Breach of Ethics

by Sharon St. George

  The rest of my workday was routine until an urgent call was transferred to me by a switchboard operator who heard the word forensics. A road construction flagman had been struck by a hit-and-run driver in a sparsely populated town in the northeastern corner of the county. The TMC helicopter pilot who was transporting the patient said the CHP officers at the scene wanted to know if our ER staff was experienced in collecting forensic evidence. I confirmed that they had been trained, but I assured the pilot that I would contact our sheriff’s office so one of their forensic people would be on hand when the patient arrived.

  Just before closing, I called the ER and heard that the hit-and-run patient was out of surgery and was going to make it. With that satisfying ending to my workday, I headed to Coyote Creek to prepare for the post-midnight invasion of Quinn’s office.

  Chapter 17

  The alarm on my cell phone woke me from a two-hour nap at eleven o’clock Wednesday night, giving me plenty of time to enjoy fresh coffee and a yogurt snack before meeting Harry at his condo at midnight. I had to dress in office clothes for the cameras, but I wanted maximum comfort, so I stayed away from dresses and high heels and opted for gray slacks and a navy blazer over a white shirt.

  When I got to Harry’s place, he opened the door and said, “What do you think?”

  He spun around, showing off his phony fire agency duds. Khaki pants, white shirt, and a black jacket with a patch on the shoulder embroidered with a red flame. Under the flame were the initials FFG.

  “Where’d you get the patch?” I asked. “And what does FFG stand for? I hope it’s not real, or we could be in trouble if the cameras pick it up.”

  “Don’t worry, it’s not real. I ordered it online. Overnight shipping. You’d be surprised how easy it was.”

  “So what’s FFG?”

  “Fake Fire Guy.” Harry grinned. “I checked, there’s no real agency with those initials. At least not anywhere near Timbergate.”

  We were still standing in Harry’s entry area when his doorbell rang. Bad timing. Why would he have company at midnight? The answer became obvious as soon as Harry opened his door.

  Nick.

  Before I could ask why he was there, he smiled and turned his left shoulder toward me. Another FFG. He was dressed just like Harry, and I had to admit they looked convincing.

  “Wait a minute, Cleo and I can’t sneak both of you into Quinn’s office.”

  “No problem,” Harry said. “Nick’s not going up to the fourth floor with us. I might need him if I find what I’m looking for. If anyone spots Nick, all you and Cleo have to do is tell your acting administrator he’s with me. We’ll take care of the rest.”

  I sighed. “I’m beginning to think this was a terrible idea.”

  “Why?” Harry asked. “Afraid Quinn will find out and can you?”

  “Of course. I’ve avoided speaking to him since he went ballistic about keeping you out of his office. But that’s not all that’s bothering me. What if the police have already come up with some solid leads? Maybe what we’re doing is a risk without a reason.”

  Nick spoke up. “Aimee, it’s been almost ten days since the doctor was killed in your boss’s office. Have you heard anything about their having new leads?”

  “No, but I wouldn’t expect them to keep me informed.”

  “What about Quinn’s stand-in? They must be communicating with him.”

  “If they’re disclosing anything to Sanjay about the case, he’s keeping it to himself.” And probably enjoying his newfound status as TMC’s top dog. “Besides, I get the feeling the police are considering anyone who works at TMC as a potential suspect. Maybe Sanjay’s in the dark along with the rest of us.”

  In spite of my growing doubts, it was too late to turn back. Sanjay had already been told that the annunciator panel in Quinn’s office needed to be inspected. If the fire guys didn’t show up, he might start asking questions. Our acting administrator was wielding authority with a zeal that became more excessive and intrusive every day. The sooner Quinn was cleared and back to work, the better for everyone at TMC.

  Harry and I rode to the hospital in Nick’s SUV. On the way, I told them about the scene in Natasha’s room on the peds ward and about Gailworth wanting to take Natasha out of the hospital.

  “He’s already put that little girl’s life at risk once,” I said. “I hate to think what might happen when she’s sent home. His wife is either as submissive and dutiful as she seems, or she’s so cowed by her husband that she’s powerless.”

  “Do you think she’s afraid of him?” Harry asked.

  “If she suspects he killed Lowe, she must be.”

  “I thought the prevailing theory about frauds and cons was that they aren’t killers,” Nick said.

  “Depends how desperate they are,” Harry said. “I hear all kinds of stories from the cops in my classes at the dojo.”

  Nick pulled into the TMC parking garage and Cleo pulled in behind us. We checked the time. Twelve thirty. Right on schedule. I warned Harry and Nick that camera coverage of our foray would be scrutinized right away, although I still wasn’t clear what Nick’s role was, since Harry hadn’t explained that. We reviewed our plan to get in and out as quickly as possible and to avoid making contact with any hospital staff, especially Sanjay D’Costa.

  “One last thing,” Harry said. “That alarm is going to be loud. You'll need these.”

  He handed each of us a set of earplugs, then we headed toward the main tower to take up our positions. Harry and Nick walked toward the building ahead of Cleo and me. Both men wore black caps with the bills pulled low on their foreheads. We entered through the little-used access at the back of the hospital that was primarily for transferring bodies from the hospital morgue to the coroner or to various mortuaries in the area.

  We reached the elevators and the adjacent stairwell halfway down the corridor.

  “Which do we take?” I asked. “Should the cameras see us coming off the elevator?”

  “We’ll use the stairs,” Harry the FFG said. “Never use elevators during a fire—even a drill.”

  “Okay, but what are we going to do with Nick? He can’t be seen on the fourth floor with us. We told Sanjay there would only be one fire guy.”

  “He’s only going as far as the third floor,” Harry said.

  Cleo gave me a nervous, inquisitive look.

  “Harry knows what he’s doing,” I assured her.

  We made our way up the stairwell, leaving Nick behind on the third-floor landing. We had five minutes to spare when we stepped out into the fourth floor corridor and approached the door to the administrative suite. Knowing the security cameras were trained on us gave me a tingling sensation, as if someone with a powerful rifle had used the red dot of a laser beam to pinpoint me as a target. I glanced at Harry. Between the upturned collar of his FFG jacket and the ball cap pulled down low, very little of his face showed.

  Cleo did the honors with her keys. We stepped inside Varsha’s reception area and stood still for a moment to make sure no light or sound was coming through Sanjay’s closed door to the right of Varsha’s desk. He was required to be down on the first floor before, during, and after the ten-minute drill, but there was no guarantee he wouldn’t need to make a quick trip up to his office.

  Quinn’s office door was on the opposite side of the reception area. Cleo quickly unlocked it. Just as we stepped inside, we heard the fire alarm go off. Harry walked over to the annunciator panel on the wall near Quinn’s bathroom.

  He smiled at Cleo. “You can tell your acting boss that the panel is working fine.”

  Cleo turned to me. “Does he really know, or is he making that up?”

  “He knows,” I said. “Maybe one of us should go back to the reception area and stand guard. Did you lock the door behind us when we came in?”

  “I did. I’ll go and wait out there. You can stay here in Quinn’s office, but tell your brother to hurry. I’m prone to hyperventilating when I’m stressed.” />
  The alarm continued in sharp bursts of three, then a pause, then three more bursts. I hadn’t counted on how painfully loud the blasts would be. Harry pointed to his ears, reminding Cleo and me to use our earplugs. He put his in his ears, then went into Quinn’s bathroom. I followed him, curious to see what he was looking for.

  The toilet was seated to the right of the door at the back wall. A small sink stood next to it. He inspected the floor and walked to the other end of the small room opposite the sink and toilet. The top half of that wall housed a small medicine cabinet. Below that, there were two narrow shelves and at the bottom was a cupboard for supplies.

  Harry opened the medicine cabinet, ran his hands over every surface inside, then did the same with the shallow cupboard below.

  I checked my watch. We’d used three minutes. Harry turned back from the wall, looked around the room, and then focused on an elaborate light fixture hanging from the ceiling by a chain.

  “Step out of the way,” he said. I backed up but watched him through the bathroom door. He gave the chain a firm pull, and the wall with the medicine cabinet swung toward him, revealing a dark space behind it. I stood staring at it with my mouth open.

  “We’ve used five minutes,” I said, between alarm blasts.

  “I know,” Harry said. “Stay right here.” He pulled out his cell phone, punched in a number and slipped behind the false wall into the dark opening. “Don’t let this panel close. I’ll be right back.”

  “Wait,” I said, but he was already out of sight. I stood there gripping the panel, afraid it would close, locking him inside. What if I couldn’t make it open again to let him out?

  I checked the time again. We had already used seven of our ten minutes. I hadn’t counted on being stuck inside the bathroom waiting for Harry. From her post in the reception room, watching through the small safety window in the entrance door, Cleo would spot anyone approaching from out in the corridor. I couldn’t see her from where I stood, and with the blasting alarm only partially muffled by earplugs, I wouldn’t hear her if she called out a warning.

  As the blasts continued and the minutes ticked away, my earplugs came loose and fell out. I couldn't retrieve them while I stood, bathed in sweat, holding the heavy wall in place. I wondered how long the secret door had been there. I remembered telling Harry about a private bathroom that had been added to the administrator’s office when Quinn was first hired.

  Obviously that job had involved more than installing a bathroom. Considering Quinn’s past brush with death in the Middle East at the hands of armed assassins, and his concern for the safety of TMC’s patients and employees, the secret passage made all kinds of sense. He wasn’t about to be trapped with no way out if a shooter came looking for him. No wonder he didn’t want Harry inspecting his office. This secret belonged only to Quinn and to someone who had been paid well to build it and keep quiet about its existence.

  I suddenly realized the alarm was quiet. I looked at the time. Sixteen minutes. Where was Harry? Where was Cleo? Where was Nick? We had to get out.

  After the steady blasting from the alarm, the profound silence in Quinn’s office was unnerving. My ears buzzed and my head felt hollow. I strained to hear any trace of sound coming from behind the false wall, unable to trust my ears and praying Harry would reappear before it was too late.

  “Pssst, Aimee,” Cleo whispered from the doorway between Quinn’s office and the reception room. “What’s the holdup?”

  I could barely hear her, and I didn’t want to let go of the false wall.

  “Can you come in here?” I whispered.

  She tiptoed to the bathroom door and looked in, wide-eyed. “Oh, my god. What did you do to Quinn’s bathroom?”

  “Nothing. It’s a false door.”

  “Where’s Harry? We have to get out of here. Now that the drill’s over, Sanjay could appear any minute.”

  I nodded to the space where Harry had gone. “He’s in there. He said he’d be right back. Something must have gone wrong.”

  “What shall we do?” Cleo’s breath was coming in short bursts. She wasn’t kidding about hyperventilating.

  “I’ll wait here for Harry. You go out into the corridor. If you see Sanjay coming, think of something to distract him.”

  “Like what?” Cleo’s breathing was so rapid that I expected her to pass out any minute.

  “I don’t know.” I suggested the obvious. “Can you pretend to faint?”

  “Not in a hospital. I’d end up in the ER.”

  Just then Harry reappeared from behind the false wall with a big grin on his face. Every tense muscle in my body relaxed at the same time and I almost collapsed with relief.

  He stepped back inside the wall and told me to push it toward him.

  “Really?” I was afraid he’d be trapped if it closed all the way.

  “Really, Sis. I want to check something. Give it a shove.” I did, and it closed with a solid snap. I looked up at the light fixture hanging from the ceiling by a chain. Harry had pulled it to open the wall. I was about to give it a yank when the wall opened again.

  “Mission accomplished,” Harry said, slipping around the open wall into the bathroom. “There’s a release on the inside that’s simple to operate. Let’s get out of here.”

  Chapter 18

  After Harry made sure the false door was seated back in its proper position, the three of us left the administrative suite and made our getaway down the stairwell and out to the parking garage. Cleo’s breathing was nearly normal by the time we met up with Nick, who waited next to his SUV. He and Harry grinned and slapped high-fives.

  “Enough celebrating,” I said. “Tell us what you found.”

  “Let’s go to my place where it’ll be easier to explain.” Harry glanced at Cleo. “Unless you need to get home? It’s almost two o’clock.”

  “I want to hear this,” she said. “I’ll be right behind you.”

  At Harry’s condo we gathered around his computer while he pulled up the blueprint he and I had made illustrating the floor plan of the fourth floor and the administrative suite. He used his drafting program to draw in the space he’d found behind the false wall; then he added a spiral staircase leading down to the third floor.

  “How in the world did you think to look for that?” Cleo asked.

  “I’ve designed a few false doors and safe rooms,” he said. “One was a hidden entrance to a wine cellar, and another was a safe room in an attorney’s office. They’re more common than most people realize.”

  I asked the next question. “Where does the staircase lead?”

  Harry and Nick exchanged smiles. “That’s where Nick came in. I’d already shown him this floor plan. Remember this alcove?” He pointed to the recessed space in the corridor near the entrance door to the administrative suite’s reception area. Cleo and I nodded. We’d both seen it countless times.

  Nick spoke up. “Harry told me to look on the third floor for a similar alcove directly below that one. I spotted it right away and waited for Harry to text me. The alcove is recessed deep enough that the security cameras don’t have a view of it. It’s near the end of the corridor, and the doors to the public restrooms are in that alcove. No one paid any attention to me while I waited.”

  Harry picked up the thread. “So I went down the hidden staircase. I tapped on the interior side of the alcove wall Nick described, and he responded with an answering tap.”

  “Was there anything in that alcove?” I asked. “Chairs? Shelving for pamphlets?”

  Nick shook his head. “No. Just the restroom doors on the east wall, and a locked steel door on the back wall with a sign in bold red lettering.”

  “What does it say?” Cleo asked.

  “Have a look.” Nick held out his phone. He had taken a photo of the door. The lettering read: HAZARD: NO ADMITTANCE. A graphic showed a man wearing a gas mask and a yellow hard-hat. Enough to discourage almost anyone from trying to open that door.

  “I checked to see if it
would open from the inside without a key,” Harry said. “There was no way. Only someone with a key could open that door from either side. Once someone entered the alcove, they could disappear through that door and no one would notice.”

  “And remember,” Nick said, “it’s conveniently out of the line of sight of the security cameras.”

  Cleo’s face went white. “Oh, I don’t like this one bit. Now we know why Quinn didn’t want Harry in his office.”

  “This doesn’t mean Quinn’s guilty,” I said. “Lowe must have known about the secret passage. How else would he have gotten into Quinn’s office that night?”

  “True,” Harry said. “If Lowe knew, then Quinn’s efforts to keep his secret were already in vain. The cat was out of the bag.”

  “Not necessarily,” Nick said, holding up his hands, palms out. “Maybe Quinn shared his secret only with Lowe, and only on the night of the murder.”

  “That doesn’t make sense,” Cleo said with a frown. “If Quinn wanted Lowe to meet with him, why wouldn’t they both just use the normal entrance?”

  “That’s a question only Quinn can answer,” Harry said.

  “Not if he wasn’t there.” Cleo looked to me for backup.

  I pointed out that Quinn insisted he wasn’t in his office after hours the night of the murder. I asked Harry if there was any way to find out who had built the passage, and if so, whether that contractor would know how many people were aware of it.

  “Doubtful. If Quinn wanted that passage kept a secret, and clearly he did, it had to be excluded from the permit and probably involved a hefty bribe. I’m betting Quinn hired someone from out of the area.”

  Cleo raised a hand. “Even so, someone in accounting must have approved the expense for the bathroom. I was working at TMC when it was installed. It was obvious that work was being done in Quinn’s office.”

  “Sure,” Harry said, “but Quinn’s signature was probably already on the paperwork for nothing more than removal of an elevator and construction of a private bathroom. It would have been rubber-stamped at that point.”