Lethal Practice (20 page)

“In writing,” I added.

It helped. But they were still hesitating. “And of course I’ll sign a release of liability for myself,” I added.

That did it. Being responsible for blowing my case was apparently their biggest worry. I quickly signed triple forms proclaiming I was an ass and hadn’t the sense to do what they thought was good for me.

Muffy was breathing hard; each expelled breath ended in a weak whine. The wound, as best I could see in their headlights and the gray, belated start of dawn, looked surprisingly clean and straight. She must have been sliced from catching a fender edge on the first pass as we both leaped clear.

A few of the neighbors, shivering in their bathrobes, asked if I was all right. Someone offered to go back and lock the house.

From the ambulance kit I took a large sterile pad and put it over Muffy’s abdomen. I held it in place as the other two men lifted her gently, and, now unprotesting, onto the stretcher. I didn’t really know if all that stuff I’d said about being all right was true. As I stood and walked beside Muffy to the ambulance, I felt my knees start to buckle. I hoped that neither of the attendants noticed, but I caught the bigger guy checking his shirt pocket to make sure my signed release was handy.

As I climbed through the rear doors, I noticed the sign on the vehicle’s side panel. This was one of me rogue private companies we kept an eye on. But for a ride to the vet, I figured it didn’t matter, and got Muffy settled down in the back while the attendants climbed into the front.

“Siren, Doc?”

“Why the hell not?”

He hit the switch.

Never had the clientele of Buffalo’s leading animal hospital had an arrival like it. We’d phoned ahead in the ambulance, so Dr. Sophie had her team ready at the door. She was an old friend from shared premed classes during university days. Our arrival with full lights and siren raised her eyebrows, but she and her colleagues swept Muffy away and into the OR. I wished my unit were that fast.

I thanked the drivers and assured them I wouldn’t forget to call Zak and put in a good word.

After their departure I felt helpless with nothing to do. I was smeared with Muffy’s blood and juices from her innards. Awkwardly I took a seat in Sophie’s waiting room. Her other “patients” sniffed the gore on my shirt and backed away. The owners looked miffed that I’d gotten priority treatment. Muffy’s emergency surgery had pulled most of Sophie’s staff from conducting routine visits.

“Car accident,” I offered, hoping forgiveness would follow. I got a bunch of “Likely story!” stares instead.

I slunk down in my waiting room chair. It was a lot more comfortable than the ones in the ER.

Finally, I had a chance to think about what had just happened.

Someone had tried to kill me. Deliberately. Savagely. The intent of it scared me as much as having been so close to death.

I was alive only because of a fluke, a random slip throwing me half out of the way on their first pass. There was no logical reason I hadn’t been hurt. I couldn’t comfort myself much that I’d done anything to save myself— I hadn’t had a shred of control over what had happened. Except for sheer blind stupid luck, I’d probably be dead.

My worst fears had been true. Somehow I’d become a target and I didn’t have a clue why.

I could no longer explain away the footprints at the cabin or dismiss the figure on the golf green as an over-zealous watchman.

And the whispered warning to
back off?
Not knowing what it meant seemed likely to cost me my life.

My panic was reaching new heights, and I realized I was trembling like the proverbial leaf in the wind. So far I hadn’t been able to link the warning to Kingsly’s murder. I desperately tried to think of other explanations.

A doctor always lives with the possibility of coming face-to-face with a wacko, and it’s even more probable for doctors who deal with the walk-ins in emergency. But in twenty years I’d never had anyone try to hurt me. Anger, rage, blame in the face of unspeakable loss, yes— even threats, but never harm.

I had heard one story of a psychiatrist I’d been in medical school with who’d been targeted by a woman suffering erotomania. When he repeatedly rebuffed her obsessive advances, she had used her family connections with the mob to have his car bombed. He miraculously survived, but left town and changed his name.

Now someone was after me, and I didn’t know what I’d done. Someone I’d unknowingly crossed in emergency was possible, but unlikely. While I did have more run-ins than most with discontented patients or relatives in my role as chief of the department, as an acting clinician I’d never been sued for negligence. I didn’t take much comfort in that. It meant only that my errors in judgment had occurred within the conventions of reasonable care. This distinction didn’t rule out personal retaliation over somebody dying, but it lessened the danger of it. When cases did go bad, it was usually the disease that did the damage. I don’t know why—the grief and regret remained, including mine—but I had never felt at risk for whatever mistakes I’d committed. A bit of luck, and a lot of being careful, had so far, it seemed, resulted in, if not forgiveness, a lack of someone taking revenge. At least among the sane.

Psychiatric cases were another matter. Here even a slight, real or imagined, could have catastrophic consequences. I’d had my share of those, but again, in some context, with some reason—a diagnosed psychosis to explain it all. There was nothing recent, at least not that I could remember ... but there could have been a patient with some impending disaster I’d missed and then sent home. I might never know who I’d butchered—the emergency physician’s nightmare. And what about the un-diagnosed psychos and sickos whom I’d unknowingly cared for. What seething maniac had I treated for tonsillitis and unwittingly enraged?

No. After twenty years on the line, it was a mighty big coincidence to have randomly invoked such wrath now, little more than three days after Kingsly’s murder. The most probable reason for the attack on me had to be related to his killing. But why, I asked myself again, would Kingsly’s murderer be after me?

Slumped in the chair in the waiting room, I’d stopped shaking, but now I was stiffening up. I realized as I shifted in my chair that getting up was going to be significantly more painful than sitting down had been. I groaned as I stood. The other animals whined, much as their owners waiting with them probably wanted to do.

I limped over to the receptionist and asked her to call in to the OR and get an update. She looked annoyed, but she knew Sophie and I were friends, so she grudgingly complied, punching the appropriate speaker button and asking how long it would be. “Another thirty minutes!” blared out of the receiver, and that was all I got before she pointedly resumed her typing. She didn’t offer to get any progress report. I hadn’t the stomach to hear the worst from the likes of her anyway, and didn’t ask.

I limped back to my chair. The animals shuffled around a bit more and then settled again but watched me nervously. The owners made huffing noises and looked at their watches. I went back to my thoughts.

If not Kingsly’s killer, then who?

The only other unusual event was my threat to close emergency. I still couldn’t believe any sane person would murder me over that because of lost income. Then I recalled Kradic’s obvious but silent rage at our departmental meeting. Did all his unreasonable behavior hide a deeper, deadlier flaw? Had I set him off by publicly calling him on the carpet Sunday night? I didn’t know for sure, and this frightened me. Were there others in the department I wasn’t sure of? Could I have worked alongside a secret maniac all these years? And what about Hurst? What if he had murdered Kingsly and was coming after me because I was the one who had actually discovered it was murder? What if he thought I was getting too close to something that could expose him? My previous dread at what he might be capable of came flooding back.

I shivered some more, then stopped myself from thinking in this direction. I wanted to concentrate on logic and couldn’t give in to groundless speculation and fears. But fear was inevitable now. Until I knew who had tried to kill me, and why, it would pervade everything I did.

If there was a why. Maybe the killer didn’t need a reason; maybe he was one of those zombies who killed for the sake of killing. The professional term was a
homicidal psychopath.

The animals around me must have sensed my distress again, for they whined and shied away some more. The owners looked fed up with my effect on their pets.

Had I been followed? I wondered, as I thought back to that night and remembered the trailing headlights. Had Muffy spoiled the first attempt—or hadn’t she? This morning the killer hadn’t seemed the type to be put off by a barking dog. If the same person had been at my door two nights ago and wanted me dead, a dog wouldn’t have stopped the attack. They could just as easily have killed Muffy and then me.

Perhaps the other night hadn’t been a murder run after all. But then why had I been followed? And what had I done in the meantime to up the ante?

Janet! I’d forgotten to call her, and I didn’t want her to find out about Muffy from a neighbor.

I asked the receptionist for the phone. I got an icy “Certainly, Doctor.” I was sure that the emphasis on “Doctor” was a warning to the civilians in the room that they wouldn’t be making any free calls.

Getting through to Janet’s hospital was the same pain in the ass as it had been when I called my own department, except Janet’s hospital was computerized. A cheery voice kept telling me to punch a number if I wanted one department, another number for the floor, and a third for the exact nursing station. When I finally got to a human voice, it was the janitor in the case room cleaning up between deliveries.

“Doctor not here. Went home in big hurry.”

“Shit!”

“Pardon?”

“Sorry. Thank you.”

I dialed home. Janet picked up on one ring. She was sobbing. I had never heard her cry.

“Janet, what’s happened?” I immediately thought of the baby.

“Please, come home.”

“What’s happened?”

“Just come home now—please!”

And she hung up.

She never even asked about Muffy. Whatever had happened, it was bad.

I told the receptionist to call me at the house as soon as Sophie had Muff out of surgery.

I got lucky with a cab, but during the ride my sense of dread increased.

Two cop cars flashing blue and red outside our front door confirmed it. I shoved a fistful of bills at the driver, jumped out of the cab, and ran inside.

The first assault was the stink. Feces. Smeared over the hallway and up the staircase. Janet, pale and hunched, sat on the couch beside a uniformed cop. He was shyly holding a salad bowl. More smells; she’d been vomiting.

“Janet!” I moved to her side. A detective seated across from her quickly got up, as if to protect her.

“It’s okay, I’m her husband.”

Janet took my hand, weakly squeezed, then grabbed the salad bowl and retched again.

I put my arm around her and could feel her trembling. Through chattering teeth she whispered, “Sorry.”

Her shaking subsided to shivers. She handed the bowl to me. The uniformed cop looked relieved.

“Mrs. Sharp called me at work,” Janet said. Mrs. Sharp was the neighborhood busybody.

“Said you were all right but Muffy was bad. I signed out and came home to this.” Her helpless expression as she looked around rendered the destruction even more vicious. This part of the house had been attacked. I didn’t know yet if anything had been taken, but the room I was sitting in had been slashed, torn apart, and then smeared with excrement. The wallpaper along the staircase leading upstairs was shredded and the chandelier in the entranceway was ripped out of the ceiling and left dangling from its wires. Broken lightbulbs and pieces of glass crunched underfoot. The stereo I had listened to the night before lay bent and cracked open in the fireplace. It must have been thrown against the bricks.

“It’s worse on the second floor.” Janet spoke quietly into clenched hands. “The bastards really destroyed the baby’s room.” She started trembling again. I had my arm around her shoulders. I pulled her to lean against me, but she resisted and stayed rigid.

“I want to know what the hell is going on!” she said, taking back the salad bowl.

The uniformed cop got up and went into the kitchen. The plumbing was intact; I heard him washing his hands.

The detective leaned toward us. “So do we,” he said, and then ignored me as he picked up the questioning I had interrupted.

“So, when you arrived, you found the back door locked, and from the outside there was no evidence of forced entry?”

Shit. In the lane. I remembered a voice behind me, indistinct, a presumed neighbor.
“I’ll go make sure the house is locked.”
I had never even looked to see who it was; I’d been focused on Muff.

“Oh, God,” I muttered.

The detective sighed. Janet gave me her “you again” glance and tried to finish her statement. I think talking kept the heaves away.

But I interrupted anyway. “I know how they got in,” I confessed.

The detective got a little more interested.

Janet said, “This better be good,” and handed the bowl back to me, still keeping a close eye on it, and swallowing a lot.

“No, I mean it,” I went on. “It must’ve been the person who offered to lock the house.”

She looked up, startled. “What?”

“Who did you tell to lock up the house?” The detective was suddenly half off his chair.

“I don’t know.”

Janet had pulled away again and was holding her hand over her mouth. I think I heard her mutter something about “turkey,” but I was explaining to an increasingly incredulous cop that after almost being run down and trying to save our dog, I wasn’t exactly keeping tabs on voices in the crowd.

“You didn’t report a deliberate hit-and-run to the police?”

“I didn’t have time to report it.”

Janet was holding her head.

The detective opened a pad. He looked like he was going to write me up for stupidity. “Who’s ‘they’?”