The Swick and the Dead

by Maggie Foster

  “Were you protesting?”

  Grace nodded.

  “Did you see anything?”

  “Just the flash of light, then blood.” Her eyes grew wide. “So much blood!” She was rubbing her hands together, trying to get the blood off.

  Ginny laid her gloved hands on Grace’s bloody ones, stilling the motion. “We’re going to take care of you,” she said. She attached the triage tag, finished the paperwork that would accompany Grace to the hospital, then handed her off to the EMS crew.

  Ginny dealt with the walking wounded until past midnight. When the last of the victims had been sent to the hospital, she and the other nurses collapsed onto the sofas. The barman brought over a tray of ice water. Snacks followed. There was very little conversation.

  The management went from group to group. “If you will leave your clothes for the staff to collect tomorrow, the hotel will be pleased to clean them and return them to you. No charge.”

  Ginny nodded her thanks, then climbed to her feet. She wanted a bath and a stiff drink, and her bed. She went back to her room and got cleaned up, then reached for her phone. She had missed five calls from Jim and one from her mother. She called her mother first.

  “I’m fine. We had casualties in the lobby and I was helping out. I’m sorry I couldn’t call sooner. No. I have no idea what happened. I’ll let you know when I do. I love you, too.”

  Jim wasn’t answering his phone, but she was pretty sure she knew what he wanted. She tapped out a text message indicating she was fine and would try to reach him in the morning, then turned down the volume on the phone, shut off the light, and closed her eyes.

  She was practically catatonic with fatigue. The only problem was, with her eyes closed, she couldn’t help seeing the image of that reporter, and the body parts, and the injured she’d cared for that evening.

  Someone had overreacted. Surely no one in Texas would kill so many and so indiscriminately over a disputed bill in the state legislature. There had to be more to it than that.

  She moved restlessly in the bed, trying to find a comfortable spot. Anyone was capable of violence, of course, even nurses, but if this was a nurse, he or she was deranged. The people who went into nursing did so because they wanted to help, not hurt. Nurses didn’t send shrapnel into crowds of unprotected protesters.

  Besides, what nurse would set up shrapnel bombs knowing they would take out voters who were on their side? Kill the enemy, maybe, but not friends.

  Ginny’s eyes drifted open. Grace had said she and Phyllis were political enemies. Grace. Calm, cool, elegant. Except once. On that occasion she had managed to break an IV pole and that took some doing. They were made of steel and bolted together, intended for heavy use and heavy loads.

  Ginny sat up and rubbed her face with both hands. It wasn’t Grace. Violent she could be, true, but that outburst had been sudden and the result of severe stress and over as suddenly as it had started. A strangling required stealth. Like a bomb. Stealth and patience and the ability to hide in plain sight.

  Ginny fell back into the pillows. It was a good thing she wasn’t really a detective. She was starting to see murderers everywhere she looked. She closed her eyes and tried to count sheep. She had gotten to sixteen before she realized the sheep were all wearing scrubs. At twenty they also had stethoscopes around their necks. Red ones. At twenty-five, the stethoscopes had become red wires, dripping blood. She was sure that meant something. Something important. She should write it down, before it got away.

  She rolled over and saw no more sheep that night.

  * * *

  Friday evening

  Austin

  It took Jim just over an hour of flying time in the helicopter to go from Dallas to Austin. With the take-off and landing, that put them on the roof of the big county hospital in Austin around nine-thirty. He was swept into the ER, his bag stashed in a locker, and an isolation gown thrown over his scrubs in fifteen minutes flat. The nurse assigned to help him also got him into shoe covers and a face shield before he could ask. He saw why as soon as he walked into the first patient room.

  It was midnight before Jim could get away to take a bathroom break and grab a cup of coffee. There didn’t seem to be any end to the patients still lining up to be seen. He tried Ginny again, still without success. He tossed back the coffee and went back to work.

  By four a.m. the flood of patients had dwindled to a trickle and Jim was released to one of the call rooms to get some sleep. He checked his phone again and this time found Ginny’s text message. He breathed a heavy sigh of relief, set the phone down on the table, and closed his eyes. The next thing he knew, he was being shaken awake.

  “Dr. Mackenzie, there’s a call for you.”

  Jim climbed groggily back to consciousness, reaching for his phone.

  “Not that one. It’s the house phone.” The nurse picked up the receiver on the hospital line and handed it to him.

  Jim rubbed a hand over his face. “Lo?”

  “Jim, it’s Richard Lyons. Sorry to wake you, but I need an update.”

  Jim glanced at his watch. Seven-thirty. Three hours of sleep. Just like residency.

  He took a breath, then gave his boss a run down on what they’d found; the types of injuries, casualty numbers (last he’d heard), and projected timeline.

  “Sounds like you’ve got that under control.”

  “As far as the emergency care is concerned, yes.”

  “Good. Here’s why I’m calling. DeSoto found out you were in Austin and asked me to ask you to do something for him.”

  Jim groaned under his breath. All he wanted to do at the moment was go back to sleep. “What does he need?”

  “He wants you to talk to one of the docs at County. Here’s his name and contact information.”

  Jim wrote it down on his hand. “What about?”

  “Fake fentanyl patches.”

  * * *

  Chapter 18

  Day 9 – Saturday morning

  Host hotel, Austin

  The alarm went off too early for Ginny. If it hadn’t been for the bombing, she would have been tempted to cut the conference and go back to sleep. Instead, she pulled herself awake and turned on the TV, hunting for news.

  Most of it she already knew. They had found pieces of several bombs, each hidden in an abandoned bicycle. The explosive had been packed into the hollow tube of the frame and any empty space filled with nails, bits of broken glass, cut up aluminum cans, and other sharp objects, then the bikes had been chained to stands, lamp posts, and fences. They had been triggered remotely, which meant wirelessly, and they had been synchronized. The delay in the explosions she heard was caused by the size of the charges and the composition of the bicycles, but all had gone off, with lethal results.

  Ginny was just finishing her braid, twisting the rubber band around the bottom when an image appeared on the screen that froze her where she stood.

  “In a related story, the lead lobbyist for HB 1712 is unavailable for comment. Supporters are claiming foul play in the sudden disappearance of their spokeswoman, Clara Carpenter. She was last seen one week ago. The police have no leads and there is speculation that her disappearance may be connected to last night’s bombing.”

  Phyllis!

  Ginny was unaware she was staring at the TV, her mouth hanging open. She shook her head. She must have been mistaken. It couldn’t have been Phyllis. It was someone who looked sort of like Phyllis.

  But, the other woman had disappeared one week ago. Phyllis had been murdered one week ago.

  Ginny shook her head again, harder. It wasn’t possible. Phyllis had a husband and two children, each with carpools and playdates, and laundry and cooking and all the other demands of married life. In Dallas. And she had a job, full time nights in the Hillcrest Medical ICU. In Dallas.

  Ginny turned off the TV, glanced at the clock, and headed downstairs, thoughts tumbling through her mind. What had John said? That Phyllis was mixed up in something political. That he had
n’t paid enough attention.

  But surely he would have noticed if she’d been gone often enough and long enough to be running a political campaign of this magnitude.

  But—Phyllis was dead. Murdered. And there had to be a reason.

  Ginny turned left out of the elevator, located her assigned conference room, and found a seat. They had replaced the round tables with long rectangles, swathed in white linen and edged with ruffles in deep blue.

  She put her materials down, then got in line for the breakfast buffet. She smiled vaguely at the other nurses, her attention still on the news cast.

  Okay. Suppose, for a moment, it was true. Suppose Phyllis was mixed up in this House Bill whatever thing. Did it make sense to kill her?

  Ginny could imagine a shadowy opposition gathered around a basement table planning to remove the political head of the movement. Extreme, but possible. If—somehow—Phyllis was the head of that movement, then a nice, quiet throttling, in a city far away from the media scrutiny surrounding the bill, might suit her enemies very well.

  What’s more, it explained why the murderer chose the ICU ladies’ room. A hired killer would benefit from the change of venue, and a suspect pool, none of whom was guilty, but all of whom would come under suspicion. The real killer would be overlooked in the investigation of the innocent. The police would focus on the people who had access.

  So, from that point of view, it fit. It was looking more and more likely that Phyllis’ killer was an outsider, someone who had managed to get past the security, do the deed, then slip away without detection.

  Ginny helped herself to breakfast with these thoughts churning in her brain and a niggling sensation of having missed something. It was the sort of feeling she got when she’d forgotten to do something, or write something down, or tell someone something. She knew the feeling well. She also knew she would have to wait for whatever it was to make its way into her conscious mind before she would know what it was. She settled down at her table, took a deep breath, then deliberately turned her attention to breakfast and the day’s lesson, releasing her subconscious mind to work on the puzzle.

  * * *

  Saturday morning

  Travis County Hospital, Austin

  At nine a.m. on the morning after the bombing, Jim sat across the desk from a thin, pale man who seemed on the point of a nervous breakdown. His white hair looked as if he’d managed to pull several clumps of it out by the roots and there was an artery pulsing in his temple that bulged with each heartbeat. The nameplate on the desk identified him as Dr. Wingate, Medical Director for Travis County Emergency Responses.

  “I’m getting too old for this,” he said. He pushed a gallon-sized baggie toward Jim, who lifted it, seeing, among other things, the same fentanyl patches he’d seen in Dallas. “They’re all fakes,” Dr. Wingate said. “Good ones.”

  “Do we know who’s making them?”

  “Yes and no.” The Director leaned back in his chair. “Border patrol intercepted a shipment coming up from Mexico last month. They took pictures of the cargo, but the courier somehow died—in custody—before he could talk. The truck went up in flames in the impound yard, and the seized samples in a warehouse fire.”

  “So where did these come from?” Jim asked.

  “A woman. A nurse.” Dr. Wingate leaned forward. “This has to stay confidential.”

  Jim nodded.

  “Three days ago, we got a patient in the ER. Vehicle versus lamp post. She was still seizing when they brought her in. She’s on life support, but there’s no brain activity. When we went looking for next of kin, we found that in her purse.” He tapped the baggie. “At first, we thought they were real and maybe had caused the seizures, but analysis showed no active ingredient in any of them.”

  “What made you suspicious?” Jim was thinking of Luis.

  “The house supervisor took the bag to the pharmacy and asked them to try to identify the drugs. The pharmacist opened the bag and pulled out one of the cocaine vials, only to find it was leaking. He managed to spill some of it on his wrist.”

  “Careless.”

  “Yes, but not lethal, and there were a lot of broken vials in the bag. Anyway, he expected the skin to go numb. You know.”

  Jim nodded. In health care settings, cocaine was used as an anesthetic.

  “Well, it didn’t happen. That made him suspicious, so he tested the liquid, then the others. They’re chemically inactive, every last one of them.”

  Dr. Wingate was rocking in his chair, the squeak making Jim nervous. “That’s when I called the DEA. We arranged a handoff. He didn’t want to come here, something about making targets of the hospital staff. I was supposed to meet him and hand over the fake drugs.”

  The Medical Director rubbed both hands on his pant legs. “It was his idea to meet during the demonstration, to blend in with the crowd.” Dr. Wingate swallowed and Jim suddenly thought he knew where this was going.

  “I was late. I was in my car and got stopped by the police barricades. I had to find a place to park and get out and walk.

  “The DEA agent had chosen the Heroes of the Alamo monument because we could step inside and not be seen. I was just entering the Great Walk when all hell broke loose.”

  He swallowed. “You wouldn’t believe the carnage. I’ve seen a lot in this profession, but nothing like that. Maybe in a war. I missed out on military service. Anyway, as soon as I could pick myself up off the ground, I ran.”

  He clasped his hands on his desk and fixed his eyes on them. “I called my contact at the DEA and told him what had happened. He said one of the bombs leveled the memorial. Apparently, someone knew we were supposed to be there.”

  Dr. Wingate lifted his eyes and looked at Jim. “They want you to take this stuff back to Dallas with you, but I won’t blame you if you refuse.”

  Jim pressed his lips together, eyeing the baggie, then looked up at Dr. Wingate. “Does the DEA think the bombers know who you are, or just the agent you were supposed to meet?”

  “They had agents watching, taking pictures. The man I was to meet was seen talking to an older man in scrubs and a jacket just before the bomb went off. It’s possible the bombers think I’m dead and the evidence was destroyed in the fires.”

  “Or they know who you are and that we’ve had this little chat.”

  Dr. Wingate nodded. “That’s about the size of it.” He took a deep breath. “We can disguise this meeting as a thank you to the Dallas volunteers or a promise to share what we learn from the post-mortem. Something like that.”

  Jim nodded. “The latter, I think, and I have a suggestion.”

  “What is it?”

  “You give me half the contents of that baggie. Then you take the rest and leave town. You can mail them to the Dallas DEA office. That way we double our chances of getting the evidence into the right hands.”

  The older man licked his lips, then nodded. He pulled a manila envelope out of his drawer and reached for the baggie.

  “Wait,” Jim pulled a pair of nonsterile gloves out of his pocket. He slipped them on, then went through the contents of the baggie, picking them over and choosing ones he thought might have DNA or fingerprint evidence on them. Dr. Wingate held the manila envelope open while Jim filled it, then he sealed it and handed it to Jim, who took it and slid it inside his pants, under his scrubs.

  “Okay. If they’re watching, they know we’ve been talking, but it doesn’t have to be about fake drugs.” Jim rose and walked toward the door, rumpling his hair. “Don’t forget to smile at me.”

  Dr. Wingate pulled himself together and opened the door to his office. “We’re so grateful for your help. I’ll be sure to send you the data we collect on the disaster response and I’ll look forward to hearing your suggestions.”

  “I don’t know if they’ll be of any use. You’ve done a great job with this emergency, but I’ll be happy to look over the data and see if I have anything to offer.”

  “Safe trip home!”

 
“Thanks.” The two men shook hands then Jim went back to the ER locker room, slid the envelope into an interior pocket in his overnight bag, put on his coat, and headed for the lobby.

  He called Mrs. Forbes and got the name of Ginny’s hotel, then gave it to the taxi driver. He was allowed to check in and order an early lunch from room service then hit the showers. He’d brought slacks and a turtleneck in addition to the scrubs, so he had something decent to put on later.

  For the moment though, food and sleep took priority. He ate, drank two bottles of water, pulled the blackout curtains, and fell into bed, deliberately not thinking about the envelope concealed in his bag. Hopefully no one in Austin would realize he had the fake drugs in his possession. He also hoped they wouldn’t be in his possession for long. He didn’t want to end up like Dr. Wingate.

  * * *

  Saturday morning

  Host hotel, Austin

  Ginny was paying attention, but not hanging on every word. The material being presented wasn’t new and the handouts covered all but a few points. She had her laptop open, muted, and was using it to do a bit of investigation on the subject of the two Phyllises.

  She plugged HB 1712 into a search box and scanned the results. There were a lot. By the next break she had assembled a short portfolio on the missing woman. Her name was Clara Carpenter. She was a nurse. She was active in many nursing organizations and had made headlines when she took on the foreign nurse problem.

  For many years, Texas, along with the rest of the country, had been importing nurses trained in other lands. Some worked out, some didn’t. Ginny already knew there had been backlash when whole flocks of nurses from the same country came in, were hired by one facility, and took over everything. Clique didn’t even begin to cover the change in culture in those locations.

  Nor did they assimilate. They brought prejudices and practices with them which did not meet standard of care and, sometimes, did not comply with local and federal laws. The fresh-off-the-boat recruits had to be watched like hawks, to make sure no patient suffered, and that defeated the purpose, since they were usually hired by places that already didn’t have enough qualified nurses.