Working Stiff (25 page)

“I take it you know about Mike Halverson's death,” I say.

He nods. “Tragic thing.”

I stare at him for several seconds, appalled. “That's it?” I say. “That's all you have to say? ‘Tragic thing?'”

His brow furrows and he looks confused. “What were you expecting me to say?”

“Oh, I don't know. Maybe something a bit more emotional. I mean, you were sleeping with the guy, weren't you?”

He staggers back a step and all the blood drains from his face.
“What?”
he says, the word coming out like a gunshot.

“Don't try to deny it, David. I have a witness who saw you at the Grizzly Motel. You met Mike Halverson there. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure it all out.”

“The Grizzly?” Then dawning spreads across his face. “Oh.”

“Yes,
oh.
”

“It's not what you think,” he says quietly. “You don't understand.”

“Damn right I don't. You did know Mike Halverson was HIV positive, didn't you?”

“Yes, I knew.” He crosses his arms over his chest and tightens his lips. His calm complacency infuriates me.

“Jesus Christ, David. Wasn't screwing around with Karen enough for you? Didn't that pose enough of a risk to me? Not to mention your patients? My God, don't you realize what you've done?”

“Mattie, you've got it all wrong.”

“Oh, really? Then pray tell, David. What's the story? Did you kill Mike Halverson, too?”

“What the hell are you talking about?” he says. “Mike Halverson committed suicide.” He pauses a second, looking at me. “Didn't he?” he adds.

“No. It was staged to look like a suicide, but he was murdered.”

“Christ,” David says, raking his fingers through his hair and staring at the floor. I watch the muscles in his cheeks twitch and leap. When he looks back up again, I see resignation in his face. But I have no idea what he's resigned to do. “I think you better come and sit down,” he says.

The look in his eyes frightens me and suddenly I remember Dom's cautionary advice. Have I just made a fatal error in judgment? “If you have something to say to me, say it here,” I tell him. I want to stay close to the door, just in case.

“Fine. Have it your way.” He shifts uncomfortably and stares off into space for a second, seeming to gather his thoughts. “Yes, I knew Mike Halverson,” he says finally. “And yes, I did meet him at the Grizzly one evening. Just once, and he didn't know I was coming. And it wasn't for what you think. All I did was talk to them.”

“Them?”

I see a montage of emotion flash across his face: doubt, indecision, fear, and sadness. “Yes,
them.
Mike and his lover.”

“His lover,” I repeat, thoughts racing through my mind. “His lover? What, were you jealous? Is that it? You wanted him for yourself?”

He groans in frustration, his hands clenched into fists. “Christ, Mattie. Do you seriously think I'm gay? Or a murderer?”

“I don't know, David. I don't know what to think anymore.” Hearing the shrill tone in my voice, I take a deep breath and try to calm down. “Everything is so confusing. People are getting killed and I have no idea why or who's doing it. But it's hard for me to ignore the facts, David. And an awful lot of the facts point to you.”

“Well, I'm not a killer,” he says, calmer now. “Nor am I gay.” He sucks in a breath and squeezes his eyes closed. “But,” he adds, “Sidney Carrigan is.”

A
t first I'm not sure if David means Sidney is gay, a killer, or both. As it turns out, David isn't sure either about the killer part. That Sidney is gay, he is certain of. That Sidney is a killer, he doesn't want to believe. Nor do I.
No way,
I think. But one look at David's face and I know he has spoken the truth. The tragedy of it is written there, plain to see.

I finally take the seat David offered earlier and sit in stunned silence as he tells me everything he knows. It is a puzzling, sad, and sordid tale, one that makes me wish I'd kept my damnably curious nose out of things.

David explains how he first became aware of something going on when he overheard Sidney and Karen having a heated argument in an on-call room one night a couple of weeks ago. “I couldn't hear everything they said, but certain words came out quite clearly,” David says. “I understood that Karen was asking Sid for money and threatening to reveal something about him if he didn't. The next day I confronted Karen and, after first trying to deny it all, she just broke down and sobbed. That was when she told me about Mike, that he was her brother, that he was gay, and that he had AIDS.

“She told me how they were orphaned when Karen was nineteen and Mike was still in high school. She assumed responsibility for him then and has felt she has had it ever since. Apparently, it's been quite a struggle, emotionally and financially. When Mike was diagnosed with AIDS, things really got bad. They had no health insurance and the cost of the drugs he needed to take to keep the disease under control was astronomical.”

Something clicks into place in my mind. “How long ago was he diagnosed?” I ask.

“I'm not sure. But I gather it was a number of years ago. Karen said he came close to dying once before. That was before the current protease inhibitor treatments became available.”

“That might explain why she took on that nurse's identity,” I muse. “If she was hurting for money, the difference in pay between an OR nurse and an assistant could have made a significant difference. Plus, it might have given her access to supplies she would have otherwise had to buy for him.”

“I don't know,” David says. “I suppose it's possible. I didn't know Karen wasn't who she said she was until after she was killed. All I knew was what she told me, that she'd been trying to care for Mike for the last twenty years. She was buying his drugs, paying his rent, and she also set him up in his business.”

“You mean the medical supply company? Karen set that up?”

“So she said. Apparently it's organized under a fairly convoluted corporate structure that hides the real owners' names behind a series of dummy companies, with the main one looking like a sole proprietorship owned by Mike Halverson. In truth, the place is owned by Karen. That's why she was trying to talk some of the docs into investing in the place. She had it set up so that they could become blind owners, their names never appearing anywhere in any official capacity. Then the docs could refer business there and convince their associates to do so, too, profiting from the revenues their referrals generated.”

“Did anyone buy into it?”

“I'm not sure. I know she was upset when I declined to participate, but she seemed to take it in stride. Though to be honest, in retrospect I think my refusal was why she turned her attentions toward me in another way.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning her seduction.”

I give him my best skeptic's look. “I suppose you're going to tell me it was all her fault.”

“Of course not. I let myself get caught up in it all. I felt sorry for her at first and simply wanted to help her. Then one thing led to another and…” He shrugs, as if it is no big deal. “Maybe she was hoping to blackmail me. I'm pretty sure that's what she was doing to Sidney. But your untimely arrival in the OR that night sort of eliminated any hold she had over me.”

“How convenient.”

David lets out a mirthless laugh. “Go ahead. I deserve whatever nastiness you want to dish out. What I did was stupid and thoughtless. I never meant to hurt you, Mattie. You don't know how many times I've come to regret what I did.”

“Did you kill Karen?”

“What do you think?”

I study him a moment, gathering my thoughts. “I think,” I say finally, “that you're not the man I thought you were. I think that you have betrayed my trust. I think your supposed love for me, or for anyone else for that matter, isn't nearly as deep as your love for yourself.”

I pause, seeing the misery my words have triggered in him and trying to take pleasure from the fact. But for some reason, all it does is make me feel worse.

“But no,” I conclude somewhat anticlimactically. “I don't think you are a killer.”

“Thank you for that, anyway.” His smile is grim.

“I'm curious, David. What were you and Karen fighting about the night she was killed?”

“I confronted her about Sidney. I could tell something was bothering him; he just hasn't been himself lately. And because of the argument I overheard, I couldn't help but think that Karen had something to do with it. She tried to tell me that the argument was just her getting upset with Sid because she asked him for a loan and he refused her.” He pauses, his expression growing sad. He turns away from me and looks out a window.

“But I didn't believe her. I've heard things about Karen over the past few weeks that are rather disturbing. Arthur Henley told me about a conversation he had with her where she kept mentioning Ruth and making suggestive comments that made it sound as if she might let something slip to Lauren.”

“That wouldn't have gotten her very far,” I tell him. “Lauren knows all about Ruth.”

“She does?”

I nod. “She and Arthur have…well, I guess you could call it an understanding.”

“Guess that explains why Arthur didn't seem too bothered by Karen's hints. Anyway, then I heard a similar story from Mick Dunn. Seems Karen made some suggestive comments to him, too, after he'd slept with her several times. She was threatening to let it slip to Marjorie.”

I laugh. I can't help it. “Like Marjorie doesn't know about Mick.” I shake my head. “Man, poor Karen. She kept picking all the wrong people to try to blackmail.”

“Until Sid,” David says. “Sid never did come right out and admit anything, but there were things he said that made me think Karen might be trying to blackmail him, too. I just couldn't figure out what she had over him. I didn't know then that Sidney was seeing Karen's brother, or that Sidney was gay. But when I confronted Karen and told her I wasn't going to allow her to get away with blackmailing Sid, she told me everything, not only that Sid was gay, a fact he was desperate to hide, but that he was HIV positive. She cried and pleaded with me, saying that Sid's money was the only way she could keep Mike on the drugs he needed, that he'd already developed an intolerance for one protease inhibitor and had to be switched to another one that was even more expensive.”

He pauses, lost in memory for a moment. “I thought about what she was saying and tried to see things from her point of view, to understand her situation. But I kept coming back to the fact that Sidney was HIV positive and operating on patients.”

He leans forward, burying his face in his hands for a moment. When he straightens up and looks at me, I see the raw emotion, the exhaustion and misery of it all reflected in his eyes. He looks haggard and bereft, and I fight an urge to go to him, to hold and comfort him. When he continues, his voice is flat and impassive.

“While I don't condone Sid's lifestyle, I've always liked and respected him. His family is highly regarded here in Sorenson and I have a great deal of respect for Gina and her work, as well. I know that a scandal like this will be devastating to them. Not to mention what it will do to the hospital if word gets out. But while I'm not eager to expose Sid, I still feel morally obligated to do something.

“I told Karen I was going to talk to Sid and try to convince him that he should retire and move away somewhere. Try to start over. I suppose in a way what I was planning was a form of blackmail as well. For I'd pretty much decided that unless Sid left voluntarily, I was going to report him. I hoped that by doing that I might be able to control the fallout and minimize the damage somehow.

“But when I told Karen what I intended to do, she went berserk. Then she told me about her pregnancy. I suspected it might be a last-ditch effort on her part to get me to side with her, to have enough sympathy for her plight that I wouldn't expose her or Sid. But I wasn't convinced she really was pregnant. Or if she was, that it was mine.”

He looks at me then, a pleading question in his eyes.

“I can't tell you, David. The DNA results haven't come back yet.”

He sighs, his face rigid.

“Did you go to Karen's house that night? Hurley said he had a witness who saw you there.”

“That's total bullshit. According to Lucien, this purported eyewitness was just some anonymous woman who called from a pay phone at the Quik-E-Mart. Lucien thinks it was a crank looking to get a cheap thrill. I never went to Karen's house that night. In fact, I never saw her again after she left here. But I don't have an alibi for the period of time in question. Actually, I do have one, but I haven't been willing to share it yet.”

“What do you mean?”

“After Karen left that night, I put in a page to Sidney, found out he was over at the hospital trying to catch up on his back charts, and went over there hoping to talk to him when he was finished. I got there just as he was coming out of the hospital and we spoke in the parking lot. I confronted him with what I knew and he didn't deny any of it.”

He shakes his head. “You should have seen him when he talked about this Halverson guy. He kept saying he was truly in love for the first time in his life and that, faced with a considerably shortened lifespan, he no longer felt the need to hide who he was, to be so circumspect about his sex life.

“I told him that was all fine and good, but that I couldn't ethically allow him to continue to operate on patients if he was HIV positive.”

“What was his reaction?”

“He was obviously upset…. Devastated might be a better word. I don't know. I think he was so caught up in the euphoria of his relationship with Halverson that he hadn't really thought through all the consequences. Then he got pissed at me. He got in his car and left, refusing to hear me out.

“I didn't know what to do at first. But I knew I couldn't let things go on the way they were. So I headed out to his house hoping to talk to him some more. Except when I got there, no one was home. I knew from Karen that Mike frequented the Grizzly Motel and I guessed that was the most likely place to find Sid. So I headed out there, and when I saw his car, I bluffed my way into finding out what room he was in. Then I laid down the law to him and Mike.”

“And how did you leave it?”

“I told Sid I'd give him a week to make up his mind. Either he leaves voluntarily or I report him. And the week will be up the day after tomorrow. That's why I didn't tell that detective where I was the night Karen was killed. I knew Sid would just deny it all and then I'd only end up looking worse.”

“If Sid doesn't withdraw from operating voluntarily, are you going to go ahead and report him?”

“Yes.” His sigh carries the weight of the world with it. “But I have to tell you, Mattie, I don't like being in this position. Sid is not only a respected colleague of mine, he's a friend. I'm trying to do what's right, but for some reason it feels all wrong.”

He buries his head in his hands and again I am struck by an urge to reach out to him, to pull him to my breast and comfort him. I still hate him for what he did, for his betrayal of me, of us. But I loved him deeply once and I suppose that on some level, I still do. It's not an emotion I can just turn on and off with a switch. And seeing how utterly dejected and tormented he is by all that has happened, I can't help but feel some empathy for him, a softening of my anger.

“What about Gina?” I ask him. “Do you think she knows any of this?”

“I have no idea.”

Then I ask the question that hangs between us, the one neither of us wants to verbalize. “Do you think Sid killed Mike Halverson?”

“I don't know,” David says. “God, I hope not.” He gets up and walks over to a window—the same one I peered into on that fateful night—and stares out at the world, his expression troubled. “Why would he kill the guy if he loved him?”

I've already asked myself this same question. “Maybe Sid has some other problems. Maybe his touch with reality isn't too strong right now.”

David says nothing.

“Or maybe he discovered that Mike wasn't as enamored of him as he was of Mike. Maybe Mike was only using him, the same way Karen tried to use everyone. Maybe Mike took over his sister's blackmailing scheme and Sid finally killed him in a brokenhearted rage.”

David stays quiet, but the very lack of any denial from him tells me all I need to know.

“David, you know we can't keep this to ourselves. I like Sid, too, and I certainly don't want to think of him as a killer. But we can't pretend all of this hasn't happened.”

“I told him I'd give him a week,” David says.

“Look, it doesn't have to come from you. I can call Steve Hurley, tell him what we know, and let him handle it from here. Sid doesn't have to know that any of it came from you.”

David turns from the window and looks at me, his face stricken. “You're going to just sic the police on him? Christ. Isn't there an easier way? Can't we give him a chance to turn himself in?”

“What if he doesn't? What if he runs, David?”

“He's not going to run, Mattie. Besides, he's on call this weekend.”