Born To Die

  He was already climbing to his full six feet two inches, and Alvarez was reaching for her jacket, purse, and sidearm. “I’ll drive,” Pescoli said. She wanted to see his reaction to the injured woman, and then she’d double-check his story.

  And if the woman turned out to be someone other than Jocelyn Wallis, there was still the problem that the schoolteacher was missing.

  If what O’Halleran had told them was true.

  “Oh, thank God, Doctor Lambert! I was so afraid.... Oh, sweet Jesus!” Rosie Alsgaard said, the fingers of one hand theatrically splayed over her chest as she hurried along the hallway of the second floor of the small hospital. Dressed in scrubs, the ear tips of the coiled stethoscope peeking out of her pocket like the tiny twin faces of a double-headed snake, the ER nurse jogged over the shiny linoleum as she met Kacey. “Oh, man, I was worried. We all were.”

  “Worried? What’re you talking about?”

  “Because of the patient who was admitted last night, before my shift! She’s a dead ringer for you, and Cleo, she was certain it was you! The Jane Doe.”

  “Cleo?”

  “The nurse’s aide who was working ER last night. And not just her. Me, too. I saw the patient and ... and it’s freaky!” Rosie was breathing hard, her words tumbling out of her mouth in no sensible order. “I mean, of course her face is swollen and bruised, her nose broken, but her hair ... and she looks like you. I was sure when I saw her this morning ... I mean, I was worried sick that you had fallen and—”

  “Rosie! Slow down,” Kacey ordered, one hand up. “Let’s start over.”

  An aide pushing a medication cart passed by, while another nurse whipped past them and hurried toward the bank of elevators located at this end of the small building housing the newly reopened St. Bart’s Hospital.

  “Okay, okay!” Some of Rosie’s color was coming back, and she took a long, deep breath. “Last night a patient came into the ER by ambulance. Apparently she was out jogging and fell down the ravine by the river. She didn’t have any ID on her, and she was—is—in bad shape. Head trauma, broken pelvis, fractured tibia in two places, sprained wrist, two cracked ribs, ruptured spleen, and cuts and contusions. I mean, she’s a mess, must’ve rolled down that hill, hitting rocks and roots and God knows what else. But the thing is, she does resemble you. She’s got the same build, and we all know that you jog, sometimes up in the park.... We all were hoping that it wasn’t you, but we were worried just the same.”

  “Someone could have called.”

  “Too busy last night. The police were here, too. And there were two multiple-car accidents with the snow, so there wasn’t any time. Cleo and I, we figured if you didn’t show up for rounds today, that we’d call the clinic.”

  “Where’s the Jane Doe now?”

  “In ICU, but she might have to be sent to Missoula or Spokane, depending. Right now, no one wants to move her.”

  “I’ll check on her when my rounds are finished.”

  Rosie offered a tentative smile. “I’m just glad you’re okay.”

  As Kacey went about her rounds, she wondered just how “okay” she was. For the second time in a week she’d heard that someone who looked like her was either dead or fighting for her life. Weird. But until she saw the woman in the ICU, she couldn’t be certain that Rosie’s imagination wasn’t working overtime.

  An hour later, after she’d finished checking on the few patients who were under her care in the hospital, she made her way to the ICU.

  Anita Bellows was the nurse on duty. Barely five feet, Anita, at forty, was as lithe and agile as a woman half her age. A gymnast in college, she now ran marathons and trained year-round to keep in shape. With short brown hair, a quick smile, and large eyes surrounded by lashes caked in mascara, she had moved from Missoula when St. Bart’s opened this past year, giving the aging Pinewood Community Hospital a run for its money.

  Today, like Rosie Alsgaard, Anita, spying Kacey push open the door to the ICU, was visibly relieved. Anita was situated at the large circular desk from which private, curtained “rooms” radiated, much like the petals of a sunflower. “Oh, thank God,” she whispered, making a quick sign of the cross over her thin chest, where a tiny gold cross was suspended on a fragile chain. “I thought ... I mean, I was worried that . . .” She sighed and hitched her chin toward a woman lying in one of the two occupied beds. “I’m just glad she’s not you.”

  “She’s the Jane Doe?”

  “Uh-huh. Brought in last night.”

  Kacey approached the private, curtained area for the patient.

  The muscles in her torso tensed as she stared down at the patient’s swollen face. Kacey saw the resemblance despite the contusions and probable broken nose. High cheekbones, deep-set eyes, which were now closed, a heart-shaped face, a few freckles still visible were like her own. The patient’s hair was a deep auburn hue, and it fell in unruly waves to her shoulders, just as Kacey’s did, even though a part of Jane’s head had been shaved to allow an intracerebral pressure catheter to be inserted into her skull. The ICP monitored pressure inside the skull and drained off excess fluid.

  Not a good sign. Heart monitor, ICP, IVs, urinary catheter were just a start. Jane Doe’s body was draped beneath a sheet, one leg splinted, but Kacey already knew from Rosie and Anita the patient was a similar size and body type.

  She touched the woman’s hand. Who are you?

  An eerie whisper swept over the back of her neck, and she told herself she was being foolish and unprofessional. Just because Rosie, who wasn’t known for being rock steady, thought there was a resemblance, so what? Yet, as she looked at the comatose woman, just for a second she imagined her own self in this woman’s place. In her mind’s eye she saw herself helpless, comatose, on the cusp of death, while nurses and doctors scurried around to try and save her life.

  “See what I mean?” Anita asked.

  Kacey lifted a shoulder. “Maybe she does look a little like me.”

  “Try ‘she looks a lot like you.’” Anita straightened the sheet, but her gaze was focused on her patient. “Pretty compromised. Just when we think we’ve got her stabilized, she starts to crash.” She bit at her lower lip as she concentrated. “Some of her symptoms aren’t consistent with her injuries, and Dr. Henner is still trying to figure out what’s going on internally. X-rays, MRIs, CAT scans, but . . .” She glanced at the laptop computer that was also hooked to all the monitors. “Since she’s comatose, we can’t ask her what happened, and no one was with her or has come forward. She can’t give us any information on her pain or if she was on some kind of drug or had a seizure ... lots of unanswered questions, but the lab work should come back this morning. Then we’ll know a little more. A couple of detectives were here last night and said they’d be back in the morning.”

  “Detectives?” Again, that tiniest of shivers.

  “Yeah, two women who were checking out the accident.” She glanced at the clock mounted on one wall. Frowning, her eyebrows drawing together, she added, “They’ll probably show up soon, so I’ll double-check with the lab. Maybe they’ll know something more. You’d think someone should be missing her. She came in wearing top-end jogging clothes, jewelry, and had an iPod in her pocket. It’s not like she was destitute. Trust me, someone’s missing Jane.”

  Kacey, too, saw the time. “I’ve got to get going. Tell anyone who might still think I’m lying in that hospital bed that I’m alive and kicking and I’m definitely not the Jane Doe.”

  “Will do,” Anita said. She was just walking back to her station when the ICU buzzer announced a visitor.

  Anita hit a button that unlocked the doors, and they were immediately pushed open as Trace O’Halleran, his face a grim mask, strode into the unit. Unshaven, hair mussed, wearing work clothes under a heavy jacket, he looked shaken and none too happy about being at the hospital. Two women were with him, just a step behind. The taller of the two was a redhead, mid- to late thirties, who introduced herself as Detective Pescoli. Her partner was sh
orter, Hispanic, and said her name was Alvarez. Both wore the no-nonsense attitude of cops on duty.

  Anita wasn’t impressed with their credentials. “We can’t have more than one visitor at a time in ICU. What’s he doing here?” She pointed at the rancher.

  O’Halleran’s gaze met Kacey’s, and she noticed a spark of recognition in those deep-set eyes. What was it his son had said? That she looked like his girlfriend? A little drip of trepidation slid through her bloodstream.

  “This is Trace O’Halleran,” Pescoli said. “He thinks he might be able to identify the woman who was brought in last night.”

  Anita wasn’t persuaded. “Only one at a time.” She held up a hand as if to physically halt the two officers. “There are several patients here, and we’re not going to disturb them.” As if to enforce her authority, she glanced toward Kacey. “This is Doctor Lambert. She can take Mr. O’Halleran to the patient’s bed, and you two can wait here, by the door.”

  The officers looked as if they wanted to argue but held back, and Kacey managed a smile she didn’t feel. She was suddenly cold as ice inside. O’Halleran and the Jane Doe? “Over here,” she said and led the way, slowly drawing back the curtain so that he could view the patient.

  He visibly flinched at the sight of her, his jaw tightening, his eyes closing for the briefest of seconds before he opened them again and took a long look.

  “Jesus,” he whispered under his breath. Then more loudly he said, “It’s Jocelyn,” turning away from the bed to face Kacey. “Jocelyn Wallis. The teacher Eli was talking about.” He didn’t explain any further to the detectives, and Kacey figured they’d already covered that ground. He looked once more at the battered woman lying, unmoving, in the hospital bed. The corners of his mouth twisted downward. “How the hell did she fall?”

  “That’s what we want to find out,” Pescoli said. “We’ll need you to tell us everything you know about her.” The taller detective was moving toward the newly identified patient, but Anita stepped between them.

  “Uh-uh. You can handle this interview outside the room.” The smallest person in the area, she was still very much in command as she faced off with the cops. “I mean it. Out. But ... I’ll need to get some information, too.” She glanced at O’Halleran. “Medical. Family.”

  “I don’t . . . I don’t know her that well.” He rubbed a hand behind his neck, and Kacey wondered how much he was covering up. How involved was he with Jocelyn Wallis? “I think she has a sister somewhere in California.”

  “California’s a pretty big state,” Alvarez pointed out.

  “That’s all I ever heard. California. I told you I don’t . . . didn’t really know her.” But he was thinking now. “Her maiden name was Black, she said, and her parents are from somewhere in Idaho. Around Pocatello?” he said as if asking himself a question. “She mentioned her dad a couple of times.... What the hell was his name? Cedric? No ... Cecil.” He snapped his fingers. “That’s right. Cecil Black, but I don’t remember her mother’s name. The school would have a lot more information. You can probably get it from the principal. Her name is Barbara Killingsworth.”

  Anita was nodding and shepherding them out. O’Halleran glanced back at Kacey just as one of the monitors started to give off an alarm.

  Anita spun on her heel. “Oh, hell! She’s crashing!” To the detectives, she said, “All of you, get out of here! Now!” She was already reaching for the alarm button on her desk to alert the rest of the staff. Kacey had moved to Jane Doe’s—now, presumably, Jocelyn’s—side, ready to administer CPR and hoping to high heaven that the crash cart and doctor arrived soon.

  She started CPR on the woman ... two breaths, then chest compressions. Come on, come on, Jocelyn. Stay with me, she thought as she counted aloud.

  “One, two, three, four, five—”

  For a second, the woman’s eyes opened, and Kacey nearly gasped as the resemblance to herself was almost uncanny.

  “Doctor!”

  Anita’s voice pierced her brain, and she realized she’d stumbled on the count.

  “That’s fifteen, sixteen, seventeen,” Anita prompted, and Kacey caught up just as the doors to the ICU flew open again, three nurses and two doctors streaming in, the crash cart rolling toward the bed.

  “Get these people out of here!” a strong male voice ordered, and from the corner of her eye Kacey watched as Anita shooed the detectives and Trace O’Halleran through the doors. “I’ll take over now,” the same voice said, and she glanced up to see Dr. Wes Lewis walk quickly to the bed, waiting for her to hit thirty before stepping in as she withdrew her hands and a nurse sidled the crash cart to the patient. Lewis began giving orders to the staff as easily as he had as a quarterback in college. Big, black, and usually affable, he was all business today, but Kacey felt it was too late. She’d sensed it, that recognition that a patient was slipping away. Whether it was conscious or not, there came a point where the body was done.

  “It’s when St. Peter comes a-callin’,” her grandmother, Ada, had whispered into her ear as she, crying miserably, watched as her favorite old horse, lying in the straw of his stall, shuddered his last breath.

  Her grandfather had glanced at his wife, as if to disagree, but the look she’d sent him had silenced whatever he’d wanted to say.

  “St. Peter needs horses?” Kacey, at nine, had asked. Her throat had been so thick, she’d barely been able to get the words out.

  “Course he does,” Grannie had insisted, hugging her so close that the smells of the barn—the acrid odor of urine, the dust in the hay, and the warm, heavy scent of horses—had faded to the background. All Kacey had been able to smell was the sweet scent of the wild roses in her grandmother’s favorite perfume. “Course he does.”

  And now, Kacey thought, as the patient was being treated, the defibrillator standing at the ready, St. Peter seemed to be needing and “callin’ for” Jocelyn Wallis.

  CHAPTER 9

  Dr. Lambert’s expression said it all, Trace thought.

  Her jaw was set, her lips were thin, her eyes somber as she walked down the short hallway to the area where he and the two cops were waiting. It had been only half an hour since they’d been banished from the ICU, but obviously things hadn’t gone well.

  “Jocelyn Wallis didn’t make it,” she informed both of the cops, who had been in and out of the waiting area, talking on cell phones, checking their watches, speaking in low tones, and sipping the weak, free coffee from paper cups. They’d questioned him further about his relationship with the teacher, and he’d told them about the last time they’d gotten together, that Jocelyn had wanted him to spend the night.

  Going over to her place had been a mistake.

  One that he hadn’t made again.

  He’d been taken in by her good looks, quick smile and, if truth be told, a sexual need that hadn’t been fulfilled in a long while. But he hadn’t allowed himself to be seduced more than once, if that counted for anything.

  Chivalrous, he wasn’t. And he’d seen that unspoken accusation in the shorter detective’s, Alvarez’s, eyes as she’d taken notes.

  Now he shoved his hands through his hair as Kacey went on.

  “She was just too compromised, too many internal injuries and head trauma. Dr. Lewis, who was the admitting doctor, will be out in a few minutes. He can answer any questions for you.” She glanced at Trace, then walked quickly toward the elevators.

  “Stick around,” Pescoli advised him, as if she sensed he was about to try and leave. “We’ve got some more questions.”

  “About Jocelyn?” he asked but sensed there was something deeper.

  Pescoli nodded as Alvarez eyed him with more than a grain of suspicion.

  Trace got the message. “You think that this wasn’t an accident?” he asked, feeling a new rising sense of anger. “And you think I know something about it?”

  Pescoli shook her head. “We didn’t say that.”

  “But you implied it.”

  Alvarez stepped
in. “We’re just looking into all the possible scenarios. For all we know, she slipped and fell over the railing. That’s certainly likely. But we’re trying to be thorough.” She offered him a smile that didn’t exactly light up her face, a smile that said without words, “Don’t worry. This is just a formality,” but his innate sense of self-preservation counteracted her forced affability. There was something more going on here; these women were part of the homicide investigation team.

  Trace said, “I’ve got a sick kid and a ranch to look after. I’ve told you just about everything I know about Jocelyn Wallis, but if you have more questions, you can call me.”

  He thought they might try to stop him, but at that time a big black man in a lab coat swept out of the ICU and caught the cops’ attention.

  Good.

  Trace made his way to the bank of elevators and felt a jab of disappointment that Kacey was already gone. Not that it mattered, he told himself as he stepped into the next car, where a male attendant was holding on to the hand-grips of a wheelchair where a woman in a cast was seated. Trace sidestepped the outstretched, casted leg and waited as the doors whispered shut.

  It was weird to think that Jocelyn was dead. He’d seen her less than three months ago, when she’d asked him over and they’d made another stab at it, or at least she had. He hadn’t been interested but had wanted to smooth things over. The evening had ended with her asking him to spend the night. He had been tempted but had known that going to bed with her would be a bad idea. At that point, when he’d said he’d better leave, that getting involved wouldn’t be a good idea, primarily because of Eli, she’d become instantly furious. White hot and pissed as hell.

  The elevator stopped with a jolt, and the doors swept open in the main lobby. Trace waited for the patient in the wheelchair to be pushed out of the car, then headed toward the lobby doors at the front of the hospital.

  Outside, it was snowing again, the wind bitter and harsh, the promise of December heavy on its breath. Turning his collar against the cold, he dashed across the emergency lane to his truck. He was yanking open the door when he caught a glimpse of a gray coat from the corner of his eye.