Nothing Sacred (FBI Agent Dan Hammer Series Book 1) (17 page)

“Louis. Louis! Motherfucker…” she whispered under her breath. Then, she yelled into the receiver. “Goddammit, Louis, talk to me!”

“… she’s dead, Mouth.”

“She’s what?”

Dr. Garrison sensed Janice’s obvious agitation as she began pacing back and forth, twisting the telephone cord nervously in her fingers. Her feet began to perspire. Dr. Garrison stood up and approached the kitchen.

“Dead, Mouth. Along with the Mother.”

“The girl’s in a hospital, Louis. Come on.” Janice couldn’t believe what she was hearing, although she had no reason not to.

“A fire broke out in her room…”

“I don’t fucking believe it.”

“I’ve dispatched the photographer. It’s gonna be a media frenzy. We’ll be fighting with television crews from Columbia, plus local…”

“Fire?”

Dr. Garrison opened the refrigerator and grabbed a bottle of Evian. Janice deduced by the remaining contents, her main diet was predominately Hospital Cafeteria. Save for the bottles of water, a Yuban coffee container and 2% milk, her icebox was virtually empty. She offered Janice a glass from the cupboard. Janice shook her head “no.”

“Jesus Christ, Louis.”

Louis’s voice barreled through the receiver like thunder. “Get your ass to the hospital, Mouth. NOW!”

“Ten-four, Louis.” Janice hung up. She looked across the kitchen at Dr. Garrison. “Better get your keys, Doc.”

“Why? What’s going on?”

“That Kessler girl…”

“What about her?”

The Doctor finished her water in one graceful tilt. She sat the glass down on the
white
countertop. Janice could only imagine how brilliant a surgeon she was. Those slim, delicate perfectly long fingers. In the short time Janice had witnessed Dr. Garrison, everything she did, including the most insignificant of things, like opening her front door, the refrigerator, sitting down, ever so poised on her sofa, each indiscriminant act resonated calmness. Discipline. God, how Janice envied her. She was all over the place. Emotionally and physically. “Sloppy Sue,” she called herself. Meanwhile, Dr. Garrison remained cool. Unflustered. Her aura a bath of serenity. Relaxed under pressure, able to handle all situations quickly and deftly and oh, so reserved.

“Nothing…” Janice said, trying desperately to imitate the Doctor’s demeanor without much success. “… except the Kessler girl is dead.”

5:07 PM

Friday

MUSC

22

Dan parked his car at Roper Hospital and walked the short distance to the MUSC Emergency Room. Often confused and within spitting distance from one another, the two hospitals were closely linked. He passed by a cloister of uniformed female nurses. They stood along the parking lot sidewalk smoking cigarettes. Their conversation was low-keyed and sullen. They took turns running to the end of the walkway and peaking around its mammoth brick structure toward MUSC. Then they would scurry back to the group and cackle, like chickens in a henhouse!

The weather had turned cool. Dead leaves rustled across the freshly planted lawn. The threat of rain loomed. Fire trucks, media vans and police cruisers lined the street as Dan hurried around the corner to the ER and pressed the silver entry button, crossing over the threshold to a fanfare of commotion and confusion.

“Excuse me, can I help you?” A tough-looking, African American female nurse approached him. Dan flashed his metal. “Sorry,” she said, directing him with her index finger down the hallway to the elevator, “…just checking. This place is a zoo! The fire was on the fourth floor.”

Dan eased his way through a maze of similar entranceways until he reached the main corridor. The elevators had been restricted due to the fire. He found the emergency stairway and took two steps at a time, entering the fourth floor out of breath, only to find the elevators were back in service. The fire had been secured.

Chief Abrams stood by the nurse’s station. He was conferring with several men decked out in bulky fire gear when he spotted Dan.

“Arson. The Fire Chief said it was arson, Hammer. Gasoline.”

“They send samples to the lab?” Dan responded in monotone, scoping out the floor.

Chief Abrams was a big man. He pulled his pants up around his waist and leaned on the counter. He pulled a handkerchief from his back pocket and blew his nose loudly. “Smoke’s really bad. It bothers my asthma.”

“Sure is.” Dan agreed. A thin, gray haze of residual smoke hung like City smog close to the ceiling.

The Chief continued. “I’m glad you’re here.” He put his hand on Dan’s shoulder and bared some weight. “Now, how in the Sam hill could somebody enter this floor, it being under constant surveillance and all? And then have enough time to swirl gasoline around a room and light a damn match? It just doesn’t make any sense!”

“Unless it’s somebody who works here. At the hospital.” Dan stated the obvious, matter-of-factly, finding it hard to believe the Chief hadn’t already made the same deduction himself. “Somebody was able to infiltrate the area without being noticed. Or somebody knows where to find hospital clothing. Where’s Central Supply?”

“Basement.”

“How else could he have been allowed access? Who were the nurses on duty? They must have seen somebody come from the elevator or the hallway. Any security? Cameras?”

“Over there.” Chief Abrams pointed to a female and a male nurse. They sat in chairs behind the nurse’s station hunkered against the back corner.

“Excuse me.” Dan showed his ID. “I’m Detective Hammer. I have some questions I need to ask you.”

The female nurse was blonde and petite. She peered up at him before lowering her head into her hands. Her eyes were red and swollen. A tall male nurse sat beside her, his arm protectively wrapped around her shoulder. He spoke first.

“We’ve told the police everything.”

“I understand…”

“Everything was fine…” he continued. “Angie’s parents had finally left the unit to go down to the Cafeteria. Mr. Kessler wanted a cigarette. They hadn’t left that room since the poor girl was admitted. Sixteen hours. That’s a long time. I was logging narcotics behind the desk and Rebecca was writing down doctor’s orders in patient’s charts. Right there…”

“Anybody enter the Unit during that time? Dan inquired, pulling out a pad and scribbling down notes.

“No, not that I’m aware of. The next thing we know, Rebecca smelled smoke…”

“Did you?”

“No. I told Rebecca that… I’ve been nursing a cold, so I haven’t been able to smell much of anything the last couple of days.”

Rebecca looked up. “The elevator door opened, we saw them exit and walk toward us, Mrs. Kessler and her husband entered the Unit… I could see them right in front of the desk…” She cast her gaze to the chair she had been seated in. “Anyway, I stood up to greet them and, for some reason, we all looked toward Angie’s room and… and… God, it was just awful. The room was filled with flames. I was in shock. I didn’t know what to do.” Rebecca started crying again. The male nurse grabbed another tissue for her and himself. They both started blotting and blowing their noses. “Next thing I know, Mrs. Kessler took off, running toward the room. I don’t think her husband knew what to do. We all just sort of stood for a second and watched. I know he tried to grab her, but she fought back. She took off. Just like that. He couldn’t catch her in time.”

The male nurse added to the story. “Next, we see Mrs. Kessler in that room, standing in the middle of those flames trying to extinguish the fire herself…”

“She looked like a poor little bird, just flapping her arms and screaming…”

The two sounded like an old married couple, completing each other’s sentences.

“It was horrible.” Rebecca buried her face in her hands again. “Just horrible.”

“And you saw no one enter the unit from the time Mr. and Mrs. Kessler left and when they returned from the cafeteria?”

They conferred with one another, and in similar fashion shook their heads “no.”

“Nobody. Not that I can remember.”

“Well, somebody gained access. Somewhere. Are there other stairways. Emergency exits other than the one I just used? Could somebody have entered the Unit without you knowing it?”

“They could have come up the back, I suppose. But, we would have seen them if they entered the room.”

“The door was cracked open. Angie was under constant observation. We were getting ready to transfer her to the surgical floor downstairs.”

“The door was open?” Dan inquired, sizing up the distance from the Nurse’s Station to her private room.

The male nurse stood up. He started waving his hands flamboyantly. “I had just checked on Angie. I was the one who suggested that the Kessler’s go down and take a break.” Now,
he
started crying. He yanked at another tissue and started dabbing at his eyes. “It’s probably all my fault.”

“Who pulled the fire alarm?”

“I told Rebecca to. I ran to the room, grabbed the fire extinguisher from the hallway and started putting the flames out myself. As much as I could. The alarm went off automatically. We have fire drills routinely here in the Hospital, but you just never think it will actually happen. Code Red. I called it! Then, nurses from the other floors started coming up to assist us in transporting our other patients to safety. It’s all part of the drill. I contained the fire as much as I could… at least it didn’t spread.”

“By the time the fire trucks arrived, it was too late. The fire had pretty much devoured everything in the room.”

“Where is Mr. Kessler?”

Rebecca piped up. “Oh, God, that poor man. They had to sedate him. By injection. He went crazy. They transported him to another floor on a gurney. It was just too much for him. To take it all in. It was too much for all of us.”

Dan thanked them, and left the two nurses with their used tissues and each other. He walked toward Angie’s room, now sealed off. Firefighters, carrying large gray hoses paraded past him. Police officers patrolled surrounding rooms looking for stray sparks. Dan recognized a few of the officers, familiar faces, but the atmosphere was dim and gloomy. Everybody remained quiet. The last of the firemen exited. They walked in assembly line-fashion to the back hallway where the Emergency Exit was located.

Dan entered Angie’s room, or what was left of it. The stale smell of smoke and water was strong and consuming. The windows had been broken. Shards of glass were sprayed all over the floor. With each step, Dan felt the crunch beneath his feet. The bed was nothing more than a skeleton of burned metal and spiraling gray funnels. Little plumes of withering smoke rose toward the ceiling from the wreckage. The surrounding area was black. The outer layer of paint and fabric had bubbled up and was stripped away. Bare.

“Nothing much left in here.” The weathered voice of Chief Abrams came from the doorway. His handkerchief covered his mouth. “The Coroner has taken what’s left of the bodies to the morgue.” He lowered his head, in the same way a father might react when a son or daughter disappointed him. “Sure will be glad when that guy from Washington gets here.”

Dan excused himself and reentered the off white hallway. He wasn’t sure how he felt about the FBI butting their noses into the case. On the other hand, he was looking forward to meeting Harry Wright again. He had been one of his teachers at the VICAP seminar held in Quantico. He held great respect and admiration for the man. Perhaps even some jealousy. Dan wanted to be the expert involved in this case. Perhaps, someday he would be.

Dan strolled by several empty rooms, opening doors, swinging them ajar enough to check interiors. Marooned in the middle of one room was a metal examining tray. Another had a large glass shelving unit layered to the ceiling with blue and green surgical kits. Others were similar to Angie’s. They sat empty, vacated, the patients transferred to other floors of the hospital.

Dan pushed the latch to the Emergency Exit door and entered into the landing of the stairwell. No alarm was in place. No signal of anyone entering or exiting. He stood there for a moment, looking down the steps. He took in the surrounding area scanning for clues, cigarette butts, gloves, surgical masks. Cameras. The area was clean, except for dirty boot tracks left behind from the firemen. Dan held onto the steel railing and looked up. Nothing. He reopened the emergency door and peaked down the hallway toward Angie’s room. He had a clear view. If he were the killer, he would have to wait. Here. Make sure the coast was clear. So, what did he do while he was waiting?

Dan closed the door and walked up the flight of stairs to the fifth floor landing. He looked in the corner of each step. An ardent breeze swirled. He shivered. Nothing. Damn! Totally unremarkable. He went back downstairs.

At the nurse’s station, Rebecca remained seated. The male nurse had left. “Does Staff use the emergency stairwell often?”

Rebecca wiped her nose with a tissue. “Sure, we all use it. All the time. When we don’t want to wait for the elevators.”

“So, the person who started the fire, if he were out there waiting, somebody or someone might have seen him, right? A staff member from another floor, maybe?” Dan sat down in a chair beside her.

“I guess. Sure.”

In the hallway, the elevator door opened.
Ding
. Dr. Garrison pushed through the barriers, walked down the hallway and entered into the Unit. Dan stood up to greet her.

“Dr. Garrison…”

Rebecca stood as well. By rote, out of respect, that silent, ongoing rivalry between doctor and nurse continually played out. Dr. Garrison moved around the reception desk and entered into the Nurse’s Station. “What in the hell happened here?”

“We’re not sure yet.” Dan answered.

At the elevator, more disorder. Commotion. That woman again. The one Dan saw at the crime scene, the one with the blonde hair. She pushed past the grip of Security and hurried toward the Unit. Two hospital guards in blue uniforms exited the elevator and chased after her.