by Wally Duff
I took a step, too. We were two gunfighters facing off, almost like the first time I saw Fertig and Warren interact at the nursing station in this hospital.
“I tried to get even with them by making them sick, but like Eddie said, it didn’t work. Then Warren killed himself, and that gave me a better solution. If those doctors wouldn’t write scripts for my drugs, I would help them ‘commit suicide.’ It was perfect.”
Another step toward her.
I slid my right index finger onto the Glock’s trigger guard.
“Diane Warren and Fertig never had anything to do with these murders?”
“Nope. They were too busy making money to be bothered with my financial problems.”
She dropped the doctor’s coat on the floor. It flopped open. In the bundle were white scrubs with dried blood on them, latex gloves, cowboy boots, and a black wig. She was left holding a gun in her hand. A big gun.
“What are you talking about? You make a good living.”
“Oh, I do, but it’s about to end. I’ve complained over and over to my company’s HR people about the doctors sexually harassing me, but would anyone listen? No way. But the boss was afraid to fire me. His solution was to raise my quota so high I could never reach it.”
“And then they could let you go.”
“Exactly. And Fertig was the worst. By himself he could have saved me by writing more prescriptions, and he knew that. Each time I had sex with him, he promised me he would write more scripts.” She limped forward another step. “But he didn’t.”
163
I threw down my purse as I pulled out the Glock. I jacked one round into the chamber and held the gun in front of me. I kept my right index finger on the trigger guard.
“Who shot you?” I asked.
“I shot myself,” Alexis said. “Bad mistake. It looks easy on TV, but the pain was unbearable. And I never dreamed it would cause that much damage.”
“You hid the evidence up there on top of the ceiling tiles,” I said, pointing at the contents of the bundle that were on the floor by her feet, “and then slid the tile back in place.”
I stepped closer. She did the same.
“I needed to prove to the cops that Fertig was a killer and they’d arrest him. The only way was to have the security cameras record him going into the OR to kill Gary, but I didn’t know about Fertig having his private entrance.”
“You decided to have the cameras record ‘Fertig’ shooting Wickham.”
“And they did. After Diane and her lawyers saw that recording, they assumed Fertig was guilty of shooting me and killing the other doctors.”
I inched forward and let her continue to talk.
“She had one of her people remove those discs. The only evidence left that would prove Fertig was a killer was my testimony, and we both know how that turned out.”
“You shot out the security cameras, allowing you to change into your own outfit, hide his clothes, and shoot yourself without being seen.”
“And I had to get here before the cameras were repaired. Once they were, the guards would see me pick up the only evidence against me, and I sure didn’t want it to be found after Diane gave me all that money.”
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“Was there ever a list of Peter’s committee members?” I asked.
“I’m sure there was, but I have no idea who was on it,” Alexis said. “You needed names, and I needed to kill doctors. I made a list for you.”
“‘Lex, you’re not a killer. Why would you do this?”
“My kids,” she said. “You’re a mom. Doesn’t the lioness kill for her cubs? I was going to lose my job, and my kids would have to quit college. And graduate school? Forget it. Their lives were going to be ruined. I couldn’t let that happen.”
“I don’t believe you. No one would kill another person to keep a job. That’s preposterous.”
Her blue eyes flashed. “You want to know what’s preposterous? Not just doctors. All men. They suck. Ever since I can remember, I’ve been screwed over by men. I should get a medal for what I did.”
“That’s crazy.”
“How can you say that? Men deserve to die for what they do to women. All these women in the #MeToo movement are idiots. They go public. They beg for dignity, but what do they get? Not a damn thing. They should all do what I’ve done.”
“And you think that justifies killing men?”
“It does, and I would do it again. It felt great to make the doctors sick, but it was even better to watch them die.”
“What about Wickham? She obviously wasn’t a man.”
“You pushed me into a corner. David and Rick said Fertig was leaving the country in a few hours. I needed to convince the cops that he was the killer so they would arrest him. And she was always a bitch to me. I guess you could call her collateral damage.”
“Would you have kept killing?”
“I might have, but now, with all this money, I can retire.” She smiled. “But who knows? If a guy pisses me off in the future, I might go back to work.”
165
I stepped closer. “You never expected to get rich from all this,” I said.
“You got that right,” Alexis said. “If I’d known that would happen, I would have shot myself a long time ago and not bothered killing the doctors.”
As I inched closer, I did a slide-step to my left. She mirrored my movement by limping to her right.
“I just realized something,” she said. “You are good at getting people to tell you things they don’t want to. I confessed everything to you without intending to do it. Dumb me. Now I have to kill you to keep you from writing this story.”
“I think you intended to do that all along.”
I moved closer and to the left. She did the same thing and to the right.
“Maybe not. One never knows.”
“We both have guns.”
I moved my finger to the trigger and raised my gun into firing position. She did too.
“Match point,” she said. “We know each other’s weakness. Yours is that you can’t shoot me because I’m your friend and tennis partner.”
“I think you’re wrong.”
She laughed. “I killed those doctors, and I’m not afraid to kill you.”
“There’s one thing you need to know about me. I’ve used my gun before.”
She laughed again. “Shooting a guy in his hands isn’t the same as killing someone.”
I took a slide step to my left, forcing her to put more weight on her right leg as she again mirrored my move.
“You could ask the terrorist I shot at O’Hare about that, but he’s no longer around.” I pointed my gun at her center mass and slid further to my left. “Drop the gun, or I’ll shoot.”
She moved to her right and laughed one more time. “I don’t think so.”
Her finger tightened on the trigger, as she slid once more to her right.
I took in a deep breath. I had to slow my pounding heart rate to improve my aim.
“I hate to be laughed at,” I said moving to my left.
We fired at the same time.
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The impact from my bullet knocked Alexis on her back. I ran up to her. Blood and air bubbled out of two entry wounds in her chest.
Two?
Alexis fired one bullet at me and missed. I fired one and hit her.
But there were two holes in her chest.
What the heck?
I turned around.
“I’m not into tennis, but I think you guys call this game, set, and match,” Janet said. She elbowed me out of the way and kicked the gun out of Alexis’s motionless hand.
Janet checked my former friend’s neck for a pulse. She shook her head and holstered her gun.
I stared at Alexis’s body and wondered how much I know about the rest of my friends.
Or how much they know about me and what makes me tick.
Janet glanced over her shoulder at me. “Two chest wounds. You fired one. I fired the
other.”
“I did.”
“We both hit her.”
“We did. Will it be hard to tell which one killed her?”
“Probably.”
“I don’t want to know.”
“That’s understandable.”
“But it doesn’t make me feel any better.”
“She missed. You didn’t.”
“I was sure she would.”
“It’s harder than it looks to shoot a living person.”
“Especially when that person is shooting back.”
“Moving her around on her bad leg didn’t help her aim any either.”
“You could say I took advantage of my opponent’s weakness.”
“Athletes do stuff like that.”
“We do.”
“She thought she was doing the same thing to you.”
“She should have listened and dropped her gun.”
The blood began to clot on Alexis’s chest.
“She would still be alive if she’d done that,” she said.
167
A Chicago police officer ran up to Janet. He began securing the scene with yellow tape.
“Should I ask why you’re here?” I asked.
“I’ve been waiting,” Janet said.
“For me?”
“Alexis.”
“How did you know she would be here?”
She pointed up at the ceiling. “After I found the white coat wrapped around all that evidence, I knew she would eventually come down here to pick it up.”
I pointed at the security camera. “It isn’t broken, is it?”
“Nope. If she saw a new one, she wouldn’t try and steal the evidence. It was rigged to look like it was still broken.”
“You needed her to retrieve her bag to prove she was the killer.”
She smiled.
“Is there another camera?” I asked.
She pointed to the fire extinguisher. “I had the boys put one in there too. And another at the other end of the hall. High tech equipment. She couldn’t see the cameras unless she knew where to look.”
“Where were you hiding?”
“In the garage. It’s a long run. That’s why it took so long for me to get here.”
“Tell me. I did the same run when Alexis shot herself.”
“Do you want to call your husband? This seems like a great story.”
“One I’m not sure I want to write.”
“You thought she was your friend.”
“I did.” I pointed at my gun. The glitter on the barrel sparkled. “And I might have a problem if Carter finds out I fired one of the shots.”
“I agree. I’ll take your gun with me for the ballistics check. I think I can convince the captain to keep the findings in-house.” She paused. “It should work if you don’t mind changing the ending when you talk to your husband about what actually happened here.”
I pointed at the cameras. “Except you have a recording of what happened.”
“But Carter won’t know about that unless you tell him. Let’s keep it between us girls.”
“What about the security videos?”
“They are now the property of the Chicago PD. We’ll take care of them.”
“Sounds good to me.”
I called Carter.
168
I sat in the passenger seat of Janet’s Crown Vic and watched the M.E. and her crew roll the gurney with my former friend’s body on it into the garage to be loaded into the ambulance and driven to the medical examiner’s office.
Janet followed them and then turned away and climbed into the driver’s side. “Carter on the way?” she asked.
“He is,” I said. “He freaked out when I called. He’ll probably get a speeding ticket driving over here.”
The EMTs removed the body. There wasn’t any rush. I didn’t want to, but I couldn’t help it. I began to cry.
I had to swallow several times before I could talk. “How did you figure it out?”
“Initially, I was going to ask you the same thing, but I watched and listened to the tape of the shooting my guys recorded from our cameras before I came out here. You never knew.”
“Not until she pulled that white bundle down from the ceiling.”
“And you started asking questions and got her to begin blabbing. She was right about one thing. You’re great at getting a suspect to spill her guts. We have her confession on tape, and we didn’t have to do a thing to get it.”
“But it helped that she came back down here.”
“She had to destroy the evidence if she wanted to keep the money Diane Warren gave her.”
“But all this wasn’t about that money.”
“Nope. It was interesting how she tried to con you about that, claiming the #MeToo movement was her reason for doing this.”
“Maybe part of it was. Several times she mentioned to us that she’d had bad experiences with her two ex-husbands and guys she dated, but I never realized she hated them.”
“Not a surprise if you’d looked into her background.”
“Which I didn’t, but you did.”
She nodded. “After I figured out what she’d done, I checked out her history. There was abuse and all sorts of bad encounters with men going all the way back to her childhood.”
“But that’s not justification for making men sick or killing them.”
“I’m sure she would disagree.” She paused. “If she were still alive.”
169
I pulled out a writing pad from my backpack to take notes I would later give to Carter. I also recorded the conversation with Janet on my phone.
My hand shook as I began to write. I was still having problems processing what had happened. Working on the story would help right now, but later? From my previous experiences with near-death moments, I knew I might have PTSD problems again.
“How did you figure it out?” I began.
“It was the clothes you wore the day she shot herself,” Janet began.
“My clothes?” I asked.
“Yeah, think back. What did you have on those clothes?”
“Her blood.”
“And?”
“Her hair.”
“But it wasn’t her hair. Our lab guys matched it to a young Chinese woman.”
Whoa.
“When they told me that, I went over everything again, beginning with the security tapes, and I had her.”
“I don’t understand.”
“It was the recording of the female cleaning lady who pushed the cart into the OR before Dr. Gary’s murder.”
“The one who wore forest-green scrubs, a paper hat, green paper booties, and protective goggles?”
“Yep, and latex gloves.”
“I missed the gloves. Why did she have those on?”
“She didn’t want to leave her fingerprints on the cart, or in the OR procedure room when she got out the equipment to kill Gary.”
“The cleaning lady was Alexis.”
“It was.”
“Where did she get the cleaning outfit?”
“The same place she got the cart — in the locker room the cleaning people use in the doctor’s building.”
“She was in that building daily. She knew where everything was stored.”
“And when they wouldn’t be around to catch her.”
“Where did she change?”
“In the bathroom in the doctor’s building. We reviewed the videos from that building and saw her.”
“There are cleaning people everywhere in the hospital and doctor’s building. They’re part of the background scene and no one notices them.”
“The CSI guys found her own hair fibers and fingerprints in the bathroom, which helped, but there was one other thing: her feet.”
170
“Her feet?” I asked.