Lethal Practice

by Peter Clement

  It was insane. Crazy. Despite having initially found the mark myself, I was sure he had to be wrong. I started grasping at logical explanations. “Someone must have tried resuscitating him prehospital and it wasn’t recorded.”

  “That was my first thought too, but I already double-checked with MAS. It was a DOA picked up in an alley. Long dead. There was no attempt at resuscitation made.” Watts seemed weary and paused, then added, “I know it’s hard to accept. I’ve run it over and over looking for some other explanation myself. But the entry wound on the heart in that container over there is in perfect position. John Doe was stabbed same as Kingsly, by an expert. Of course, I’ll need my tissue samples to confirm whether the needle went in before or after death, but without the history of a resuscitation attempt, murder, however inexplicable, has to be our working diagnosis. I’m just kicking myself for not following up on your first impulse.”

  The shock left me nervous. Since I was a kid, a serious situation had always made me giggle; I didn’t giggle, but my next crack was its verbal equivalent. “Maybe John and Kingsly were drinking buddies?”

  * * * *

  Detective Bufort was not a happy man. We’d pulled him out of the hospital’s finance department, where he was hovering over a group of men uniformly dressed in white shirts, gray slacks, and black shoes. Only the ties varied. They had taken their raincoats off, giving a slightly new meaning to the term “plainclothes,” and resembling more the members of a firm of certified public accountants than cops.

  With all the focus on the hospital books, I realized Bufort must have figured Kingsly’s death had something to do with money. I wondered if that was why Gil Fernandez had looked so frightened. But a dead vagrant didn’t exactly fit the financial crimes profile.

  “Impossible!” Bufort had spat out as we described our find on the way to the morgue. Having to put on full protection against airborne infections made him even more irritable. Actually seeing the guide wire tracing the needle stab to the heart seemed to make him angry.

  “Preposterous!” He glared at Watts. “You must be wrong. This goes against everything we’ve found so far in our investigation. You’ve obviously made a mistake.” He was nearly stuttering, he was so upset.

  “My big mistake,” said Watts, sounding miserable, “was ignoring Dr. Garnet when he suggested I take a look at this mark two days ago. I practically laughed him out of the room.” He shook his head. “I can’t believe I was so stupid.”

  Bufort swung around to face me. “You reported this two days ago! And you didn’t tell me?”

  “Detective Bufort!” interrupted Watts. “I said the delay was all my fault. If it hadn’t been for Dr. Garnet being so alert—”

  “Dr. Watts, I’m not interested in your very noble and entirely predictable defense of a colleague,” snapped Bufort without taking his eyes off me. “I’m very interested in the fact that Dr. Garnet has once again attempted to withhold information from me.” His face was flushed, and the blacks of his eyes widened until his irises became thin brown rims.

  “Now, wait a minute,” I protested. “I reported a very unlikely possibility to the hospital’s pathologist—a mole or dirt on that DOA. Why should either of us have told the police such a wild idea until it was confirmed? You wouldn’t have believed us then, and you don’t seem ready to accept the finding even now.” My accusation sounded a bit hollow, since I, too, was having trouble accepting that the derelict could have been murdered with a cardiac needle.

  Bufort turned back to Watts. “I don’t accept your verdict, Doctor, because according to our investigation so far, it makes no sense. And with all due respect, while we appreciate the help you gave us with Kingsly, you’re not a forensic pathologist. You may be perfectly adequate discovering why people die from natural causes, but to go so far as proclaiming this derelict was murdered in the same way that Kingsly was, well, clearly, you can’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Now Watts’s eyes dilated, and his cold stare fixed on Bufort. Many a poor fool, resident and staff alike, had invited his or her own humiliation by challenging one of Watts’s clinical pronouncements. He struck the pose of a readied cobra I’d seen in previous bouts, but this threatened to get physical. “Would you care to repeat that accusation?” The level of menace in his voice alarmed even me, and I instinctively placed my hand on his arm. He was shaking with rage. With deliberate slowness Watts reached up and switched on his overhead dictating microphone.

  Bufort swallowed. He was a tough cop, pompous, close-minded and maybe incompetent, but I suspected he was also a canny bureaucrat. A tape recorder probably frightened him more than a gun. An official record, even on his best behavior, could be scrutinized, picked apart, and twisted against him by the press, or even by someone in his own department settling an old score.

  He looked from Watts to me, then very carefully said, “Let’s review your findings. Dr. Watts. And if you’ll permit me to use your phone, I’ll call an officer to come down here and help me take a statement from you and Dr. Garnet. Then I’ll get a forensic pathologist on this.”

  His tone was polite, but his expression was murderous. The son of a bitch kept us in that room for more than an hour making a “detailed report.”

  It was late afternoon by the time I got out. Between the formaldehyde fumes, the corpses starting to stink, and the cramped subterranean quarters, I had a headache. As soon as I entered the relative freedom of the main floor corridor, I heard my name being called on the overhead speakers.

  “Where have you been!” demanded the operator once I got to a phone. The women in locating always sounded like annoyed mothers, but none more so than this woman at this moment.

  “In the autopsy room.” There were no speakers there. The operators didn’t even want to think about what it was we did in that inner sanctum.

  There was a pause as my misbehaving was measured. “Well, next time tell us where you’re going.”

  “Yes, mommy. Now can I have my messages please? I promise I’ll be a good boy.”

  “Smartass! Okay, first: Susanne wants you in emergency, then Dr. Hurst has been calling for you, but the most urgent seemed to be geriatrics.”

  Damn, Muffy had been there since the morning, when I’d had them retrieve her from the car.

  “Anything else?”

  “Yes, phone your wife.”

  Great idea. Recalling I had a life outside this labyrinth made me feel better.

  A quick call to Susanne confirmed we were still in a mess. “Forty admitted patients,” she reported, “and some are on their second day in the corridor.”

  No surprise there.

  “And Hurst is a little mad at you for stranding him in the real world of patients. Mad as in wanting to resurrect his long-faded surgical skills on your carcass without anesthetic.”

  Normally I would have laughed, but not now. My next thought just slipped out. “They probably aren’t all that faded.”

  “Pardon?”

  “Sorry, Susanne. Talking to myself.” I certainly wasn’t ready to add my suspicions about him to hospital gossip. “And thanks for the warning. I’ve no inclination to call him anyway. What else?”

  “A few reporters have been looking for you. They seem to have picked up that you found the body.”

  I very definitely didn’t want to deal with the press. “Oh, God!” I started. “We’ve been told to send all reporters to Hurst and Bufort. And tell the rest of our staff to do the same.” That was one order I was more than glad to obey.

  “I already have, on both counts. I figured they’d want it that way.”

  “You do good in chaos.”

  She gave a little laugh, but then there was a pause, which was unusual for Susanne.

  I gave her time. More silence.

  “Okay, Susanne, spit it out.”

  “No. It’s nothing. Look, I gotta go, another ambulance.” And she clicked off.

  Great. If Susanne can’t tell me something, I worry. I added it to a g
rowing pile of questions.

  Janet’s line was repeatedly busy. That left Muffy. I retrieved her from a regal pose on a love seat in the geriatric wing amid a clutch of elderly admirers. She pranced along, proudly drawing stares as we headed through the corridors for the front door and home.

  * * * *

  It was a rare treat to be home at six o’clock, but the back lane was already a channel of mist. Our house was even darker. Neighboring porch lights were fuzzy glares in the gloom. There was no point going in just to sit alone. Muffy happily accepted a chance to walk.

  The lane was normally a pleasant place lined with backyard hedges and gardens put to bed for the winter. It had once been a private road leading to the golf course where I’d encountered the dogs Monday night. Now it was shared by all the home owners on our block.

  The image of those Dobermans needed no urging to come to mind. I kept pushing away what might have happened if the attack hadn’t been called off. The intruder at our cabin didn’t help my frame of mind any. I tried to remind myself to stop jumping to conclusions, but out here alone it was hard not to be afraid of the dark.

  The fog was so heavy, I could feel its cool droplets on my face, yet it was strangely soothing, and as Muff happily marked her favorite spots, I began churning over the events of the last few hours.

  None of it made sense. There was no explaining how both Kingsly and a derelict could have been killed by a cardiac needle. At least I agreed with Bufort about that. Watts’s bombshell certainly seemed to have derailed whatever solution Bufort was on the trail of. Or worse, maybe not. I still had the distinct impression no troublesome facts were going to get in the way of his “solution.” Heaven help the innocent, including me.

  My own thinking was certainly thrown off. As much as I’d come to fear and suspect Hurst, I couldn’t even begin to imagine why he’d have any relation to the DOA, let alone a motive to murder him. It was just as inexplicable to try to connect anyone else in the hospital to killing a vagrant. There had to be some other explanation. I kept clinging to the possibility there’d been a resuscitation attempt somewhere during which a cardiac needle had been used, but if not with MAS, where?

  Watts wouldn’t issue a final report until he’d completed his study of the other organs, subjected all the tissue samples he’d taken to an examination under the microscope, and reviewed the results of the biochemistry and toxicology testing that would be done on the man’s blood, urine, and stomach contents. Until then, all we knew for sure was that a needle had been put into his heart. As Watts had said, knowing definitively whether it had killed him or was inserted and removed after something else killed him would have to wait for his findings. But without there having been a resuscitation, was there any possible cause of what he’d found other than murder?

  Muffy examined a weed at the edge of the concrete, and I tried to focus on more pleasant thoughts. My head was beginning to ache again.

  It wasn’t hard to start thinking of Janet coming home in a few minutes. We were going to have an all too rare evening together, and the prospect lay ahead of me like a life raft.

  Muffy anointed a suitable bush and made a deposit in a vacant strip of weeds nestled between a telephone pole and the gate to a neighbor’s manicured lawn. Since scooping laws were left to towns and municipalities and nobody could decide to whom this patch belonged, we poop troops were uncertain. So Muff and I were free, for now at least, from any degrading bagging routine.

  On the way back, she limited her pause-and-sniff checks to an occasional passing snort and was suddenly tugging me home, pulling me hard.

  A jerk on the leash set me jogging after her. Even in leather shoes the exertion was welcome, but I was hopelessly outclassed. Trying to keep up with her for thirty seconds left me winded and my heart pounding. I was clearly out of practice.

  Then I suddenly thought of how a derelict might have a cardiac needle track in his heart and it be perfectly legitimate. The possible answer was as simple as relief. Of course! I thought. It had to be. But I couldn’t check it out now. I’d have to wait until Kradic and the night resident were on call at midnight. More realistically, I’d catch them before they went off in the morning. Now they’d probably be sleeping.

  Muff turned the corner of our driveway and scooted up to our well-lighted back door. Janet’s car was in the garage, and the kitchen lights promised warmth and welcome. Muffy pranced around me in an impatient circle as I got the door open, then ran in ahead of me to get the first hug. Already, the warm, spicy aroma of Janet’s quick goulash filled the place. I stood in line till Muff was finished, then got a kiss.

  “Miss me?” Janet asked playfully.

  “You and what’s-his-name here,” I said, reaching down to pat the beginning swell of Janet’s stomach. I was periodically pushed away by the head of a jealous poodle. We started to giggle.

  Janet looked at the upturned eyes begging for attention. “Muff, you are in for a surprise.”

  We made a little fuss over her, then Janet shoved us both out of the kitchen and returned to preparing our meal. Muff and I retreated to the living room, where I put on a tape of Joe Cocker and settled down to the strains of “Try a Little Tenderness.” As that raspy voice evoked the decade when I had sworn I would never end up domesticated, Muff sprawled out beside me, taking up most of the couch and planting her head in my lap for a few kitzles. In the kitchen, Janet had joined Cocker in a duet and was belting out when love grows weary. I put my head back, smiled, and loved every corny moment of it.

  This was the first real time we’d had together since Kingsly’s murder, and I knew I’d have to tell Janet about the trouble I was in. But I resented letting that worry and dread intrude on our lives. I’d at least wait until we finished eating.

  * * * *

  The ordinary evening was nothing less than resuscitation of the soul. Simple stew, a beer for me, club soda for Janet, and, by some miracle, no calls for either of us.

  After dinner we sat in easy silence in the living room and had coffee. Janet’s feet were in my lap, and I was kitzling them.

  “What have you been up to?” she asked sleepily.

  “You obviously didn’t hear the news today. The CEO of the hospital was found murdered in his office early Monday morning.”

  “What! Kingsly?” Her eyes were open wide now. Janet had met him a few times at hospital social events.

  “Afraid so. That’s why I came in so late from my shift.”

  “Who killed him?”

  “Nobody knows. There’s police all over the place.”

  “God! That’s ghastly. How was he killed?”

  “This isn’t in the news, and it’s confidential as hell. He was stabbed with a cardiac needle.”

  “Good Lord! That’s weird. Who’d use a cardiac needle to kill someone?”

  “That’s what the police want to know.”

  “Who do you think it was?”

  “I haven’t a clue.”

  She lay back with her eyes closed again, and I was relieved she didn’t ask any more questions for a while. Should I volunteer the rest of it? What was the point? It was all suspicion and unsubstantiated fears so far—the shadow stuff of nightmares. Whispered warnings. Cops playing mind games. Dirty hospital politics. Why upset her with vague conspiracy theories, or frighten her with stories of Doberman attacks and intruders in the night, when I had no real evidence any of it could harm us. I’d only be sharing paranoia.

  “Is any of it going to be affecting you?” she finally asked. “Not much,” I lied. “Hurst shut down a hundred beds Monday, and emergency’s a mess.”

  This didn’t even get her eyes open. She’d come from a family of doctors, two brothers and her father. Whenever we all got together, there was a family rule. “No medicine!”

  And she had insisted the same for us. It assured we didn’t squander what little time we had together on worries better left at work. But, of course, exceptions slipped in now and then.

  “Is that why you w
ent to the cabin?” she asked slyly. She knew I’d use any pretext I could to sneak in an extra trip. “The old I-got-to-use-my-computer ploy,” she added with a grin and a toe jab in the ribs.

  “Hey, watch it. You’ll injure my kitzling arm.”

  “Kitzle me!” she ordered with more toe tickles.

  I started laughing and protested, “Stop it!”

  That got her toes racing up and down my rib cage and me guffawing and begging her to stop.

  Then her feet fell back in my lap, and I started kitzling again, laughed-out and content. The nightmare shadows had been driven off for now.

  Janet was a wonder in my life. We had met nine years ago in London. I was attending a conference on emergency medicine and staying at Brown’s, a lovely hotel near Berkeley Square. It had a particularly good tearoom, and one crowded afternoon the maitre d’h6tel came over to my table and asked if I would mind sharing it with a fellow physician from New York. I accepted politely, expecting to be paired with some old man, but was delighted to instead find Janet escorted to my table. She was dressed in a sleek beige suit that matched her light blonde hair and fair skin, but what captured my attention were her deep blue eyes and the light that flashed from them. We extended crumpets and petit fours into dinner, and I spent the next few hours learning she was in England on a fellowship year studying high-risk obstetrics at King’s Cross Hospital. We passed the next week together going to art galleries and the theater.

  After two weeks we became lovers. A year later she took a position at the University of Buffalo, and we were married.

  Her toes were stirring in my lap, and I increased my kitzling.

  She had wanted to wait until her practice was established before having children. I was seven years older, and already in practice for twelve, but agreed to the delay. It seemed she needed time to feel secure enough with me to have a child. And little wonder. All our colleagues were divorced. But now it looked like we were about to have it all.