Her Lawman on Call

by Marie Ferrarella

  “But I’m not free, Detective.” She let the remark sink in, then decided that she’d had enough fun and explained what she really meant. “I’m expensive. At least, that’s what my more well-off patients seem to think. And they’re right,” she confided as she worked another stitch through his flesh. “That way, I can treat and buy medication for my patients who can’t afford to pay for any treatment.”

  She pressed her lips together as she continued stitching up the wound. It went deeper than she’d first thought. Even so, the detective was as immovable as a rock. The only thing that gave him away was the involuntary twitch of his muscles. She was very aware of his muscles. It was enough to take her breath away if she wasn’t careful, she reproached herself. He needed a doctor right now, not a fan.

  She raised her eyes from her work for a split second to look at him. “I’m sorry about this.”

  Tony made a dismissive noise. “Not exactly your fault.”

  Now there he was wrong. “But it is. I brought in that thief’s girlfriend.” The look in his eyes told her he wanted details. So, details he was going to get. It was the least she could do. “I found Carol in the alley right behind the hospital. She was wound up into a ball and grunting. I thought she couldn’t make it into PM, you know, labor pains knocking her feet right out from under her, that kind of thing,” she explained, all the while working the needle back and forth through his flesh, sewing up first one layer of skin, then the next. “It turned out that she couldn’t afford to stay at the hospital, but she wanted to be close by in case the baby was born in some sort of distress.” Sasha sighed. “At least she had the presence of mind for that.”

  “What were you doing in the alley?” he wanted to know.

  “Taking a shortcut. My office is in the building right across the street,” she reminded him. “The back entrance faces the alley. Anyway, I brought Carol in and this boyfriend—Duane—insisted on coming along. As soon as I had her and the baby wheeled into recovery, he ran off to raid the supply room.”

  “How’d he get a knife past the security check?” he wanted to know.

  Tony forced himself to watch as she worked. The stitches were small, precise, even. Like a seamstress, he thought. Lucky for him. Looks had never meant much to him but if he had a choice between looking like Frankenstein and not, he’d choose not.

  “That wasn’t a knife. That was a scalpel. He must have lifted it from the delivery room when we weren’t looking.” She pressed her lips together, aware that he was observing her every move. “Anyway, I owe you.”

  If anything, she was guilty of having a heart. He didn’t see that as a punishable offense. Just an unusual one.

  “Okay,” he allowed, his voice rumbling along her consciousness, “you pick up the tab for dinner.”

  “Done,” she declared, pulling through the last stitch. She raised her eyes to his. “And done,” she repeated, this time more softly, her answer intended as a reply to his suggestion.

  Dinner. He was asking her out. Something shimmied through her stomach. It took effort not to place her hand over it. It took further effort not to just turn tail and run from the room, the invitation and the man.

  But then, she wouldn’t have been Sasha Pulaski, or her father’s daughter, so she stayed where she was. And smiled.

  Chapter 9

  Dinner wound up being postponed.

  Not intentionally, but the event was unceremoniously pushed to the rear of Tony’s agenda just as he was about to leave the precinct. His plan was to go home, change and then pick the doctor up at her apartment. He had the address tucked into his shirt pocket.

  An incoming call changed all that. Directed to Homicide, the call was rerouted to his desk.

  “Gonna get that?” he heard Henderson ask as he stared accusingly at the telephone.

  “Yeah,” Tony bit off, annoyed. He should have left five minutes ago, he told himself. Yanking up the receiver, he pressed it against his ear. “Santini.”

  He heard the high-pitched voice of the dispatcher say, “There’s been another homicide, Detective.”

  There was always another homicide in New York City. That was one of the detractions about living in an overpopulated big city, he thought.

  “Have someone else catch it,” he’d snapped, his voice overlapping that of the dispatcher’s. The woman was rattling off the location where the body had been found. “There’re eight other homicide detectives in the squad.”

  But no apology, no promise of taking her call elsewhere was forthcoming. “Thought you were handling the Hospital Stalker,” the woman said.

  He hated the name the press had affixed to the killer. It made it seem as if the police had no control over this man.

  Well, did they? Tony forced himself to focus on what the dispatcher was saying.

  “You just said the body was found in an office across town,” he pointed out.

  “It was,” the woman replied. Then, before he could say anything, she added, “The patrolman who called it in said that the dead man—a doctor—had the same note in his hand.”

  A doctor. So the killer finally got it right, he thought cynically.

  “Give me the address again,” Tony instructed. Grabbing the first available piece of paper on his desk, he jotted down the address the woman was reciting. Finished, he terminated the call without bothering with any further exchange. “Henderson,” he called over to his partner. “We’re up.” He heard the man sigh deeply as he lumbered up to his feet. Tony paused and looked at him. “You got somewhere to go?”

  Henderson slipped on his hound’s-tooth jacket. “Only home.” It was obvious that home was where he wanted to be. “Big boxing match on pay-TV tonight.”

  Tony looked at him incredulously as he waited for the big man to reach him. “You pay to watch two guys beat each other’s brains out? Don’t you get enough of that here?”

  They walked out into the hall together, and then down the corridor to the elevator. “Yeah, but on TV, I don’t have to figure out who done it. I already know.” He looked at Tony as they got into the elevator. The car had just been standing there, as if it knew it was going to be pressed into service. Henderson made the logical assumption. “Did someone find another body in the hospital?”

  Tony shook his head. The elevator made its way down to the first floor without stopping. “No, this time it’s across town. And the victim’s a doctor.”

  They weren’t called down for every murder. That was why the precinct had as large a squad as it did. “Then how—?”

  Tony already knew what Henderson was going to ask. “The patrolman said he found a note.”

  “Same one?” Henderson asked grimly.

  “Same one.”

  The frown on the man’s beefy lips deepened. “Bastard’s spreading out.”

  “Looks like,” Tony agreed.

  The elevator doors opened and they got out. Darkness wound its fingers around the world outside. And within.

  The crime scene had been disturbed, Tony noted.

  Despite the best efforts of the inexperienced patrolman who had responded to the initial 911 call, the late doctor’s wife had sunk down to the floor, wrapped her arms around the dead man and held him to her. She’d been holding him for the last forty-five minutes.

  “What is she doing here?” Tony wanted to know. He put the question to Officer Caldwell. Caldwell looked barely old enough to shave.

  “The guy who found him called her. It’s a partnership,” Officer Caldwell offered. “Seven of them altogether. The Greater Anesthesiologists of New York.” The explanation was unnecessary, since that was what it said on the door. “She’s his wife,” Caldwell added helplessly.

  The woman was sobbing now as she rocked to and fro. Her arms were locked in a death grip around her husband. There was blood smeared on her coat, her black slacks and her sweater.

  The crime scene investigators were going to have a fit, Tony thought. Making his way over to her, he politely addressed the woman.

/>   “Ma’am, I need you to get up.” She gave no indication that she heard him or was even aware of his presence. Tony tried again. “Ma’am?”

  Trapped in a world whose walls were comprised of grief, the slain physician’s wife didn’t seem to hear him. For the time being, since the damage was already done, Tony backed away, allowing her to hold onto her husband for a while longer.

  He looked over toward a very distraught man in his mid to late thirties. The man’s haircut and suit alone would have set him back three months’ salary, Tony mused as he crossed to him.

  “You were the one who found him?” Tony asked.

  The physician nodded. “Dr. Tyler Harris,” he said numbly.

  The name seemed to be free-floating in space. “Is that your name or his?”

  The doctor blinked, as if that helped him process the question. It took a moment for him to respond. “His. Mine’s Rothenberg. Julian,” he added as an afterthought, then said his whole name. “Dr. Julian Rothenberg. I just looked in to say good night to Ty as I was leaving and there he was.” He gestured haplessly toward the body. “Like that.”

  Someone had to have seen or heard something, Tony thought. “Did you see anyone leave the office?”

  But Rothenberg shook his head. “I was busy in the back.” He paused, then said, “Maybe Myra noticed someone…”

  “Myra?” Henderson asked. Until now, Tony’s partner had merely stood in his shadow, listening. Looking around. Tony knew the older detective was processing the scene in his own way.

  “Our receptionist,” Rothenberg clarified. “Oh, wait, Myra took off after lunch.”

  Tony exchanged looks with Henderson. “In the middle of the day?” That seemed a little unusual to him. Was it just a coincidence, or had Myra possibly been notified that something was going down? “Anyone covering for her?”

  The doctor shook his head. “Myra does the billing, mostly and keeps tabs on the surgeries being scheduled. We’re not those kind of doctors.”

  It sounded like an odd thing to say. “What kind?” Henderson wanted to know.

  “The kind who see patients in our office. We see them in the hospital, the day of the surgery. And we usually call the night before to go over things with them,” he added, then explained, “but no one ever comes to the office.”

  Tony looked around. He was no expert, but he knew expensive when he saw it. “Pretty elaborate decorating for a place no one ever sees.”

  “We see it,” Dr. Rothenberg pointed out. There was just enough snobbery in his voice to be off-putting.

  “Yeah, right,” Tony muttered under his breath. He took out his notepad and flipped to an empty page. “What hospital was Dr. Harris with?”

  “The group is affiliated with several hospitals,” Rothenberg told him. When Tony continued to look at him expectantly, the doctor rattled off the names of the hospitals.

  None of them were Patience Memorial.

  Where was the connection? Tony wondered. Was there a connection or just some psycho running around, terrorizing people? “Did Harris ever freelance? Fill in for another anesthesiologist?” Tony asked.

  Rothenberg didn’t look as if he was sure what he was being asked. “We cover for each other if some kind of emergency arises, but those are the only hospitals we’re affiliated with. Why?” And then genuine fear contoured his features. “Does this have anything to do with the Hospital Stalker?”

  Tony didn’t answer him directly. Instead, he said, “The other three victims were associated with Patience Memorial Hospital.”

  Rothenberg’s head bobbed up and down, as if everything was making perfect sense to him. “Tyler’s last group was associated with that hospital.”

  “Last group?” Tony repeated.

  On firmer ground, Rothenberg looked a shade more confident again. “Doctors recruit just like everyone else, Detective. As an anesthesiologist, Tyler had an excellent record. Better than most. We made him an offer he couldn’t refuse.”

  “Looks like the killer did, too,” Tony commented more to Henderson than to Rothenberg as he looked down at the dead man.

  Sasha tossed the magazine she’d restlessly been paging through for the last twenty minutes onto the coffee table. If pressed, she wouldn’t have been able to repeat a single thing she’d read.

  Pretty bad for a woman with a photographic memory, she thought ruefully.

  She resisted looking at the clock again. It had to be approaching ten o’clock, or perhaps even later. That would make Santini three hours late. If he were coming, which, it seemed, he wasn’t.

  The detective had told her that he would be at her apartment by seven. He hadn’t come, hadn’t called. Obviously, she’d slipped his mind. Or maybe he’d thought better of his invitation.

  Sasha frowned, telling herself not to make a big deal out of it. But she’d never been stood up before, she thought.

  It didn’t matter, she silently insisted, except that she had been looking forward to going out to some place different for a change. These days, “going out” meant going back home to Queens, to the house where she’d grown up, to spend time with her parents and younger sisters. That is, if Tatania and Marja were home. These days, that usually wasn’t the case. Tatania was an intern. Asserting her independence, she’d chosen a hospital that wasn’t Patience Memorial and right now, Sasha was secretly glad that Tatania was somewhere else. As for Marja, the youngest of the Pulaski sisters, she was in her last year of medical school. Free time for either of them was rare.

  The apartment was too quiet, Sasha thought. So quiet she could swear she could hear the paint aging on the walls. Ordinarily, one or both of her other sisters were here, barring some last-minute emergency at the hospital. But Natalya had gone off with a couple of friends to spend a hard-earned weekend in Atlantic City and Kady, well God only knew what Kady was doing. The most rebellious sister of the group, Kady liked to come and go as she pleased “without having to punch a clock,” as she put it. The remark was a blatant reference to all those times as teenagers when they’d had to account for themselves to their father.

  It wasn’t so much that Josef Pulaski was unreasonably strict, he just worried about them. As a policeman, he’d been privy to the lowest forms of humanity and more than anything, he wanted to keep his wife and daughters safe from that world.

  It was a sweet sentiment, she thought. Confining, but nonetheless a sweet sentiment.

  Sasha blew out a breath, looking around for the umpteenth time. Here she was, with the apartment all to herself and nothing to do.

  She supposed it was better this way. If the detective had taken her out, he might have insisted on walking her back home. Since it was empty, she might have been tempted to ask him in….

  Tempted, now there was a word she hadn’t used in a long time, Sasha thought. That was because she hadn’t felt that way in a long time.

  Tempted.

  She hadn’t been tempted by anyone or anything since Adam had been killed. Hadn’t felt anything since he’d been killed. Nothing except for a sense of duty.

  Until now.

  Not now, she insisted silently.

  Rotating her neck from side to side, she rose from the sofa. As she did, she slanted a glance at the clock above the TV monitor. It was past ten. Maybe what she should do was go to bed before one of those babies she was scheduled to bring into the world in the next few weeks decided to pop early. God knew she was always complaining about never getting enough sleep. Now was her chance to catch up.

  It was as good a plan as any.

  Sasha switched off the light in the living room and reduced the lamp closest to the hallway down to its lowest setting. That way, the small foyer would have some illumination in case Kady came home before dawn.

  She was on her way to her bedroom when she heard the doorbell ring.

  Instantly, every muscle in her body tightened. Thoughts of those two murdered nurses, not to mention poor Jorge, were never all that far from her thoughts. She stared at the front do
or.

  The killer hasn’t changed his MO, Sash. He’s not going from door to door ringing doorbells like some demonic trick-or-treater, she upbraided herself.

  Nonetheless, she made no effort to cross to the foyer.

  When the doorbell rang again, Sasha was forced to abandon the idea that if she simply ignored the person, whoever was ringing her doorbell would just go away.

  It was probably just one of her sisters’ boyfriends, looking for them, Sasha reasoned. Squaring her shoulders, she approached the door.

  “Who is it?”

  There was a pause, as if the person on the other side of the door didn’t know what to call himself.

  The murderer?

  A chill raced down her spine. Deciding that it was better to be safe than sorry, Sasha pulled out the cell phone she kept in her pocket at all times and quickly pressed the buttons that would connect her to Santini. The detective had picked a hell of a time to stand her up, she thought, annoyed.

  The second she pressed Send, Sasha heard a phone ringing somewhere in the hallway outside her apartment. With the cell phone still against her ear, she looked through the peephole. And saw the man she was calling standing on the other side of her door.

  “Detective?”

  With one hand braced against the side of the peephole, Tony leaned against the door. “Look, I know it’s late, but could you open up the door, Sasha?”

  Sasha. She suddenly realized that in all the exchanges they’d had, Santini had never called her by her given name before. It kind of rumbled from his mouth, she thought, amused despite the fact that she knew she was supposed to be really annoyed.

  She slipped her cell phone back in her pocket. Flipping open the lock, she removed the chain and then opened the door.

  “Someone steal your watch, Detective?” she asked politely as she stepped back.

  Tony walked in, feeling awkward. Knowing he’d only feel more awkward if he’d skipped coming here and gone directly home from the crime scene.

  He held up his left hand, allowing her to glimpse the watch that was strapped to his wrist. The watch that he only removed when he showered.