On Call: An Original Short Story (4 page)

“Like what?”

“Like the company is owned by George Kincaid and Hannah Radcliffe. Apparently, it’s some sort of electronic medical records business, and the stars seem to be aligned for a huge success. You know how Kincaid is always trumpeting that electronic medical records are the future.”

“Interesting,” Lou said.

“I couldn’t get more details off Hoovers, so I asked a good friend from my truncated Naval Academy days if he could dig up additional intel on the company. His name’s Drew Stoddard. His father is super well off and well connected. In fact, Drew was able to confirm that recently, Annabelle Stern’s name was added to the board of the company.”

“A true silent partner,” Paul said.

“So,” I said, “George Kincaid was not only sleeping with Annabelle, he apparently set her up with a stake in his business. I think it’s possible that she was blackmailing him.”

Paul read the note I scrawled soon as I left Victoria’s apartment.

“I think this will make you very happy. That does have a slight ring of blackmail to it.”

A sharp knock on the door made us all jump.

Lou checked the peephole. “Hey, it’s those cops, Anderson and Rodriquez.”

As soon as Lou had the door open, the cops were on him. I stood quickly, knocking over my chair. Before I could utter a single protest, Anderson had Lou pressed up against the wall, while Rodriquez slapped handcuffs on him and patted him down.

“Louis Welcome,” Anderson said in his gruff cop voice. “You’re under arrest for the murder of Dr. Annabelle Stern.”

I’d never seen Hannah Radcliffe look so distraught. We were alone in the pathology lab—both of us in mourning. Paul’s dismissal, Annabelle’s death, and now Lou’s arrest. To those intimately connected with a place like Eisenhower Memorial, the hospital itself was like an organism, growing and decaying as buildings came down and went up, and neophyte doctors learned and grew and finally moved on or advanced to the faculty—see one, do one, teach one. Even though I was considering calling it quits with medicine, I was still connected to the ebbs and flows of Eisenhower as though I were part of something truly alive. Since that orientation assembly, a part of our hospital had died a slow and painful death.

Motherly Hannah Radcliffe felt it, as did I.

The pathology professor, half of the first couple of the hospital, seemed to have aged a decade overnight. She was physical and emotional wreckage. Lou Welcome, perhaps her favorite resident, was locked away in a jail somewhere, denied bail because of the seriousness of the charges against him.

Murder.

Radcliffe was on the verge of tears. “I can’t believe that Lou…I mean…it’s inconceivable.”

“The DNA from the tissue samples found under Annabelle’s fingernails were a ninety-nine percent match for him,” I said. “They had to make the arrest.”

“What happens now?” Radcliffe asked.

“Now, Lou will defend his innocence unless Annabelle’s real killer can be caught.”

“You don’t think Lou is guilty?”

I shook my head emphatically, but my mind could not let go of the gouges I had seen on his hands. “There are other ways to explain his tissue being found under her nails,” I said. “They had a romantic relationship, for goodness’ sake. It could have suddenly rekindled.”

“What does that mean?” Radcliffe asked.

“I’ve got another theory about what might have happened to Annabelle. Perhaps you should sit down before I share it.”

Radcliffe appeared ill at ease. She took a seat as I advised, her fingers tightly interlocked. “Go ahead, please,” she said.

“Hannah, did you know that Annabelle Stern was a one-third partner in Medtransit?”

“That’s…that’s impossible.”

“No, it’s true,” I said. “I had a contact of mine look into it. George made Annabelle a one-third partner in the company.”

“Why? Why would he do that?”

I knew Radcliffe as a woman of science, a razor-sharp intellect who viewed the world through a prism of logic. The look of complete bewilderment on her face was heartbreaking. In a matter of seconds, I had upended her neatly ordered world…and I was about to do it again.

“I think he might have been blackmailed,” I said. “By Annabelle.”

“Blackmailed? How would Annabelle Stern be able to blackmail my husband?”

I didn’t say anything, figuring it would be best for Radcliffe to reach that conclusion on her own. It did not take long. Her hands covered her mouth while shock and surprise crossed her face like a storm cloud.

“Oh, my God. George was having an affair with her?”

I nodded. “I’m virtually certain of it. She kept letters from him to her.”

“You have proof George killed her?”

“No, but I’m trying to piece that together. I have a horse in this race. My best friend is in jail, and I don’t think he’s guilty. George has more of a motive for killing her than Lou, DNA or not.”

“Oh, Gabe, what happens now?”

“George is your husband, Hannah,” I said. “But if he’s capable of this, I believe he could be dangerous, especially when the walls start closing in. I think you should consider going away for a while, someplace safe.”

“And you?”

“I’m going to the police with what I know. Lou is innocent, but I’m sorry, Hannah, I don’t feel the same way about George. I think you should be careful.”

I sat alone in my office, just down the hall from the pathology department, finishing up some work and thinking about exactly what I was going to say to Detectives Anderson and Rodriquez. Hannah Radcliffe had left her lab in tears, along with a promise to get away to her sister’s home in Saint Louis before I went to the police. As for me, I felt exhausted and still bewildered about how Lou’s DNA could have gotten under Annabelle’s nails. Had he lied to me in denying they had taken up again? Then there were those scratches and his offhand assertion that his lab rats were responsible. Still, I remained solid that my best friend was incapable of such a brutal murder.

On the other hand, I had always liked George Kincaid, but there was no doubt that the power of his position and the wealth he had accumulated were motivating forces in his life. And a woman like Annabelle Stern was capable of driving all but the most saintly men toward madness.

By nine, I caved into crushing psychological fatigue, and decided it was time to head home. I grabbed my bag and shuffled down the stairs. The hospital was drifting into night mode, with just a scattering of foot traffic headed from one building to another. Nearly all the buildings of Eisenhower Memorial were connected by a series of subterranean tunnels, some of which were rumored to date back a century. They were more heavily trafficked in the wintertime, but I liked to use them year-round because of the convenience of getting to the Metro several minutes faster than with the aboveground route.

I was about halfway to my destination, on B-1, the uppermost underground level, traveling along an older, less well lit portion of the tunnel system, when I sensed movement directly behind me. As I was whirling, my eyes adjusted just in time to catch the tubular shape of some object swinging for my head. I instinctively raised my wrists in defense and took the brunt of the blow from a metal pipe directly on bone. Pain exploded up my arm, and my knees buckled, dropping me to the cement floor. Immediately, I went into a roll.

Again and again, the pipe just missed me, sparking off the floor and wall. Finally, it struck me again, this time on the tip of my shoulder. The pain was blinding. Drills from high school football were all that kept me rolling. My body slammed hard against an exit door. The blows continued from the shadows. I tried to get a fix on the man, but the blows kept raining down, some missing, some not. A surgical mask registered, and some sort of woolen cap.

I pulled my legs to my chest and pressed my back up against the door for leverage. The attacker was swinging with a nearly regular rhythm. It was my only chance. His blow glanced off my shin, and when he raised the weapon above his head again—I plunged both my feet hard into his abdomen. My thrust drove him backwards. I heard the air explode from his lungs. The pipe clattered to the floor.

Moving as quickly as I could manage, I pushed myself away from the door, executed a painful shoulder roll, and grabbed hold of the pipe. Before I could stand, I was kicked hard in the face. I fell back. My vision blurred, but I started swinging the pipe wildly and connected at least once. The blow pulled me off balance. When I scrambled to me feet, I saw the exit door had been opened and my attacker was on the run. The pain in my face, wrist, and legs made it nearly impossible for me to follow. A dozen yards down, the tunnel split, and my attacker had vanished. I was cooked. I chose the left, followed it for a while, and gave up.

I dragged myself back to the spot where I had been attacked. On the floor against a wall, I found a thin fragment of red plastic. I had no idea what it was or if it was related to the attack. Still, I suspected the mystery would not remain unsolved for long. After all, I worked in a lab and, until she left for her sister’s place, had the chief of pathology at my disposal.

The answer, at least to some of my questions, came in the form of a 2
A.M
. call from Detective Manny Rodriquez. Rather than try to enlist Hannah’s help when she was under such stress, I had called Rodriquez, and he and his partner came by the hospital, checked over the tunnel, and then took the lead pipe and oddly shaped red plastic fragment off my hands.

Now, at eight on a cloud-shrouded morning, it was time for action. I stood on the front steps of George and Hannah’s sprawling Tudor-style mansion, with the gun I had first used as an apprentice rodeo clown tucked in the waistband of my trousers.

Seconds after I rang the bell, Kincaid was at the door. “Gabe,” he said, perplexed, “what are you doing here?”

I took a step inside, pulled the gun out, and jammed it into Kincaid’s sit-ups-enhanced midsection. The medical chief groaned as though he’d been sucker-punched.

“Get inside and don’t do anything stupid,” I said.

Kincaid backed into the kitchen, where Hannah was at the table cradling a hefty mug of coffee.

As soon as Radcliffe saw me and the revolver, the mug tumbled from her hand and shattered on the tile. “Gabe!” she cried out. “What are you doing?”

“Sit down, George,” I said, jabbing his midsection with the gun.

“We talked about this, Gabe,” Radcliffe said. “This isn’t the plan. You’re supposed to speak to the police after I leave for my sister’s. Please, Gabe! Be reasonable.”

“That was before he tried to kill me,” I said. “Didn’t you, George? I was getting too close, and asking people about you and Annabelle. So you decided bashing my head in was the simplest solution.”

I came up behind Kincaid and pressed the muzzle of the gun to his temple. He was shaking now. Radcliffe was, too. I must have looked like a rabid dog to them, spittle at the corners of my mouth, utterly dangerous.

“What do you want, Gabe?” Kincaid stammered. “What do you want from me?”

“I want you to admit that you killed Annabelle Stern,” I said.

“What? I’ll do no such thing!”

“My best friend is in jail because of you. You strangled Annabelle and you tried to kill me, you sonofabitch. Now, you’re going to confess to what you did, or I’m going to use every bullet in this on a different part of you.”