Ricochet

by Paula Gosling

  ‘You got it,’ she said and moved to the phone on the wall.

  He turned to face the patient, a frightened-looking woman in her late forties. ‘Mrs Jenkins, I think what we have here is appendicitis and I think it would be best to have it taken care of as soon as possible.’

  The woman gasped. ‘I thought it was just that spicy sausage I ate,’ she said.

  ‘Then you have a better threshold of pain than I do.’ Dan pointed to her taut abdomen. ‘That must hurt like blazes.’

  ‘They gonna cut me?’

  ‘I’m afraid so. But it’s a quick, routine operation. Leave it any longer and it could get a lot more serious. Fast.’

  She closed her eyes. ‘OK,’ she breathed. ‘Anything to make it stop.’

  ‘Good girl,’ he said, giving her upper arm a reassuring squeeze. He left the cubicle and looked around. ‘Anything else?’ he asked Ann-Catherine as she passed by with a handful of charts.

  ‘Nothing we can’t handle. Get yourself a cup of coffee or something, you look like hell.’

  ‘Gee, thanks.’ Dan grinned. But he was grateful for the break as there was something he wanted to check out.

  ‘Hello, my dear. I’m Dr Maclaine.’

  Lois looked up, didn’t say anything. The woman who had entered the room was in her seventies, white-haired and benign-looking. Her hair surrounded her face like a halo, but was well cut and styled. She was dressed in a navy-blue tracksuit and bright white trainers, and carried a small black bag. When she came in she glanced at the woman police officer who had been sitting with Lois McKittrick and the officer left, closing the door behind her.

  ‘The officers are worried about you, my dear,’ Dr Maclaine went on, opening her bag. ‘They’ve asked me to check you over, to make sure you’re all right. Is that OK with you?’

  Lois sighed and nodded. She held out an arm, as if offering it for a sacrifice. Dr Maclaine duly took it and counted her pulse. ‘A little fast, but then, under the circumstances that’s not surprising,’ she said gently. ‘I understand you’re an asthmatic?’

  Lois nodded. She fished her inhaler out of her bag and presented it to the doctor. ‘Ah, yes,’ Dr Maclaine said, reading the label and handing it back. ‘I’d like to listen to your chest, if that’s all right with you?’

  Lois submitted to this. Dr Maclaine listened intently, then removed her stethoscope. ‘I think another puff or two would be in order,’ she said with an encouraging smile. ‘I am getting wheezing in there, still.’ She sat down beside Lois, folding up her stethoscope, and watched the girl take two puffs from her inhaler.

  Dr Maclaine tilted her head on one side, like a wise old bird. ‘And how do you feel in yourself?’

  Lois looked at her and suddenly the slow tears became racking sobs. She covered her face and gave way completely. Dr Maclaine took a box of tissues out of her bag and put them on the table between them. She waited patiently. She knew what had happened – they had gone at the girl hammer and tongs, with no result. All men, all bigger than the girl, all angry. One kind word was all it needed. One sympathetic voice. A woman’s voice. Because although she might be over twenty-one, this was a child.

  Dr Maclaine knew about children. She’d been a psychiatrist for forty years, specializing in children. Children of all ages.

  As the sobs decreased in intensity, Dr Maclaine drew one of the tissues out of the box and held it where Lois could see it. Lois took it and began mopping her face, her chest still heaving with sobs and wheezes. The storm of emotion had done her asthma no good at all, but might have released other tensions.

  ‘They’re going to put me in jail,’ she finally hiccuped.

  ‘Are they?’ asked Dr Maclaine. ‘Why do you think that?’

  ‘Because . . . because . . . I killed her.’

  ‘Killed whom, dear?’ Dr Maclaine’s voice was non-judgemental.

  ‘My mother,’ was the answer. Taken aback a little, Dr Maclaine glanced briefly at the one-way glass and frowned. This wasn’t what they had briefed her about at all.

  ‘I kill everybody I love,’ Lois went on.

  ‘When did your mother die, Lois?’ the doctor asked softly.

  ‘When . . . when . . . I left home.’ More sobs, dry sobs now, and wheezing. Dr Maclaine looked into her bag to make sure she had epinephrine in case this blew up into a big attack. She knew they kept oxygen in the building, but she would like to have had a nebulizer handy. Letting the girl go on like this was a risk, but it was important she got it out. All out.

  ‘Then you didn’t kill her,’ the doctor said in a reasonable tone.

  ‘She took too many pills,’ Lois said. ‘She didn’t want me to go to college, she didn’t want me to leave. He did. He liked the idea of me spending someone else’s money and not his. He promised not to hit her anymore, but she knew when I left he would start again. I knew it, too. In my heart I knew it but I didn’t want to admit it.’

  ‘Who is this? Your father?’

  ‘Yes. He . . . he . . .’ She stopped, her chest obviously constricting. ‘He’s evil. And I’m evil too. He always said I was. He was afraid of me.’

  ‘Surely not.’

  ‘Oh, yes. If I’d stayed . . .’

  ‘If you’d stayed he might have started hitting both of you,’ Dr Maclaine said. ‘If your mother was afraid of him, she could have left with you. But she stayed. It was her choice, Lois. Not yours. You have your own life to live. I understand you came to GSU on a full scholarship, all your expenses covered. Nobody could reasonably be expected to turn down such an opportunity.’

  ‘I could have. I could have stayed. I should have stayed.’

  Dr Maclaine waited until Lois’s breathing was a little less laboured. She knew the police officers behind the glass were impatient, but there wasn’t always a fast way through misery. ‘But that isn’t why they have arrested you, is it, Lois?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You don’t know why they’ve arrested you?’

  ‘Well, they said . . . they think I killed . . . Professor Mayhew. And I didn’t. I didn’t!’ She looked straight at the doctor, her blue eyes bloodshot, the rims reddened. ‘But she died because of me. It was my fault. I am evil, like he said. He said I was an evil child. Just like Daddy used to say!’

  TWENTY-THREE

  Dan Waxman walked along the hall and entered the ward that broke everyone’s heart – filled as it was with terminal AIDS cases. There, at the far end, he spotted Ivan Sherwin with his blood tray, doing the work of the phlebotomist who was off sick. Gowned and gloved, he was gentle as he worked, looking for the elusive veins under the tender skin.

  Dan stood and watched, saying nothing. When Ivan finished, he looked up and started. ‘Dr Waxman,’ he said. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘Watching, just watching.’ Then he turned on his heel and walked away, reasonably certain of what he had seen.

  Ivan caught up with him at the door. He was unusually chatty. ‘I have to do a lot of this,’ he said, walking beside Dan as they went towards the elevators. ‘Mary – that’s one of the phlebotomists – she has chronic kidney problems. Loses a lot of time.’

  ‘Kind of below you, isn’t it?’ Dan suggested with a wry smile.

  Ivan shrugged. ‘We all pitch in because of Mary. She’s a good woman, she can’t help being sick. And I enjoy the clinical side of it, too. We can get a bit ivory-towerish in the lab.’

  ‘What are you looking for?’ Dan asked, as the elevator doors opened and they joined the people inside. ‘Anything besides white and T-cell count?’

  ‘Whatever I can find. You know I’m working on AIDS research myself.’

  ‘Yes, I know that,’ Dan said carefully. ‘How’s it going?’

  Ivan shrugged. ‘Uphill, always uphill.’

  The door opened and Dan got out. ‘Keep at it,’ he said casually
and turned away as the doors closed behind him.

  Then he leaned against the wall and tried to slow his breathing. The nearness of the big man had unnerved him. That, plus what he had seen. Or thought he had seen.

  ‘Dr Waxman! We have a triple traffic smash-up on the way in,’ called one of the nurses.

  ‘Coming.’

  Lois McKittrick had stopped crying, but she was wheezing badly and struggling to control her breathing.

  Dr Maclaine waited. Finally, she spoke. ‘Why do you say it was your fault Professor Mayhew died?’ she asked softly.

  ‘Because she was angry and upset.’

  ‘Angry with you?’

  Lois shook her head, reached for the glasses she had discarded, twiddled with them, not looking up. ‘No. With the man on the phone.’

  ‘What man was that?’

  ‘Some man who had been calling her and saying bad things. I heard him. I took the phone away from her and told him he was disgusting and he called me . . . he called me . . .’

  ‘An evil child?’

  ‘Yes.’ Lois emitted a small hiccup. ‘Even he knew.’

  ‘Why did you go to see Professor Mayhew that night?’

  Lois sighed, as much as she could. ‘She hugged Chan, but she didn’t hug me,’ she said sadly. ‘In the movie, the man stood up for himself and I thought I should, too. She didn’t listen to my paper, she didn’t take time for me on Sunday, and I loved her so much and I knew it was a mistake and so I went to see her. I know that was wrong, now. It was late. She was so tired. She said her head felt like it was about to burst. But then the phone call came and she got so angry. She started yelling at the man and she was so upset, and I wanted to protect her, so I took the phone, but then he said . . . what he said . . . and I began to cry and that made her even angrier with the man and then she suddenly flopped down on the bed and said she’d had enough. It was too much, she couldn’t go on any longer. She told me to leave and I started to, but then I saw her take a gun out of the bedside table. I thought she was going to kill herself.’

  ‘Really?’ Dr Maclaine sounded neither surprised nor unsurprised. Just interested.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did you think she was serious?’

  ‘Oh yes. Oh yes. She had the gun. I thought she was going to kill herself or the man on the phone.’

  ‘She knew who it was?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did she say who it was?’

  ‘No.’ Lois frowned. ‘She just said he’d been calling and calling, and saying she was wicked and that he was going to tell someone she was lying in her book – falsifying research, that kind of thing. As if she would. She said she was sorry he’d upset me.’ Lois gave a convulsive single sob and hunched slightly forward. ‘She was worried about me . . . she cared about me . . . she did, she did.’

  ‘Of course she did. You were her student. Someone special.’

  ‘Yes. She knew I loved her. Not . . . not . . . in a bad way.’

  ‘Like you loved your mother?’

  ‘Yes. Yes. Like with your whole heart, you can’t help it. It just is there, and I wanted to tell her, but he called . . . he called and it was all spoiled.’

  Dr Maclaine took a deep breath and let it out slowly. ‘And then what happened?’

  ‘I knew if she went and shot someone she would be put in jail, so I tried to take the gun away. She wouldn’t listen, she was in such a state, like nothing mattered any more. I’d never seen her like that. She was so tired and it was all too much finally. She said she was going to end it. I didn’t know if she meant to kill the man or herself, then. But I knew she wasn’t being reasonable. Maybe I wasn’t, either. I wanted to stop her, to hold her, to protect her . . . and it went off. The gun went off.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And she was dead. It was horrible. Horrible.’ Lois was beyond tears now. Reliving the moment, her eyes wide with horror, panting as her chest constricted and she struggled to breathe.

  Dr Maclaine took out the vial of epinephrine. ‘I’m going to give you an injection to help you breathe,’ she said and did so. Lois ignored her, showed no reaction to the needle, but after a minute or so she seemed easier. She was still staring at the far wall, seeing something where there was nothing.

  ‘It was an accident,’ Dr Maclaine said after a minute. ‘The gun went off in the struggle.’

  ‘But if I hadn’t been there, there would have been no struggle,’ Lois said in a surprisingly sane tone.

  ‘Then she might have done something foolish.’

  Lois shook her head. ‘No. It was because I was there. Because of what he said to me. It made her snap. She was so tired, you see. And she had a splitting headache. And it all . . . it all . . .’ She shrugged. ‘If I hadn’t been there she would have had no one to get angry for. She was angry for me. She cared about me. She wanted to protect me.’

  ‘And you wanted to protect her.’

  ‘I should have called the police when she was dead. I called the Suicide Hotline – they have always been so good to me. The man said I should call the police, but I was afraid to. I know how it looked. So I wiped off the gun and the telephone in the bedroom before I left. I’d been in the house before, but never in there, you see. Then, the next day, I should have said right away, I should have admitted it all. But I wanted to wipe it away like I had wiped my fingerprints off, I wanted to forget it, I didn’t want to be there, I didn’t want to have been there at all. So I pretended to myself that it had been someone else, not me. It worked at first, but . . .’

  ‘But the police figured it out.’

  ‘I guess. They arrested me, didn’t they?’

  ‘If you had told them what you told me, I’m sure they would have understood.’

  Lois shook her head, her thin hair swinging on either side of her narrow face. ‘But it was still wrong. Wasn’t it? I will still have to go to jail.’

  ‘I have no idea about that,’ Dr Maclaine said briskly. ‘I think it’s more important that you get some treatment to help you get over this. It was a terrible thing to happen. You were wrong not to speak up, that’s true. But you were frightened.’

  Lois looked straight at her, then, and her gaze was clear and suddenly more adult. ‘I was more frightened for myself. That is the bad part. I only cared about myself when I left home and I only cared about myself when Elise was dead.’ She gave a sudden shiver. ‘Daddy and that man are right. I am a wicked person.’

  Dr Maclaine turned to look at the blank expanse of glass on the far wall. She shook her head. She placed her hand on Lois McKittrick’s shoulder.

  Beyond the glass Stryker, Tos, Muller, Neilson and Captain Fineman heaved a collective sigh. ‘She’s going to fight for her,’ Stryker said. ‘She’s a tough old bird.’

  ‘It was an accident,’ Neilson said in an amazed tone. ‘Why didn’t she just tell us that?’

  Captain Fineman cleared his throat. ‘She’s only a kid. Maybe one of us looks like her damned father.’

  Two hours later they gathered in Stryker’s office, although Fineman left them to it, claiming other duties. They could see he’d been upset by the girl’s confession. They all had. They all wished they had been gentler, kinder – but it was too late for that now.

  When you work on murder, sometimes you lose perspective.

  ‘We’ll have to charge her,’ Neilson said. ‘I mean . . . we will, won’t we?’

  ‘Let the DA decide,’ Stryker said. He glanced at the Assistant DA who had joined them. He was named Bradman and he was fairly new to the DA’s office. To the rest of them he looked about the same age as Lois McKittrick or Muller.

  The Assistant DA shrugged. ‘It’s complicated – could go either way. I’ll have to get back to you.’

  Stryker tried to explain. ‘She’s in a pretty bad state. Dr Maclaine says she has apparently been mentally
abused for years by her father. He’s a fanatic “Christian”. They live in isolation up north. He’s a survivalist, too. She and her mother must have been in torment. The only reason he let her go away to college was what she said – someone else was paying for it. He would have liked that – getting the better of the system, a system he hated and feared. And that other stuff – about him calling her evil – it seems her mother had an affair and she was the result. He never let her forget it, used it as an excuse to beat and torture his wife. Said he kept Lois out of pity, to cover up her mother’s sin. But there was something about Lois that scared him, too. Maybe he knew who the real father was, maybe there was something about that.’ Stryker shrugged. ‘It will take a long time. She lives half in a dream, half in the real world and can’t seem to make a solid connection between the two. Poor Professor Mayhew – exhausted, faced with the girl and her fantasies, and then . . .’

  Bradman pressed his lips together. He had seen Lois McKittrick through the one-way glass and he pitied her. But he knew he was supposed to be without pity, without judgement, and to go on the facts alone. Could they get a conviction? Should they try? ‘I’ll get back to you,’ he repeated and left the room, clutching his new briefcase to his chest.

  There was silence. Then Neilson cleared his throat. ‘So, what about this guy who was upsetting Mayhew with phone calls? Is it Torrance?’

  ‘Oh yes, I think so,’ Stryker said. And he told them about Kate’s calls. ‘He set it off.’

  One of the civilian aides came over. ‘There was a call from a Miss Olson. She said it was urgent, but you were in the observation room.’

  ‘I wonder what Liz wants?’ Tos hoped this was a breakthrough in their relationship. He could use some good news.

  ‘No, the call was for Lieutenant Stryker,’ the aide said. ‘I’m sorry, should I have interrupted after all?’

  Suddenly afraid, Stryker picked up the phone and dialled Kate’s mobile. ‘Listen, Kate, about Torrance—’

  ‘Oh yes, indeed, he’s right here,’ Kate said over-brightly. ‘We’re here together, having a nice talk.’

  ‘I thought we’d agreed you wouldn’t . . .’ Stryker sat up, his chair lurching beneath him.