The Oxygen Murder (25 page)

I just didn’t accept the destination.

“Actually, I’ll be going to Central Hospital first,” I told the cabdriver when we’d turned down Broadway. “Do you know where that is?”

The cabdriver gave me a look, as if I’d asked one of the old joke questions like
Is the Pope Catholic?
It used to be that
Is the Pope Italian?
worked also, but not lately.

“You’re not from around here, I guess,” the driver said in an accent I couldn’t place. “I gotta go back the other way now, go up Central Park West and then over.”

I wasn’t sure if he was asking my permission or complaining. Either way, he seemed pleasant enough as he hummed carols along with a group that might have been the Mormon Tabernacle Choir coming through his speakers.

Twenty minutes later, I stepped out—curbside, not into the traffic, as the driver admonished me—in front of Central Hospital, apparently the nearest one to the jogging path where Dee Dee had been attacked.

I surveyed the area and didn’t see any NYPD multitone-blue police cars. I’d gotten pretty good at recognizing an unmarked in Revere, but I was not in home territory and couldn’t tell if any of the cars parked bumper to bumper outside the hospital were official.

I walked with purpose through the automatic glass doors and up to a nurse’s station, easy to find in the relatively small facility.

“Ms. Sanders,” I said, as if I had an appointment and was not to be questioned.

“Name?” asked a burly woman whose smock had a western theme—horseshoes, saddles, and bright pink rope—and a name badge that read
POGEL
.

I knew I wouldn’t make any points by telling her that her name was close to the acronym POGAL, for “precision optics grinder and lathe,” a special grinding machine developed at a national lab in California.

“Dr. Gloria Lamerino,” I said, wishing I were wearing my old lab coat.

Ms. Pogel didn’t seem impressed by my confident manner. She consulted a computer database. “Sorry. Ms. Sanders has requested only certain visitors. You’re not on the list.” She gave me a withering look, meant to send me far away from her desk.

“I wasn’t aware that they’d forgotten to call my name in,” I said, congratulating myself on quick thinking.

Nurse Pogel frowned at me. “Well, now you know.”

Foiled.
I slunk back from the station and took a seat in a small waiting area, outside Ms. Pogel’s peripheral vision, to rethink my strategy. I glanced over at the well-staffed nurses’ station and felt overwhelmed.

“Ms. Sanders.”

I thought I was hearing an echo of my own voice, except it came from a tall young man with reddish-brown hair. He’d approached the desk in the same confident manner I’d tried.

“I’m her fiancé, and I should be on a list. Zachary Landram.”

Zach. I remembered meeting him the other day when he’d had simply boyfriend status.

“ID, please.”

Nurse Pogel wasn’t making it easy for Zach, either. I strained my ears, hoping she’d announce Dee Dee’s room number.

No such luck. Apparently satisfied with Zach’s ID, Nurse Pogel wrote something on a piece of paper. I could have sworn she glanced over her shoulder at me when she did it.

Zach wore a heavy army-green overcoat and a yellow and red plaid scarf. Easy to follow down a corridor. I stood and straightened my clothes. I headed in the same direction he did.

I’d taken four steps when Nurse Pogel marched out from behind the desk and blocked my path. “Is there something else I can help you with, Dr. Marino?” she asked.

She didn’t seem to be in the mood to be corrected. “Not at the moment,” I said, defeated.

I turned and walked toward the large glass exit doors. I’d found out one thing, at least: The police had already talked to Dee Dee. Otherwise Zach wouldn’t have been admitted to see her.

I wasn’t happy with my lack of progress.

On the street I began what I knew would be the long process of getting a cab to the hotel.

I’d never felt so frustrated. Since arriving in New York, I’d been unable to help a woman dying at my feet, then incompetent at assisting in finding her killer. My ozone lessons to the NYPD had been brief, and for all I knew, useless. In fact, I’d been more trouble than I was worth to them: I’d stolen a letter, causing the police and an ADA to waste valuable time figuring out what to do with me. The small connection I’d made between Dee Dee Sanders and Amber Keenan was moot since the police had already determined it.

Now I couldn’t even get into a loosely secured medical facility to talk to a potential suspect.

New York is tough,
I thought.

My ride to the hotel, when I finally caught one, was fast and wild. The driver wove the bright yellow cab in and out of traffic, leaning on his horn as he spoke a steady stream of dissonant sounds into his headset. At one intersection it was a face-off between the cab and an enormous office supply delivery truck. I decided he wasn’t happy with this small fare—only about nine blocks down and two over—and wanted to get the job over with in a hurry. The music blaring through the speakers was unhummable, and the name on his ID card was hard to pronounce.

It was all a nice change from my taxi experiences so far, with the drivers asking, “Where are you from?” and the sounds of “O Come, All Ye Faithful” on their radios.

Thanks to the speed-of-light transportation, I arrived at the hotel early. I thought I might have time to call around to some of the less expensive hotels in the city.

Did a young blond man from Kansas check in last week?
I could ask. Then what would I say?
This is his mother?

I had a strange feeling as I made my way through the crowded lobby, past guests or passersby sitting on the couches and easy chairs, past a Christmas tree by the stairway to the mezzanine cocktail lounge
and a menorah on the registration desk. I thought I saw Billy at one point, but it was another young man with the same straw-colored hair. Tina seemed to lurk behind a luggage dolly stacked with suitcases and duffel bags. A chubby woman on a settee, surrounded by luggage, sat with the same posture as Karla. Rounding a corner, I nearly tripped over stiletto-heeled boots, and my breath caught until I realized they weren’t Dee Dee’s.

I needed a break and a nap. I had at least a half hour before Rose was due back from her shopping trip. I hoped she hadn’t bought me anything.

I walked to the back of the hotel, past telephone banks that stood unused. I remembered the old days of conferences in hotels, and the long phone lines at break times. Now the landlines bolted to the wall were like monuments to an earlier age.

Ping.

The elevator. I checked for the white up arrow and stepped into the car, grateful not to have to pull a folding metal door closed. Unlike the one in Lori’s building, this elevator moved smoothly. As the wonders of machinery carried me upward, I stuffed my gloves into my tote and fished around for the card key in an outside compartment. I couldn’t shake a chill and hoped the maid had left the heat in our room on high.

Whirrr.

The elevator whined to a stop. I looked at the LED display and saw it was black. No sleek red number to indicate the floor. I waited for the doors to open. It hadn’t felt like nine floors of travel, but maybe someone on a lower floor had pushed the button. It could even be Rose, back early, traveling from six to nine.

A long time passed. Probably five seconds, I told myself, smiling at the recollection of an article I’d read: People waiting for an elevator started getting impatient only seven seconds after pushing the call button.

I relaxed, thinking how short a time ago Polaroid photographs were a brand-new concept, and now they were too slow for modern life. I doubted Karla’s son, William, would give a second look to any accessory that didn’t plug into his computer. I patted my digital camera
through the leather of my purse and resolved to take more advantage of it for the rest of the trip. Maybe catch some of those spectacular views of Central Park I heard the Sassos enjoyed from their apartment windows on the Upper West Side.

I checked my watch. I didn’t have a starting point, but I’d have bet that more than seven seconds had passed. The car was still stopped. The doors remained closed.

The elevator was paneled in dark brown, with a brass rod across the back. I leaned against the pole and looked again at the display in the upper right corner of the car, shifting my head back and forth for a different reflection, to see if I could read a number.

Nothing.

I unbuttoned my coat, took off my scarf, and shoved it into my tote. My hand hurt, and I realized that I’d been digging the plastic card key into it. I put the card back into its compartment.

No need to panic yet, I told myself, looking at the knobby red alarm button. How embarrassing it would be to call out the cavalry and then start a smooth ascent to the ninth floor. I might learn that there’d been only a ten-second delay. I checked for a camera mounted on the ceiling but saw none. I saw the outline of a trap door but no way to open it. I suspected it was locked from the outside, available only to authorized rescuers.

I had a flashback to a story in the Berkeley newspaper about a fraternity prank where students figured out a way to climb onto the top of the cage of an elevator and had a beer party sitting right there. The incident resulted in a permanent termination of elevator service in the fraternity house.

I didn’t need to think of spooky elevator stories, I told myself.

The only signage, lined up across the top of the elevator car, was advertising for the hotel restaurants. Looking at the backlit dinner plate, I involuntarily conjured up the smell of shrimp and felt a wave of nausea.

I pictured the figures in freshman physics books showing the force diagrams for a person in an elevator. I kept myself mentally occupied by recalling Newton’s laws for the situation. If I were standing on a scale, with the elevator moving up at a uniform acceleration, the scale
would read greater than my actual weight. If the cable were cut—here I gulped noisily—I’d be weightless, like an astronaut floating around in her spaceship.

The physics of the problem was unsettling, and so were the chemistry and biology. Fortunately, I didn’t know off-hand how much oxygen was used up by a person per minute in a closed box.

I jiggled the
STOP
button, in case it was stuck somehow and that was the problem. It wasn’t.

I pushed my cell phone buttons to call Matt. The only response on the green backlit screen was
NO SERVICE
.

I’ll count to ten,
I decided,
and if the car doesn’t move, then I’ll push the alarm button.
I took off my coat and let it drop to the floor.
One, two
. . .

Enough.

I leaned as hard as I could on the red button.

I wasn’t ready for the silence. I expected loud clanging noises. I
wanted
loud clanging noises.
It’s all right,
I thought.
A silent alarm, so we don’t frighten all the guests.

Just the one trapped in the elevator.

I desperately hoped there was an alarm sounding, a light blinking, a security guard’s pager vibrating somewhere.

I pushed and pushed on the button, starting to hyperventilate.

Whirrr.

The car jolted into action. I let out a long, loud breath, close to a wail. I felt the car move. I stood still, sucking in my breath again. The machinery whirred, a comforting sound in ordinary conditions, but I couldn’t move a muscle in anticipation of another malfunction, if that’s what I’d experienced. I longed for the bumps and clanging noises of the old elevator on West Forty-eighth Street to tell me I’d reached some upward milestones.

Ping.

The elevator stopped again. This time the doors opened, and I was at the ninth floor. I rushed out of the car, leaving my coat behind. I glanced back while the doors were still open. My comfortable, old black coat, lying in a heap in the middle of the floor, beckoned, but the wide, gaping hole left by the opened doors was frightening, and I didn’t dare enter the car again.

I rushed down the corridor to our room, digging the card key out. It took me three tries to get a green light.

Once inside I leaned against the door and tried to get my breathing to a normal rate. I tried to determine what had upset me so much and decided that if I’d been sharing the car with anyone at all, it would have been more bearable.

How many elevator cars were there in New York City? I asked myself. Thousands? Maybe tens of thousands. This afternoon one of them happened to malfunction, and I happened to be on it. That was all.

Still, my nerves were on edge.

Ring ring ring.

Three short, loud rings in quick succession. I jumped and dropped my key card. The elevator alarm, finally?

No. It was the hotel landline. We’d all been using our cell phones, and I’d never heard what the ring sounded like.

Ring ring ring.

I was startled again.

Ring ring ring.

I picked up.

“I’m back, Gloria. How was your day?” Rose’s merry voice.

It took me a moment to adjust to the cheery sound. “I nearly suffocated in the elevator,” I said, before I thought about it.

“I know. Those cars are so overheated, aren’t they?”

“Right,” I said, and collapsed on the bed.

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