamy food display. ‘Fitz was pretty upset about losing the chance for the grant – it was a big one. He is a big guy, remember, with a short temper. And he mentioned your name in conjunction with broken bones.’