Medical Judgment

by Richard L. Mabry M. D.

  Sarah resisted the urge to sigh and shake her head. Instead, she said evenly, “Kyle, I can’t have a bodyguard follow me around until the police catch this person. The pistol you gave me is in my car, and I’ll carry it with me into the house. I keep the doors and windows locked, and my house is alarmed. I’ll be fine.”

  “Then call me when you’re safely home. Will you do that?”

  “Sure,” Sarah said. She hurried to her car and drove off, but not before she retrieved the revolver from the glove compartment and laid it on the seat beside her within easy reach. The drive home took less than ten minutes, time spent in reflection about the meeting with Kyle. She was glad he realized that, however gently, he’d been pressuring her to get over her loss. But she also made a mental note to be very careful about the signals she sent Kyle in the future. Not now, Kyle. Maybe someday, maybe not.

  As she neared her home, Sarah flashed back on something Kyle had said. Their pastor, Steve Farber, had told him about a doctor missing the diagnosis of his wife’s cancer. Was it possible that Farber was behind the attacks on her? Surely not. Then again . . .

  Immediately on the heels of that thought she had another, one that made her pulse race. Kyle was never around when any of these episodes took place. Could Kyle be doing them in order to drive her toward him?

  She’d need to talk with Bill Larson about this. But could she trust the detective? For that matter, could she trust anyone?

  * * *

  It was after two a.m. The doctor’s shift ended long ago. She should be home by now. Multiple scenarios ran through the mind of the man sitting in darkness in Sarah Gordon’s bedroom. He touched the button to illuminate the numbers on his watch: two twenty-five. Where was she?

  Perhaps she had to work a double shift. Maybe she went home with a friend. It was doubtful she was spending this time with a boyfriend—too soon after her husband’s death, you’d think. Then again, maybe she was reacting to the pressure and had decided to stay at a hotel. Perhaps she’d even left town. If she did, that would be too bad. He had more in store for her.

  Two thirty. He wanted to stay, to carry this through, but the longer he sat there in the house the more nervous he became. What if he got caught before he did everything he had planned? He had to leave. It was too bad to let such an opportunity pass by, but there’d be others. Meanwhile, maybe he could arrange something that would let her know he’d been here. . . something to keep up the pressure on Dr. Gordon. And he wasn’t ready for the end game. She hadn’t suffered nearly enough.

  11

  As Sarah turned into her driveway, she automati-cally scanned her surroundings. No lights on in the neighborhood. No people in view nearby. No unfamiliar cars parked at the curb. No suspicious shadows in the bushes and hedges of her yard or those around her. She reached down to the key ring dangling from the ignition and thumbed the button to disarm her security system, used the remote on her sun visor to raise the garage door, and drove in. Still safely locked in her car, she once more remotely lowered the garage door. After she heard the door hit the ground and confirmed it by looking in the rearview mirror, she unlocked her car door and hurried inside the house. There she used the keypad beside the kitchen door to rearm her system, securing all the doors and windows. Now the drawbridge was up. The moat was filled.

  She’d carried the pistol with her when she exited her car. She laid it gently on the kitchen table. Now she could relax.

  * * *

  Kyle, once more in pajamas, sat propped up in bed, but the novel in his hand wasn’t holding his attention. He supposed the book was interesting enough, but when he turned a page he was hard-pressed to recall what he’d just read. He tried to avoid looking at his bedside clock, but he finally gave in. Sarah had been gone for twenty minutes. The drive to her house should have taken ten. She’d agreed to call him when she got home. Was this simply a case of forgetting, or had something happened to her? Kyle knew his suggestion that he follow her home was probably overkill, but now he regretted not insisting and following through.

  Finally, he closed his book and reached to the bedside table for his cell phone. If he called Sarah and she was falling asleep, she might be angry with him. But if he didn’t call, only to find out the next day that something bad had happened . . . No, he had to check on her.

  The phone rang four times before she answered, and when she did, it was obvious she was upset.

  “Sarah, this is Kyle. Is something wrong?”

  She didn’t answer for several seconds, and when she did, her voice was tight and pitched a bit higher than usual, as though she were forcing the words out. “Someone’s been in the house.”

  “Did they breach your security system?” He stopped himself. “Never mind, Sarah. I’m on my way. I want you to do two things. First, if you’re not already holding that pistol, I want it in your hand when I arrive. Before I get there, if you see something or someone suspicious, shoot. Once you have the gun, call 9-1-1 and report this.”

  “Should I call Bill Larson?”

  “Call the regular police emergency number. They can have a car there in a few minutes. Let them decide whether to notify Larson. But first, get the gun and have it ready. Just don’t shoot the police or me when we arrive.”

  When Kyle arrived, a Jameson police car, its roof lights bathing Sarah’s house in flashes of red and blue, was angle-parked at the curb. He carefully kept his hands in sight when he mounted the two steps to her porch. At the open front door, he called, “Sarah, it’s Kyle. Can I come in?”

  Instead of Sarah, a brawny young man in a police uniform appeared in the doorway, essentially filling it. “Sir, I’m going to ask you to reach into your pocket with two fingers and get out some identification.”

  “I’ll vouch for him. He’s . . . he’s a friend.” Sarah’s voice from behind the policeman sounded a bit better to Kyle than it had minutes ago on the phone.

  “That’s okay,” Kyle said. He produced his wallet and pulled out his driver’s license and membership card in the Texas Bar Association. He handed them to the policeman, who studied them, returned them to Kyle, nodded sharply, and motioned him inside.

  “Sarah, are you all right?” Kyle asked as he hurried to her.

  He saw that her hands were empty and was about to ask about the pistol, but she must have anticipated his question, because she said, “Yes. And in case you’re wondering, one of the officers has my pistol. He took it from me when I answered the door.”

  “You don’t need it right now. I’ll talk with them when they leave. I’ll make certain you’re protected, even if I have to spend the night on the sofa in the living room with my own pistol in my hand,” Kyle said. “Now what happened?”

  “My . . . my bedroom.” She pointed up the stairs.

  Kyle asked the policeman, who was still standing with them, “Okay if I go upstairs?”

  “If she takes you, it’s fine with me. We’ve checked and there’s nobody there now. Meanwhile, I’m going to see if my partner has found anything outside.”

  At the door to her bedroom, Sarah said, “I didn’t notice anything amiss when I walked in. I came straight up here and the light was on. I thought I’d turned it off, but sometimes I forget, so I wasn’t concerned. Then I looked at the bed, and . . . ” She pointed.

  Sarah had blocked his view into the room as she stood in the doorway. When she moved aside, Kyle saw what she meant. The covers on the right side of the bed were heaped up in a mound as though there were someone under them. “So he—”

  “That’s the side of the bed Harry always slept on. At first, I thought there might be a person in the bed. When I could see what this represented, I was afraid there was still someone in the house. That’s when I ran back down the stairs. Then you called.”

  Kyle nodded. He stood in the doorway and scanned the room. Nothing seemed out of place except the mass under the covers. He moved toward the bed. As he got closer, he began to see what had happened. Finally, he reached the bed and pulled bac
k the covers. Someone had done a fair job of arranging pillows to simulate a body, even using a smaller pillow to provide a semblance of the head. “So the pillows under the covers made you think there was someone in the bed. Must have been quite a shock.”

  Sarah nodded. “Initially, yes. But my greatest shock came after that, when I realized someone had gotten past the security system and into my house.” She hugged herself. “Every entrance to my home is alarmed. I have to follow a routine so complicated I need a script. And yet someone got into the house, into my bedroom.” She looked directly at Kyle. “What else must I do before I feel secure?”

  * * *

  He cruised by Dr. Gordon’s house. He’d been gone for about an hour, and apparently she’d come home since he left. There were lights on in every room. Two cars, one of them a Jameson police patrol car, were parked in front of the house. He went by slowly, but couldn’t get a glimpse of what was going on inside.

  Did he dare go around the block and swing by for a second look? No, he decided not to take the chance. It was obvious from what he saw that his little calling card in her bedroom had produced the desired results. And if she left her security system unarmed once, she’d probably do it again. That was just human nature. When she did, he’d be ready.

  He touched the bulge made by the small semiautomatic pistol in his pocket. He’d used it once to frighten her. Soon he’d use it to bring an end to all this. . . but not before she knew who he was. . . and why he was doing it.

  * * *

  Sarah was feeling a bit calmer now, although things certainly were far from normal yet. She and Kyle sat on the sofa in her living room, looking up at the two policemen.

  The policeman who spoke to her was tall and broad-shouldered, with close-cropped dark hair, a square jaw, and a deep voice. He’d answered the door when Kyle arrived, and the two stripes on his uniform shirt and the way the second patrolman deferred to him led Sarah to believe he was in charge. “Dr. Gordon, my partner and I have been through the whole house. We’ve searched around your property. We even checked for someone hiding in a neighbor’s yard. I can assure you that whoever did this is gone.”

  “That’s good. But the question remains, how did he get in here in the first place?” she asked. “Every door and window is alarmed.”

  “People can break in and disarm a security system if they’re fast enough or for some reason have the code,” the policeman said. “But we found no evidence of a break-in. There were no scratches around the locks, no indication of a window being forced open. You say you used your opener to lift the garage door, so the emergency release hadn’t been tripped.”

  “And if it had, that door is alarmed as well,” Sarah said.

  “Is it possible you forgot to set the alarm?” He apparently saw her about to object, so he hurried on. “It happens all the time. The two main problems with a security system are false alarms and neglecting to set them. And that’s especially true if they’re fairly new, as I believe you said this one is.”

  Kyle turned to her and said, “That’s true, Sarah. It’s tough to get in the habit, and maybe something distracted you when you were leaving, something that kept you from arming the system.”

  Sarah recalled that when she left she’d received a phone call. Maybe it had distracted her enough that she didn’t complete the task of setting her alarm. But was it that simple? She remembered wondering if Tom Oliver had learned the code she assigned, or even put in a second code known only to him, one that would allow him free access. Or, if he was smart enough to install a system, maybe he knew ways to disarm it rapidly enough to keep an alarm from sounding.

  And how about the doors? Although she had no certain knowledge of how it was done, perhaps he’d been able to get an impression of the key to her door while he was working on the house. Or maybe, since he did construction, he knew how to get an extra key.

  And if Tom wasn’t the culprit, maybe he sold the information to someone else. Contractors weren’t the wealthiest people in the world. Perhaps he needed money. Or maybe someone put pressure on him. He said he owed Kyle a favor. Who else did he owe? Or, for that matter, was Kyle the one to whom Tom gave the information?

  Then there were the workmen. Three men about whom she knew almost nothing had been in her house for a couple of days. Was one of them doing this? Sarah felt as though she was about to scream. Was there anyone who wasn’t a suspect? Was there anyone she could trust?

  “Sarah, are you all right?” Kyle asked. “It seemed as though your thoughts were a million miles away.”

  “What . . . Oh, yes, I was just thinking.” She looked up at the policeman. “So what do I do now?”

  “You asked about notifying Detective Larson. He’ll get our report in just a few hours when he comes to work. I imagine he’ll be calling you shortly after that.” He took the cap he had tucked under his arm and set it squarely on his head. “In the meantime, just rearm your system after we leave, and you’ll be fine.”

  “What about her pistol?” Kyle asked.

  “Sir, I don’t think the doctor has a permit for this weapon.”

  Kyle stood, dug into his pocket, and once more showed the policeman his ID card for the Texas Bar and his own gun permit. “Officer, I’m Dr. Gordon’s attorney. We have reason to believe that her life is in danger. I gave her that pistol, she demonstrated to me that she knows how to use it, and we’ve started the process for her to receive a concealed-carry permit. Right now she needs the gun for protection, and she has every right to have it in her possession inside her home. I suggest you give it back to her now. If you have any questions, you can call Detective Bill Larson.”

  The officer shrugged. He turned to his partner and nodded. The other policeman placed the revolver on the table in front of Sarah. The first officer said, “Ma’am, just be careful with this. When people are armed and confront an intruder, most of the time they wind up being the ones shot, rather than doing the shooting. I wouldn’t want that to happen to you.”

  * * *

  Because Bill Larson had discovered that his work helped him ignore the craving for alcohol he still fought on a daily basis, he generally didn’t linger at home once he was awake in the morning. Today was no exception. When he arrived at police headquarters, he headed straight for the squad room and his desk, where he put down the white paper sack containing his breakfast, and glanced at the reports centered on his blotter. The top one immediately grabbed his attention. There’d been a break-in at Sarah Gordon’s home during the night. He was actively working on her case, so why hadn’t he received a call?

  Ignoring the coffee and pastry in the sack, Larson turned away and strode down the hall to the desk of the police watch commander, where Sergeant Dumas was preparing for his daily meeting with the officers who would take over to patrol the city on the day shift.

  The detective waved the incident report as he neared the desk. “Sergeant, why wasn’t I called when this took place?”

  “That’s what I asked Carmody. He was the shift sergeant overnight.”

  “And . . . ”

  “He decided that since the patrolmen who responded were two pretty senior men, there was no reason to roust you out when you’d get their full report in just a few hours.”

  “Don’t you—”

  “Don’t I think that’s a decision that should have been left up to you? Yes, I do, and that’s what I told Carmody. But it happened, and you know as well as I do that there are going to be slipups like that.” He gestured with his coffee cup. “Want some of the world’s worst coffee? I think Carmody made this when he came on duty about ten hours ago, so it’s got some body to it.” The sergeant grinned.

  Larson shook his head. “No, thanks. I’ve got some coffee and an apple fritter waiting for me at my desk.” He took a deep breath. “And you’re right. These things happen. I presume you set Carmody straight.”

  “Oh, I’m sure that for a while you’ll get called anytime someone involved in one of your cases sneezes,” Duma
s said.

  Larson eased into his desk chair and opened the sack. The coffee was just about right, and he took a healthy swallow from the cup. As he bit into the apple fritter he remembered one of the things he’d read about alcoholics. Sometimes they substituted food—especially sweets—for the alcohol they really wanted. He was going to have to watch that. It wouldn’t do to stay sober but die of a heart attack when he weighed three hundred pounds.

  He scanned the report Corporal McNaught had filed. It looked as though the patrolman had done everything Larson would have done. He’d even attached a picture of the pillows dummied up to simulate a body in Gordon’s bed. When he finished reading the report, Larson agreed the most likely scenario was that the doctor failed to activate her alarm system. That allowed the prowler to go about his business undetected, although Larson would still have to figure out how he breached a door or window to enter the house. But another question remained. Why did the prowler, or stalker, or whatever they decided to call him—why did he leave without confronting the doctor? Did he just want to frighten her? Or had something caused him to leave before completing the task he had in mind?

  The detective noticed the report said Dr. Gordon entered her home at about a few minutes before three a.m. That was several hours after she should have gotten off work. He’d need to check that out.

  He continued reading, putting himself into the scene, running various scenarios through his mind, compiling a list of questions he wanted to ask the doctor. The apple fritter was gone, the coffee cup was empty, and Larson wasn’t ready for police station coffee left too long on the hot plate. He looked at his watch and decided he’d give Sarah Gordon another hour or so before he called. Meanwhile, maybe he’d head over to the coffee shop near police headquarters and get a second cup.

  Although he had intentions of taking his coffee back to his desk, Larson encountered some people he knew, so he sat down for what he figured would be a brief talk. That brief talk stretched on, and by the time he re-entered police headquarters it was a little after eight a.m. Since the break-in had been reported less than five hours ago, it was possible a call to Sarah Gordon might wake her, but Larson put himself in her position and decided she probably hadn’t slept since the police left her house. Anyway, the sooner he talked with her, the sooner he could resume his search for the person who was behind the activities aimed at her.