Embryo 2: Crosshairs

by JA Schneider

  They stared at him for a moment.

  “So where are you going to sleep now?” David finally asked.

  A helpless gesture. “Cat nap in the hospital. I gotta go up and get some things first.”

  Haig rose to go; again walked sickly around Kassie’s bloodstain.

  David beat him to the door.

  “See you there,” he said, opening the door wide.

  On the threshold Sandy Haig turned, peered back into the room.

  “Irony?” he said. “Before that call, I was planning to come here anyway and clean. Try to straighten it up a little. God, the cops said it was trashed but I didn’t know it was this bad. How can Kassie come home to this?”

  He shrugged his shoulders helplessly. “I’ll figure out something. Well, g’night, I hope.”

  35

  With the door open a crack, they listened as Haig trudged up the stairwell.

  Jill gave David a little smile. “I’m on to you.”

  He didn’t smile back; looked suddenly stressed, too pressured to think. “Did Kassie have any Scotch tape in her drawers? No, that’s too thin. Jeez, I’m out of my element, what about - where’re you going?”

  She dashed to the kitchen, got Kassie’s gloves from the broom closet, scissors and plastic baggies from the drawer, and dashed back with the gloves on. Started peeling and cutting three-inch strips of yellow crime scene tape still on the door.

  David blinked at her, whispered hoarsely, “I feel like an idiot!”

  “Nah, together we make a smart person.” Jill shot a glance back to the kitchen. “Labels. We need labels.”

  He went back for a pen and Kassie’s shopping list. Flipped the pad’s top sheet and tore two sheets from below it into halves. “Think four’s enough?”

  “For now,” Jill said cryptically. She was applying the first yellow strip to the outside door handle, and carefully lifting it. “I’ve seen this done on TV,” she said. “Hope I’m doing it right.”

  “It’s perfect,” David said, scribbling labels. “Brilliant.”

  “When you held the door open for him? I realized you didn’t want him closing it, maybe wiping his prints from the knob.”

  “Or smudging anybody’s prints. What if someone came back after the cops dusted, conveniently cut their tape to let anyone know they were done and gone?” David’s pen scribbled. “It’s hot. Haig’s hands were sweating. Someone’s definitely looking for something here, and Haig’s sweaty hand would have made a mess.”

  Jill frowned slightly as she snipped more yellow tape. “Did you notice he didn’t touch anything, including the glass of water I gave him? Kassie’s water’s fine, by the way…maybe a bit cloudy. Gimme another label.”

  Downstairs, they heard the vestibule door open and close. Then, quick steps up to the second floor just below them, where another door opened and slammed.

  They froze for a minute, then resumed. Lifted prints which Jill’s gloved hands sealed into more labeled, plastic bags. David scanned the door’s old wood, looking up and down it. “Print above and below the knob too.”

  Jill did. In minutes they had five plastic sandwich bags containing finger-printed tapes and matching labels. Each label read, “Fingerprints from K. Doyle’s front doorknob,” and was dated the day after the cops searched and dusted…fruitless anyway since the rapist had worn gloves.

  On the labels David had also included their names and cell phone numbers.

  Shots and screams rang from someone’s TV.

  David glanced frowning to that door. Then looked back, concentrating. “The cops were okay with Haig’s alibi that he was working and seen by others last night. He still could have skipped out for a bit. The hospital’s close.”

  “Same goes for Even Blair,” Jill shrugged. “And night duty does have its lulls.” Her eyes moved from Kassie’s door to the darkened stairwell just outside. She stepped out into the hall a bit, peering up.

  David read her. “Print Coughing Kirka too? Whoever he is?”

  Jill nodded, still warily eyeing the stairway. “We’ll need extra tape and plastic bags and labels.”

  David seemed suddenly hesitant. “I’ll go,” he said low. “It’s one flight up - but, uh, what goes up…y’know…must come down. You haven’t gone down a flight of stairs since…”

  Oh damn. She’d forgotten. She’d thought she’d conquered her vertigo, but this wasn’t just staring out an attic window.

  “One flight.” Jill pulled in a deep breath. “I can do it. Just…have your gun ready. And leave this door unlocked.”

  “Definitely.”

  Halfway up the flight, David stopped.

  “It just occurred,” he whispered. “The cops never could have taken lifts from this second apartment. Given Haig’s alibi, they would have had no probable cause.”

  Jill’s lips parted. “And Pappas said they found one latent print in Kassie’s apartment. Wouldn’t it be something if one of these guys-“

  “I’ll say. Imagine that.”

  They crept up to 4C. Rounded the landing, walked just feet to the door like all the other drab doors in the hall, and got to work with their tape lifting.

  No real need for quiet, though. Beside this floor’s TVs sounding – music, canned laughter, gunshots - there was an argument going on inside 4C.

  “So I’ll leave!” said a deep male voice. “There are other goddamn couches!”

  “Find one!” Haig, his voice thin and reedy.

  “You’re just pissed ‘cause I won’t help you clean your fat mama friend’s apartment!”

  “Kassie was nice to you too!” Haig’s voice strained higher. “She brought you casseroles, sewed your camouflage jacket, those buttons on your stupid-“

  “I’m not going near that scare place!” yelled the deep voice – and coughed. “It’s been bad enough bunking in this dump!”

  “So why don’t you move to the Ritz?” Haig’s voice sounded near tears. “I’m sure your low-rent agent will advance you the money!”

  They hollered. Haig’s voice piped and cried from further away. Doors and drawers slammed.

  Jill hurried. Her hands shook as she passed tapes to David who sealed and labeled them.

  Then, suddenly, came the sound of locks unbolting, and a door across the hall cracked open. Above a chain still in place, a broad-faced woman of about fifty glared out at them. They were pinned, didn’t know what to say. Jill tried to act casual and smiled at her. The woman relaxed, but kept her chain in place.

  “Awful, the way those two fight,” she snorted.

  They agreed, quiet-voiced, and moved closer together to block the taping they’d been doing. The woman didn’t seem interested.

  Her voice was gravelly. “The one named Sandy says he’s sick of Jerry, he’s trying to get him out of his life.”

  “He’d be better off,” David said quietly, nodding.

  “I’d be better off,” the woman snapped. “Get some peace around here.”

  Jill stepped closer to the woman, who drew back a little from her chain. “Do you know the one named Jerry?” Jill asked softly.

  “Never even seen him, they both work weird hours. Even the Sandy one I only talk to through this chain.” The woman frowned at their plainclothes. “You guys cops? Someone in 4E said he was going to call the cops, complain about the noise.”

  David stepped closer to her too. “We’ll do our best, Ma’am,” he said low, pleasantly. Then put his index finger to his lips in a request for quiet.

  She seemed to like that. Muttered something about “getting some damn sleep,” and thumped her door closed. Slide bolts clunked back into place.

  They exhaled. Got hurriedly back to work. The labels in this new bunch of plastic bags bore the information that prints were from both Sandy Haig and someone unknown named Jerry Kirka who also lived in Haig’s apartment. A rubber band held the first bunch from Kassie’s doorknob together. Jill now stretched a second rubber band around the Haig-Kirka bunch.

  The hol
lering inside 4C continued. A door slammed again. What sounded like a chair fell over.

  “Kirka coughed,” Jill whispered, handing David the last tape lift.

  He nodded, his jaw taut. “Either allergy like Haig said,” he whispered, “or the guy’s using codeine. It’s in every cough suppressant. Works for a while unless it’s a bad bug.”

  “Like Pseudomonas.”

  “Yup.”

  Something crashed inside 4C.

  “Great, asshole!!” the deep voice bellowed.

  “Who’s the asshole?” Haig cried. “That’s it, I’m gonna sublet! Say ‘bye to the couch, I’m outta here!”

  Footsteps approached the door.

  They ran for the stairs. Ducked down several until Jill saw the landing below rise up to pulverize her. Her knees buckled and she grabbed the railing.

  David scooped her up over his shoulder, carried her fast down the rest of the stairs, and back into Kassie’s apartment with the door closed. Footsteps ran down seconds later, and the vestibule door three flights below slammed.

  He got her settled in a chair by the window. She was miffed, embarrassed, furious with herself. “I could have handled those stairs,” she protested, still feeling wobbly. “I made it down a few, didn’t I?”

  “Yeah, first time, you did good,” he said, pounding away at his phone and pacing. “It’s urgent,” he told someone at the other end. “Fine, patch me through.”

  Frowning, Jill peeked from her chair out to the dark street. Haig’s figure passed under a streetlight, and then disappeared. He was carrying a packed duffel bag.

  Now David was talking to Alex Brand. “We just lifted some prints for you to look at,” he said. “Can you send someone for them?”

  They arranged to have a patrol car meet them on First at the corner of Thirty-seventh. It wouldn’t do to have a blue-and-white seen pulling up in front of the building.

  Seconds later Jill and David were running to First. Minutes later they were in a lights-flashing, speeding patrol car. The cop driving said he’d take the prints straight to the crime lab.

  “Tell them to start with the second bunch, they’re from two guys, I don’t think you have either of their prints,” David said, leaning over to the front seat. “The one named Jerry Kirka may be sick with something…bad.”

  “Consider it done,” the cop said. “They’re fast.”

  He swerved, and took a slight detour.

  “Brand’s orders,” he said. “They don’t want you two out on the streets.”

  The patrol car pulled into the busy ambulance bay. They thanked him and ran into the hospital.

  36

  All hell had broken loose while they were gone. The ambulance bay was ablaze with the flashing lights of other blue-and-whites, and more ambulances pulling in.

  “I just ran down, we’re swamped,” said Woody Greenberg, helping an EMS guy in with a gurney. “Four deliveries at once, bad enough, then pow.” He gestured back out to the flashing bay as the E.R. doors slid closed - then jerked open again. Another ambulance was unloading.

  “First an intersection collision, woman seven months pregnant with a crushed pelvis.” His voice lowered as they helped push his gurney. “Then some guy beats up his pregnant girlfriend - that’s this one - and another guy shoots his pregnant girlfriend. The second one’s already upstairs. It looks bad.” He peered back at a new gurney just coming in through the sliding doors. “Oh pleeease, make this one surgery, we’re outta people.”

  Jeans and hoodies? He blinked and seemed suddenly aware of what they were wearing. “How fast can you guys scrub in? We need everyone.”

  “Five minutes,” Jill said, adjusting the sheet covering the woman on their gurney.

  “Same.” David helped steer the gurney through the E.R. chaos, glanced from its base at the woman too. Black and blue, moaning and crying, face bloodied, minor head lacerations. Moaning and crying meant she was conscious, though.

  He looked up again. “Crushed pelvis already here?” he asked Woody.

  “Upstairs as of just ten minutes ago. Looks bad. MacIntyre and Holloway are there, Tricia, Ramu. Can’t get to the fetus ‘cause there’s broken bone in the way and they’re probably screaming for you. Great night for you to be not on call, huh?”

  “I’ll go.”

  “David?” Jill found herself staring down at the woman on the gurney.

  Woody was still yammering and updating him on the crushed pelvis case. He looked so grim, listening. She bumped into an orderly, excused herself, and finally just reached and yanked on David’s sleeve. That got his attention. He looked at her as if his mind was whirling.

  “Is that…?” she said, gesturing down with her gaze. “It looks like…”

  She couldn’t be sure. It was someone she’d seen only once, and now was unrecognizable. David glanced back down at the woman, then stared. “Oh boy,” he said, slack-jawed. Then asked the EMS guy pushing the gurney’s side, “Got a name?”

  He did. The woman’s name was Kim Dean.

  The P.R. woman from Howard Graham’s meeting. She was pregnant?

  They got her into a cubicle. “Get into scrubs, I’ll wait,” David told Jill.

  She ran to change, Phisohex her hands, and ran back. David, one ear to his cell phone, was repeating numbers from the sound of it and watching Woody check the patient. A nurse busied herself with the IV.

  Then Woody scrammed for one of the deliveries.

  David, repocketing his phone, whispered, “A glimmer of good news. Kassie Doyle’s temp is down to 102.7. She’s still sedated for pain.”

  Jill was thrilled. “But her temp’s down!”

  David wasn’t thrilled. “The cefepime works, but it’s too damned slow and that bug’s multiplying too fast.”

  “Because it had a head start…”

  A nod. “Peritonitis is the worst.” David glanced at Kim Dean, shook his head and said, “She’s yours. I gotta go.” Then squeezed Jill’s arm and was off to the crushed pelvis.

  Kim Dean was moaning weakly.

  No makeup, hair stringy, no clanky bracelets or fancy outfit. Unrecognizable. Bloody and pathetic.

  The nurse helped Jill into gloves, mask, and a sterile gown. Tying the knot behind Jill’s sterile gown she said quietly, “I just heard. She’s a hospital employee. Works in one of the admin offices.”

  Do tell.

  Kim Dean was crying with her swollen eyes shut tight. Jill swabbed blood from her face, a gash on her brow, and gently tried to reassure. Then re-checked for head and neurological injury, even though Woody had already done it. As with Lainey Wheeler, brain swelling and subdural hematomas had a way of sneaking up on you.

  But Kim Dean was okay. No evidence of permanent physical damage or…rape or being bludgeoned from behind with a cement block. Mainly that three-centimeter gash over the eyebrow. Jill pictured a hurled lamp base. Kim had also been punched or kicked in the face, probably when she was on the floor in a tight tuck position, trying to protect her baby.

  Jill pulled down the light blue blanket, and palpated Kim’s uterus. She was four months along. There were no signs of bleeding or miscarriage.

  This was a fight, a big, bad fight. The kind the hospital saw every day.

  “Not…my fault,” Kim Dean whispered tearfully. Her eyes were partly open now, swollen, unfocused.

  Pulling the blanket back up Jill asked gently, “What wasn’t your fault?”

  “He…got fired. Hospital big shot got him fired. Not my fault.” The voice came out in a feeble wail.

  “Of course it wasn’t your fault,” Jill comforted. “You and your baby are going to be okay.”

  She inhaled before asking the next question.

  “Who’s ‘he?’” she asked. “Who did this to you?”

  “Trey.”

  Jill froze.

  Hospital big shot got him fired. Jill’s breath caught as she thought back to her conversation with Simpson. She felt unaccountably guilty. Kim Dean had seemed…sweet, actua
lly, during their meeting at Graham’s office. Okay, hustling for their P.R. co-operation, but also proud of the blouse she had made herself, showing it to Jill in a woman-to-woman moment. How could someone like Kim Dean hook up with an embittered, boa-loving, grandiose egotist like Trey Raphael?

  Tears streamed down Kim’s cheeks. Jill reached for tissues and gently wiped. The nurse bustled back in with Procaine in a syringe. “You’ll feel a little sting,” Jill said, swabbing again and injecting the painkiller. The laceration had to be sutured. Kim let out the barest whimper.

  Seconds passed, the Procaine took effect, and Jill got to work with her curved suture needle. “Try not to move,” she said, although the nurse was holding Kim’s head steady.

  Kim felt nothing, seemed only to want to talk. “He was so charming, we started out so well,” she wept. Then her tone turned almost angry. “I did everything for him. I got him this job. Let him move in with me. Then he got moody and angry and today got fired and snapped. Came home crazed, coked up, took it out on me.”

  “Have him arrested,” said the nurse.

  “How?” The reddened eyes went round with fear. Sought Jill out but didn’t recognize her in her mask. “I don’t know where he is. He ran out. He said…”

  “Said what?” Jill prompted, her breath quickening.

  “First he said, ‘I shoulda killed you.’ Then, getting crazier he said, “’I’m gonna kill them.’”

  “Call the police,” the nurse urged, getting alarmed.

  But the place was crawling with cops, extra security. People planning violence had a way of getting past them. Or if thwarted, harming others.

  Jill’s throat was dry as parchment. She sutured, trying to keep her voice even. “Kill them?” she repeated. “Did he say who?”

  “Just…them. He kept saying them. Said they had ruined his life.”

  The terrifying phone call boomed in Jill’s ears. “’I want all of you dead. You and that freakazoid floating kid!’”

  In her mind Jill replayed “…came home crazed, coked up.” Also remembered Pappas calling them in the bacteriology lab. “Raphael’s got a rap sheet for drugs.”