Blood Work (24 page)

“Just don’t
let Kate give you any Vietnamese food.”

“I’ll try to
fend off her cold rolls.”

“Good boy. Get
some rest.”

He laughed,
short and shallowly. “Love you.”

“Love you,”
she whispered and hung up.

“You okay?”
Ivan stood in the door to her office.

“What are you
doing here? I told Brad to keep you at home.”

He smiled, a
little less than usual. “You’re not so crash hot without your
wonder assistant. ‘Sides, I couldn’t stop thinking about it at
home. I need to do something.”

Ivan wore a
pair of old jeans and loose blue shirt. His hair, usually spiked up
with product, hung limp over his eyes like an emo.

“Okay. But I’m
buying you lunch.”

He came into
the office and sat opposite her. “So, what are we doing today?”

“Looking up
anything that might shed some light on this.” She passed him a
paper with NYT CLL written on it. “It’s Hawkins’ personalised
number plate. I’m thinking it means something to him.”

Ivan began
muttering it over as she had been doing all morning. Erin was still
stuck on ‘night cell’ and after a moment, that was Ivan’s
conclusion as well. Google returned no direct hits but Ivan sat at
his desk and his fingers flew over the keyboard as he tried other
avenues.

The fax
machine beeped and spat out a couple of pages. Erin got to it
before Ivan. It was from Detective Courey. The cover page said his
captain wanted him to pass it on. The second page was Matthew
Hawkins’ work history.

She sat on the
corner of Ivan’s desk and read it out to him. “First noted job when
he was twenty-one and fresh out of university with a medical
science degree. It was at a private pathology lab up the coast.
Stayed there for three years, then moved into the ambulance service
and transferred down here. We know how that ended up. When he got
out of prison, he vanished for a while, then returned and got back
into pathology. Oh, look at this. His last job was out at
Redcliffe. He was there for two years before being fired.”

Ivan snorted.
“Wonder why they fired him.”

“I’m going to
go out there and find someone to talk to.”

“Am I coming?”
Ivan asked it casually, but she noted the slight waver in his
voice.

“No. You have
to stay here and keep working on ‘night cell’. I want it cracked
before I get back.”

He smiled,
relieved. “Will do. What about lunch?”

Erin grabbed
her purse from the office and slapped a twenty on the desk. Then
before she could think twice, she kissed the top of his head.
“You’ll be all right.”

He shrugged
and nodded, taking the money and putting it in a draw.

After a
moment’s hesitation, Erin went back into her office, opened the
safe and took out her Glock. She checked it over quickly, slapped
in a magazine and slung on her shoulder rig. Putting a jacket on
over the top already made her feel warm, but she wanted the
security today. Ivan wasn’t the only one holding his coffee mug in
both hands.

The drive out
to Redcliffe was quick and pleasant. Erin took the time to look
around. It was a sweet place, surrounded by the ocean on three
sides, bright and colourful. The houses were predominately older,
some looking worn down by all their years, some freshly renovated
and cheerful. There was a scattering of newer houses and signs that
property was in demand, with several battleaxe lots about the
place. The waterfront parade was crowded with cars and people at
the cafes and walking out along the peer. A big whale-watching
catamaran was docked in the small harbour.

Erin decided
she liked the place. It was moving forward with the world, but
still retained an old fashioned feel. A good place to come to
relax, or to live and ease the stress of life.

She was pretty
relaxed herself when she reached the hospital, though that
evaporated fast. There were police in the foyer when she walked in.
They were talking to members of the staff, and a few of the nurses
were huddled in a corner, crying and holding each other.

“What’s
happened?” Erin asked at the front counter.

“Didn’t you
hear?” the woman said, aghast. “One of our doctors was murdered
last night. In the car park.”

“My God.
Why?”

“No one knows.
But it was very strange. He was beaten up and killed, and only the
night before, he’d treated a similar case. I think it’s a
gang.”

Erin’s
knuckles went white as she gripped the edge of the desk. “Not Dr
Nolan?”

“Yes. Did you
know him?”

“I met him
yesterday.”

The
receptionist shook her head. “Such a shame. So young and single. A
lot of the girls here quite liked him. Now, can I help you with
anything else?”

Shaking aside
the nagging suspicion that Nolan’s death had something to do with
Hawkins, Erin said, “I’d like to talk to someone in charge of
pathology. I’m investigating a missing person’s case and I think
someone here might know him.”

The
receptionist called up to the lab and after a brief discussion,
announced the lab manager would come to talk to her. It wasn’t long
before an older gentleman appeared. He had white hair and a close
cropped beard.

“Hi. James
Douglass. I manage the lab.”

She shook his
hand and introduced herself and explained why she was here. “I
understand Hawkins used to work here. Were you here then?”

Douglass
nodded. “He was a good lad. Very capable scientist. No one much
worried about his past, so that wasn’t a problem with us. You say
he’s missing?”

“Well, only in
the sense no one seems to have any solid evidence of him being
around. I suspect he’s voluntarily dropped off the radar. It
occasionally happens when someone’s been through a traumatic event.
You haven’t seen him since he finished up here?”

“Not
personally. Couple of the others have mentioned seeing him about
though.” Douglass shifted a bit uncomfortably. “He didn’t leave us
on the best of terms. It got a little ugly toward the end. It was
strongly recommended he not show his face in the lab here
again.”

“Did you know
he was here in ED night before last?”

“Yeah. We did
some blood work on him. Got beaten up pretty good, I hear. Poor
kid. I went to see him when I saw he was admitted, but apparently
he never made it up to the bed. Scarpered before they could lock
him down.” He smiled. “Should have expected it of him. If he didn’t
want to be somewhere, it took some work to get him there.”

“He could be
uncooperative?”

Douglass shook
his head. “Not at first. Then it was more like he just had this
need to argue everything out.”

“Like
what?”

“Well, like
night call. He hated doing it. Said it hurt his knee to disrupt his
sleep. I felt for him, sure, but it’s something we’ve all got to
do. I couldn’t excuse him from it.”

Bells went off
in Erin’s head. “Night call? What’s that?”

“We don’t run
the lab twenty-four seven. It shuts down between eleven p.m. and
six a.m. For those seven hours, someone has to be available to do
any urgent work. I think it’s a nice touch of irony that Matt hated
night call with a passion, and then was a reason for someone to be
called in the other night. When you find him, tell him I said
that.”

Erin noted it
down. The list of things they had to tell his guy was growing. “So,
night call was a big deal in his life?”

“He’s a good
bloke, no second thoughts about it, but he got that bee in his
bonnet and wouldn’t stop shaking it about.”

“You said he
became uncooperative after a while. What happened?”

Douglass
shoved his hands in his pockets. “He began missing shifts, not
coming in on calls. I had to cover for him and we argued over it a
lot. When he did show up for work, he was overly tired and
listless. Useless to us really. We’re a busy lab. Then one day, he
lost it. Blew a gasket or two. Trashed a lot of glassware and broke
a computer. I knew he was having issues. Something was happening in
his personal life that he wouldn’t talk about. But when he did
that, he had to go. I wanted him to get some help, but he wouldn’t
listen to me.” He sighed. “I haven’t seen or heard from him since
that day.”

So Hawkins
still had his temper. “Do you have any idea what provoked his anger
that day?”

“One of the
analysers broke down. Backed the work up and we were having big
trouble getting the blasted thing fixed. It happens. You take it in
stride and get on with the work. That day, Matt just couldn’t deal
with it.”

“Any thoughts
about what caused the initial change in his behaviour?”

Douglass
looked around, spied some seats and led her over to them. They sat
and he took a moment to order his thoughts.

“I’m guessing
with some of this. I kind of put it together after he was let go.
He was on call one night and had to come in. It was for a Jane Doe,
found beaten in a park. She had low haemoglobin and red cell count.
The doctor ordered a transfusion. Matt did the group, but it came
out wrong.”

“Wrong?”

“When a person
has a transfusion, ninety percent of the time, they’re given their
own blood group. When they aren’t, and there’s two different types
of antigens running around the system, it shows up in the blood
group as a mixed result. You see the patient’s true group and the
introduced one.”

Erin shook her
head. “Wait. I thought if you got the wrong group, you were in
trouble.”

“No. You’ve
heard that the O group is a universal donor?”

She nodded.
“So anyone can get an O group?”

Douglass
nodded. “Within a few limits, yes. People with AB group can receive
all types, again with some limits. Some groups are rarer than
others, so if you have a rare group that the blood bank doesn’t
have much stock of, you’re generally given one of the more readily
available, and compatible, groups. This was what Matt had thought
had happened with this patient.”

“Was it?”

“We never
found out. She wasn’t identified. No one came forward to claim her.
There was no way we could check her medical history. But that
night, faced with this, Matt had to do extra testing. I hesitate to
say that he got angry with the nursing staff over it, but he did.
In the end, he went down to collect more blood himself, to ensure
there hadn’t been a mistake with the initial collection.”

Douglass
paused and stared at the wall behind Erin for a moment.

“This is where
I really had to start piecing bits and pieces together. Matt
wouldn’t talk about it afterward. Even though he didn’t say
anything, the attending doctor thought Matt recognised the girl
when he saw her. Either way, Matt did the required testing and
issued her blood. She was admitted. Matt then spent a lot of time
in her room. He wouldn’t talk to anyone, he just sat with her
whenever he wasn’t in the lab, and sometimes when he should have
been. She was in a coma for three days.”

“He spent all
that time with her and no one could get him to talk about whether
or not he knew her? I hardly believe that. What about the
police?”

“They asked
him, he said he didn’t know her. When they asked why he sat with
her, he said someone had to.”

That struck a
chord deep inside Erin. She hated leaving William alone, even when
he was sleeping. She felt no one should ever have to be alone, even
if they didn’t know someone was with them.

“He was a good
lad,” Douglass said softly.

“But a
complicated one. What happened when she woke up?”

“She was
violent, uncontrollable. They suspected neural damage and organised
a transfer to a specialist unit in the city. She was kept sedated
while they waited for her to be transferred.”

“And Hawkins?
What did he do?”

“He stopped
sitting with her. Didn’t tell anyone why. She was transferred out a
couple of days later. It was about a week later that Matt really
began to deteriorate. I know it had something to do with that
girl.”

“Do you know
where she was transferred to?”

“The Mentis
Institute.”

Only the most
specialised psychiatric hospital in the state.

“Thank you, Mr
Douglass. You’ve helped me a great deal.”

“I hope you
find Matt. He shouldn’t be alone. No one should.”

Erin decided to take another drive
around the peninsular before heading back. She needed a moment to
clear her thoughts. This case was messing with her head. Hawkins
was a troubling character. He had experienced some things no one
should ever have to, but that plenty of people did. He seemed to
deal with them with violence, but somehow, he managed to leave
behind people who still cared for him. Even if they didn’t forgive
him for his outbursts, they at least understood them.

She couldn’t
get the image out of her head of him sitting beside the bed of a
comatose girl, staying there because he thought she needed someone,
anyone, to be with her in the dark. Over it, she saw herself beside
William’s bed. She tried to blot it out, but couldn’t.

Following the
tourist drive signs brought her to a pub on the waterfront. Her
stomach grumbled and she impulsively pulled into a park. The pub
was busy and every table inside was taken. There was a vacant one
on the deck, so she took her chips and steak out there and sat
facing the water, sipping her beer and watching the waves break on
the rocky shore.

“Calming,
isn’t it?”

She looked up,
squinted into the sun. A man stood by her table, his hands full of
lunch plate and beer as well.

“It’s crowded
today. Do you mind if I share your table?”

Erin glanced
about. There were no other free seats anywhere. She sighed. “Sit
down.”

He sat
opposite her, but to the side so she still had her view. “Thanks. I
won’t be long. I’m just catching a quick meal.”