Omega Dog (4 page)

At the elevators, waiting, she glanced at the clock on the wall. Four PM. Visiting hours were still in effect.

She needed to get some sleep more than anything, but... a few minutes wouldn’t kill her.

Instead of going down to the first floor, Beth rode the elevator up to the sixth. She stepped out and turned left, toward the oncology ward.

The ward sister greeted her with a smile.

‘Hi, Sister,’ said Beth. ‘I’m Dr Colby, med resident?’

‘Hello, doc. Who’re you here to see?’

‘I’m off duty,’ said Beth. ‘But a friend of mine is a patient on the ward. I’d like to see her, if I may.’

‘Sure,’ said the nurse. ‘What’s your friend’s name?’

‘Luisa Perez.’

The sister’s eyes widened. Her hand came up to her mouth.

‘What is it?’ said Beth, alarmed.

‘Dr Colby, I’m so sorry. Nobody told you?’

‘What?’

‘Ms Perez died this afternoon.’

‘What?’

‘Cardiac arrest. It was very unexpected. The crash team did all they could,’ said the nurse.

Beth felt the floor tilting beneath her feet. The sister grabbed her arm to steady her.

‘Dr Colby, are you all right? Come and sit down.’ She led Beth to a swivel chair at the nurses’ station. Shocked, Beth allowed herself to be seated. Her thoughts were racing even as a cold numbness spread through her.

Luisa was dead?

But that couldn’t be. Beth had spoken to her just last night.

Luisa Perez was an old college friend of Beth’s. She’d been studying law while Beth had been premed, and they’d met at a campus party and become close friends. Like Beth, Luisa had stayed in New York after graduation, and was working her way up to partner in a small but up-and-coming law firm in Nassau Street. They spoke on the phone at least once a week, met once or twice a month to go out shopping, had even double-dated a few times.

Four months ago, Luisa had called Beth in tears, asking her to come round. Rushing over to Luisa’s Brooklyn apartment, Beth found her in a shaken state. After she’d fed her a little brandy and gotten her to open up, Beth learned that Luisa had just received some medical test results. She’d been feeling exhausted, listless, for the past few weeks, and was catching colds on a regular basis, as well as starting to bruise easily. So she’d gone to her physician to get checked out, and he’d run a series of blood tests.

Luisa had cancer. Chronic myelogenous leukemia.

The good news, as Beth was able to tell Luisa, was that this was a kind of cancer that could be successfully managed with drugs, giving a normal life expectancy in the vast majority of patients. And Luisa started on the treatments, at first quite successfully.

It turned out to be a highly unusual form of CML, as Luisa didn’t have the typical chromosome nearly all sufferers possess. As a result, the drugs didn’t work quite so well as expected, and a few days ago Luisa had fallen sick and had been admitted to the oncology ward.

When Beth visited her during a break in her shift yesterday, Luisa was sitting up, looking pale and drawn but able to summon a smile. She was feeling better, her white cell count had stabilized, and the attending haematologist had said she could probably go home in a day or two.

And now...
this
. Luisa, dead from a cardiac arrest.

It didn’t make sense.

––––––––

‘W
hat happened?’ said Beth. She was sitting in the staff room of the oncology ward. The sister, Debra, had brought her a mug of sweet tea and she sipped it gratefully.

Debra had gone to find the attending physician, who happened to be on the ward at the time. His name was Reissman, and he sat opposite Beth, looking gloomy.

‘It’s the damnedest thing,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘She was better. I’d swear it on a stack of holy books. No signs of infection. Cell counts stable, including platelets. Her EKG was completely normal. All set for discharge tomorrow. Then, around lunchtime, she goes into V-tach. Just like that. Crash team were there pronto, but they couldn’t save her.’ He ran a hand through his mop of black, curly hair. ‘There’ll be an autopsy, of course. Somehow I doubt it’ll tell us anything.’

‘She’s got parents. A brother.’ Beth felt the tears brim and spill over. She wiped her face on her sleeve, angry with herself. Doctors weren’t supposed to show emotion.

‘Yeah, I know,’ said Reissman, handing her a box of Kleenex. She grabbed a wad. ‘They’re on their way from San Diego.’

Beth would make a point of coming in tomorrow to see them, even though it was her day off.

‘Dr Reissman?’ she said. ‘Will you let me know if you learn anything? About how she died?’

‘Sure, Beth.’ He jerked his head at the door. ‘Now go home. You look exhausted.’

Usually after a grueling shift, Beth would take the subway home. Her apartment was in Lincoln Square, all the way across town from Kips Bay where she worked, and though she was physically fit and enjoyed exercise, there came a point when you just had to give in to your body’s demand for rest. Today, though, Beth stumbled past one subway station after another, not seeing the crowds around her, not taking in the crazy sights and sounds and smells of the metropolis she loved.

All she could think of was her friend, normally so full of life and joy, now cold and dead. Unexpectedly,
senselessly
so.

And Beth hadn’t had a chance to say goodbye.

She walked the streets for an hour, roving in an approximate circle, somehow always finding herself back where she started. The fatigue was beginning to drain down into her legs, her very bones. Beth knew that if she didn’t get herself home soon, she’d end up being transported to hospital on a gurney. And she didn’t want to spend yet another night at her place of work.

She headed for the nearest station, stopping automatically at a newsstand to pick up a copy of the
New York Times
. Cocooned in the hospital for a day and a half, it was easy to lose touch with what was happening in the world outside, and she was usually eager to catch up after her shift ended. This time, she needed something to distract her thoughts more than anything else.

On the subway carriage, a kind elderly man offered Beth his seat, but she smiled at him and declined. She preferred to stand. Sitting down was dangerous, in her condition, as she’d discovered before to her cost. She was liable to nod off and miss her stop.

She paged through the
Times
, barely registering the words, sleep clawing at her eyelids.

Then something hit home in her brain. She stared at the print, trying to work out what it was.

Nothing.

Beth turned back to the previous page, and saw the picture that had caught her attention.

It was the face of an African-American man, about five years older than Beth. Below the photo ran a short article. The headline read:
Subway Fatality Named
.

Beth skimmed the article. Lawrence B. Siddon, 35, an insurance salesman from Queens, had fallen under a train as it was departing Metropolitan Avenue Station yesterday. He was killed instantly. There was no mention of possible suicide. He left behind a wife and two children.

It was the kind of article that appeared all too regularly in the Times, and in itself there was nothing remarkable about it. But Beth found her gaze drawn again and again to the photo.

I know you
, she thought.

But from where? He wasn’t someone she worked with, and although he might once have been a patient of Beth’s – sometimes it felt like she’d treated just about everybody in the Five Boroughs at one time or another – she didn’t think so. It felt like they’d had a more prolonged interaction. He certainly wasn’t an ex-boyfriend. Beth remembered each of them, however brief the relationship had been.

Was she imagining things, in her sleep-deprived state? Misremembering connections that weren’t really there?

No. She
knew
Lawrence B. Siddon from somewhere. She was sure of it.

Carefully she tore the picture out of the paper and put it in her pocket. She’d take another look tomorrow, after she’d had some shut-eye.

As Beth clutched onto one of the straps hanging from the roof, trying not to let the rocking of the carriage lull her into sleep, it suddenly occurred to her that two people she knew had died within the space of twenty-four hours.

Despite the heat from the packed bodies in the subway carriage, Beth felt a chill run through her.

––––––––

V
enn stripped the gun quickly, laying the component parts out expertly out on the table. It was a Glock 19, an efficient piece. He was familiar with it, though it wasn’t his handgun of choice. He’d always relied on his Beretta M9 when he was with the force.

Still, beggars couldn’t be choosers, he thought bleakly.

The magazine was empty. Venn wasn’t surprised. It’d have been foolhardy of Corcoran to hand him a loaded gun. Even though Venn’s chances of breaking out of a fully staffed police station were virtually non-existent, he might just have been crazy enough to try it, for all Corcoran knew.

Venn reassembled the gun rapidly and slammed the empty magazine home. He aimed the gun and sighted down it, rehearsing the moves several times. It had been a while since he’d been on the range, still longer since he’d fired a weapon in a combat situation. But the instincts were still there, the honed reflexes that could turn him into an effective killing machine at the drop of a hat.

Corcoran watched in silence. If he was impressed, he didn’t show it.

‘I’m surprised,’ said Corcoran. ‘I’d have thought you’d keep a gun at home.’

So they hadn’t searched his apartment, Venn realized. That was interesting. If they had, they’d have located the Beretta in its case in the gun safe. Or at least, they’d have found the safe, and asked him for the combination. He’d asked for the gun as a test, and had gotten his answer.

Why hadn’t they tossed the apartment of a man arrested for murder? It confirmed his suspicion, that nobody seriously suspected him of killing the guy in the alleyway. He’d been well and truly set up. Venn glanced at Corcoran, anger rising in him again.

Bastard.

Corcoran said, ‘You got what you asked for. A gun. Anything else?’

‘No.’

‘Money?’

‘That’ll depend on what I find. Whether I have to take any expensive trips anywhere.’

‘Fair enough.’ Corcoran nodded at the cell phone on the table, the one he’d given Venn with Professor Lomax’s picture on it. ‘Keep that. There’s one number on the speed dial. It’s mine. Anything you require, any time you need to speak to me, call.’

‘Anything I require?’ said Venn.

‘Within reason.’

‘Manpower?’

Corcoran shook his head. ‘I’m afraid that’s one thing we can’t provide. You’re on your own in that sense.’

‘Why?’

‘Because,’ said Corcoran, ‘as I mentioned before, I don’t know who I can trust. I can’t very well send a bunch of cops or Federal agents into the field to assist you, when one or more of them might be involved in Lomax’s disappearance.’

Venn pocketed the phone, and pushed the gun down the waistband of his jeans. It wasn’t loaded yet, so he wasn’t in any danger of blowing off anything sensitive. ‘When do I get some ammo?’

‘In a minute.’

Corcoran spoke into his own phone, just a couple of words Venn didn’t catch. Then he said to Venn: ‘There’s one more thing. And you’re not going to like it.’

The door opened and in came the same plainclothes guy who’d brought in the cell phone and later the Glock. In his hand he carried a metal object encased in black rubber, that resembled a bent-open ring.

Venn knew immediately what it was. He’d seen them before, on more than one asshole he’d taken into custody as a cop.

An electronic monitoring device, of the kind used to track the movements of a convicted sex offender.

The man came over behind the table and knelt at Venn’s feet. Venn admired the guy’s cool. He was taking a hell of a risk, getting that close to Venn’s boots. The man pulled the leg of Venn’s jeans free from the boot and fitted the tag round his lower right shin. Then he snapped it into place, ratcheting it tighter until the fit was snug but not uncomfortable.

Though it would probably itch like hell later.

The guy straightened up, nodded to Corcoran, and walked out without glancing at Venn.

‘Insurance,’ Corcoran said, as if he’d been asked. ‘Thanks to the wonders of GPS, we’ll know exactly where you are at all times. So if you did happen to decide to skip town, we’d be all over you like a rash. Wherever you are in the world.’

Venn shifted his feet under the table. The added weight on his right leg felt unfamiliar, but he’d get used to it.

He stood up.

‘Let’s get this over with,’ he said. He held out his hand. ‘I need those bullets.’

‘At the door, Joe,’ said Corcoran. ‘I’ll walk you out.’

He led Venn down a series of institutional corridors, lit by sputtering fluorescent ceiling tubes. Nobody seemed to be about. Eventually they reached a featureless room, with a door that presumably led to the street outside, judging by the view through the window next to it. Some kind of unofficial exit from the station. 

There were no cops in the room, but the guy from earlier, who’d brought the things in to Corcoran, was waiting. He dropped a handful of 9 mm bullets into Venn’s palm, and handed him two more ammo clips. Venn filled up the magazine and put the spares in his jacket pocket.

‘Do I get a ride?’ he said to Corcoran.

Corcoran shook his head. ‘No. You’re on your own from now on.’

‘Except for the ankle bracelet.’

‘That’s right.’ Corcoran handed him a manila packet. ‘Everything we have on Professor Leonard Lomax is in here. Read it, memorize it, and then destroy it. Don’t let anyone else get their hands on it.’

Venn put his hand on the door handle.

Corcoran said, ‘Good luck, Joe.’

Venn half-turned. ‘Corcoran?’

‘Yes?’

‘After I pull this job off, I’ll take the pardon. Or rather, I’ll take the lifting of the frame-up you’ve laid on me. But I won’t take any of your money. Not a cent.’