Diagnosis Murder 6 - The Dead Letter (3 page)

It was silly of her to think Lowell was stepping out on her. What kind of woman was going to fall for him anyway?

He was lucky to have her. It made her sick to think about all the things she could have bought with the fifteen hundred dollars she'd spent to discover the obvious.

She finally reached the front counter and chatted with Rene, the huge Polynesian postal worker, about his six kids while he weighed her packages and applied the correct postage. Then she strolled back across the lobby to unlock her mailbox and get whatever checks and money orders had come in from customers too afraid of identity theft to use PayPal.

But the only thing in her box that day was a fat manila envelope with no return address that had been bent in half and jammed inside by some uncaring postal employee.

Monette carried the envelops back to her Windstar minivan, sat in the front seat, and opened it up. There was no note inside, just a dozen eight-by-ten glossy photographs with a crease down the middle.

She pulled them out and propped them between her lap and the steering wheel so she could look at them.

There were pictures of Lowell and her sweet, beautiful little LeSabre walking hand in hand down the street. Monette smiled—the two of them looked so good, and it warmed her heart to see the affection between the two most important people in her life. She couldn't believe how fast her daughter was growing up. LeSabre looked so adult, so confident, so sexy. Monette's heart swelled with pride, but then she wondered why neither of them was looking at the camera, and who took the picture and why she wasn't in it, too. She quickly swapped that picture for the next one.

It was a photo of Lowell and LeSabre embracing outside a motel room door. It wasn't the kind of embrace a father gives a daughter. It was the kind of embrace Monette kept hoping Lowell would give her again one day. She felt her chest tightening up, and she flipped through the remaining photos so rapidly it was almost like frames of a film passing through a projector, the movie playing out in her hands. An X-rated movie. The remaining photos showed Lowell and LeSabre in bed.

Monette flung the photos onto the passenger seat and grabbed the steering wheel for support.

The bastard was cheating on her. With her daughter.

It didn't matter that LeSabre wasn't his flesh and blood.

It didn't matter that LeSabre was an adult now.

LeSabre was his
stepdaughter
. The child he'd raised since she was twelve years old.

Monette knew it wasn't her daughter's fault at all. LeSabre was a victim of a vile, perverted sicko who took advantage of her trust, her obedience, and her love.

Lowell had ruined her sweet LeSabre's future. His despicable acts were something the girl would never forget. It would be with her every moment of her life.

It was unforgivable. It was unbearable.

Monette gripped the steering wheel until her knuckles were white.

She couldn't breathe. She couldn't think. She couldn't see.

Monette felt as if she was being buried alive, deep in the cold, dark earth. She was being smothered. There was nothing she could do to save herself.

And then, as quickly as all the panic had descended upon her, it disappeared leaving perfect clarity and calm.

Monette didn't feel angry. She didn't feel hurt. She didn't feel anything. She didn't need to feel anymore. She was a creature of single purpose who existed now to do just one thing.

The man on the gurney was in his early forties and looked pretty relaxed, considering his situation. He was bleeding from a deep gash on his forehead, a cut on his lip, and a scrape on his prominent chin. Both of his arms were obviously broken, tucked close to his chest and supported by crude cardboard splints made by the paramedics who wheeled him into the Community General emergency room. He wore a bloodstained aloha shirt, baggy shorts, and leather flip-flops. Judging by the tan lines on his face, he'd only recently started cutting his hair very short in a futile attempt to hide the sprinkle of gray and halt the eternal march of time.

Dr. Mark Sloan, Community General's chief of internal medicine, had seen a hundred patients with injuries just like this during his four decades in medicine. He could guess what had happened.

"Motorcycle accident?" Mark asked.

The man shook his head. "I tripped over the handicapped ramp at McDonald's."

"You're joking," Mark said and glanced incredulously at the paramedic, Nestor Cody, a seasoned fire department veteran who'd been wheeling patients into the ER for years.

"It's true, Doc," Nestor said. "Mr. Copeland was walking out of the restaurant with his Happy Meal and tripped. He hit his head on the curb, but didn't lose consciousness. His elbows must have broken his fall—no pun intended."

Mark turned back to the patient on the gurney. "I don't understand, Mr. Copeland. How could you possibly trip over a ramp? They're flat, with smooth edges. That's what makes them ramps."

"Not this one," Copeland said. "It goes down the middle of the sidewalk, parallel to the curb, gradually declining towards the front of the building. You have to walk across it to get to the parking lot and I didn't see it."

"It wasn't painted or anything?"

"It is now," Copeland said. "With a pint of my blood."

"That's very vivid," Mark said.

The man shrugged and immediately winced at the pain. "I'm a writer."

Mark glanced at Nestor. "Where's his child?"

"What child?" Nestor asked.

"The one he was buying the Happy Meal for," Mark said.

"It was for me," Copeland said.

"You seem a little old to be ordering from the kiddie menu," Mark said.

"I collect the toys. I have a complete collection of McDonald's toys going back to 1967," Copeland said, and then a look of panic washed over his face. "Where's my Earthquake Kitty?"

Nestor reached into his pocket and pulled out the toy, still in its plastic wrap. It was a chubby blue-plastic cat with a jet pack on her back. "Right here."

Copeland sagged with relief. "Thank God. That's the hardest member of the Kitty Crew to find."

Mark turned to the paramedics. "That's one Happy Meal that didn't do its job."

"A Happy Meal of Doom," Copeland said.

"Speaking of which, a Big Mac sounds pretty good right now." Nester looked at his partner. 'What do you say we go back and grab lunch?"

Mark shook his head and motioned to Teresa Chingas, one of the youngest nurses in the ER. She was also the only person on staff at Community General Hospital who found Mark Sloan intimidating. No matter what he did to rty to put the woman at ease, it never worked.

She hurried over to them. "Yes, Doctor?"

"Teresa, please take Mr. Copeland in for X-rays and call Dr. Wiss down for an orthopedic consult," Mark said, making some notes on a chart and handing it to her.

"Certainly, Dr. Sloan," she said. She took charge of the gurney from the paramedics and rolled it right over Mark's foot.

He yelped in surprise. Teresa looked back at him, horrorstricken. "Oh my God, are you okay?"

"I'm fine." Mark winced, hopping on one foot to one of the waiting room chairs. "Hardly felt a thing."

"I am so sorry." She rushed over to him. "Can I get you some ice?"

"You want me to take a look at that for you, Doe?" Nestor asked with a grin.

"No, thanks," Mark said, sitting down and pulling off his tennis shoe.

Nestor chuckled and headed back outside with his partner.

"Hey," Copeland called from his gurney, "what about me?"

Teresa looked back at him, as if noticing him for the first time.

"He has a point, Teresa. You better get going." Mark tipped his head in the general direction of the radiology department. "I'll be fine."

Teresa, her face red with shame, went back to the gurney and wheeled the patient away, careful to steer clear of Mark's chair.

Mark was about to take off his sock and examine his aching toes when Susan Hilliard called out to him from the nurses' station, where she stood at the emergency console, communicating with paramedics in the field.

"Dr. Sloan," she said, "I need your help."

Susan was as young as Teresa, but more confident, more skilled, and not the least bit intimidated by Mark or, he suspected, anyone else. Then again, even Teresa would be hard-pressed to be intimidated by a white-haired man in his sixties, hopping over to the nurses' station on one foot.

"A guy was crossing an intersection when he was hit by a minivan. Paramedics are on the scene," she said. "The victim is male, approximately forty years old, unconscious, with negative vitals. He's in full arrest."

The voice of one of the paramedics came over the speaker. "We're administering CPR, oh-two via ambu at one hundred percent, and an IV, five percent dextrose in lactated ringers wide open."

Mark glanced at a monitor that showed the victim's EKG. The pattern of the man's heartbeat looked like a straight line drawn by a trembling hand.

The patient was in v-fib. His heart was failing.

Mark took the mike from Susan and gave the paramedics a quick series of orders. "Give him a hundred milligrams of lidocaine. Shock him. Four hundred-watt seconds."

"Ten-four," the paramedics replied.

Mark studied the EKG monitor to see if the drugs and cardioversion caused any change in the patient's condition. They didn't. He looked at Susan. "How far away are they?"

"Five minutes," Susan said.

Mark spoke into the mike again. "Continue CPR and bring him in." He turned to Susan. "Page Jesse, set up a major trauma room. Call X-ray and the lab. Get a crash cart ready and pulmonary down here so we can get some ABGs done stat."

Susan hurried away to make the preparations.

Mark continued giving instructions to the paramedics en route. As soon as he knew they were pulling into the parking lot, he left the nurses' station, hopped back to his seat, and put on his tennis shoe. He didn't think he'd broken any toes—not that there was much he could do about it besides taping the injured toe to the one next to it for support.

He finished tying his shoelaces just as the paramedics came rushing in with the man on a gurney, nearly running over Mark's foot again.

Mark gave the man a quick visual examination. His legs were crushed, his clothes were covered in blood, and he was in full cardiac arrest. One paramedic was giving him CPR while the other pushed the gurney. The situation was bleak.

"He's still in v-fib," said the paramedic who was giving CPR.

"This way," Mark said, leading the gurney to the trauma room, where Dr. Jesse Travis was already waiting, pulling a pair of rubber gloves on with a loud snap. The X-ray and lab techs were there, too, ready to do their work.

Jesse's boundless enthusiasm and boyish eagerness often made patients wonder if he was old enough, and experienced enough, to be their doctor. But here in the trauma room he was a different person. He projected a natural confidence and authority that eluded him in every other aspect of his life, including his long-term relationship with Susan Hilliard. He immediately started giving orders to the team of nurses who streamed in behind Mark, the patient, and the paramedics.

"We need five units of 0-negative, lidocaine, an amp of bicarb, and an amp of calcium gluconate," Jesse said, taking over the CPR from the paramedics as they transferred the patient from the gurney to the trauma table.

Susan had anticipated Jesse's order and was already rushing up to Mark with the ampoules, which were standard doses of medication in glass tubes, prepackaged with needles at the tip to save time in emergencies.

Mark removed the needle covers, inserted the ampoules into the IV line and injected the drugs while he ordered X rays and the standard labs, though he knew this patient's fate would be decided long before tests could be done.

He kept his eyes on the EKG monitors. Flatline. "Asystole," Mark said, turning to Susan. "One milligram of atropine."

Jesse took the defibrillator paddles and prepared to shock the patient. Susan administered the atropine and stepped back.

"Clear!" Jesse said and applied the paddles. The man's body jerked as the electricity coursed through him. Life, however, did not.

The round of drugs was repeated and more shocks were given, but the patient's heart simply refused to beat. Mark and Jesse shared a look without saying a word to one another. Jesse dropped the paddles back on the crash cart and peeled off his gloves, declaring defeat.

'Time of death, one twenty-two p.m.," Jesse tossed his gloves in the biohazard can. "The poor guy was as good as dead when he came in."

Mark couldn't argue with that. He studied the patient for the first time and noticed a white name patch on the man's bloody work shirt. The patch read: Lowell.

He looked up and saw his son, Steve, in the corridor, watching them through the glass of the trauma room doors.

Jesse followed Mark's gaze. "The only thing worse than a homicide detective outside your door is a mortician. It's like having the Grim Reaper peering in your window. It doesn't exactly make a patient feel good about his prospects for recovery."

"I don't think this gentleman had much of a chance to worry," Mark said.

The two doctors went out and met Steve in the hall. He was holding a large manila envelope in his hands.

"He looked dead to me before the paramedics even left the scene," Steve said. "But I'm no doctor."

"Have you ever thought about carrying a scythe?" Jesse asked.

"A what?" Steve said.

"Did you catch the guy who ran him over?" Mark asked, ignoring Jesse's comment.

Steve nodded. "It was a woman. Mr. Hobbes here was walking across the street when she plowed into him, lost control of her car, and slammed into a light pole. Not a scratch on her, thanks to her seat belt and the airbag. Some Good Samaritans yanked her from the car and were restraining her when I arrived."

"Why?" Jesse asked. "Did she try to drive away?"

"No," Steve said. "She tried to back up and run over her husband again."

Mark and Jesse both looked at the body in the trauma room, then back at Steve.