by Lisa Gardner
Sure enough, around the room, several pairs of arms began to rise up. Not Danielle’s, D.D. noticed. And not Karen’s. The nurse manager had abandoned the meditation. She was studying Lightfoot instead.
“Warmth,” he intoned. “Love. Light. Heat. Joy. I release all judgments. I understand I am responsible for all corporal actions and I forgive myself for my sins. I forgive others. I am a being of light. I call upon that light. I call upon the love in this room—” A sudden spasm crossed his face, peeling his lips back from his teeth. Lightfoot caught the grimace, soldiered on. “I seek the love of my friends, companions, coworkers—” His voice broke off again. Both shoulders twitched, his left arm bouncing up from his knee. Then his eyes popped up, and he winced sharply, abandoning all pretense as he brought up a hand to shield his face from the overhead lights.
The break in rhythm caught the attention of others. Danielle opened her eyes. Greg, too. They eyed Lightfoot uncertainly.
Karen was already on her feet, returning her wire-rimmed glasses to her face. “Andrew?” she asked as a fresh spasm shook his body.
D.D. pushed away from the wall, starting to understand that this was no longer business as usual.
Lightfoot raised his head toward the ceiling, shut his eyes, and bore down, as if fighting some kind of internal war.
“I call upon the LIGHT!” he boomed. “I am a being of LOVE. I am filled with JOY and PEACE and CONTENTMENT. I release negativity. I cast off all judgment. I feel the love of my friends and community. Their LOVE gives me the strength to PUSH the darkness from this building. There will be no NEGATIVITY. There will be no anger, no PAIN. We are united in the light, filling this space with LOVE, holding this space with LOVE. I call upon THE LIGHT, THE LIGHT, THE LIGH—”
His rising voice broke off. Both hands gripped his face. The next instant, the healer pitched forward, rolling off the edge of the table and flipping onto the floor, where his body convulsed wildly.
“The light, the light!” he screamed. “It’s burning my eyes, my eyes, my eyes!”
“Code blue!” Karen bellowed, sprinting toward the fallen man. “Call downstairs. We need a crash cart, stat!”
She was already on her knees beside Lightfoot, trying to secure his head in her hands as his body flailed and he beat at her with his hands.
“Bite stick!” Karen demanded, working to peel open one eyelid, check his vitals.
“Don’t touch me don’t touch me don’t touch. It burns….”
The staff sprang belatedly into action. The nurses, Danielle and Janet, made a beeline for medical supplies. Greg grabbed a phone, while the other MCs pushed back tables, cleared the area. Lightfoot’s neck and back arched, muscles coiling and uncoiling rigidly beneath the tan sheath of his skin. Karen finally got his eyelid open. His eye was not rolled back up in his head, as D.D. had expected. Instead, he peered directly at Karen, quite conscious.
“The light,” he moaned. She released his eyelid. He moaned again, this time in relief.
Danielle and Janet were back with supplies. Karen took a Popsicle stick and jammed it into Lightfoot’s mouth. He immediately tried to spit it out. “Don’t touch me!”
“Towel,” Karen ordered, rolling him onto his side. “Quick, over his eyes. Cecille, kill the overhead lights. We can work by the glow of the hallway bulbs.”
Cecille obeyed, darkening the common area as Ed raced down the hallway to grab a towel. The second the overhead lights winked out, Lightfoot seemed to relax.
“Hurts. Can’t stop,” he muttered. “Inside me. Feel it. Cold, cold, cold. Bitter … burns. Must fight. White light, white light, white light. Tired. So tired … Must find … the light.”
Ed returned with a stack of towels. They folded one and placed it over the top part of Lightfoot’s face, shielding his eyes, D.D. took a second towel and, with effort, managed to pry Lightfoot’s fingers from Karen’s wrist and wrest his hand onto a rolled towel.
“Talk to me, Andrew,” Karen demanded loudly. “Stay with us. Where do you feel the pain?”
“Legs … arms … back … body … muscles, hurt, hurt, hurt.” His body thrashed against the floor. “Too loud. Too bright. Stop, stop, stop, stop, stop….”
“The light hurts you?” Karen prodded.
“Burns … my eyes.”
“And noise?” D.D. spoke up.
“Ahhhhahhh,” he moaned, bringing up one hand to block his ears.
The doors burst open. Two medics bustled into the area, led by the security guard. They took one look at Lightfoot’s convulsing form and sprinted over to him.
“Condition?” the first man asked Karen.
“Started three minutes ago. Convulsions, light sensitivity, noise sensitivity,” Karen reported. “But conscious. Aware of his condition.”
“Pulse?”
“Two ten.”
The medic arched a brow. D.D. didn’t blame him. With that pulse rate, Lightfoot should be racing up Mount Everest.
“History of seizures?” the medic asked, trying to check vitals.
“Unknown,” Karen answered, just as Lightfoot said, “No. Not seizures. Spasms. Muscle … spasms …”
The medic glanced at Lightfoot’s towel-draped face, then back at Karen. She shrugged.
“The dark …” Lightfoot groaned. “I’m filled with the dark. So, so cold … it burns….”
“Hallucinating,” the medic muttered. He straightened, nodded to his partner. They grabbed a backboard and looked ready to get to work.
“Wait a minute,” D.D. called out. A case she’d read once. Lightfoot’s uncanny consciousness, even during what appeared to be a grand mal seizure. She strode over to Lightfoot’s table and sniffed his bottle of iced tea. Nothing. She touched her fingertip to the top edge, where a drop of moisture rested. She brought it cautiously to her mouth and, with a bolstering grimace, stuck out her tongue. It tasted …
Teaish. Grassy. Lemony. Then, beneath it all, a slightly bitter aftertaste.
“You need to get this tested immediately,” she informed the medic. “But I’m guessing strychnine.”
“Rat poison?” Greg spoke up from the hallway.
“In his drink?” Karen echoed, frowning. The staff looked at one another, then down at Lightfoot’s churning body.
“Symptoms fit.” She looked at the medic. “Hypersensitivity, muscle spasms, initial consciousness …”
“Yeah.” The medic nodded. “Now that you mention it … Well, we gotta motor, then, ’cause next on that list is respiratory failure. Come on, buddy. Hang in there with us. If you’re ever going to get poisoned, a hospital is the place to do it.”
With help from the MCs, they got Lightfoot’s body onto the gurney. Then they raced out of the unit for the elevator banks.
The elevator arrived with a ding. The doors opened, and Alex strode out, bearing a steaming tower of boxed pizzas. He looked at the medics, Lightfoot’s strapped-down body, and the shell-shocked staff, all staring at him.
“What happened to the healer?” he asked.
“That,” D.D. replied, “is an excellent question.”
Karen and her crew might be crack medics, but there was still a reason they paid D.D. the big bucks.
“Where did Lightfoot get the tea?” she demanded, the second the medics disappeared into the elevator.
“I don’t know. I think … I assume he brought it with him.” Karen looked at her staff. They milled about the half-lit common area, kicking at towels, staring at hastily rearranged furniture. Several were rubbing their arms, as if fighting a chill.
“Sure there’s no iced tea in the kitchenette?”
“No. We don’t stock it here.”
“Downstairs cafeteria?”
Karen shook her head uncertainly. Danielle piped up, “Andrew’s tea, the Koala brand, is one of those all-natural, all-organic, keep-the-planet-green products. I don’t think you can buy it around here.”
“Thank heavens for small favors,” D.D. muttered, as shutting down a hospital
cafeteria and calling poison control was not high on her list of things she wanted to do right now. “Lightfoot arrive with any stuff, maybe a lunchbox, briefcase?” D.D. had a fleeting image of a brown leather strap over Lightfoot’s shoulder when she and Alex had first spotted him by the elevators. “Maybe a manbag,” she mused. “I want it.”
Karen dutifully led D.D. into the Admin area, where Lightfoot had stowed a brown leather satchel. D.D. flipped it open to find a container of Greek yogurt and a bag of sunflower seeds. She took the food for testing, then returned to the common area, where she could see the staff eyeing one another nervously for imminent medical collapse.
“Anyone else have iced tea?” D.D. asked.
One by one, they shook their heads.
“Who’s eaten here tonight?”
Four staff members slowly raised their arms. D.D. noted that Greg and Danielle were not among them.
“What time?”
The MCs had started at seven p.m., taking a snack break between nine and nine-thirty.
“Good news,” D.D. informed them. “Strychnine is one of the fastest-acting poisons, with symptoms emerging within five minutes of ingestion, so if you’re vertical now, you’re probably going to be vertical later. Timeline fits what we saw tonight: Lightfoot opened his drink, took a few sips, started the meditation, drank a bit more, and I’d say about eight minutes into it …”
“Collapsed in full convulsion,” Karen filled in, her voice subdued. Everyone stared at the table that Lightfoot had been sitting on.
“Strychnine is odorless,” D.D. informed the anxious staff members, “but has a bitter taste. So if you run across anything that tastes funky, set it aside immediately. I’ll phone the lab, have them send someone over to test the water, as well as everything in the kitchen, but that’ll take some time. When are the kids due to eat again?”
“Not until breakfast,” Karen supplied, “though some of the kids need a middle-of-the-night snack.”
D.D. thought about it. “Stick to food or drink items that come from sealed packages. Snack-sized cereals, that sort of thing. As long as the seal hasn’t been broken, they should be okay. Make sense?”
Everyone nodded mutely.
“All right. Who saw Lightfoot with the iced tea?”
The one with the short-cropped hair raised her arm. Cecille. “Um, I was one of the first people to take a seat. Andrew wasn’t here yet, but the iced tea was already on the table, like he’d maybe just opened it, then went to get something. Or maybe he went to throw away the cap.”
“The cap!” D.D. agreed. She marched over to the trash can. Right on top, one white lid stamped Koala Iced Tea. D.D. snapped on gloves and fished it out. Metal, for sealing a glass bottle. Not the kind of container that could be easily tampered with—say, penetrated by a syringe. Nope. Cap came off. Poison went in.
Now, possibly, the product had been poisoned at the warehouse level, part of a massive terrorist act. Or possibly, Lightfoot’s barky little dog had plotted revenge and spiked her master’s tea on the home front.
But D.D. was willing to bet Lightfoot’s distinctive beverage took the hit while sitting exposed in the common area.
“How long was Lightfoot gone?” she asked Cecille.
The MC shrugged. “I’m not sure. Not long. A few minutes. Five minutes maybe. People were starting to gather. I wasn’t really paying attention.”
D.D. looked around the room. One by one, everyone dropped their gazes.
“I was with a kid,” Greg volunteered softly. He glanced at Danielle. “She was with me. We came late.”
Establishing alibis. D.D. liked it. And they thought the milieu of the unit had been compromised before.
“I don’t understand,” Karen spoke up. “Why would someone poison Andrew? I mean, this whole thing … This is crazy.”
“Good question.” D.D. considered it. “Maybe because you brought him here to fix the unit. Calm it down. Following that logic, maybe someone doesn’t want the unit calmed down. That person wants you all jumpy and edgy and chasing after exploding kids. Lightfoot’s poisoned. You’re all freaked-out as hell. Mission accomplished.”
Karen gaped at her. “That’s insane.”
“Twelve dead and one injured. All connected with this ward. You’re right—can’t get much more insane than that.”
“Stop it! We are not those kind of people—”
“What kind of people?” D.D. asked with interest.
“Murderers. Dr. Deaths or Angels of Doom.”
“Medical caretakers who convince themselves that their patients—i.e., their troubled young charges—would be better off dead?” D.D. volunteered helpfully.
Karen glared at her. “Myself, my staff, we are committed to healing children. Not hurting them.”
“People change.”
“No!” Karen blazed. “You don’t get it. This is a pediatric psych ward. We work as tightly together as any trauma team. And we succeed precisely because we know one another that well, we believe in one another that much. I’d trust anyone here to hand me a drink right now and I would down it without hesitation.”
D.D. waited to see if anyone would take Karen up on that offer. No one moved.
“Maybe that just proves you’re the guilty party,” D.D. said.
“I was the first to help him.”
“Maybe because you already knew something bad was going to happen.”
“How dare you! I’m a nurse—”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” D.D. interrupted. “So you’ve said. Fact remains, someone drugged Lightfoot’s iced tea, and I’m guessing that someone is standing right here, unless you believe the unit’s negative energy suddenly grew a pair of hands.”
No one said a word, which D.D. took as a sign of agreement. She continued briskly: “Now, seems to me, problems here are growing bigger, not smaller. Meaning, it’s time for my team to take a crack at your team, and meaning no one’s allowed off this floor until personally cleared by a member of my squad. No trips to the cafeteria. No five-minute break to catch a smoke. Are we clear? Let’s get this party started. And candidate number one will be …” D.D. glanced around the common area, spotting her target of choice: “Gym Coach, follow me.”
CHAPTER
THIRTY-FOUR
Greg didn’t look happy. The big guy trailed down the hallway toward the BPD’s makeshift command center, his gaze glued to the carpet, his high-top sneakers dragging. It made D.D. feel warm and fuzzy all over. Always nice to know she wasn’t losing her touch.
Inside the classroom, Alex had set up the pizzas across one table. The scent of melted cheese, fresh-baked dough, and spicy pepperoni made D.D.’s stomach growl. There was probably something ironic about stuffing one’s face right after watching a grown man get poisoned, but D.D. was starving. Alex and several of the other guys had already dug in, munching away. They looked up with interest as D.D. closed the door behind her and Greg then headed straight for the pizza. She found the fully loaded pie and slid two cheesy slices onto a paper plate.
“Want some?” she asked Greg.
He shook his head.
“Soda, water, iced tea?”
He gave her a look. “No. Thank you.”
“I bet the food’s safer in here than out there,” she told him.
“I’m with Karen on this one,” he answered stiffly.
“Loyal to the Corps?”
“You wouldn’t understand.”
“’Course not. Cops. Hell, what could we possibly know about the importance of teamwork?”
The classroom door opened. Danielle walked in.
“Not your turn, chickadee,” D.D. informed her, through a mouthful of pizza. “Go back and play with your other friends.”
“Can’t,” Danielle said. “I’m on leave, right? Can’t stay out there, so Karen sent me in here.”
“Wanna talk? Fine. Alex will take you next door. Alex.” D.D. gestured to him, just as Danielle said:
“Nope.”
“Yes.�
�
“Nope.”
D.D. frowned, set down her paper plate, and strode over to Danielle. She stood right in the nurse’s face. Heightwise, D.D. had only an inch on the woman, but she knew how to use it. “This is a private party. Out.”
“No.”
“What the fuck is your problem?”
The nurse shifted edgily. “You. Him.” Danielle jerked her head toward Greg. “The whole fucking unit. You think you need answers? I need them even more. Meaning Greg has got to start talking.”
D.D. snapped around to glare at Greg. “Do you know what she means?”
He shook his head.
“Yes you do,” Danielle said, eyes still on D.D. “I heard you with the boy. You know Evan. From off the unit. How can that be, Greg? How do you know him, and why didn’t you tell us?”
“Danielle—”
“For God’s sake!” Danielle exploded. “Two families are dead, Greg. And Lucy. Plus, now Lightfoot’s hospitalized. How many more, Greg? Something’s terribly wrong. Someone’s hurting our kids. You need to start talking. How do you know Evan?”
D.D. stuck her hands on her hips. “Might as well confess now, buddy boy. Because none of us are letting you out of this room until you do.”
Greg remained standing there, lips thinned, face unreadable. He stared at Danielle. She stared back at him.
“I knew the families,” Greg said abruptly. “All of them. Outside of the unit. I’m the missing link.”
“I started respite work couple of years ago,” Greg was saying five minutes later. He was seated at the table, Danielle next to him, D.D. and Alex across from him. Despite his earlier refusal, he and Danielle were now both armed with cans of soda, which they had opened themselves and tasted carefully.
“At first, I worked for just one family. I’d met them here; their four-year-old daughter suffered from schizophrenia. They were talking about how hard it was to get a break, to have a date night, go for a walk, buy groceries. Neither of their families were equipped to handle Maria, and there was a waiting list for trained help. I felt bad, especially for the mom. You could tell she was losing it. So I offered to watch Maria while the parents had a night out.