The Bedroom Killer (26 page)

CHAPTER 60

John gripped the wheel like he was hanging over Niagara Falls and his hands were slipping from the wetness. His heart still beat fast from his encounter with Detective Bell and the air inside his car tasted stale. He needed to get out of his car, but he was almost home. He'd wait until he got inside. Wait for what? He wasn't sure.

The son-of-a-bitch pulled his gun
.
What cop pulls a fucking gun and points it at another person who hasn't done anything unless they're whacked in the head. 

The traffic cleared enough for John to pull off a side street and his thoughts turned back to
the killer.

Where was he now
?

Was he planning another one
?

What does this guy do for money
?

Does he have a job
?

The same questions he'd been asking himself for the last month
, and still he had no answers. He was useless. He was bringing nothing to the game. A bench warmer. Worse, a towel boy who just got his ass kicked by the quarterback. He drove on.

Ten minutes later
, he slipped his house key into his front door and turned the knob. Once inside he threw his keys on the kitchen table and walked into the living room, staring at his map with four pushpins, each one revealing the location of one of the killings. He grabbed a new pushpin and found Monterey Street and pushed it into place. He stood back to compare the new location with the others—hoping beyond hope that he would see a pattern reveal itself. But he saw nothing; just five pushpins.

He caught movement out of the corner of his eye and turned toward his kitchen
, where he spotted the red message light flashing on his phone. He walked over and punched the play button. He heard Megan's shaky voice.

John
…I want to thank you for everything you've done for me. You're a wonderful, sweet man. But I need to figure things out…and I think we should…
Her voice broke.
Maybe we shouldn't see each other for a while.

The message ended and John stood still, staring at the machine.

Was that a breakup call
?

His felt his stomach turn
. First, he had witnessed Megan stumbling out of the house where the latest murder had occurred, and then he had chased her into the park, where they sat on the bench before he took her home. Next he had been pulled over by Bell and had Bell's gun shoved into his face. Now this. He couldn't understand it.

He thought th
e time at the park was good, sitting quietly arm in arm. Now he felt that everything he had been working on for the past month was falling apart right in front of him, and he couldn't do anything to stop it. John returned to the living room, raised both hands to his head as he paced back and forth, feeling the same anxiety he felt the morning he heard the scream. He walked over to his map, and in one swift movement reached up and ripped it from the wall. He turned around, gripped the card table by the edge and flipped it over, kicking at the piles of papers and books strewn across the floor. He dropped to his knees, ripping the pages of notes he had so painstakingly collected over the last month. The notes, the photos, the map—everything. He pulled them all down and ripped them up one by one. For the second time in a month, he'd had a gun pointed at him, not including his own. He was tired of guns. Tired of thinking about death. Tired of Detective Bell and his bullshit. Tired of feeling unable to help Megan.

Then he heard the scream again.

Daddiiiiie!

John's mind flashed back to the night of the accident
. He was on late shift in emergency. His cell phone rang and it was Paulette reminding him that they were supposed to run to the local sports shop to buy Trevor his first baseball glove. John had been the one to push baseball onto Trevor. He wanted Trevor to like sports as he did. To like baseball, as he did. John's intensity back then meant he usually got what he wanted. Paulette was the one who recognized that Trevor would probably never be an athlete. He was going to be a nerd. He was smart and read everything he could get his hands on. And he loved dinosaurs and space. All that was fine with John, but there's nothing wrong with being smart
and
athletic. So they would buy the glove, and make it a big event. Even though Trevor didn't show any interest and Paulette was against pushing him, John put his foot down, insisting that once he started throwing the ball around and really connected with a bat, he would be hooked.

He told
Paulette be ready—his shift would end at 8:00 p.m. and he would be home no later than 8:30, which would give them an hour to get to the shop and buy the glove before it closed at ten. Since the downtown stores were just ten minutes away that gave them more than enough time.

But John forgot.

Actually, if he were honest with himself, he'd say he didn't try to remember because he got caught up in the flirtation that he and Carrie had begun two weeks before the accident. It wasn't overt, but it wasn't hidden either. He was feeling it and so was she. He forgot about the glove. He forgot about Trevor. He forgot about the plans he'd insisted upon. A distraught woman brought in her husband, a man in his sixties, complaining of chest pains just as John was supposed to finish his shift. But since Carrie was tending to this new patient, John shimmied over and took it upon himself to handle the new patient. John knew that Danny would take over once he became available. But one thing lead to another and the man went into cardiac arrest. A
Code Blue
was called, and Danny, with Carrie and two other surgical assistants in support soon joined John. It took fifty-five minutes from beginning to end before the man's condition stabilized. The three of them, Danny, John, and Carrie, talked for a moment once they got away from the cardiac patient and as they stood there, John suddenly remembered.

The glove.

He yanked his phone from the clip on his waist and went to make a call, but he saw he had a message. He punched a button and Paulette's name appeared with three questions marks in a row. She was going to be pissed…and she had every right to be. The message was an hour old.

"Damn, I have to go," he said, smiling at Carrie, who smiled back and said, "I'll see you tomorrow?"

"You sure will."

"See ya," Danny called out from a few feet away
—stretching his arms above his head, working out the kinks. As John turned, Elizabeth, one of the surgical assistants stepped out and called to Danny.

"We got two on the way
—car accident."

John heard the call and stopped
. Danny turned back to him and waved him away.

"Go
. We got this. Nick is here now."

John nodded and turned away, walking, then jogging toward his car parked far out in the parking lot
. As he jogged, he saw the first ambulance turn into the emergency lane, followed by a second one. John never understood when he looked back on the events of that night, why he stopped. There was no reason; as Danny had said, Steve was on shift and they had enough hands.

But he did.

He stood and watched as the two ambulances pulled up to the emergency entrance. Danny and Carrie were there, waiting, and when the first one stopped, Danny opened the back door—and that moment marked the beginning of the end of John's medical career. He took a step forward—back toward the hospital. Then another. He was five steps closer to the hospital when he suddenly saw Carrie turn toward him and scream.

"
No. Jooooooohn!"

John ran
. For John, hearing the shrillness of Carrie's voice was like getting a shot of adrenaline right into his aorta. Somehow, he knew what he was going to find. He didn't want to see it, didn't want to believe it could be true—but he knew even as he was running back. He'd stayed too long. He got there just as the gurney dropped and he could see Trevor, strapped down, his T-shirt and face covered in blood. John had seen this many times. The blood never scared him, but it would kick start his mental checklist of all the things it could be and the first thing to find out was what happened and where was the wound.

But not this time.

John grabbed the gurney and reached for Trevor's face.

"Trevor
. It's Daddy, son. Daddy's here."

"Daddiiiiiiiiiiiie!"

Trevor screamed the last syllable into a high-pitched siren call that shook John to the core. He had never heard his son scream like that. Ever. This was his son. Not someone else's. His boy.

Danny grabbed John by the arm, "Let's get him inside." Danny looked for Nick and saw him just inside the door. He knew there was no way he could have John taking lead on this, but he also knew there would be no stopping him.

Every doctor's nightmare.

The controlled chaos started as the gurney was wheeled through the automatic doors and was instantly surrounded and directed through the double doors to the far side of the emergency room, and then down the hall into the first operating room. Danny wanted to get John away, so he grabbed him by the arm and yelled, "John, go check on Paulette."

John's eyes went wide in the realization that he had forgotten about her. He looked at his son and then let go, turned, and ran back the way they came, like a firefighter going back into the fire to try to rescue one more person. When he got back outside, the first ambulance had already pulled forward and the second one had taken its place. The rear doors were open, and the driver and a paramedic were standing there. This didn't make sense to John.

Why didn't they have her out already
?

The paramedic saw John racing toward him
, held up his hand, and said, "No need to rush. She didn't make it."

John stared at him like a confused child
. The guy stepped back and nodded inside, saying, "Go ahead." Although he knew Dr. Randall, as most seasoned paramedics and ambulance drivers knew the staff of an emergency room, he certainly wasn't close enough to know John's family. So when he told him go ahead, the paramedic was thinking,
pompous doctors always need to check for themselves
, a sentiment he would soon regret. John pushed passed and leapt into the back of the ambulance calling out, "Paulette?" He stood, hunched over her lifeless body, which was covered in blood. John kneeled down, reached for her face and collapsed onto her, sobbing into her hair—his world destroyed in less than five minutes.

It didn't take the driver and paramedic very long to realize what they were witnessing
. The driver ran inside, grabbed the closest nurse, and explained the situation.

She already knew.

"Leave him out there," she said.

"But we have to go."

"Not yet, you don't. The hospital administrator has been called and he's on his way in; same with the grief counselor. They'll have questions for you."

"But I've got it all written up already," said the driver, pointing into the room at nothing in particular, knowing that his three
-page handwritten report was sitting on top of someone's pile in there. But even as they argued over who was going to do what, they heard the automatic doors open and saw Dr. John Randall, his face red with tears, running through the lobby heading for the double doors marked SURGERY—STAFF ONLY—NO ADMITTANCE.

"Doctor Randall
!" the nurse called out, but she was too late. He was already through the double doors and quickly disappearing down the hall as the doors closed behind him.

Four minutes later John scrubbed and suited u
p, stepped into the operating room to find Danny, Carrie, and three others hovered around Trevor. They didn't notice John enter. Trevor was still screaming.

"Daddiiiiiiie!"

They couldn't sedate him yet because they didn't know the extent of his head injury. They had already taken a head X-ray, and the film would be there any minute. In the meantime, they were talking to him and had already inserted an IV in the back of his left hand. Blood had come out of his ears, nose, and mouth but wasn't flowing at this moment.

"Trevor
!" John called and stepped through the scrum of doctors and nurses and picked up his son's right hand, stroking it calmly.

"I'm here, son
. Daddy's here. It's okay." He turned his gaze to Danny and said, "Film."

"Any minute now
," said Danny.

John turned to look up at the heart and blood pressure monitor and his foot snagged on something on the floor
. He looked down and his eyes focused on something brown and foreign. Something that didn't belong in an operating room. That's when the full weight of his guilt settled down upon his shoulders and dug in…the same guilt that would grow and spread throughout his body and deep into his soul. Because what John saw sitting next to his right foot was a tiny Derek Jeter, size six, baseball glove. Trevor's glove…the one he never really wanted…with the tag still on it. John could read the price—$24.95. And later, when he stored away the baseball glove along with Trevor's other belongings, he would come to feel that $24.95 was the amount it cost him to lose his whole family.