The Charles Dickens murders Paperback - 1999

Excerpt

PROLOGUE

Manhattan Hospital
Intensive Care Unit
Early August--the present

At night the ICU dropped its daytime hustle for a quieter, more passive  personality.

No distraught families waiting in the corridor to talk with the doctor.  No clusters of attendings, residents, and medical students on rounds,  making their slow march in and out of patients' rooms.

The very emptiness highlighted objects that usually receded into the  background.

Now one's eyes were drawn to the mirrors, like huge silver bowls, that  hung at intervals from the ceiling, there to prevent an around-the-corner  collision between a linen cart and a trauma team.

Now one noticed the rough-lettered sign at the nursing  station--REMEMBER!  SIGN OUT YOUR PATIENT'S NARCOTICS ASAP!!--and  above it the monitor, its  continuous display of moving lines showing the electrical impulses of each  patient's heart. The symmetrical red rows of peaks and valleys stood out  boldly against the black of the monitor screen. At night, the watcher,  drawn to the screen, was inclined to feel uneasy, almost breathless,  fearful of peaks that suddenly inverted, of valleys that suddenly peaked,  of a sudden conversion from a neat pattern to wild scribbling, or a sudden  collapse into a futile straight line--changes that triggered triple beeps  or Klaxon honks.

At night one could hear the sounds of silence--the compression and  release of ventilators that breathed for some patients, the soft sighs of  patients who could breathe on their own, the muted conversation from the  lounge, where the staff had gathered to watch Letterman.

At night one looked more closely at the patients' rooms that lined the  corridor. With their glass-windowed sliding doors, they resembled the  compartments of a European train--a train that one could enter  unobserved.

The head nurse, alone at the station, picked up the phone and called  X-ray. "Hey! You were supposed to be here half an hour ago. . . . Well,  speed it up!" Then, with an occasional glance at the monitor, she resumed  writing progress notes and nibbled popcorn.

Unseen in the conference room, watching the nurse as she wrote her notes,  was someone wearing a gray lab coat, a stethoscope protruding from a  pocket. How much of life is based on trust, the person was thinking. Trust  that the driver of the oncoming car would stop at the red light. Trust  that the uniformed man really was there to read the meter. Trust that a  lab coat, with stethoscope, automatically entitled its wearer entry to any  hospital floor. Suddenly, from a far room came a high whine. Labcoat  watched closely as the nurse went to replace a near-empty IV bottle. Once  the nurse was out of sight, Labcoat rushed out of the conference room and  entered a room at the near end of the corridor.

Quickly drawing the curtains over the windows, Labcoat turned to scan the  room. Below the bed a network of hoses led to oxygen, suction, dialysis  units, and other life-preserving devices. Above the bed the hanging metal  apparatus for the intravenous looked like two hoses. Two IV's--that was  convenient.

On the bed the patient lay sleeping, her hair, the pure white of a former  blond, straggled over the pillow. The sheet clung to the long thin  body.

Labcoat stood watching the patient.

Slowly, her eyes opened. She gave a sigh, looked up, saw Labcoat--and  stared. "But I--you--" Mumbling something that sounded like "Can't talk,"  she gestured for water and was handed a glass with a straw. She drank  eagerly. "But I know you--you're--"

"Shh"--lightly a finger was put over her mouth--"you don't want to wake  anyone."

"Hell, I don't care. Then it's night?"

"Yes."

"I'm so upset--thought it was daytime." She lay there, looking up. "So  many years. Where have you been?"

"You've kept busy, Dewey. Your book--"

Her hands clutched the sheet. "The collection?"

"I found it--enthralling."

Warily--"You read it?"

"There's something the matter with your IV. Let me fix it."

"Oh"--less wary now--"you work here?"

"Yes."

"Didn't know--so confused--so upset."

Out of a lab-coat pocket came a syringe. In one smooth movement, the  syringe was injected into the IV plug. A split second later the color  drained from the patient's face. Her eyes rolled upward, her head fell  back.

Instantly the Unit was hit with an earsplitting blast of warning  beeps.

Yelling "Code Blue," Labcoat raced out of the room and almost collided  with an X-ray cart. The X-ray tech hardly noticed. The loudspeaker was  announcing "Code Blue--7152," and all hell had broken loose.



"How long has it been?" said the chief resident.

The nurse checked her notes. "Four and a half minutes."

"Let's shock her one more time."

The nurse put the defibrillator paddles against the chest. An electric  shock went into the heart. Dewey's body arched, almost jolting off the  bed.

There must have been twenty people in the room by this time--all staring  glumly at the monitor.

Still a straight line.

"Oh shit," said the chief resident. "It's hopeless. Might as well stop.  Probably brain dead now."



At the nursing station, the chief resident was saying, "Know who she  was?"

"Who?"

"Cob Conner's daughter."

"Who's Cob Conner?" said the medical student.

"Forget it. Someone has to notify the family. Get the chart."



In Dewey's room, the aides had removed the tubes, the catheter, the EKG  leads. They had cleaned the body and wrapped it in a sheet. Now the crew  came in to clean the room. They emptied the wastebaskets and were about to  toss the EKG strips when the resident came back to the room.

"No," he said. "Save that."

He stood, threading the long EKG strips through his fingers. Strange, he  thought. Why were the T-waves so peaked just before she died? Well, maybe  tissue necrosis. But I want a post.



Labcoat, in street clothes now, stood on Fifth Avenue and hailed a cab.

Media reviews

"[A] smartly plotted whodunit."
--The New York Times Book Review

"Stylish and witty . . . Another clever yarn starring English professor/amateur sleuth Beth Austin."  
--Buffalo News

"A masterpiece . . . Another winner by a great writer who has made the Austin mysteries some of the best female amateur sleuth novels ever written."
--Midwest Book Review