I had almost reached my car when I heard the roar of a motorcycle engine. Not again. I ran the last few feet, glancing at my tires, making sure the air pressure looked normal. I slid in, locked my doors and started my engine. The motorcycle passed by my car on the driver’s side but kept going. In black leather and a helmet, the rider was unrecognizable, but the body looked masculine. He kept going, exiting the parking lot and heading for the street. Apparently, he had nothing to do with me. I turned out of the parking lot, and in minutes I was on the highway, headed home.
Then my cell phone rang. I glanced at the screen. The caller was Sybil Snyder. Odd … why would she be calling me at ten o’clock at night? I pulled off at the next exit and wound my way back to a well-lit street where I could park in front of a Starbuck’s. I opted for caution in spite of feeling silly about my over-the-top reaction to the motorcycle back at the civic center. I couldn’t freak out every time one appeared. As if to prove my point, another motorcycle pulled in behind me at Starbucks. The rider walked inside, focused on his phone. I went in and read Snyder’s text. Urgent meet me TMC re Natasha STAT.
That was too compelling to ignore. I texted back: Where?
3rd floor visitor’s lounge.
Pre- and post-op rooms were on the third floor. Hindered by the sudden onset of heavy rain and gusty wind, I drove to TMC. I was alarmed for Natasha. How could she have looked so healthy just an hour ago and now be back in the hospital? And why would Sybil Snyder be calling me?
I was a block away from the hospital when I noticed a light in my rearview mirror. At first I thought it was a car with a missing headlight, but when I slowed to turn in, a motorcycle shot past me and continued on its way, spraying rainwater in its wake. Three of them in one night tested my tolerance for coincidence, but I hadn’t been mugged and I still had my fanny pack. I parked and shot off a quick text to Cleo, alerting her to what was going on with Dr. Snyder. I said I’d fill her in ASAP.
Chilling rain pelted me, soaking my sweater as I hurried from the parking lot to the main entrance. Inside, I shed the sweater, folding it over my arm as I rode the elevator to the third floor.
The visitor’s lounge was located near the center of the main corridor. I found Sybil Snyder there, perched on the edge of a faux leather club chair that had seen better days. When I walked in, she looked up from the screen on her smartphone.
“Aimee, thank you for coming.”
“What is it, Dr. Snyder? Is Natasha all right? Has she been admitted?”
“Oh, no. I’m sorry if I worried you. She’s fine.”
“Then where is she? Why is she here?”
Snyder slipped her phone into the back pocket of her formfitting designer jeans. “I’m afraid my message wasn’t clear. Natasha isn’t here. She’s with her CPS guardian. I asked to meet with you because I believe we very much need to talk about her future.”
“But why me? I’m sure there are people more qualified to help sort that out. The judge who presided over the recent custody hearing is still withholding a final opinion, isn’t he?”
“There’s more to this situation than he knows. Come with me. There’s something I want to show you.”
Leading me down the deserted corridor to the east end of the third floor, she turned into the recessed alcove with the locked door marked by a hazard warning—the door that gave access to the hidden staircase leading to Quinn’s office on the fourth floor. I followed her into the alcove. My breath caught for a moment when Snyder slipped her hand into the front pocket of her jeans and took out a single key. She fitted it into the lock, pushed the door open, and stepped inside. She turned to where I stood immobilized by surprise and indecision.
“Hurry, come with me,” she whispered. “I know who killed Gavin Lowe.”
Chapter 37
What was going on? Why did Sybil Snyder have a key to the secret staircase?
“Step inside, please,” she urged. “I have to shut this door before someone sees us.”
I hesitated, calculating the odds. Would I be taking a risk to follow her? She carried no purse, wore no coat. There was no room in the pockets of her jeans for a gun or any other weapon with more bulk than her ultra-slim cell phone. There was no place on her person to hide a weapon, and I had no doubt I could easily take her down if she attacked me hand to hand. On the plus side, she wanted to tell me who had killed Gavin Lowe—something I desperately wanted to know.
I asked again. “Why me?”
“You’re the only person I’m sure I can trust with the truth.”
The risk seemed worth the reward. I stepped inside. She locked the door and we were pitched into darkness. Before I could reach in my fanny pack for my penlight, the space lit up in a pale blue glow just bright enough for us to maneuver up the spiral staircase. A motion sensor light, no doubt.
“Follow me,” she said.
We wound our way up the stairs, and when we reached the top, she activated the mechanism that opened the false wall into Quinn’s bathroom. We went through into his dark office, where Sybil switched on a single small lamp on his desk.
“Let’s sit over here,” she said, walking across the dimly lit room to a table flanked by straight chairs. I followed and sat across from her.
“Dr. Snyder, please explain yourself. Why is it necessary for us to talk in here? And how do you know we won’t be interrupted? Suppose Jared Quinn has reason to be called in tonight?”
“I doubt that,” she said. “I’ve been led to believe he’s out of town. A funeral, I think.”
“Then who’s on duty in case of emergency?”
“Apparently Sanjay D’Costa is acting as backup.”
“Really? Then home office must be easing up on him. But how do you know?”
“One of the charge nurses mentioned it as I was doing rounds.”
An adrenaline rush sent numbness coursing across my shoulders. Impatient for her to get to the point, I said, “Dr. Snyder, if you know who killed Dr. Lowe, and you feel it’s important to explain yourself to me, please get on with it.”
In the shadowy room, I couldn’t read her expression, but her body language told me she was struggling for control. She stopped wringing her hands long enough to run them through her hair.
With a shudder, she began, “First, I brought you here so you would believe me when I explained the whole story. How else could I convince you of something as unusual as a secret staircase?”
How else, indeed? I didn’t let on that I already knew about it.
“A good point,” I said. “But how do you happen to know about it?”
“I learned of it from a man I’ve been meeting here.” I waited for her to say his name, but she didn’t offer it.
“Was it Jared Quinn?” I asked, although I was almost certain it wasn’t.
Snyder looked up, startled. “No, he has no idea that we … that I know.”
“Who, then? Gavin Lowe?”
“No, Gavin didn’t know until I had a key made for him.”
“I’m sorry, Dr. Snyder, but let me be sure I understand. Were you meeting both Gavin Lowe and this other man in Quinn’s office?”
“Don’t judge me without knowing what my life is like.” Snyder crossed her arms, hugging herself, her head bowed—a posture out of character for the woman I thought I knew. She looked up at me. “Take my advice, Miss Machado: never marry for the wrong reason. I found it difficult to be unmarried and lonely, but to be married and lonely was far worse. It soon became unbearable.”
I was trying not to panic. “I’m in no position to judge you, but please, tell me what you want from me. I’ll go with you to the police. If you know how Dr. Lowe was killed, that’s where you need to tell your story.” I was beginning to wonder if she was about to confess that she killed Lowe herself.
“I can’t tell the police that I witnessed the murder,” she said. “I wasn’t in this room when it happened, but I have reason to know who was here. Once that reason comes out, my marriage will shatter, and I�
�ll be dragged through hell.”
“But you must be prepared for that. Otherwise, why are you willing to tell me?”
“I hoped you could use the information somehow, without my having to reveal my part in it.”
I didn’t want to tell her how unlikely that was. Absolutely impossible. “Why don’t you finish your story? Then we’ll decide what we can do. Maybe you should start by telling me about the other man you were seeing? The one who gave you a key.”
A shiver ran through her. When it passed, she spoke barely above a whisper, “It was Hector Korba. That’s why I brought you here. We mustn’t let him gain custody of Natasha.”
Snyder went on to tell me she and Korba had begun their affair almost a year earlier. That was when he told her about the secret passageway to Quinn’s office. He told her he had known about it from the time it was constructed, but kept it to himself.
Back then he took the opportunity, the first time Quinn was out of town on business, to have a key made for himself. Because Korba was chairman of the board, the locksmith did not question the need for any further authorization before making the extra key to the hazard door. Korba never let on to Quinn that he knew about the passageway.
“But why did he want a key?”
“You know the man. His life is about power and control. He enjoyed being in on Quinn’s secret. He thought it might come in handy someday, and it did.”
When her flirtation with Korba became an affair, he had a duplicate key made for her. The empty office—with its secret entrance, private bathroom, and comfy couch—became an ideal place for late-night trysts. No sneaking off to motels or worrying about being spotted in places she would have to explain to her husband. As far as Glen Capshaw knew, his wife was either in meetings or tending to sick hospital patients.
“That doesn’t explain how Gavin Lowe got in here the night he was shot,” I said.
“That’s the rest of the story.” She was interrupted when a Life Support Unit siren announced its arrival at the emergency room entrance four floors below. Snyder stood and walked to the window, where windblown raindrops peppered the glass. She looked down, then turned back to me. “God. I can’t believe what kind of fool I’ve been.”
“Dr. Snyder, are you sure you want to go on with this? Maybe we should go to the police now. You should be talking to them instead of me.”
“I suppose you’re right, but first, I need to talk this through, see if it makes sense. Then we’ll see.”
My nerves were ragged, but I imagined hers were far worse, so I feigned calmness, hoping she would get to the heart of the matter quickly.
“You were saying there’s more to your story. About how Dr. Lowe came to be in here the night he died?”
Snyder came back to the table with a gait like a sleepwalker’s and sat across from me.
“Hector Korba was a surprise as a lover,” she said. “Gentle, tender, and generous—everything my husband was not. At first I enjoyed our times together, although they weren’t often. There was always some risk of our being found out by Quinn.” She shook her head. “I suppose that risk added to the excitement, but we were careful not to leave any sign that we’d been here. Quinn never caught on.”
“What about your husband?” I was reluctant to tell her that Glen Capshaw had questioned me about Sybil’s bogus meetings. Not yet.
“Glen has always been jealous and suspicious, long before he had any reason to be. I suspect that’s a large part of what drove me away from him. He complained when any man looked at me or spoke to me. He claimed I should be flattered by his jealousy, but instead, I was made to feel guilty for something I hadn’t done. It’s almost impossible to prove a negative.”
“That sounds terrible. Did you try to work it out, maybe with counseling?”
Sybil laughed softly. “Tell a physician with a colossal ego that he needs counseling? No, and asking for a divorce seemed out of the question. Even before I began the affair with Korba, Glen would have accused me of adultery. We were partners in our medical practice. I knew Glen’s vindictiveness was too terrible to contemplate. He would have destroyed both of us financially and professionally in order to punish me for wanting out of our marriage.”
Remembering Capshaw’s vitriolic rant in the stairwell, I could easily believe Dr. Snyder’s fears on that issue.
“Dr. Snyder, tell me about Gavin Lowe. That’s why you brought me here, isn’t it? How is his death related to Natasha? I don’t see the connection with what you’ve said so far.” I glanced at Quinn’s ornate wall clock, amazed that only twenty minutes had passed; it seemed we had been there for hours.
“I’ll try to make the rest brief,” Snyder said. “A few months ago, Hector became more demanding, more possessive. He wanted us to marry. He began pressuring me to ask Glen for a divorce. I knew what was behind it. Hector wanted custody of Natasha. He believed being married would increase his chances. I tried to tell him what hell it would be to divorce Glen, but he continued to insist until I finally broke off our affair. He demanded that I return my key to the passageway. I gave it back to him, but he didn’t know I’d had a spare made. I’m compulsive about that sort of thing. I tend to have duplicates of everything.”
Even lovers, I thought.
“Is that when you started seeing Gavin Lowe?”
“Gavin and I were at a conference in Sacramento just over a month ago. We went for drinks one evening, and one thing led to another. After that, I had a key to this room made for him. Since Hector and I were no longer seeing each other, I foolishly decided I could meet Gavin here. We thought we were being discreet, but somehow his wife and my husband both found out about our affair.”
I knew how. Macbeth’s witches.
“Then what happened?” I asked.
“The first time we met here there was no problem. The second time was the night he was killed. I had been called to respond to an emergency with a patient, so I texted Gavin that I probably wouldn’t be able to meet him. That was around nine o’clock. He texted back that he would wait.”
“So he was up here alone, waiting for you to show up?”
“Yes. I managed to take care of the emergency by ten thirty or so. I checked my messages and saw that Gavin was still waiting for me. I hurried to the hazard door on the third floor. No one was around so I slipped inside and started up the staircase. Halfway up, I heard voices. Two men arguing.” Snyder doubled over, clutching her stomach. “God help me …. I froze, terrified. At first I thought Glen had somehow found his way here to confront Gavin and me, even though it seemed impossible.”
“Couldn’t you make out the voices?”
“After a moment, I recognized them—Gavin and Hector. It was a bad dream. I didn’t know whether to join them and try to reason with Hector, or to run away.”
“I understand why Lowe was in here that night. He was waiting for you. But why Korba?”
“An embarrassing miscalculation on my part. Hector had been visiting Natasha and someone told him I had just checked on her. Apparently, he had the notion that he could persuade me to meet him here in Quinn’s office. Perhaps to reconcile. I imagine he was surprised to find Gavin already here waiting for me.”
“And Lowe must have been surprised when Hector showed up instead of you. Was their argument about you?”
“Not at first.” She hesitated for a moment, remembering. “Their dispute was about how Gavin would testify at the custody hearing. It turned out Gavin wasn’t going to offer the testimony Hector expected from him. Hector wanted sole legal and physical custody. I heard Gavin say that he believed Natasha’s mother deserved another chance. That he intended to make that recommendation in Natasha’s medical record.”
I remembered the day I’d found the flash drive in Lowe’s briefcase. Korba had been standing there when I put it in my purse. That was the day my purse was snatched in the grocery store parking lot. By a man on a motorcycle. Had the same man just followed me here?
“So Hector knew Lowe’s int
entions right from the start?”
“Yes, and when he saw you put that flash drive in your purse, he suspected it might contain Lowe’s notes documenting his decision about Natasha’s custody. He didn’t want that to end up in Natasha’s medical record.”
Panic had begun to creep into my voice. Were we in danger in this place? I began to speak more rapidly. “Is that why my purse was snatched that night? In the hope that I hadn’t looked at the contents of the flash drive?”
“Of course. Hector hired a thug to do that bit of dirty work. He couldn’t count on you returning the flash drive to Rita Lowe without checking its contents. But as we now know, it was too late. Both Hector and the Gailworths had already seen it before I had it removed from Natasha’s chart. As the primary physician, I was the one to decide whether to disregard Lowe’s recommendation and make my own.”
“Then why snatch the flash drive with Lowe’s notes?” I was halfway out of my seat, listening for danger, certain that Hector’s hired thug had followed me to the hospital and then reported my whereabouts to his boss.
“Hector feared those notes would be interpreted as a motive for murder. He had hoped to remove all trace of them,” Snyder said.
She didn’t share my sense of urgency, of course. I was standing now. Korba would enter through the passage, so as to remain undetected by the cameras. That meant we should flee through the reception area and out the front door, but that would set off a motion-sensor alarm, when what we wanted was to escape unnoticed. Did we risk leaving through the secret passage?
“But I had seen the notes,” I continued. “So had Cleo and the director of the Health Information Office.”
“That might be contested as hearsay, but the flash drive was tangible. It couldn’t be easily refuted.”
“This isn’t helping me to understand why Dr. Lowe was killed. Surely not over the custody battle.”
Breach of Ethics Page 29