Trent glanced up Beacon Street, toward Boston Garden. He saw he was close to the popular bar made famous by the TV series Cheers. That’s when a plan began to take shape in his mind. Maybe he could get Gail or her roommate out of the apartment.
Leaving the building, Trent walked the short distance to the Hampshire House. There he used a pay phone to dial the number for Gail that he’d taken from the bulletin board in the OR lounge. As the phone rang, he thought up various ploys. It all depended who answered. “Hello,” said the voice at the other end of the line. It was Gail.
“Ms. Winthrop, please,” Trent said.
“Sorry, she’s not at home.”
Trent’s mood brightened. Maybe this was going to be easy after all. “Could you please tell me when she’ll be in?”
“Who is this?”
“A friend of the family’s,” Trent said. “I’m in town on business and was given her number to say hello.”
“She’s currently working the night shift at St. Joseph’s Hospital,” Gail said. “Would you like that number? You could try her there. Otherwise, she’ll be back here around seven-thirty tomorrow morning if you prefer to call back.”
Trent pretended to take the St. Joseph’s number, thanked Gail and hung up. He couldn’t repress a smile.
Leaving Hampshire House, he hurried back to Gail’s building. Now all he had to do was get in there. He stepped into the foyer and put on a pair of black driving gloves. Then he rang her buzzer.
In a minute, Gail’s voice crackled through the mesh-covered speaker.
“Gail, is that you?” Trent asked, even though he was quite sure it was.
“Yes. Who’s this?”
“Duncan Wagner,” Trent said. It was the first name that came to his mind. The Wagners had lived next to the Hardings at the army base in San Antonio. Duncan was a few years older than Trent and they had played together until Duncan’s father had deemed Trent a bad influence.
“Do I know you?” Gail questioned.
“By sight, if not by name,” Trent said. “I work evenings in pedes.” Trent thought pediatrics sounded the most benign.
“On the third floor?”
“That’s right,” Trent said. “I hope I’m not disturbing you, but a group of us from the hospital ended up at the Bull Finch Pub. Your name came up. Someone said you lived just up the street. We played Wales Tails to see who would come and get you to join us. Looks like I won.”
“That’s nice of you,” Gail said, “but I just got home and just got off work.”
“So did we. Come on over. You’ll know everybody.”
“Who else is there?”
“Regina Puksar, for one,” Trent said.
“I just left her. She said she was going over to her boyfriend’s.”
“What can I say? Maybe she changed her mind. Maybe her boyfriend wasn’t around. Anyway, she came in and joined us. She was big on having someone come get you. She thought you could use the break.”
There was a pause. Trent smiled. He knew he had her.
“I’m still in my uniform,” Gail said.
“So are a few of the others.” Trent had an answer for everything.
“Well, I’d have to take a shower.”
“No problem,” Trent said. “I’ll wait.”
“I can meet you there.”
“No, I’ll wait. Just buzz me in.”
“It will take me ten minutes or so,” Gail said.
“Take all the time you need.”
“Okay,” Gail said. “If you don’t mind waiting. I live in 3C.”
Suddenly the lock on the inner door to the foyer began to buzz. Trent leaped for it and pushed. Stepping through, he smiled again. This wasn’t just going to be easy, it was going to be fun. He checked his gun. It was still secure. Next he checked the syringe. It was safe in his pocket.
Trent climbed quickly to the third floor. The trick was to get into Gail’s apartment before anyone saw him. If he ran into one of the other tenants in the hallway, he would pretend he was going somewhere else. But there was no one in sight in the third floor corridor. What’s more, Gail had left her door open for him. He stepped inside and closed and locked the door. The last thing he wanted now was to be interrupted. Trent heard water running in the bathroom. Gail was already in the shower.
“Make yourself at home,” Gail called once she heard the front door close. “I’ll be out in a flash.”
Trent took a look around. First he went to the kitchen. No one was there. Then he checked the second bedroom. Turning on the light, he saw that it was empty. Gail was by herself. The setup was perfect.
Taking out his beloved gun, Trent wrapped his hand around the grip, gently resting a finger on the trigger. It was such a perfect fit. Stepping over to Gail’s bedroom door, Trent gave it a careful push. The door swung open a few inches. Trent looked in. The bed was unmade. Gail’s nurse’s uniform was casually draped across it. On the floor was a pair of panties, a pair of white stockings, and a garter belt. The door to the bathroom was closed, but Trent could still hear water running.
Trent stepped over to the garter belt and nudged it with his foot. His mother had always worn one. She’d told him a dozen times that pantyhose were uncomfortable. Since his mother insisted he sleep with her while his father was off on his numerous army missions, Trent grew up seeing a lot more of the garter belts than he would have liked.
Trent quietly edged over to the bathroom door and tried it. The knob turned easily. He cracked the door open about an inch. A waft of warm, moist air escaped. Trent pointed the gun barrel at the ceiling, like Don Johnson in Miami Vice. He was holding it with both hands. Using his foot, he pushed the door completely open. The bathroom fixtures were old-fashioned. The tub was an old porcelain model on legs with claw-shaped feet. The white shower curtain with large irises printed across it was drawn. Behind the curtain, Trent could make out Gail’s silhouette as she shampooed her hair. Trent took two steps toward the tub and yanked the curtain back with one fluid move. The curtain rod gave way and clattered to the floor, along with the curtain.
Gail put her arms across her chest. “What . . . Who the . . .” she sputtered. Then, angrily, she shouted, “Get out!”
Water streamed down Gail’s well-lathered body. It took a moment for Trent to regain his composure. Gail certainly had a better figure than Trent’s mother had had.
“Get out of the shower,” he said, coolly leveling the gun at Gail so she would be sure to see.
“Out!” he said again when she didn’t move. But Gail was frozen in terror. Trent put the gun to her head to urge her out.
Gail started to scream. Within the confines of the bathroom, it was a horrid screech. To stop her quickly, Trent lifted the gun high and brought the butt down on her head hard. He hit her just at the hairline.
The instant he struck her he knew he’d hit her too hard. Gail crumpled into the tub in a limp heap. A long gash ran across her forehead and down as far as her ear. The wound looked deep, and Trent could see bone at its base. In only a minute there was so much blood that it turned the whole tub pink.
Trent leaned in and turned off the shower. Then he darted into the living room to listen for sounds of help on the way. Somewhere a TV set was on. Other than that, there wasn’t a sound. He put his ear to the door; the hallway was quiet. No one had heard Gail’s scream; if they had, it didn’t seem as if anyone was coming to her aid. Trent went back to the bathroom.
Gail had ended up in a semi-sitting position, with her legs tucked underneath her and her head resting in the corner against the wall. Her eyes were closed. The gash was oozing blood but the flow had slowed without the shower water hitting it.
Shoving his pistol back into his belt, Trent grabbed Gail by her legs and began to pull her out lengthwise. But he stopped. He felt his anger flare. Seeing Gail’s naked body lying before him he expected to feel some kind of sexual arousal, but he didn’t feel anything except perhaps disgust. Maybe a little panic.
With
sudden rage, he pulled his gun back out. Holding it by the barrel, he raised the butt high over his head. He wanted to smash Gail’s calm face. He was just about to bring his arm down hard when he caught himself. Slowly he lowered the gun. For as much as he wanted to mutilate her, he knew it would be a mistake. The beauty of his plan was that Gail’s death would seem to have been due to natural causes, not murder.
Putting his gun back in his belt, Trent pulled out the syringe. Removing the cap from the needle, he bent over. Taking advantage of the gash, and thereby avoiding a puncture site, he injected the contents of the syringe directly into the wound.
Trent stood up. He put the cap back on the needle and slipped the empty syringe back into his pocket. Then he waited and watched. Within a minute, muscle fasciculations contorted Gail’s face, distorting her still, placid lips into a grotesque grimace. The fasciculations quickly spread to the rest of her body. After a few minutes more, the muscle twitches coalesced into violent jerks followed by a full-blown seizure. Gail’s head smashed helplessly against the hard tile wall, then even against the hardware, with a sickening sound. Trent winced as he watched.
Trent backed away, awed by the drug’s power. The effect was truly horrifying, especially when Gail was suddenly incontinent. Trent turned and fled into the living room.
Opening the door to the hallway, he glanced up and down the stairs. Thankfully, no one was there. Stepping out, he pulled the door shut. He then tiptoed to the stairs and made his way down to the ground floor. He left the building, making it a point to walk casually, as if he was simply out for a stroll. He wanted to be sure not to call attention to himself in any way.
Feeling nervous and upset, he turned right on Beacon Street and headed back to the Bull Finch Pub. He didn’t understand why he felt so unsettled. He’d expected to be excited by the violence, like when he watched the Miami Vice reruns.
As he walked he told himself that Gail wasn’t all that attractive. In fact she must have been pretty ugly. That had to be the explanation that her nakedness hadn’t turned him on. She was just too damn skinny, with hardly any chest at all. The one thing Trent was sure of was that he wasn’t a homosexual. The Navy had just used that as an excuse because he didn’t get along with the doctors.
Just to prove to himself how normal he was, Trent made it a point to introduce himself to a perky brunette secretary at the bar. She wasn’t very attractive either. But it didn’t matter. As they chatted, he could tell she was impressed by his body. She even asked him if he worked out. What a stupid question, he thought. Any man who cared about himself worked out. The only men that didn’t work out were those limp-wristed fags that Trent occasionally ran into on Cambridge Street when he went out looking for a fight.
It didn’t take long for Jeffrey to get the surgical lounge looking cleaner than it had in years. Housekeeping had a closet in the hall just outside the lounge. There, Jeffrey found a vacuum cleaner. He used it to vacuum not only the lounge, but also the dictation area and the hallway all the way to the elevators. Next, he attacked the small kitchen off the surgical lounge. He’d always felt the place was filthy. He actually enjoyed the chance to clean it up. He even cleaned the refrigerator, stove, and sink.
David still hadn’t come back. Going into the locker room, Jeffrey found out why. David’s modus operandi was to work for five or ten minutes, then take a five or ten minute break to smoke a cigarette. Sometimes he broke for a cigarette and coffee.
David didn’t seem pleased that Jeffrey had accomplished so much in so little time. He told Jeffrey to slow down or he’d suffer a “cleaning burnout.” But Jeffrey felt it harder to stand around doing nothing than it was to work.
Once David gave up on any notion of the supervision game, he gave Jeffrey his own set of passkeys. He told Jeffrey he could head into the OR suite itself. “I’ll stay here and finish the locker room,” he said. “Then I’ll be in to help you. Start in the OR corridor. Be sure to hit the big blackboard. In fact, do that first. The director of nursing has a fit whenever we forget to wash it down. Then hit any of the ORs that have been used tonight. The others should have been cleaned during the evening shift.”
Jeffrey would have preferred to go straight to pathology to look up Patty Owen’s pathology report, but he was happy to get into the OR. He put on a scrub suit as he’d been instructed. When he checked himself in the mirror, he was alarmed to see that except for his new shade of hair and his bare upper lip, he looked much like his old self. He quickly put on a surgical mask as he’d planned.
“You don’t need a mask,” David said when he caught sight of him.
“I’m coming down with a cold,” Jeffrey explained. “I think they’d want me to wear it.”
David nodded. “Good thinking.”
Pushing his cleaning cart ahead of him, Jeffrey went through the double doors to the OR. He hadn’t been in there since the hospital had put him on leave, but the place looked exactly the same. As far as Jeffrey could tell, nothing had changed.
Following David’s instructions, Jeffrey tackled the big blackboard first. A few staff members came and went as Jeffrey worked. Some of them Jeffrey knew by name, but none of them gave him a second look. Jeffrey had to believe his cleaning activities protected his true identity as much as his altered appearance did. He made it a point not to stray far from his mop and cleaning cart as he worked.
Even so, when an emergency appendectomy that had been in progress when he first entered the OR was at last completed and the operating team emerged, Jeffrey made it a point to keep his back to the group. The anesthesiologist and the surgeon were both good friends of his.
After the doors swung closed behind the departing team, a silence descended on the OR. Jeffrey could make out the faint sound of a radio coming from the direction of Central Supply. He mopped his way over to the main operating room desk.
The operating room desk was more of a long counter with several areas for people to sit. It served as the command post for moving people into and out of the ORs, calling to have patients brought up from their rooms, bringing in the patients from the holding area, and coordinating the flow of personnel. Under the center portion were a number of large file drawers. One was marked “scheduling.”
Jeffrey glanced up and down the corridor to make sure it was truly deserted. Then he pulled open the drawer. Since the operating schedules were filed according to date, Jeffrey was soon able to find the schedule for the fateful day: September 9. He scanned the day’s cases, looking for epidurals that might have required .75% Marcaine, but there were none to be found. There were a number of spinal cases, but they would have used spinal grade Marcaine if Marcaine had been used at all, not the 30 cc variety used for epidurals or regional blocks.
Going back in the drawer, Jeffrey pulled out the schedule for September 8. Although the biohazard disposal container on the side of the anesthesia machine was emptied every day, there was always a chance it had been missed for some reason. But the schedule for the 8th provided no more possible explanations than the one for the 9th had. Jeffrey was forced to wonder if he’d misread the Marcaine label for Patty Owen’s epidural after all. How else could he account for the empty .75% Marcaine vial that had been found?
Just as Jeffrey was almost through, the swinging doors burst open. Jeffrey grabbed his mop and frantically started mopping. For a moment, he dared not look up. But after it became clear no one was approaching, he raised his head in time to see a surgical team rushing a patient on a gurney toward the OR set up for emergencies. Several units of blood were hanging above the stretcher. Jeffrey guessed the patient was a victim of an automobile accident.
Only after calm had returned did Jeffrey go back to the schedules. He replaced each one in its respective slot and closed the file drawer. The emergency case that had just gone by started him thinking. Emergencies wouldn’t appear on an OR schedule. For that matter, neither would a case like Patty Owen’s. Her Caesarean had not been anticipated. How could it have been scheduled? Jeffrey move
d on to the previous year’s scheduling book. This was the book that contained listings of all the OR cases, including emergencies and operations that may have been scheduled, only to be canceled or postponed.
Other than Caesareans, epidural anesthesia was not commonly used in emergencies. Jeffrey knew that, but he decided to check the scheduling book anyway, just to be sure. There were exceptions. He looked at entries on the 8th first, running his finger down the list. It was not easy to read since it was in longhand by many different hands. He found nothing remotely suspicious. He turned the page to the 9th and started down the list. He didn’t have to check far. In OR 15, the same OR that Patty Owen had been treated in, there had been a corneal laceration repair at five in the morning. Jeffrey’s pulse quickened. An ophthalmic emergency was promising indeed.
Jeffrey tore a piece of paper from a pad on the counter and quickly jotted down the patient’s name. Then he closed the book and returned it to its spot on the shelf. Pushing his bucket along on its unsteady wheels, Jeffrey made his way down the hall to the anesthesia office. He opened the door and turned on the light. He ran to the anesthesia file drawer and pulled out the anesthesia record for the patient in question.
“Bingo!” Jeffrey whispered. The anesthesia record indicated that the patient had received retrobulbar anesthesia with .75% Marcaine! Jeffrey put the anesthesia record back in place and shut the file drawer. Kelly had been right. He could hardly believe it. Instantly he felt better about himself, and more confident about his judgment. He knew that what he’d found wouldn’t have much import in court, but it meant the world to him. He hadn’t misread the label on the Marcaine!
When the time for the lunch break arrived, David came looking for Jeffrey. Jeffrey had finished the main OR corridor and had cleaned the two operating rooms that had been used for the emergencies. He was busy in Central Supply when David found him.
“I’d just as soon keep working,” Jeffrey said. “I’m not hungry. I’ll head down to the labs and get started.”