Cold Snap

by Allison Brennan

  Pat extended his hand and Sean took it. “Patrick has talked a lot about you. More than my daughter.”

  “I’m sorry I haven’t visited, Daddy.”

  “You’ve been busy. And I’m sorry your mother and I didn’t come out for your graduation. We should have been there.”

  “You were recuperating from the flu.”

  “I could have made it. I should have.”

  “It’s okay. Dillon and Kate were there, and Patrick and Sean—I was well represented.”

  “Carina was by earlier. She told me what you did,” her dad said.

  “I did my job.” She sat on the edge of his bed and smiled. “I was worried about you.”

  “Now you know what it’s like to be a parent. We worry, too.” He squeezed her hand.

  “What do the doctors say?”

  “My doc thinks I overdid it at the gym after my bout with the flu and strained my heart, and coupled with my diet, my ticker rebelled.”

  “It could have been much worse.”

  “It is. I think your mom is going to make me eat fish and chicken for the rest of my life.”

  “Listen to her.”

  “I’m so proud of you, Lucy, of who you’ve become. You’re not my little girl anymore. I think when you were growing up, I didn’t know what to do with another baby, considering that Patrick was ten and playing in Little League. Everyone raised you, I can’t take any credit.”

  “Daddy, don’t be ridiculous. You were the best dad ever. I had a wonderful childhood.”

  “San Antonio isn’t too far. When you’re settled, we’ll visit.”

  “I’d like that.” She bit her lip and glanced at Sean.

  “Lucy, I may be sixty-nine, but I’m not an old fuddy-duddy. I know you and Sean are moving in together.”

  “Who told you?” Her heart raced and she glanced at Sean.

  “No one told me. But I certainly didn’t think he’d be moving all the way to San Antonio and into a separate apartment.”

  “Oh.” She hadn’t thought about that. “We love each other, Dad.”

  “I know. I’ve already had reports from Jack and Dillon.”

  “Reports?” It was Sean who spoke, and his voice cracked. Lucy would have laughed if she wasn’t also a bit nervous.

  “Lucy’s my baby girl. Of course I’ve been keeping tabs. Jack said only one thing, but it was enough. He said, ‘He makes her smile.’” Pat stared at Sean. “You make sure my baby girl keeps smiling.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Lucy’s phone was vibrating, and she ignored it.

  “Someone needs you,” he said.

  “No, I’m going to stay.”

  “Do what you need to do, Lucia.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Connor went to pick up your mother. The doctor wants to go over my test results and let us know what our options are.”

  “But you’re okay, right?”

  “Of course I am.” But he didn’t look her in the eye. He didn’t know what the doctor was going to say. Maybe he needed surgery. That would be dangerous, especially for a man of his age.

  “I’ll be well taken care of.”

  “I know.” But she didn’t want to lose her dad. “I love you, Dad.”

  She kissed his cheek and left with Sean.

  “Your dad is going to be okay,” Sean said. “Believe that.”

  “I do.” I hope. “Someone has been calling me repeatedly.” She checked her phone. Carina had left her a message. She was just about to check it when she saw Nelia turn the corner.

  Lucy froze. She hadn’t spoken to Nelia in eighteen years, since Nelia’s son, Justin, was murdered when he and Lucy were seven. Her own sister seemed to hate her, at least that’s the way Lucy had always felt. If she and Nelia were in the same room, Nelia could have a conversation with everyone but Lucy, as if Lucy weren’t even there. Nelia never spoke to her directly. Every family gathering was awkward. But they’d only been together a few times—after Patrick got out of his coma, again a few years ago when Lucy came home for one summer while in college. Nelia lived in Idaho, and while she seemed to have found a modicum of peace, she was still quiet, reserved, and carried a silent air of pain wherever she went. When Justin was killed, Lucy had lost her closest childhood friend. But Nelia had lost her only child.

  Nelia caught Lucy’s eye and hesitated. Then she approached. “Lucy. Hello.”

  “Hi.” Her voice sounded like a child’s. “This is Sean. My boyfriend. This is my sister Nelia.”

  Sean extended his hand, but his expression was cool. “Nice to meet you.” Lucy had shared with him all the pain and frustration she’d felt over Nelia’s attitude since Justin’s murder, including Lucy’s childhood belief that Nelia wished it had been her who’d died.

  “How’s Dad?”

  “Good spirits.”

  “I, um, just arrived. We drove. Tom is downstairs talking to Jack and Patrick.”

  “I haven’t seen them yet.”

  “Well, I’m going to tell Dad we’re here.”

  “Okay.”

  Nelia hesitated, then turned into the colonel’s room.

  Sean had his arm around her shoulders and he squeezed. Lucy said, “That’s the first time she’s ever spoken directly to me.”

  “You’re a forgiving woman, Luce,” Sean said.

  “It’s okay, really.”

  It wasn’t, but it had to be. She didn’t know what to say to Nelia, and it was clear Nelia didn’t know what to say to her.

  Lucy didn’t lose sight of the fact that she was much closer to Kate than she was to her two sisters, but now … she was beginning to realize that maybe that was okay. And that maybe she needed to make an effort with Carina. She was going to have a niece or nephew. She wanted to be an aunt, especially since she couldn’t have children of her own.

  Her phone rang again and she answered.

  “Where are you?” Carina said.

  “Outside Dad’s room.”

  “Security found Wendy Parsons. She’s dead.”

  CHAPTER 33

  Wendy Parsons was found locked in a janitorial closet on the top floor in the north tower.

  The locked utility rooms hadn’t been checked during the immediate threat, because hospital security was more concerned with evacuating patients and there was no indication that Charlie Peterson had another shooter in the building helping him.

  A criminalist from San Diego PD was processing the scene, and two doctors confirmed that she was dead with no visible sign of injury.

  “He killed her?” Carina asked, shaking her head.

  “No,” Lucy said.

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Why would he?”

  Carina shook her head. “Doc, how long has she been dead?”

  “She appears to be in full rigor mortis. Twelve to eighteen hours. But that’s a guess.”

  Sean said, “The last time she was seen on a security camera was at midnight. Peterson didn’t go into the hospital, and didn’t return until nine this morning.”

  Will Hooper turned down the hallway. “I need everyone out of here, except Detective Kincaid.” He glared at Lucy. “You called the D.A.? Why would you interfere like that?”

  Carina looked surprised. “You called Andrew? Why?”

  “To get an autopsy on Sarah Peterson tonight. There are drugs that will disappear as the body goes through decomp, and if there’s something there, we need to find it now. I’d like to inspect Ms. Parsons.”

  “Hell, no,” Will said. “We have a damn good forensics lab in San Diego; this is my crime scene.”

  Carina pulled Will aside and spoke quietly to him. Will was angry, but he listened to her, said something, then walked away.

  Carina told Lucy, “Five minutes. Will is a great cop, Lucy. We’ve been partners for ten years. Going over his head isn’t cool.”

  Office politics was one of the areas where Lucy struggled. She always did what she thought was best, and sometimes she stepped
on people’s toes and didn’t realize it.

  “I’m sorry, Carina. It seems as though Will still sees me as an irresponsible teenager, and not a sworn-in FBI agent.”

  “And do newly sworn FBI agents normally call the district attorney for special favors?”

  Sean couldn’t keep his mouth closed. “Lay off,” he said.

  “I did what I thought was right. I’m willing to live with the consequences.” Lucy paused. “Can you honestly tell me that you’ve never done something that wasn’t technically by the book because you knew in your gut you had no choice?”

  Carina couldn’t answer that.

  Lucy pulled on a pair of gloves and asked the criminalist to help her. “Did you get pictures?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said. “We’re just waiting for the coroner.”

  The body was bent at the waist, suggesting that she’d been propped against the wall. No external injuries, except for bruising on her right arm, as if someone had grabbed her.

  “Did you get these bruises?” she asked him.

  “Yes. And there is a bump on the back of her head.”

  The doctor said, “It doesn’t look serious enough to have knocked her unconscious.”

  Lucy carefully inspected the raised surface. “It’s less than one inch in diameter, and about half an inch from the surface.” She glanced into the closet.

  Carina said, “She was found propped against the metal shelving. Her head was on the second shelf at an odd angle. At first glance, it appears that someone killed her and put her in the closet. No one found her because we’d evacuated this floor and the door was locked.”

  Lucy looked at Parsons’s arms carefully, searching for any puncture wound. If she’d been poisoned, it could have been administered orally or injected.

  Then she saw it. A needle mark on the back of her shoulder. “Get this,” she said to the criminalist. “This is an injection site. See the bruising? She moved while the needle was inside, possibly trying to get it out.”

  “The timeline doesn’t put Peterson in the clear,” Carina said.

  “I know, but he didn’t kill her. She was helping him find out what happened to his sister.”

  “You sound just like Dillon,” Carina muttered.

  Lucy took that as a compliment.

  “Luce, I have something,” Sean said, and handed her his tablet.

  Sean had finished with the backgrounds on the three nurses. None of them had lost a close relative to cancer who was a single female under forty. “I was wrong,” she said.

  “No you weren’t. Peterson was wrong.”

  Sean swiped the screen and brought up another background search. “I ran all the employees—nurses, doctors, orderlies—in the cancer ward who started more than three years ago. There are eighteen who’ve been here for more than three years.”

  “You did what?” Carina exclaimed.

  Lucy ignored her. She stared at the list. There were four employees on the list who had lost an immediate family member to cancer.

  But one name jumped out at her.

  She rose from her squat and said, “I need to talk to Will and Dillon. I have a theory, but we have no proof. And if we can’t get her to slip up, she will kill again.”

  * * *

  They were in a conference room in the north tower that SWAT and security had used during the hostage situation. It had been cleared out, but Tom Blade was in there writing a report and talking with the head of hospital security.

  Lucy had asked Dillon to come because she didn’t think Will would trust her instincts on this, but he knew and trusted Dillon. She was also glad Kate was there, but she was surprised Kate was sitting with SSA Ken Swan, who had been present in her earlier interview. Nick and Carina sat with Will. Lucy felt like there were two sides: San Diego PD on one, and the FBI on the other.

  “I know who killed Sarah Peterson and eight other women in this hospital, but I have no proof. Unfortunately, if we can’t get her to confess or slip up, she’s going to get away with it.”

  “You’re saying that nine women have been killed?” Will said. “That there’s a serial killer?” His tone reflected complete disbelief.

  “Yes,” Lucy said with more confidence than she felt. She hated this part of the job, standing in front of colleagues and friends and explaining her theory. She’d done it in the past, and it always made her uncomfortable. She’d rather be at a crime scene than in an office. “Virtually all serial murders in a hospital setting are called mercy killings, but that’s not what this is. This is a psychologically damaged nurse who is killing patients who remind her of her sister.”

  She took out the piece of paper that Peterson had handed her. “We know based on the security feed that Wendy Parsons slipped Charlie Peterson a flash drive and, I think, this piece of paper. He gave it to me and I didn’t turn it over to you, Will, and I’m sorry. I didn’t realize what I had at first, with everything that happened at the morgue, and then when I saw it I asked Sean to find out what the names had in common.” She walked over and handed Hooper the paper that was now in a plastic evidence bag.

  “You withheld evidence?”

  “Not intentionally.” At first. “All those women have died here, in the north tower cancer wing, in the last three years. This isn’t unusual, except that all the women were single, under forty, had no children, and had been in remission but readmitted because of problems with medication.”

  “You are really going out on a limb,” Will said. “We’re here because a gunman took four people hostage and shot two people, and killed a nurse—”

  “You don’t have any proof that Peterson killed Wendy Parsons. There’s no security camera on that wing where her body was found.”

  “How do you know that?” Will snapped.

  “I told her,” Sean said. He was getting angry with Will, and that wasn’t going to do Lucy any good.

  Carina intervened. “Will, just listen to the theory. I totally understand where you’re coming from, but I think Lucy is right.”

  Will said through clenched teeth, “Explain.”

  “We know that Parsons gave Peterson information after midnight, and he waited for nine hours before he came back. Someone who knew those three nurses were going to be on duty during the same shift sent them a message about the training, and that tells me that Parsons knew what Peterson planned on doing.”

  “You’re saying she’s a conspirator,” Will said.

  “Maybe she didn’t realize he was going to take them hostage, but thought he wanted them in the same room with him. Maybe she planned on being there herself to confront them with what she knew, and when she didn’t show, Peterson did it his way. We can only speculate at this point. However, we know that she gave him something that made him believe that one of those nurses killed his sister, and I think her research on the drive she gave him was medical records of those deceased patients.”

  She glanced at the hospital security head. “Is there any way to find out if Wendy Parsons downloaded or copied patient data during the time between Sarah Peterson’s death and when she handed Peterson the flash drive?”

  “Yes,” he said. “I would have to ask the IT department to research it.”

  Lucy knew that Sean could get it faster, but she’d already told him not to volunteer to do anything else, because they were pushing the envelope with what he’d already done.

  “I think that was her proof, and because Peterson was a soldier she thought he might be able to get the information to the right people.”

  “If this is true,” the hospital security chief asked, “why didn’t she go to her supervisor?

  “Because it’s not proof. These were cancer patients. An investigation would have been started, but what if she was scared that the killer would go after her? She went to Peterson because he was an outside party.”

  “She could have gone to the D.A.’s office,” Carina said, “or the FBI. Or any number of law enforcement agencies.”

  “We could ask h
er why she didn’t, but she’s dead,” Sean said.

  Lucy didn’t want the meeting to deteriorate. She glanced at Dillon. He was listening, but he had yet to say anything.

  “I asked Sean to run all employees who work in the cancer wing who’d been here at least three years. Not just the three nurses Peterson thought were responsible, but all employees. Then we took the list and ran a background to see who had lost a loved one to cancer. Four. Of those four, one name popped out.

  “Marilyn Todd.”

  “The floor supervisor,” Will said flatly. “The petite fifty-year-old nurse.”

  “Injecting someone with a neuromuscular blocker doesn’t require physical strength,” Lucy said, and realized she sounded sarcastic.

  “But taking down a healthy, thirty-year-old nurse?” Will countered.

  “Parsons was injected with something in her upper shoulder.” Lucy walked over to the largest man in the room, the hotel security guard, and patted him on the shoulder. “It’s that simple.”

  “Why wouldn’t she have screamed? Called for help?”

  “Because if the dose is large enough, she wouldn’t be able to. Her killer injected her, pulled her into the janitor’s closet, and left her there to die.”

  “It wasn’t instantaneous?”

  “Probably took a little time. She wouldn’t be able to move, her organs would shut down one by one, and she would die of asphyxiation. Endrophonium is an antidote for neuromuscular blockers, or atropine. There might be others, but it needs to be administered relatively quickly to stop and reverse the effect.”

  “What do these drugs do?” Swan asked.

  “They’re used for anesthesia. Common in hospitals, and I can think of at least half a dozen cases in the last fifty years where medical personnel used Tubarine or Pavulon and similar drugs to kill patients. This isn’t coming out of left field.”

  “But they’re closely regulated.”

  “Yes, but if you know how the system works, you can bypass anything.”

  No one argued that point.

  “I believe that Parsons was suspicious, but didn’t know who was guilty. She compiled information about these dead patients, but when Sarah Peterson died she panicked. Maybe she saw something, or sensed something, and she reached out to Sarah’s brother.”