Bad Medicine (9 page)

He didn't look okay. His dark eyes were washy with the kind of tears men aren't supposed to allow. "Yeah, I guess."

"I need to talk to you when I finish up there. Would you mind hanging around that long?"

He just shook his head and dropped it back into his arms. Molly straightened and headed up to business, too long past that kind of reaction to even remember having it.

Well, that wasn't exactly true. She remembered it when she wasn't careful. And on days like today, she was very careful.

By the time she got to the top of the stairs, the young woman with the radio had taken up a place next to the maintenance guy. Molly's attention was already on the room and its occupants.

"Anybody hear it?" she asked Mort.

He inclined his head downward. "A couple right below. Said they just thought it was another drunk. The Cubs're in town."

Molly nodded. When the Cubs played St. Louis, the economy motels were full and the noise level was high. "What time?"

"They're not sure. Late. After three."

"You gonna be my ranking officer, Mort?"

"It's just your lucky day," a voice answered from inside the room.

With the glare of the sun, Molly had to squint to make out the features that went with the voice.

"Well, fiddle-dee-dee, Rhett," she greeted him as she headed on in to drop her case at the door and peel off her jacket. "Is this karma, or are you just on somebody's shit list down there?"

"I guess they decided I needed another suicide to complete my merit badge," Rhett responded, already in shirtsleeves and protective gloves himself, making notes in his ubiquitous notebook. "I don't need to ask whether you're on a shit list or not."

Molly just scowled, the raw spots still healing from where Winnie had been chewing on her butt for the last few days.

"But why get anybody from homicide at all?" she asked. "Is there a question now?"

The homicide bureau in St. Louis city was so busy that they didn't answer routine suicides. Only patrol officer, precinct sergeant, death investigator, evidence. From what Molly had heard, there hadn't been any question about this one. On any other day, they would have run everything by the numbers to prevent surprises, told the family they were sorry, and then moved on to the tough stuff like Tyrell. They wouldn't think of cluttering the homicide desks with it.

Rhett said, "The uniform who called it in's a rookie, got a little spooked. You'll see. And there's no note. I don't see a problem, so I'm about ready to head out as soon as evidence is finished."

Almost as a punctuation, there was a flash from the area of the bathroom where the evidence tech was taking full color shots of the scene.

Because the scene was contaminated enough with the people who'd already waded through it, Molly took care of her own housecleaning at the door. Shaking the wrinkles out of her jacket, she reached up and hung it over the top of the open doorway.Then she laid her case on the little round table by the window and opened it to pull out her gloves.

"Victim's in the bathroom?" she asked, pulling them on.

"Aren't all victims in the bathroom?" Rhett demanded. "I swear, I'm gonna do a study on it some day. 'The propensity of humans to migrate to the john to die.' You think it's an instinct, like elephants, or a societal problem?"

Molly looked up from the paperwork she was pulling out. "You're really hung up on this, Rhett."

He glared—well, as much as Rhett could glare. "This is my third dead body in two days, and every damn one of them has been wedged in between a tub and a toilet. Do me a favor, Molly. If you ever answer a sudden death call and it's me, make sure I'm not in the bathroom."

Molly began cataloging the scene before she headed on into the bathroom. "I promise, Rhett," she answered. "I'll drag you out by your heels with your pants around your ankles."

"You're a pal, Burke."

The bed was unmade, the pillows bunched up as if the victim had used them to read or watch TV. There was a pair of black alligator pumps by the bed and a red Ann Taylor suit crumpled on the chair. Hose, hairbrush, handbag.

This one hadn't arranged herself in bed like Juliet waiting for Romeo to come find her. This one, evidently, had gone out like a man.

"Suicides," Molly protested with a shake of her head. "What's the rush, all of a sudden? I mean, suicide season doesn't even open until the first frost. Don't these people know they can be fined?"

Rhett, still busy with his own facts and figures, grinned. "I think they've bagged more than their limit of lawyers, too."

Molly stopped and stared at him. "Another one?" she asked, really surprised.

His grin got a little too feral for that poor kid on the stairs to see. "Wanna know the difference between a lawyer and a dead skunk on the road?"

"I know it." She was doing another quick scan of the room. "I don't suppose this was a cross-dressing lawyer."

"Why? You hopin' to recognize somebody?"

Molly's smile was no prettier. "A small, select list. All of whom have flies in the front of their shorts."

"Then this one definitely doesn't meet the height requirements."

Molly nodded. "That makes it, what, then? Two men and two women?"

Four lawyers. Molly wondered if there was some ethics investigation going on. Something that would explain this more than the simple "things happen in bunches" theory. After all, as she'd said, summer wasn't suicide season. It was murder season. Then she reached the bathroom and stopped theorizing.

Molly saw the arm first, outthrown as if trying to escape the disaster that was about to befall. She saw the gun, a heavy, large bore semiautomatic that had spatters of blood on it. She saw the silk and lace slip, the creamy bra beneath, the porcelain, pampered skin and long legs that were now stiff and soiled. She saw the mess that the poor maintenance crew was going to have to clean up after everybody left. Because whoever their victim was, she'd put that big gun in her mouth and pulled the trigger. And ended up wedged right between the toilet and the tub, what was left of her head against the wall.

"Jesus," Molly whispered, the smell in the close little room overwhelming. Musky and sharp, a little sweet, like old chicken left out in the trash. "She was serious."

Rhett looked in over her shoulder. "Women suicides used to be so simple. A coupla pills, a note, a little lipstick. Now, they want to be Dirty Harry. I'll tell you, Molly, if this is equality, I'm not so sure you should fight so hard."

"This ain't the equality
I'm
fighting for," she assured him, marking her outline with the victim's injuries. "We got a name? Family? All that good stuff?"

Rhett checked his notes. "Her name's Ryan, Mary Margaret. Single, no wants or warrants, address in the county."

Molly sighed, set her paperwork aside so she could bend to examine the body more closely. "Family?"

"Checkin' now."

"Transport's here!" Mort called from the door.

Molly nodded absently. "Send 'em in. I need to move her to do a complete exam."

No obvious tracks, no obvious bruising or abrasions. Molly wanted to check the victim's hands for defensive wounds, just in case. She'd wrap them in paper bags until they got the body downtown so they could check for blowback or residue that would prove the victim was the one holding the gun.

It should be a score. The injuries were commensurate with immediate-range injuries. The livor, where the blood had pooled inside her when she died, matched her present position. And her rigor panned out to be about seven or eight hours old. Molly would check the temperature to corroborate it, but it looked as if the couple downstairs was about right.

Molly could hear the clatter of the cart being dragged up the steps. She straightened to get her thermometer and Polaroid so she could get shots of the body before she moved it. Double the police shots with her own of the blood spatter pattern, the injuries, the placement of the gun just beyond the victim's right hand. When she told the family what happened, Molly would have to ask what hand the victim used. The last thing they needed was a closed suicide case where the gun was in the right hand of a left-handed woman.

Molly was at the front door checking her pictures when she heard the sudden squeal of tires out on the parking lot. A siren howled to life. Suddenly, there was a lot of running and yelling, and Mort was poised in the door like a jet on takeoff.

"Butler!" he yelled into the room. "Officer down!"

Rhett immediately lost interest in the bathroom. "Where?"

Mort could hardly stand still in the doorway. "On the move, Kingshighway southbound heading for Oakland. Myers got himself shot and taken with his own damn gun."

Rhett was almost dancing with impatience. "Shit! That's right down the block!"

Immediately, the suicide was put into perspective within the parameters of not only the justice system, but the medical one. Balance the effort given to a young woman who didn't care enough to sustain her own life against a known officer who was fighting to save his. Even Molly wanted to run help.

"Molly?" Rhett asked, turning on her, poised.

"Leave me the rookie," she said, and they ran.

The transport team took their place with the tarp on which they would lay out the victim so Molly could get a better look. Molly got out her thermometer and set it.

The uniform, a fresh-faced kid named Roscoe, turned up his walkie-talkie so they could listen. The evidence tech, now just waiting for Molly to be finished so he could take away the gun, stood with the rookie.

Molly took the victim's temperature and took more pictures, and all the while she listened to the terse chatter on the talkie Roscoe brought back up with him. She helped the transport team lift the body out of the bathroom onto the tarp so she could check the dorsal aspect for surprises, even though in her mind she was following the cars and helicopters along the side streets of the city She cataloged injury, personal effects, prescription medications, and a small bag of white powder the evidence tech already held that Molly didn't really think was Equal, and prayed for a man who needed her prayers, because her patient had already taken her chances and lost. Molly gathered the medications to carry along to her lab and thought briefly that she was going to have to find out what that bright blue capsule was she was beginning to see everywhere, even as she watched the hooded eyes of the men who waited by the radio.

The suicide, Mary Margaret Ryan, got Molly's attention. The cop, Bill Myers, got her anxiety.

And then, it all ended.

"Oh, Jesus!" came the stunned voice over the radio, breaking every rule. "They just threw him out!"

All activity in the room stopped. All eyes focused on the radio. Everyone waited, even though that tone of voice told them everything.

"Pursuit is continuing southbound on Kingshighway. Tan late-model Olds, Missouri vanity plates David-Ivan-Victor-Edgar-Robert. Eleven hundred block of South Kingshighway is blocked off. Watch commander is requested at scene, eleven-thirty-eight."

No request for paramedics.

"Let's get her moved," Molly told her team, because they were all needed somewhere else. "I'll call Winnie and let her know."

And then she had to get to Kingshighway, because the last thing any of them needed was for Bill Myers to be lying out there too long.

* * *

"Did you know Mary Margaret had a prescription for Prozac, Mrs. Ryan?" Molly asked three hours later.

Crouched in the corner of the nubby brown and blue plaid Sears country comfort couch, Mrs. Mary Jane Ryan held on to the box of tissues in her lap as if it were the ballast that kept her from slipping into a little ball of grief. A small woman with old eyes in a middle-aged face, she stared at the butterflies that decorated the top of the cardboard container much the way Molly watched Gene's mountains.

"Stress," Mary Margaret Ryan's mother answered in a whisper. "She has a lot of... stress. A big case. She wouldn't... she..."

She would. She had.

Molly focused on the questions on her sheet, half filled in, her own words terse and clinical. Her hands were trembling almost as badly as Mrs. Ryan's. It was a good thing the woman couldn't tell.

Molly's mind was still on Myers. She'd done her job, the same she'd done for Mary Margaret Ryan, but she'd done it more quickly. More quietly. She'd been ringed by a dozen squad cars with flashing lights and a herd of media trucks, the newspeople jostling with angry police.

At least she hadn't had to break the news to Bill's wife. There were at least three chaplains and a dozen senior officers for that. Molly had ushered his body back to her cold little morgue, though. She'd handed him over to the attendants and a somber Winnie and then fought her way back out through the news crews to talk to Mary Margaret Ryan's mother while the city police force mobilized to track down the tan Olds that had gotten out into the county.

Molly had work to do. She had to go in to the hospital at five for her next shift. She had to find out whether they'd caught the fifteen-year-old who'd shot Myers in the head with his own gun and then dumped him onto a busy street at sixty miles an hour.