Sam had his hand over his mouth. Tricia and Woody whimpered to each other that the guy looked mean.
David pursed his lips for a thoughtful moment, then looked from Alex to Kerri. “Your CSU just went over the crime scene?”
“The alley where Ashley was killed, yes,” Kerri said.
David reached to the tablet now in Woody’s hands. “Creep’s drinking a Guinness. And isn’t wearing gloves. Who wears gloves in a bar?”
Alex’s eyes widened. “Oh hell.”
He made a quick call, muttered, “Find the bottle, how many people could’ve been drinking Guinness? Yes! In the bar’s trash! If the garbage truck’s already there, jump in.”
While he spoke Jill leaned to Kerri. “Connor and Zienuc told you he stalked me right after the murder?”
“Yes.” Kerri grimly flipped a notebook page, shook her head.
“He bragged to David he’d just seen me. By then the beard was gone, he wore glasses different from the ones he wore in the bar, and had something under his jacket to look fat.” Jill raised her eyebrows. “Ashley’s purse containing her phone with all our numbers, ya think?”
Tricia gasped. “Oh my God, Jill! He stalked you?” Her eyes were wide, shocked.
Charlie dropped his head in his hand.
MacIntyre’s phone sounded. He swore softy, announced he’d just been called. “You too,” he told Trish as she tore her eyes from Jill and shakily pulled out her phone.
“Keep us posted,” Sam said, worriedly fist-bumping David’s shoulder. Tricia hugged Jill hard and announced that she was in no shape to deliver a baby.
“Yes you are,” David said. “Git.”
After they drooped out, Kerri mentioned the traps on David’s and Jill’s phones. “There are cops already tuned in, it’s an automated thing that alerts them.” She looked pointedly to Jill. “You ready if he calls you?”
Through gritted teeth: “Oh, yes.” The syrupy voice tore through Jill’s brain. Oh, and Happy Birthday to Jesse! Soon, right? She brought her fist to her mouth, imagining poor Ashley lying cold and murdered in an alley. Tears of fury sprang up again.
Suddenly Woody jumped up and was at the TV, making it louder.
Yellow crime scene tape and patrol cars shot into view. And a covered, laden gurney getting wheeled to an M.E. van, with a voiceover explaining the terrible tragedy of this young doctor, “so full of promise, attacked last night after thirty-two hours straight of heroic work at Madison Memorial -”
Woody turned it off. “Argh, sorry, I just couldn’t stand it,” he groaned, and the others agreed: Leave it off.
In the tense silence Alex looked at David. “Okay to see Beth Willis now?”
David called and checked. Beth was doing well and her Ricky was all settled in.
He nodded yes, and saw another call ding his phone. No change in expression, Jill saw, inhaling when he hung up.
“Woman in hard labor just brought in,” he said.
“I’ll take it.” Woody drooped for the door. “C’mon, Charlie. Sounds like a hot one.”
Jill, David and the two detectives left for room 514.
13
He looked so tiny, all tucked against Beth inside her bed’s upturned rails. His eyes were closed and his arm hugged the gray toy kitty, which was good. He wasn’t sucking his thumb.
Beth looked up, smiled bravely at them when they entered. Her bed was cranked up, and on her lap was the opened folder Jill had left her last night. She had Ricky under her right arm since her IV and the wires to her monitor were on her left side. Awkwardly, she was using her left hand to study the photos.
David asked her how she felt.
Another brave smile. “Okay, kinda groggy from the painkiller,” she said, hugging Ricky. “But so happy to have him here.”
“Remember us?” Kerri asked, re-introducing herself and Alex, moving around the cot put in for Ricky.
A faint nod. “I think so. Last night was a blur.”
Beth’s pretty features shifted to Jill. “These photos,” she said hopefully. “I think I’ve found some maybes.”
She handed three photos to Jill, who studied them, feeling chilled seeing the men’s faces – which one? Then she handed them shakily to Alex and Kerri. They’d pulled up chairs and started comparing the photos to the surveillance pictures on their tablet.
David was at the foot of the bed checking Beth’s chart and nurses’ notes. Looking satisfied, he straightened and said, “Beth? Did your attacker have a slightly jutting chin? Can you remember?”
She turned her dark-tousled head away a little, as if trying to think.
“No,” she said faintly, looking back to Jill. “I tried to remember this morning when I was clearer, but…nothing.” She switched her gaze to David. “It was darker under the trees. All I remember is a man in a crouch wearing sunglasses holding a gun. Guess I was stunned by the gun.” She shuddered.
Alex glanced up from the three photos Beth had picked. “Two of these have jutting chins. One of ‘em slightly jutting.”
David stepped closer to see.
And Kerri rose to show Beth their tablet’s surveillance photos taken at Farrell’s. She said gently, “A young woman was killed last night by the same man who attacked you.”
“Oh no!” Beth’s lips parted and her eyes went round with shock, compassion. She’d exclaimed too loudly and Ricky stirred, whimpered in his sleep. Beth hugged him, biting her lip, but her eyes filled.
“The beard is fake,” Kerri continued quietly. “Is there anything about this guy you can recognize?”
Beth took the tablet and peered hard at it, her brow creased. “His posture,” she said, tapping the glass. “Body hunched like that with his chin down? That’s the only thing that…hits me.” Her lips were dry.
She asked for two of the leaving-the-park photos.
Alex handed them back and she studied them again, raising her head slightly from her pillow. “No,” she said unhappily. “I can’t…connect them with the man on the tablet.”
She dropped her head back to her pillow. “I’m sorry,” she breathed. “I’ve given you nothing.”
“No, you’ve narrowed it down,” Alex insisted. He took the two photos from her and looked at them. “Both these guys are slightly jut-jawed but” – he held one photo up – “this one’s shorts are black and the other’s” – he held the second photo to her – “are gray. Do you remember the color shorts?”
He watched Beth expectantly as she took the prints from him, tried again.
She shook her head in frustration. “Can’t be sure…it was too shadowy...” She clutched the prints harder, white-knuckled, looking angry at herself. “I’m sorry,” she said again, near tears.
And then, in the tiniest, timid whisper came, “Gray shorts.”
Stunned gazes locked on Ricky, whose eyes were suddenly open. “The bad man wore gray shorts,” he said, looking up at his mother.
It was the first time he had spoken.
Smiles broke out. Beth’s spirits leaped and her right arm squeezed him tight. “Ricky, thank you! Oh, my smart boy.”
Kerri and Alex took the photo from her and traded looks: The guy in gray shorts. Looked in his thirties. About 5’11” or six feet, judging from other males in the picture and Ortega’s description.
“This is great, Ricky.” Alex reached to pat the little guy’s shoulder and Kerri beamed at him. He gave the tiniest smile, and hugged his gray kitty.
Low-voiced, Alex tapped the photo and told the others, “This will go into facial recognition software. Get compared to other felons in the system.”
David said, “You may not need the software. If you find that Guinness bottle you may have prints and DNA.” He cracked a smile. “Wonder how they’re doing with Farrell’s trash?”
The detectives were hyped. They suddenly had something. The beginnings of what this psycho looked like and the hope of physical evidence.
“We owe you big time,” Alex told Jill and David. They th
anked Beth too, and bent to Ricky.
“You saved the day, honey,” Kerri said. “I love your kitty.”
Ricky turned under Beth’s arm to look at her. “His name’s Niner,” he said in a wee voice.
Kerri looked questioningly at Beth. “Niner?”
“Tell the wonderful detectives what it means,” Beth urged Ricky.
The child switched his gaze to Alex, who looked ready to run out and grab the killer before he struck again.
“Niner’s short for Nine Lives,” he said, his voice a bit stronger. “Cats and strong people get to live nine lives.”
14
Dumpster Diving, it was called, and it wasn’t just for the homeless anymore. It had caught on with the unemployed young who’d either given up on finding jobs or hated their former gray cubicles and soulless, underpaid retail jobs. Fresh air! Exercise! The thrill of the hunt! Maybe a little messy, but a valid career alternative and redeemable in cash, no tax!
The cops reached the alley next to Farrell’s just in time. There they were, young, friendly pros with their carts nearly full of water bottles, energy drinks, Diet Pepsi, Bud Lights, and lots of Miller cans. They’d just opened Farrell’s Dumpster lid; seemed frustrated when the cops told them to move on.
“Looking for anything in particular?” one asked, sounding like he was still working at JCrew; and another one piped, “Could you leave us the rest? That’s a mineral reserve in there!”
They were educated, that was the sad thing. Although they didn’t look sad. They looked like dogged entrepreneurs.
The cops shrugged, pulled on their own gloves, groaned to each other, “How come we always get Trash Detail?” and got to it. Plowed through a cloud of stale beer, still-wet cigarette butts, mysterious foodstuffs and goo to the bottles placed at the bottom.
“Miller, Bud, Corona, Coors…” one cop droned, carefully moving the cans and bottles. “Ah, here we go.”
He lifted a Guinness bottle and placed it in a plastic bag another cop held.
“See any more?” asked the second cop.
They checked to be sure.
“Nope, that’s the only one.” The first cop gave a few more pokes in the Dumpster’s trash.
One of their onlookers said, “Who drinks Guinness in this economy?”
“That’s what we want to know,” one of the cops answered gruffly.
They left, not saying Don’t, so the trash-diggers resumed their search in Farrell’s wonderful Dumpster.
Bouquets crowded the OB nurses’ desk. Happy relatives and new dads rushed off the elevator.
Visiting hours had begun. Jill and David were just telling Beth ‘bye for now as four people crowded the doorway, and a nurse intercepted them. “Sorry,” she said. “Only two visitors at a time.”
Brief discussion, and two of them, waving emotionally to Beth, volunteered to wait in the hall.
Beth introduced the pair rushing in to Jill and David. “Sandy Ortiz and Ray Dunne,” she said after she hugged back a young woman near tears and a man awkwardly kissing her cheek. Sandy Ortiz had a prosthetic right leg and Ray Dunne walked with a cane.
“We’re in Beth’s PTSD group,” Sandy Ortiz said, still emotional, now hugging and thanking Jill and David for Beth’s care; and Ray Dunne said, slowly and with difficulty, “We ‘ame ‘ast niii, aw of uth.”
Oh…both doctors realized with a pang. Cranial nerve damage. An intensely brave man struggling to get his lips, tongue and cheeks to work. It was hard for him just to force air past his vocal cords.
David shook hands warmly with him, thanking him and Sandy for their service. Ray Dunne’s eyes welled. His arms went out and he hugged David hard.
“Hugging’s the best thing we do,” Beth said, eyes glistening as she watched Sandy and Ray greet Ricky, who was sitting up now, happy to see them, showing them his kitty.
David’s phone beeped and he checked it. “Have a good visit,” he said, patting Beth’s shoulder, glancing at Jill. “We got called.”
Sandy asked how long they could stay.
“Ten minutes but you can stretch it,” Jill said, overwhelmed nearly to tears at the emotional bravery of these three vets; and David suggested inviting the other two back in. “Tell the nurse I said it’s okay.”
Out in the hall, Jill drew a deep, depressed breath and leaned her back against the wall. “I would so like to kill the guy who did this to Beth,” she whispered.
“Me too,” David said, touching her arm. “But first we gotta deliver a baby.”
“How much time do we have?”
“A few minutes. Why? You gonna find him and shoot him while you wait?”
“Be serious. You’re against guns.”
“Yup. Especially now that we have a baby.”
A low hiss: “Beth has a gun.”
It was bicker time again.
“She’s trained.” David’s voice rose slightly. “And Ricky’s four, which still scares me. I don’t think guns should be around any kids. Jesse plays with everything he can get his little hands on, and lately he’s climbing-”
“But if you lock it up?”
“What good’s a gun if it’s not where you need it? And a doctor’s back is always turned-”
“Excuse me?”
They turned, embarrassed, to a dark-haired young woman in a short dress under a gray cardigan coming up behind them. She was one of the pair who’d volunteered to wait in the hall.
“I’m Ginny Russo,” she said. “A good friend of Beth’s, and I just wanted to thank you for caring for her.” She turned to introduce a man who was coming from a bench a few doors down.
“Blaine Bennet,” he said smiling, brown-haired and extending a muscular hand. He gestured. “Ginny’s a psychiatric social worker and I’m in physical rehab. We both work with the PTSD group.”
Ginny said in an emotional rush, “We were all here last night, but they said it was too soon, come back today. Just as well, I was hysterical last night.”
“She’s on the mend,” Jill reassured; and David, studying Bennet, asked, “Are you a vet too?”
“No.” A sorry shrug. “I’m just the guy who puts them through a lot of painful stuff. Starting with learning to walk again.”
“But you both know Beth well?” David persisted.
Ginny glanced at Blaine. “I guess I know her better,” she said. “In fact Beth and I are really close. Our children are the same age and…I’m divorced, she’s widowed, and we both wanted another child.” Her face became pained, and her voice dropped so as not to carry. “She must be shattered about her pregnancy, the baby lost. Did you know she’d adopted an embryo?”
“Yes,” Jill said. “She told the residents last night.” A question came that she hadn’t felt able to ask Beth. “There was no man in her life? No male friend she wanted to, ah-”
“No.” Ginny was firm. She peeked toward Beth’s open door and looked back. Seemed anxious to see her friend; channeled her emotions into garrulousness.
“She says nobody could ever take the place of her husband Ted.” Still speaking low, feelingly. “If you’d known him, you’d know why. He was handsome, and so warm and funny.” Ginny smiled bleakly; saw the expressions of Jill and David wanting to hear more, so she told them.
“Ted made Beth happy. He just had a way about him. He’d look at any of these…starlets with their, uh, boobs up to here and say, ‘Nah. I find nothing more sexy than a woman who can field strip a rifle and then go home and be able to take care of her family.’ And he meant it. He’d hug Beth and always have his arm around her.”
“He sounds wonderful,” Jill said softly, feeling her heart ache. “What a loss.”
“The kind of loss you never get over,” Blaine Bennet said.
Ginny sighed and added, “After the terrible news about Ted, Beth went through a horrible time, felt like an orphan. Still does. Grew up with just a grandmother who’s now deceased.” Ginny sighed heavily, looked again toward Beth’s door, looked back. “Feeling like
an orphan made her extra sensitive to the stories of thousands of embryos orphaned too, just waiting, cryopreserved. Beth wanted desperately to adopt one.”
“Had an easy time with the IVF,” Blaine Bennet said. “It took on the second try. She was thrilled, but now….” A mournful gesture. “It’s a tragedy, losing the baby.”
David asked where Beth’s IVF had been done.
“The Human Reproduction Agency on West 85th Street,” Ginny said.
“West 87th Street,” Blaine said.
Sandy Ortiz stuck her head out of Beth’s room. “Come on in, you guys,” she called brightly. Her eyes moved to David and Jill. “We’ve been told it’s okay to have all four of us visiting, right?”
“Right.” David said. “But keep it under twenty minutes.”
Ginny was elated and Blaine said that was fine; they both had to get back to work. Both gave their cards.
David watched them enter Beth’s room. Jill narrowed her eyes, watching them too. “His chin’s slightly jutting,” she mused.
“Yeah.” David nodded. “Are we going to be seeing that on half the males we look at?”
She didn’t answer. David checked his phone and said, “Yow, contractions galloping, we’ve got a baby on the way.”
He nudged Jill toward the elevators.
15
No…could it be?
The thought came, oddly and unbidden, as the panting patient Dee Smith was screaming at David for not figuring out how to have babies the Jesse way, and she was nine centimeters dilated in huge pain and Jill was telling an intern how to slow the child’s exit.
“Tell the mother just a little push,” she said. “Then tell her to stop pushing.”
“Why?” the intern asked. Sean something. Jill’s mind was too careening to remember his last name.
David was annoyed at the question during such a rushed delivery. “Two reasons,” he said, answering anyway from the foot of the table. His voice was muffled behind his mask and he had to speak loudly because now Dee was howling that she hated her husband.
“First, the baby’s skull is compressed in the birth canal. Popping out fast causes too-rapid cranial expansion that can damage the baby’s brain.”
CATCH ME (EMBRYO: A Raney & Levine Thriller, Book 4) Page 7