The Arms Of The Law

by Jenna Ryan

  “Yeah, right.” A sullen, puffy-faced Sammy refused to look up from the black Formica tabletop. “What’s in it for me if I cop a guilty plea? Twenty-five to life, at least”

  Vachon massaged his aching eyes. “You’ll get that anyway for the attempted murder of Dr. Sorensen together with the other charges. You have a record, Slide. Did you think we wouldn’t find out about it?”

  Sammy’s knuckles went white. “It was ten years ago,” he muttered with a blend of annoyance and fear. “Petty theft—and in Chicago, at that. Do you cops have a rat file on the Internet, or something?”

  His belligerent tone was nothing more than a cover for quaking terror. Sammy Slide did not relish the prospect of hard time in prison.

  “Talk to me, Slide,” Vachon suggested in a deceptively bland tone. “Tell me what I want to hear.”

  Heavy fists struck the table. “Screw you, cop. Your witch doctor pumped knockout drugs into my arm this afternoon. I know a loophole when I see one.”

  Vachon brought his hands away from his face, placed his palms on the table and leaned forward. “You wouldn’t know a loophole if you fell into one, Slide. You attacked Dr. Sorensen. She retaliated. The justice system calls that lf-defense. You’re just lucky she filled that syringe with chloral hydrate and not cyanide.”

  The door opened and closed behind him. Manny set two mugs of coffee on the table. “Anything?”

  While Sammy smoldered and sulked, Vachon dropped into his chair. “A slamming headache, but that’s about it. He’s not going to say a word without a lawyer.”

  Manny uttered a short curse, snatched his coffee and motioned Vachon to the door.

  “About that lawyer,” Sammy griped as Vachon’s chair scraped across the floor. “I’m not doing the good-cop, bad-cop thing without him.”

  “Her,” Vachon corrected.

  Sammy vaulted from his seat A uniformed officer pushed him down. He stuck his neck toward Vachon. “What is this? You can’t stick me with some feminist broad fresh out of law school.”

  “We aren’t sticking you with anyone,” Vachon retorted levelly. “Your aunt in Marblehead retained her. I hear she’s good. But I’ll pass along your message. Who knows?” He shrugged. “Maybe you’ll get lucky and the feminist broad crack won’t put her off. Still, you might want to check the laws surrounding trial by ordeal. If I were a female and your lawyer, I’d suggest it to the judge.”

  Sammy gurgled an oath, which Vachon chose to ignore. He allowed the door to slam shut behind him.

  His mood had deteriorated from one of desperation at seeing Sammy’s hands poised to choke the life out of Nikita, to a more palatable state of belated outrage that made him want to ram his coffee mug along with several of Sammy’s capped teeth down his bull throat.

  They had him on the stolen drugs charge; the proof was currently being extracted from his home. But he hadn’t confessed to three cold-blooded murders. Nor was he likely to.

  Manny paced the busy corridor, a scowl drawing his fair brows together. “I didn’t think Slide would be the one,” he mumbled. “Martin, maybe Flynn or Lally Monk. Are you sure about this guy, Vachon?”

  “No, but I’m going to get sure.” Vachon spied Nikita down the hallway and watched her approach. She looked composed, albeit a trifle pale.

  “Hi,” she greeted with false cheerfulness. “Did you squeeze anything out of him?”

  “A few nasty comments,” Vachon replied. “Nothing more substantial than that. I’m going to drive over to his condo and see what the uniforms have dug up. You,” he said, running a thumb over her pale cheek, “should go home and get some rest. It’s your night off.”

  “I will,” she promised, then glanced at Manny. “You don’t seem very happy.”

  Her dispassionate tone didn’t fool Vachon for a minute. Manny was sleeping with Deana, and her sisterly affection for Martin was offended by that fact.

  Manny’s scowl deepened. “I’m not happy,” he retorted. “I thought the murderer was—someone else. I still don’t believe it isn’t.”

  Her voice and expression chilled by several degrees. “Someone like Martin, you mean?”

  “Or Lally.”

  “I see.” She glared at Manny. “Sammy’s not good enough for you, is that it? Don’t you think you’re being just the tiniest bit unprofessional about this, Detective?”

  Manny faced her, steely-eyed. “What I’m being, Dr. Sorensen, is justifiably cautious. You might call it a vendetta in the case of your brother, but I call him and every other jerk like him disgusting. They don’t give a damn for anybody’s feelings but their own. They wreak havoc and leave more damage in their wake than a Florida hurricane, but, hey, all’s fair, right?” He made a flat gesture of negation with his hands. “Don’t talk to me about unprofessional attitudes. Save the speech for your brother. And while you’re at it, consider who really did have the stronger motive for wanting those two women dead—Sammy Slide, who never got to first base with them, or Martin, who might very well have gone too far. Because—and here’s the kicker, my friends—there was an irregularity in Patti Warneckie’s autopsy. It was bugging the coroner, so he decided to do a double check. And what do you think he found?”

  Vachon winced. Somehow he knew, he just knew what Manny was going to say. Nikita didn’t need this, he decided, and sent his partner a steady look. “Let it go, Manny,” he advised. “She’s been through enough today.”

  “No, she hasn’t,” Nikita retorted. He gaze remained fixed on Manny’s. “What did he find, Detective?”

  “Patti was pregnant Only six weeks, but pregnant all the same, a time frame that just happens to coincide with the night of the Beldon-Drake Christmas party. Come on, Nikita, you know as well as I do who made his usual playboy rounds at that party. Tell me truthfully. Whose baby do you think she was carrying?”

  “NOT MARTIN’S,” Nikita insisted seven hours later. In silence, she thought, until she met Verity’s puzzled gaze.

  “What’s not Martin’s?” her friend asked. Her friend who was having an affair with her brother, Deana’s husband. Which was fine, apparently, since Deana was involved with Manny Beldon, Vachon’s partner and spiteful descendant of the man who’d willed that his estate be transformed into a psychiatric hospital. A hospital with criminal orderlies, patients with peculiar tendencies and a freaky doctor who had taken to living in his underground lab.

  “I wish Carl Jung were still alive.” Nikita masked a sigh. For Verity’s sake, she summoned a smile. “Martin’s fine. I was just mumbling to myself. Are you settled for the night?”

  Verity belted a mint green satin robe that Nikita had never seen over a matching lace negligee. Gifts from Martin, perhaps? She shoved the thought away.

  “Niki?” she said. “Are you angry with me? As a friend.”

  Nikita considered her answer. “Not angry,” she replied slowly. “Disappointed. In you and in Martin.”

  No reaction registered on Verity’s serene face. “Do you think Sammy Slide killed those people?”

  Did she? She wanted to. So did Vachon. But wanting a thing didn’t necessarily make it so. Still, Sammy had attacked her, and God knew what would have happened if Vachon hadn’t showed up.

  Nikita shivered violently at the memory of Sammy’s thick, sweaty hand on her throat, his foul breath pouring over her face. She’d taken a hot shower, but still couldn’t shake the notion that she’d been contaminated.

  “I don’t know what to believe,” she admitted to Verity. “Maybe he did it.”

  Shrewd brows arched in her direction. “Or maybe Talia did?”

  Nikita knew she should defend Lally. At the very least she should tell Verity politely but firmly to butt out of her case. Verity liked Lally but was clearly nervous of Talia. Her feelings were understandable. They were also based entirely on emotion.

  Dredging up the remnants of a smile, Nikita moved to the door. “Good night, Verity,” she said. “Try and get some sleep, okay?”

  “Thanks for co
ming on your night off,” Verity murmured, then, fidgeting with the brown curls over her ears, turned and wandered to the window.

  Nikita hesitated before leaving. She was letting the events of the day impair her judgment Verity was fine. And she’d looked in on Lally thirty minutes ago. On the other hand—she glanced at Lally’s door—it never hurt to double-check.

  She crossed the carpeted hall, knocked softly, waited, then stuck her head inside. “Lally?”

  No answer. A pool of pearly moonlight revealed a smooth coverlet and an empty armchair. The bathroom? No, that door was wide-open, the room beyond it dark as pitch.

  Nikita noted distantly that the wind had begun to whistle eerily around the eaves. A chill she chose not to analyze feathered along her spine. Ten-thirty. Lally was not a night owl. She should be asleep by now, or well on the way. Where had she gone?

  A half drunk cup of tea stood on her bedside table. Nikita tested it Still warm. Now that was very odd. Lally insisted on having a hot drink—milk until recently—every night before she went to bed. Sometimes she drank it, sometimes not, but she never left her room after she got it.

  “Where are you, then?” she wondered to the papered walls.

  It occurred to Nikita as she regarded Lally’s plain cotton nightgown that she’d forgotten to sign herself on tonight. Unable to sit still and with no Vachon to distract her, she’d donned her lab coat and gravitated to the central wing. Maybe Lally had suffered an emotional crisis and one of the other doctors, not realizing she was here, had dealt with it.

  As always at this time, the hospital had settled in for a long night That is to say, the lights had been dimmed and the staff reduced to a bare minimum. The lone nurse on the second-floor desk had just returned from a patient call.

  “Mr. Bedrosian wanted a Kit Kat,” she explained. “I gave him a banana. I don’t think he’s too happy.” They heard a strident beep. “Nope, not happy at all. That’s his bell.”

  “Tell him he can have some chocolate chip cookies tomorrow if he’s good tonight”

  The nurse grinned. “Bribes, Nikita?”

  “Whatever works. Have you seen Lally Monk in the past half hour?”

  “No, and I’m glad for the reprieve. Weird is an understatement for her behavior today.”

  As the nurse hastened off, Nikita gnawed on her lip. A gust of wind struck the window behind her, but it wasn’t that so much as the unexpected buzz of her pager that caused her heart to skip a full beat. She reached into her pocket, checked the number, smiled and located the nurse’s phone under a pile of computer paper.

  “You called?” she greeted her grandmother twenty seconds later.

  Adeline sounded cranky. “Yes, I did. I can’t get hold of Dean. Is he there?”

  “I haven’t seen him. Is it important?”

  “It’s chess night Well, alternate chess night. He’s been busy a lot lately, though heaven knows with what.” A pause. “I thought this was your evening off.”

  “It was—it is. I’m waiting for Vachon.”

  “Ah.” The old woman’s canny tone said it all. “You two set a date yet?”

  Nikita’s fingers tightened on the receiver. “I don’t want to get married, Gran. Neither does he.”

  “Bull. All men want to marry. Just need the right woman to make them realize it. And you two are right for each other or my name isn’t Adeline Jean Lockinvar Cameron Sorensen.”

  “Lockinvar?”

  “Don’t ask. You just march straight over to the nearest mirror, take a look in the glass and tell me you’re not a woman in love.”

  “Oh, Gran.” Nikita sighed. “Love has nothing to do with it. Well, no, that’s not true,” she amended hastily. “But you know what I mean.”

  Her grandmother snorted. “I most certainly do not Find that mirror, Niki, and while you’re at it have a poke around for Dean. He mentioned driving out that way tonight We heard the latest scuttlebutt on the news….”

  Adeline spent the next five minutes abusing with delight the “slimy lowlife orderly” who’d attacked her granddaughter and Deana, then gone on to try to separate Vachon’s handsome head from his equally handsome shoulders.

  “I suppose,” she finished, somewhat mollified, “it’s only natural that Dean should want to check Deana after such an ugly incident”

  “It was ugly,” Nikita agreed. She kept a watchful eye on Lally’s door. “But Dean shouldn’t come here if he wants to see Dee. She logged out at nine-twenty.”

  “Hmph. Not with your no-account brother, I’m sure.”

  Nikita wandered to the window. She scanned the parking lot No sign of Deana’s car. However…She squinted through the frosted pane. “Damn him, Gran, Martin’s Corolla’s down there.” She set her jaw. “I swear, I’m going to strangle him.”

  Adeline cackled with glee. “Be my guest Vachon’ll back you all the way. You found that mirror yet, Niki?”

  Did she need to find it?

  Stop right there, she told herself firmly. This was no time to be thinking about her feelings for Vachon—however tempted she might be.

  With a determined effort, she coaxed Adeline into hanging up. A quick study of the duty roster revealed that Donald Flynn was still here. Why should that matter? Because she’d found Lally sitting outside his lab one night, that’s why.

  Ice pellets tapped against the windows. Jack Frost’s fingernails, Nikita reflected, wishing the hospital lighting didn’t create quite so many dark shadows.

  She surveyed the silent floor. Where was everyone? “Marilyn?” she called. But apparently the nurse hadn’t returned from Mr. Bedrosian’s room.

  Thoughts bubbled in her head. Had Sammy committed all three murders? Where was Lally? Had Donald been experimenting on Laverne and Patti? Where did Tom fit in? Had Sammy killed Tom and not the women?

  And what about her brother, playboy Martin—and Deana and Dean and Verity and Manny? Manny certainly had a motive. Did he also have a plan? Seduce the temporary director so she would be too distracted to notice his actions? It made sense to Nikita, more sense than the idea that Deana loved him.

  Nikita lingered on that word. Love. An emotion as devastating as it was desirable. “I don’t want to love him,” she stated emphatically, then closed her eyes and added more gently, “Don’t want to, but do.”

  It was too confusing. Too many divergent thoughts twirled and collided in her mind. She had to select one and follow it through. Vachon wasn’t here. Lally should be. She would find Lally first and deal with her other problems later.

  Where to start, though?

  She headed for her office and Lally’s file. This part of the building was darker than the rest. Her footsteps slowed as she rounded the first corner. Not a single light broke the shroud of blackness that swamped her.

  “Jonah in the belly of the whale,” she murmured. Goose bumps rose on her skin as the wind let out a mournful wail high in the rafters.

  She paused halfway down the long corridor. Her hand was touching the cool metal of the elevator door when she heard the inner mechanism begin to grind. At the same instant, she spied a sliver of light snaking out around the next corner.

  She craned her neck forward. What was that other sound? A faint thump? A creak of floorboards?

  Nikita had no idea why she crept forward rather than walked. A few more yards, another corner and she’d be into the night-glow corridors.

  She passed her office, then Dr. Baines’s and finally Deana’s. All were dark. The light came from Sherman Drake’s office, twenty feet along the hall on the opposite side.

  A watery sob caught her attention. It punctuated a show tune Nikita had heard many times as a child. “On the good ship Lally-pop,” a voice trilled.

  Lally-pop? Nikita set her hand on the brass knob. Since when had Lally likened herself to a child star?

  She was about to enter the office when a flash of movement to her left caught her attention. She squinted into the gloom. “Vachon?” She frowned. “Is that you?”


  The hand that covered her mouth came out of nowhere. She gasped and would have plunged her elbows into the person’s ribs if he hadn’t said through his teeth, “It’s me. I followed Flynn up here from the basement.”

  Sick to death of having her heart lodged in her throat, Nikita used both hands to snatch Vachon’s fingers away. “Do you ever not sneak up on people?”

  “It’s part of our training.” He sounded abstracted, impatient. “Have you seen him?”

  “No, but I heard a thump or a creak a minute ago. I have to go. Lally’s in Dr. Drake’s office.”

  “Alone?”

  “I was just about to check. It sounded like she might be. Do you mind?”

  Her gaze lowered to the fingers of his left hand, which were splayed with erotic familiarity across her abdomen. No wonder her mouth had gone dry.

  When he didn’t move, she squirmed, acutely aware of the smile that quirked his lips. “Let go, Vachon. I really do have to see Lally. The noise came from this area, if you’re interested.”

  He did look interested, though not necessarily in determining the source of the sound. His dark eyes glinted in the half-light.

  Lally, Nikita reminded herself firmly, and marched to Dr. Drake’s door.

  Deana occasionally used his office, but Deana had booked out, and Lally’s off-key singing sounded unmonitored.

  “Where the bonbons play,” she warbled. Her voice caught on a hiccup as Nikita knocked. “On the sunny beach…Go away,” she ordered, then hiccupped again.

  Vachon glanced doubtfully at Nikita. “Is she drunk?”

  “Of course not”

  “She’s slurring her words.”

  “That could be a sign of overmedication,” Nikita replied, opening the door.

  It took her several seconds to locate Lally. She was huddled in a corner next to the brass coatrack. The light source was a small lamp on Sherman Drake’s desk.