CATCH ME (EMBRYO: A Raney & Levine Thriller, Book 4)

by J. A. Schneider

  “He’s doing so well, I’m thrilled,” she told Beth, who thanked her profusely, saying this was such a wonderful idea. Jamie smiled again; smiled back at the children playing, and left.

  Beth sat to one side in her wheelchair, watching Ricky in surprised, grateful silence. Her eyes glistened. “It’s so good to see him having fun,” she said, looking from Jill to David. “What a blessing.”

  They sat with her, watching the kids and waiting. In theory this was doubly good, Jill thought. Ricky happy and active, plus a chance to talk to Beth alone. Still, Jill felt bad, wondered how to wrench Beth out of this moment and bring up the killings. She glanced at David’s solemn features, and knew he felt the same.

  Abruptly Beth sat straighter in her chair. “Okay,” she said in a gentle, party’s-over tone. “What’s up? You two have something on your minds or you wouldn’t have come down here.”

  David stirred, smiled crookedly. “Oh, you are smart.”

  “How did you know?” Jill asked, surprised.

  Beth looked so alert. “It’s been on your faces since I first saw you. C’mon, give. Any closer to catching the killer?”

  Oh…right, she’d been out in the hall exercising. Hadn’t seen the new murders coverage or Haven’s police photo on television.

  They shrugged no, and took turns filling her in.

  The killer was an Iraq War vet too, dishonorably discharged. The police had finally found his prints and DNA in his apartment, and his name was Mitch Haven.

  Beth paled and her lips parted. She took a long moment, blinking. “I thought he was dead,” she gasped.

  Another door had suddenly opened on this horror. David stared and Jill felt her heart lurch. “Definitely not dead,” she breathed, hearing Haven ranting at her again.

  Beth clutched both arms of her wheelchair.

  “He was after me in Mosul,” she said darkly, as if re-feeling the heat and the horror of the place. “Even though I was married and told him, kept telling him.” She swallowed, started to speak faster. “Such an odd man. One of our protect and support personnel, he started out charming, then showed his other, scary side. I reported him for harassment. Other women did too. He got crazier. Fought with soldiers and stole drugs. Then I got into trouble when they found out I was pregnant and sent me home. Five months passed and I forgot about him until” – her voice caught – “Ted was killed.”

  She stopped. Her eyes widened and filled, as if she were seeing that dreadful letter again: “We regret to inform you…”

  Jill reached and squeezed her arm. She glanced to Ricky playing and struggled for control.

  “Then the letters started coming. Haven didn’t have my email address so he wrote snail mail. First a condolence letter. Then long scrawls of how he so sympathized, but at last now I was free and we could be together.”

  “Where were the letters from?” Jill asked, rubbing goose bumps on her arm.

  “All over, with no return addresses, I just knew from the postmarks. He’d been shipped back stateside but never went home. Ohio I think he was from. People in the unit knew he’d had a bad childhood, a father who beat him, a mother who abandoned them both.”

  Beth inhaled deeply, clearly in pain remembering. “Some letters came from Virginia, others from Albany, then Newark…” Her features became more troubled. “Finally another letter – the last – came from here, New York. It came to my New York apartment.” An incredulous headshake. “No idea how he got my address.”

  David said, “Maybe he got a job at the VA.”

  “Maybe. A dishonorably discharged vet isn’t even considered a vet – not officially - but like I said they use civilian employees too. Anyway that couldn’t have lasted long, and in that final letter he said he was going to kill himself. Said he couldn’t find work anywhere and had given up on life, was writing to say good-bye-cruel-world, blamed everyone including me, his parents, and our commanding officer for his bad luck.”

  Hence the rage, the narcissistic lashing out of a sociopath blaming anyone but himself.

  David listened with his fist to his mouth, frowning. Jill still heard Haven’s evil rasping, and remembered the dark figure watching her that night she went for Fawzie. She closed her eyes for a second, shuddered. He said he almost shot you. David’s words stormed in her mind, and Haven’s I’m gonna shoot him.

  Beth was watching her hands work in her lap. “He closed that letter with ‘by the time you read this, I’ll be dead.’ It was horrible!” She peered up at them. “I tried telling the VA and they wrote it down, or said they did, but his being dishonorably discharged meant they had no updated information on his whereabouts.” She shook her head as if she had failed. “I tried, but there was no way to help him.”

  David asked, “When did he send that final letter?”

  “Last year. Ricky had just turned three.”

  David gazed at Ricky with concern. “He’s been using fake IDs. Probably been working odd jobs that don’t even check backgrounds. He’d paid in cash and used a fake ID to get his apartment.”

  “But – a whole year since that suicide letter?” Beth’s eyes followed his to Ricky and came back to him. “Four-plus years since Mosul? We’ve only guessed he may have known I was pregnant.”

  She hadn’t heard the second part of the answer.

  Jill inhaled. “There’s more. Somebody gave him syphilis.”

  Beth stared at her.

  David said. “For a blame-others, control-crazed psycho, it put him over the edge. He’s been chewing on his rage for years. It was his final shock.”

  “Once he started killing, he decided he liked it,” Jill said.

  Beth gave them both solid stares. “I most definitely need my gun,” she said.

  Me too, Jill thought.

  Then realized that her phone hadn’t rung yet. She and David hadn’t been called so there was time…for something she needed terribly.

  “Beth,” she blurted. “Would you like to meet Jesse?”

  30

  Beth felt hurt – stung, really – that Ricky was so okay with her leaving him to play. Jill and David tried to cheer her as they left their cell numbers with the playroom staff.

  “Have I become one of those clingy mothers?” she fretted in the elevator. “Me? I was afraid it would be the other way around, with Ricky growing up too clingy on me, but he just said, ‘Yeah!’ and ran off with his new friends when I told him I was going to visit your baby.”

  Jill said, “I dread that wrench too. When they become more independent.”

  “The shared trauma,” David said, leaning on the back of Beth’s chair. “Ricky’s been with you constantly. You’ve both clung to each other…”

  “Through every nightmare,” Beth murmured, looking sad, contemplating one of Life’s Big Moments. “Looking back, he was my rock.”

  Beth’s fretting and their comforting continued as they wheeled her through the halls.

  Had Ricky been independent before this? Yes, he loved his daycare.

  Did he make friends easily? Yes, he ran off with any new little pal in the park, I had to dog after him.

  “And you said you were afraid it would be the other way around, dincha?” Jill reminded, patting Beth’s shoulder as David pushed the chair.

  She sighed. “It’s the way it’s supposed to be, isn’t it? Encouraging them to be independent?”

  “Sounds like that’s what you’d been doing.” David maneuvered the chair past the Staff Childcare sign.

  Beth became thoughtful. “I still want to try again,” she said. “I’d so love to have another child, and I definitely don’t want Ricky to be alone…”

  She brightened at the baby babble, the whole busy, colorful scene. And fell instantly in love with Jesse in his white top and red overalls.

  “Oh, he’s gorgeous,” she cried as Jill squeezed and kissed him, then introduced them (“Honey, this is Beth. Love Beth”) - and he hugged her. Then sat in her lap entranced and tugging at the shiny white buttons on he
r robe. OOH-RAH! they each said in blue letters.

  “OOH-RAH,” Beth taught him.

  “Oooh,” Jesse grinned, proud of himself and hugging David who bent to him.

  Beth wheeled him around in her chair, and he liked that too. Then slid off her lap, went for his red plastic truck and brought it back to her, showing her one of its wheels, turning it.

  “Yes, another wheel,” Beth told him brightly, tapping one of her chair’s wheels and looking, astonished, to David and Jill. They rolled their eyes, then watched as Jesse tried to sit on his truck, and tumbled off.

  “Your truck’s too small,” Jill told him, smiling, crouching. David crouched too, held the little truck upside down, turned one of its wheels with his free hand, then put his hand on Beth’s chair’s wheel. “But both have wheels,” he said.

  “Weee,” Jesse said, frowning his little brows at his truck. He turned back to Beth, clasped both his chubby hands on one of her chair wheels and tried to push it.

  “Can’t, sweetie,” Beth said. “It’s too heavy.”

  Jesse looked frustrated; looked back to David who hugged him. “Bigger wheels later, slugger.”

  He squirmed away and turned to Beth’s chair. Poked, fascinated, at her wheel’s spokes, and looked back again at his truck.

  “No spokes,” David whispered to Jill.

  “Do they make toy wheelchairs?” she whispered back, amazed as usual at Jesse’s curiosity, the way he connected things. “Oh wait, yes!”

  “You saw them in the playroom?”

  “Yes, come to think of it, plastic ones for action figures.”

  “Let’s get him one.”

  Beth had meanwhile removed her feet from her chair’s two foot rests, and Jesse was squatting on one of them, pushing at the other.

  Beth grinned up at them. “Whoever thought my chair would be a hit?”

  David’s phone chirped. “Simpson calling, gotta go,” he said, hanging up and getting up. He bent to hug Jesse again, kissed Jill, pecked Beth on the cheek, and went out.

  “Who’s Simpson?” Beth asked.

  “I’ll tell you,” Jill said, checking the time. “Oops, we gotta go too. I’m due in the clinic in ten minutes.”

  More smooches for Jesse, who looked disappointed seeing them go. “Be back soon, honey,” Jill waved by the door.

  He gave his floppy little wave back.

  “That was fun, he’s amazing,” Beth said in the elevator.

  “Playing with him beats medication,” Jill said, adding that it was time for Beth to rest anyway. “All that exercise before we came, then the playroom and Jesse…”

  Her phone beeped. She listened, smiled, and hung up.

  “Sounds like you and Ricky have both had too much exercise,” she announced. “That was the playroom. Your little boy is exhausted. He’s lying on a nap matt, saying he’s tired and wants to go back to his mommy. How ‘bout that?”

  Beth laughed lightly. “Oh, so clingy!” she said in happy sarcasm.

  “I’ll take you down to him.”

  The elevator doors opened, and they zoomed out to the third floor corridor. It was busy. Jill, pushing Beth’s chair, leaned down close to her.

  “By the way where’s your gun?” she whispered. “I can’t believe you just left it under your pillow.”

  “’Course not,” Beth whispered back. She patted the side of her robe. “It’s been in my pocket the whole time.”

  Ricky, sitting in the open door of the playroom, jumped up when he saw them.

  “Mommy!” he cried, joyfully running to them. “Jamie said you were coming!”

  31

  Phones rang, stressed admin assistants answered and tried to reassure about seat reservations, delayed flights, food allergies and hotel complications. Willard Simpson’s front office was in turmoil – excited turmoil, since tomorrow was the big day. Flowers adorned desks, and the usual baby pictures lined the walls of the main office and the hall leading to Simpson’s inner sanctum.

  His door was open. The lettering on it read, Willard Simpson, M.D., Genetic Counseling Committee Chief, Embryonic Epidemiology and High Risk Obstetrics.

  “David!” Simpson got achingly to his feet and reached his thick hand across his desk. “I heard about last night,” he said. “So glad you’re okay, except” – he grimaced – “for that lovely little abrasion.”

  David touched his brow self-consciously as he sat. “All’s well, for now at least,” he said. “The cop’s going to be okay, too.” Red buttons lit and went dim on the busy desk’s phone console, preventing interruptions.

  “Yes, I’ve checked on his status too. Thank goodness for both of you.” Simpson pushed his wire rims back up his tiny, pointy nose. He was seriously overweight, his small features lost in his broad, pink face that Jill compared to a country ham wearing glasses. Stories abounded of the hospital’s cardiologists following him around begging him to lose weight, and he’d answer that he’d been a fat sperm, ha ha, please pass the donuts.

  But he was brilliant, world famous in his field. Serious too, now fiddling with his ballpoint and shaking his head.

  “This is some business, huh?”

  “The Couples Killer? Ashley?” David said solemnly.

  A nod. “I spent this morning with Ashley’s parents. My heart’s still aching for them.” The ballpoint tapped nervously. Then Simpson grasped it with both hands and leaned forward. “The police mentioned that this killer’s been calling you, threatening. That he got your number from Ashley’s purse.”

  David acknowledged that it was true. “Please don’t worry about it.”

  “Don’t worry? What was last night?”

  “I’ll be more careful.”

  “This hospital cannot afford to lose you.” Simpson said it slowly, concentrating on his ballpoint, his face turning a darker pink. “You’re the best chief resident I’ve ever had, and all this…tragedy - in the city, then Ashley, then hearing about you last night.”

  He looked up imploringly at David. “Don’t do this to me. My blood pressure can’t take it.” He gestured with a hand. “Okay, I’m stressed about tomorrow too, but more worried about you, about both of you. How’s Jill…dealing with all this?”

  “She’s nervous. Heartbroken too. Everyone is.” Skip the Fawzie stalking and Haven’s call to Jill. Simpson’s BP probably is off the chart. “I think she’s worried about tomorrow too,” David added.

  “Oh?” Simpson raised his brows. “All she has to do is show up. And Jesse too, hopefully, if you’re both still willing.”

  “Yes, Jesse too. He’s a little ham, wouldn’t miss it.” David shrugged. “For Jill it’s just…so many strangers, that’s what scares her. We’ve been in a fortress state of mind, sleeping in the hospital since this started. And tomorrow the fortress opens itself to the world.” A bleak smile. “Jill hates the headlines, photographers, the thought of ‘Jesse on display,’ that’s how she sees it.”

  Simpson ducked his head and nodded, an admission that this was reasonable. “You’ve reassured her?” he asked.

  “Yes. Still reassuring.”

  “Tell her that, besides the physician and researcher guests, only four photographers will be allowed, all of them background-checked. Plus they’ll be double-checked by our security.”

  “And the servers? Caterers? Whatever you call them?”

  “Banford Events, the same outfit this hospital always uses. Their staff get background checks like Brink’s, practically. They have to. They do political fundraisers, fancy parties, hideously expensive weddings, you get the picture. They’ve also done Madison Medical graduation parties, welcome to new interns parties, every conference involving too many guests for our conference kitchen to handle, in fact.”

  David seemed satisfied. “Sounds good. I’ve probably been to some of their gigs myself.”

  “You have, definitely.” Simpson checked a paper before him. “Your table is number four, by the way. It’s near the podium. You’ll all be there? All five of
you?”

  “Yes.”

  “MacIntyre, Greenberg, Donovan, you and Jill.” Simpson tapped his paper with his ballpoint. “That’s it? Anyone else who interacted with Jesse at three months gestation and up to his birth? Who can talk about it, describe it?”

  “That’s it, mostly. There’s also Gary Phipps. Other interns in Jill’s last year group came and gaped, interacted to some extent, but by Jesse’s seventh month Gary was there big time, waving at the little guy, goofing around, making him smile…”

  “Ask him to come? I’ll arrange coverage for him too. Mornings are less busy, and there’s Holloway, Mackey, and lemme see, who else to cover…” Simpson flipped some schedule pages, looked up satisfied. “Coverage is good, it will be fine. Tell Phipps what I’ve told all of you. No stiff speeches, just…spew, ad lib, tell stories describing what no one’s ever seen before, a fetus growing, acting, and reacting before his birth.”

  David cracked a smile. “Seems like forever ago.” He looked up at the ceiling. “Now he’s up there in Childcare trying to figure out the wheel.”

  Simpson smiled and gazed up at the ceiling too, as if also seeing Jesse. Then he looked down and flipped his phone console back on. The visit seemed concluded, and David rose.

  “So that’s it and we’re all set,” he said.

  “Yes. Please be careful, David, so I can go back to just stressing about tomorrow. And tell Jill not to worry.” He was emphatic. “Banford has done all our events. They’ve reassured me many times; my only complaint is they’ve become too popular. But even when short-handed, they take just the best resumes. Good people, we’ve never had otherwise from them.”

  “No arrest records?” David smiled by the door.

  Simpson barked laughter. “No, just good people. That’s why every department in the hospital uses them. The Board of Trustees, too.”

  His phone rang and he answered it, waving a pudgy ‘bye to David, who left repeating just good people to himself, so he could repeat it to Jill.

  “Madison Memorial Medical Center, how may I help you?”

  Well doggone, a real human being.