Vanished in the Night (9 page)

“Yeah. I’ll be real sure to do that.” Every word dripped more sarcasm than a leaky IV dripped saline.

McKnight walked away.

Tina was back in a second. “I thought you’d given up cops.”

“And paramedics. I’m thinking a nice accountant would be restful.”

Tina took the ponytailer out of her hair and shook out her curls. “Too nitpicky. You sure you don’t want to make an exception for Tall, Dark, and Handsome? He’s got a nice rear view.”

She hadn’t missed that. It was nearly as impossible to miss as the way his shirt stretched across his shoulders and chest. “I’m sure.”

“So what was he here for?” Tina asked as she rewound her hair into a messy bun.

Veronica shook her head.

“Are you going to make me guess, or are you going to give up and tell me? You know I won’t stop until I know.”

That was true. There was no point in trying to keep
anything from Tina. “They found my brother’s body. McKnight caught the case. He wanted to ask some follow-up questions.”

Tina sat on the rolling stool next to the counter, her eyes wide. “I didn’t even know you
had
a brother.”

That stung. In a lot of ways, Veronica hadn’t had a brother for twenty years. He wasn’t at family dinners. He didn’t borrow money, or help clean the gutters. He didn’t do the usual brother things. He hadn’t been able to. He’d been dead.

In her heart, though, Veronica had always had a brother. He’d been alive there, kept that way through hope. A hope that had proved to be pathetic and ridiculous. She couldn’t decide if she was better off knowing the truth or if she had preferred operating in blissful ignorance.

“He disappeared a long time ago. When I was just a kid. They found his body in a construction site.”

Tina’s eyes went wide. “Wait. Your brother was the body they found downtown the other day? The bones in the pit? That was your brother?”

Veronica nodded.

“Wow.” Tina’s brow creased. “But wait. The picture they’re showing of that kid. He’s, well . . .”

“Black?” Veronica finished for her.

“Yeah. I think we’re supposed to use African American now, but you got the gist.”

“He was my half brother.” There it was again. “He was from my mother’s first marriage. Max’s dad died in Vietnam.”

“Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t your dad pretty racist?” Tina’s brow furrowed deeper.

“You could say that.” Oh, boy, could you ever say that. Although Veronica suspected that if Max had been Caucasian, her father would have found some other reason to hate him. It was what her father did best.

Well, second best. He was damn good at drinking. They were intertwined. Maybe he wouldn’t hate quite so much without the booze, or drink so much without the hate. She’d given up trying to parse that one out years ago.

“That must have been fun.” Tina stood up and started riffling through the case files. “You want the five-year-old breathing emergency in two, or the Natasha Richardson case?” Ever since the actress had hit her head while skiing and died a few days later, every Tom, Dick, and Harry with a head bump came to the emergency room.

Veronica shot her a look.

Tina handed her the file. “Five-year-old it is, but you owe me.” She swished away, but turned before she went behind the curtain. “And if you don’t want Tall, Silent, and Studly, I’m more than happy to take your sloppy seconds.”

Veronica snorted. As if Tina had ever had to take anyone’s sloppy seconds. She went in to check on the five-year-old with asthma, but before she could take two steps, all the buzzers and whistles started to go off. She looked over at Tina. “I guess you got your wish.”

“Let me guess. She was thrilled to see you. She accepted the photo and expressed her deep, undying gratitude for how seriously you were taking her brother’s case,” Frank said as Zach got back into the Crown Vic.

“Yeah. Then I proposed and we’re hoping for a June wedding. Save the date, will you?” Zach shot back.

Frank snorted. “Gave you a hard time, did she?”

“It’s shocking, but she resents the fact that we consider her father a suspect. Can you believe that?” Zach buckled his seat belt.

Frank started the car, waited until the ambulance that was pulling into the lot, lights flashing and siren blaring, had gone past, then pulled out of their space. “Absolutely shocking. So what’s next?”

“I say we start looking at this Sierra School. Maybe we can find someone who might know something that would give us a lead.” Zach leaned back in his seat.
Please let them stir up a lead somewhere.
Lord, he hated cold cases.

“Sounds like a good plan for tomorrow.” Frank pulled onto I-5. “Have I mentioned that I hate cold cases?”

“It’s like you’re reading my mind, Frank.”

Zach closed his eyes. He wanted a hot shower and a cold beer, perhaps at the same time. He wanted a black, dreamless sleep undisturbed by sexy little nurses or old bones clutching military-issue dog tags.

The case was getting to him, and he knew why. He hadn’t exactly been a perfect teenager. After his father died, he’d been angry.

The problem was, there wasn’t anyone to take that anger out on. The cops found the drunk who had hit his dad during a routine traffic stop, and the man had gone down for vehicular manslaughter. Maximum sentence, maximum outrage from the community, solidarity from his father’s brothers in blue.

Without a target to focus his rage on, it had diffused throughout Zach’s world. He’d started cutting classes, gotten in some fights, experimented with booze and grass. Really, it had been a classic pattern. It had ended with him coming damn close to being arrested for breaking into a neighbor’s garage. His plan had been to steal a stereo system to get money to buy some weed.

Overwhelmed with her own grief, his mother
hadn’t had a clue about how to deal with her angry son. That’s when some of his father’s friends had stepped in. A collection was taken and Zach had been sent to the Mount Hood Academy.

He was pretty sure it had saved his life.

It hadn’t been easy. The first few months had been pure, unadulterated hell. They had broken down every defense he had, one by one, until he felt as if there was nothing left of him. Every bit of anger and defiance had been drained from him. Then they’d started to build him back up again.

Had Max been one of those kids who were so sure the rules didn’t apply to them? Zach remembered that type. The ones who thought they were special, that they shouldn’t have to wait in the line or do the work or earn the privilege. He still dealt with them every day. Talk to your average criminal and you’d hear the same story. They shouldn’t have to earn their own living. They should be able to take someone else’s stuff. They shouldn’t have to abide by the rules of society. They were special, special snowflakes and should be treated as such.

Right.

All
snowflakes had to abide by the rules, or Zach was going to help society melt them.

*     *     *

Tina stripped off her gloves and threw them in the garbage can. “How many times do we have to tell them?”

“Don’t start, Tina.” Veronica knew what she meant, though. If the person was dead, why bring them to the emergency room? It’s not as if CPR was going to bring them back when they were already stone cold.

Tina glanced up at the clock. “We spent forty-five minutes trying to resuscitate that woman when we all knew it was pointless. For God’s sake, her pupils were totally blown before they walked in the door. Why can’t they just call the morgue or something?”

“She had a pulse.”

Tina and Veronica both turned. One of the EMTs was filling out paperwork at the nurses’ station. He didn’t turn around. The view wasn’t half bad, although he looked a little old for Veronica’s taste. She had Daddy issues and she fought them as hard as possible.

“And she was still breathing,” he continued without looking up. “At least a little.”

“Ever heard of agonal breathing?” Tina fired back.

The body wants to breathe. Even when the brain is basically dead—and the code they’d just spent forty-five minutes laboring over was definitely brain dead what with the hugely dilated and unresponsive pupils and all—the body will still try to gasp in air.

“Ever heard of paramedics calling a code in the field if there’s even the slightest sign of life?” He was giving as good as he got, and he was getting it pretty good. It didn’t seem to ruffle him, though. He turned around from his paperwork. The front view was fine, too. He had a little salt mixed in with the pepper of his close-cropped hair. It wasn’t Veronica’s thing, but Tina seemed damn near speechless.

“You new here?” Veronica asked. She knew most of the EMTs, at least by sight.

He stuck out his hand. “Yeah. I just moved down from Truckee a few months ago. I’m Matthew Cassel.”

“Veronica Osborne.” She shook his hand. “My testy friend here is Tina Rivera.”

Cassel smiled over at Tina. “I don’t blame her for being testy. It was a lost cause from the beginning. Nothing anybody could do about it. Except their jobs.”

“True enough,” Veronica said.

Tina just stared as Cassel headed out the door.

“Wow,” Tina said. Then she whirled back on Veronica. “I don’t care
how
cute he was. It was still a waste of my time, and you know how I feel about that.”

Veronica did know. Anyone within earshot of Tina knew exactly how she felt about having her time wasted, the latest set of contestants on
Dancing with the Stars,
and the
Eat Pray Love
movie.

“Just think of all the money the emergency room is
going to charge her insurance company. It’ll pay your salary for the entire year,” Veronica told her, patting her on the back.

Tina grinned. “You always know the right thing to say.”

Two cops approached them. They were in plainclothes, but they were undoubtedly cops. The man was a nice-looking guy. Tall, broad shouldered, the whole bit. The woman was striking. Long, curling hair clasped back in a barrette. Flawless mocha skin. Beyoncé with a gun. Well, Beyoncé before the Master Cleanse diet. The woman had some dangerous curves going for her and baby totally had back.

“Hi, I’m Detective Josh Wolfe. This is my partner, Elise Jacobs,” the male cop said.

“I take it our vic didn’t make it,” Jacobs said.

“Sorry, no. She was long gone before she got here.”

Wolfe ran his hand through his hair. “Yeah. It looked that way. It was a weird one, though. Any idea what happened?”

“She choked on her own vomit,” Tina chimed in. “Very
Spinal Tap,
except the part where she wasn’t a drummer.”

Elise snorted, but Josh just stared at her. His partner jabbed him in the ribs with her elbow. “It was a joke, Josh. Smile.”

“I got it. Right.” He turned to Veronica. “Anything
else? We got nothing so far. Nice neighborhood, no sign of forced entry. A neighbor noticed her door was open and walked in. Found her tied and gagged.”

“Could it have been sex play gone wrong? Maybe her partner panicked and took off.” Veronica had seen a lot weirder stuff than a little bondage, and a lot of things way weirder than someone running when they’d accidentally killed their S and M playmate.

“Didn’t look that way.” Elise flipped open a notebook she’d taken out of her jacket. “She was fully clothed. There wasn’t anything at the scene that indicated any kind of sexual rendezvous.”

“What? No candles or Barry White? No glasses of wine?” Tina asked.

“Nope.” Elise glanced at her notes. “One cup of chamomile tea with milk and a Lean Cuisine.”

“Ouch. Sounds like my place,” Tina said.

“I hear you, sister.” Elise flipped her notebook shut.

“Maybe the doc’s got something more,” Wolfe said.

The two detectives started down the corridor to where the attending, Dr. Mahaffy, was talking with a colleague.

Tina looked at Veronica. “He was cute, too. It’s practically raining men in here tonight.”

“No sense of humor, though,” Veronica pointed out.

“Maybe he was just tired.” Tina stretched and
yawned. “I’m tired, too. Maybe I wasn’t as funny as you thought I was.”

Veronica shook her head. “I thought we’d sworn off cops.”

Tina turned and watched the detectives talking to Dr. Mahaffy. “That’s you. I’m not swearing off anything, cops or paramedics.”

“Do me a favor and check to see if the next one is married before you throw yourself at him.” There’d been one incident this year that had left her fun-loving friend weeping for six weeks. Veronica wasn’t sure she could survive another breakup like that one.

Tina gave her a sidelong glance. “Where’s the fun in that? By the way, there’s a constipated eighty-year-old available now.”

Oh, man. That did not sound like any kind of fun whatsoever. “What happened to the asthmatic five-year-old and the Natasha Richardson case?”

“The five-year-old got a breathing treatment and went home with an inhaler. Natasha decided that her head didn’t hurt that bad anymore and left. Gave one of the chairs in the waiting room a pretty good kick on her way out, too, according to Linnea. I believe she may have also impugned our sexual reputations and several people’s mothers.”

All in all, just another night in Emergency Room Paradise. Veronica looked at her watch. “It’s time for
my break.” If possible, it would always be time for her break when there was a constipated eighty-year-old within a mile radius.

“Mine, too.” Tina smiled at her. “Rochambeau?”

“You have got to be kidding. You want to do rock paper scissors for a patient?” Veronica shook her head, although she’d seen worse ways of deciding who had to deal with a less-than-ideal case.

“We could flip a coin.” Tina’s smile got bigger.

“Forget it. Go enjoy your break. I’ll go disimpact the eighty-year-old.”

“Have fun.” Tina wiggled her fingers at her and headed for the nurses’ lounge. She stopped then and turned around. “Did that woman who coded look familiar to you?”

Veronica wracked her brain. In all honesty, she wasn’t even sure what the woman looked like. She’d been too focused on starting an IV and trying to get her heart going again to look at the woman’s face. “I don’t think so. Do you think you know her?”