MURDER IN RETROSPECT (Allie Griffin Mysteries Book 5) (3 page)

              Hospital cafeterias are dismal places, full of folks in between good and bad news, or bad and worse news. The coffee's usually terrible too.

              The Verdenier General hospital, for all its shining, noiseless modernity, had coffee on par with just about every other hospital in America.

              It was late in the day, around six in the evening, and after admitting Del, Allie went and tracked down Lucy Wainwright. The woman had agreed to meet her for coffee at six.

              She sat there now, waiting for the woman to arrive.

              Looking around, she noticed the people sitting around her. How many of them, she thought, were here because they were waiting, either for good news or for bad? No matter how you looked at it, this place was the hospital equivalent of purgatory. Neither good nor bad, just a place to sit and wait.

              Sitting diagonally from her was a young man in his twenties in hospital scrubs. He sat hunched over an open journal, his hair spilling out in front of him. He picked his head up and looked around dreamily; fixated on some point either in the real world or far off inside his mind, and then he dropped his head down again and scribbled.

              Allie watched him as she waited, waited for Lucy, waited for her coffee to cool to the point where it wouldn’t scald her to death. Everyone in here was waiting;
everyone except for junior Ernest Hemingway over there.
Allie's vision of whom was suddenly obscured by the form of Lucy Wainwright, holding a cup of steaming coffee in her hand.

              The woman sat down, the perfect picture of a hospital nurse run ragged yet holding steadfast to her post.

              After a few pleasantries, Allie took her first sip of Verdenier General's finest blend, winced, and said, "So, what do you remember about my husband? Don’t be shy."

              Lucy Wainwright smiled, a fond remembrance relaxing her tired features. "I remember he was a good man. Kind, and he could be very funny when he wanted to be, and very serious when he wanted to be. We saw both sides often. He was relentless in surgery—always at the top of his game—and he expected you to be there right with him. I liked it; it kept me on my toes. I can’t say the same for others, I'm sorry to say."

              "Don’t be sorry," said Allie, dumping the third of what she assumed would be fifty-three packets of sugar into her mud water.

              "Yeah, there were folks who didn’t like to work with someone like that. I don’t know why. As I said, it kept you on your toes. We need people like that everywhere, but especially in places where people's lives are at stake. Anyway, I'm sorry, I liked him."

              "You're sorry that you liked him?" Allie said with a smile.

              "No, I'm sorry that I admitted there were people who didn’t."

              "Listen, you think I didn’t know my husband? I'm the first to say it. He was a pain; a lovable pain. You were with him the day he died."

              The woman's face contorted with painful memory. "That's right. He collapsed right next to me. We had to scramble to get everything under control and tend to him at the same time. What an awful day. I still can’t remember it without feeling some of those emotions. It was such a shock to all of us. He seemed like he was in great health."

              "Heart condition."

              "Yeah, I know. But there was just this feeling I had. Hard to describe. Do you believe in intuition? Real intuition?"

              "I do and I don’t. I think intuition is a good thing to help you make a choice. But it's like flipping a coin. Nothing in science or nature says that it knows any more than you do what the outcome of any situation will be. But it is good to follow intuition, if you trust yourself enough."

              "I believe the same way. And I had intuition about Tom's death. That it was something that just shouldn’t have happened the way it happened. I can’t explain. I wish I could. I've been living with the memory and this nagging feeling surrounding it all these years. That blackout, it was just awful."

              Allie paused, mid-sip, swallowed, and said, "Did you just say 'blackout'?"             

              "Mm hmm," said Lucy Wainwright. "That's what caused it all, right? I mean—"

              "Excuse me," said Allie, "but I don’t remember anything about a blackout."

              Lucy Wainwright stared quizzically at Allie. "My God, why would you? Allie, I'm so sorry. There was so much that went on that day, and after. Listen, I don’t know how much you know about this story, but I'll try to give it to you from the top." Lucy leaned in. "This doesn’t go past this table."

              Allie shot a quick glance over at Hemingway, and then nodded.

              Lucy Wainwright took a healthy—or not so healthy depending on one's perspective—sip of coffee. Her voice became soft, and grave.

              "The patient's heart had stopped. He was dying on the table. Tom, incredible man that he was, began to resuscitate him. It was a sight to see; an internal cardiac massage. I'll spare you the details, but let me say that I've never seen anyone keep his cool like that, especially when, about a minute later—or thirty seconds, who knows—the lights went out completely. I don’t know if you remember the summer then. Freakishly hot. There were outages all over the place. The lights, the power, everything was out."

              "I don’t understand," said Allie, "don’t hospitals have backup generators?"

              "They do. This one failed. I don’t remember because of all the chaos, but later on I heard it was something like thirty seconds before the thing powered up and we had backup power. Now thirty seconds may not seem like much, but let me tell you, in a life or death situation..."

              Allie held up her hand. "'Nuff said."

              "We were lucky. I mean, really, like, the gods must’ve been watching lucky. We didn’t lose anyone that day on account of the power failure. And Tom, he was there the whole time resuscitating that man on the table—didn’t stop once—I couldn’t believe it. He succeeded. The lights came back up. Equipment rebooted. And that's when Tom stepped back from the table and collapsed. I mean, resuscitating a dying patient in that manner is stressful enough, but then to have to continue in the dark with everyone panicking all around you? It was just too much given his heart condition, I guess."

              Allie found there were no words coming to her mind. None at all. There was only a blank space there with an image of her wonderful Tom, looking sexy in scrubs with his kind eyes and his strong brow.

              "It's ok, Allie," said Lucy, passing a napkin over the table.

              Allie took it and dabbed at the corners of her eyes.

              "He was a hero," said Lucy. "That's how he died. A hero. You should be proud."

              "Oh, I am." Words came back to her. And the image she had in her head was no longer of Tom, but of something terribly wrong in the electrical bowels of Verdenier General.

#

              She made the call from her car.

              "
Verdenier General, how may I direct your call?
"

              If only she didn’t have to sit through fifteen minutes of Muzak before hearing this woman's voice.

              "I need to speak with the head of technology." She looked at her computer screen, which displayed the web page listing Verdenier General's personnel. "Richard Teller? Is he there?"

              "
Hold on, I'll connect you...
"

              About a minute and a half more of Burt Bacharach, and then, "
Teller here.
"

              "Yes, hello, Mr. Teller, my name is Allie Griffin and I'm looking for some information regarding a power outage at the hospital some time ago."

              A pause, and then, "
Ok?
"

              "This was about six years ago."

              "
Ok?
"

              "A power outage was accompanied by a corresponding failure of the hospital's backup—"

              "
What was your name again?
"

              "Allie Griffin."

              "
And where are you calling from?
"

              "I'm doing some independent research."

              "
Listen, that matter is settled and closed and no one is interested anymore
."

              "Mr. Teller, I—"

              "
I have a lot of things to do today.
"

              "I understand that, and I—"

              "
Well then you should have no problem understanding that I have a lot more important things to do than to revisit an accident from six years ago. Goodbye, Miss Griffin."

              And hung up.

              Allie fumed. There was no call for such curtness on the phone from a total—

             
Accident
, he'd said

              Interesting choice of words.

              The next day, she went back to the hospital and asked to meet with Richard Teller in person.

              He was nothing as she’d expected him to be. He was a short man, stocky, with snow-white hair and thick bags underneath his eyes. His entire face seemed to droop away from his forehead, and he looked not so much like a busy man than an extremely tired man.

              "How can I help you?" he said.

              "Mr. Teller, I'm Allie Griffin."

              He looked at her quizzically. "Where do I know that name from?"

              She looked right into his eyes. "We spoke on the phone yesterday? It was about the power outage from six years ago."

              At some point while she was speaking, recognition set in on the man's face.

              "Wait a minute—"

              "Mr. Teller, please, I'm not with any newspaper or any organization or anything. I'm a private citizen looking to settle a little mystery surrounding my husband's death. Tom Griffin? He was a surgeon here. He died six years ago."

              "You're that girl."

              Her eyes rolled out of sheer habit.

              A smile appeared on the man's face. "You're the one who solves all those mysteries."

              "How do you do, Mr. Teller."

              His smile faded. "Listen, I'd love to help you, but really there's nothing I can do. That was a long time ago and my memory's not what it used to be. There aren't any records left. It's over and done with. I'm sorry."

              She reached into her bag and fumbled for a piece of paper and a pen. "Ok, but just in case, I'd like to give you my number. If your memory suddenly returns."

              She scribbled her number on a chewing gum wrapper and handed it to him. "Sorry, it's all I got."

              "Ms. Griffin."

              She turned toward the sound of the voice and was face to face with Robert Hawkes.

              "Hello again."

              "Ms. Griffin, my staff is extremely busy. Surely you couldn’t have forgotten how it used to be around here. Well it's worse today. And my staff has better things to do than to stand around being harassed by you."

              "She's not harassing me," said Richard Teller.

              Hawkes glared at the man. "Mr. Teller, do you have any idea of the stack of resumes we have sitting in HR? Do you have any idea how many of them are just as qualified to do your job as you are, or more qualified? If you want to stand here and diddle around, be my guest."

              Teller let out a breath like a slow-leaking tire and slunk away.

              "And you, Ms. Griffin, I believe I'm correct in assuming you have no lucrative business here, am I right?"

              "I'm here to visit a friend."

              "The food poisoning case? She went home yesterday."             

              "For a hospital director you're incredibly involved in the tiny details."

              "You're done here, Ms. Griffin. We're done. Goodbye."

              He began to walk away and Allie called out to him. "I've had warmer breakups!"

              He swung his head around once as he kept walking. In that one head turn, Allie Griffin had herself a tiny victory.

              "Dinah?
Ou est ma chatte
?"

              Allie's white tabby came galumphing out with a series of complaints and grievances, most of which revolved around the lack of feline edibles in the house.

              "My little baby fur ball, I'm going to feed you and give you your shot. What do you think about that?"

              The cat repeated her list of grievances. Dinah was diabetic, which meant that Allie had to give the kitty a shot of insulin in the scruff of the neck twice a day. Both parties were experts in the field. Allie in administering, Dinah in receiving. Both demonstrated their respective abilities now, as Allie stabbed the ampule with the needle and drew a perfect dose, no air bubbles; and she gently and deftly pulled up Dinah's scruff as the kitty scarfed her food, and she administered the shot. Dinah looked up as if to say, "Are you finished?" and then dropped her head back down into her bowl.

              She grabbed the remote and flicked on the TV. "What do you say we get ourselves a pizza tonight, Dinah?"

              The TV flickered on with the image of Dean Robert Hawkes, with a banner scrolling across the bottom of the screen: "LOCAL HOSPITAL OFFICIAL MURDERED."

              She drew in her breath. "Oh my."

              "...
police are currently involved in investigating the scene, and so it is closed off to all media. However, sources are able to confirm that the dean and accomplished surgeon, Robert Hawkes, was indeed found strangled to death in his home. No suspects are in custody at this time, and police are still searching for any leads."

             
She sat down on her couch and sunk into the cushions.

              Tomlin was right. Everywhere Allie went, murder seemed to follow.

             
Stop it
, she thought. She wasn’t a murderer. Nor was she some sort of bad luck charm. Ruling these out still left a mystery to be solved. Exterior shots of the Hawkes household revealed that Sgt. Beauchenne's car was at the scene. Good, she thought. She could get some info.

              She could hear Beauchenne now, admonishing her to stay out, to avoid sticking her nose in, contaminating evidence. A fat lot of good that advice did in the past. Allie had managed to solve every murder she'd come across with almost no help from him or any other cop.

              Maybe she didn’t need to be there at all. Could she possibly be so cocky as to assume such a thing? Of course she could.

              She kissed Dinah on her furry little head and headed out into the chill night air.

#

              She exited the car, pizza box in hand, and began the long, arduous climb up the driveway to Jimmy Welles's house. It was actually Virginia Needleman's house. Jimmy was her sole boarder and the closest thing to a son/grandson that the woman would ever have.

              When she approached the door, Jimmy Welles opened it.

              Allie couldn’t believe her eyes. Jimmy Welles had shaved.

              "Jimmy?"

              "Don't say it."

              "Jimmy!"

              "I look like a dweeb."

              "You are a dweeb."

              "Yeah, but I never looked like one. That's a pizza. What's it gonna cost me?"

              "Can I at least come in first?"

              "If you must."

              Something odd had caught her attention as soon as she'd come far enough up the driveway to see it: Mrs. Needleman's car was missing. Only Jimmy's battered Volkswagen Beetle sat there like some prehistoric beast that refused to go extinct.

              "Where is she?" said Allie.

              "On a date."

              "A date?" Allie exclaimed. "Isn’t she, you know...?"

              "What? Too old? Is that what you were going to say?"

              "She's eighty-three."

              "Yeah? And?"

              "And nothing. Good for her, I was going to say. Sheesh, Jimmy, you alright? I mean, you're never a hundred percent Mr. Vivacious, but you're downright gloomy today."

              The boy sighed dramatically and dropped into his landlady's big comfy chair, upsetting a crocheted blanket that had been draped over the top.

              "Everybody's got a date tonight except me. Why is that Allie?"

              "You're jealous of Mrs. Needleman?"

              "Not jealous, no."

              She sat down on the couch across from him. "So where did she meet this fellow?"

              A smile crept across the boy's face. "She doesn’t know it, but I may have hacked her computer dating account."

              Allie threw her head back and laughed. Jimmy Welles was a hacker extraordinaire. Though this was the first time she'd ever known him to be completely selfless with this questionable hobby of his.

              "And she's not going to find out about it, ok?"

              "Oh," said Allie, buttoning her lip, "mum's the word."

              "So, I know you didn’t come here just to eat pizza. And why aren’t we eating it, by the way?"

              "We'll get to it. I'm starving too. I have a problem."

              "Well, save your pizza, because I have a problem too."

              "Ok."

              "I can't do any hacking for a while. Mrs. Needleman was an exception."

              "Ok."

              They stared at each other in silence.

              "I suppose you want an explanation?"

              Allie opened her arms. "Yeah."

              Jimmy Welles sighed again and leaned forward in his chair. "It seems I may have breached the cybersecurity of a North Korean financial institution."

              Allie felt the blood in her face drain all the way to her ankles. "Oh, Jimmy, you didn’t."

              "Yeah, and I got this email from this North Korean hacker that I actually know. He's a defector, right? Now he spends his time working for the CIA."

              "Ok." She suddenly felt like running out of the house, pizza and all.

              "And he writes that he wants to see me. Then he hacks my computer, commandeers my cursor, and opens up my Microsoft Word program to write a message saying,
don’t worry
."

              "Oh boy."

              "Yeah, that's what I thought. But the
don’t worry
thing made me feel a little better. So I meet him in this disgusting little taco joint, and there are bugs all over the place, and he's eating tacos and telling me about the CIA and how they’re always looking for recruits to do these black bag jobs. You know…classic spy stuff. He said he recognized the security breach as my work—hackers leave their own personal mark that only other hackers can spot—and he spent the rest of the day convincing his bosses that I wasn't a threat. And they sent a message to North Korea saying I've been thrown into prison and that I'm getting beaten with a rubber pipe once a day in solitary confinement."

              Allie put her head in her hands.

              "Well don't look so dejected. I'm not going to prison."

              "Ok. I don’t know if dejected is quite the word I would use to describe what I'm feeling, but ok."

              "So he says to me, lay low for a while. He says the CIA is going to check me out, and if I look good, I'm going to have a job with them."

              "Oh my. So...congratulations?"

              "Yeah, you can say that. If they don’t like me, there's a chance all my equipment could be confiscated and they'll ensure I literally never touch a computer again."

              "Oh my God, Jimmy."

              "Pizza's getting cold. Is there sausage on it?"

              "Sausage and peppers. Jimmy, what are you going to do?"

              The boy grabbed a slice and munched feverishly on it and shrugged. "I don’t know. But I know what I'm not going to do. What I can’t do. I can't be hacking for you anymore."

              "Well, I'm happy that you seem to be taking this all very well."

              The boy stared at his pizza. "Where do you think they get this sausage from? I mean, it isn’t real. It can’t be real."

              "Jimmy—"

              "Allie, there's nothing about this that doesn’t stink. But there's nothing that stinks more than the prospect of never seeing you again."

              She smiled at him. "Jimmy, I'll come by with a home-cooked meal at least once a month. Ok? Our friendship isn’t grounded on what you’re able to do with a computer. It's grounded on the fact that you're always willing to do it."

              The boy smiled. At twenty-something, he was a genius, and certainly an adult, but there was a boyish quality about him that made her want to care for him. She had to chase such thoughts away at the moment.

              "All that said, can I ask you a technical question?"

              He smiled again and nodded, sucking pizza crust out of his teeth. "Shoot."

              "How does a backup power generator work in a major hospital?"

              Jimmy Welles looked at his watch.

              "Jimmy?"

              "Yeah, you may want to grab a pillow and a blanket, 'cause this is going to take a while."

              "Come on, Jimmy."

              "Ok, simplest answer. They work very well."

              "Very funny."

              "Well, listen, I'm being serious here. You're talking about top of the line pieces. They have to be. People's lives are at stake. Now, you want to know
how
they work? Like, from the beginning?"

              "Hold on. Back it up a second. You said they're usually top of the line. What can cause one to fail?"

              "Ok, well, that's no easier a question to answer. There can be a host of problems. What kind of failure are we talking about?"

              "Well, maybe not a total failure. But say the generator was supposed to kick in right away and it didn't."

              "Ok. If I was diagnosing a situation, and I had already ruled out the simpler stuff like someone forgetting to flick a switch or something like that, then I'd look at the electronic components. Maybe it's a faulty transfer switch."

              "Huh."

              "You don't understand."

              "Thank you, Mr. Man, but I'm doing just fine."

              "Can we call this a consulting session?"

              Allie smiled at the boy. "What's it gonna cost me?"

              "Maple bourbon vanilla ice cream soda."

              "Anywhere I can pick up one around here? Or would you like me to drive down to New York City, because that's no problem at all."

              "Nothing doing," Jimmy said, making Allie highly unsure of whether the boy knew she was joking. "There's a great little place up in Burlington. Right on Church Street."

              "Burlington."

              "Yup. Artisan stuff. They churn it right in the window."

              "I'm going to drive twenty miles right now to pick up a soda for you."

              "Nope," said Jimmy, rising out of his chair and picking up his coat off the top of a mound of laundry dominating a territorially advantageous section of the floor. "We're going right now. You and me."

              "Excuse me," said Allie, not rising, "since when are you ordering me to take you on a date, Jimmy Welles?"

              "Since I can't hack anymore. I've suddenly found myself with a lot of free time on my hands."

              Allie chuckled and got up to follow the boy out of his home.

#

              They sat before four scoops of delicious ice cream divided between two ice cream sodas, mounds of vanilla bobbing on the frothy surface and melting sweetly over the sides of old fashioned metal cups.

              "So where do you get a transfer switch?"

              "Well, they don’t sell them at the local Walgreens. There's a manufacturer up in Maine. The only manufacturer of semiconductors in the Northeast. MTS. Morley, I think. Morley Technology Solutions."

              "Semiconductors."

              "Mm hmm," said the boy into his soda.

              "Is that the same thing as a transfer switch?"

              He wiped the corner of his mouth on his sleeve. "The types of switches you'd find in a hospital's generator are the static types that use power semiconductors."