Nothing Personal (27 page)

“Yeah, you look like it,” Jules retorted.

B.J. made it back around to insert himself between the guests and the latest letter. Kate couldn’t even look up at him.

“Actually,” she said, dragging up her courage from where it was cowering somewhere near her
knees, “I’m glad you’re both here. I still need to go over some things with you.”

“What things?”

She faced her friend with every ounce of determination she could muster. “I need you to finally tell me what happened the night of the Rashad boy. I think it’s more important than we thought.”

Jules and Sticks exchanged glances. Sticks started playing with one of her earrings, which usually meant she had nothing to say. Jules set her hands on her hips and checked with B.J. before answering. “You have the chart, Kate. What else is there?”

“There’s the murderer,” she said, ignoring the note. “I think all this has something to do with what happened to that baby. And I think it was my fault.”

My fault, my fault
. It seemed it was a litany she’d chanted her whole life. If she’d done something different, her father would have stayed. If she’d been a better daughter, her mother wouldn’t have been so nuts. If she’d fought a better fight, she could have protected the girls. If she’d forgotten her old ghosts and gone after the murderer sooner, Tim wouldn’t be dead.

“What did I do, Jules?”

It wasn’t B.J. whom Kate expected to react. B.J. did, though, shoving past Jules to take hold of her by the arms. “I’m getting a little tired of this,” he threatened.

Kate didn’t know how to answer him. He didn’t understand. Maybe he never would. “Something set this off. Something I did. Something maybe I don’t want to deal with.”

“Just like before?” he demanded. “Just like always?”

“Yes,” she finally admitted, looking him right in the eye. “Just like always. Only this time I can’t deal with it because I don’t know what happened. Even reading the chart over and over again, I don’t know what it was I did that night that might have set off a killer.”

He let go of her, but Kate knew he wasn’t appeased.

“I told you before,” Jules said. “Nothing happened that night you should be ashamed of.”

“Is that what I should tell my defense attorney?”

“Should John be here for this?” B.J. asked.

“No!” Jules and Kate retorted simultaneously.

The strength of Jules’s objection sent Kate’s stomach skidding. “You might as well tell me,” she said. “I’m going to find out sooner or later.”

“Nothing went on,” Jules insisted, too strongly.

B.J. made a point of handing Kate her brandy. “Might as well sit down,” he said to them all. “Sounds like it’s gonna be a long evening.”

Jules never looked away from her friend. “That’s okay. I don’t have much to say.”

“Weiss said I kept that little boy too long. So does the chart. Why?”

Kate had almost forgotten Sticks, standing there just inside the door like the school truant waiting to see the principal. “You might as well tell her,” the girl said.

“It was a busy night,” Jules insisted. “Nobody else really saw what went on.”

Kate shouldered past Jules to face Sticks. “Will you tell me? You were there.”

Sticks looked over at Jules, her fingers in her hair making the feathers dance at her ears. The feathers she always wore, attached to the hoops with bright little beads. Kate suddenly couldn’t take her eyes off them.

“Jules is right,” was all Sticks said, although it sounded more like a challenge than an offer of support. “It wasn’t your fault.”

Kate backed up and faced them all. “What?” she demanded. “What wasn’t my fault?”

It was Jules’s turn to move. She flanked Kate and headed for the couch. Around the couch as if she were pacing the work lane. Revving up her memory with movement, like all people who think on their feet.

“I’m not lying, Kate. It was too busy to know for sure. Hell, we even had Mary Polyester in with the family, because none of us could do time in there. You can just imagine what good she did.”

“What good did I do?” Kate demanded, terrified.

Jules skidded to a stop right in front of her. “You did everything you could for that baby. You went toe to toe with everyone from Phyl to Weiss to Warner to Fleischer. Shit, Kate, you were fired, did you know that? We didn’t tell you because we figured you didn’t need to know. They were going to toss your ass out for trying to get that kid good treatment.”

“Why? There isn’t anything on the chart to suggest why I waited. What was it? Was there
something there, or was I just pissed off because Fleischer wouldn’t accept an uninsured kid?”

“You were sure that kid was cooking a bad head injury, all right? You said your instincts were telling you that even though he looked all right, that kid was too sick to transfer. You were terrified he was going to crump on the way into the city, so you did everything you could to make sure he was in a good facility when he did go bad.”

“But he didn’t.”

Jules couldn’t quite look her in the eye anymore. “Not while he was there.”

Kate was having trouble breathing again. Maybe Billy had gone bad after all. Maybe she’d been right. But the only people who might have told her for sure were dead. She turned to B.J., even knowing how little he could help.

“You did the post on him,” she said.

But he shook his head. “I wish I could give you something definite, pogue. The damage was too extensive. I don’t know whether it was precrash or post-crash.”

Kate never heard the doorbell this time. She didn’t notice B.J. leave her. Her eyes were turned inward, searching for a memory that wasn’t there.

Finally she couldn’t do any more than shake her head. “So now all we have to do is find the person on that night who was most affected by what happened, and we’ll have our murderer.”

“We already have.”

Kate turned from the window to find John and Mary standing just inside the door. John had a
card in his hand. Mary was frowning over at Kate as if she wanted to apologize.

“What are you talking about?” Kate asked, and remembered the beads. Turned stunned eyes to Sticks, who looked, if possible, even paler.

But John didn’t turn to Sticks. “Jules,” he said with sincere sorrow, “we’d like you to come down to de station wid us, please.”

“
JULES?” KATE DEMANDED
of John. “What the hell are you talking about?”

Jules, for once, didn’t seem able to say anything for herself.

Over in her corner, Sticks forgot to be quiet. “Goddamn it, Kate, who else you gonna turn in, me? Mary Polyester?” Her face was suddenly flushed, her young eyes hard with accusation.

“Shut up, Sticks,” Jules snapped.

“You wan’ me to read you your rights?” John asked Jules.

“It was just a few faxes,” Kate protested. “She didn’t mean anything. You know that.”

John turned those sad brown eyes on her, and Kate knew she didn’t want to hear what he was going to say. “I’m sorry, Katie girl.”

“But we agreed it couldn’t have been her. She was too big for anybody to think it was me.”

“She was,” he answered, pulling a plastic bag out of his coat pocket. “But not her frien’ Davy.”

And there it was, Kate’s missing cap, the chartreuse one with the big
RN
in purple letters.
Kate looked over at Jules, who was staring at the thing as if it had grown eight legs and danced.

“Where’d you get that?” the big woman demanded.

“Your locker. De hospital let us look after we foun’ out you were in poor Mr. Gunn’s office today. You went in wid him when he brought in his gin and tonics, girl. An’ you came back later. Everybody up dere notice you. And den we got to t’inkin’. Maybe it didn’t need to be a girl poor Bose saw dat night. Maybe it was a man dressed to look like one. Maybe a man helpin’ you.”

“Wait a minute,” Kate protested. “Are you saying she’s the killer or the person sending me the warnings?”

“I’m sayin’ I t’ink maybe she’s both.”

“But that’s stupid,” Kate retorted. “Why would she suddenly do something so dumb when she’s been so smart before? We agreed it had to be somebody nobody’d think twice about being up in Gunn’s office. Like Suzie. Ask her, for God’s sake.”

“Suzie don’ make nice pretty moccasins wit’ beads on dem. Does she, Jules?”

“That’s what I was doing there, John,” she said. “He bought a pair of moccasins from me. I swear it.”

“Gunn wanted moccasins?” Kate instinctively demanded.

But John was waving everybody off with his Miranda card. “You listen to dis before you talk to me. And I t’ink it better if we do dis someplace else. Katie don’ look too good.”

“Fuck Katie,” Sticks retorted, tears in her big eyes. “Who says
she
didn’t do it and plant the goddamn cap?”

“Shut up!” Jules yelled.

“She’s not going anywhere,” Kate said without thinking. “This is ridiculous. You’re convicting her on what was in her locker? Anybody can get in her locker. For God’s sake, they got in my apartment. Again. They dropped off my mail when they brought in the newest love note, damn it. And who says that was her bead? Look at Sticks’s earrings. There are probably a lot of other people I haven’t even thought of yet who have beads.”

“New love note?” Mary asked B.J.

“You talk ’bout dat later, little girl,” John warned. “After de rest of us are gone.”

“Why?” Kate demanded. “The whole hospital knows about ’em. Jules sure as hell must. Isn’t she the one who’s supposed to be sending them?”

“Sending what?” Jules asked, her attention swinging back and forth between John and Kate. “What notes?”

“Those damn letters from Florence,” Kate said, gaze locked on John. “The ones he thinks you’ve been sending me to warn me off.”

“You got another one?”

John was beginning to look dangerous now. “Katie, don’t. You’re hurtin’ worse dan you’re helpin’. Now, let’s go.”

Jules turned panic-stricken eyes on Kate. “Do you know a lawyer?”

“Of course….”

Steve. Tim’s brother. Tim, who was one of the victims Jules was being arrested for murdering.

“Don’t ask her,” Sticks pleaded, hand on Jules’s arm. “She’s coverin’ her ass on this one, damn it.”

Jules shook her off like a small dog. “Go on, Sticks. Get on back to work before I hurt you.”

“But Kate—”

“But Kate nothing. Grow up for once and pay attention. She’s not any happier about this than you are.”

John took the other arm in a grip that wouldn’t be shaken. “Jules, I wan’ you outa here before de media fin’ out. Please. An’ you,” he said with enough force to make Sticks flinch. “Not a word about notes. I’ll hear.”

Jules finally nodded. John lifted his Miranda card. Kate fought the urge to throw herself at him, as if it could make a difference.

“We’ll get somebody down there,” B.J. said for her. He was there, his arm around Kate’s shoulder. He sounded as bad as she felt.

“Can I have the latest note?” Mary asked, blocking Sticks’s way out. The girl glared at the FBI agent with the same venom she’d reserved for Kate. Mary didn’t seem to notice. “I’d like to talk to you a second before you go,” she said simply. Sticks headed for the window so she could watch Jules leave.

Mary looked at the note and frowned. Shook her head. “Another copycat,” she concluded, standing in the doorway as John and Jules disappeared down the stairs.

“A copycat with the key to my apartment,” Kate retorted. “Which, I might add, Jules doesn’t have.”

“At least you don’t think so.”

B.J. held on to Kate again, this time more tightly, as if expecting argument. Kate couldn’t even manage that anymore. She just wanted to be gone. To be quiet and relieved of everyone’s expectations.

“Molly,” Mary mused, then looked up. “Kate?”

Kate just shook her head. “My sister,” she said. “It’s…a long story. B.J., you didn’t…?”

But Kate already knew even B.J. didn’t know this. B.J. would never have told anyone something that could hurt Kate this badly, no matter what the cause.

B.J. shook his head anyway. “Who knows about your sisters?” he asked.

“Nobody knows,” she said, truthfully, because no one did. “No one.”

“You got a look at the chart,” Mary said to Kate. “Anything in it help?”

“Help what?” Kate demanded. “Jules? I don’t know. Just how upset was she that night, Sticks? You were there. Did she take sides with me on that little boy?”

Sticks stood on one foot, rubbing her ankle with the other, suddenly looking like the little girl she really was. “Don’t expect any help outa me,” she said.

“I’m asking you to help Jules,” Kate retorted, too upset to be angry.

Sticks tried a little more glaring before she
finally gave in. “Jules was telling the truth. It was so busy she didn’t know what was going on until she saw Mrs. Warner piling your stuff on the floor outside your locker. The only people who were really upset were the ones involved with that kid.” She darted a look around at all of them before returning to Kate. “Especially you. I’ve never seen you so pissed. You said you wished somebody would have the guts to do something about all the assholes who keep us from doing our jobs.”

“And somebody took me seriously.”

“Thomas à Becket syndrome,” Mary muttered. “We were right, Kate. It all hinges on that night, after all.”

Kate hardly heard her. “Jesus Christ, Sticks. You never told anybody about this, did you?”

“So I could do what, protect Mr. Gunn?”

“So you could protect Tim.”

“Who was there when she said it?” Mary asked.

Sticks shuffled a little more, gave another halfhearted shrug. “I don’t know. It was so busy, and things happened so fast. I do remember Phyl had just told Kate that Mrs. Warner wouldn’t let her have a helicopter. And that Phyl would personally fire her if she tried to go over her head one more time.”

Kate was rubbing at her face. “There has to be something we’ve missed.”

“Maybe not,” Mary suggested quietly.

Kate dropped her hands and glared. “Jules didn’t do it,” she insisted.

“You just don’t want to believe any of your friends would be involved in something like this,” the agent responded. “But one of them is, Kate. One of them is.”

“Can I go now?” Sticks asked. “I need to get back to work.”

Mary moved aside and Sticks made for the door, pausing only long enough to give Kate one last look. Kate saw the struggle in her, the need to blame, the fierce loyalty and frustration. Kate couldn’t fault her a bit, and that hurt almost worse than seeing Jules being led out the door.

Kate tried to sit back down. It didn’t work. She felt the walls closing in, and there didn’t seem to be any way of stopping them. Something was wrong and she knew it. She just couldn’t say what. Something felt cold and sinister in a way that it hadn’t before. Calculated. Evil. Different from the beginning, with those polite little notes and people dropping over so quickly they’d have to have chased down their own near-death experiences.

She took a deep breath and tried to consider it all logically. She couldn’t. She knew too much now about that night and still too little. She knew Jules couldn’t be the culprit. She knew whatever was wrong lay just beneath the surface like a bad itch. She knew she couldn’t sit still.

“Maybe if I call them all,” she said to herself, rubbing her hands together to ward off the numbness of exhaustion. “Maybe if I step up the threats,
she’ll come forward. I haven’t done enough. I haven’t—”

“Step up what threats?”

Kate looked up to see Sticks gone, the door closed, and Mary and B.J. standing head to head, their attention now on her. It was B.J. who’d heard her, evidently.

“Maybe you could go over the chart for me, Beej,” she said, lurching back to her feet. “See something I missed. Something that would point in the right direction. I could give her information she wouldn’t think I had.”

B.J.’s features were tight and unhappy. “Step up what threats?” he asked again, stepping away from Mary.

Kate batted his hand away as she bent for her bag, for the records inside that held all the clues. “You didn’t give me enough time. It would have worked, I know it. I could have convinced Florence that I was the only one who knew what was going on and she’d have had to come for me. Come for me here.”

This time B.J. wasn’t going to be waved aside. He grabbed her by both arms and yanked her away from the bag just as Kate was pulling out the folder. Contents flew everywhere, scissors and tourniquets and the chart, which hit the floor and spread. Kate dove for it again without success.

By the time B.J. got her to face him, his expression was thunderous. “What have you been doing?” he demanded.

“I’m trying to find the real killer,” she snapped, struggling to get loose.

“Are you crazy? Just what did you think was going to happen?”

“I’m going to force her out of hiding, because the only way I’ll stop is if she kills me. And the only way she’ll know what I’ve told anybody else is to meet me face to face.”

“You were just going to invite her over here for another hanging party?”

“Yes!”

Kate glared at him, furious. Terrified. “Don’t you understand? It’s the only way we’re going to know. It’s the only way my friends are going to be safe.” It was the only way she was going to discover what other people had found out.

He actually shook her, as if he could work the obsession loose. “Goddamn it, Kate—”

“But it doesn’t make any difference now,” Mary insisted.

“Of course it does,” B.J. retorted. “Jules is no more the murderer than I am. Kate’s setting herself up to be the next target.”

“But I’ll know,” Kate protested. “I’ll be able to protect myself, because she’s going to have to explain herself before she acts. She has to get my approval—”

There it was again, the snag that had been bothering her. The notes had asked for understanding. The murders had been some odd kind of offering. All the murders but one.

Kate turned on Mary with a vengeance.

“You can’t possibly believe Jules really did it,” she accused.

That shut both Mary and B.J. up in a second.

Mary recovered first. “It’s not just the beads, or the faxes. One of the typewriters used on the notes was from the emergency department. Her time cards match. And she fits the profile. Adult child of an alcoholic, needing approval, seeking control over her environment, neat, meticulous, thorough.”

“Shit, Mary, so am I. So is three-fourths of the staff over there. But Jules wouldn’t kill Tim. You know it. I know it. That’s what it keeps coming back to. No matter how you try and stretch the psychological profile you’ve put together, it falls apart. Tim just doesn’t fit the picture. You’d know that if you’d ever worked with him.”

Control. Kate could feel it seeping back in, just a little. Funny how even a taste of it was like a stimulant. They all needed it in different ways. Kate desperately needed tidiness, predictability, structure. As long as someone told her where and when to come to work, what was expected of her, and where to find the right tools, she could accomplish damn near anything. Mary thought their killer was seeking control through the murders. Maybe she was. Maybe they all were, with whatever way they handled the entire matter.

“I can’t believe I didn’t think of it before,” she said. “It’s been there all along.”

“It couldn’t be that you’d been a little preoccupied,” B.J. drawled, from where he was moving to pick up the mess she’d just made.

“What’s everybody else’s excuse?” she retorted.

“What was there all along?” Mary asked.

“Tim,” Kate said. “Tim. He’s a puzzle piece that just doesn’t fit. I mean, shit. If you think Jules would kill him, think again. She’d rather hang her husband than Tim. And as for anybody else doing it, if she’s murdering to get my approval, why would she commit the one act that would guarantee she’d lose it?”

“Even if Tim was gay?”

“That has nothing to do with it! He was a good man. He was my friend. He was everything the killer was trying to protect in medicine, not what she was trying to get rid of.”

Mary should have looked more chagrined. At least more belligerent. Seeing her reaction, Kate realized that Mary had agreed with her before she’d ever opened her argument.

“Then tell me what you think,” the agent suggested, deliberately sitting herself down.

It took Kate a minute to change gears. To cool down enough to think. Then she followed Mary to the couch. Finished her forgotten brandy. Pulled her rattled brain cells into order to cull some sense from the whole thing.