“Don’t even think of jousting with me, dear boy.” Hamilton absent-mindedly brushed off the lapel of his signature white suit. “We can’t have our police thinking cold cases will go away just because they’re being ignored. If you don’t give me the file, I’ve already had my attorney fill out the Freedom of Information forms. He just has to pull the trigger.”
Cody was seething. But for now Raymond Handley and Uncle Tony-and now Dr. Song Wiley-were his priorities.
Ward Hamilton was not.
Mindful of Stinelli’s pleas, Cody reached across the desk and handed over the green file containing a Xeroxed copy of the Cramer file he’d ordered Kate to check over before she left the Loft yesterday evening.
Hamilton accepted the file without bothering even to glance at it, much less open it. “Remember, detective, the race goes to the swiftest.”
“Not always,” Cody replied evenly.
“And I do understand you’re busy adding a few more unsolveds to your list,” Hamilton concluded as he stood up.
This time Cody took the bait. “What the hell are you referring to?” At his orders, TAZ had bent over double to cloak the events of the last few days in secrecy.
Hamilton’s shit-eating grin said it all, but that didn’t stop him from adding: “I have my sources.”?
Kate and Rizzo were at Bellevue E.R. retracing Song’s movements last night. So far they’d come up empty- handed. No one on the day shift was the least bit useful; they might as well have been working on another planet. Kate had led Rizzo to the office Song used, but today it was occupied by a Pakistani whose English was so thickly accented that they could barely make out a word. But the gist was clear. The man hadn’t seen Dr. Wiley. When he’d started his shift, he’d gone straight to the O.R. and only just occupied the physicians’ office a half an hour ago.
Finally, a minimally-helpful desk clerk suggested they visit Human Resources. A flash of badge at the African-American who manned the reception desk was enough to get the list of everyone who worked the E.R. shift with Dr. Wiley last night. Phone numbers were another matter, however. It was an hour before they’d gone through the personnel files and created a complete roster.
“We’re losing precious time,” Kate said, berating herself for not staying awake last night for Song.
Rizzo heard the edge in her voice, and nodded. “I’m going to fax this over to TAZ,” he said. “Five people manning the phones should get the speed we need.”
And, in fact, it was only twenty minutes later that they got their first lead.
“She was heading for the pharmacy when she left here,” one of the nurses, an Hispanic named Ivonne Leonel, reported.
“What time was that?” Kate asked.
“Ten-maybe fifteen-after twelve,” Leonel said. “Why are you asking about Dr. Wiley? Is she okay?”
“Do you know why she was heading there?” Rizzo pressed, ignoring the question.
“One of my patients was complaining that we were bringing his medication too late,” Leonel explained. “Dr. Wiley said she was going to up the medication and prescribe that we bring it to him every three hours so we wouldn’t always be chasing the pain, she said.”
The pharmacy was in the basement, and they got lucky. The very weary pharmacist was doing a double shift.
He remembered Dr. Wiley had come in on her way out last night. Ruffling around in an untidy spindle, he pulled out the prescription she’d ask him to fill. He waved it toward them, as though to show off his organizational skills.
“What time was that?” Rizzo asked.
The pharmacist thought for a moment, then typed a few strokes into his computer. “Twelve-twenty,” he said. “Have to record the time for billing purposes.”
“Did Dr. Wiley wait for you to fill it?” Kate asked.
The pharmacist nodded. “Yes,” he said. “I offered to take it up myself, but she insisted. It only took me a few minutes. I handed it to her, and she thanked me and left.”
Kate brushed at her eye, as though something other than a tear was bothering it.
Rizzo noticed the thoughtful look on the pharmacist’s countenance. “Anything else you can tell us?” he asked.
“Yes,” he said. “The elevator wasn’t working. She walked back and asked me where the steps were. ‘It was working a minute ago,’ she said. I pointed down the hall and she left again.”
Kate and Rizzo shared an uneasy glance as they walked down the same hall Song had walked nine hours ago, toward the “Exit” sign that indicated the doorway to the staircase.?
They never made it to the stairs.
A few feet before the exit, a door marked “Pharmaceutical Storeroom-Authorized Personnel Only” caught Kate’s attention. The door was ajar.
“That’s odd,” she said, stopping in front of the door. Her hand extended to push it open when Rizzo intervened.
“Let me,” he said, reaching inside his jacket for his piece. “Stand behind me.”
Kate wasn’t budging. “I can handle myself,” she said.
Rizzo kicked the door open, then reached for the light switch.
For the rest of his life, Kate’s scream would haunt his dreams.
35
Like Handley and Uncle Tony, she’d been stripped naked, and was seated. On a card-table chair. Her legs and arms bound with surgical tape. One hand was clutching an open bottle of Excedrin. They could see that at least a third of the pills were missing.
The other hand was positioned on her lap, its thumb taped beneath the four fingers.
Kate stopped screaming. She was staring at her lover as though a huge practical joke was being perpetrated on her and, if she just waited, Song would wink and say, “Gotcha!”
Rizzo studied the rigid corpse. Song’s body was perfect, not an ounce of fat anywhere, he noticed. Her breasts were perfectly formed, the nipples hard with the caress of rigor mortis. No visible signs of trauma-only the look of surprise on the good doctor’s face seemed out of kilter with what otherwise could have been mistaken for a model posing nude for a painter.
The sonofabitch who had done this to her was painting with human lives.
Kate hadn’t moved, not backwards, not forwards. Rizzo could see she was in shock. “Let me handle this,” he said, taking her by the elbow and backing her toward the door.
With a wrenching effort, Kate snapped out of it and turned her head toward him. “Take your hand off me,” she said. “I’m fine.”
“If you’re fine,” he said. “You’re superhuman.”
“Why her? Who would do this to Song?” Kate sobbed. “She never hurt a fly in her life.”
“My guess is that it had nothing to do with her at all,” Rizzo said, reaching for his cell phone. His nose wrinkled at a familiar scent.
Kate detected it too.
“Burnt almonds,” Rizzo said.
“Cyanide?” Kate guessed.
Rizzo nodded as he speed-dialed.
Then Kate pointed to something else, the shelf to the right of Song’s body.
It was filled with boxes and boxes of blue and green surgical booties.?
For the rest of the day, the entire squad was turned on its ear. Kate’s devastation ignited a slow burn that would not cool until Androg was brought to justice. Cody had tried to send her home, to get her a prescription for valium. She’d refused both.
“Don’t you realize I’d go crazy if I went home?” she said. “Don’t do that to me. I’m staying here. I’m working
