Chapter Eleven
Before we could go, I made Jackson dig out the old radio we had in storage. We spent a good twenty minutes fiddling with it until we could make it work. We tuned it to the frequency Leroy and I had agreed on and we got our new driver on the horn.
Leroy was punctual and got to the offices in less than ten minutes after I'd called him. Jackson and I climbed into the back of the familiar cab and Jackson gave Leroy the address where we were headed.
Back to the Kitchen for the third time in two days. I wasn't impressed with it, but I wanted to solve this case. No one screws with the good guys on my watch and gets away with it. I just didn't like the nagging feeling that we were pushing our luck, and safety, every time we made another trip into the Kitchen these days.
It wasn't hard to find the building that Doctor Jones had used as his main practice. The address was listed in his file and it was public knowledge anyway. Free clinics that dealt with clockwork implants were almost unheard of because, with legal implants, the complications were immediately covered up with painkillers, antibiotics and additional surgery when necessary. In the world of legal clockwork implants, maintaining the image of healthy people with complication-free clockwork implants was the biggest concern. Clockwork implants being rejected by the patient's body was so uncommon in the regular world that most people didn’t even consider it when they went to get their surgeries. Out here, though, reputations were tarnished and while the illegal doctors known as “Greasers” could have the worst reputation ever, they were so few and far between that reputation didn't matter so much as long as they were willing to perform the surgery.
It didn't take us long to find the place we were looking for and we told Leroy to head back to Chelsea for an hour. We didn't expect that we'd need much longer than that to get what we needed and I didn't want Leroy sitting out with the meter running in the Kitchen. That just spelled disaster in my mind.
I was pretty sure that Jackson was convinced that someone here would break this case wide open for us. He was all but foaming at the mouth with righteous anger. It was bad enough in his mind that someone had killed the only person willing to give a damn about the kids who had fallen between the cracks of the medical system, but to kill him on the very cusp of a breakthrough that would help these kids get out of the cycle of illegal surgery and drug addiction was just unspeakable. Jackson was willing to do anything to bring the killer to justice, and damn the consequences. I didn't think he was looking at the big picture. The real question wasn't about catching the killer, it was about finding a replacement for Doctor Jones to pick up the work that still needed to be done. I felt bad enough that someone had died for a senseless reason. I didn't need to be accused of not looking at the bigger picture, too. I just hoped that Jackson would think bigger once we had made some headway in the case.
I still felt like there was some sort of conspiracy being hidden here, and we just needed to take a half a step back to see it. Jackson kept insisting that I was crazy, and I was really starting to consider the fact that I just needed a shadowy evil figure to blame this senseless murder on, and Wayside wasn't filling that role anymore.
The building that housed the late Doctor's practice was nondescript in itself. It didn't stand out from the surrounding buildings in any way. It was a squat, concrete thing with thick plate windows that had thin metal mesh inside, making them less penetrable by bullets. The door was thick steel with a grimy window set in it. Faded lettering on the glass in the door announced that yes, this was the “Doctor Jones Free Clinic” and that “all patients are welcome”.
I felt a twist in my guts. It wasn't right that all these kids would be missing the Doctor now. It wasn't fair that there were gonna be kids dying in the streets without medical care, or access to surgery to replace their broken or poorly installed clockwork enhancements. It was bullshit to think that there were people getting killed just for being better than the rest of us, and doing things without selfish intentions. It didn't make me sad, it pissed me off. The corrupt system kept turning no matter who got trampled or killed or left behind.
Maybe Jackson's rage wasn't so self-righteous after all.
I pushed open the door with Jackson close behind me. The entrance way that led into the practice was dim and overly warm. A coat rack filled up the long wall, and the smell of brewing coffee and some sort of spice cake or cookies mingled with the undercurrent of sweat and dirt that emanated from the street kids who passed through this place day in and day out. We found ourselves standing in a wide open waiting room with more chairs and couches than I'd ever seen in a doctor's waiting room. The furniture was worn out, but the chairs and couches looked comfortable. I almost didn't notice the pillows and blankets stacked neatly in the corner by the water cooler and coffee station. I wondered how often the kids who came to see Doctor Jones ended up crashing in this waiting room just to stay out of the cold.
A large, heavy desk partially obstructed the path leading to the stairs. I assumed that there were operating or recovery rooms upstairs. The building looked like it was similar to my own, two, maybe three floors worth of space. I wondered vaguely if there was an elevator. It didn't seem logical to let patients walk up a flight of stairs when they were in pain, or doped up on God-knows-what kind of drugs.
There were only two kids sitting in the waiting room. A boy and a girl. They were dressed a lot nicer than I would have thought street kids, or at least, anyone who would wind up in this office would be dressed. They seemed uneasy, kind of out of place, too. I assumed that they were a couple, the way they were sitting suggested it. She was pale and skinny, and looked like she hadn't slept in three days. He was holding her carefully, like he was afraid that she might break if he put too much pressure on her. I couldn't see any clockwork implants on the boy, but the girl had evident implants on her arm. She didn't look like she was doing well, I assumed that they were here because something wasn't working right with her implants. I felt a pang of guilt and I silently hoped that her body wasn't rejecting whatever work she had had done recently. With Doctor Jones out of the picture, I didn't think there would be much hope for her getting the treatment she needed to fix a rejection. And that thought just fuelled my building rage.
I was gonna make someone pay.
Jackson patted my on the arm, trying to get my attention as a receptionist arrived from the depths of the back of the building.
“Can I help you, gentlemen?” she asked.
I looked her over; she was a plump dark-skinned woman with a friendly smile and the kindest, darkest eyes I'd ever seen. She was wearing nurse's scrubs in a pale pink that made the caramel tone of her skin all the more striking. Her hair was long and braided down her back and she wore no makeup. She also didn't have any mechanical parts that I could see. I found that kind of strange, as it was proven that medical staff with clockwork implants in their hands were more skilled and steady in the operating room than those without.
Jackson stepped forward and offered his hand. “My name is Jackson Early, this is Blaze Tuesday. We're detectives.”
The receptionist took Jackson's hand slowly, giving him a critical look of disapproval. “Detectives huh?” she replied gruffly. “Look, I already told your partners over at the precinct everything I know about Doctor Jones and his personal life.”
I interjected without hesitation. “No, ma'am, we're private detectives. We've got nothing to do with Detective Stringer and his investigation.”
“Have you talked to that so-called Detective Stringer?” she asked me.
“Actually, he arrested me yesterday and tried to blame Doctor Jones' murder on me,” I replied, pointing to my bruised face. “He's not a very good detective, if you ask me.”
“I'd have to agree with you there,” she said with a nod.
“We'd be entirely grateful for whatever help you can give us,” I added, smiling innocently at her. “We want to see the murderer brought to justice. Doctor Jones was a good guy, and this can't go unpunished.”
The plump receptionist looked from me to Jacks and back again, clearly having an internal debate with herself about how much information she could give us, and whether or not I was being sincere.
“Miss, I'm sorry that you've had such a shitty time with Stringer. We know how much of a pain in the ass he can be. He's honestly just trying to do his job, even if he's not very good at it,” Jackson explained slowly, trying to warm her up a little bit, and get on friendly terms. “And we were hired by a third party, if it makes any difference,” he explained, digging out his PI license, and flashing her the tin badge.
“It really depends on who the third party is.”
I had to try very hard not to chuckle. The receptionist was a tough broad. I liked her attitude, even if she was roadblocking us from making any progress on this case.
“We can't exactly divulge that information,” I said with an apologetic shrug. “Not yet, anyway.”
The receptionist gave me a smug look of disbelief. She wasn't going to have any of my excuses, apparently.
“Listen, ma'am,” Jackson tried again. “I've been where these kids are. I was forced to get my implants after an accident. My body rejected them at first. I was sick, and so drugged up that I couldn't think straight. I didn't have anyone, my girlfriend left me, I was a cop at the time and no one on the force was willing to take care of a drugged out cripple. I was ready to just roll over and die, and this was all due to legal implants I had forced on me by the cops. I can't imagine what it's like for these kids, with no one else to turn to,” he frowned, pausing his little speech to let the words really sink in. “Doctor Jones was a good man, and we just want to make sure that his work doesn't get buried and forgotten in the wake of his death.”
Good Lord, Jackson was good at sweet talking people. Ladykiller indeed.
The Receptionist nodded. “All right, you two. Take a seat,” she told us. “Let me help these kids and then I'll bring down the others and we'll have a talk, okay?”
I smiled. “Thank you... miss?”
“You can call me Janelle,” the receptionist told us with a nod and a smile. “Now seriously, have a seat, help yourself to coffee or those cookies or whatever you'd like for refreshments there, and I'll be back in a few minutes I have a bit of work I need to do before we can talk.”
“Thank you, Janelle,” I said, nudging Jackson's arm and getting him to follow me to a couple of empty seats in the corner of the room.
I watched as Janelle disappeared back into the hidden back rooms of the office to do whatever sort of work she needed to do. Jackson crossed the room instead of sitting with me and helped himself to a cup of coffee. I leaned forward and rested my elbows on my knees, staring at the floor as I waited. Jackson came and sat next to me, sipping his coffee slowly and sitting perfectly straight, as if he was watching for something.
There was an incoherent whisper and the rustle of clothes moving as the two teenagers shifted in their places. I looked up to see their dark, wide eyes staring at Jackson and me. They looked scared and sickly and it was all I could do not to offer them to come back to my office and work as housekeepers or something. Jackson's bleeding heart was rubbing off on me.
“You guys are really private investigators?” the boy asked.
I nodded and fished out my badge. I held it out to the kids to let them have a look at it. We were required to carry a badge and a small license with our photo on it at all times when we were out in the field. There had been too many novices getting in over their heads and too many people impersonating private investigators and getting access to things they shouldn't have, so laws were passed to make it safer for everyone. It made me feel important again, like I had felt when I'd been a real cop. Our badges were crappy tin, though, nothing incredibly fancy, but more ornate than the toy sheriff badges that little kids sometimes got as gifts. And we still had badge I.D. numbers to prove that we weren't fakes.
The boy nodded, convinced and I put my badge back in my pocket.
“Is something wrong?” I asked quietly.
“You mean aside from Doctor Jones being killed?” the boy shot back, venom and anger in his voice.
“Yeah, aside from that,” I agreed.
“Do you know who killed him?” the girl asked. Her voice was raspy and thin. She sounded like she'd been sick for quite a while.
“Not yet,” I admitted. “We're working on it though.”
“The cops have been all over the place out here,” the boy explained. “All of them useless. Pulling us off the streets, forcing us to show them our clockwork. A bunch of our friends have been arrested for no reason.”
“Are they arresting anyone who has clockwork hands?” I asked, eyeing the girl's mechanical arm.
“How the hell did you know that?” the boy asked, suddenly on the defensive.
“I'm a detective, I'm paid to know these things,” I replied coolly. “They think someone with an illegal clockwork hand killed the Doctor, right?”
The boy nodded. “We've been lucky so far, they haven't gotten to us.”
“You have a clockwork hand, too?”
The boy shook his head in the negative. “Just her. But she was getting her surgery fixed when the murder happened.”
“Not by Doctor Jones?” I pressed.
“Unfortunately not,” the girl said with a sigh. She held up her mechanical hand. It sure as hell didn't look like the typical illegal clockwork.
“That's a standard implant,” Jackson pointed out. “What are you doing out here?”
The girl shrugged. “Lost my arm in a car wreck,” she explained, interrupting herself as she succumbed to a coughing fit.
Jackson and I waited patiently as her boyfriend patted her back gently, reassuring her and offering water, which she turned away with a wave of her hand.
“I got the standard implant done a couple of weeks ago,” she wheezed weakly when she had managed to regain her composure. “My parents didn't believe me when I said it was hurting and I wanted to go back to a doctor. They both have implants and their surgeries went off without any hitches or glitches.”
“So you came to see if Doctor Jones could help you?” I asked, frowning.
“Not even,” she admitted. “I uh... I went to see a Greaser, I wanted to see if I could bypass the whole medical paper trail thing. He looked at it and said there was nothing he could do for me with the gear he had but he sent me off to one of his associates.”
“Do these Greasers have names that you can recall?” Jackson asked, trying very hard to hide the anger in his voice.
The girl shook her head. “No, sir. I'm sorry.”
“What did you get done to your arm?” I interrupted, watching Jackson grind his teeth in anger before taking a long sip of his coffee.
“The Greaser I went to said that he was gonna upgrade the joint, that it was put in my arm socket incorrectly and that was what was causing me so much pain.”
“Lemme guess,” I said slowly, “that was bullshit?”
“Apparently,” the girl replied with a sigh. “Anyway, it made it worse and I'm here now. We were both at the Greaser's place yesterday when Doctor Jones was killed, I just really don't want to get arrested and have to explain this whole thing to my parents.”
I nodded sympathetically. These kids were scared.
“So you two aren't technically Gearheads then?” I asked. “If you'll pardon the assumption.”
“No need to apologize,” the boy said. “It's totally understandable that you'd think that way.”
“What are you doing in the Kitchen then?” Jackson asked. “You said you have friends out here?”
“Yeah, is it so hard to believe that we've got friends in hard places?” the boy accused. “This is why we didn't want to talk to cops or private investigators. I can see why they call you guys dicks.”
I grinned and snorted a chuckle under my breath. “No need for hostility, kids,” I said, addressing both the kids sitting across from me as well as Jackson. “We just weren't expe
cting to find people in such a unique situation as yours,” I explained.
The boy shrugged. “I've lived in the Kitchen for most of my life, actually,” he explained. “Grew up on the edge of Chelsea and have kind of made it my home out here.”
“You work a proper job?” I asked.
“Not that it matters, but yes I do,” the boy replied. “And I pay rent on my own apartment closer to Chelsea.”
“Good for you,” I commended. “So you're familiar with the work that Doctor Jones does here?”
“Yeah,” he told me with a nod. “I've seen a lot of friends get really messed up with their clockwork implants and stuff. I had to bury two of my friends this year already,” he added bitterly. “The Greasers are totally scalping people. The quality of their work is getting worse and worse. I've seen implants that outright break on people when they're just doing regular every day things. And there's no one to turn to when you get sick like this,” he motioned to his girlfriend. “Doctor Jones was helping people.”
“We know, kid,” I assured him. “That's why we're trying to find out who killed him, and why.”
“It doesn't really matter anymore,” the girl said sadly. “I mean, he's dead now. There's no one to replace him. The kids who were counting on him are just gonna go back to the Greasers and keep getting more implants, and they're just gonna keep getting sick and dying on the tables and no one is gonna do a damn thing to stop it.”
“How did you two know Doctor Jones?” I asked. “You speak so highly of him.”
“Everyone 'round here knows about Doctor Jones,” the boy said bluntly. “You hear things, you make friends with a Gearhead who had some work done or you meet someone who volunteers at his halfway houses.”
“I have volunteered here since before my accident,” the girl said quietly.
“Volunteered at the halfway houses?” Jackson asked, intrigued.
“Yeah,” the girl replied with a nod. “I'm from what I guess you'd call a 'well to do' family, so I figured helping out kids who aren't as fortunate as I am was a good way to spend my time. Plus, my boyfriend lives really close to the Kitchen, so it's kind of nice to be able to help out with a cause that means more to him than something random like picking up trash on the highway or something.”
I nodded. “So what do you do when you volunteer?”
She shrugged. “It really depends. Laundry, cooking, sometimes I just visited the kids who were sick.”
“How old are you?” Jackson interrupted.
“I'm twenty-four, he's twenty-six,” she said, while her boyfriend glared at us. “Is that relevant?”
“Just wondering if you're underage,” Jackson replied with a shrug. “It wouldn't have mattered, we're not here to enforce truancy or anything.”
“Can I get your names?” I asked gently. I didn't want to spook these kids away. They might know something that was helpful, even if they didn't know it yet.
“My name is Rose,” the girl told me with a small smile. “And this is David.”
“Do you have last names, in case I need to find you later?” I asked.
“You won't need to find us later,” David growled.
“What happens if Rose gets picked up by the cops?” I pressed. “How am I gonna be able to come find you and help you if Stringer gets to you first?”
“No one's gonna pick Rose up,” David insisted. “And if that Stringer guy tries anything, we have alibis.”
“Stringer is an idiot and won't listen to a couple of what he would consider 'kids' who claim to have alibis when your girlfriend there is a prime suspect in an open murder investigation,” I shot back.
“Tekla,” Rose said with a nod. “Rose Tekla,” she patted David. “And he's David Schubert.”
“Thank you,” I said sincerely. I fished out a business card as Jackson wrote their names in his little notebook. “My name is Blaze Tuesday. If you need any help with anything, or if you think of anything that might help us figure out who killed Doctor Jones, gimme a call, okay?”
Rose took the card from me with a small nod and a smile. “Thank you, Mister Tuesday.”
David nodded reluctantly. “Yeah, it's kinda nice to know that there's still a few good guys left to help us out.”
Receptionist Janelle returned from the abyss of the back room just then clipboard in hand. “Hey, Rose?” She called, obviously they were on friendly terms. “They're ready for you upstairs.”
“What are you getting done?” Jackson asked suddenly. “There's no surgeon on staff anymore, right?”
Rose smiled bravely through her pallid countenance and dark rimmed eyes. She looked like she was running a pretty bad fever. “They're gonna have a look to start. Probably give me some antibiotics and hopefully I won't need to have it fixed surgically,” she explained.
“What happens if you need surgery?”
She shrugged, and then winced at the motion. “I'll go back to my parents with a referral and a prescription, I hope,” she replied.
Janelle cleared her throat from where she stood by her desk. And Rose held up a single finger, signalling she'd be just a moment longer.
“It was nice to meet you, Detectives,” she told us. “I really do hope that there's something we can do to help you in your investigation.”
“You've been very helpful already,” I assured the kids. “Take care of yourselves now, and seriously, if you need anything, lemme know, okay?”
Rose nodded and David led her gently away from us towards the waiting receptionist, Janelle.
As soon as we were alone again, Jackson wheeled on me. “What the hell, Blaze?” he hissed.
“Tekla is the name of one of the major investors in Five Points,” I said simply, shrugging. “And she's been volunteering at the halfway houses.”
“Good Lord, Blaze, are you still going on with your insane theory that this was a rivalry taken too far?”
I nodded. “But she's not involved in any way.”
Jackson groaned in response. “You're insane,” he grumbled into his Styrofoam coffee cup.
“That's not very nice,” I replied simply.
Before we could get into an all out argument, Janelle returned with two more people dressed in scrubs. One was a tall, scrawny man in drab olive green scrubs. The other was a petite blonde woman in blue scrubs.
“I'm Felix Morrow. This is Margo Grace,” the man said bluntly. “You're the private investigators hired to find out who killed Doctor Jones?”
I stared at the young man, unimpressed. If he was a doctor, his bedside manners needed a major brushing up. “Yeah,” I replied, matching his blunt tone. “I'm Detective Tuesday, this is Detective Early. We were just hoping that we could ask you a few questions.”
“We have a patient upstairs,” Felix informed us. “We have maybe ten minutes to spare.”
“You a surgeon?” I asked immediately. I was getting a bad vibe from this Felix fellow.
“No,” Felix said. “Doctor Jones was the only qualified surgeon here.”
“You a Greaser then?” I pressed.
“Lord, no,” Felix said with a scowl of distaste. “I don't perform operations, although I was competent enough to assist Doctor Jones in surgery.”
“So you're a nurse?”
Felix's eye twitched. Obviously he didn't like that phrase applied to him. “If it makes it easier for you to comprehend, then yes.”
Oh, so he wasn't happy with his station in life. That was interesting.
“And you?” I asked Margo.
“Just a nurse, like Janelle,” She said simply. “We were here to assist the doctor and to make sure that things went relatively smoothly.”
“You have medical training?” I asked.
“I can get you our personnel files,” Margo assured me with a smile. At least one of them was being helpful.
“I'm just gonna get right to the point,” I said bluntly, I had no patience for playing games. “Someone killed Doctor Jones, we want to figure out who. The suspect had m
echanical hands, we need a list of all your patients who had implants in their hands. I need personnel files, and any financial records you might have.”
Jackson gave me a weird look since we’d already acquired all of Doctor Jones’ medical files when we tossed his house, but kept scribbling notes. I didn't really need any of these things, outside of the medical files, I just wanted to keep these people out of my hair.
“Doctor Jones kept all the files at his place,” Margo said, earning herself a glare from Janelle. “We have basic notes here, which I can get for you. The list of patients with clockwork hands I can also give you, but I will need you to sign a non-disclosure agreement, Detective.”
I was impressed. “You're not gonna fight me about the whole 'Doctor-patient privilege' thing?”
Margo shook her head. “Doctor Jones is dead, as long as you sign the non-disclosure agreement and don't make our lists public I don't see any reason why we shouldn't allow you to have a look over that sort of stuff.”
“Are you the second in command here, Margo?”
“I guess so,” Margo said lightly. “I'm the senior staff at least.”
I made a mental note of that.
“Who is in charge of the halfway houses that Doctor Jones operated?” Jackson interjected.
“Each building has a manager,” Margo explained. “I was one of the managers, the other two are locals who have been involved with the whole Gearhead subculture for long enough that they know the ins and outs of living with illegal clockwork.”
“Was?” I pressed.
“I resigned last week,” Margo explained. “I'm getting married in two months and my fiancé is transferring out of the city for work and I fully intend to go with him.”
“So who will be taking over your highly important positions here?”
“Doctor Jones hadn't picked a replacement yet,” She informed us with another shrug. “It wasn't really my problem.”
“So what's going to happen now?” I asked slowly, trying to be delicate but failing. “With Doctor Jones dead, and you leaving, what's going to happen to the practice?”
“Dunno,” Felix replied, getting more agitated the more I pressed. “His will hasn't been released, if he had one. We don't make a lot of money here, and without a proper doctor, we're likely going to have to shut down.”
“What about the kids?” Jackson croaked, trying very hard not to lose his temper. “They've got no one else to help them!”
“We can't really do much about that,” Felix said dryly. “None of us are doctors, and Doctor Jones, as far as we know, hadn't set up anything to help us out in a situation like this.”
“No one expects to get murdered,” I replied.
“We really do need to get back to work,” Felix said flatly. “So if you're done with your questions...”
“I just need Margo to get me those files,” I agreed with a nod. “You and Miss Janelle are welcome to head back to work.”
Felix grunted in response and Janelle followed him as they went back to whatever the rooms in the back held away from the prying eyes of the public.
“Sorry about them,” Margo apologized. “They're not the most friendly of people to start with, some of the kids who come through here make our jobs suck.”
“Most of the people I work with do the same,” Jackson chimed in.
Margo laughed lightly. “I could imagine. So, those files will just take me a moment to round up,” she explained. “What did you need again?”
“Just the patient list and your personnel files, please,” I reiterated.
“You don't want the bank files and stuff?” Margo asked, arching an eyebrow questioningly.
“We'll take 'em if they're easy enough for you to get.”
“Yeah, that's not a problem,” Margo assured us. “You might find something useful in there anyway,” she said hopefully.
I stood and followed Margo as she walked behind the desk and started opening what I had thought were wooden cabinets but were actually cleverly disguised filing cabinets. Margo pulled out a single sheet of paper and handed it to me.
“Sign this and I'll get you what you need.”
I read the paper quickly; it was a standard non-disclosure agreement, kind of like the one that Wayside had sent to Doctor Jones. I signed it without hesitation. I needed those files. I understood the need for doctor-patient confidentiality, so the whole NDA thing made sense. I'd honestly be a little pissed off if my doctor had handed over my files to Stringer, but at the same time, if I was a suspect in on open murder case and my medical records would prove that I was innocent, I wouldn't argue the fact.
Besides, if my doctor was dead, as far as I was concerned the whole confidentiality thing was kind of a moot point. I just didn't want to argue semantics, this was a controversial can of worms and I was taking a risk. I would make sure that Trixie wasn't aware of this stuff though, just to be safe if it came back to bite me in the ass.
I watched as Margo flipped through the files, pulling out the ones I'd asked for and stacking them in a neat little pile. I cast a wary glance around the room and made sure that we were alone, except for Jacks and I popped the big question.
“You weren't terribly impressed with Doctor Jones seriously considering taking a contract to go back to work with Wayside, were you?”
Margo fumbled the file she was holding, but made a nice recovery catch. She stopped and looked up at me, glaring daggers.
“That's why you resigned, right? Not because you're getting married in two months and your future husband is getting transferred out of the city,” I pressed on. “You're not wearing a ring, and you haven't got tan lines on your fingers to indicate the presence of one outside of your work.”
Margo shook her head and continued to pull files for me as she replied. “No, I was not terribly impressed with his decision,” she explained coolly, still glaring at me over her shoulder. “Wayside is responsible for this whole mess in the first place. They were the reason that Terry... er... Doctor Jones started this whole practice in the first place. They don't care about what happens to their product once it's sold. And they sure as hell don't care about the kids dying in the streets because they're unable to get the medical treatment that they need when their implants go septic!”
“You call him by his first name often?” I asked sweetly.
She picked up the stack of files and slammed them down on the desk in front of me. “I'm his senior staff. I've been with him since the beginning. Yes, we called each other by our first names. No I wasn't sleeping with him. Yes, I do have a fiancé and we are getting married in two months, but the transfer isn't happening until the new year,” she added with a smug look in my direction. “Yes, I knew about the contract. Yes I knew that he was seriously considering it. No I was not happy with it and I resigned as soon as he told me about it. It doesn't matter now, though, because he's dead and we're all pretty much unemployed if we can't find a doctor to replace him.”
I picked up the stack of files from the desk and leaned forward. “I really do appreciate your help and cooperation,” I said sincerely. “Trust me when I say that we're really going to do whatever we can to make sure that this operation doesn't go under. Doctor Jones was a good guy, and we won't let his death go unpunished.”
I turned on my heel and strode towards the door. Jackson followed me and we walked back into the sunlight, leaving Doctor Jones' practice behind us without another word.