Angel Interrupted (35 page)

“You should be a detective,” Maggie told her. “Make the call.”

The nurse obeyed and handed Maggie back her phone. “Maybe I should be an actress?” she joked, and the two women smiled at each other. I loved this sisterhood of competent women. It made me feel like the whole world was safer.

“Verrett doesn’t sound Indian to me,” Maggie told the nurse. “The guard said an Indian doctor was in here? Said he was the anesthesiologist?”

“He might have been. Or the woman doctor was and he was an attending looking over her shoulder,” the nurse explained. “The hospital’s a little paranoid about lawsuits, especially with Fiona being murdered. The big dogs are sniffing around a lot, second-guessing everyone. He was probably an attending who was checking up on staff and being very careful.”

“What’s his name?”

She looked apologetic. She wanted to help Maggie, but she was also part of a bigger team and she wasn’t about to unleash a witch hunt based on skin color. “I’m not sure who it was. I didn’t see them. I had a patient code on me around that time, and this man technically isn’t my responsibility.”

“He is now,” Maggie told her. The woman nodded. She was willing to help Maggie any way she could.

“Did you recognize the female doctor the guard described?” Maggie asked.

The nurse’s tone was apologetic. “About a third of the doctors on staff now are women. The numbers grow every year.”

Maggie’s sigh was eloquent. I almost pitied her. When she was focused, no one could best her. No one. But she had been going hard for days now, running on empty. Bulling through alone wasn’t going to cut it.

“What’s going on?” a voice asked. “He was fine an hour ago. What happened?”

“This is Dr. Verrett,” the nurse explained. “The surgeon.”

Maggie introduced herself and explained why she was there. The doctor was tall and thin with short-cropped dark hair and intense eyes that he likely used to intimidate other people. His energy was even more intense. He was as coiled as a cobra. Maggie had no effect on him whatsoever. But then again, he had no effect on Maggie in return. She was not intimidated by him at all. I don’t think he was used to that, and it confused him.

“Christian Fletcher explained why you were here to me earlier,” he said when Maggie was done. “Are you sure someone tried to kill this man?”

The nurse nodded and said, “We’re sure.” Dr. Verrett seemed to take her word a lot more seriously than Maggie’s.

“Is he stable now?” he asked.

“Yes,” the nurse said. “If he was given something to impair his breathing, it seems to be wearing off.”

“Then there’s nothing I can do.” He turned to go.

“Wait,” Maggie said. “Every doctor in this hospital is under suspicion except for you.”

“Every doctor?” he asked incredulously. “Did Christian Fletcher not save this man’s life just a few hours ago? Why would he do that if he wanted him dead?”

The nurse stared at Maggie, waiting for her answer. She had definitely heard the rumors about them.

“
Every
doctor,” Maggie said firmly.

“There’s nothing I can do for him,” the doctor explained impatiently. He looked at his watch. “I have another procedure in an hour, and I’m hungry.”

“Can’t you bring him out of this faster?” Maggie asked. “Give him a shot?”

“I could,” the doctor admitted. “But I won’t. It’s medically contraindicated, we have no idea what else may be in his system, and he’s been through enough as it is.” He stared at Maggie’s gun pointedly. She got the meaning.

“I’m not the one who shot him,” she said in an uncharacteristically defensive voice, perhaps realizing for the first time that, because she had helped redeem Calvano, he was now going to be her responsibility for a long time to come.

“Look,” the doctor said, less impatiently. “He wasn’t deprived of oxygen long enough to cause brain damage, and he’s going to come out from under soon enough.” He checked the LED readouts on the medical equipment surrounding the bed and read through the thin strips of paper containing the man’s vital signs history. “You’ll be able to talk to him in about thirty to forty-five minutes.”

“I can’t wait that long,” Maggie insisted.

“You’re not used to waiting, are you?” the doctor asked.

“You’re not used to people arguing with you, are you?” she countered.

The doctor sighed and gave the nurse some orders to adjust the solution going into the IV inserted in the man’s arm. “I’m not doing anything but hydrating him more quickly,” the doctor told Maggie. “I can’t agree to anything more than that.”

“How long?” Maggie asked.

“Thirty minutes. Take it or leave it.”

Maggie said nothing, and he turned to go.

“Wait,” she told him. “You can’t go.”

“I can’t go?” the doctor repeated slowly.

“If something else happens to him, I want you here.”

“All this for a witness?” he asked impatiently.

“The only witness to whoever killed Fiona Harker,” Maggie said angrily. “If we lose him, we’ll never know.”

“And Fiona Harker was a nurse in this hospital?” he asked.

“Yes,” Maggie said.

“The best nurse we had,” the gray-haired nurse interrupted. Her voice was fierce, and she had tears in her eyes. “Fiona Harker was the best nurse this hospital ever had, and she deserves justice.”

The doctor looked at her in surprise, but when he spoke, his voice was kinder. “Okay, then,” he agreed. “I’ll stay until you’re done questioning him.”

Maggie’s smile was transformative. Even Dr. Verrett had to smile back.

For thirty-three long minutes, no one spoke. The doctor sat in a chair and closed his eyes, taking the opportunity to enjoy a catnap. The nurse fussed over Cody Wells, constantly adjusting his pillows and checking the monitoring devices. Maggie leaned against a wall and lost herself in her thoughts. She was thinking of Christian Fletcher, I knew, thinking of him a floor below, knowing that he was probably feeling betrayed now that she had chosen Dr. Verrett to stand guard instead of him. She was wondering if he would ever get over what he was sure to see as a betrayal.

Ah, the job. I remembered it all too well. It always forced you to choose between the people in your life and life on the job. For a woman like Maggie it would be even worse. She’d dealt with it before by having no life outside the job. I’d dealt with it by having neither.

Somewhere during those thirty-three minutes, the little boy who had been standing watch over Cody Wells faded from view. One moment he was there; the next he was gone.
Does that mean the man’s life is out of danger?

“He’s coming out of it,” the nurse finally announced.

Maggie moved to his bedside.

“Not so fast, hotshot,” the doctor told her. He bent over Cody Wells and checked his pulse and pupils, then made adjustments in the IV solution. “It’s going to take him a while to regain full consciousness.”

“Will he remember who took his breathing tube out?” Maggie asked.

“No.” The doctor shook his head. “You’ll be lucky if he remembers anything about the last forty-eight hours before he was admitted. Trauma can do that to you.”

“But he’ll remember four or five days ago?” Maggie asked, alarmed.

The doctor stared at her. “This is medicine. I don’t give guarantees.”

But the man remembered. Slowly he gained consciousness, his eyes clearing, his face regaining animation, his breathing strong enough for the doctor to remove the breathing tube. It was as if he were emerging from the bottom of a deep, deep sea. Maggie had to be patient, and she didn’t do patient well. She fidgeted and kept darting toward the bed before being sent back to her corner by a look from the doctor or nurse. If so much hadn’t been riding on the outcome, I’d almost have enjoyed her discomfort.

At last, Cody Wells was lying slightly elevated in bed, breathing under his own power, sipping at a cup of water the nurse held to his lips.

His first words were simple: “The boy?”

Maggie was at his side in an instant. “He’s okay,” she said. “We found him. He’s with his mother now.”

Something in the man let go. He seemed to melt into the pillows, as if he could drift back to a twilight world again.

“Wait,” Maggie said. “I need to ask you some questions.”

“I would never have hurt him,” the man whispered to her. “I couldn’t. I just couldn’t.”

“We saw the video,” Maggie said. “I saw you taking good care of him. It’s okay. I understand.”

“I should never have taken him from the playground in the first place,” the man whispered. “I was afraid if I didn’t, I’d lose everything.” Suddenly his eyes widened. He looked alarmed. “Where’s the colonel? Does he know he’s lost the boy?”

“The colonel is upstairs in the burn unit,” the nurse interrupted. Her voice was tight. “He’ll probably never regain consciousness. If fate is kind to him.”

Maggie looked up at her, startled. The look the nurse gave her right back was very clear:
I’m sorry,
it said,
but I am a nurse, and this man hurt someone. No one should have to go through the agony that man is going through upstairs in the burn unit. No one. I don’t care what he did.

Well, I wasn’t sure I agreed with her. The colonel had caused greater and more lasting agony in how many young souls? But that difference between us was why I had been a detective and why the gray-haired woman was a nurse. I wasn’t going to fault her for it.

“Do you remember anything about the fire?” Maggie asked the man gently.

He shook his head.

“It doesn’t matter,” Maggie assured him. “I’m not here about that.”

The man relaxed again, but I knew what Maggie was thinking: as soon as Howard McGrew’s charred body gave up the fight, it was very likely this man lying in bed before her, so concerned about the boy, would be charged with his murder. And go to prison for a very long time because of it.

“Did you know the colonel’s real name?” Maggie asked him.

The man stared at her with vacant eyes strangely reminiscent of those of the little boy apparition. “I called him Daddy,” he explained. “I don’t know his real name.”

“What’s your real name?” Maggie asked. “We know it’s not Cody Wells.”

Tears filled the man’s eyes. His pulse raced and Dr. Verrett glared a warning at Maggie. She ignored him. “What’s your real name?” she asked again.

He shook his head weakly. “No,” he said. “I don’t know. I don’t remember. I don’t want to know. I don’t want to remember. I don’t want people to know.”

“You’re going to lose him,” the doctor warned her. “If you push him too hard, he’ll just drop back down under. People’s bodies take care of their minds.”

Maggie did not want that to happen. Not until she knew what he’d seen from his vantage point in the park, when he’d sat on the bench right across from Fiona Harker’s house, keeping track of everyone and everything around him.

“Right before you went into surgery, you told two people ‘I know who killed the nurse,’ ” she explained to the man. “Do you remember?”

“No,” he whispered back. “I don’t remember saying any of that.”

Maggie looked panicked “But do you know who killed Fiona Harker?”

“Yes. It was the doctor. I saw the doctor leaving her house the morning the newspapers say she died,” he explained weakly.

“What did he look like?” Maggie asked.

The man looked confused.

“What did he look like?” she asked again.

“It was a woman,” the man said. “It was a tall woman with long, blonde hair wearing a doctor’s coat and high heels.”

“Why do you assume she was a doctor?”

“She drove a red Lamborghini, that’s why. And she acted like she thought she was hot shit, like doctors always do. Like they’re too good for the rest of us.”

Dr. Verrett looked amused at this. I had to give him credit for having a sense of humor.

But Maggie looked stunned. I knew what she was thinking: Serena Holman had killed Fiona Harker for having an affair with her husband. Simply divorcing Christian Fletcher had not been good enough. No one crossed Serena Holman like that. Not without paying. No one.

Which made Christian Fletcher a big, fat liar. It meant he had, indeed, been having an affair with Fiona Harker.

“Are you sure?” Maggie asked. “Did you get a good look?”

“I’m sure,” he said. “It was the third or fourth time I’d seen her. I recognized her from a few days before, and the week before that, too, when I was sitting in my car, watching the park, trying to decide if I . . .” He did not want to continue in that direction and returned to what he had seen. “One day, she walked right past me and didn’t even give me a glance. Each time I saw her, it was always midmorning. She’d come on Mondays and Wednesdays, stay for a few hours, and then leave. It was always the same lady doctor. I just figured someone who was sick lived there.”