Dead Ringer: Chapter Twenty-Three

Go here to read Chapter Twenty-Two.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

I felt like the worst kind of heel about how things had gone with Will. I stressed about it all the way home, almost missing the turn into my own street and thought about calling him but decided I’d probably done enough damage for one day.

The thing is, picturing Will as a young med student had triggered the idea that a group of guys training to be doctors might have access to some very nice prescription drugs, like the ones Rachel’s mother was happy to trade her then-fifteen-year-old daughter for. And I suspected her moneyed mother would prefer that kind of company to some sad scrawny bunch of men from the far side of Raleigh. With the needle-in-a-haystack challenge of figuring out who the father of Rachel’s child might be, here at least might be a place to start. So my mouth went flapping before my brain caught up, and Will had heard the shift in my voice, from a conversation between friends to an inquiry tinged with suspicion.

I had a shitty night’s sleep filled with anxiety dreams. Though I couldn’t remember what they were about, I woke feeling hungover and a little sad. A steamy shower and some smoky black coffee barely served to revive me.

Thick, hot summer air swirled off the busy roadways and through the breeze-starved trees. My sweet old Civic’s air conditioner struggled to keep up, and I knew how it felt. Honestly, by mid-June in Brady I’d already be pining for the cool of October days. Just walking from St. Regis’s parking lot to the sliding front doors had me wiping sweat from my forehead.

I cut through the ER looking for Benny, who should have been finishing an overnight shift. “Hi, Molly, I’m looking for the intern chaplain.”

“Benny? Haven’t seen him,” she said without looking up from the chart that had her full attention.

That stopped me. “At all? Like, he wasn’t here during the night?”

She sighed and put her finger on the chart to hold her place and met my eyes with a frustrated glance. “If he was here, I didn’t see him. But it’s been pretty quiet.”

“Molly, what the hell?!” shouted one of the nurses from a back office.

“Uh-oh,” I said and backed away from the counter. Everybody knows, you never, ever use the “Q” word. That’s just inviting complete mayhem to break out.

Molly offered a raised middle finger to the nurse in the office, and stuck her tongue out at me. “See what you made me go and do? Scram, get outta here. You’re bad juju.”

“I love you, too,” I said and blew her a kiss. I couldn’t help noticing there was a Guy Trubiano-sized gap in that room, and then I couldn’t help noticing I felt a little sad about that. I scurried toward the back stairs, trying to tamp down the hot feelings that had briefly flared, and shifted my attention to the supervisory problem at hand.

Benny had either not shown up at all last night or he’d found a place to hide out and avoid any interactions with human beings. Either way, it was all going to blow back on me.

I used my key card to open the door to the stairway up to the second floor, fuming with each step. Who had even let Benny into the program? I was more and more convinced he had no real interest in being here. Maybe his rich dad was on the hospital board or something like that. All I knew was, he irritated the shit out of me.

I opened the door to the Pastoral Care office to see a very blonde, very broad-shouldered security guard perched on one corner of Mavis’s desk, his head tilted toward her as she offered a series of small, bleating laughs.

“Good morning!” I announced a little too loudly.

“Ms. Blair!” Mavis blurted, nearly upsetting her rolling chair. I confess to enjoying mightily the little warble in her voice.

The guard took his time standing, all 6’4” of him, and swiveled to offer me a sideways grin, a dimple appearing in one smooth, tanned cheek.

I grinned back at him. “And you are?”  

“Just leaving,” he said, and laughed as he shook my extended hand. “Samuel Thompson, ma’am.”

Jesus Christ. Did he just “ma’am” me? What am I, a fossil? Some old relic?

“Chaplain Blair,” I said, sighing. His hand was warm and firm, and the crinkles at the corners of his blue-green eyes promised a lot of fun. I looked from him to Mavis, who sat blushing furiously.

“Well, Samuel Thompson, we have work to do and I’m sure you do, too.”

“Nope,” he said. “I’m off duty. But I’ll let y’all get back to it.” He winked at Mavis and nodded at me. Mavis’s eyes, full of something exceedingly bright, followed his impressive frame until the door closed behind him. In the moment of silence that followed, she heaved a deep sigh, forgetting, it seemed, there was anyone else in the room.

When she remembered, she came back with a vengeance, drawing her mouth into a thin line. “There are three mistakes on your grant reports. I corrected them but marked them on your copies. Please be more attentive in the future,” she said, holding a sheaf of papers out to me. “Also, The Reverend Moseley called. He wondered where you were. I told him I had no idea.”

It was clear she’d relished tattling on me to Fred. I resolved to tell him about my work with Omega the next time he was in the office, which according to the loose schedule he was following, should be next Monday. Sunday I’d be doing my on-call overnight shift, but I could stick around to meet with him in the morning.

“Thank you, Mavis,” I said, biting the inside of my cheek to keep my tone even. I took the grant report copies from her, went into my office, and shut myself in. I tossed the papers on the credenza behind the desk and plopped down in my chair, swiveling in a slow circle. I was busting a gut to call WindDancer and track down the CNA, Cathy Somebody, but I needed to get the chaplains’ scheduling finalized and still had to get up with the errant Benny for supervision. And there was the dreaded call to Chad Miller that I couldn’t put off any longer. I pulled up my big girl panties, picked up the phone, and dialed.

I got the reception from him that I’d imagined. “I can’t stop you from snooping around,” Chad said, “but if you so much as put a pinky toe over the line, if you screw up this investigation in any way, I will come after you.”

Pinky toe? I resisted the urge to snicker.

I thought I might as well plow on, since he was already pissed. “Are there any updates that you’re able to share?” I was fishing, in part, to see what he knew about how the killer had left Rachel’s body, hoping I could get to Cathy Somebody first.

There was a pause during which I thought he might be counting to ten. “I guess I haven’t made myself clear,” he said. “Brady PD won’t be sharing any information with you or your boss.” He said boss like he was spitting out something nasty.

He continued. “We have a strict policy about keeping our investigations confidential, strictly on a need to know basis, and civilians do not need to know.”

“Got it,” I said, and then just to poke the bear, I followed with, “I understand the county sheriff’s office has jurisdiction, and therefore is taking the lead. So it’s not really your investigation, is it?”

From the sharp intake of breath, I knew I'd scored a hit. I’m petty enough that I marked it in the air with a 1. “Not that I owe you an explanation, far from it, Ms. Blair, but the Sheriff has asked for Brady PD to assist. So just stay the hell out of everyone’s way. Or I’ll arrest you and have you charged with obstruction and anything else I can come up with.”

“I understand, Detective,” I said. “Can you at least give me the name of the person at the Sheriff’s Office who is heading up the investigation?” I mean, why not?

The noise that was delivered to my ear left me wondering if Chad had cracked the phone handset when he slammed it down. Well, that was out of the way. Unpleasant, and I suspected not the last such interaction between us, but I could check it off my list.

I shifted my attention to the tasks at hand. The chaplain’s schedule sorted itself pretty neatly, thanks to the magic of a pricey database the hospital had agreed to pay up for.

I paged Benny and then returned three phone calls. The first was to a pastor from Charlotte asking if I could visit one of his parishioners who’d ended up at St. Regis after the sudden onset of appendicitis during a business meeting at a biotech company. The second call was to politely decline an invitation from a small congregation to be their guest preacher, something I’d stopped doing when I started my work with Omega. The last call was to the administrator of one of our faith-based grants who had a question about some previous budget reports.

With the first two calls I’d been able to speak with actual humans, but I had to leave voicemail for the grants administrator. Who knew? Maybe our recordings could carry on without us and get things resolved.

Next, I called Mark. I wanted to tell him about the CNA finding Rachel.

He answered sounding out of breath. “Oh, hey, I’m glad it’s you,” he said.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, I’m having to go out of town unexpectedly, be gone for a couple days, so I wanted to make sure you have what you need for the Roper case.” His voice sounded odd, like if I was in the room with him I’d see raised eyebrows and a forced smile.

“Well, I do have some news. Will Keating has information about a nurse who found Rachel, and she said Rachel’s hair had been combed and her hands were…”

Mark interrupted me. “Okay, good. When I get back you can let me know what you find out.”

Curiosity edged out a sudden irritation. “Is everything okay over there?”

He paused before answering, and I could have sworn I heard a whispered who’s that? before he said, “Oh, sure, sure. All good here. Fine. Good.”

“You’re a really terrible liar,” I said, and at that he laughed, and when he spoke again he sounded a bit more like himself.

“No need to worry, Blainey. I leave in the morning and will be back Sunday or Monday. We’ll catch up then, okay?” A muffled crash echoed in the background, a chair or something falling. “Listen, I’ve got to go. Talk to you later.” The phone went dead before I could say anything else.

I briefly considered getting in my car and driving over there to see what the hell was going on, but the wild urge to find Cathy Somebody overrode my curiosity about what Mark was up to, and besides, I reminded myself, this was my case now.

I had a tentative plan in place. I’d go find Will and apologize and get the name of the outfit that had transported Rachel’s body, find the guy who’d spilled about the CNA, and head out to WindDancer to see if I could talk to her. Along the way, I’d catch up by phone with Weston Roper and give him an update. All of this I’d write up in a report for Mark to approve and sign, documentation of the supervised hours that were required for the P.I. license I wasn’t even sure I wanted. But even so, if I were Mark I’d want to know everything that was being done in my agency’s name.

And all of this, everything, I had to accomplish before my Sunday night shift, and before I met with Fred Moseley and confessed all, because I might have a hard decision to make if he didn’t fire me on the spot.

In the meantime, I needed to check in on Jenny Malone. It was now a week since her heart transplant, and by all reports she was doing well. While I’d been skulking around in my secret other life, one of the part-time chaplains, Maureen Long, had been covering pastoral care visits. But Jenny and her folks were special to me, and my conscience was guilting me pretty hard with the feeling I’d abandoned them.

I emerged from my cocoon to find Mavis had left for lunch. The office was blessedly quiet. I grabbed a prayer book and headed out with the plan to spend some quality time with the Malones.

Go here to read Chapter 24.