Ricochet

by Paula Gosling

  ‘Fitz would be too afraid of breaking a toe to attack anyone,’ Dan said cautiously. ‘I think.’

  Barney sighed. ‘You’re probably right, but I just want you to know I don’t much appreciate what is going on in my department at the moment. I can’t get any work done – any paperwork, anyway. What they don’t mess up or take away – who knows? It’s ridiculous.’

  ‘I’m really sorry,’ Dan said. ‘I’m sure they must be looking at other departments too, you know.’

  ‘I know, I know . . .’ Barney was cooling down. Anger was not natural to him and he was obviously a little embarrassed, now, to have come on so strong. ‘It’s just – path seems to get it in the neck all the time.’

  ‘It’s where the bodies are,’ Dan reminded him. Barney chuckled reluctantly. Dan leaned over and picked out a thick piece of chocolate cake, which he placed on Barney’s tray. ‘Peace?’

  Barney sighed. ‘Just watch out for Fitz, that’s all I say,’ he mumbled.

  There was a companionable silence as they looked for and settled down at a table. When Dan spoke, his voice echoed a little from the bottom of his coffee mug. ‘Done any interesting autopsies lately?’

  ‘What’s that, a conversational ploy, like have I read any good books lately?’ Barney asked, almost amused.

  ‘No, a little more than that. Have you noticed anything odd coming through? Any rarities? Anything unexplained? Any patterns? Anything?’

  Barney considered. ‘I had a guy the other day, he was full of diamonds.’

  Dan sat up quickly. ‘Diamonds?’

  ‘Yeah. A mule, a smuggler. They got him through Customs, then somebody decided they couldn’t wait for him to pass them in the natural way – or maybe he made a break for it. Anyway, they offed him. They were trying to cut him open when they were spotted. He was a goner. When I opened him up, there were the stones. About a million bucks’ worth, the cops said. Naturally they were standing over me the whole time, otherwise I might have palmed a few. In fact . . .’ He lowered his voice. ‘I did. Well, only one really nice one. Gonna have it put in a ring for my wife. Finders keepers, hey?’

  ‘You’re a bad man, Barney.’

  ‘Oh, come on, it’s the only larceny I ever committed.’ Barney finished his coffee. ‘Only one I admit to, anyway.’ He laughed. ‘It was better than doing an AIDS autopsy, though. We have had a slew of those lately and they scare the hell out of me. I think some of them are developing immunity to the drug cocktail or something. They seem to be doing OK, then whammo. It looks bad on our records.’

  ‘Not much we can do about it, Barney. We can talk our heads off, but after those first few years, people stopped worrying so much about safe sex and got careless again. And the druggies share needles all the time. Then they all look at you with those big eyes in their white faces and you feel so damn guilty because you want to scream at them “your fault, your fault, stupid, stupid, stupid”, but . . . what good would it do?’ He started to shrug, then thought better of it. ‘They’d probably sue me for harassment anyway.’

  ‘If they lived long enough to collect, poor bastards.’ Barney stood up. ‘Well, thanks for the coffee. But remember what I said about Fitz. And he might not be the only one you’ve pissed off lately.’

  ‘I’ll do my best,’ Dan said vaguely. He was lost in thought. Visions of diamonds danced in his head.

  ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ Donald Mayhew said. ‘What phone calls?’

  ‘Apparently on the Sunday afternoon your wife got an annoying phone call,’ Stryker said. ‘It seemed to upset her.’

  ‘I wouldn’t . . .’ Mayhew paused. He’d said he’d taken a short leave of absence from his job and was staying in the house trying to come to terms with his wife’s death. He looked bad, though, unshaven and gaunt. Grief was making him even smaller. He was more or less dwarfed by the large recliner in which he was huddling.

  After a minute he spoke again. ‘You know, you’re right. I remember now, Elise once said something about nasty phone calls. Mostly on the weekend – that’s right. Some man called her and . . . was extremely unpleasant. It made her angry, though, not upset. I mean, not frightened or anything. Elise was a strong woman.’

  ‘Did she know who was making the phone calls?’

  ‘I don’t know. I think she might have, because once she said she was going to call him back and tell him off, threaten to report him to the police. But she never said to me who it was. I assumed it was a student. Do you know who it was?’

  Tos and Stryker exchanged glances. ‘No. We hoped you might know.’

  ‘Sorry,’ Mayhew said. He lit another cigarette, although he had just stamped out one that still lay in the ashtray, a thin spiral of smoke rising from it. His hands were shaky. He gestured around, as if to disguise it. ‘I’m going to have to sell this place. It was Elise’s income that paid for it – she made a lot more than I do. And I don’t want to . . . I mean, she’s still here . . .’ His eyes filled with tears. ‘It’s hard. When I left that Sunday night, we had argued. She wanted me to be home more and I said what was the point when she didn’t pay any attention to me when I was here, and . . . it was all so stupid. I knew she had to finish that book. I knew she cared about her damned students. I hated sharing her with everyone . . . I still do. But . . .’

  ‘You didn’t have a chance to say goodbye,’ said Stryker with understanding.

  ‘Yes, that’s right,’ Mayhew agreed with some surprise, looking at Stryker. ‘No chance to say goodbye.’

  They spent a little more time with him, but nothing came of it.

  Out in the car, Tos was unimpressed. ‘I still think he might have done it,’ he muttered.

  Stryker was surprised. ‘But the other day it was me who suspected him. Not now.’

  ‘You’re a sucker for a crier,’ Tos said. ‘All those signs, the tears, the not shaving, the not eating – guilt. It all points to guilt, if you ask me.’

  ‘And the phone call?’

  Tos was quiet for a moment, then spoke thoughtfully. ‘Suppose Elise Mayhew did know who it was. Suppose she called him back after the kids had left and confronted him, threatened to go to the police.’

  ‘And he came round and shot her?’

  ‘It’s possible,’ Tos said. ‘It’s really possible, you know?’

  Stryker was concentrating on getting on to the freeway, but conceded the point. ‘We’d better get hold of the Mayhews’ phone bill – there could be a record of her calls that Sunday night. We might be able to nail him. Could it be that easy?’

  ‘Never has been before, but maybe we’ll get lucky.’

  Stryker snorted. ‘It would be the first time this year.’

  Dr Dan Waxman had been rushed off his feet for the past eight hours. A fire in a downtown warehouse, followed by two road traffic accidents and assorted patients ranging from a guy with a splinter in his eye to a woman with a sick baby, had kept him constantly on the hop.

  Weary and fed up, he opened the door to the outside world and found it was not ready to receive him. At least, not with any graciousness. It was raining and the wind was strong, buffeting him as he left the hospital and started towards the parking building. Pulling up the hood of his anorak, half blinding himself in the process, he stumbled across the pavement and into the relative calm of the parking building. But when he got to where he had parked, he let out a groan of misery. All four tyres of his car were flat. Not just flat but slashed beyond repair. He started to curse when out of the corner of his eye he saw a movement. As he turned, something came at him and he took a hard blow to the head. It didn’t feel like a fist – more like an iron bar. His hood softened it a bit, but he felt his eyes crossing and a great sonorous organ began to play chords in his brain. It hurt like hell. So this is what it feels like to be mugged, he thought as he went down. The rest was a blur – another blow to the head, a kicking from one or p
ossibly forty-five people, then blackness.

  He came to in his own ER. Even before he opened his eyes he knew the sounds, the smell. Full circle, he thought and drifted away again. But someone was calling him. Leave me alone, he thought. I want to sleep. But the voice was insistent. When he forced his eyes open there was a great glare, which hurt too. His head ached and he hurt all over, in fact. It had been much easier to stay asleep.

  ‘Come on, Dan . . . wake up . . . stay with us,’ said the voice. He opened his eyes more cautiously and, though blurred, he recognized the face of the neurological resident. What was his name again? Arthur? Charles? Rumpelstiltskin?

  His medical training reasserted itself. ‘How long have I been out?’ he mumbled. His mouth felt stiff on one side.

  ‘About twenty minutes at a guess. We don’t know how long you lay there before one of the nurses came by. You’re a mess.’

  ‘So I’ve frequently been told,’ he said and closed his eyes again. ‘Go away.’

  ‘No. Come on . . . wake up.’

  He was being shaken gently.

  ‘That hurts,’ he complained.

  ‘Yes, you took a good kicking and you have concussion, but there’s no skull fracture. No other broken bones.’

  ‘Well, hooray for me,’ Dan muttered. ‘If there are no bones broken, then sleep is an excellent idea.’

  ‘Not until you’re fully awake – the police are here and want to talk to you.’

  ‘Then will you give me some Demerol and let me sleep?’ he bargained.

  ‘Probably. Come on – sit up.’

  They managed to get him more upright on the examination table. He peered around blearily and spotted a patient in even more distress than he was. ‘Man over there needs help,’ he said, trying to lift one arm to gesture. That hurt too. He hurt every possible where and he was definitely not going to be brave about it. ‘Ouch.’

  ‘You are off duty, Doctor,’ came a voice from his other side. Gingerly he turned his head and saw it was Ann-Catherine, his chief and favourite nurse. Her expression was sympathetic but her eyes said she meant business. ‘We’ll handle the patients, you get yourself together.’

  ‘Why can’t I just rest here for a while?’ he asked and heard a definite whine in his voice. Come on, Waxman, somebody inside him said. Set a good example. Piss off, said someone else inside him. A fight ensued. Eventually he swung his legs over the side and braced himself upright.

  ‘Good for you,’ said Ann-Catherine. ‘The guy you asked me to call is here.’

  ‘Did I ask you to call someone?’

  ‘In between groans, yes.’ Ann-Catherine grinned. ‘You were very insistent. You had his number on your mobile.’ She stepped back and through the curtains.

  A moment later they parted again and Pinsky came through. ‘Good God,’ he said.

  ‘Is it spectacular?’ Dan asked hopefully. ‘That’s the only consoling thing, to look really, really bad. The rest is just boring.’

  ‘Did you see who . . .’

  ‘No. I think there were about nine of them.’

  Pinsky looked disconcerted. ‘Really?’

  ‘Hell, no. Just trying to impress you. One guy, maybe two. Most probably one with a big stick and big feet.’ He shifted slightly and let out an involuntary groan.

  ‘Haven’t they given you something for the pain?’ Pinsky asked, wincing in sympathy.

  ‘Not until they are sure my head is clear. Could be a haematoma in there. Or several small men with axes. Something unpleasant, anyway.’

  ‘You weren’t robbed,’ Pinsky said quietly. ‘It was personal. I saw your car.’

  ‘Shit.’

  ‘Do you owe anybody money? Slept with anyone’s wife lately?’

  ‘Neither.’ Dan took a deep breath and diagnosed a cracked rib.

  Pinsky sighed. ‘Then it must be you’ve upset someone by snooping around for me. I’m sorry.’

  Dan tried to wave a hand negligently, but it brought tears to his eyes. ‘You know,’ he began conversationally, ‘I’ve treated hundreds of guys who’ve been mugged, beat up, whatever. I think I’m going to be more sympathetic in future. This is not my finest moment.’ He blinked a few times, then looked at Pinsky warily. ‘You really think I’ve hit a nerve someplace?’

  ‘It looks like it. Hard on you, but it does tell us how seriously whoever it is takes it. At least he didn’t kill you.’

  ‘He tried.’

  ‘No – once he got you down he could have finished you off, the way he did Ricky,’ Pinsky pointed out. ‘He didn’t. This was a warning.’

  ‘I would have accepted a printed notice, even a phone call. I’m not a hero. I’d have backed off right away.’

  ‘And you’re backing off now?’

  ‘Hell, no.’ Dan concentrated hard to keep the room from spinning. ‘Now I’m pissed off.’

  ‘Maybe I should let you rest,’ Pinsky said, concerned at Waxman’s pallor, which was heightened by the contrast with the bruises.

  ‘No, thanks. I want to tell you.’ It took him a minute or two to gather his mind, which felt like it was running out of his ears. ‘I think you should talk to a guy in pathology called Fitz. He was angry about the money thing. It might have been him.’ He spoke confidentially and deliberately, as if very, very drunk.

  ‘And why him?’

  ‘Money,’ Waxman repeated. ‘Remember I told you my brother thought maybe there could be something like that going on – some kind of skimming perhaps. Embezzlement – that kind of thing. I don’t see how, but then I’m no accountant.’

  ‘Oh hell,’ Pinsky muttered. ‘And I had a word with the ice maiden in personnel yesterday. Maybe that’s what hit a nerve.’

  ‘A bit soon, I’d have thought.’

  ‘OK, but listen.’ Pinsky had another idea. ‘I was talking to my daughter and she told me something Ricky said. Something like “You can see something every day and yet never really see it at all.” What kind of thing would he see every day?’

  ‘Now you’re asking something,’ Waxman said. ‘There are routines in every department . . . ours are mostly to do with supplies, because otherwise we are anything but routine. We never know what’s coming through the door.’

  ‘But you do have procedures you perform, things that are common to every patient? Tests and so on?’

  ‘Oh, sure . . . depending on the seriousness of the case, of course. Regular tests, blood, urine, respiration, pulse, blood pressure . . . Is that the kind of thing you mean?’

  ‘I think it must be,’ Pinsky said slowly. ‘He wouldn’t have been able to see money skimming every day, would he? I think it must be something you do down here. Something you do every day. Something so ordinary it’s done automatically.’

  ‘You mean without thinking?’

  ‘Without thinking.’

  Waxman was perturbed. ‘You mean it isn’t pathology? It’s right here in the ER?’

  Pinsky shrugged. ‘You tell me.’

  ‘I intend to,’ Dan said. ‘As soon as they give me a new head.’

  Just then, Pinsky’s cellphone went off. He answered, listened, spoke. ‘I’ll meet you there in ten minutes.’ He cut off. Dan raised an eyebrow – not without difficulty. ‘Might be a lead,’ Pinsky explained. ‘I’ll check out this Fitz guy, but I think it might be a red herring.’

  ‘Then maybe you should check out the cafeteria,’ Dan said and abruptly went to sleep.

  Mike Rivera was waiting outside a Starbucks. He looked a real mess, filthy and defeated. It wasn’t just the clothes and the dirt, it was something in his eyes. ‘I can’t do this any more,’ were his first words. His voice was thin and desperate, and he kept brushing at his clothes, now here, now there.

  ‘Take it easy, Mike,’ Pinsky said gently. ‘You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do.’

 
‘It used to be a game, you know? I felt like an actor performing a role in a big movie . . . now I feel . . .’ His voice trailed off and he shook his head. ‘I’ve lost it,’ he said. ‘It’s all gone.’

  ‘Come in and have a coffee,’ Pinsky suggested.

  ‘They won’t let me in there,’ Mike protested.

  ‘They can’t stop you. Come on.’

  The Starbucks staff seemed a little flustered at serving Mike, but they did it with dignity. As the shop was not far from French Street, they were probably accustomed to some less than savoury customers. Pinsky made a promise to himself to patronize the chain more often. ‘Now, what was the big hurry?’ he asked when Mike had downed two doughnuts and half his coffee.

  ‘I talked to a witness,’ Mike answered. ‘Somebody who saw the killing. I’m not saying he’s reliable or would have much punch in court, but he saw it. He’s scared as hell of cops because he’s been put into Beaumarchais twice already.’ Beaumarchais was the hospital where the psychiatric cases were sent who were considered a threat to the community. ‘He doesn’t want to go back.’

  ‘He doesn’t sound much of a help.’ Pinsky was disappointed.

  ‘No, but he said this. He said “two white coats”. He said “one white coat hit the other white coat and then ran away”. He’s real clear on that because he has this thing about white coats from Beaumarchais, of course, but he’s definite. He was in the alley opposite and saw the whole thing. He says they argued and then – bam!’

  ‘He said white coat? For sure?’ Pinsky asked. ‘Not white uniform?’

  ‘White coat. Definitely.’

  ‘Waxman wears those green scrubs most of the time,’ Pinsky mused, ‘but some of the other doctors wear white coats. In fact, most of them do. That makes it definitely the hospital, as if I didn’t think that already,’ Pinsky said, feeling better. ‘This guy say anything else?’ He was grateful to Mike for turning up the witness, but irritated by the fact that he hadn’t been turned up earlier by the officers interrogating French Street inhabitants the day of the murder. Still, it was a floating population and most of them would have melted away when the police appeared. And, of course, they were all blind, deaf and dumb when it came to telling tales on their fellow wanderers.