Alpha Kill - 03

by Tim Stevens

  “You think hubby might have pulled strings to help her along?”

  “Anything’s possible, “ said Venn. “Fil, I want you to track down as many of the patients in these screenshots as possible. Find out what happened to them. Their HMOs may be able to help. If you get any opposition, lean on them a little. But not too much. We don’t want them making any official complaints. We don’t want this to be official at all. Not yet.”

  “Done,” said Fil, taking the flash drive from Venn.

  “What are you gonna do?” asked Harmony.

  Venn stood. “I’m going to speak with Beth’s boss, Dr Soper.”

  “Ain’t that a little direct?” said Harmony in surprise.

  Venn said, “I’ll be discreet.”

  Chapter 12

  Beth rode the elevator to the fifth floor, her pager already yelling at her, the bustle and noise of the hospital engulfing her the way it did every weekday morning.

  On Mondays she began her ward rounds at seven a.m. It was punishingly early, especially after she’d been working the day before, but Beth had decided long ago that the only way to hit the ground running as a relatively new attending physician was to establish yourself firmly as a hard worker. The popular view of doctors in hospital practise was that you did all of the hard work, labored under the yoke of inhuman hours, while you were a resident. Once you’d achieved the exalted status of attending, the common view went, you got to kick back, relax, and enjoy the fruits of years of toil. Including the prestige, and the money.

  It wasn’t like that at all. Beth was working harder than she’d ever worked in her life. One day, maybe, she’d slow down. Have the private practice and the place in the Hamptons and the snazzy car. Right now, she was aiming at establishing her reputation, cementing her knowledge base and her experience. And a state hospital such as the one she worked at provided a golden opportunity to gain that experience.

  Beth had lain awake for a while the night before, after sending the email to Venn in the wee hours. This morning, unusually, the alarm had woken her. She’d sat up in bed, stricken by a bolt of terror. What had she done? Sending confidential patient data to a third party without proper legal process?

  Without lingering to allow the dread to build, Beth had driven herself out of bed and hit the shower. Paul had turned over as she’d got up, but by the time she emerged from the bathroom he was in his robe, his hair rumpled, holding out a mug of coffee.

  Over a hasty breakfast, they chatted. Paul hadn’t been sure if he’d be delayed at the congress in Milwaukee, so as a precaution he’d canceled all his activities at the hospital until one p.m. that day. Which meant he was in no rush to get to work, unlike Beth.

  “Maybe I’ll slob around your apartment in my robe,” he said. “Watch TV. Feel what it’s like to be a kept man.”

  Beth kissed him. “See you later,” she said.

  As she was heading out the door, a thought struck her. She turned back, grabbed her laptop from the table, found its carrying bag and slung it over her shoulder.

  Why had she done that? she thought as she strode along the Monday morning streets. She had plenty of computer access at work. She never took her personal laptop with her.

  Was she afraid that Paul, lingering in her apartment, might take a snoop? Find the illicit data on her hard drive?

  Had she become so mistrusting of people?

  The laptop was going straight into her locker, she decided as the elevator ascended. She glanced at the digital floor display. They’d passed the third floor and were slowing for the fourth.

  The doors opened and Dr Olivia Collins stepped in.

  Beth felt a tightening at her throat. It was the first time she’d seen Olivia since all of this had started. Her colleague had been away at a conference of her own, like Paul, and must have returned yesterday.

  Olivia Collins was around forty-seven or -eight years old. Of medium height, she appeared taller because of the elegant, almost regal way she carried herself. Her carefully coiffed black hair never looked mussed, and her face, unenhanced by any Botox or plastic surgery that Beth was aware of, was only faintly lined.

  “Beth,” she said.

  Beth nodded, opening her mouth to return the greeting, but somehow unable to. She realized she must seem rude, but the longer she held back on saying hello, the more ridiculous it would sound when she did.

  The elevator held two other people, who stepped aside to allow Olivia room. The woman moved in beside Beth and adopted the standard elevator-passenger’s pose, facing the doors and gazing at the floor counter above them.

  Trying not to blurt her words, Beth said, “How was the conference?”

  “Not bad,” said the other woman. “The usual bunch of egos trying to shout each other down. My paper was a hit, though.”

  Beth searched her memory frantically. Yes, now she recalled it. Olivia had presented the preliminary results of her study into a community outreach program for people on renal dialysis.

  “Was Professor Harrison there?” asked Beth. She knew Harrison, from Los Angeles, was doing similar work.

  Olivia looked pleased, as though she appreciated Beth’s interest. “He was. And he was impressed by my results, even though he would never be caught dead admitting it.”

  They chatted for a minute until the elevator reached the fifth floor, then stepped out together. Their wards were on opposite sides of the building though on the same floor. With a companionable, “Hope yours is a good one,” Olivia took her leave of Beth.

  By the time Beth reached her office, her sense of unease was beginning to dissipate a little. She hadn’t gotten the impression that Olivia knew she’d been snooping around. Which meant either that Olivia didn’t know about it, or she was a superb actress.

  *

  The morning blurred past in a constant stream of activity. Mondays were often a busy time in internal medicine. There was catching up to be done, on ward patients who’d taken a turn for the worse over the weekend. A lot of people with lifestyle-related conditions - diabetes, drug and alcohol disorders, heart disease - got sicker on a Saturday and a Sunday, and felt it on Monday morning. Plus, Beth had had two new interns starting the previous week, and they needed close supervision.

  By twelve-fifteen she was in need of a break. Popping into the doctors’ mess for a quick cup of overbrewed coffee didn’t constitute a break. It was likely somebody would pop their head round the door asking for advice, or summoning her to a patient’s bedside. Or, one of the hospital’s management bureaucrats would use the opportunity to come and remind her of some form she’d filled out incorrectly, some nitpicking aspect of protocol she’d been remiss in following.

  Instead, having made sure the ward was under control and in a state of relative peace, and after telling her resident, Kevin, to contact her on her cell if necessary - by which she meant an outbreak of the Ebola virus, or something of similar magnitude - Beth strode to the stairs and took the four flights to the first floor and headed for the front doors.

  She made her way past the knots of smokers milling around on the sidewalk, and ended up on the corner of the street, where she stood and half-closed her eyes and breathed in the cold, crisp, slightly grubby atmosphere of the city. It wasn’t exactly like getting a dose of pure Alpine air, but it made a change from the antiseptic aroma of the hospital.

  A man loomed in her visual field to her left...

  Beth recoiled, panic clawing at her, even as her conscious brain cursed her for a fool, a bag of nerves. It was only Paul, his arm raised in greeting, a brown paper bag held aloft, just like the one he’d brandished last night when he’d arrived at the door of her apartment.

  “Brought you some lunch,” he said, as Beth turned toward him and tried to suppress her initial reaction under a pleased, surprised smile. “Otherwise you’ll end up skipping it. I know you.”

  Beth took the bag. She allowed him to put his arm around her shoulders. Theirs wasn’t a secret affair, and she didn’t mind who saw.
/>
  “You’re early,” she said.

  Paul shrugged. “Got bored, hanging around the apartment. There wasn’t time to return to my own place, so I thought I’d just head over here. Pick up my messages, catch up with a little paperwork.” He tilted his chin. “Feel like taking a stroll across the road?”

  On the other side, a tiny crescent of green beckoned. It wasn’t big enough to qualify as a park, but if you could find a place to sit, it served as a nice little lunchtime oasis.

  “Sure,” said Beth.

  They waited for the light to turn green. The cross-traffic began to slow, then drew to a halt.

  In the seconds before the WALK sign appeared, Beth glanced at the nearest car.

  It was a black Jeep Cherokee.

  From behind the wheel, through the lowered window, Venn said, “Hey. Beth.”

  He was staring at her. She saw his eyes flick to Paul. Linger. Then return to her.

  “Venn,” she said, her voice faltering.

  She began to cross the street, in lockstep with Paul and the rest of the pedestrians who’d been waiting. As she passed in front of the Jeep, she turned her head, gave a half-smile.

  Venn’s face was invisible through the windshield, the glare of the slanting sun masking it.

  Chapter 13

  Venn eased the Jeep into one of the ridiculously narrow spaces in the hospital’s underground parking lot, avoiding scraping a mirror by a hair’s breadth.

  He cut the engine and sat behind the wheel.

  He uttered a silent curse at Fate.

  Why now? Why had he happened to stop at that particular light, just as Beth happened to be crossing?

  And not alone...

  Despite his general disdain for emotion, and the authority granted to it by today’s culture, Venn believed he was pretty good at identifying and labeling it when he experienced it in all of its varieties. He recalled an English teacher when he was in high school, who’d been a fussy, pedantic kind of guy but whom Venn credited with getting him through his SATS. The teacher had decried the common confusing of the words envy and jealousy. Envy was something you felt when you coveted another person’s possessions, or achievements. Jealousy happened when an important person in your life focused, or appeared to focus, their attention on somebody else.

  Venn had experienced envy plenty of times. He’d known it as a Marine, when other guys had beaten him during basic maneuvers or on the shooting range. And as a cop, he’d seen colleagues and rivals pull off high-profile cases and reap the rewards, and had felt pangs within him, even when they’d been guys he liked and respected.

  He could handle envy, especially once he’d identified it. He could live with it, and refuse to allow his actions to be guided by it, and gradually it would fade.

  He couldn’t recall ever before, in his life, experiencing jealousy. And now, as an entirely new, startlingly unfamiliar notion, it gripped him by the heart, and sent waves of pain juddering and roiling through him.

  The man with Beth had looked amiable, smart, kind. He hadn’t appeared smarmy, or flashy, or potentially abusive. There was nothing about him that could possibly trigger feelings of dislike.

  Except that he was holding onto Beth’s arm. And she was holding his arm right back.

  He was the guy who’d called her on her cell phone last night, on the street outside the coffee shop. The one she’d seemed cagey about.

  Venn had known it then. And that was why he’d gone overboard with the young drunks outside the bar.

  There was no use in trying to deny it.

  There was also no point in thinking about it.

  Venn got out of the car, locked it. He strode across the parking lot toward the elevator.

  He might allow himself to think about it later. Right now, he had work to do. And he couldn’t allow himself to be distracted.

  *

  Dr Bill Soper’s office was on the sixth floor. Venn knew this because Beth had told him once. He had a memory for detail.

  The receptionist looked up with a bright smile, which twitched a fraction when she gave Venn the once over. It was probably his size, his black leather jacket, his shaved head, none of which would be commonplace in the offices of a senior attending physician in one of the city’s most prestigious hospitals.

  Or maybe it was something in Venn’s face that unnerved her.

  “May I help you, sir?” she said, coolly professional.

  Venn used his calming voice, soft tones on a low register. The voice he’d used before when talking down a potential suicide from a ledge, or when speaking with a cranked-up robber holding a gun to a hostage’s head.

  “Yes, I hope you can, Ms-? Chen.” He peered at the name tag pinned to her blouse. “I’m sorry to drop in like this, but I wonder if there’s any chance Dr Soper might be in his office, and if I could have a few moments of his time. I realize you’re all busy.”

  He didn’t offer a smile. He couldn’t fake them.

  The receptionist, on the other hand, gave a smile that was at least partly genuine. “May I ask your name?”

  “Joseph Venn. I’m a detective lieutenant with the New York Police Department.” He held up a hand. “I don’t mean to alarm you. I’m not here on official police business. I’d like to speak with Dr Soper about a personal matter. He knows me, and if you give him my name, I believe he’ll be willing to see me.”

  Ms Chen’s eyebrows dropped once more, but her eyes were watchful. She picked up the phone on her desk.

  “I’ll check.”

  She turned away, and Venn allowed her her privacy. Several other receptionists were glancing across curiously.

  Ms Chen swiveled back and said, her tone altogether more assured: “Dr Soper will see you now, Lieutenant.”

  She stood and gestured toward a door behind her. But there was no need: it opened immediately and Soper appeared.

  “Joe. Come on in.”

  Venn had met Soper just once before, at an office party Beth had brought him along to. The two men had spent a lot of time talking, and despite the older man’s air of gravitas, he’d been surprisingly down to earth. They’d discussed sports, politics, the state of both health care and the NYPD. He was a smallish guy, in his sixties, with a neatly trimmed mustache the same gray as his thinning hair, and a slight stoop. Beth told Venn that senior doctors got that a lot, from listening to patients every day for decades.

  The office was medium-sized, homely, and cluttered with shelves crammed with textbooks and journals. Soper waved at a chair across the desk from his own.

  “Take a seat. Coffee?”

  “No thanks,” said Venn.

  “You should have called. You’re lucky you caught me in.”

  Venn had in fact called the hospital, just to establish that Dr Soper was at work that day. He hadn’t wanted to make an appointment. The operator he’d spoken to informed him that Dr Soper was expected in at around eleven o’clock, which was why Venn had waited before heading for the hospital.

  “Luck of the draw,” said Venn, settling himself into the chair. He sat slightly lower than Soper, he noticed, and suspected this was intentional, not for him but for any visitor to the head of department’s office.

  “So. What can I do for you?” Soper placed his hands on the desktop.

  “It’s about Beth,” said Venn.

  Soper watched him, his untamed older-man’s eyebrows knitting together.

  “Is she okay?” he said. “I haven’t seen her today, but that doesn’t mean much. Been in my office since this morning.”

  “Yeah, she’s at work, I assume,” said Venn. “I didn’t mean that anything sudden has happened to her. It’s just... well you know she and I broke up.”

  Soper’s brow furrowed. He nodded. “Yes, I was aware of that. I’m sorry.”

  “We still keep in contact, though,” Venn went on. “We’re kind of friends. But she’s taken things hard. All of that stuff that happened back in the summer, getting kidnapped by those drug gangbangers... it
had an impact on her.”

  “Again, I’m aware of that,” said Soper gravely.

  Venn sighed. “Dr Soper -”

  “Bill. Please.”

  “Bill. Look, this is a little awkward. It’s not for me to be asking you about your staff, and their performance. I’m just a cop. But I wonder if you could tell me, as someone who’s concerned about Beth. Has her ability to do her job been compromised at all? Has she been slipping up?”

  Now Soper leaned back in his chair, his hands folded. “Why do you ask?”

  “Because she’s been more unsettled than usual lately, when I’ve met her. She won’t say why. Says it’s nothing. I’m wondering if she’s getting paranoid. She worries about being followed. She’s always jumping at sudden noises, looking around her, asking me if the guy in the corner keeps staring across at her. That kind of thing.”

  Soper continued to gaze at Venn, frowning, his hands together and the tips of the index fingers tapping against one another.

  Then he leaned forward once more.

  “Joe,” he said. “What I’m going to tell you might not be considered in some quarters as entirely ethical. But I believe you deserve to know.”

  Venn waited.

  “Beth is currently seeing a psychiatrist.”

  Venn’s surprise was genuine, and he allowed it to show. This was something she hadn’t mentioned to him. Then again, why would she, necessarily?

  Soper said, “I don’t know anything about the details, about what she discusses with him. Nor should I. That’s privileged information, and I have no wish to pry. I’m confident that if her psychiatrist forms the opinion that Beth’s not fit to practice medicine, he’ll tell her. And tell me, if necessary. He hasn’t done so. And I’m satisfied with that.”

  The phone on Soper’s desk rang, jarringly. He picked it up and said, “A couple more minutes, Barbara.”

  To Venn he said, “In answer to your earlier question... no, I have no concerns whatsoever about Dr Beth Colby’s work performance. She remains the dedicated, highly expert attending she’s been ever since we appointed her. And I’ll admit, I’ve been watching her more closely than usual, precisely because of the experiences she’s been through. She’s got problems, yes. But are they affecting her job? I would say, absolutely not.”