Cold Snap

by Allison Brennan

  “You mean this is for real? You’re really going to do this?”

  “Yes.”

  Kristan was confused, but Lucy didn’t care. One step at a time.

  They both pulled on latex gloves, then lifted the body onto the gurney. They rolled it over to the table, then carefully slid the heavy corpse onto the stainless steel table.

  “Can you do this?” Lucy said to the nervous girl.

  “Y-yes.”

  “How long have you been a nurse?”

  “Almost two years.”

  “I need you to access her records.” She glanced at Peterson. “Okay, Mr. Peterson? I need Kristan to access Sarah’s medical records.”

  He nodded and moved away from the computer.

  While Kristan did that, Lucy inspected the body. Sarah Peterson had been preserved almost immediately after death. The cold drawers slowed, but didn’t completely stop, decomposition. But most medication that had been in the blood prior to her death should still be present in her tissues because it had only been forty-eight hours.

  She opened the checklist application on the tablet.

  “What are you doing?” Peterson asked.

  “I’m making sure I don’t miss anything.” She showed him the checklist. “I’m going to go through this step by step. If I have any questions that I think should be reviewed by an ME, I’ll make note of it. I want to document this as best I can. Isn’t that what you want?”

  “Of course.” He seemed surprised. Was he surprised that his demands had been met? He couldn’t be so naive that he hadn’t thought that this autopsy was also a way to bide time. “How long will this take?”

  “It could take up to two hours,” she said. “I don’t know how long the lab work will take, but if they have a lab on-site and rush it, a couple hours maybe, for the basic tox screens. Some tests need longer to process than others.”

  Kristan printed out Sarah’s file and handed it to Lucy. Lucy understood enough to get by. On the nineteenth, during a routine office visit, Sarah Peterson’s doctor changed her medication. Two days later, she was admitted to the hospital with acute vomiting and dehydration. The on-call doctor put her on a different medication after consulting with her primary doctor, who was out of town. The conclusion was that she’d had a severe allergic reaction to the new meds.

  Eighteen months ago, Sarah had been diagnosed with ovarian cancer. She had had surgery that removed the affected ovary, and it was considered a success. She’d gone through a round of chemotherapy and her last checkup had been cancer-free. But her body wasn’t bouncing back as quickly as the doctor wanted, and she was put on another regimen of pills. That’s what caused her vomiting and she was admitted and given an IV. “It says they drew blood when she arrived. That’s good—if there are any anomalies they should be easy to detect.”

  “What do you mean?” he asked.

  “If there is something foreign in her system that wasn’t present when she was admitted, then we may be able to pinpoint when it was introduced and determine if it was the natural reaction of her body fighting off a medication, or if it was the wrong medication.”

  “Just do it.”

  Lucy continued her visual inspection and input her observations onto the checklist. Then she said to Peterson, “You might not want to look.”

  “I can handle it.”

  “This is your sister. There’s a reason why doctors don’t perform surgery on people they care about.”

  “I’ve seen men I served with blown up. My best friend lost his arm to an IED.”

  There was, sometimes, no reasoning with a soldier.

  She began the incision and said, both to distract Peterson from what she was doing and to keep him talking, “My brother served in the army. Panama. Iraq.”

  “Carina told me.”

  Lucy glanced down to where Carina sat on the floor. Her skin was pale, and she had her head on her knees. Though the room was cold and the ventilation good, there were still fumes and smells that irritated, particularly someone who was pregnant.

  “You okay, sis?” Lucy asked.

  “Peachy,” she muttered.

  Lucy approached Peterson. He looked suspicious. She said, “My sister is pregnant. The smells are making her ill. Can you move her to—” She glanced around. “What about the chair? Cuff her hands behind her, through the chair?”

  Peterson handed her the keys. “You do it.”

  “Thank you.”

  Lucy squatted next to Carina. “Nick told me,” she whispered.

  “Damn him.”

  “He’s worried.”

  “I’m going to puke.”

  As soon as Lucy unlocked her cuffs, Carina stumbled over to a trash can and vomited. Lucy brought her a paper cup of water from the sink. “Here.”

  She waited until Carina had gotten some of her color back, then said, “I have to do this.”

  “I know.”

  She cuffed her, and then Peterson checked and tightened the cuffs. He looked at Carina oddly, and Lucy couldn’t tell what he was thinking. She gave him back the key, and returned to the table.

  There was no turning back now.

  CHAPTER 29

  “Everything is going as expected,” Tom Blade said.

  Hardly, Sean thought. Lucy was in danger, and nothing was how it should be. Worse, he felt impotent.

  Charles Peterson had taken hostages over two hours ago. And now Lucy was down there with him. Nothing was going as expected.

  “Dr. Kincaid, if you can work up a psych profile, it will help.”

  “I have a preliminary report,” Dillon said.

  Dillon was watching Sean closely. He expected him to do something, but while Sean could disable computers and hack into any secure system, he knew nothing about disabling bombs or hostage negotiations.

  “And?”

  “Charlie Peterson lost his only living relative who, by all accounts, he was very close to. Sarah Peterson was a third-grade teacher, well liked, with no enemies. She developed ovarian cancer and was treated, but there were complications and she died. A man like Charlie would naturally have a hard time accepting that her death was natural. He wants answers. He wants to understand. I think the plan you have in play is going to work, if we can get him to accept the autopsy report from Lucy. The big question is, what is Lucy going to find? And how will that impact him?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Tom said. “We’ve already printed out negative lab results, which should tell him she died because of an allergic reaction to the new medication—something that no one could have predicted.”

  Dillon frowned. “But how did she die?”

  “According to the doctor, just that. They changed her meds and her internal organs shut down.”

  “I think the main question is why does he think one of the nurses had something to do with it?” Sean said. “Does he think gross negligence? That someone made a mistake and covered it up?”

  “That’s irrelevant.”

  “It’s not irrelevant, Tom,” Dillon said. “If we want to get the hostages and Peterson out of that room alive, we need to find out why he thinks one of the nurses is guilty of murder.”

  “Murder?” Tom shook his head in disbelief.

  “Gross negligence at a minimum, but something set him off.”

  “He must have a reason for thinking something is wonky,” Sean said. “We’ve all lost people we care about, but we don’t take a bunch of people hostage.”

  “He’s mentally unstable,” Tom said.

  “I don’t think so,” Dillon said.

  “That’s worse.”

  “He has a reason for doing this. Sean’s right. Something set him off, something gave him reason to believe that his sister’s death wasn’t natural.” Dillon turned to Will, who was listening to the exchange but not contributing. “We need his phone records for the last seventy-two hours. Re-create every step of the last three days, from when his sister was admitted until he took the hostages.”

  “We alrea
dy have people working on it, but it’s Christmas Eve, Dillon—we don’t have the manpower right now. We’re doing the best we can.”

  “I’m sorry—but those are my sisters down there.”

  “Tom and I know that,” Will said. “We have every available man working on this.”

  Dillon rarely showed his anger—it was one of the things Sean admired about him—but right now he was slowly percolating. Did he have the same problems with the operation that Sean had? Did he see something no one else saw? “We need a thorough background check on Sarah, as well as the three hostages.”

  “I can do that,” Sean said.

  “Hold it,” Will said. “I know you work for RCK and all, but we have a time issue here.”

  Sean didn’t correct Will. If the cop knew he wasn’t working with RCK anymore, he might ice him out. “I’m just offering my help.”

  Dillon asked, “Who spoke to the two women he let go after Carina confronted him?”

  “First security, then two SDPD officers,” Tom said.

  “I’d like to talk to them,” Dillon said.

  “I’ll take you,” Will agreed.

  “They might know more than they think they do.”

  Sean said, “I want to go.”

  “Sean, you should—”

  “Dillon, if I sit here I’ll go crazy.”

  Will reluctantly agreed. For some reason, this cop rubbed Sean the wrong way, and the feeling appeared to be mutual.

  They couldn’t speak to the doctor who’d been shot because she was still recovering from surgery, but they found RN Tammy Pence in a private office.

  Will frowned at Sean. “We can’t all go in there,” he said. “We’ll overwhelm her.”

  Sean said, “I’ll wait out here.”

  Dillon eyed him suspiciously. Sean gave him an innocent look. “I’ll stay right here,” he said, and sat in a chair next to the empty nurses’ station.

  Will motioned for Dillon to follow him. As soon as the door closed, Sean rolled the chair over to the computer.

  He hacked into the SWAT mobile computer. He considered sharing with SWAT ways to block people like him, but he didn’t like the way this operation was going. It wasn’t that they were doing anything wrong—on the surface they had set up a good net to catch the bastard who was holding Lucy and Carina. But Blade hadn’t been immediately forthcoming with his plans, and that made Sean nervous. Lucy was at risk, and no way was Sean going to leave her safety up to a bunch of cops he didn’t know.

  He also had seen Nick whisper something to Lucy right before she went in. Not knowing what Nick said was driving Sean crazy.

  It wasn’t that he thought Lucy incapable of handling this high-stress, dangerous situation; it was that they didn’t have all the information. Information was always the key in circumstances like this. Without it, they were working blind.

  He scanned the recent files on the SWAT server. They had blueprints of the hospital. Sean knew where all the snipers were, potential exits, and bomb-diffusing scenarios. What he really wanted was security footage—why didn’t they have it? Maybe they were using the hospital system and not downloading the data to their own servers.

  Sean pulled up the hospital’s security network, glancing at the room where Dillon and Will were talking to the nurse. He didn’t know how much time he had.

  He plugged his tablet into the computer and launched a facial recognition program, the same program he’d written and used to identify Denise Vail in Colorado. He input only the face of the shooter, and then had the computer do all the work, limiting the parameters to the last seventy-two hours. It could scan all the digital data much faster than the human eye.

  Within two minutes, his program revealed all the instances where Peterson had been caught on camera. He made note of the time stamps, but one of the images caught his eye.

  Last night, Peterson was talking to a young nurse in scrubs outside the emergency room. They were standing close together. The image wasn’t crystal clear, but the nurse looked worried and Peterson had a rigid expression. She handed him something, as small as a flash drive, and then he hugged her and left. She watched him walk away, then went back inside the building.

  The time stamp had the exchange happening just after midnight. Peterson wasn’t seen on camera again until nine this morning, shortly after shift changes, when he entered the north tower. On camera, Sean watched as Lucy’s sister Carina followed him. What had he done that triggered that cop sense in Carina? Had she seen or heard something?

  Sean switched to the next camera to track Peterson’s progress through the building.

  “What the hell are you doing, Rogan?”

  Will Hooper was standing over his shoulder. Sean had been so focused on the security feed that he hadn’t heard him.

  He rewound the digital file. “That woman—Peterson met with her at midnight last night. They clearly know each other. He then left and came back this morning.”

  “I should arrest you.”

  Dillon intervened. He gave Sean a disapproving look, but also a small smile. “Sean is tech savvy. We can use him.”

  “We have a pretty damn good tech department too—one your own brother developed.”

  “Patrick is my partner,” Sean said. Was my partner. “I think this is important. Maybe this woman knows something. She handed him something, probably a flash drive.”

  “Print it,” Will said. “I’ll talk to Tom. But stay out of this, Rogan.”

  Sean was about to argue, but Dillon touched his arm as Will walked away. Dillon stopped Will outside the elevator. Sean followed at a safe distance after grabbing the printout.

  “If Patrick were here, he’d be the first to vouch for Sean,” Dillon said. “We have a lot of information and not enough manpower to sift through it, in a time-crucial hostage situation. Sean can greatly reduce the time we need to find what’s important.”

  Sean handed Dillon the photo of the woman, and Dillon handed it to Will. “Like this.”

  Will turned around. It was clear that for some reason he didn’t care for Sean, but Sean wasn’t here to make friends.

  He didn’t talk to Sean directly. Instead he said to Dillon, “He’s a civilian. He’s your responsibility.”

  “I’m sure I have higher security clearance,” Sean mumbled.

  Will glared at him, then turned and walked away. Sean and Dillon trailed behind.

  “That doesn’t help,” Dillon said to Sean.

  “What did the witness say?”

  “Pence was in the morgue doing paperwork. One of the hostages, Kristan Otto, came in and asked about a meeting. Pence didn’t know about a meeting, and Otto said that she had a note when she came on shift to meet in the morgue at nine A.M. for a training exercise. Pence began to call around when the other two nurses, Glover and Lavagnino, entered for the same reason. Pence stepped out and ran into the doctor. Peterson came around the corner and the doctor immediately questioned him. He ignored her and went into the morgue. When he saw the three there, he pulled out a gun. The doctor was about to call security, and he shot her in the leg. Glover attempted to disarm him, and Peterson shot him in the leg.”

  “He didn’t want to kill them.”

  “No—he wanted to disable them. That’s when he heard Carina on the phone and grabbed Pence, using her as a shield to force Carina into the morgue. But the interesting thing is something Peterson said—he told Pence she wasn’t involved.”

  Sean considered what that meant.

  Dillon said, “According to the charts, all three RNs being held hostage had been on Sarah Peterson’s floor within an hour of her death.”

  “And SWAT knows this and didn’t tell us?”

  “Sean, I know this is difficult for you—”

  Sean ignored Dillon’s attempt to diffuse the tension. The only thing that would help was when Lucy was back by his side. Sean said, “Does Peterson think one of them hurt his sister? Do any of them have a personal connection with her?”

  �
�That’s what Will is looking into now. It could be that Peterson needs someone to blame for what is really a senseless death. Sometimes, for soldiers like Peterson, it’s the natural deaths, the things he can’t explain, that are the hardest to accept.”

  Sean gestured to his copy of the photo of the woman talking to Peterson. “Why would she help him?”

  “We don’t know that she did.”

  “According to the timeline, he was given an early leave because of his sister’s death. He didn’t go AWOL, he wasn’t acting impulsively. He went to the hospital and picked up her belongings four hours after he was notified, which fits the timeline from talking to his commanding officer and driving from base to the hospital. Then he returns late the next night to talk to this nurse?”

  “How do you know this?” Dillon asked.

  Sean didn’t answer the question. It was probably better that Dillon didn’t know he’d hacked into Tom Blade’s account. “That nurse gave him something. We need to find her. She’s the key to this, I feel it.”

  * * *

  Lucy prepared all the blood and tissue samples and packaged them up. The autopsy had taken nearly two hours. It would have been faster had she not double-checked everything. Maybe, subconsciously, she was giving the SWAT team time to come up with a plan, but she also wanted answers. Her visual inspection of Sarah’s organs didn’t show any sign of cancer, but cancer wasn’t generally present to the naked eye. She was missing an ovary, consistent with her medical records, but if there were any cancer cells present, Lucy would need to inspect the tissues under a stronger microscope than she had access to. She took samples of all organs and lymph nodes, as well as samples from Sarah’s blood, liver, heart, and kidneys to run a wide array of tox screens. She didn’t want to leave anything unexamined. Because though she knew this autopsy was on the one hand a delay, on the other she wanted answers almost as much as Charlie.

  Not knowing the truth about the death of a loved one was worse than the answers that might be uncovered.

  As per protocol, she put the organs back into Sarah’s body and sewed her up. Kristan helped her put the corpse back in the cold storage, and they pushed the drawer closed.