Fallen (21 page)

Lydia stood from the chair and paced.

“I know about Elise Brandt being in the ER last week. That you contacted the police—”

“I went by protocol.”

“Although Mrs. Brandt assured you she wasn’t a victim of domestic violence.”

“
I went by protocol
,” Lydia repeated. “Any time an injury appears to not be accidental, it’s my responsibility to contact the police. That’s the requirement within the state.”

“It’s not a hard mandate,” Solomon reminded. “Unless it’s a child, or a disabled or elderly person, it’s up to the treating physician’s discretion.”

Lydia tried to rein in her frustration. “Elise Brandt’s being
abused
. She’s been here twice now with suspicious injuries. She gave indications that led me to believe she would be willing to talk to the police.”

“But, ultimately, she didn’t file charges.” He rubbed at the red marks the glasses had left on the bridge of his nose. “As a physician, that’s where your involvement should have stopped. Did it?”

Fuming, Lydia didn’t answer.

“Mrs. Brandt disappeared over the weekend and took a large sum of money with her. According to Mr. Brandt, his wife has substance-abuse problems, which is why he’s desperate to find her. He’s afraid she may use the money to purchase drugs and harm herself. He’s convinced you know where she is. Do you?”

“No.”

“And if you did?”

She didn’t reply. Solomon’s mouth pressed into a hard line.

Lydia shook her head in disbelief. “Brandt
beats
and terrorizes his wife. I can’t believe you’re condoning—”

“I’m not condoning
anything
.” Solomon’s face had reddened, and he appeared a little angry himself. “But I
am
looking out for the best interests of this hospital, which is
my
job. Bart Rosedale—the owner of Southern Food Distributors—sits on our board and contributes a great deal of money through an annual endowment. He insists Brandt’s a good businessman. He has a contract to supply his clubs. And to his knowledge, no complaints have
ever
been filed against Brandt by his wife.”

Lydia gnawed at her lip. “So what happens now?”

A long moment passed before he said, “I told Bart I’d talk to you, and I have. I’ll assure him you know nothing about Elise Brandt’s disappearance. And I’ll hope to hell that’s true.”

“Thank you,” she said softly.

“You’re a damn fine ER doctor, Lydia. One of our best. But in the future, refer cases like this to a social worker, where they belong, and back out of it. Personal involvement will wear you down. There’s a
reason
we have to stay objective.”

She felt guilty for the concern she saw in his eyes. Lydia recalled how caring Abe had been following Tyler’s death. He had been the one to approve her request for an extended leave of absence, the one who had promised her she would still have a job whenever she was ready to return. She hated the situation they were placed in.

“Bart Rosedale might think he knows Brandt, but Brandt’s not a good man,” she said. “The hospital shouldn’t be accepting money from him.”

“Put your business hat on, Lydia. We’re a large public hospital that barely manages to operate in the black. Hell, more often than not, we
don’t
. The reality is, we can’t afford to pick and choose our contributors. The devil himself could show up here with a check on the end of a pitchfork, and we’d cash it. It’s just the way things are.”

He pushed himself up from behind the desk, signaling the end of their conversation. Walking her to the door, he opened it for her. “Happy birthday, by the way.”

He had most likely seen the ridiculously large bouquet of roses Rick had sent to the ER. Thanking him, Lydia departed through the corridor toward the elevator. Once she was out of his sight, however, she stopped in front of the windows overlooking the covered passenger bridge between the hospital and university and tried to collect herself. She hadn’t been aware of Elise having anything with her but a small duffel containing clothes. If she
had
taken money from their home, Lydia figured she deserved it. Maybe it would help her start a new life.

But Lydia herself had fallen into a black hole she couldn’t climb out of. She’d crossed a line where Brandt was concerned. She just wondered how far he was willing to take this. Last night, after the obscenity-laden phone call, there had been two more calls, although both times she answered, no one spoke back. Her caller ID had listed all of the calls as unknown.

Arriving inside the ER a few minutes later, she noticed the activity had finally slowed, part of the daily ebb and flow. As she went to the patient-tracking board to review the ever-changing log of which physicians were treating which cases—a diabetic with a skin ulcer, a suspected cardiac arrhythmia—Roe walked by.

“Any update on the mom and child?” Lydia asked, noting that a cystic fibrosis patient waiting on a lung transplant was in bay three. She’d gotten to know her well over the past year.

“Mother’s still in surgery, but she’s hanging in there. We found the husband. He’s upstairs with the little girl. Neuro’s running tests to determine the severity of the TBI.”

Traumatic brain injury.
Lydia felt a heaviness inside her.

“Do you have a break soon? There’s birthday cake in the lounge. Some of the interns have been eyeing it, but I told them hands off until you were ready.”

“Thanks, Roe,” she said, appreciating the effort. Lydia wasn’t in the mood to celebrate, but there was no point in ruining it for everyone. She glanced at the wall clock. “If things stay slow, maybe in fifteen minutes?”

“I’ll alert the hungry bastards.” Roe nodded to a ledge behind the admissions desk that held various files and parcels. “There’s a package that came for you, too.”

A brown shipping box sat next to Rick’s roses. Natalie’s gift. She’d been hinting it was something special, piquing Lydia’s curiosity. Her sister had a knack for selecting unusual presents from the shops in the French Quarter.

She went to the carton, which bore her name and the hospital’s address on a typed label. Borrowing scissors from a desk drawer, she used its blades to slice through the cardboard, then removed the smaller box inside, wrapped in pretty teal paper. The box felt rather light. Knowing Natalie and her libido, it was probably some barely-there piece of lingerie.

She removed the satin bow and opened the lid. Lydia’s heart dropped into her stomach. She threw the package to the floor and scrambled backward.

Wasps.

Dozens of them.

Most appeared dead, but a few crawled over the tissue paper inside the box while the heartier ones lifted to the air in angry, buzzing flight. The corpse of a small mouse—tongue hanging out, abdomen ripped open—lay amid the bloodstained tissue. Skin prickling, Lydia quickly checked her wrists and arms. She hadn’t felt a sting. With a startled cry, she brushed one off her scrub top, instantly realizing the foolishness of that reflexive move. She’d left the EpiPen in her lab coat in her locker.

“What the hell?” Jamaal exclaimed, returning from break.

“Get that out of here!” Roe ordered, rushing over. Lydia grabbed someone’s jacket from the back of a chair and tossed it to Jamaal, who threw it over the wasps remaining inside the box. Cursing, he stomped on several more creeping along the floor tiles.

“You stung, Lydia?” Roe asked, eyes wide.

Lydia’s breath came in cramped waves. She couldn’t be certain since her body had launched into fight-or-flight mode, but she felt none of the immediate symptoms—the dizziness, the profuse sweating, her throat swelling closed.

“I’m okay, I think,” she said unevenly.

“Call security,” Roe instructed Jamaal.

Lydia laid a hand on his arm, stopping him. “No.”

“Lydia—”

Despite her quivering muscles, she shook her head. “Don’t call them.”

Chapter Seventeen

Ryan recognized Vanessa
Parks as one of the women who’d been waiting for Lamar Simmons outside the precinct the night he had been brought in for questioning. She’d told them Simmons had cut her with a broken bottle and busted two of her ribs for refusing a john. Vanessa wanted retribution. Eyes bright with anger, she’d revealed from her hospital bed that she had been a passenger in his car the night he dumped LaShonda Butler’s body.

An addict herself, it was questionable whether Vanessa would make a credible witness, but at least they had enough now to charge Simmons with murder. Exiting the room alongside Mateo, Ryan carried her written statement.

“You see the tracks on her arm?” Mateo asked. “She’ll recant as soon as Simmons hooks her up again.”

“Or after he threatens to do to her what he did to LaShonda.” Despite his time in Homicide, Ryan hadn’t numbed to the violence. Vanessa’s injury was gruesome, the cut running nearly from her right eye to her jaw. But it also wasn’t lost on him that she had been blasé about the murder of eighteen-year-old LaShonda. She’d revealed what she knew only when it would benefit her. As they walked down the corridor, a uniformed officer exited the elevator.

“No one goes in except medical staff,” Ryan instructed him, indicating the room they had just left. “Simmons is a light-skinned African American, late thirties, six-foot-two with a snake tattoo on his neck. Be on watch.”

“You got it, Detective.”

They could keep Simmons away from Vanessa while she was here. Afterward, they would have fewer options.

“I’ll start the paperwork for the arrest warrant,” Mateo said as the officer took a chair outside the room. “The real bitch will be finding Simmons to serve it.”

“Even if we can’t locate him, he’s going to show up here eventually.”

With a grunt of agreement, Mateo dug into his pocket for his cell phone. “Let’s get a plainclothes on the floor, too.”

Ryan turned when someone called his name. Roe Goodman, one of the senior ER nurses, came toward him, her stethoscope bumping against her chest. She wore brightly patterned medical scrubs. They had known one another for years. He left Mateo to make the call and met her. “Roe.”

“Lydia must’ve called you, after all.” Appearing relieved, she shook her head, her short dreadlocks swinging. “Thank the Lord. I’ve been worried that woman’s lost her mind.”

“What’re you talking about?”

Her mouth fell open slightly. “You’re
not
here about the wasps?”

“I’m here taking a statement from a witness.” Concern filled him. “What about wasps—was Lydia stung?”

“She’s fine. She had a scare, is all.” Roe hesitated. “She isn’t going to like me telling you, but that’s just too bad. You need to talk to her, Ryan. Find out what’s going on. Someone sent her a box of wasps this morning, wrapped up like a present.”

Surprise and anger hardened his stomach. “Did she open it?”

“She thought it was a birthday gift from her sister.” Roe frowned, rubbing absently at her arms. “There was a mutilated mouse inside, too.”

Lydia had made enemies in her job just as he had—junkie patients she’d denied drugs to, thugs with knife or bullet wounds she’d notified the police about. But his mind shot directly to Ian Brandt. “How’d it arrive?”

“Dropped off this morning. Security cameras show some greasy-haired kid leaving it at the front desk in the main lobby. The receptionist’s new and didn’t ask questions. She just accepted it and let him go on his way.” Roe laid a hand on his arm, her tone confidential. “Lydia didn’t want security called up. I called them anyway, so you know I’m on her shit list. She downplayed it and persuaded them not to bring in the police, saying it was just a prank and to let it go.”

Ryan frowned hard.
Damn it, Lydia
. “Where’s she now?”

“She’s got M&Ms today. How’s that for a birthday?”

He was familiar with the mortality-and-morbidity briefings in which doctors reviewed cases where mistakes had been made. They were unpleasant but necessary. “How long’s it been going on?”

“Over an hour now. Shouldn’t be much longer.”

Off the phone, Mateo came over, attuned to the seriousness of their conversation. “They’re sending Washington to help out. What’s up?”

Ryan gave him the rundown, still fuming over the fact that Lydia hadn’t wanted to notify the police. What he wanted to know was why. Whether she’d been stung or not, the threat was real. Somebody had made an effort to find out personal information about her—that today was her birthday, that she had a severe allergy to bee and wasp venom. He took this seriously even if she didn’t.

“Go back without me and start the paperwork for the warrant.” He handed Vanessa Parks’s statement to Mateo. It would take awhile to get the DA’s approval, fill out the forms and find a judge to sign them, anyway. “I’ll call the captain and tell him I need to take some lost time.”

Mateo nodded. “Sure, man.”

“But don’t go looking for Simmons without me.”

“Not a chance. Just take care of this with Lydia.”

The elevator opened, and a throng of hospital visitors exited, bearing a fruit basket and bobbing helium balloons. His eyes searched the crowd. Simmons wasn’t among them. As Mateo got on and the doors slid shut again, Ryan returned his attention to Roe.