Nerves of Steel (3 page)

"Don't think so."  Lester raised his gun, his hand shaking so badly Drake was surprised he didn't drop it.  The Taurus weighed a good three and a half pounds.  "You're a hard mo'fucker to kill, Drake," he said, his words strangled, difficult to understand.  "Guess I'll hafta do it myself."

"What the hell?  Drop the gun, Lester.  Unless you wanna die.  That your game—you too chicken to come talk to me?  I thought you were the big guy on the streets, maybe I was wrong.  Maybe you've got a boss, someone who scares the shit out of you." 

As he spoke, Drake tried to keep the drug dealer's attention and gun focused on him.  He edged forward and to one side.  Lester looked confused, his mouth clamping down in a frown as if he was having a hard time understanding Drake.  "That how it is, Lester?"

When he was in range, Drake rushed forward, crossing Kwon's line of fire, and grabbed Lester's arm.  The Taurus went off, the boom of the .45 Magnum deafening at such close range.  Lester pitched forward.  Drake elbowed him hard over the kidney, sidestepped as the other man fell to the ground.  He yanked the Taurus from Lester's slack grasp.

Drake ignored the fist-sized hole the bullet had punched through the hard wood floor, safed the long-barreled revolver, and turned to Kwon.  She glared at him.  Her hands trembled as she holstered her own weapon and yanked the Taurus from him. 

"What kind of idiotic stunt was that, moving in front of me?  I could've shot you myself," she said as Summers and the rest of the team swarmed into the room.

"Glad you didn't." 

"Too much paperwork.  You're not worth it."

Lester was still face down, Summers reading him his rights, when his body began convulsing as if possessed.  Summers jumped off the dealer.

"Fucking A!  He pissed himself."  Summers flicked the fluid from his hand, the grimace on his face making him look younger than the twenty-something he was.

"Turn him over, check his breathing."  Drake squatted to help Summers roll Lester's writhing body.  He smelled the rank odor of human feces.  Lester's eyes were rolled in the back of his head, the whites of his eyeballs blossoming with the scarlet plumes of broken blood vessels.  His lips were blue and his mouth was open, but no sound came from it.

"Judas H."  Drake tried to hold Lester's head still long enough to open his airway, but the force of the seizures kept bouncing it off the hardwood floor.  Then everything stopped. 

Summers was straddling the drug dealer, still doing CPR when the paramedics arrived several minutes later. 

"Give it up.  He's dead, man," they told the detective.

Drake watched as Summers did a backward scuttle, placing as much distance as possible between himself and the dead body.  Summers, a lean, six-two black man, looked as if he might throw up.  Drake gave him a break and ushered him out into the hall before he added to the mess in the crime scene.

"I never seen anything, I mean I've seen DB's before, some of  'em really rank, but that..." Summers trailed off, wiped his hands on the seat of his jeans. 

Drake leaned against the wall, rubbed his eyes with the heels of his palms, caught a good whiff of himself and grimaced.  Worse was how he felt: soggy, bruised, ancient. 

He rammed his hands into the sodden fabric of his jacket pockets.  Ice-cold water slid under his collar and down his spine as he stared impassively at the drug dealer's body.  Leave it to Lester to die without telling them what he took or where the hell he got it.  Selfish bastard. 

With Lester dead, Drake was out of leads.  And if there was more of this shit out on the streets, they were in big trouble. 

CHAPTER 4

Cassie wrapped her fingers around the cold steel of the bed rail as she walked alongside the gurney transporting her Jane Doe to the ICU.   Jane Doe's resuscitation had left her exhausted and she leaned on the gurney for support as much as she helped to push it. 

The glass doors of the ICU swished open.  They steered Jane Doe to bed space four, her new home.  Nurses and respiratory techs swarmed over her gaunt form, transferring her to the bed, attaching licorice whip monitor leads, switching IV lines, connecting her to the ventilator. 

"We've got it, Dr. Hart," one of the nurses said after bumping into Cassie as she reached to turn on the overhead monitor.

Cassie edged to the foot of the bed where she wouldn't interfere with the well-rehearsed choreography.  After spending the last two hours fighting for Jane Doe's life, she wasn't about to abandon her now.  "Her last core temp was still only ninety-five."

"I know.  I ordered a bear-hugger warmer.  As soon as I get her situated, I'll hook it up." 

"And neuro will want a continuous EEG."

"Already paged them."  The nurse pivoted, placing herself between Cassie and Jane Doe.  "We'll take good care of her, Dr. Hart."

"Thanks. I know you will.  I'll check on her this evening before my shift starts."  Satisfied that Jane Doe was in good hands, Cassie squeezed the girl's foot in encouragement and retreated to the nurses' station to finish her charting.

She searched her pocket for a pen and chanced upon the twisted baggie of drugs she had taken from Jane Doe.  A stack of zipper-lock bags used to transport lab specimens sat on the corner of the counter near the requisition forms.  Cassie grabbed one and sealed the plastic bag with its contraband inside.  Ignoring her charting, she stared at her enemy.

Innocent looking pale green pills, each with the power to destroy a life.  Of course, the kids on the street never saw FX in its pure form.  It was already ground down, adulterated with mannitol, baking soda, lord only knew what else, then re-pressed into tablets bearing street names like Storm and Funky Shit.  One enterprising dealer had combined FX with ephedra and called his creation "Kennywood" after the local amusement park famous for its roller coasters. 

Cassie's fist tightened around the bag.  She'd lost three kids to that particular variant until word got out on the street about a "bad ride".

After watching Richard, her ex-husband, descend into the black hole of addiction, Cassie had tried to learn everything she could about the why's and how's of drug abuse.  She still couldn't understand playing Russian roulette with the product of an illicit chemist's imagination--half the kids she treated had no idea what they actually took. 

Her gaze returned to Jane Doe, now dwarfed by the machines keeping her alive.  Why would a beautiful girl throw her life away like that?  What was she running from that was so horrible that dying became a viable option?

Anger seared through her.  The waste.  Young kids, grown men, professionals like Richard—she clamped down on the anger and the thought.  Richard wasn't her worry anymore, she hadn't even seen him in a year, yet somehow he continued to infiltrate her life, leaving her with unanswered questions, doubts about her own part in what happened to him—to them--fear that she was destined to repeat her mistakes.

A queasy feeling not unlike the claustrophobia she'd felt in the helicopter churned through her.  She took a deep breath, held it for a count of five, then released it, hoping to banish her fears with it.  It helped.  A little.  She forced her attention back to the bag of FX.

Protocol called for the charge nurse to lock any drugs in the narcotics cabinet until the police arrived.  But she was currently busy with morning report.  Using her fingernail, Cassie traced the markings etched into the back of the FX tablets. 

"Son of a bitch." 

The ward clerk glared at her outburst in the otherwise still and quiet ICU, but she ignored him.  She held the bag up, scrutinizing the pills.  There were twenty-seven of them, all imprinted with "3RMC".  Three Rivers Medical Center.

To hell with protocol.  She swiveled in her chair, slamming her elbow against the counter, her anger and surprise drowning out any pain. 

The FX that had almost killed Jane Doe came from right here, from Cassie's own hospital. 

Abandoning her paperwork, she pocketed the FX, glanced at the clock, and hurried through the doors.  Seven-thirty, her shift was over, but Fran Weaver's was just beginning. 

Cassie jogged down four flights of stairs to the basement.  Here, amid the bang and hiss of ductwork and pipes, was the concrete tunnel that led to the Annex, the oldest part of the medical center.

The inpatient pharmacy was temporarily housed here while their permanent facility in the main tower was renovated and enlarged.  Instead of the Bunsen burners and microscopes Cassie once used as a medical student, the black laboratory benches were now stacked with wire baskets brimming with medications.

Fran Weaver sat at her computer, sorting patient orders from the night before.  The pharmacy assistant looked up with one of her perennial smiles.  Fran had helped Cassie several times with difficult cases, once even rushing additional drugs up to the ER after several kids had been sprayed by bullets during a drive-by shooting in East Liberty last summer.  Some drug dealer aiming at a cop, the police had said.

When their schedules overlapped, Fran, Cassie and Adeena Coleman, a social worker at Three Rivers, often got together.  They'd gorge themselves on Primanti Brothers' take out, Fran and Adeena bemoaning the Pittsburgh dating scene while Cassie kept silent, uncomfortable with the idea of letting any man back into her life. 

"Don't tell me you're flying in this weather," Fran said.

"Not since around five this morning."  Cassie perched on the edge of the desk and tossed the FX to Fran.  The halogen desk lamp made the pale green pills wrapped in plastic glisten like candy. "They're some kind of counterfeit, right?  Please tell me this shit didn't come from here."

Fran whipped her head around, looking for her boss.  "Hush.  You know Mr. Krakov hates swearing."

A bonus in Cassie's mind.  She didn't like Krakov.  Something about the arrogant pharmacist reminded her of Richard, her ex-husband.  But this morning she had better things to focus on than pissing off Fran's boss. "Just tell me where these came from.  It's important."

"Each lot of fentephex is stamped with a tracking code."  Fran scrutinized the pills, cleared her computer screen.  Her fingers flew over the keys.  She nodded as the screen flashed with information.  "These are ours, from inpatient stock received last week.  Where did you get them?  Every pill is accounted for, both here and on the floor."

"They almost killed my patient.  And could have gotten me and my team killed as well."  Cassie explained about her Jane Doe and their harrowing helicopter ride.  "How did a girl living on the street get a hold of this much FX?  And why doesn't it show up as missing in your inventory?" 

Fran twirled a strand of blond hair with her pinky.  If she was really agitated, she would gnaw on it like a school girl; if she wanted to flirt with a guy at a bar, she'd tug on it while batting her eyelashes.  Cassie wished her own rambunctious hair could be half as useful as Fran's. 

"ER, outpatient pharmacy, and same day surgery have a different lot number."  Fran's fingers resumed their race across the keys.  She was clearly unhappy with what she was finding.

An image of Jane Doe's frozen body lost in the dark waters of the Ohio flashed through Cassie's mind.  "You're saying someone on one of the inpatient units stole these?"

"No, I'm not.  We don't even know--"  The door opened, and a trim, thirty-something man with round wire-rimmed glasses and an engaging smile pushed a cart inside.  Fran looked up to greet the newcomer, the warmth returning to her face.  "Neil, how are you?  Neil Sinderson, this is Cassandra Hart, she's one of our ER docs."

"Nice to meet you," he said, taking Cassie's hand and shaking it with a firm grip, his smile widening as he looked her straight in the eyes.

"Neil runs the MedMark service," Fran told Cassie.

"MedMark?"

"Most of the HMO's subscribe to it," Neil explained.  "We provide all their patients' medications while they're in the hospital."

"Neil's a lifesaver," Fran said.  "He even found a stock of amphotericin for us when there was a nationwide shortage."

"All part of the service," Neil said with a self-deprecating shrug.  He glanced at his watch.  "I've got some Level Two narcotics here."  He gestured to a locked metal box welded to the cart.  "You want to tell Gary?"

"I'll get him for you."  Fran left her seat to go to the pharmacy director's office.

"You carry narcotics also?" Cassie asked.

"Sure, whatever the doctor orders." 

He rolled his cart down to the counter where the inpatient drugs were sorted by nursing unit.  Cassie watched as he efficiently began to dispense his merchandise.  Maybe it wasn't someone inside the hospital responsible for the FX thefts and Jane Doe's overdose.

"Do you carry FX, then?"

Neil turned around and smiled at her again.  He had a skier's tan with pale rims where his goggles would fit and an athletic build.  "No, sorry.  Fentephex is shipped directly from the manufacturer to the distribution site, no middle man."

So much for that theory
, she thought as Fran returned. 

Gary Krakov, the pharmacy director, popped out of his office like Alice's White Rabbit, his red bow tie centered precisely, the cuffs of his white shirt pressed and starched.  He frowned at Cassie, one finger stabbing his glasses up against the bridge of his nose.

"Dr. Hart, despite these temporary facilities," he intoned, "may I remind you that we are still running a pharmacy here."  Krakov glared at her mud-splattered Vasque boots, her equally stained navy blue Nomex flight suit and leather jacket.  Then he turned his gaze on Fran.  "I'm certain you have more important things to do than hosting a coffee klatch, Ms. Weaver."

Cassie slid from the desk to confront the prickly pharmacist.  "Fran is helping me find--"

Fran pinched her arm, and Cassie broke off.  "Find a dosing protocol for patients with antibiotic resistant organisms," Fran finished, pulling a stack of order sheets overtop the bag of FX.

"She can find that in the pharmacology database just like every other physician in the hospital," Krakov said.  "There's no need to waste your time."