“Lila got her degree from NAU.”
The same university Donahue’s missing wife graduated from. Amanda’s degree was in business, not nursing, but that didn’t mean the two weren’t acquainted. The ages were about right.
“Has she ever said anything about what she did in Flagstaff? People they knew? Places they went?”
“No…” Brian spoke carefully, as though searching his memory. “The only thing I remember is a neighborhood pub they used to hang out at. She’s complained about not being able to find one like it here. It’s right on Route 66. The Museum Club. Ever heard of it?”
“No.” But she wrote down the name. And would be calling Ms. McNeil again as soon as she got off the phone with Brian.
“How sure are you about this Tanya Clarion?” Brian asked, clearly getting caught up in some of her own irrational worries. “Can we trust her?”
“I don’t know.” She had to be honest with him. “I’m not sure I can trust anyone right now.”
“I gave her a key to my office and access to all my personal records.”
“We have to trust someone,” Hannah said, wishing she could reassure him. “I feel more sure about Tanya than I do about anyone else.”
Tanya, who’d seemed to believe Brian was connected to Donahue.
“Who else is there?” She dropped the question into the heavy silence that had fallen. They’d been going through his staff. Needed to focus.
“Tracy, my file clerk. You’ve met her. She’s been with me forever.”
Tracy was sixty. Widowed.
Brian named a couple of part-time employees, including a young man who handled all of their IT needs, from computer maintenance to programming the Web site.
And then he was back to the babies. Trying to find common denominators other than him. And the vaccines he’d given them. “The only thing they all have in common is that none of them were breast-fed. But that wouldn’t affect a vaccination. And I have a lot of patients who grow up on formula. With today’s working mothers, nursing is becoming more and more rare.”
Which brought Hannah right back to Carlos. He’d been formula fed. Her adorable baby boy with big dark eyes that looked at her as if he couldn’t quite believe she was real.
She’d struggled to accept that he was real, too. A baby of her own. In her home. Waiting for her every morning…
Until the morning he hadn’t.
Because someone had killed him? Someone she knew?
God, please stop me now, she prayed. Please give me back my mind. Don’t let them do this to me. Don’t let them take me to the point of no return. She was not going to see their power, their vindictiveness in every aspect of her life. She was not going to believe that her son had died because of an Ivory Nation guilty verdict.
She’d brought the boy with her. Sitting outside the downtown courtroom Monday morning, William smiled at his twelve-year-old son, looking far too solemn, in the chair across the hall. Francis nodded. Patsy stared off in the opposite direction. She hadn’t looked at William since she’d arrived, Francis in tow, half an hour before.
But William knew she was aware of him. He’d seen her grab the boy’s wrist as he’d made a move toward his father.
It wasn’t right, what she was doing to their son—using him as a weapon to get back at William. Patsy knew him well. Knew how to hurt him, a price he paid for having once loved her. She knew that Francis meant more to him than anything.
You’re the one who asked for the divorce, dammit, he wanted to say to her. And might have. If not for Francis’s presence. He refused to bring him into this. Patsy was his mother. Francis needed to respect her. And someday, when he was an adult, to look out for her. Protect her.
It’s what boys—and then men—did.
The courtroom door opened. William’s attorney appeared. With Patsy’s lawyer right behind him.
With one look at their faces, William took his first easy breath in more than a year.
And five minutes later, after speaking with Francis, giving the boy a hug, he was in his car driving back to work, to his Monday afternoon calendar, and calling the second most important person in his life.
Hannah picked up on the first ring, as though she’d been sitting by the phone, waiting for him. “I won.”
“Oh, that’s wonderful. I mean, I knew you would, but I’m so glad it’s over. And that justice was done.” Hannah’s words, coming in a rush, were sincere.
And suddenly, as joy flowed over him, a darker emotion spiraled through William. For every good there was a corresponding bad. And while he’d fought hard for his son, had rejoiced in his new relationship with Hannah, he couldn’t help but wonder what he would do if he lost either one of them.
Monday didn’t always suck. Smiling, Hannah pushed the first number on her speed dial as soon as she’d cleared the court building at lunch. William had had good news, and so did she.
Brian didn’t pick up his cell, but she reached him easily on his home phone.
“Hi.” She didn’t bother introducing herself.
“Hi, yourself.” The catch in his voice tore at her.
“Don’t worry, it’s not bad news,” she added quickly. Whoever was doing this to Brian was going to pay. “I just heard another rumor.”
And didn’t feel the least bit guilty about passing it on.
“And?”
“There was no trace of HGH in any medicinal product you had in your possession. None was found among the personal belongings at your home, either. Nor can they trace any orders of it, legal or not, to you, your license or your office.”
“Thank God. Oh, Hannah, thank God.” The emotion in his voice brought tears to her eyes.
“This doesn’t mean you’re off the hook,” she warned. “There’s still at least one murder that must be accounted for and you’re a suspect.”
“I understand.” At the moment he didn’t sound like he cared all that much.
“There’s something else.” This wouldn’t be as easy for him to hear. But it helped his case.
“What’s that?” The wariness had returned.
“That place where Lila hung out, the Museum Club. According to Janet McNeil, Amanda Blake, Donahue’s missing girlfriend, worked there. That’s where Simon Green, ex-undercover FBI and also now Janet’s husband, met Amanda. It’s where Amanda first agreed to work with law enforcement to bring down Donahue and his organization.”
“Lila’s linked to this. I should’ve known.”
Hannah didn’t say anything. She’d met the woman. Couldn’t picture her in the room with Carlos. Couldn’t picture her period.
“There has to be someone on the inside,” she said when she could.
“I’ll call Tanya. Let her know to start checking. What do you suggest I do with Lila in the meantime? Fire her?”
“Ask Tanya what she thinks, but my gut reaction is no. These guys aren’t stupid. You don’t want to give any indication that you’re on to them. They’ll vanish and you’ll be left with a conviction.”
“There’s no way I’m exposing another child to her, conviction or not.”
“Isn’t there some seminar you can send her to?”
“I’ll find one.”
Brian sounded better. Energized. The angst would return, Hannah knew that. But she was glad to have been able to give him this respite.
“How do you keep hearing these rumors, by the way?” he asked.
“I’m not at liberty to say,” she told him. And silently thanked her judicial assistant.
There was no way Susan had just happened to hear about Brian’s case. She’d called in a favor for the information.
It was a favor Hannah hoped to be able to return someday.
On Tuesday morning, while Joseph was still asleep, Brian crept quietly past his door, peeking in long enough to see the bed covers rise and fall with his even breaths. “Tell him good morning for me,” he whispered to Cynthia behind him.
Cynthia nodded. And a minute later reached
up to straighten the knot in his Toy Story tie as he faced her before he headed out to the garage—and his Jag. “I’ll be here all day,” she told him. “Call me if you need me.”
“I’ll need you even if I don’t get a chance to call,” he said, knowing the words were true on some level.
He did need her. She was a friend. A loyal friend. He cared about her. Wanted her to be happy.
He just wasn’t sure he was in love with her.
But he wanted to be.
The past several days at home would have been excruciating if not for her and Joseph. The four-year-old hadn’t had a single nightmare in five days. And he’d only wet the bed once.
“Good luck.” With one hand on the back of Brian’s neck, Cynthia pulled him down for a kiss.
The strikingly obvious yellow caution tape was gone. And inside Brian’s office looked, surprisingly, just as he’d left it. As long as he didn’t open file drawers or go through his desk. Fresh paper still covered the tables in the examination rooms. Utensils filled the glass canisters on the counters. Instrumental renditions of kids’ songs played over the sound system when he turned it on.
His appointment book sat open on Barbara’s desk, as always, though the police had taken photocopies. His medicine cabinets were full and locked.
He might, technically, be under suspicion for murder, but no formal charges had been filed. Nothing formal done at all, other than a too-hasty booking that he could probably sue for if he chose.
All Brian wanted was to put it behind him and get on with his life.
He came armed with a seminar for Lila in Washington, D.C. It was a SIDS symposium and since he couldn’t leave the state…
She wasn’t the least bit upset to hear that she was to take the day off to get ready, or that he’d booked her a flight from Phoenix’s Sky Harbor airport the next morning. Because she was being kind to a boss who’d had a rough experience? Or because she was guilty as hell and eager to get out of town?
Brian didn’t know. And at the moment, didn’t care. Tanya was investigating. It was out of his hands.
And because she’d worked a solid year without a vacation, Brian insisted she take at least one of the two weeks she had coming to her. Overworked nurses weren’t healthy choices in a doctor’s office.
“I can understand why you’d want to be extra cautious right now,” she said with an agreeable nod. “I’ll see if Zane can get some time off…Maybe my mom can watch the baby, so he and I can have a few days away somewhere. It’s football season, but ASU has a bye next week…”
Lila chattered on, seemingly happy and at ease. Not at all like someone who’d just murdered her sixth infant.
But then, what did he know? He’d never been personally acquainted with a murderer.
Brian’s first patient, Allie Barnes, was due in at eight. Which left him an hour to wait and see if she showed. In the meantime, he opened drawers, closed up space left by missing folders, collected the medical files he’d need for the day, adjusted a couple of boxes of tissues.
He had his stethoscope in his ears, the base on his wrist, was counting absently as he stood in the middle of examination room one, when Barbara arrived.
“Hi,” Brian said, letting the stethoscope go to hang around his neck.
“Good morning, Doctor,” she said, her eyes concerned as she scanned his features. “How are you?”
“Fine,” he said, with the false optimism he’d been practicing for the past hour. “Ready to get back to work.”
Barbara studied him so long Brian knew she didn’t believe a word he said, and then, settling her sweater on the back of her chair, she pulled the appointment book forward.
“I’ve already collected the charts,” he told her. That was something she would have done before leaving the office the previous day, if they’d worked. And he informed her of Lila’s trip and the temporary nurse who would be starting that morning.
“Oh! Well, that’s fine then.” She peered up at him. “I’m sorry, sir, but I have to say this. I know you didn’t hurt those kids. And what’s more, everyone I’ve talked to knows it, too. You’ve been around a long time. Helped a lot of people. That kind of stuff isn’t forgotten.”
Biting his lips against the sudden emotion building in his throat, behind his eyes, Brian nodded. Tried to thank her.
“I just wanted it out in the open. Nobody here suspects you in the least. We’re all just tense as anything, waiting for them to find whoever did this. It’s creepy to think that someone’s been here in the office, tainted our supplies…”
“We don’t know that,” Brian said, focusing on the case that had consumed his thoughts. “We only know that a syringe with traces of HGH was in the trash receptacle,” he clarified. “We can’t tell for certain when or how that HGH got there.”
“You think someone might’ve tampered with it after it went out in the safe box?” she asked, giving his name for the locked container he used to dispose of needles.
“I sure as hell hope so,” he replied. And then looked back at the calendar.
“How many were you able to reach?”
“All of them.”
“And how many can we expect to see today?”
When she repeated the same three words, Brian stood up a little straighter, adjusted the knot in his tie.
It was time to work.
Hannah was the first one in chambers Wednesday morning—a common occurrence. Sometime over the past year she’d developed the habit of collecting her paper from the porch as she was leaving in the morning, hitting the drive-through for coffee on the way to work, and having a few moments of solitude in the peace and quiet of her office before the day began.
In another world, another life, she’d enjoyed those moments at home.
Flipping on the lights as she passed through the well-insulated suite, her footsteps barely audible on the carpet, she set her coffee down long enough to exchange her sweater for the robe hanging in the closet inside her personal office, and, paper under her arm, headed over to the desk.
Pray to God there was nothing about Dr. Brian Hampton in the headlines—though he’d surely have called if there had been.
And no more SIDS deaths in the city, either.
She had to look twice at her desk, at the pile of files front and center that she’d left there the previous evening, ready for her morning calendar, before she realized what was wrong.
The files were as she’d left them, neatly lined up, one atop the other, but there was a difference, too. A sheet of regular typing paper was sticking out from the middle of the pile—marring the symmetry of the stack.
Without thinking, or rather, thinking that Susan or the janitor must have left her a note, Hannah picked up the piece of paper.
And felt every nerve in her body tighten as she shivered.
There was no note. No words at all.
Only a very clear, enlarged picture of the ring that had gone missing from the evidence locker.
A crucial piece of evidence in the State v. Bobby Donahue case.
Still holding the paper in her shaking hand, Hannah sat. Stared at the offensive message. And dropped it as though it burned her.
She meant to press the panic button under her desk. She meant to phone Donna’s office next door, in case her deputy was already in. She meant to call the cops. Susan. Or William.
Instead, she carefully picked up the paper, trying to touch it as little as possible. Sealing it into an envelope, she deposited it in the fireproof safe she’d had installed in the closet when she’d first taken office.
She’d have the paper analyzed for prints. D.N.A. Any kind of identification.
As soon as she had an idea of who she could trust.
She’d just had absolute confirmation that the Ivory Nation had someone working inside the Maricopa County East Court Complex. What if it was one of the deputies? Someone in Susan’s confidence?
Susan herself?
Hannah shook her head. Surely not. No. She c
ouldn’t go that far.
And William? There was no way he was the infiltrator. Though she still didn’t call him. She wasn’t convinced he’d keep the information quiet. He was getting panicky about her work. And now that he had access to Francis, had more at stake by being connected to danger, he’d be even worse. He wasn’t involved with the Ivory Nation; she just couldn’t count on him to be rational.
Maybe it was a clerk. Or a janitor. Or Donna’s JA, Martha, who’d told Susan about the missing ring.
Names, faces swarmed through her mind until she felt dizzy. She didn’t know who among them was a traitor. But she knew someone was.
No one but a fully vetted county employee, be it a cleaning person or a judge, had access to the inner sanctum.
Ever.
Wednesday had been even better for Brian than Tuesday. If not for the investigation looming—and the fact that he’d had to hospitalize a five-year-old girl with meningitis—it would have been close to perfect.
He called Cynthia as he drove home. She and Joseph had counseling, but maybe they could meet for hamburgers before they had to go. There was one thing that had become very normal about Joseph—his love of French fries.
“I’m sorry,” Cynthia said when she heard his suggestion. “I’ve already fed Joseph and I told Linda that we’d come early tonight so Tyler and Joseph could play together in the toy room before our session starts.”
Linda and Tyler—names he recognized. And maybe she’d told him about the pre-session playdate. He’d been a bit distracted lately.
And thinking back to a week ago tonight—the worst night in recent memory—Brian dialed another number.
He’d spoken to Hannah again briefly the day before when she’d called to see how his first day back at work had gone. But he hadn’t seen her since she’d picked him up from the police station.
“Brian?”
He didn’t like her tone of voice when she answered. “What’s wrong?” Had she heard something else about the investigation?
At Close Range Page 18