“Sure, as long as it’s not about me?” she retorted.
“No, actually, it’s all about me,” I replied with a grin. “What’s your secret when it comes to getting men?”
“Gee, I don’t know that I have a secret. Are you planning on switch hitting?”
“God, no. I just can’t seem to attract women, and I want to know what’s wrong with me,” I confessed, hoping that she wouldn’t laugh at me.
“There’s not a damn thing wrong with you, Michele, other than you’re too insecure. Do you know why you can talk to me about anything?”
I shook my head, not sure what she was leading to. “Because you’re a nice, understanding female, oh, and older than the others.”
“Hey! I’m only thirty-six, remember? No, it’s because you don’t want anything from me, so you don’t put on pretentions. Listen, since you asked, can I be brutally honest with you?”
“Go ahead, I can take it,” I lied through my teeth.
“No one wants a partner they have to babysit. Well, there probably are some people who like that, but you don’t need a mother, you need someone who is your equal as a lover and a friend. You’re always whining about being too old, even though you think you’re covering it up by joking about it. Do you remember that old saying, you are what you eat?” I nodded and she continued, “Well, if you think you’re old and decrepit, then you will be, and that’s what you project to others. Honestly, you act like an eighty-year-old who hasn’t had sex in fifty years.”
Tears welled up in my eyes as she told me what I already knew.
“Oh, shit. I’m so sorry, Michele. I didn’t mean to make you cry, for God’s sake.”
“No, it’s all right, Dorey. I needed to hear it,” I said, wiping my eyes. “You’re right, and I knew it. I just needed someone to make me face it.”
“That was just the negative points, Michele. You have far more positive attributes than you give yourself credit for. Like your sense of humor, your loyalty, your compassion and caring. If I were gay, I’d make a play for you, but that’s because you don’t put on pretenses around me. You accepted me as a friend. That’s all you have to do. Find your friend first, and then be yourself. The rest will come in time.”
“If I live that long,” I quipped, and she frowned at me. “Oh, right. Sorry. Adjusting attitude now.” I put my hand to my forehead and twisted the imaginary screw.
Josh walked up, pulled a chair out and swung his leg over it before sitting down. “Hey, sorry I’m late,” he said as he unwrapped his hoagie, sprinkled some pepper on it, and took a very large bite.
“So, what do you think of our new chief?” Dorey asked.
“I’ve not decided yet,” I answered.
Josh wiped his mouth with his napkin and said, “Me neither. I think she’s going to be tough, but I don’t think that’s a bad thing.”
“Why not?” I asked curiously. I thought it was a good thing, especially for the nightshift, who needed a swift kick to the butt.
“Our department has a huge responsibility to protect our patients, and only a few of us take that seriously,” Josh explained.
“Some of that you can blame on the last chief, the one who stepped on our backs to get that promotion,” I said tersely, still angry that he didn’t care more about the people in the department, myself included.
“Agreed,” Dorey said. “I don’t think that’s the case with our new chief. I had a brief chat with Byron after he met with her, and the guy was furious. Apparently, she took his Taser away and put him on dayshift.”
“It’s about damn time,” Josh exclaimed, clapping his hands.
Dorey leaned in. “My husband has a friend who has a friend—”
“Your husband, the cop?” Josh asked.
“How many husbands do you think I have?” Dorey quipped. “Yes, my husband the cop. Anyway, he found out that the Chief was a police detective in Houston and she was a big hero. Not sure for what, but they gave her a medal.”
“Yeah, well, I already told you that, Dorey. I just got the chiefs sex wrong.”
A woman’s voice came through the overhead intercom and we all looked at the ceiling. “Code Blue, Admin parking lot. Code Blue, Admin parking lot. Code Blue, Admin parking lot.”
“Someone probably fell in the parking lot again. We’d better get out there,” Dorey said, scooting her chair back.
All our radio’s crackled to life at the same time, and I picked mine up as Josh and Dorey pulled theirs off of their belts.
“Michele, this is the operator,” the disjointed voice said.
I hit the talk button and said, “This is Michele, go ahead.”
“You need to get security out to the admin parking lot. There’s been some kind of… incident that we don’t have a code for.”
“Roger that,” I said, looking at Josh and Dorey. All three of us ran out of the cafeteria, leaving our unfinished lunches on the table. The operator was trained not to give out details over the radio, but the way she hesitated told us this was not the normal incident and that it certainly wasn’t just a case of someone falling.
A medium sized RV blocked our view of the backside of the parking lot. I assumed this was the one that belonged to the chief. When we hurried around it, a small group of employees had gathered, also blocking our view of what was going on. I followed Josh and Dorey through the people and saw two nurses giving CPR to an unconscious woman lying on the ground.
“Oh, my God,” I gasped when I saw the pool of blood seeping out from under her. There was only one reason that I never wanted to be a nurse, and thick, red, oozing blood was it.
“Has anyone called an ambulance yet?” Dorey asked the nurses, who nodded. “Josh, I’ll check on the ambulance’s ETA,” she said, and pulled her cellphone out of her pocket.
“Good, I’ll do crowd control.”
“And I’ll call the chief,” I added, not knowing what else to do. In an emergency outside the hospital, it was protocol to call an ambulance, and usually it would be the first person on the scene, or the charge nurse if she were here, who would make the call. And in security, we didn’t leave it to chance so even if 911 had been called, we would call them again, if only to confirm their arrival time.
“Anyone know what happened?” Josh asked as he held out his hands to move the growing crowd back.
An older man that I recognized from Maintenance stepped toward Josh. “I think someone shot her, or maybe stabbed her. When I found her, she was face down on her stomach and had a hole in her back. I tried…” He swallowed hard as if his mouth was too dry to speak. “I rolled her over to see if she was conscious.”
I could feel my stomach quiver and my hands began to tremble at the thought that this wasn’t a terrible accident.
“No pulse,” the nurse stated, holding the woman’s wrist between her fingers and thumb. The other nurse continued compressions, which only seemed to make the blood pump out quicker. “Where’s the damn crash cart!”
I turned away for fear of throwing up and saw a tech running toward us pushing the crash cart. I walked away from the scene so I could concentrate and keep my lunch down. I tucked my radio under my arm and pulled out my cellphone. Punching on the chief’s face in my address book, I waited for her to answer.
“Chief Dennis. Go ahead.”
“Chief, we have a Code Blue in the Admin parking lot,” I said breathlessly.
“I haven’t had a chance to memorize the codes yet, Ms. Michaels. Just tell me what’s going on, please,” the chief requested.
Fighting back my tears, I replied, “A woman appears to have been stabbed or shot; they’re not sure which. She doesn’t have a pulse.”
“I’m on my way!” Casey shouted and ended the transmission.
Chapter Five
Casey Dennis
The last thing I wanted was to be sitting across the table from a beautiful redhead who was batting her gorgeous eyelashes at me. Especially one who was a psychiatrist. What was I thinking? Or more
to the point, what part of my body was doing the thinking for me? But then I would have preferred that to getting a frantic call from the hospital saying that someone may have been murdered in the parking lot. That was just beyond my comprehension.
Celine was quiet on the drive back, and I got the feeling she was frightened. “Are you okay?” I asked, glancing over at her. Her side profile reminded me of a Greek goddess statue; perfectly sculpted, yet fragile.
“I should be asking you that. Your first day at work and someone is murdered? That’s not a very good way to start your new job.”
“I couldn’t agree more. I left the force because I didn’t want to be around murder anymore, yet it seems that murder has followed me to Colorado.”
She looked over at me and then back at the road. “That’s a defeatist way of looking at things, Casey.”
“Not if there’s a good reason behind it, Celine,” I said somewhat indignantly.
“I’m sorry,” she said quickly. “I didn’t mean to use the shrink voice on you. It’s just kind of habitual in my line of work.”
“I understand,” I offered, giving her the benefit of the doubt. I had really enjoyed the time we spent together at lunch, and would like to be friends, but not if she’s going to analyze everything I say. “We are colleagues, and we both have a job to do.”
“That’s very impartial of you, but I’ll still try to curb my interpretations and I want you to tell me when I step out of line. Deal?”
“Deal. And thank you.”
“And maybe someday you’ll tell me the reason behind it.”
I shrugged, not surprised that she couldn’t let it go. “Maybe. Someday.”
When she pulled into the doctors’ parking lot, which was adjacent to the Admin lot, I could see the coroner’s van parked next to my RV. Stepping out of her car, I looked at the situation strategically and made a mental note to move my RV all the way to the back of the parking lot so it wouldn’t block the view as it currently did. Lots of people were milling about, including police officers and EMTs. Scanning the crowd, I spotted the plain clothes detective I knew would already be on the scene. Celine and I walked up to the ambulance, just as a black plastic bag with the body inside was being lifted onto a gurney.
“May I see the body?” I asked the man whom I guessed was the coroner by the gray lab coat he wore that had an emblem of a badge with the initials BCC on it.
Celine squeezed my arm and nodded toward the hospital. “I’d better get back to work,” she said, looking at the body bag before walking away. With my tunnel vision focused on the crime, I had forgotten that she was beside me.
A woman squatting in front of the roped off crime scene, wearing a jacket with the words Boulder Homicide Detective printed across the back, stood and looked at me. “And who are you?”
“Chief of Security Casey Dennis,” I replied, holding my hand out. She was probably around twenty-eight, shoulder-length blond hair pulled back in a braid, piercing blue eyes that were looking at me from the inside out, and a muscular, medium-sized frame that told me she worked out regularly. Something about her said she hadn’t been a detective for very long. Her jacket was too new, and her eyes were too bright.
She looked at my hand skeptically and then put the pen she was holding in her left hand and took mine. “Detective Rebecca Littleton. Why do you want to see the body, Chief?”
“I was a homicide detective in Houston before I came here,” I explained. “It’s hard to give up the instinct to investigate. Know what I mean?”
She looked me up and down again before she nodded at the coroner. He unzipped the body bag and I peered in, surveying every inch of the victim that I could see. The body was still warm to the touch and rigor had not set in yet. Her wrists had rope burns and her fingerprints had been burned off. Her teeth were missing and her hair had been cut off haphazardly. In a word, she was butchered. She had a rectangle face with light skin and a noticeable scar on her chin. Without being asked, the coroner rolled the victim over and I looked closely at the wound. The cut was deep and smooth, and still seeping blood. It was unusual for a perp to kill their victims outright after torturing them. Normally, they preferred a slow death so they could get off on it. This seemed hurried, rushed, as if they had been forced to change their plans. “She was stabbed once in the back with a long blade, maybe a cutlery knife of some sort.”
“That was my finding, too.” She sounded impressed.
“Have you seen this before?” I asked, thinking that the torture was too meticulous to have been random.
“Yes, but I can’t go into details, you understand,” she said apologetically.
“I understand better than anyone. Will you keep me in the loop on this as far as it pertains to the hospital? This happened under my watch, and I’d like to be advised.”
“I’ll speak with my captain, and if she’s all right with it, then I’ll be happy to. I’m going to need to question those on the scene, including you.”
“Just let me know what I can do to help. My officers and I will help in any way we can,” I stated.
“I appreciate that, but your officers can help by staying out of the way. I can’t afford to have my crime scene trampled on by a bunch of inept security guards.”
I took offense to that, even though I knew that one or two of my staff were completely inept. I wasn’t sure about the rest of them yet. There hadn’t been time. Still, I wasn’t about to stand there and let that detective disparage my employees. “I’d appreciate it if you’d leave your insults at the precinct, Detective. My officers do the best they can with what they have and that’s saying a hell of a lot considering how short-staffed and underpaid they are.”
She blushed and held her hand up. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. But you were a detective once; you know how it is.”
I shook my head. “I know how it was, but I’m on the receiving end of those jokes now, and I don’t care for them.”
“Like I said, I’m sorry,” she said with a frown, and walked away.
As she walked past me, I turned and saw Josh, Dorey and Michele looking at me. Had they heard what she said? Did they believe it? They walked over to me and grinned.
“Thanks for setting her straight, Chief,” Josh said.
I shrugged. “I only stated the facts.”
“Still, we are professionals and proud of what we do. Thank you for not letting her belittle that fact,” Dorey explained, her passion obvious.
“When I was a detective in Houston, I felt the same way she does,” I elaborated. “It’s the nature of the job, so I can’t really blame her, and you shouldn’t either. Given time and training, I have no doubt that our department will be the best in the state.”
“From your lips to God’s ears,” Michele said succinctly.
“I suppose a little prayer couldn’t hurt either,” I said, walking over to the scene of the crime. A large pool of blood circled the concrete where the body had lain. I squatted down and surveyed the area, taking in the solitary shell casing the crime scene tech was photographing. I pulled out my cellphone and snapped pictures also. The casing was most likely from a .25 caliber semi-automatic shell. The bastard must have planted it there to play with us, because the victim had not been shot. That made him even more dangerous than we thought. My immediate fear was that he specifically chose this hospital to make his statement. Son of a bitch!
Realizing that someone had their hand on my elbow, I turned and looked up into Michele’s frightened eyes. I think the gravity of the murder finally sank in with her because she was growing paler by the minute. “Michele,” I said, using her first name purposely, “can you go to the office and get me a list of disgruntled employees, patients or family members? Detective Littleton has probably already asked for it, but I want a copy too.”
“I’ll get right on it, Chief,” she replied gratefully, the color returning to her face. She hurried across the parking lot and disappeared inside the building.
I sto
od up and turned to Josh next. “Josh, I want to talk with the Maintenance man who found the victim. Can you find him and bring him to my office? The police are probably done with him by now.”
“Roger that, Chief,” he responded and rushed off.
“Dorey, grab a camera and take photos of everything out here, whether it’s part of the crime scene or not.”
“I’ve already been doing that, Chief, on my cellphone,” she replied, pulling out her phone.
Surprised and pleased by her initiative, I asked, “Ever think of becoming a detective?”
“My husband, who is a police officer, asks me that all the time, but no, I have no desire to be around dead bodies all the time.”
“Then, apparently, you should have become a nun,” I said with a chuckle. “Get some more photos and then print them out, okay?”
“Roger that, Chief. I’ll have them on your desk in a few minutes,” she replied even as she knelt down and started taking pictures.
As I watched her for a moment, I was very impressed with how she and the other two were handling things. Especially Michele, who stood by us even though she was obviously upset by the scene. I had a feeling those three were very tight and protective of each other. I was going to depend on that as I made changes in our department.
I probably should have reported in to the CEO first, but my years of experience demanded that I secure the crime scene, or in this case, the hospital, immediately. I walked back to my office and stopped at Michele’s desk. She was back to her happy self.
“I need you to call the local security training academies and ask them to send me five temps immediately to help out for at least a month.”
“I’ll get right on it, Chief,” she replied.
Going over my list in my head as I walked into my office, I decided that in spite of this emergency, I couldn’t back down on taking Byron off the nightshift. That would be just as irresponsible as letting two untrained officers patrol at night. For now, I would have a temp buddy up with each member of my team, especially as they made their rounds outside the hospital. Although the murder took place in broad daylight, I was very concerned about the nightshift being shorthanded.
Better the Devil You Don't Know Page 4