I stepped lightly, keeping my footsteps quiet as I moved to the rear of the warehouse. I knelt, pretending to tie my shoe, and scanned the narrow snow-flecked lawn that sloped from the warehouse to the river. The dark space behind me was a fist against my back.
I slipped soundlessly inside, my senses on high alert. Water dripped rhythmically down the corrugated walls and from the steel beams, a melancholic melody that left dark puddles on the floor.
The crime scene tape had been cleared away. The only signs anybody had ever been here were the cardboard on the windows, a handful of two-by-fours leaning against the wall, and the bloodstain on the floor.
I skirted the inside perimeter of the warehouse, peering behind rusted factory equipment. But there was nobody here. Finally I dropped to my knees next to the dark stain. I pressed my fingers to it and closed my eyes for just a moment.
Nate had once told me that modern crime techs never used chalk to outline a body because it would contaminate the crime scene. Instead, they took pictures, along with measurements to fixed reference points. But I didn’t need a picture. All the images from that night were burned forever into my mind.
Isn’t it funny how in a crisis, your brain starts taking pictures? All those snapshots of color and light and sound and smells, ready to be held up and turned over and examined at arm’s length. The iciness of the velvet night. The mist of the waterfall rising over the river. The smell of woodsmoke in the air.
My neck prickled with unease, and I stood. I peered through the murky darkness and there he was, emerging from a room at the back of the warehouse. He strode toward me quickly, his face open and friendly. He smiled. It was the smile that made me drop my hands. Relief peeled away my defenses and everything in me relaxed.
But then I saw a flash of silver. I started to turn away, but it was too late. The knife burrowed into my side with a moist thwump.
I looked down, confused. The blade was buried so deep that the hand holding it was pressed almost flat against my stomach. My pulse hammered against the steel.
And then I felt the fire. My mouth dropped open. The blood was rushing out of me too fast, I knew, soaking my shirt, turning it from white to red in seconds. It was too late. Too late to save myself.
I looked into those familiar eyes, mouthed a single word.
You.
The knife slid out of me, a sickening, wet sound. Blood pooled at the bottom of my throat. And then I fell, an abrupt, uninterrupted drop.
I blinked, my brain softening, dulling. Images clicked by, one by one.
Polished black shoes.
The blur of snow as it tumbled past the open door.
The two-by-fours standing against the wall.
My body felt like it was composed of nothing but air. I had failed.
And now Josh would be left alone.
CHAPTER 46
DR. PALMER LOOKED DOWN at me with stoic, dispassionate eyes. He grabbed my purse and opened it, pulling out my gun and shoving it down the back of his pants, the bloody knife still clutched in one hand.
“Where are they, Emma? Where’d you hide the drugs?”
I pressed my hands to my side, trying to staunch the blood where he’d stabbed me. I kicked my feet out, trying to scramble away from him, but my back almost instantly hit the wall. I had nowhere to go.
“The fentanyl,” he pressed. “Ben said he doesn’t have it. You were the last person here.”
I closed my eyes.
Don’t worry. You’re not the only doctor I’ve worked with.
Answers clicked into place.
The fentanyl. The briefcase. The confusing text on the old Nokia: I’ll get fentanyl from the doc.
Pamela’s greeting: So you’re the doc.
Ben’s cagey answers to all my questions.
Ben had been working with Dr. Palmer.
“You got the fentanyl,” I whispered. “You killed Santiago. Beatrice.”
“Yes, of course,” he said, impatient now. “Santiago knew too much, and Beatrice was going to the police. You should thank Gabe and me for stopping her.”
He knelt next to me, his face softening. “Look, it was just business. I’m not some crazy drug lord who goes out of his way to hurt people.”
“Why?” I whispered.
“You can thank Ben, actually. He wanted me to sign a prescription for him. He was high, jonesing for another pill. He had some… delicate information on me. So I did. He kept coming back, so I suggested a partnership. I figured we might as well both make money from our mutual misfortune. He likes drugs, and I like money.”
Pain rocketed throughout my body in hot, bloody waves. Darkness danced around my peripheral vision. I wanted to lie down, to melt into the cold, damp floor where Nate had died and join him. I glanced at my hands, still gripping the wound. The freezing temperature had slowed the blood flow. A warm numbness was settling over me now.
But there was Josh. Always Josh
“Ben had information on you?” I asked.
“Remember this?” He lifted his palm, exposing a long white scar slicing from pinkie to thumb.
I nodded. He’d gotten it when he’d bent to lift me up the night my parents died, accidentally pressing his hand into a piece of glass on the road.
“Ben read the accident report and knew there was no glass where I found you. You’d pulled your dad away from the car. He guessed I’d been there earlier, and he was right. I cut myself when I was trying to get you out of the car.”
A memory of the accident that had killed my parents rose from a dark pocket of my mind, bobbing like a bottle adrift in the ocean.
… The sound of footsteps crunching on gravel. Knocking on glass. A tug on the door handle. “Hello? Hello?” And then a growl of pain: “Ahhh!…”
“You were there.”
He smiled sadly and nodded, pushing a strand of hair off my forehead. I squeezed my eyes shut.
“I don’t suppose it makes it any better, but it truly was an accident. I’d had far too much to drink. Like your dad, it turns out. He was going too fast to stop when I pulled out of the intersection. He overcorrected, and the car flipped off the embankment at the side of the road.”
“Why didn’t you get help?” A solitary tear rolled slowly down my cheek. “My dad could’ve lived.”
“I’m a doctor. You know the power of that responsibility. I’d have lost my license, and my calling is to help people. Think about it: if I’d turned myself in that night, I wouldn’t be here now to save Josh’s life. The end of what I did justified the means. It was clearly for the greater good: to make sure I could serve society with the medical skills I have. It wasn’t personal, I assure you.”
He stood, his knees cracking. He twisted side to side, as if working out the kinks in his lower back. Then he tightened his grasp on the knife, and I realized for the first time that he was wearing latex gloves. Tears of pain and grief and fury dripped down my face.
“This is your last chance, Emma. Tell me where the drugs are.”
“I don’t know,” I whispered. He was going to kill me no matter what.
He moved toward me, and I shrank away.
“No, wait!” I cried. “This—the poker chip!”
Dr. Palmer assessed me, curious.
“My pocket.” I motioned to my pants. “Can I…?”
He nodded, watching closely, his hand hovering over the gun tucked into his waistband as I slipped the chip from my pocket. Pain rocketed through my core at the movement.
“Remember… when I gave it to you?” My voice was thin in the icy air.
His eyes flickered as he reached for it. “I thought I lost it.”
I closed my palm. “Nate had it. He knew… about you. They all do. You won’t get away with this.”
His eyes darkened, fear flickering across his face. He snatched at the chip, but I tossed it a few feet away. It landed inside the dark stain left by Nate’s blood.
Dr. Palmer turned to pick it up. I reached behind me, my hand closing around the end of o
ne of the two-by-fours. Lurching to my feet, I swung it like a baseball bat into Dr. Palmer’s head.
His skull ricocheted off the wood, making a low, hollow thud. He crashed to the ground. The gun skittered out of his pants, across the room. I staggered to it, clutching my seeping wound with numb fingers. I expected him to come after me as I flailed for the gun with blood-soaked hands.
But he didn’t move.
He was breathing, but stone-cold unconscious.
Typically someone knocked out remains unconscious for a minute or so. I didn’t have much time. But I couldn’t seem to make myself move.
I stared, frozen, at Dr. Palmer. Was he right? Did the good he’d done helping Josh discount his responsibility for my parents’ deaths? What about all the people who were now addicted because of him? What about my father? He’d still be alive if Dr. Palmer had done the right thing. Would I trade my son for my father?
Fury opened in my veins, oozing through me, black and bilious. He was corrupt. Greedy. Arrogant.
He’d taken everything from me.
Maybe Nate had been right. Maybe how you got to your goal showed the sort of person you were. But I didn’t care.
I knelt next to Dr. Palmer. “You’re right,” I whispered. Just like him when he stood there and let my father die, I had nothing to feel sorry for now. “The end does justify the means.”
A rush of power, terrifying and immense, swept over me.
I wiped the gun down with my shirt and pushed it into Dr. Palmer’s limp hand. I wrapped his fingers around the cold trigger. I pressed the barrel to his temple.
And I pulled the trigger.
CHAPTER 47
7 MONTHS LATER
I FINISHED RECORDING NOTES on my Dictaphone, tidied the blood forms, called in a handful of prescription refill requests, sent an email requesting a chest X-ray. Once I’d finished, I closed my laptop and went to the medical staff office where Julia was writing up patient notes.
After news of Dr. Palmer’s involvement in the distribution of opioids got out, the Skamania Police Department had recommended the DA drop all charges against Julia in exchange for community service and time at a rehab center.
“Hey, Julia.” I sat next to her, trying not to wince. The knife wound in my side had been slow to heal and sometimes still pained me. But I was alive. I had to be grateful for that. “How are you feeling today?”
She smiled. “Really good, actually. My new trial drug is really helping.”
“Good, good. I’m heading off. I’ll see you at Josh’s birthday party tomorrow, right?”
“I wouldn’t miss it!”
I wandered through the hall, shutting doors and making sure everything was in order. It was quieter than normal for a Saturday.
“Bye, Marjorie!” I called. “Want me to lock up the supply closet?”
“Goddamn it!” Her bulk shifted in the leather chair as she stood. “People still can’t seem to remember.” She came along the hall and reached past me to lock the door before patting my shoulder. “Thanks, Dr. Sweeney. You enjoy your weekend with your boy.”
It was a balmy July day, the sun bright, the air clean and clear. Summer’s breath hovered gently on the breeze. The jagged mountains and sweeps of evergreen trees stood out against the cornflower-blue skies.
I got in my car slowly, grimacing in pain. I knew I was lucky. If Dr. Palmer had stabbed me just a fraction of an inch to one side, he’d likely have pierced my bowel, which would’ve led to sepsis and eventual death without treatment. Instead, my quick movement meant I’d been stabbed in the side, and he’d missed all my major organs. The cold temperatures had also helped slow my blood loss.
After I’d shot Dr. Palmer, I’d staggered to the drugs I’d hidden under a tree root and filled his pockets with the baggies of fentanyl. I used his phone to send a brief suicide text to Kia Sharpe, admitting everything.
The guilt was too much for him to bear.
Thank God for hills. And gravity. And adrenaline. They’d all worked to help me roll Dr. Palmer’s body down the incline between the warehouse and the river. I then hurled the gun into the rushing water. I still needed to get myself a new one.
A ruling of suicide was later confirmed by the coroner’s office.
After receiving Dr. Palmer’s suicide text, Kia and Lieutenant Dyson had concluded that he and Gabe had been partners in the town’s prescription drug ring. They’d found fentanyl and stacks of cash hidden at Dr. Palmer’s house, as well as DNA linking him to Santiago’s murder. Violeta’s scarf was found on Gabe’s body, and after he’d been named as a suspect in the opioid ring, his girlfriend turned in a backpack of cash and drugs that he’d hidden at the gas station.
I’d stayed home for a week after Dr. Palmer stabbed me. I’d left the wound open to drain, treating it with high doses of antibiotics, cleaning, and regular irrigation. And of course, I had a large supply of oxy at my disposal to manage the pain. I’d stashed the entire supply from the warehouse, as well as the cash from Ben, in a special pouch I’d created in Nate’s couch—the one he’d always insisted we couldn’t get rid of. Nobody would ever think to look inside the carcass of a dingy brown couch for anything.
I pulled out of the hospital parking lot and headed for Skamania State Park at the base of the waterfall. The vibrant rhododendrons along the road were a riot of colors, the brilliant purple lilacs and yellow irises and cheery-faced dahlias bursting into bloom.
Moira raised her hand in greeting as I crossed the parking lot to where she was sitting on a picnic bench. Josh was on the playground dangling from the monkey bars.
I winced as I sat down.
“Are you okay?” Her face creased with concern.
“I’m fine.” I forced a smile, absently touching the metal of the heartbeat necklace at my throat. “I think maybe I tore a muscle.”
“Well, please get yourself checked out. I can’t…” She swallowed wetly. “I can’t lose you too.”
Matt had passed away a few months back, and Moira was struggling under the double loss of her son and husband in just a few short months. She’d asked Josh and me to move in with her, and I was considering it. She didn’t want to be alone right now. Neither did I, to be honest.
“I’m not going anywhere, I promise.”
She hugged me, her fingers digging tightly into my back. I let her hold me, but didn’t return the hug. I wanted to; wanted to feel something. Anything. But these days I just felt frozen. I was starting to wonder about the coldness inside me. I’d murdered a man, yet I felt nothing. My heart had hardened to stone. A new person had formed inside me, forged from the devastated rubble of this new life.
“Mommy!” Josh shouted when he spotted me. He dropped to the ground and ran to me, throwing himself into my arms. I tried not to flinch at the impact of his body against mine. The pain was my punishment and my reward.
“Mo chuisle,” I whispered into Josh’s hair.
For a minute I felt that new person inside me soften, melted by the warmth of Josh’s love, the precious delight of his breath on my neck, the endless promise of his life, which I held in my arms. I closed my eyes, cherishing the feeling, enjoying the weight of his very alive body against mine.
The CAR T-cell therapy had literally worked a miracle on my boy. His hair had grown back. His long eyelashes left spidery shadows across his creamy skin, which was flushed, rosy with life. The endless loop of doctor appointments had ended, the smell of hospital was gone from his clothes. We could finally say the treatment had worked.
Josh was perfectly healthy now.
I tucked him under my arm. “You excited for your birthday tomorrow?”
It felt good to say it out loud. Your birthday. Josh was alive and had made it to another birthday. We’d suffered one of the greatest losses a family could suffer. The future I’d imagined with Nate was gone. But I’d promised to save Josh, and had.
My grief was a motivator of sorts. I was determined to make Nate proud, and looking at Josh now, I was sure
I had made him proud. Our son was still here, still surviving, still going forward. That meant something. It was a gift I wouldn’t waste.
Josh bobbed his head up and down, grinning. “I hope you got me a bike. Or a science set. Or a tarantula! Yeah, I want a tarantula!”
I gave an exaggerated shiver but laughed. The shiny red bike he’d been asking for since last year was sitting in Moira’s garage right now.
Josh’s face fell. “I want…” He looked at his hands, his chin quivering.
“What is it, sweetie? What do you want?”
He turned his face into my shirt, his words muffled. “I wish Daddy could come to my party.”
My throat closed. Moira’s white, dismayed face turned quickly away, but not before I saw the tears welling in her eyes. Grief in children, I’ve learned, is like a murky pond. The true depths are hidden from sight even as brief glimpses bubble to the surface.
Josh’s therapist had warned me it would take a while for him to process Nate’s death. But he was a survivor. Like me.
“Shall we go down to the river?” Moira suggested.
“You guys go ahead. I have a little paperwork to finish up,” I replied.
“I don’t wanna go without Mommy.” Josh thrust his jaw out stubbornly.
“Go with Grandma,” I urged him. “I’ll be down in just a few minutes.”
Moira took his hand, and I watched them walk away. After a moment, Josh sneaked a peek back at me. He smiled, just a small smile, the left corner of his mouth curving up just a little bit more than the right. With his floppy brown hair and bright-blue eyes and sunny smile, he suddenly looked so much like Nate it took my breath away. I missed him fiercely then, a hot ache squeezing through my middle.
Something moved in my peripheral vision, and when I turned I saw that a tiny black bird had landed on the picnic table. It stared at me, its beady eyes dark and judgmental.
I stared back, remembering the Native American story that Nate had told Josh before my world fell apart. The chief’s wife had thrown herself onto the rocks, sacrificing herself for the daughter she loved in order to save her life.
I’d sacrificed everything to save Josh.
Do No Harm Page 29