around ten, so they’ll be kicking her out of Dad’s room soon. She’ll probably sleep there though. She usually does.”
“What’s your dad’s prognosis?”
“Actually, that’s taken a turn for the better. They think he’s past the worst of it.”
“That’s great news,” said Michelle.
Eddie swallowed some of his drink. “He’s got to make it. He’s just got to.” He looked at each of them. “I don’t know if Mom could survive his dying. And while death awaits us all, I just don’t see him riding off into the sunset right now.” He looked down, embarrassed. “Sorry, too many gins and I start sounding pretty cliché-ish. Probably a reason why drinking alone with your problems is never a good idea.”
“Speaking of drinking alone, where’s Dorothea?” asked Michelle.
“At some function,” said Eddie wearily. He hastily added, “A Realtor has to do all that crap. But you can’t argue with her success.”
“True, Dorothea has been very successful,” said King quietly.
Eddie raised his glass. “To Dorothea, the world’s greatest real estate agent.”
Michelle and King looked at each other uncomfortably.
Eddie lowered his drink. “Look, she has her thing and I have mine. There’s a certain balance to that.”
“Do you have any children?” asked Michelle.
“Dorothea never wanted kids, so that pretty much settled that.” Eddie shrugged. “Who knows, maybe I didn’t want them either. I probably would’ve been a lousy dad.”
Michelle said, “You could have taught your kids to paint, ride horses, maybe they would’ve gotten into reenactments too.”
“And you still could have kids,” added King.
“To do that, I’d have to get another wife,” said Eddie with a resigned smile, “and I’m not sure I have the energy. Besides, Battles aren’t supposed to divorce. It’s unseemly. Hell, if Dorothea didn’t kill me, my mother probably would.”
“Well, it’s your life,” commented Michelle.
He looked at her strangely. “You’d think so, wouldn’t you?” He finished his drink and said, “So I heard on the news that they’ve called in the big guns to help.”
“Including your old friend Chip Bailey.”
“I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for him.”
“I’m sure your parents were really grateful to him.”
“Oh, yeah. My father offered him a position as head of security in one of his companies. Big bucks.”
“I didn’t know that,” said King. “But he obviously didn’t take it.”
“No. I guess he liked being a cop.” Eddie tapped his spoon against his fork. “I remember when I was a kid and this area was nothing but hills and woods. It was great. We never worried about anything happening.”
“And now?” asked Michelle.
“And now people are getting killed in their homes, left in the woods, shotgunned in their cars. If I ever did have a family, I don’t think I’d do it here.”
“Well, I guess you could live anywhere,” said King.
“I’m not sure my mother would be very happy about that.”
“Again, it’s your life, Eddie, right?” said Michelle.
This time Eddie Battle didn’t bother to answer her.
CHAPTER
28
WHILE KYLE MONTGOMERY
was committing his felony and Eddie, King and Michelle were in the bar, Bobby Battle lay in his hospital bed under a mass of IV lines. Remmy Battle sat next to him, her right hand clasped inside her husband’s still, pale one.
Remmy’s eyes were on the array of monitors that vividly detailed the slim grasp her husband had on life. He’d had a minor setback and gone back on the ventilator machine, and it emitted its unnervingly high-pitched screech whenever Bobby’s breathing veered off course. Remmy’s own breathing rose and fell erratically with the squawks of the infernal contraption.
The nurse walked in. “Hello, Mrs. Battle, everything all right?”
“No! He doesn’t know me,” she snapped back. “He doesn’t know anyone.”
“But he’s getting stronger, the doctors said so. It’ll just take time. His vitals are much better. Even though he’s back on the ventilator, things are looking up, they really are.”
Remmy’s tone changed. “I thank you for telling me that. I really do, honey.” She looked down at the large man in the bed.
The nurse smiled and then seemed uncomfortable. “Mrs. Battle,” she began in a deferential tone undoubtedly reserved for those fortunate few who had their names on buildings.
“I know,” Remmy said quietly.
“Are you going to sleep here tonight?” the nurse asked. “If so, I’ll get your bed made up.”
“Not tonight. I’ll be back in the morning. But thank you.”
Remmy rose and left. The nurse made a quick check on her patient and then exited the room a few minutes later.
Battle was the only patient on this short hallway that was otherwise largely taken up with storage rooms. The rest of the unit’s ten beds emptied out onto a central area across from the nurse’s station. Remmy Battle had demanded this particular room for her husband because it allowed for more privacy. There was also a rear entrance at the end of this hall that enabled her, with a special access code, to come and go without having to pass by a large number of rooms, nurses and prying glances. The room that she sometimes slept in was down this hall from her husband.
It was a few minutes after ten, and this part of the hospital, isolated from the rest, was undergoing the nightly shift change of personnel. The nurse attending Battle would spend the next forty-five minutes in the staff room with her replacement, going over the current status of the patients under her supervision as well as pertinent medication and physician instructions.
Each patient room in this unit was monitored by camera, with the live feed going to the unit’s central nurse’s station. The television monitors at the nurse’s station were supposed to be watched constantly, although during shift change this procedure was not observed for about twenty minutes as the nurses, overworked and stretched to their limits, struggled to cram an hour’s worth of work into a third of that time. However, the machinery helping keep the patients alive in each of the rooms had warning devices that would immediately alert the staff to any drastic changes in condition.
Shortly after Remmy had left, a person came in the same rear entrance that Remmy had passed through minutes earlier. Dressed in scrubs and white hospital coat with a protective mask covering the lower part of the face, and looking very much a part of the hospital world, this individual passed by the door of Bobby Battle’s room, glanced inside and saw that it was empty except for the patient. A quick peek around the corner showed that the nurse’s station was unattended. The intruder entered Battle’s room and closed the door.
Wasting no time, the person slightly moved the camera bolted to the wall across from the bed such that the live feed wouldn’t show the area to the left of the bed. Then the masked figure hurried across to the IV stand next to the bed, removed the hypodermic needle from a coat pocket and stabbed one of the medication bags above the fluid line with the needle, shooting the entire contents of the hypo into it. The person glanced once at Battle lying there, features peaceful, even with a tube down his throat. The intruder picked up his hand, placed the wristwatch on it and set it to five. Finally, the person pulled the object from another coat pocket and laid it carefully on Battle’s chest.
It was a single white bird’s feather.
Moments later the person had shot out the rear entrance, clambered down the stairs, slipped out into the parking lot and climbed in a car. The vehicle sped from the hospital.
The driver had a letter to write and mail.
Barely ten minutes after the car had driven off, a warning bell sounded on one of the machines in Bobby Battle’s room, followed by another. Within seconds all were screaming their collective and ominous warnings.
&nb
sp; The nurses rushed en masse to the room. A minute later a code blue was broadcast over the P.A., and a highly experienced medical crash team dashed into the room. It was all for naught. At 10:23 P.M. Robert E. Lee Battle was pronounced dead.
CHAPTER
29
AT FIRST IT WAS ASSUMED
that Battle had simply succumbed to the aftereffects of his stroke. The white feather left on his chest by his killer had fallen to the floor unnoticed as the medical team attempted to resuscitate him. When the feather was later discovered by a hospital technician, he placed it on the table next to the dead man’s bed, perhaps assuming it might have come from a pillow. The watch the killer had placed on Battle’s wrist was covered under IV lines and also obscured by Battle’s ID and medication wristbands. An anguished and angry Remmy Battle came and went and didn’t take note of the watch or the feather. It wasn’t until a nurse called into question the feather that people began to wonder. It hadn’t come from a hospital pillow, since they didn’t contain feathers. In addition, the swift and unanticipated change in Battle’s condition was puzzling and certainly not above scrutiny.
However, it wasn’t until around three in the morning, when they were about to move Battle’s body to the hospital morgue, that the watch was finally observed on the dead man’s wrist, prompting a much closer examination of the body and subsequently the IV bags. That’s when the attending physician saw the puncture in the bag where the hypodermic had plunged through.
“Dear God,” was all he could manage to say.
Todd Williams was roused from his bed, and on the way in he called King, who in turn called Michelle. All three arrived at the hospital at about the same time. They were surprised to see Chip Bailey there. Williams quickly introduced King and Michelle to the FBI agent.
“I was staying at a local motel, had my police scanner on,” Bailey explained. “Damn, Todd, you must have your whole force here at the hospital.”
“This is Bobby Battle,” Williams shot back. “A leading citizen of the area.”
King silently finished the man’s unspoken thought. And now you’re going to receive the full wrath of the widow.
The hospital personnel escorted them to Battle’s room. The dead man was lying there with the IV lines still in him and the ventilator tube down his throat, although all the life support machines and monitors had been turned off, their squawks and digital readouts no longer needed. Michelle found herself constantly looking over at Battle, someone she’d heard much about but had never met. For some reason, and not simply the manner of his death, he seemed as fascinating dead as he had been in life.
The head nurse and attending physician gave a brief overview of what they’d discovered regarding the feather, watch and the hole in the IV bag.
“This is all highly unusual,” said the doctor in the understatement of the year.
“We were pretty sure it didn’t happen every night,” King said.
Williams examined the watch. “Not a Zodiac,” he said quietly to Michelle and King. “But it’s set to exactly five and the stem is pulled out.”
When Chip Bailey was shown the bird feather by Todd Williams, the agent’s reaction was palpable, but he said nothing until the doctor and nurse had left the room.
“Mary Martin Speck,” he told them when they were alone. “A nurse; she was nicknamed Florence Nightinghell. The lady killed twenty-three patients in six states over a ten-year period. Speck’s currently serving a life sentence in a fed penitentiary in Georgia. Her calling card was a white bird’s feather; she claimed she was doing the Lord’s work.”
“So we can expect another letter,” said King.
“We haven’t even had time to get the one on Hinson,” complained Williams. “Why Bobby Battle? Why would the killer want to add him to the list? It was damn risky, coming in here like this.”
However, as they quickly learned after consulting once more with the head nurse, coming in the rear door was not as difficult as they’d originally thought. The code was a simple one, 4-3-2-1, and hadn’t been changed in years. There were numerous people in the hospital who knew it and quite probably had let others know.
“Do we have any idea of what was shot into the IV bag?” asked Michelle.
“The lab will analyze and run tox on the contents,” said Williams. “Luckily, somebody had sharp eyes and discovered the hole in the bag before everything was taken down and discarded.”
“Where’s Sylvia?” asked King.
Williams shook his head. “Home sick as a dog. She finished up Hinson last night, caught a bug and is right now throwing up into the toilet. At least that’s what she planned to do when I hung up. She’ll be here as soon as she can.”
Bailey spoke up. “The FBI too. This is the fifth connected death, at least that we know of. We’re going to take a more active presence, Todd. Sorry.”
“Then maybe you can talk to Remmy. When that woman finds out about this, she’s going to have a piece of my hide.”
King said, “I wouldn’t do that until we receive a letter from the killer. The presence of the watch and feather makes it seem certain Bobby was another victim, but we need to be absolutely sure before we open that can of worms with Remmy.”
“Good point,” agreed Bailey.
“Were there any items missing from Bobby’s room?” asked Michelle. “The guy we’re looking for took something from all the other victims.”
“We really won’t know for sure until we talk to Remmy,” said Williams. “Now I want to nail down the chain of events.” He stepped out for a moment and returned once more with the attending physician and head nurse.
“Can you run over the timeline again for us?” Williams asked.
“Yes, sir,” the nurse answered. “Mrs. Battle was here from four until right around ten. She was in the room the whole time. Mr. Battle was alive and doing fine at a few minutes after ten when his nurse last checked him. There were no other visitors during that time.”
“How about before Mrs. Battle got here?” asked Michelle.
“His daughter, Savannah, came and stayed for a while early in the afternoon. I don’t know the exact times. And also Dorothea Battle came in after that, say around two-thirty.”
“Did they come through the rear entrance?” asked Bailey.
“Savannah did, Dorothea Battle came in the front,” answered the nurse.
“We’ll need exact times on those visits,” Williams told them.
“Fine, we’ll get them,” said the doctor stiffly. “Now, can you excuse me? I have other patients to attend to.” The man was surely contemplating the lawsuit that was heading right at his and the hospital’s wallets, thought King.
“Hope you have better luck with them,” fired back Williams, who’d obviously read the same message in the man’s tone.
After he’d left, Williams continued questioning the nurse. “So at ten-fifteen Battle’s condition changed.”
The nurse nodded. “He went into cardiac arrest. He was flatlined when the first nurse arrived. The crash team tried to resuscitate but was unsuccessful.”
King said, “So in the ten or so minutes between the nurse’s checking him and his flatlining, the killer struck and the poison, if that’s what we’re looking at here, took effect.”
“Looks that way,” agreed Bailey.
“I noticed that the room has a video camera,” said King.
“They all do. That way we can monitor all the patients from the nurse’s station.”
“But no one saw anyone else come in the room after Mrs. Battle left?”
The nurse looked nervous. “Sometimes the nurse’s station isn’t manned.”
“Like during shift change?” said King.
“Yes. Now, if someone did come in after Mrs. Battle left, they had to come through the rear door, or else someone would have seen them.”
“Understood,” answered King.
“Pretty ballsy to do it with people all over the place,” commented Williams.
“Well, if someone were going to try something like that,” said the nurse, “they picked the right time to do it.”
“Yes, they certainly did,” said King.
As King and Michelle were leaving the unit, King stopped at the nurse’s station.
“Mind if I take a look?” he asked the head nurse.
He went behind the large console and studied the live video feeds appearing on the monitors. “These aren’t on tape, are they?” he asked.
“No. It’s not for security, just for the welfare of the patients.”
“Well, you might want to rethink that philosophy.”
“What was that about?” Michelle asked after they’d left the hospital unit.
“It occurred to me that someone familiar with hospital procedure would also know about the cameras. You don’t want to be caught on TV when you’re killing someone; it really puts a crimp in your legal defense. In
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