Stress Test (20 page)

Before he could change his mind, Matt pushed the speed-dial button for Jennifer’s cell phone. It had rung once when Carol hurried in. “We need you right now! Cardiac arrest!”

Matt ended the call, barely conscious of the sound of Jennifer’s tentative “Hello?” as he broke the connection.

In Trauma Room 1, two EMTs labored over a thin elderly man, still on the ambulance stretcher. One performed chest compressions while the other squeezed an Ambu bag to force oxygen through a
tube in the patient’s windpipe. Carol was injecting something into the IV line taped to the patient’s wrist.
Probably Cordarone
.
Might help,
wouldn’t hurt
.

Matt picked up the EKG tracing that still hung from the machine. There were a few squiggles, but nothing to suggest organized cardiac activity.

“Was he like this when you found him?” Matt asked the EMT doing chest compressions.

“Yeah. His daughter called him for supper, and when he didn’t answer, she went to his room. Found him on the floor, like this.”

“We shocked him, but no response,” the other EMT added. “Shoved a backboard under him and I did chest compressions all the way to the ER.”

Matt motioned the men to stand aside. “Give me a second.” Matt lifted the old man’s eyelids, revealing large pupils that didn’t shrink when he shone his penlight into them. He put his stethoscope on the cold, ashen skin of the patient’s chest. He held his breath and listened but, as he expected, heard nothing. What now? Inject adrenaline directly into the heart? Try another electrical shock to restart the heart? No, it was too late for all that. It was probably too late when the daughter found her father. “He’s gone.” Matt pulled the sheet over the old man’s face and stepped back. He looked at the clock on the wall and gave the nurse the official time of death.

Matt knew what he had to do next, and he dreaded it, the same way he’d dreaded all the other occasions like it. Sometimes the practice of medicine was the most gratifying thing in the world. And sometimes, when you had to deliver bad news, it was the worst possible job a person could have.

He paused at the door leading to the waiting room and glanced at the name on the sheet of paper Carol had handed him.
God, please
give me the words to say
. Matt wondered how he could continue to pray for guidance at times like these, even though his current prayers for deliverance seemed to go unanswered. Was it nothing more than a ritual? If that was all there was to it, he truly was a man without hope. And right now, hope was all he had.

Sandra was deep in thought about a complex legal point when the intercom buzzer sounded.

“Detective Grimes is on line one. He’s calling about the Newman case.”

“Thanks, Elaine. I’ll take it.” Sandra picked up the receiver and said, “Detective Grimes, this is Sandra Murray. How can I help you?”

Grimes’s voice, when filtered through the phone, seemed even more menacing than it did in person. “We need to ask the doctor a few more questions. Can he come in this morning?”

Sandra checked her watch. Ten a.m. Matt should be awake by now. “Let me call him and see. I’ll get back to you.”

Matt sounded a bit sleepy but didn’t seem to mind Sandra’s call. “Maybe we’ll learn why Grimes is so unwilling to believe my story,” he said. “Do you want me to go directly to the police station?”

“No, come to my office. We can take my car, and I’ll bring you back here for yours after lunch.” Sandra wondered why she’d added the lunch date. But then, it wasn’t really a date. It was a professional meeting. She hoped that once their session with Grimes was over, she and Matt would still have an appetite.

After she ended the call with Matt, Sandra buzzed Elaine. “Call Detective Grimes and tell him Dr. Newman and I will be at his office in an hour.” As though she’d just thought of it, she added, “And I’m going to have lunch after that. Am I free until two?”

Elaine’s smirk showed in her voice. “I’ll make sure you are. You and the doctor enjoy your lunch.”

Matt followed Sandra into the squad room, thankful for her presence, and totally unsure of what was going to happen.

Grimes rose from his desk. “Doctor, Counselor. Thanks for coming.” There was no sign of the blond detective. Matt couldn’t understand that. Didn’t they always work in pairs? Since Sandra didn’t seem concerned, he decided to keep quiet and wait for developments.

Matt wasn’t sure what he expected. Maybe sitting in a hard chair with a bright light shining in his face. Maybe two detectives playing “good cop, bad cop” as they volleyed questions at him like tennis balls out of a machine.
You’ve watched too many detective shows
.

Grimes ushered Matt and Sandra into what Matt decided was an interview room. The only furniture was a table with two chairs on either side. Grimes pointed them to the side of the table farthest from the door. Matt eased into his chair and decided that, although it wasn’t upholstered, he’d certainly sat on less comfortable furniture.

The wall to Matt’s right featured a large mirror. Matt figured it was one-way glass, allowing his actions to be monitored from the next room. Probably wired, as well. Sandra sat to his left, a calming presence.

“I guess—” Grimes stopped when the door opened and the tall blond detective entered and took the chair next to him. “Dr. Newman, I believe you’ve met Detective Merrilee Ames. She’ll be sitting in with us today.” He pointed at Sandra. “This is Dr. Newman’s attorney, Ms. Murray.”

The two women nodded at each other, and Matt felt the temperature drop ten degrees. Was there a natural rivalry between police and
attorney? Or was this tension because two beautiful women were in the same room? Matt noticed that Ames wore a wedding ring, and wondered if being married made it easier or harder for Sandra to accept her.

Grimes went through what Matt figured was a routine for interviews of this type: the tape recorder, the Miranda warning. Sandra had warned him, and he took this in stride.

“Now, Doctor, tell me one more time what happened to you when you left the emergency room on the night of . . .” Grimes consulted the notepad in front of him and added the date.

Matt went through it all. Grimes and Ames listened without comment, the woman occasionally jotting a note, Grimes displaying no emotion and very little apparent interest in Matt’s narrative. “I tried to climb down from my perch, my foot slipped, and that’s all I remember until I woke up in the ICU.”

“Your story initially was that you had no recollection of some of these events,” Grimes said. “Did you invent these details later?”

Ames frowned. She’d been silent so far, and Matt wondered if this was her cue to intervene as the good cop.

Matt opened his mouth, then felt Sandra’s hand touch his arm lightly, a reminder not to give in to his temper. They’d covered that in detail on the ride over. He took a calming breath. “No, trauma to the head, especially a severe injury such as I experienced, typically results in what we call retrograde amnesia. The patient has no memory of events leading up to the injury. In my case, as often occurs, those memories returned later. What I’ve told you are the facts.”

The interview went on in that vein for a while, until Grimes said, “What would you say if we told you we had evidence that you and the deceased, Cara Mendiola, were involved in procuring and selling controlled substances. That she threatened to go to the authorities with her knowledge, and that you killed her to shut her up.” He delivered
this with the attitude of a magician producing, if not a rabbit from a hat, at least a card that an audience member had chosen.

“I’d say—” This time Sandra’s grip on his arm was almost painful. Matt stopped.

Sandra’s stare was like an icicle launched at Grimes. “Detective, if you have such evidence, trot it out. If not, I believe this interview is over.”

Up to this point, Ames had done a credible imitation of a sphinx. She spoke for the first time. “Counselor, I believe you should advise your client—”

“I’ll take care of the advice, Detective.” Sandra managed to make the title an invective.

Grimes’s expression never changed. “You’ll see our evidence soon enough. In the meantime, Doctor, please stay where we can reach you at short notice.”

“If you want me,” Matt said, “you’ll probably find me in the emergency room, trying to save lives. Not ruin them, as you seem to enjoy doing.”

Sandra picked at her chef’s salad and decided she wasn’t hungry. She noticed Matt hadn’t eaten much either. “I guess that meeting with Grimes killed your appetite too,” she said.

“I suppose that’s it.” Matt crumpled his napkin and dropped it on his plate, covering the remains of his tuna sandwich.

For a moment the silence between them was interrupted only by the sounds of traffic and an occasional burst from a jackhammer as crews worked on the street outside. Sandra had picked this small downtown sandwich shop because it was near police headquarters. She hadn’t counted on the noise, but right now it seemed like it wasn’t
going to hinder their conversation. Matt sat silent as a statue, staring through the plate glass window but obviously taking no note of what was beyond it.

“Anything you’d like to share?” Sandra asked.

“Where do I start?” He ticked off the points on his fingers. “I’m still a suspect in a murder case. The police say they have evidence that I’ve been involved in a narcotics ring. Someone kidnapped me with murder in mind, although I haven’t the foggiest notion why, and it appears they’re not going to rest until they succeed. My girlfriend . . . make that ex-girlfriend, blew me off when I needed her.” He started to touch his thumb to emphasize the fifth point, then dropped his hands to his lap. “I guess that’s enough.”

Sandra filed away the “ex-girlfriend” remark. She’d get back to that later. “You’re not a suspect, you’re a person of interest,” Sandra said. “And Grimes was yanking your chain with that evidence thing. If they had something, we’d know about it.”

“Great. So I don’t have to worry about the police coming for me in the middle of the night. All I have to worry about is that someone will eventually succeed in knocking me off.” He dug a potato chip out of the mess on his plate and bit into it fiercely, chewed, and swallowed. “I’m still not sure I did the right thing, giving up that pistol. If I didn’t have—never mind.”

“If you didn’t have what?” Sandra asked. “Do you have any other illegal weapons I don’t know about? If so, you need to let me have them. Now!”

“Nothing illegal,” Matt said. “Let’s just leave it at that for now.”

They exchanged glances that communicated as effectively as though she’d asked if he was finished and he’d answered in the affirmative. Both pushed back their chairs and made their way out into the downtown heat and noise.

Sandra started to ask Matt again if he had another weapon of some sort, but decided a busy sidewalk wasn’t the place for that conversation.
Change the subject. Bring it up later
. “I’ll drive you back to my office to get your car,” she said.

They stopped at the curb as the pedestrian signal across from them changed from Walk to Don’t Walk.

“Sorry I snapped at you,” Matt said.