Stress Test

by Richard Mabry

  “A what?”

  “An assistant district attorney.” She touched her second finger. “At some point after your release, probably soon after, Grimes and the ADA will bring you in for questioning. Don’t worry. I’ll be there. I don’t think they’ll arrest you, although they probably will tell you not to leave the city. That’s just standard practice.”

  “No chance of my going anywhere. I don’t even have a car. When will I get mine back?”

  Sandra waved off the question. “Later. Stay with me. They’re moving carefully because of your injury. Grimes will sweat you as much as he thinks he can get away with, but eventually he’ll have to turn you loose. However, if the ADA decides there’s enough evidence, he’ll present your case to a grand jury.” She touched a third finger. “And if they indict you, the police will come for you with an arrest warrant.”

  Matt felt his heart drop to his shoes.

  “After you’re taken into custody, you’re arraigned.” Now she had four fingers in the air. “The arraignment is when you appear before a judge. You have the opportunity to hear the charges against you and enter a plea. Most important for now, that’s when the judge either sets bail or denies it. The trial comes after that. Often a long time after that.”

  “But I’ve been in custody for . . . how long have I been here? Why haven’t I been arraigned?”

  “Because, despite Detective Grimes’s attempt to frighten you, you haven’t really been arrested. When you are, believe me, you’ll know it.”

  “Ms. Murray—”

  “Please, call me Sandra.”

  “Okay, and I’m Matt.” He grimaced. “I hope that when this is over I still have a name, not a number.” He picked up his ever-present legal pad and flipped a couple of pages. “I’ve been trying to figure out where I’ll get the money for bail. How much do you think I’ll need?”

  Her answer made Matt cringe. “I don’t see how I can raise that much.”

  “Let’s talk a little about how bail works,” Sandra said. “If you can’t put up the money or something worth that much, a bondsman will write the surety for a fee of ten percent of the bail. So we’re talking one-tenth of that amount I just mentioned.”

  She mentioned a figure and he replied, “I guess I can raise that.”

  A half hour later, when Sandra closed her briefcase and prepared to leave, she asked, “Do you have any other questions?”

  “What about my kidnapping? Why don’t the police believe me?”

  “Apparently because they think your story is a lie, dreamed up to cover the murder of Cara Mendiola. We can use the kidnapping story in our defense if we need to, but our first job is to convince the police you didn’t kill her. I’ll keep hammering them with the kidnapping, but right now Grimes is pretty convinced it’s a fiction.” She cocked her head. “Any other questions?”

  “No,” Matt said. He had no more questions. Unfortunately he had very few answers to the ones already swimming in his head.

  The second visitor was Matt’s neurosurgeon, Ken Gordon. The gist of the conversation was that Matt was recovering even more rapidly than Gordon hoped. That was the good news. The bad news was that Gordon would have to discharge Matt soon, and both men knew what Matt was facing once he left the hospital.

  “Let’s make it day after tomorrow. Tell your lawyer about nine o’clock. She’ll probably want to be here.” He stuck out his hand and Matt shook it. “I hope we’ll be having lunch together in the medical center’s faculty club real soon.”

  The third visitor both surprised and angered Matt. Why hadn’t Brad Franklin visited before this? After all, the man had hired Matt for a faculty position. Was it too much to expect the chairman of the surgery department to drop by? Sure, he was busy. Matt realized that. But this visit came much too late to suit Matt.

  Franklin tapped on the door frame, and Matt motioned him inside, barely suppressed anger roiling inside him. “Come in, Brad. I’ve been hoping you’d come by.”

  On surgery days Franklin wore a clean, crisp, ironed scrub suit he brought from home, shunning the wrinkled garb everyone else wore. He covered the scrubs with a fresh white coat with his name and “Chairman, General Surgery” embroidered over the pocket. Matt had observed this on a previous visit and decided that if the chairman wanted to look better than everyone else, that was his business.

  Apparently Franklin wasn’t operating today, but his clothes still told everyone he was a cut above average. His unbuttoned lab coat revealed a white-on-white dress shirt set off by a designer tie. Small rubies accented gold cuff links at either wrist. Brad Franklin looked every inch the department chair, and something in his manner today made the hairs on Matt’s neck stand at attention. Whatever was coming wasn’t good.

  Franklin hitched up his trousers to preserve the crease and eased into a chair at Matt’s bedside. “How are you doing?” he asked.

  “I’ve been better,” Matt said, “but Ken says he’ll be turning me loose soon. I guess you know that I have some legal problems to settle, but my attorney tells me the charges the police are bringing probably won’t hold up.” Okay, so maybe I’m being too optimistic, but there’s no need to tell him how bad things are. “As soon as I can get that cleared up, I’m looking forward to starting my work here.”

  Franklin appeared to find something fascinating in the region of his shoes. Still looking down, he said, “Actually, that’s what I wanted to talk about.”

  Matt knew what was coming before the chairman started his next sentence. Sure enough, Franklin said he’d met with the dean, and they’d decided it was in the best interest of the medical center if Matt didn’t officially join the staff until after his legal problems were put to rest. “I’m sure you understand,” Franklin said.

  Matt didn’t really understand anything except that the chairman had just pulled the rug out from under him. The prospect of his new salary as an assistant professor of surgery had vanished. He’d already closed his private practice. Other than a few fees dribbling in from final bills and insurance claims, Matt had no real income and no prospects of any. And he was piling up debts faster than he could find a way to pay them.

  Matt was already worried sick about getting the money together to pay his attorney. He figured he should be able to scrape up enough assets to cover posting bail. But this was the last straw.

  The night before, in desperation, Matt had thumbed through a Bible he found in the drawer of his bedside table looking for comfort. He’d tried to pray. And finally he asked God to give him a sign that things would be all right. Now, as Franklin continued to justify his decision, Matt had one thought foremost in his mind. If this is Your sign, God, I don’t like it.

  EIGHT

  Sandra Murray handed Elaine a steaming paper cup bearing the Starbucks logo. “Here you go. Your favorite.”

  After Sandra settled into the chair across from her secretary’s desk, she flipped the lid from her own cup into the wastebasket and inhaled the rich aroma. Today she’d decided to shake things up with a caramel macchiato. Elaine had another mocha latte, and Sandra noticed that it did indeed mirror the woman’s skin tones almost exactly. I hope that when I’m her age, I look that good.

  Sandra sipped, licked a few drops of caramel-flavored foam from her upper lip, and said, “Elaine, how’s your pipeline into the DA’s office?”

  Elaine moved her coffee aside and leaned forward over the desk. “Why? Want me to do a little undercover snooping for you?”

  “Haven’t developed scruples against that, have you?” Sandra’s smile took any sting out of the banter.

  “Nope, just want to know what you’d like me to find out. You know me.” She fluffed her hair and gave an exaggerated come-hither look. “Always happy to use my feminine wiles to help my boss.”

  “Still dating Charlie Greaver?” Sandra asked. Charlie, the number two man in the DA’s office, was virtually a shoo-in to succeed the current DA, Jack Tanner. If so, he’d be the first African-American in Sandra’s memory to
hold the position.

  “I sometimes accept an invitation to go out with Charlie. After all, I’m a widow who’s still in the prime of life, and he’s a widower who’s . . . well, he’s a widower.”

  “Right now, I’m more interested in his status at the DA’s office. I need to know where things stand with my client, Dr. Newman.”

  “Hmm. You know, Charlie doesn’t usually discuss things at the DA’s office with me, the same way I don’t tell him about stuff at our office.”

  Sandra grinned. “I’m not asking for anything secret. Just see what you can find out.”

  “Just to be clear, you want me to take Charlie up on one of his dinner invitations, pump him, and then toss him aside?” Elaine laughed.

  “What you do with Charlie after you find out whether Grimes has a case against Newman is your business. You can play catch and release if you want to. If you go further than that, don’t tell me.”

  “Gotcha.” Elaine took her first sip of coffee and smiled. “One cup of coffee, and I agree to play spy for you. I’ve really got to raise my fees.”

  “Huh,” Sandra said. “You can’t kid me. You’d do it for nothing. The coffee’s just a bonus.”

  Matt wasn’t sure he’d slept at all. Now that he was out of the ICU, the nurses no longer came in every hour or so to check his vital signs. Still, he remained aware of the ceaseless activity all around him: people going in and out of patient rooms, murmured conversations in the hall, the ringing of phones and rattle of charts at the nearby nurses’ station. Besides, who could sleep when they knew they might be arrested as soon as they passed through the doors of the hospital into the outside world?

  “Knock, knock.” A man wearing surgical scrubs paused in the doorway.

  “Come on in,” Matt said. He sized up his visitor: probably mid-twenties, Asian features, a definite familiarity to his face. Matt had the sense he should know the man, but the name floated outside his reach. His visitor wore scrubs, but that could mean he was anything from a medical student to an OR orderly to a doctor. See if he introduces himself.

  He did. “Dr. Newman, I’m Hank Truong. I’m the one who brought your pager to you in the ICU. But you were pretty out of it.” Hank leaned on the back of the chair at Matt’s bedside, but didn’t sit down. “Actually I’m the one who saw you when the EMTs brought you to the ER.”

  It clicked then. “Oh, right. Thanks for getting me to the neurosurgeon. You probably saved my life.”

  “Just doing my job. But I’m glad you made it.”

  Matt had it figured out by now. “So you’re a second-year resident, doing your rotation in the Parkland ER as Pit Boss.”

  “Yes. I see you’ve picked up the slang for the resident in charge in the ER. They tell me that duty is pretty much the same as getting a battlefield commission in the service, and I can’t disagree. You see a little of everything, and you have to make some tough decisions, often in a hurry.”

  “Well, I appreciate your coming by,” Matt said. “I hope I’ll be seeing you again soon.”

  “I . . . I understand you’re about to be discharged,” Hank said. “So I wanted to make sure you’re doing okay.”

  Even if the chairman didn’t seem to care about his situation, Matt was pleased to find that this resident did. “Medically, I’m fine. Legally? That’s another story.”

  Hank stuck out his hand. “Well, we’re all hoping you’ll get that straight soon. The residents are looking forward to your joining the faculty and staffing us here.”

  Matt shook the offered hand. “Thanks.”

  Halfway to the door, Hank seemed to reach a decision and turned back. “Let me ask you something. This morning I had a patient come in with an infected gash on his lower leg, several days old—maybe a week or so. Of course, it’s too late to suture it, so I cleaned it up real well, gave him a tetanus shot, and started him on an antibiotic. But I’ve read about doing secondary closures on wounds that long after the injury. What’s your opinion on that?”

  “I haven’t tried it, myself,” he said. Something clicked in Matt’s brain. Could it be? A gash on the lower leg, over a week old. “Describe this guy for me.”

  If Hank was surprised by the request, he didn’t show it. Then again, when a staff doctor asked a resident a question, the resident’s response was to answer, not wonder why. And Dr. Newman was a staff doctor—sort of. “He had a high-pitched voice,” Hank said. “Jittery guy. Short, sort of sharp-faced. Late thirties. Hispanic, I think. I don’t recall his name, though.”

  “I’m betting the name and all the other information he gave was false. And I’d guess he paid cash.”

  Hank frowned. “Uh, I don’t know. Do you want me to check?”

  Would it do any good? If nothing else, it might back up his story. “Sure. Please do.”

  “Where can I call you with the information?” Hank asked.

  Good question. Maybe jail? “Tell you what. I’ll call you in a day or so. Thanks.”

  Hank left, undoubtedly to pull the ER record before it could get filed and—if the Parkland system was anything like what Matt had experienced at other hospitals—possibly lost.

  “Ready to get out of here?” Ken Gordon stood in the doorway of Matt’s room. His rumpled scrubs and unshaven face told Matt the neurosurgeon had been up all night.

  “Not sure,” Matt replied. “You have a busy night?”

  Gordon eased into the chair at Matt’s bedside and finger-combed his hair. “Kid—actually, early twenties, but they’re all kids to me—riding his motorcycle down North Central Expressway about one a.m. Weaving in and out of traffic, doing about ninety, the police estimate, when he hit a rough spot in the road and lost control. Had on an expensive set of leathers—didn’t want to get road rash if he wiped out, I guess—but no helmet.”

  “Closed head injury, I suppose,” said Matt, as much to himself as to Gordon. “Were you able to save him?”

  “So far. My part was managing an acute subdural hematoma. He’s still in the OR while the general surgeons tend to a ruptured spleen and lacerated liver. The orthopods will have to deal with a fractured arm and crushed pelvis later, if he survives.”

  “Tough,” Matt said. He remembered his own nights on emergency call and wondered if he’d ever get back to practicing medicine. Not if he were convicted of a felony . . . and possibly not even if he were found innocent of the charges Grimes was pursuing. There was such a thing as slinging enough mud until something stuck, and Matt was afraid that the barrage directed against him had just begun.

  “Jennifer, I enjoyed dinner the other night.”

  Jennifer Ball looked up from her computer. Frank Everett was perched in what was becoming his customary position at the edge of her desk. She hated when people did that, but swallowed the words that would move him. “It was fun,” she said.

  “I have tickets to a show at the State Fair Music Hall next Saturday. Would you like to go?”

  Jennifer did a rapid mental run-through of her social calendar and found it distressingly empty. After Matt, Frank was the only person who’d shown any interest in her. She had a twinge of guilt at abandoning Matt so quickly, but she shoved it aside. Besides, Frank could be a valuable asset as things played out. “Sure. That sounds good.”

  “Great. I’ve got a meeting with the DA in a few minutes, but why don’t I come by here after that? Maybe we can get some coffee.”

  Was this moving a little fast? Yes, but she feared that if she tried to slow it down, it might stop completely. “Sure. See you then.”

  Jennifer applied herself to her typing, letting the words flow from her fingertips without making much of an impression on her mind. Only when she finished and hit the Print button on her computer did it register what she’d been transcribing. These were the notes from a meeting between DA Tanner, ADA Greaver, and a detective from the homicide squad. And they concerned potential murder charges against a doctor who was currently recovering from a severe head injury—a doctor named Matt Newman.
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  She snatched up the five pages of typescript and read it through carefully. The case appeared to be coming together, although much of the evidence was circumstantial. As she turned the last page, she heard someone whistling toward her desk. Jennifer grabbed the papers and shoved them into her top desk drawer just as Frank Everett hove into view.

  In addition to the whistling, he was smiling broadly and there was an unusual spring in his step. She didn’t have to wait long to find out why, either.

  “Forget my offer of coffee. What would you say to dinner tonight? You pick the restaurant—the fancier the better.”

  Now he was definitely moving too fast. But Jennifer’s curiosity got the best of her. Why was Frank back so quickly, and in a mood to celebrate? “I’ll check my calendar,” Jennifer said. “What’s the occasion?”

  Everett leaned against her desk, but he must have seen the tiny frown Jennifer let flash across her face. He hooked a vacant chair from the next desk, pulled it toward him, and eased into it. “I’m apparently moving up in the world. I just met with Tanner and Greaver, and they’re giving me a plum case. If I get a conviction on this, I’m going to be their fair-haired boy.”

  Jennifer worked hard to keep her expression neutral. “Will it be a tough one?”

  Everett spread his hands in a “no problem” gesture. “I don’t think so. I’ll know more after I review the evidence and talk to the police, but I’m pretty confident I can nail it.” He smiled without mirth. “Yessir, Dr. Matt Newman is going to wish he’d never heard of Assistant DA Frank Everett.”

  Jennifer’s palms were suddenly damp with sweat. She wiped them on her skirt, hiding the gesture by turning her swivel chair toward the clock on the far wall. “That’s great, Frank.” She struggled to keep her voice level. “Why don’t you make reservations at Nana for seven? I’ll meet you there.”

  Everett went whistling on his way, while Jennifer wondered how to keep her new boyfriend from finding out about her old one.