Nerves of Steel (12 page)

"What've you got for me?" Drake asked, resting against the door jam, hands in his pockets until she cleared him to enter.

"Come on in.  It's not much."  Kwon handed him a pair of vinyl gloves.  "Tons of prints--will take us a long time to go through them all.  Looks like she was grabbed here."  She gestured to an overturned cup of coffee at a debris-covered desk. 

"Didn't put up a lot of a struggle.  Here's the tape he used to restrain her."  She indicated a roll of reinforced strapping tape.  "Our actor was too smart to take it with him.  It's that damned Discovery Channel, it's like Criminal U."

Drake nodded, he'd heard it before.  At least it wasn't duct tape, that would have Kwon, who worked sex crimes before she came to Major Crimes, ranting about how the omnipresent silver tape should be bought by licensed non-rapists only.  He was more interested in what was missing from the desk.  "Where's the computer?"

Kwon crooked a finger at him.  "No disks or hard copy anywhere, but the CPU is over here."  They rounded a corner and Drake groaned.  The computer unit had been torn open, the individual components immersed in a sink full of, he sniffed, isopropyl alcohol.  "Looks like he tried to torch it.  It didn't catch, we can maybe recover something useful."

"How long?" he asked.  She shrugged her answer.

"Not much else to see, except that the narcotics vault, if you can call it that, is empty."

He looked past the sink to the corner of the room where a metal lock box sat on the counter, its door twisted off its hinges.  "That can't be standard hospital issue.  It wouldn't stop any serious thief for more than a few seconds."

"Apparently these digs are only temporary while they're remodeling the real thing.  You'll have to ask the boss man, Krakov's his name, for more details.  Not too happy about finding his pharmacy a crime scene, either."

Drake turned around, surveying the scene for anything Kwon might have missed.  As usual there was nothing.  "Guess I'd better go talk to Krakov."

"Did you know the vic?" Kwon asked.

"I met her this morning," he told her.  "Why?"

"No reason, you just seem a bit off your pace, that's all."

Drake stripped off his gloves, wadded them into a ball and aimed for the trash bag Kwon had hung at the entrance to the crime scene.  He missed.  "No sleep for a few days will do that to an old man like me." 

"If you say so.  Just you haven't looked like this since what happened last summer."

He frowned, retrieved the gloves and deposited them in the bag.  "Where's Krakov?"

"The office."  She nodded her head toward the open door on the opposite side of the room.  "It's clean, I already checked."

He left her to do her job.

Cassie bowed her head against the stream of hot water.  Finally, she took in a shuddering breath, collapsing onto the tile floor beneath the stream of water.  She hugged her knees to her chest and leaned her forehead against the wall.

It should have been her.  Why wasn't it?  Why hadn't he killed Cassie?  Maybe he would have if she hadn't grabbed the guard at the entrance.  The thought should have left her cold with terror, but it didn't.

She felt nothing.

Cassie sat there long enough for her skin to prune.  Trembling, she climbed to her feet and turned the water off.  She stripped free of the wet jeans and underwear and threw her bloodstained clothes in the garbage.  Wrapping one towel around her hair and another around her body, she went to her locker.  Not much to chose from: her Nomex flight suit, bright with its reflective stripes and brass pins, a white lab coat, or a sweaty black cotton
gi
in a forgotten gym bag.

Her hand brushed against the white lab coat and flinched away.  No, she would not dress like a doctor, not tonight.  The
gi
, with its flowing pants and loose fitting top, would be more comfortable against naked skin than the itchy Nomex.  A spare pair of running shoes,
sans
socks, completed her ensemble.

She sat on the wooden bench and dried her hair, exhausted by making the simple decision. How could that be? She made decisions all day long--life and death decisions.  Like asking her friend to help her, introducing Fran to Drake.

What was she going to do next?

At first she fought against the need to make another choice--who would she hurt with this one?  She flung her head upside down, rubbing at her hair with the energy of a maniac.  She remembered Rosa combing it with infinite patience every morning before school.

Gram Rosa, the one ghost whose presence she welcomed. 

What would Rosa say now?  

Suddenly Cassie heard Rosa's voice echo through the locker room with absolute clarity. 
You must live forever or die trying.

Cassie straightened.  The scent of lavender and lilacs filled the room.  Despite the weight of sorrow and unshed tears, she found her lips easing into a reluctant smile.  Rosa had outwitted the Nazis, fought with the Resistance, once even escaping from the Gestapo.  But more important, Rosa was a Rom, a gypsy of the Kalderasha tribe.  If anyone could speak from beyond the grave it would be her.

Live forever or die trying.  Typical Rosa advice.  Not to be taken at face value.  Rosa did not mean to cloister herself away from her problems and thus stay safe and sound until old age took her.  Cassie knew her gram's wisdom better than that.  Rosa's message was to go out fighting, to risk everything on what she did today because there may not be a tomorrow.

Die trying.

Maybe.  As Cassie stood up and shut her locker door, she realized that she no longer felt empty.   Where there had been a frozen void, she now felt anger, an anger as sharp and brilliant as a scalpel blade.

The man who killed Fran made a mistake when he didn't take Cassie as well, she decided as she reached for her father's jacket on the bench.  There was nowhere to hide.  She would make certain that he was brought to justice.

Whatever it took.

CHAPTER 22

Cassie stepped out into the hall and headed toward the ER.  She blinked in the bright lights.  Wherever she looked, rainbow halos glimmered around her.  Before facing her co-workers, she leaned against the wall and wiped her eyes on the sleeve of her top.  When she opened them again the halos had vanished.  But the knot twisting her gut, pushing against her lungs so that it was hard to breathe, remained.

She turned the corner and saw a familiar figure ahead, near the med room.  Richard spotted her immediately, his long strides quickly cutting the distance between them. 

"Are you all right?" he asked, taking her elbows in his hands and holding her at arms length as if inspecting her for damage.  "What happened?"

Cassie was silent, wishing she had an adequate answer.  He wore a tan trenchcoat draped over a silk suit ruined with rain and mud splatters.  His shoes were also soaked through, leaving gray smears of footprints in his wake.  Her glance traveled past him down the hall the way he'd come.  What was he doing here?

"Ella," he gave her a small shake, returning her focus to him.  "What happened?  What did you see?"

"Fran's dead."  It was an effort to choke out the words.  Her voice sounded small, tinny as if it came from a great distance.

"I know.  What were you doing, getting involved in this?  What were you thinking!"

She tilted her head, her gaze sliding from his shoulder to his eyes.  Their dull, sheet metal gray had been almost swallowed whole by his dilated pupils.  His rapid blinking couldn't disguise the slight twitch at the corner of his left eye.  She jerked away from his touch, shifted her weight to balance on the balls of her feet.  "Are you using again?"

His upper lip pulled back in a sneer.  She met his gaze without flinching.  He couldn't scare her.  Not tonight, not after what she'd just seen, after what happened.

"None of your business, Ella.  None of this is any of your damned business.  You'd better remember that." 

He took a half step toward her, trying to intimidate her with his height advantage.  Cassie stood her ground.  He stared at her for a long, hard moment, then lowered his hand.

"Did you have anything--Richard, were you involved--" She broke off, unable to finish.  The man she'd seen running away from Fran had seemed shorter than Richard, but it was dark and with all the mist and rain....

"No!  Of course, not.  I'd never let anyone hurt you, Ella."  His tone changed to one of possessive concern again.  He gave a quick glance over his shoulder, frowning as if he expected someone to be there.  "I have to go," he said abruptly.  "I need to call Alan, the cops want to talk to me."   He spun back to her in a move that caught her by surprise.  He raised a finger to trace her jaw.  His flesh felt icy against hers, as if he'd been the one caught outside in the rain.  "I guess I have you to thank for that."

Cassie climbed the stairs to the ICU, still puzzling over her conversation with Richard.  If he knew who killed Fran, if Richard was somehow involved in the FX thefts....Her nails bit into her palms as she thought about the possibility.  He was obviously using again, which made him a danger to patients as well.

The glass doors of the ICU swished open, admitting her.  She stopped at the nurses' station and called the Medical Board's 800 number. 

"I'd like to report an impaired physician," she said, leaving Richard's information on the anonymous recorded hot line.  Richard was the one abusing drugs, not her, so why did she feel so guilty?  But rational thought couldn't erase feelings reinforced during the three years she'd spent with Richard.

Or the fact that she was betraying the man she once loved.

Tapping her finger against her lips, she listened to the automated voice thanking her for her interest in aiding impaired physicians.  She held onto the phone long after the dial tone began to buzz.  Finally she lowered it back into its cradle.  There, it was done.

She found Brian, the young man who overdosed on the new combination of FX and MDMA, in a bed two spaces down from Jane Doe's.  He was now on dialysis.  A portable EEG machine sat at the foot of the bed, needles scratching against paper in a monotonous hum.  His nurse glanced at Cassie's unusual garb, then looked away again.  So, the news had traveled up here already.  Hospital grapevine, the original instant messenger.

"How's he doing?" Cassie asked, glancing at the EEG tracing.  The ink lines were flat and unvarying.  Not a good sign.

"They're still trying to find his parents, hoping they might consent to organ transplantation before..."

Before his body deteriorated to the point where the vital organs became too damaged to donate.  Which meant the boy in front of her was, for all intents and purposes, just as dead as Fran.  Cassie reached a hand out, stroked her fingers along his well-muscled arm.  She blinked hard, felt a pressure building behind her eyes as if something was trying to escape.

"Kind of makes you think of that old commercial, doesn't it?" the nurse went on.  "You know, the one with the frying pan and the egg.  This is your brain on drugs."

Cassie sighed and gave Brian's lifeless hand one last pat.  "And my Jane Doe?"

"Bed Four?"  The nurse pursed her lips.  "A little better, they're starting to wean her vent."

At last some good news.  Cassie left Brian and walked past two sleeping patients to bedspace four.  She took the seat beside Jane Doe, holding her hand as she leafed through the chart, now the size of a bible.

"It all started with you," Cassie told the sleeping teenager in a low voice.  "If you would just wake up and tell us where those pills came from, we could end this before more people get hurt."  She returned the chart to the bedside table and leaned over to straighten the girl's sheets, tucking them around her thin body. 

"I lost a friend tonight, to the same man who gave you those drugs.  Fran was doing me a favor, she didn't want to get involved in this.  She just wanted to get me to go out on a date, she thinks I spend too much time alone."  She squeezed Jane Doe's limp hand in hers.  "Fran's like that, always looking out for everyone else.  She shouldn't even have been there tonight--"

Cassie looked away, blinking hard against the glare of the overhead light.  Once the tears had been subdued, she turned back to stroke the straight, blonde hair away from Jane Doe's face.  "You know, when I was a little girl, I would have killed to have hair like yours.  I begged and begged my father to let me bleach mine.  I even tried washing mine in Chlorox.  I was only six, didn't know you needed hydrogen peroxide."

"I'll bet that was a pretty sight," came an amused but tired voice behind her.  Cassie looked up to see Drake standing at the foot of the bed.  "Thought I'd find you here." He scrutinized her outfit.  "Not going Ninja on me, are you?"

"It was the only thing in my locker." 

"How's she doing?"  He nodded to Jane Doe.

"Better. Stable.  Progressing nicely.  Take your pick."

"When's she gonna be able to talk to me?"

Cassie's sigh rattled through her, leaving her empty. "Maybe tomorrow, maybe never."

"You're a big help.  How 'bout if I give you a lift home."

"Thought you needed my statement."

"I do, but you've been through a lot."

"I'd rather get it over with."

"You make it sound like getting a root canal," he joked.  Cassie said nothing to that.  "All right, I'm set up in the break room down in the ER."

After giving Jane Doe's hand one final squeeze, she followed Drake downstairs to the ER.

"You know the pharmacy's narcotic safe was emptied?" Drake asked as he slid a small recorder from his pocket.

"Does that mean there's more FX out on the street?"

"More of a lot of drugs: Percocet, Dilaudid, Oxy-Contin, you name it.  This actor also trashed your friend's computer, didn't want us to find something she was working on.  Any idea what it was?"

"Fran called me.  Said the FX thefts were only a part of the problem.  That there was more going on."  She hesitated, gnawing on her lower lip for a moment.  He waited, allowing her to set the pace, wondering if she was going to finally tell him about her ex.  "Gary Krakov, her boss, knew she was looking into the FX thefts.  He was pretty upset."