Night Sins (2 page)

“Can't Craig handle it?”

“Maybe, but we'd rather have a higher life form with opposable thumbs.”

“I'm not even on call tonight. I have to pick up Josh from hockey. Call Dr. Baskir—”

“We did. He's in bed with your friend and mine, Jurassic Park flu, also known as tracheasaurus phlegmus. That's one butt-kicking virus. Half the staff is down with it, which means I, Kathleen Casey, queen of the ER, may press you into service against your will. It won't take long, I promise.”

“Famous last words,” Hannah muttered.

Kathleen ignored her and started to turn as if she had every intention of towing all five feet nine inches of Hannah in her wake. Hannah's feet moved of their own accord as the wail of an ambulance sounded in the distance.

“What's coming in?” she asked with resignation.

“Car accident. Some kid hit a patch of ice on Old Cedar Road and spun into a car full of grandmas.”

Their pace picked up with each step, the low heels of Hannah's leather boots pounding out a quick staccato rhythm. Her fatigue and its companion emotions slipped under the surface of duty and her “doctor mode,” as Paul called it. Power switches flipped on inside her, filling her brain with light and energy, sending a rush of adrenaline shooting through her.

“What's the status?” Hannah asked, her speech taking on a sharper, harder quality.

“They flew two critical to Hennepin County Medical Center. We get the leftovers. Two grandmas with bumps and bruises and the college kid. Sounds like he's banged up pretty good.”

“No seat belt?”

“Why bother when you haven't lived long enough to grasp the concept of mortality?” Kathleen said as they reached the area that served as a combination nurses' station and admissions desk.

Hannah leaned over the counter. “Carol? Could you please call the hockey rink and leave word for Josh that I'll be a little bit late? Maybe he can practice his skating.”

“Sure thing, Dr. Garrison.”

Dr. Craig Lomax arrived on the scene in immaculate surgical greens, looking like a soap opera doctor.

“Jesus,” Kathleen muttered half under her breath, “he's been watching
Medical Center
reruns again. Get a load of the Chad Everett hair.”

Strands of black hair tumbled across his forehead in a careless look he had probably spent fifteen painstaking minutes in front of a mirror to achieve. Lomax was thirty-two, madly in love with himself, and afflicted with an overabundance of confidence in his own talents. He had come to Deer Lake Community in April, a reject from the better medical centers in the Twin Cities—a hard truth that had not managed to put so much as a dent in his ego. Deer Lake was just far enough outstate that they couldn't afford to be choosy. Most doctors preferred the salaries in the metro area over the chance to serve the needs of a small rural college town.

Lomax had arranged his features in a suitably grave expression that cracked a little when he caught sight of Hannah. “I thought you'd gone home,” he said bluntly.

“Kathleen just caught me.”

“In the nick of time,” the nurse added.

Lomax sucked in a breath to chastise her for her attitude.

“Save it, Craig,” Hannah snapped, tossing her things on a waiting area couch and moving forward as the doors to the ER slid open.

A stretcher was rolled in, one paramedic at the rear, one bent over the patient, talking to him in a soothing tone. “Hang in there, Mike. The docs'll have you patched up in no time.”

The young man on the stretcher groaned and tried to sit up, but chest and head restraints held him down on the backboard. His face was taut and gray with pain above the cervical collar that immobilized his neck. Blood ran down across his temple from a gash on his forehead.

“What have we got here, Arlis?” Hannah asked, shoving up the sleeves of her sweater.

“Mike Chamberlain. Nineteen. He's a little shocky,” the paramedic said. “Pulse one twenty. BP ninety over sixty. Got a bump on the noggin and some broken bones.”

“Is he lucid?”

Lomax cut her off on the way to the stretcher with a move as smooth as glass. “I'll handle it, Dr. Garrison. You're off duty. Mavis.” He nodded to Mavis Sandstrom. The nurse exchanged a glance with Kathleen, her expression as blank as a cardshark's.

Hannah bit her tongue and stepped back. There was no point in fighting with Lomax in front of staff and the patient. Administration frowned on that kind of thing. She didn't want to be there anyway. Let Lomax take the patient who would require the most time.

“Treatment room three, guys,” Lomax ordered, and ushered them down the hall as a second ambulance pulled into the drive. “Let's start an IV with lactated ringers . . .”

“Dr. Craig Ego strikes again,” Kathleen growled. “He has yet to grasp the notion that you're his boss now.”

“No biggie,” Hannah said calmly. “If we ignore him long enough, maybe he'll stop trying to mark territory and we can all live happily ever after.”

“Or maybe he'll flip out and we'll find him in the parking lot, peeing on car tires.”

There wasn't time to laugh. A heavyset EMT from the second ambulance charged into the reception area.

“We've got a full arrest! Ida Bergen. Sixty-nine. We were bringing her in with cuts and bruises, and as we pulled into the drive,
bam!
She grabs her chest and goes—”

The rest of her words were lost as Hannah, Kathleen, and another nurse bolted into action. The emergency room erupted into a whirlwind of sound and action. Orders shouted and relayed. Pages sounding for additional staff. The stretcher wheeling into the reception area and down the hall. The trauma cart and crash cart thundering into the treatment room.

“Standard ACLS procedure, guys,” Hannah called out. “Get me a 6.5 endotracheal tube. Let's get her bagged and get some air into her lungs. Do we have a pulse without
CPR?”

“No.”

“With CPR?”

“Yes.”

“BP forty over twenty and fading fast.”

“Start an IV. Hang bretylium and dopamine and give her a bristoject of epinephrine.”

“Goddammit, I can't get a vein! Come on, baby, come on, come to Mama Kathleen.”

“Allen, check for lung sounds. Stop CPR. Angie, run a strip. Is respiratory coming?”

“Wayne's on his way down.”

“Gotcha!” Kathleen slipped the line onto the catheter and secured it with tape, her small hands quick and sure. A tech handed her the epinephrine and she injected it into the line.

“Fine v-fib, Dr. Garrison.”

“We need to defibrillate. Chris, continue CPR until my word. Allen, charge me up to 320.” Hannah grabbed the paddles, rubbing the heads together to spread the gel. “Stand clear!”
Paddles in position against the woman's bare chest.
“All clear!”
Hit the buttons.
The old woman's body bucked on the gurney.

“Nothing! No pulse.”

“Clear!” She hit the buttons again. Her eyes went to the monitor, where a flat green line bisected the screen. “Once more. Clear!”

The woman's body convulsed. The flat line snapped like a cracking whip and the monitor began to bleep out an erratic beat. A cheer went up in the room.

T
hey worked on Ida Bergen for forty minutes, pulling her out of the clutches of death, only to lose her again ten minutes later. They worked the miracle a second time, but not a third.

Hannah delivered the news to Ida's husband. Ed Bergen's chore clothes emanated the warm, sweet scent of cows and fresh milk with a pungent undertone of manure. He had the same stoic face she had seen on many a Nordic farmer, but his eyes were bright and moist with worry, and they brimmed with tears when she told him they had done their best but had been unable to save his wife.

She sat with him and led him through some of the cruel rituals of death. Even in this time of grief, decisions had to be made, etc., etc. She went through the routine in a low monotone, feeling on autopilot, numb with exhaustion, crushed by depression. As a doctor, she had cheated death time and again, but death wouldn't let her win every time and she had never learned to be a gracious loser. The adrenaline that fueled her through the crisis had vaporized. A crash was imminent. Another familiar part of a routine she hated.

After Mr. Bergen had gone, Hannah slipped into her office and sat at the desk with the lights off, her head cradled in her hands. It hurt worse this time. Perhaps because she felt perilously close to loss for the first time in her life. Her marriage was in trouble. Ed Bergen's marriage was over. Forty-eight years of partnership over in the time it took a car to skid out of control on an icy road. Had they been good years? Loving years? Would he mourn his wife or simply go on?

She thought of Paul, his dissatisfaction, his discontent, his quiet hostility. Ten years of marriage was tearing apart like rotted silk, and she felt powerless to stop it. She had no point of reference. She had never lost anything, had never developed the skills to fight against loss. She felt the tears building—tears for Ida and Ed Bergen and for herself. Tears of grief and confusion and exhaustion. She was afraid to let them start falling. She had to be strong. She had to find a solution, smooth over all the rough spots, make everyone happy. But tonight the burdens weighed too heavily on her slender shoulders. She couldn't help thinking the only light at the end of the tunnel was the headlight of a big black train.

Knuckles rapped against her door and Kathleen stuck her head in. “You know she'd been seeing a cardiac specialist at Abbott-Northwestern for years,” she said quietly.

Hannah sniffed and flicked on the desk lamp. “How's Craig's patient?”

Kathleen slid into the visitor's chair. She crossed a sneaker over one knee and rubbed absently at an ink mark on the leg of her scrub pants. “He'll be fine. A couple of broken bones, a slight concussion, whiplash. He was lucky. His car was turned sideways at the moment of impact. The other car hit him on the passenger side.

“Poor kid. He feels terrible about the accident. He keeps going on and on about how the road was dry and then suddenly there was this big patch of ice and he was out of control.”

“I guess life can be that way sometimes,” Hannah murmured, fingering the small cube-shaped clock on her desk. The wood was bird's-eye maple, smooth and satiny beneath her fingertips. An anniversary gift from Paul four years ago. A clock so she would always know how long it would be before they could be together again.

“Yeah, well, you've hit your patch of ice for the night,” Kathleen said. “Time to pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and get home to the munchkins.”

A chill went through Hannah like a dagger of ice. Her fingers tightened on the clock and tilted the face up to the light. Six-fifty.

“Oh, my God. Josh. I forgot about Josh!”

J
OURNAL ENTRY
D
AY
1

The plan has been perfected.

The players have been chosen.

The game begins today.

CHAPTER 2

D
AY
1
6:42
P.M.
         22°

M
egan O'Malley had never expected to meet a chief of police in his underwear, but then again, it had been that kind of day. She had not allotted enough time for moving into the new apartment. Rather, she had not allowed for as many screwups as she had encountered before, during, and after the move. She kicked herself for that. Should have known.

Of course, there were things that couldn't have been foreseen. She couldn't have foreseen the key breaking off in the ignition of the moving van yesterday, for example. She couldn't have foreseen her new landlord hitting it big on the pull tabs at the American Legion hall and skipping town on a charter trip to Vegas. She couldn't have imagined that tracking down the keys to her apartment would involve a manhunt into the deepest, darkest reaches of the BuckLand cheese factory, or that once she got into the apartment, none of the utilities that were to have been turned on two days before were operational. No phone. No electricity. No gas.

The disasters and delays clustered together in a spot above her right eye. Pain nibbled at the edge of her brain, threatening a full-blown headache. The last thing she needed was to start her new assignment with a migraine. That would establish her all right—as weak. Small and weak—an image she had to fight even when she was in the best of health.

As of today she was a field agent for the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, one of the top law enforcement agencies in the Midwest. As of today she was one of only eleven field agents in the state. The only woman. The first female to crash the testosterone barrier of the BCA field ranks. Someone somewhere was probably proud of her for that, but Megan doubted that sentiment would extend to the male bastions of outstate law enforcement. Feminists would call her a pioneer. Others would use words omitted from standard dictionaries for the sake of propriety.

Megan called herself a cop. She was sick and tired of having gender enter into the discussion. She had taken all required courses, passed all tests—in the classroom and on the streets. She knew how to handle herself, knew how to handle anything that could shoot. She'd done her time on patrol, earned her stripes as a detective. She'd put in the hours at headquarters and had been passed over twice for a field assignment. Then finally her time had come.

Leo Kozlowski, the Deer Lake district agent, dropped dead from a heart attack at the age of fifty-three. Thirty years of doughnuts and cheap cigars had finally caught up with him and landed poor old Leo facedown in a plate of post-Christmas Swedish meatballs at the Scandia House Cafe.

When the news of his demise swept through the warren of offices at headquarters, Megan observed a moment of silence in honor of Leo, then typed yet another memorandum to the assistant superintendent, submitting her name for consideration for the post. When the day for decision-making drew near and she had heard nothing encouraging, she gathered her nerve and her service record and marched to the office of the special agent in charge of the St. Paul regional office.

Bruce DePalma went through the same song-and-dance he'd given her before. There were reasons all the field agents were men. The chiefs and sheriffs they had to work with were all men. The detectives and officers who made up their network were nearly all men. No, that wasn't discrimination, that was reality.

“Well, I've got another dose of reality for you, Bruce,” Megan said, plunking her file dead center on his immaculate blotter. “I've got more investigative experience, more class time, and a better arrest record than any other person in line for this assignment. I've passed the agent's course at the FBI academy and I can shoot the dick off a rat at two hundred yards. If I get passed over again for no other reason than the fact that I have breasts, you'll hear me howling all the way to the city desk of the
Pioneer Press
.”

DePalma scowled at her. He had a Nixonesque quality that had never endeared him to the press. Megan could see him playing the scene through his mind—reporters calling him evasive and uncooperative while the cameras focused on his deep-set, shifty eyes.

“That's blackmail,” he said at last.

“And this is sex discrimination. I want the assignment because I'm a damn good cop and because I deserve it. If I get out there and screw up, then yank me back, but give me the chance to try.”

DePalma slumped down in his chair and steepled his fingers, bony shoulders hunched up to his ears, a pose reminiscent of a vulture on a perch. The silence stretched taut between them. Megan held her ground and held his gaze. She hated to stoop to threats; she wanted the job on merit. But she knew that the brass was especially skittish of words like
harassment
and
gender bias,
was still smarting from the sexual harassment charges several female employees had made against the outgoing superintendent months before. It may have been a risk, but the reminder might be just enough to make DePalma pay attention.

He scowled at her, jowls quivering as he ground his teeth. “It's an old-boy network out there. That network is essential to successful police work. How do you expect to get in when everyone else thinks you don't belong?”

“I'll make them see that I do belong.”

“You'll hit a stone wall every time you turn around.”

“That's what jackhammers are for.”

DePalma shook his head. “This job calls for finesse, not jackhammers.”

“I'll wear kid gloves.”

Or mittens,
she thought as she fiddled with the car's heater setting. Frustrated and cold to the bone, she smacked the dashboard with a fist and was rewarded with a cloud of dust from the fan vents. The Chevy Lumina was a nag from the bureau's stable. It ran, had four good tires, and the requisite radio equipment. That was it. No frills. But it was a car and she was a field agent. Damned if she was going to complain.

Field agent for the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension. The BCA had been created by the state legislature in 1927 to provide multijurisdictional investigative, lab, and records services to the other law enforcement agencies in the state, a scaled-down version of the FBI. Megan was now the bureau's representative to a ten-county area. She now served as liaison between the local authorities and headquarters. Consultant, detective, drug czar—she had to wear many hats, and as the first woman on the job, she would have to look damn good in all of them.

Being late for her first meeting with the chief of police in the town that would be her base of operations was not a good beginning.

“Should have made the appointment for tomorrow, O'Malley,” she muttered, climbing out of her car, struggling with what seemed to be twenty yards of gray woolen scarf.

The scarf was like a python twisting itself around her neck, around her arm, around the handle of her briefcase. She snatched at it and pulled at it, cursing under her breath as she made her way across the skating rink that passed for a parking lot behind the Deer Lake city hall and law enforcement center. Getting hold of the end of the scarf, she flung it hard over her shoulder—and threw herself off balance. Instantly, her feet went out from under her and she scrambled in a mad tap dance to keep from going down. The heels of the boots she had chosen to give herself the illusion of height acted like skate blades instead of cleats. She danced another five feet toward the building, then fell like a sack of bricks, landing with teeth-rattling impact smack on her fanny. The pain shot up her spine from her butt to her brain and rang there like a bell.

For a moment Megan just sat there with her eyes squeezed shut, then the cold began to penetrate through the seat of her black wool trousers. She looked around the parking lot for witnesses. There were none. The afternoon had been crushed beneath the weight of darkness. Five o'clock had come and gone; most of the office personnel had already left for the day. Chief Holt was probably gone as well, but she wanted it on the log that she
had
shown up for their appointment. Three hours late, but she had shown.

“I hate winter,” she snarled, gathering her legs beneath her, and rose with little grace and confidence, slipping, stumbling, finally grabbing hold of a car door to steady herself. “I
hate
winter.”

She would rather have been anywhere south of the snow belt. It didn't matter that she had been born and raised in St. Paul. A love for arctic temperatures was not part of her genetic makeup. She had no affinity for down jackets. Wool sweaters made her break out in a rash.

If it hadn't been for her father, she would have been long gone to friendlier climes. She would have taken the FBI assignment that had been offered when she'd been at the academy in Quantico. Memphis. People in Memphis didn't even know what winter was. Snow was an event in Memphis. Their thermometers probably didn't have numbers below zero. If they'd ever heard the words
Alberta clipper,
they probably thought it was the name of a boat, not a weather system that brought wind-chill factors cold enough to freeze marrow in the bones of polar bears.

I stay here for you, Pop.

As if he cared.

The teeth of the headache bit a little harder.

The Deer Lake City Center was new. A handsome V-shaped two-story brick building, it testified to the growing tax base brought about by professional people moving out from the Cities. The town was just within commuting distance of the south end of the metro area. With crime and crowding on the rise in Minneapolis and St. Paul, those who could afford to and didn't mind the drive sought out the quaint charm of places like Deer Lake, Elk River, Northfield, Lakefield.

The city offices were housed in the south wing of City Center, the police department and the office of the late lamented Leo Kozlowski in the north, with the city jail on the second floor. Additional jail facilities were available across the town square in the old Park County courthouse and law enforcement center, where the county sheriff's offices and the county jail were located.

Once inside the building, Megan hung a left and marched down the wide hall, ignoring the pretty atrium with its skylights and potted palms and pictorial history of Deer Lake. Catching a glimpse of her reflection in the glass of a wall-mounted display case, she winced a little. She looked as if she'd just pulled a gunnysack off her head. That morning—seemed like a month ago—she had swept her dark mane back into a low ponytail and secured it with a small, no-nonsense bow in a dark Black Watch plaid. Neat. Businesslike. Now, strands fell like fine silk thread across her forehead and along her cheeks and jaw. She tried to sweep the stragglers back with an impatient gesture.

The reception desk at the head of the police wing had been abandoned for the day. She marched past it and on to the security doors that kept the city council safe from criminals and cops, and vice versa. She punched the buzzer and waited, looking into the squad room through the bulletproof glass. The room was bright and clean—white walls, slate-gray industrial-grade carpet that had yet to show any signs of wear. A small platoon of black steel desks squatted in two rows. The desks, for the most part, were not neat. They were piled with files and paperwork, crowded with coffee mugs and framed photos. Only three of them were manned, one by a massive uniformed cop talking on the phone, the other two by men in plainclothes, eating sandwiches while they tackled paperwork.

The uniform hung up the phone and rose to a towering height, big, drowsy eyes on Megan as he lumbered to the door, unwrapping a stick of Dentyne. He looked thirty and Samoan. His hair was dark and unruly, his body as thick as the trunk of an oak tree, and probably just as strong. His name tag said
NOGA
. He popped the gum in his mouth and punched the intercom button.

“Can I help you?”

“Agent O'Malley, BCA.” Producing her ID, Megan held it up to the glass for his inspection. “I had an appointment with Chief Holt.”

The cop studied the photo with mild interest; he looked half asleep. “Come on in,” he said with a casual wave. “Door's open.”

Megan gritted her teeth and willed herself not to blush. She didn't care to be made a fool of, especially not at the end of a day like this one or by a man who was a part of her network. Noga pulled one of the doors open and she marched in, fixing him with a steely look.

“Shouldn't this area be secured?” she asked sharply.

Noga appeared unperturbed by her manner. He shrugged his shoulders, a move that looked like an earthquake going through a small mountain range. “Against what?” When she just glared at him, he smiled a crooked half-smile, his thick lips tugging upward on the right side. “You aren't from around here, are you?”

Megan was getting a crick in her neck from looking up at him. Hell of a trick, trying to do imperious on someone a full foot taller than you. “Are you?”

“For long enough. Come on back.” He led the way through the rows of desks to a hall with private offices off it. “Natalie's still around. No one sees the chief without seeing Natalie first. She runs the place. We call her the Commandant.” He eyed her with mild curiosity. “So what are you here for? Filling in until they find a replacement for Leo?”

“I
am
the replacement for Leo.”

Noga arched a thick brow, schooling a look of shock and dismay into something that more resembled indigestion. “No shit?”

“No shit.”

“Huh.”

“You got a problem working with a woman?” Megan worked to keep the edge out of her voice. But she was tired and her temper was running on a real lean mix. She could feel it simmering just beneath the surface of her control.

Noga played innocent, eyes wide. “Not me.”

“Good.”

He ducked into an office, drumming his knuckles on the open door as he went. “Hey, Natalie! The BCA guy—er—gal—” Noga cast a self-conscious glance at Megan.

“Agent O'Malley,” she said stiffly.

“—is here,” he finished.

“Well, it's about damn time.”