Fallen (25 page)

The temperature was colder two stories down in the sub-basement. Sara pulled her lab coat closed as she walked past the records department. Unlike the old days when she’d interned at Grady, there was no need to stand in line for charts. Everything was automated, a patient’s information only as far away as the computerized tablets that worked on the hospital’s intranet. X-rays were on the larger computer monitors in the rooms, and all medications were coded to patient armbands. As the only publicly funded hospital left in Atlanta, Grady was constantly teetering on bankruptcy, but at least it was trying to go out in style.

Sara stopped in front of the thick double doors that separated the morgue from the rest of the hospital. She waved her badge in front of the reader. There was a sudden whoosh of changing air pressure as the insulated steel doors swung open.

The attendant seemed surprised to find Sara in his space. He was as close to goth as you could get while wearing blue hospital scrubs. Everything about him announced that he was too cool for his job. His dyed black hair was pulled into a ponytail. His glasses looked like they had belonged to John Lennon. His eyeliner was something out of a Cleopatra movie. To Sara, the paunch at his stomach and the Fu Manchu made him look more like Spike, Snoopy’s brother. “You lost?”

“Junior,” she read off his nametag. He was young, probably Nan’s age. “I was wondering if someone from the Fulton ME’s office was here.”

“Larry. He’s loading up in the back. Is there a problem?”

“No, I just want to pick his brain.”

“Good luck finding it.”

A skinny Hispanic man came out of the back room. His scrubs hung on him like a bathrobe. He was around Junior’s age, which was
to say that he had probably been in diapers a few weeks ago. “Very funny,
jefe.
” He punched Junior in the arm. “Whatchu need, Doc?”

This wasn’t going as planned. “Nothing. Sorry to bother you guys.” She started to turn away, but Junior stopped her.

“You’re Dale’s new lady, right? He said you were a tall redhead.”

Sara bit her lip. What was Dale doing hanging around all these ten-year-olds?

Junior’s face broke out into a grin. “Dr. Linton, I presume.”

She would’ve lied but for her badge hanging off her jacket. And her name embroidered over the breast pocket. And the fact that she was the only doctor with red hair working in the hospital.

Larry offered, “I’d be pleased to help Dale’s new squeeze.”

“Hells yeah,” Junior chimed in.

Sara plastered a smile onto her face. “How do you two know Dale?”

“B-ball, baby.” Larry feigned a hoop shot. “What is the nature of your emergency?”

“No emergency—” she said, before realizing he was just being funny. “I had a question about the shooting yesterday.”

“Which one?”

This time he wasn’t joking. Asking about a shooting in Atlanta was like asking about the drunk at a football game. “Sherwood Forest. The officer-involved shooting.”

Larry nodded. “Damn, that was freaky. Guy had a belly full of H.”

“Heroin?” Sara asked.

“Packed into balloons. The gunshot split ’em open like …” He asked Junior, “Shit, man, what’re them things with sugar in ’em?”

“Dip Stick?”

“No.”

“Is it chocolate?”

“No, man, like in the paper straw.”

Sara suggested, “Pixie Stix?”

“Yeah, that’s right. Dude went out on an epic high.”

Sara waited through some fist bumping between the two. “This was the Asian man?”

“No, the Puerto Rican. Ricardo.” He put an exotic spin on the r’s.

“I thought he was Mexican.”

“Yo, ’cause we all look alike?”

Sara didn’t know how to answer him.

Larry laughed. “That’s cool. I’m just playin’ ya. Sure, he’s Puerto Rican, like my moms.”

“Did they get a last name on him?”

“No. But, he got the Neta tattooed on his hand.” He pointed to the webbing between his thumb and index finger. “It’s a heart with an
N
in the middle.”

“Neta?” Sara had never heard the name before.

“Puerto Rican gang. Crazy dudes want to break off from the U.S. My moms was all up in that shit when we left. All ‘we gotta get out from the rule of the colonial oppressors.’ Then she gets here and she’s all, ‘I gotta get me one’a them big-screen plasma TVs like your aunt Frieda.’ Word.” Another fist bump with Junior.

“You’re sure that’s a gang symbol—the
N
inside a heart?”

“One of ’em. Everybody who joins up has to bring in more people.”

“Like Wiccans,” Junior provided.

“Exactly. Lots of ’em drop out or move on. Ricardo there can’t be big-time. He don’t got the fingers.” Larry held up his hand again, this time with his index finger crossed in front of his middle finger. “Usually looks like this, with the Puerto Rican flag around the wrist. They’re all about independence. At least that’s what they say.”

Sara remembered what Will had told her. “I thought Ricardo had the Los Texicanos tattoo on his chest?”

“Yeah, like I said, a lot of ’em drop out or move on. Brother must’ve moved on and up. Neta ain’t got pull here like Texicanos.” He hissed air through his teeth. “Scary stuff, man. Them Texicanos don’t screw around.”

“Does the ME’s office know all of this?”

“They sent the pictures to the gang unit. Neta’s the top organization in PR. They’ll be in the Bible.”

The Gang Bible was the book used by police officers to track gang signs and movements. “Was there anything on the Asian men? The other victims?”

“One was a student. Some kind of math whiz. Won all kinds of prizes or some shit.”

Sara remembered Hironobu Kwon’s photo from the news. “I thought he was at Georgia State?” State wasn’t a bad school, but a math prodigy would end up at Georgia Tech.

“That’s all I know. They’re doing the other guy right now. That apartment fire got us backed up big-time. Six bodies.” He shook his head. “Two dogs. Man, I hate when it’s dogs.”

Junior said, “I feel ya, bro.”

“Thank you,” Sara said. “Thank you both.”

Junior pounded the side of his fist against his chest. “Be good to my man Dale.”

Sara left before more fists were bumped. She dug her hand into her pocket, trying to find her cell phone as she walked down the hallway. Most of the staff carried so many electronic devices that they were all likely going to die of radiation poisoning. She had a BlackBerry she received lab reports and hospital communiqués on as well as an iPhone for personal use. Her hospital cell phone was a flip-style that had previously belonged to someone with very sticky hands. Two pagers were clipped to her coat pocket, one for the emergency department and one for the pediatrics ward. Her personal phone was slim and usually the last thing she found, which was the case this time.

She scrolled through the numbers, pausing on Amanda Wagner’s name, then scrolling back up to Will Trent. His phone rang twice before he picked up.

“Trent.”

Sara was inexplicably tongue-tied by the sound of his voice. In the silence, she could hear wind blowing, the sound of children playing.

He said, “Hello?”

“Hi, Will—sorry.” She cleared her throat. “I was calling because I talked to someone at the ME’s office. Like you asked.” She felt her face turning red. “Like Amanda asked.”

He mumbled something, probably to Amanda. “What’d you find out?”

“The Texicanos victim, Ricardo. No last name as of yet, but he was probably Puerto Rican.” She waited while he relayed this information to Amanda. She asked the same question Sara had. Sara answered, “He had a tattoo on his hand for a gang, the Neta, which is in Puerto Rico. The man I talked with said Ricardo probably switched affiliations when he came to Atlanta.” Again, she waited for him to tell Amanda. “He also had a belly full of heroin.”

“Heroin?” His voice went up in surprise. “How much?”

“I’m not sure. The man I spoke with said the powder was packed in balloons. When Faith shot him, the heroin was released. That alone would’ve killed him.”

Will told Amanda as much, then came back on the line. “Amanda says thank you for checking into this.”

“I’m sorry there’s not more.”

“That’s great what you came up with.” He clarified, “I mean, thank you, Dr. Linton. This is all very useful information to have.”

She knew he couldn’t talk in front of Amanda, but she didn’t want to let him go. “How’s it going on your end?”

“The prison was a bust. We’re standing outside Hironobu Kwon’s house right now. He lived with his mother in Grant Park.” He was less than fifteen minutes away from Grady. “The neighbor says his mother should be home soon. I guess she’s probably making arrangements. She lives across the street from the zoo. We had to park about a mile away. Or, I did. Amanda made me drop her off.” He finally paused for breath. “How are you doing?”

Sara smiled. He seemed to want to stay on the phone as much as she did. “Did you get any sleep last night?”

“Not much. How about you?”

She tried to think of something flirty to say, but settled on, “Not much.”

Amanda’s voice was too muffled to understand, but Sara got the tone. Will said, “So, I’ll talk to you later. Thank you again, Dr. Linton.”

Sara felt foolish as she ended the call. Maybe she should go back up to the lounge and gossip with Nan.

Or maybe she should talk to Dale Dugan and nip this in the bud before they both got any more embarrassed. Sara took out her hospital BlackBerry and looked up Dale’s email address, then started to enter it into her iPhone. She would ask him to meet her in the cafeteria so they could talk this through. Or maybe she should suggest the parking lot. She didn’t want to cause more gossip than was already circulating.

Up ahead, the elevator bell dinged and she caught sight of Dale. He was laughing with one of the nurses. Junior must’ve told him she was down here. Sara chickened out. She opened the first door she came to, which happened to be the records department. Two older women with matching, tightly groomed perms sat behind desks piled with charts. They were typing furiously on their computer keyboards and barely looked up at Sara.

One of them asked, “Help you?” turning the page on the chart opened beside her.

Sara stood there, momentarily unsure of herself. She realized that somewhere in the back of her mind, she had been thinking about the records office since she got on the elevator. She dropped her iPhone back into her coat pocket.

“What is it, darlin’?” the woman asked. They were both staring at Sara now.

She held up her hospital ID. “I need an old chart from nineteen …” She did the math quickly in her head. “Seventy-six, maybe?”

The woman handed her a pad and paper. “Give me the name. That’ll make it easier.”

Sara knew even as she wrote down Will’s name that what she was
doing was wrong, and not just because she was breaking federal privacy laws and risking immediate termination. Will had been at the Atlanta Children’s Home from infancy. There wouldn’t have been a family physician managing his care. All of his medical needs would have been handled through Grady. His entire childhood was stored here, and Sara was using her hospital ID to gain access to it.

“No middle name?” the woman asked.

Sara shook her head. She didn’t trust herself to speak.

“Gimme a minute. These won’t be in the computer yet or you’d be able to pull them up on your tablet. We’ve barely dipped our toe into 1970.” She was out of her chair and through the door marked “File Room” before Sara could tell her to stop.

The other woman went back to her typing, her long red fingernails making a sound like a cat running across a tile floor. Sara looked down at her shoes, which were stained with God knows what from this morning’s cases. In her mind, she went over the possible culprits, but as hard as she tried, she could not shake the feeling that what she was doing was absolutely and without a doubt the most unethical thing she had ever done in her life. What’s more, it was a complete betrayal of Will’s trust.

And she couldn’t do it. She wouldn’t do it.

This wasn’t the way Sara operated. She was normally a forthright person. If she wanted to know about Will’s suicide attempt, or any details about his childhood, then she should ask him, not sneak around his back and look at his medical chart.

The woman was back. “No William, but I found a Wilbur.” She had a file tucked under her arm. “Nineteen seventy-five.”

Sara had used paper charts the majority of her career. Most healthy kids had a chart with twenty or so pages by the time they reached eighteen years of age. An unhealthy kid’s file could run around fifty. Will’s chart was over an inch thick. A decaying rubber band held together faded sheets of yellow and white paper.

“No middle name,” the woman said. “I’m sure he had one at some point, but a lot of these kids fell through the cracks back then.”

Her partner supplied, “Ellis Island and Tuskegee rolled up into one.”

Sara reached for the file, then stopped herself. Her hand hovered in the air.

“You all right, darlin’?” The woman glanced back at her office mate, then to Sara. “You need to sit down?”

Sara dropped her hand. “I don’t think I need that after all. I’m sorry to waste your time.”

“Are you sure?”

Sara nodded. She could not remember the last time she had felt this awful. Even her run-in with Angie Trent hadn’t produced this amount of guilt. “I’m so sorry.”

“No need to apologize. Felt good to get up.” She started to tuck the file under her arm but the rubber band broke, sending papers flying onto the floor.

Automatically, Sara bent down to help. She gathered the pages together, willing herself not to read the words. There were lab reports printed in dot matrix, reams of chart notations, and what looked like an ancient Atlanta police report. She blurred her vision, praying she wouldn’t pick up a word or a sentence.

“Look at this.”

Sara looked up. It was a natural thing to do. The woman held a faded Polaroid picture in her hand. The shot was a close-up of a child’s mouth. A small silver ruler was beside a laceration running the width of the philtrum, the midline groove between the top of the lip and nose. The injury wasn’t from a tumble or bump. The impact had been significant enough to rend the flesh in two, revealing the teeth. Thick black sutures pulled together the wound. The skin was puffy and irritated. Sara was more accustomed to seeing this kind of baseball stitching in a morgue, not on a child’s face.