The Crush (9 page)

"You were the conscientious objector of the group, weren't you? You led the charge for acquittal."

He stacked his hands over his heart. "Our own Dr. Rennie Newton, crusader for the freedom of career criminals."

The argument ended there with their listeners' laughter.

It was the last verbal skirmish she and Lee would ever have. As always, they'd parted friends. As she said good night to him and Myrna, he'd given her a quick hug. "You know I was only teasing, don't you? Of all the jurors who ever sat on any trial, you would work the hardest at getting it right."

Yes, she had tried to get it right. Little had she known what an impact that damn jury summons, the trial, and its outcome would have on her personally. She had counted on it being an inconvenience. She hadn't counted on it being catastrophic.

Did Detective Wesley really consider her a suspect?

Her lawyer had dismissed her concerns. He said because the police had absolutely no clues, they had thrown out a wide net and were interrogating everyone with whom Lee Howell had any interaction, from hospital orderlies to his golfing buddies. At this point everyone was suspect. Insinuation and intimidation were standard police methods, the attorney assured her.

She shouldn't feel that she'd been singled out.

Rennie had tried to reassure herself that he was right and that she was overreacting. But what her lawyer didn't know was that when it came to being questioned by police, she had a right to be a little jittery.

Wesley's interrogation had been in the forefront of her mind this afternoon when the hospital board of directors invited her to join their weekly meeting and offered her the position tragically vacated by Dr. Lee Howell.

"I appreciate your consideration, but my answer is no thank you. You had months to consider me before, and you chose someone else. If I accepted now, I would always feel as though I were your second choice."

They assured her that Dr. Howell had received only one more vote than she and that none of them thought she was an inferior candidate.

"That's not the only reason I'm declining," she'd told them. "I admired Dr. Howell professionally, but I also regarded him and Myrna as friends. To benefit from his death would feel ... obscene. Thank you for the offer, but my answer is no."

To her surprise, they refused to accept that answer and pressed her into thinking it over for a day or two more.

While flattered and gratified by their persistence, she was now faced with a difficult decision. She had wanted the position and knew she was qualified, but it would feel wrong to get a career boost from Lee's death.

Wesley was another factor to take into account. were she to assume the position he considered a motive for murder, his suspicions of her involvement might be heightened. She wasn't afraid of his finding anything that would implicate her. There was nothing, absolutely nothing, connecting her to Lee's murder. But before Wesley determined that, she would be put through a rigorous police investigation. That was what she feared and wanted to avoid.

With all this weighing on her mind, her head actually felt heavy. Reaching back, she slid the coated rubber band from her hair and shook out her ponytail, then massaged her scalp, pressing hard with her fingertips.

She had performed four major surgeries before lunch. The waiting room outside the operating room had been filled with anxious friends and family not only of her patients, but of other patients.

Immediately following each operation, she had come out to speak briefly with the patient's loved ones, to report on the condition of the patient, and to explain the procedure she'd done. For some she was even able to show color photographs taken during the surgery. Thankfully all the patients' prognoses had been good, all the reports positive. She hadn't had to break bad news to anyone today.

Thanks to her able staff, things had gone smoothly in her office this afternoon. Rounds at the hospital had taken a little longer than usual.

She had the four post-op patients to see, and three more to brief before their scheduled surgeries tomorrow morning. One had to be sweet-talked into his pre-op enema. The frazzled nursing staff had given up. After Rennie talked to him, he surrendered quietly.

Then, just before she left for the day, she had received the telephone call.

The reminder caused her to shudder. Quickly she finished the bottle of water and tossed it into the trash compactor. She rinsed out the soaking carafe of the coffeemaker, then prepared it for tomorrow morning and set the timer. She knew she should eat something, but the thought of food made her nauseous. She was too upset to eat.

She left her handbag on the table--she didn't think she had the strength to lift it--and turned off the kitchen light. Then, as she started toward the living room, she paused and switched the light back on. She had lived alone all her adult life, and this was the first time she could remember ever wanting to leave the lights on.

In her bedroom she switched on the lamp and sat down on the edge of her unmade bed.

Ordinarily it would have bothered her that she hadn't had time to make her bed before leaving that morning. Now that seemed a trivial, even silly concern. An unmade bed was hardly worth fretting about.

With dread, she opened the drawer of her nightstand. The card was beneath the box of stationery her receptionist had given her last Christmas. She had never even broken the cellophane wrapping.

Pushing the stationery box aside, she stared down at the small white card.

She had been making notations on the charts of her post-op patients when the duty nurse had informed her that she had a call. "Line three."

"Thanks." She cradled the receiver between her cheek and shoulder, leaving her hands free to continue the final task of a very long day. "Dr.Newton."

"Hello, Rennie."

Her writing pen halted mid-signature.

Immediately alarmed by the whispery voice, she said, "Who is this?"

"Lozada."

She sucked in a quick breath but tried to keep it inaudible. "Lozada?"

He laughed softly, as though he knew her obtuseness were deliberate. "Come now, Rennie, we're hardly strangers. You couldn't have forgotten me so soon. We spent almost two weeks together in the same room."

No, she hadn't forgotten him. She doubted that anyone with whom this man came into contact would ever forget him. Often during the trial his dark eyes had connected with hers across the courtroom.

Once she had begun to notice it she had avoided looking at him. But each time her gaze happened to land on him, he'd been staring at her in a way that had made her uncomfortable and self-conscious. She was aware that other jurors and people in the courtroom also had noticed his unwelcome interest in her.

"This call is highly inappropriate, Mr.
Lozada."

"Why? The trial's over. Sometimes, when there's an acquittal, defendants and jurors get together and have a party to celebrate."

"That kind of celebration is tasteless and insensitive. It's a slap in the face to the family of the murder victim, who still have no closure. In any event, you and I have nothing to celebrate or even to talk about. Good-bye."

"Did you like the roses?"

Her heart skipped several beats, then restarted, pounding double-time.

After dismissing every conceivable possibility, it had occurred to her that he might have been her secret admirer, but she hadn't wanted to acknowledge it even to herself. Now that it had been confirmed, she wanted to pretend that she didn't know what he was talking about.

But of course he would know better. He had placed the roses inside her house, making certain she would receive them, leaving no margin for error. She wanted to ask him how the hell he had gotten inside her home but, as Lee Howell had pointed out to her, Lozada was a career criminal. Breaking and entering would be child's play to a man with his arrest record.

He was incredibly intelligent and resourceful or he couldn't have escaped prosecution for all his misdeeds, including the most recent murder for which he'd been tried and that she fully believed he had committed. It just hadn't been proved.

He said, "Considering the color of your front door I guessed red might be your favorite."

The roses hadn't been the color of her front door. They'd been the color of the blood in the crime-scene photos entered as evidence and shown to the jury. The victim, whom it was alleged that Lozada had been hired to kill, had been choked to death with a garrote, something very fine yet so strong that it had broken the skin of his throat enough to bleed.

"Don't bother me again, Mr. Lozada."

"Rennie, don't hang up." He said it with just enough menace to prevent her from slamming down the telephone receiver. "Please," he said in a gentler voice. "I want to thank you."

"Thank me?"

"I talked to Mrs. Grissom. Frizzy gray hair. Thick ankles."

Rennie remembered her well. Juror number five. She was married to a plumber and had four children. She seized every opportunity to bore the other eleven jurors with complaints against her lazy husband and ungrateful children. As soon as she learned that Rennie was a physician, she had run down a list of ailments she wanted to discuss with her.

"Mrs. Grissom told me what you did for me," Lozada said.

"I didn't do anything for you."

"Oh, but you did, Rennie. If not for you, I'd be on death row."

"Twelve of us arrived at the verdict. No one was singly responsible for the decision to acquit you."

"But you led the campaign for my acquittal, didn't you?"

"We looked at the case from every angle. We reviewed the points of law until we unanimously agreed on their interpretation and application."

"Perhaps, Rennie," he said with a soft chuckle.

"But Mrs. Grissom said you argued my side and that your arguments were inspired and ... passionate."

He said it as though he were stroking her while he spoke, and the thought of his touching her made her skin crawl. "Don't contact me again." She had slammed down the telephone receiver but continued to grip it until her knuckles turned white.

"Dr. Newton? Is something wrong? Dr.Newton, are you all right?"

Drops of perspiration beaded on her face as though she were performing the most intricate and life-threatening surgery. She thought she might throw up. Taking a deep breath through her mouth, she let go of the telephone receiver and turned to the concerned nurse.

"I'm fine. But I'm not going to take any more calls. I'm trying to wrap up here, so if someone wants me, tell them to have me paged."

"Certainly, Dr. Newton."

She had quickly completed her chart notations and left for home. As she walked across the familiar doctors' parking lot, she glanced over her shoulder several times and was reassured by the presence of the guard on duty. She'd heard that the young man who had discovered Lee's body was taking some time off.

On the drive home, she kept one eye on the road and another in the rearview mirror, half expecting to see Lozada following her.

Damn him for making her feel paranoid and afraid! Damn him for complicating her life when she had finally gotten it exactly as she wanted it.

Now as she stared at the hateful little card in her nightstand drawer, her resentment increased. It made her furious that he dared speak to her in sexual overtones and with implied intimacy. But it also frightened her, and that was what she hated most--that she was afraid of him.

Angrily she closed the nightstand drawer.

She stood up and removed her blouse and slacks. She wanted a hot shower. Immediately.

She felt violated, as though Lozada had touched her with his sibilant voice. She couldn't bear to think about his being here inside her house, invading her private space.

Worse, she felt a presence here still, although she told herself that was just her imagination, that it had been thrust into overdrive. She found herself looking at every object in the room. Was each item exactly as she'd left it this morning? The cap on her body lotion was loose, but she remembered being in a hurry this morning and not replacing it securely. Was that the angle at which the open magazine had been left on the nightstand?

She told herself she was being silly.

Nevertheless, she felt exposed, vulnerable, watched.

Suddenly she glanced toward the windows. The slats of the blinds were only partially drawn. Moving quickly, she snapped off the lamp and then went to the windows and pulled the louvers tightly closed.

"Damn him," she whispered into the darkness.

In the bathroom, she showered and prepared for bed.

When she turned out the light, she considered leaving it on, but only for an instant before deciding against it. She wouldn't give in to her fear even to that extent.

She had never been a coward. On the contrary, her courage when she was a child had caused her mother to wring her hands with concern. As a teen, her bravery had escalated into deliberate recklessness. In recent years she had traveled to war- and famine-plagued corners of the world. She had defied despots, and raging storms, and armed marauders, and contagious disease in order to provide medical treatment to people in desperate need of it, always with little or no regard for her personal safety.