Covert Reich (8 page)

Gem went up to her bedroom and into her master bath, hoping a bath would relax her. She turned on the tub, poured in some lavender salts, and then walked toward her balcony to open the door and let in some fresh air. She couldn’t help looking over at Chad’s place. As the tub filled, her mind wandered. An idea grabbed her. It was crazy and might not result in anything, but she felt compelled to try.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Pazzini
was late. He’d gotten caught up in more interviews with folks who’d known Dr. Hamilton. This guy seemed to have no enemies whatsoever except for his ex-wife. Interestingly enough, she was overseas in Monaco, of all places. He couldn’t help but wonder how she could afford that kind of vacation on alimony. Sure, doctors made a very good living, but not the kind that afforded the items the ex-Mrs. Hamilton seemed to have. At least not these days.

The ex had to have moved on to something, or someone, bigger and better—someone with a substantial bank account. Simmons was still trying to reach her. Pazzini had a few pointed questions to ask. A woman with that kind of money could easily hire out a hit. But then why bother? She was divorced, clearly well off…what was the motive?

Then there was the teenage daughter. She was staying with friends while her mother was cavorting in Monaco. Tony had yet to speak to her, but she could be an excellent source of information. He’d had one of the female officers break the news to her about her dad, and take a statement. However, Pazzini figured it would be vital that he also have a word with the kid. From what he heard, she was pretty distraught, and even more so because her mother was incommunicado. Another odd thing…if the ex-wife was out of town, why was the sixteen-year old daughter staying with friends and not her dad? That didn’t add up. Nothing was adding up for him with this case. Maybe the doc could provide more insight.

Dr. Morales met Pazzini at a Starbucks around the corner from the hospital. She gave him a slight wave and a tentative smile when he came through the door. It appeared she’d forgiven his heavy hand from the evening before. Her face was drawn with exhaustion but she still looked lovely.

“Sorry I’m late,” he said as he sat down.

“It’s fine. I got you a coffee. Black. Didn’t know if that was okay, but…”

“Live off the stuff. Thank you. Black is perfect.”

She smiled again, erasing some of the fatigue from her face. “I grabbed a sandwich…this is my dinner break,” she said. “Hope you don’t mind. If you want something, I can wait.”

“No. I’m good. Hoping to get a home-cooked meal tonight.”

“Your wife is a good cook, I take it?”

He didn’t respond for a moment. “Actually, my mother. She takes care of my son while I’m at work. My wife passed away a few years ago. Cancer.”

“Oh! I am so sorry. I didn’t mean…” She shook her head, looking chagrined. “I would love a home-cooked meal. I really should eat better. Doctors’ schedules and all.”

“We all should….eat better, that is. And you don’t need to apologize, but thank you.” She had lost the anger, but seemed jumpy, anxious—something was off. He clasped his hands together. “You called, which is good because I wanted to ask you some more questions.”

She took a sip from her coffee. “Ask away.”

“Why don’t we tackle what you wanted to talk to me about first, Dr. Morales. Maybe we can kill two birds with one stone.”

“Sure. By the way, you don’t have to call me Dr. Morales, Detective. Kelly is fine.”

He hesitated for a second. Yes, there was a definite edginess to her, which put him on alert. “Okay, then, Kelly. Please call me Tony.” If she wanted to try and make things comfortable, he’d follow her lead.

“You may think I’m a lunatic—and I may be, I don’t know—but, here goes. I think that Jake’s murder ties into something more sinister and complex than a revenge plot, crime of passion, or whatever the police might think is going on.”

“Really?
I don’t know that anything of the sort has been concocted. What are you getting at?” How had she come up with an idea about revenge? She knew more than she was letting on.

“I believe someone wanted Jake dead because he knew something that…that someone didn’t want him to talk about.”

“What do you mean?” He set his cup down on the chrome table, and leaned back watching her every move—her eyes, her hands. All of her. He was looking for any tell-tale expressions or movements that would show she was lying.

“Have you looked through his most recent case files?” she asked.

“Of course we have. I can’t go into details, though. Why?”

She crossed her arms and sat back in her chair. “I went to speak to Jake yesterday about a patient. A young mother, Lupe Salazar, came in for an emergency delivery. She was a runaway but was really concerned about her baby. She told me she had been doing all of the right things, as much as she could anyway, and was even being seen at the local clinic. She was living at the shelter on East Fifth. The whole thing was strange. The girl had a wild-eyed look to her, and it crossed my mind she was using. Lupe flat out denied it, but she was frightened. These kids come in and think if they give us any kind of information about using, we’ll have them hauled off to juvie after they deliver. Anyway, I didn’t get much time to get any history from her, and neither did the attending O.B., because she seized, coded, and died in a matter of minutes. We had limited time to attempt to resuscitate because of the infant.” Kelly finished telling him the details of Baby S’s delivery. She told him about the inconclusive reports and possible connection to other recent deaths with pre-term mothers. “This isn’t normal. Three young women die in labor and delivery in one week, presenting the same symptoms…I don’t know what to think. It’s what Jake and I planned to discuss over dinner.”

“I’m confused how all this relates to Dr. Hamilton’s murder, though. Granted it sounds strange but what’s the tie in?”

She frowned and leaned towards him, lowering her voice just above a whisper. “Jake got nervous…I mean, not just nervous, but he seemed terrified when I asked him about Lupe and the other girls. I asked to see the autopsy reports. He told me to back off, told me I could get hurt. He wasn’t acting at all like his usual self. He was…he was really scared, and kept trying to get me to drop the whole thing. When I kept insisting, he agreed to meet me for dinner and tell me what was going on, or maybe what he thought was going on. I don’t know. I am wondering if my insistence on getting info out of him got him killed.”

Tony wasn’t sure he believed her. It didn’t make much sense. Was she trying to feed him a line to make him think Dr. Hamilton was caught up in some rotten deal? She was sounding a bit too “conspiracy theorist” for his tastes. Street kids died every day from drug overdoses and other causes. Maybe she was a crazy and covering her own tracks? And why hadn’t she told him this last night? She’d had twenty-four hours to concoct a story, but why? “So you are saying the deaths of these women and their children are tied to Dr. Hamilton’s murder?”

“Yes. Exactly.”

“How?
Why?”

“If I knew, I would tell you, and then some bad people would be behind bars.” She took a bite of her sandwich.

“Why didn’t you tell me this last night?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. I was in shock and I guess after seeing the fear in Jake’s eyes, it had me spooked. I’m sorry. I should have said something.”

“Yes, you should have. I don’t mean to patronize you, Doc, but I have to be honest. This sounds a bit far-fetched. I am not even sure where you’re headed with this.” He raised his hands in confusion.

“Here is what I think…”

Uh oh.
He watched as she shifted from cagey and anxious to annoyed and angry.

“I think there’s a new street drug out there and it’s flying under your radar. It’s potent and hard to detect. And it kills.”

“Wouldn’t there be other deaths?” he asked.

“I assume so. Maybe you could start looking into it. I know drug overdoses happen all the time, Detective, but not the kind where there’s no detection of a drug in the system. No explanation of why a seemingly healthy person would die. I think Jake discovered this drug in the autopsies, and someone killed him because he knew too much.”

He shook his head. “If there is a new street drug available, the guys making it could care less who dies and who doesn’t. They only care about the cash in their back pockets. Eventually this stuff gets found out.”

“Okay, how about this? You and I know there have been plenty of sickos throughout history who have done things like plant poison in meds. Look at the Tylenol and Excedrin cases. Those seemed off the wall when they happened, but they were real situations. Plus, we’re always hearing things in the media about the possibility of terrorists poisoning our food or water supply. Heck, there are documentaries about how genetically modified foods will eventually be our demise. I don’t know.” She leaned forward again, her face red. “
I don’t know
, and I don’t care if you believe me. But what I can tell you is some type of poison I can’t put a name to is in a helpless baby’s system. She is lying in her incubator, fighting for her life. I want to know what’s killing her, and I want to know before it’s too late.”

The doctor certainly had passion and if she was selling him a story, she had herself convinced of it, or seemed to anyway. “Okay, so say your theory is correct, how did this person or persons know Hamilton was onto this thing?”

“You’re the detective, you figure it out.” With that, she stood up and walked out the door.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Time was a major factor and Ryan didn’t know how much he had. He knew The Brotherhood goons would be watching
and
listening. So, the morning after the fight with his wife, he called her cell phone from the house and left a voicemail.

“Jeanine, I love you. I love you and the kids very much. I’m sorry. I was a jack-ass. Please come home. At least call me, and tell me where you are. I just want to hear your voice. Please call. I love you.” He clicked off his phone and sighed heavily. This had to work. If Jeanine was following his plan, and hadn’t turned back, hadn’t decided he was insane, or hadn’t been caught…he closed his eyes at the thought. God, please let them be safe. Assuming they were, the next steps his wife took would be the most important ones.

Thank God through some stroke of luck, Ryan had sent his parents on a cruise for two weeks in Alaska. He assumed they’d be safe on the boat. But what if The Brotherhood found out what he was up to, and went after his folks? Did they know he’d purchased those tickets? Did they know his parents were on that cruise? Fuck! They seemed to know everything.

Ryan forced himself to stop thinking about it. He knew he was taking a big risk and he hoped in doing the right thing, he wasn’t putting his family in any further jeopardy than he already had.

CHAPTER TWENTY

Kelly knew it was a risk to discuss her theory with the detective, but she thought he might be a bit more supportive or accepting than he’d been. In fact, he hadn’t been open to her theory in the least. She could see it in his dark eyes, which seemed to grow even darker when she told him her thoughts. Or maybe she was just being paranoid. Her theory did sound far-fetched. New drug? Pregnant girls?
Murder?
She shook her head. It sounded idiotic. But one thing was for certain—Jake was dead. He had been brutally murdered, and she wanted to find some answers. If the detective was going to ignore her story, maybe she would see what she could find out on her own. Tamara had been by the hospital earlier that day to pick up the blood samples from Kelly. Unfortunately, she had not been able to obtain a sample from Lupe Salazar.

As she pulled into the parking lot, Kelly knew she needed to regain her composure before going back into the unit. She straightened her blue linen blouse and headed in. She knew, though, the minute she saw innocent Baby S., her thoughts would revert back to Jake and wondering what had gone wrong.

The unit was unusually quiet. It was feeding time, and the little ones who were not eating, were sleeping. It was a rarity. She passed by the receptionist who smiled at her. “Hi, Dr. Morales. All is quiet on the western front.”

“Quiet is a reprieve, my friend. We both know it won’t last long.”

“True. By the way, it appears you have an admirer. There are some flowers in your office.”

“Really?”
Maybe they were from her dad. He did that every so often. Sent flowers or a card, sometimes a small gift to remind her he was thinking of her.

A large vase of dark pink tulips sat on top of Kelly’s desk. They brightened an otherwise dull room, whose only other adornments included her degrees, a picture of her with her dad back in Kentucky, one of Syd, and one of her and her mom the year before she’d died. That had been the last happy summer of her childhood.

She opened the small envelope and took out the card. It read:
Hope you’re having a nice day. I’ll be watching you.
A prickle of foreboding crept up her spine.
I’ll be watching you?
She shook her head. Some of the docs she worked with had a twisted sense of humor but after what had happened to Jake, she couldn’t help be on edge.

She headed back to the receptionist’s desk. “Jo, did you see who delivered the flowers?”

The receptionist shrugged. “Some delivery guy.”

Kelly sighed and rubbed her temples. She went back into her office to call her dad and find out if he sent them. It would be like him. The note, however, would not. Maybe the card was meant for another delivery? Maybe she received the wrong flowers?

No sooner had she left word on her dad’s answering machine then her pager went off. It was coming from the unit. Kelly flew out of her office. As she turned the corner into the NICU, she saw a handful of nurses working on Baby S.

“She’s seizing, Doc!” Eric yelled as he adjusted the various tubes plugged into the baby.

A knot formed inside Kelly’s stomach. The tiny infant shook violently, turning shades of gray. Kelly tried hard to keep her emotions in check.