The Inquisitor (30 page)

She heard someone approach, and gasped when Dr. Graceton stepped inside the curtains. The woman's luminous, steady gaze and warm expression from minutes ago had vanished. She looked stunned, with her eyes blank and her face as white as her mask.

"Sorry, J.S., I've got an emergency." The words came out clipped and fast. "Sedation orders are written. Get some sleep. I'll be back first thing in the morning and we can talk more then." She wheeled and headed for the exit, disappearing out the sliding door in seconds.

Something must have happened at home, Jane thought. Otherwise why would Dr. G. be the one who telephoned? Besides, last night had been her last on call for obstetrics.

A terrible possibility flew to mind, accompanied by a sense of dread that made it seem certain.

My God. Dr. G., Dr. Graceton, and Thomas were working on the cluster program tonight. They might have already matched Jimmy's schedule to mine.

She rang for a nurse.

The woman with silver glasses and matching hair listened to her request, then tried to argue that Dr. Graceton had left specific orders there were to be no more visitors.

"But I want to see the chaplain. He's not a visitor. At least let me talk to him on the phone."

The lady looked about to say no.

"Surely you wouldn't deny a patient spiritual comfort, especially not in here."

"I know he's your friend," she said, sounding annoyed, but brought her a phone anyway.

Jimmy Fitzpatrick's hand held steady as he replaced the receiver in its cradle.

He had taken the call at a patient's bedside and used the lack of privacy as an excuse for not being able to speak very long.

But he'd heard enough to set his heart racing and send himself running back to his office.

"Hey, I'm here so much, everybody thinks I work when they do," he had said to J.S. No telling if she'd bought it.

He'd known when he started it might all come down on his head. That still didn't make him ready to be led away in handcuffs for murder. And he definitely hadn't anticipated this twist involving J.S.

He fumbled the keys as he opened the lock and shut the door behind him but didn't turn on the light. Somehow he felt less panicky in the dark. He had enough ambient glow to see from the sodium lamps over the parking lot outside his window.

He'd gotten used to working in that ambient glow.

Around him were the bookshelves that held the words he'd chosen to live by. The Bible, of course, but also the philosophers he'd studied with such enthusiasm and love. Perfect thoughts from Aristotle, pupil of Plato, teacher of Alexander the Great, first in the struggle to reconcile science, ethics, politics, and the soul. John Locke, champion of empiricism and the inherent right of man to life, liberty, and a patch of land to call his own. Jean-Paul Sartre, who liberated all individuals to the lonely burden of defining right and wrong by themselves, then condemned those same individuals to the cold ethical void of existentialism. Sartre alone probably came closest to re-creating the ice bath of freedom and responsibility that God threw Adam and Eve into when He kicked them out of Eden.

Who could read any of the great teachers from all the ages, take their writings to heart, and not become an outlaw spirit?

At least that's how he'd read his calling among the realities of today at St. Paul's. How else could a man live for the greater good, help the meek, define right, and back it up with action if he wasn't willing to step outside the law now and then? Not to be pretentious, but he saw his predicament as merely a smaller-scale version of what had always been the dilemma for philosophers, people of God, and defenders of the oppressed who dared turn beautiful thoughts into concrete acts. Whether Jesus Christ, Robin Hood, Joan of Arc, or Zorro, they were rebels all, and he would have been proud to work at their sides whatever the period. No way was he just the grandstanding swashbuckler out of his time that Earl made him out to be.

At least that's how he'd thought of himself in the heady days at the start of their plan when getting caught seemed nothing more than a vague but unlikely possibility. He'd even promised the others they would never be found out, that, if necessary, he alone would take the blame and, by standing proud for what he did, make the deeds seem courageous and noble.

His head reeled in disgust at having been so naive and reckless, forcing him to grip the side of his desk.

Whom had he been kidding?

His downfall, if it came, would be a seedy, petty event, the stuff of tabloids blaring news of yet another disgraced priest.

He ran into the bathroom and threw up.

His stomach, emptied out, clenched itself tight as a fist, and he staggered back to his desk where he collapsed into his chair.

He could still get away with everything if he acted fast.

In the minimal light he pulled out the lower right drawer where he kept his prayer shawl, folded and ready for use. He lifted it out.

Next he withdrew a small mahogany box lined with purple velvet that held his holy oils and pyx, a circular container for consecrated wafers. He laid the kit unopened beside his shawl.

Reaching back into the drawer, he removed the false bottom in its recesses. There lay the syringes he'd stolen from ER. Beside them stood two vials of morphine, one provided by Stewart, the other by Michael.

9:55 p.m.

Janet had told Thomas to wait for her in the doctor's lounge. She found him there with mask off and sipping tea. He'd made an entire pot, and alongside it on a low magazine table sat a mug with cream already added, exactly the way he'd seen her take it after dinner hours earlier.

When she came closer, he jumped to his feet, eyes wide with alarm. "My God, are you all right? Is J.S. okay?"

"She's fine, other than scared and worried. I ordered sedation, and you must let her sleep. But there's other bad news-"

"What did she say?"

"What we expected. She hasn't a clue how her schedule could match the killings. And when I asked her if anyone always seemed to be around during her shifts, the denial came a little too quickly for my liking. Probably afraid to get a friend in trouble, so tomorrow see if you can get her to talk."

"I'll go see her right now." He started to get up.

Janet put a restraining hand on his chest. "Whoa! I just had the nurses sedate her, remember. She's safe enough until morning."

He hesitated, then said, "Here, sit down," and motioned her to an overstuffed, leather lounge chair.

The decor in here hadn't changed since Reagan had been president, and maroon must have been a popular color back then. Even on a good day the furnishings jangled her eyes.

"And drink this. You look as though you could use it." He poured the steaming brown liquid to the mug's brim, gave the mix a stir, and handed it to her. "Now what's the other bad news?"

She pulled down her mask and took a sip, savoring the warmth as it traveled to her stomach. "It's about Stewart," she began, and described how Earl had discovered his body.

Thomas's face fell slack in disbelief.

Having to tell the story left her feeling leaden.

"He hung himself?" Thomas said when she'd finished, his voice as incredulous as his saggy-eyed expression.

She nodded. As the misery of Stewart's death sunk in, displacing her initial shock, she took another sip of tea. It tasted even more mellow than the first. "They found a tape playing at the scene that sounded like recorded interviews of people in a near-death state," she continued. "Some of them included the patient's name, so it will be easy to compare them to our list of suspicious deaths. But the interviewer is whispering the whole time. While we can presume Stewart is the one asking questions, they won't be able to verify it. Apparently, according to the detectives, a whisper can't be matched the way speaking voices are."

Thomas sank back where he sat and regarded the ceiling, slowly shaking his head.

"If all that isn't weird enough," she went on, "the first quarter of the tape is of Roy Orbison singing 'Pretty Woman.' Nobody can even hazard a guess what that's about."

Up came his head, an expression of dismay on his face. " 'Pretty Woman?'"

"And get this. They found a small bottle of chloroform. The cops think he used it to put his dog to death, then made a noose with the animal's leash for himself."

He leaned forward. "Wait a minute. You're saying Stewart had been the guy in the hospital subbasement who left you there-"

"Stewart left no explanations. All they discovered in the form of a suicide note were two words written on his personal computer: 'I'm sorry.' The machine had conveniently been left on sleep mode so it came to life as soon as one of the cops touched the keyboard." She paused and took several more swallows from her mug. The familiar comfort smoothed away the tightness in her gut.

"But it seems as if everything Yablonsky accused him of turned out to be true," Thomas said, his voice quiet, as if he was thinking aloud.

Janet shook her head. "Not according to Earl."

"What?"

"Come on, Thomas. Where's your healthy sense of skepticism? Every good clinician has one."

"I don't understand."

"It's all too neat. Everything, from the tapes to the chloroform to the hanging."

"The hanging?"

"Yeah. Apparently a researcher in New York hung himself exactly the same way fourteen years ago, and Stewart may have had a hand in what drove him to it."

"Wait a minute. Another researcher hung himself? Who?"

Janet downed her tea. "Come on, drive me home, and I'll explain on the way. But it all stinks to high heaven- too much like a package wrapped up in a nice ribbon. And to top it all, Earl thinks Stewart left a sign to say he didn't commit suicide, but had been murdered."

Thomas's eyebrows notched a quarter inch higher. "A sign?"

"I'll tell you in the car."

10:10 p.m.

Neighbors began to appear in the street, huddled under umbrellas. They stood around like clumps of black mushrooms despite the storm picking up force again.

"Don't touch the body, and treat the house as a murder scene," Earl had said to the first officers who arrived over thirty minutes ago. "Above all, protect this tape." He indicated the microcassette on the floor that continued to broadcast the whispered interviews. "You'll want to check it for fingerprints," Earl said, though if this was the clever setup he thought it to be, the only prints on it would be Stewart's. Then he added, "And by using the cue numbers, we can work backward to determine when someone started it."

The eerie questions and answers floating out of the miniature speaker had brought a frown to the fresh young face of the cop who knelt down to inspect it. "What the hell am I listening to?" she asked. A blond ponytail dangled out the back of her peaked cap. The big gun on her tiny hips seemed incongruous with her cheerleader appearance.

"I'm not sure," Earl had said, but in fact he had a damn good idea.

"Get me a set of gloves," she'd ordered her partner. Minutes later, her hands appropriately garbed in latex and holding the device by a corner so as not to smudge any traces of its previous handler, she pressed stop using a ballpoint pen. After writing down the cue number and the time, she again used the pen, pressing rewind. But when she started the tape at the beginning, and they heard the familiar strains of "Pretty Woman," he'd no clue at all what to make of that.

He'd called Janet and broken the news to her, then waited in the living room as more cop cars pulled up. Some of the newly arrived officers came inside and went downstairs. Through the front window he saw others run yellow tape around the perimeter of the property. He gave a brief statement about discovering Stewart's body to the woman with the ponytail, all the time thinking she couldn't be any older than J.S.

That had been ten minutes ago.

Now he had nothing to do but watch the onlookers outside as they watched him.

Finally, at 10:20, a pair of plainclothes homicide detectives walked in and said they'd be in charge of the investigation.

The older of the two, a tall, blond woman about Janet's age, introduced herself as Detective Lazar. She wore a Burberry raincoat and carried a sadness in her eyes that most cops eventually assume. Her colleague, a man of equal height but at least ten years her junior, his perfectly coiffed black hair and square jaw suitable for a recruitment poster, stood with pen and pad in hand, ready to take notes.

Earl gave his name, led them downstairs, and proceeded to explain why he thought Stewart had been murdered.

"First, look at his feet," he began.

Though the body remained suspended enough that it seemed to be standing tiptoed, the balls of the feet were pressed a good inch into the soft vinyl surface of the stool under them. "Have you ever seen hanging victims before, Detective?"

She nodded.

Her partner did the same but found it necessary to also flex his eyebrows in an attempt at a boy-have-l-seen-hanging-victims look.

Earl ignored him. "Then you know most end up dying slow, strangling themselves." He directed his comments only to Lazar. "They're ignorant about the benefit that a drop from a gallows provides- haven't a clue how the momentum causes the rope to mercifully snap the neck at the second cervical vertebrae and, if the victim's lucky, severs the spinal cord, bringing as near-instantaneous brain death as possible. Instead, they linger in the noose and suffer hideously. Stewart wouldn't make that mistake. If he wanted to die by hanging, he'd have launched himself at the end of a rope out a second-story window." He looked at his friend's limp body, the rumpled trousers stained with the indignity of death, and shuddered. "Never ever would he have set up something so amateurish as this. At the very least, he'd have kicked the stool away. I think he deliberately didn't do that, at the price of excruciating agony, to signal us this is not a suicide." A mix of pity, sorrow, and horror swept through him as the terror of Stewart's final moments hit home. He grimaced and grew angry. "You may be willing to render such a brave last act meaningless by ignoring it, but I'm not."