Hard Play Page 13

  Frank backed into the hallway, allowing the quiet chanting of his name to fade away as he continued down the hall to his old office.

  Wren’s thumbs were dusted in orange. He was sitting in the leather armchair behind Frank’s desk, munching on his cheese puffs, watching the security cameras, watching Dean, watching Frank. He clicked off the flat screen on the desk as Frank came through the door.

  “Oh,” Frank scoffed, realizing Wren was at his desk.

  Wren leaned back in the chair, folding his hands on his chest and letting the cheesy powder on his fingers blend into the orange of his sweater.

  “You like my office?” Wren probed, stressing that third word, seeking to get a rise out of Frank. His thumbs circulated over his chest, rubbing his sternum and spreading the oily stains as he stared intently at Frank. “So what did you need?”

  Frank only replied in a flat tone, “You move my files?”

  “No.”

  “Then I don’t need you,” he growled.

  Frank pushed past Wren, nudging the leather chair with his boot and rolling the plump man into the corner, his feet dangling in the chair just above the floor. Frank dove into one of the many drawers in the bank of file cabinets behind the desk.

  “What are you looking for?” Wren asked as he hopped to his feet. He pawed the bag of Cheetos on the desk and shoved a handful in his mouth.

  Frank thumbed through the files. His fingers settled on a tab labeled Still & Wersner Insurance Company. Snatching it up, he spun around and threw it open on the desk.

  “What’s that?” Wren mumbled through a mouthful of cheese snacks.

  Frank turned, narrowing his eyes at Wren.

  “You’re still here?” Frank hissed as he took out a cigarette and lit it, turning back to the open folder.

  “You can’t smoke in here.”

  “Fuck you, Wren,” Frank said with a mouthful of smoke, tapping the cigarette in the glass ashtray that had been converted, by Wren, into an oversized glass paperweight.

  Frank peered down into printed pages before him. Running his fingers along the words, he scanned each line. A few lines down the first page, it read, Plaintiff: Jim Dalton. Defendant: Still & Wersner. Wrongful Death Claim on behalf of Allison Berry-Dalton. Presiding Judge: Mary-Beth Johnson.

  A few paragraphs further, read, Burden of Care left to Husband and Daughter. Seeking economic damages in the form of $9,000 for funeral expenses. Seeking reparation for mental anguish, pain and suffering in the amount of $28,000. For the loss of care and guidance to minor, Felicia Dalton, plaintiff is seeking $130,000 in damages to maintain proper care and schooling for dependent.

  The top of the second page read Judgment. No more than halfway down the page, a large square box held the words, No damages awarded. Still & Wersner found to have acted within the scope of the law. Defendant is not found liable in motion for directed verdict.

  Turning the page, a list of medications ran the length of the paper, terminating in a paragraph of diagnosed measures.

  For angina: Lentonitrat, Pentaerythritol tetranitrate. For intestinal spasm control: Hyoscine, Scopolamine. Patient complained of chest pains. History of angina complications. Diagnosis: Collapse of one of main coronary arteries. Aortic Aneurysm. Upon attempted surgery, hole discovered in left ventricle. Hospital recommended transplant. After six weeks of observed care, patient Berry-Dalton rejected donor heart. After two weeks with an artificial heart under constant observation and artificial sustenance, patient showed no sign of recovery and was removed from life support.

  Frank had consulted on this case. His name was nowhere in the paperwork and his contributions were limited, but he did have a hand in the dealings. It was years ago and all he was asked to do was to confirm the Dalton family’s use of one primary care physician. It turned out they had been acting in accordance with requirements and the case was a simple open-and-shut, solved within a day.

  Frank dragged on his cigarette, turning the page as he exhaled a cloud of gray smoke. The smoke spread across the pages fanned out on the desk.

  He turned over another page.

  Plaintiff: Jim Dalton. Defendant: Patrick Allen, M.D. Presiding Judge: Judge Mary-Beth Johnson.

  The next page echoed the last. Judgment denied.

  Turning the page yet again, Frank found another wrongful death claim, this time against the registered nurse that was responsible for the in-hospital care of Allison Berry-Dalton: Chad Campbell.

  “I should’ve seen it,” Frank breathed, another cloud of smoke trailing his words.

  “What?” Wren pressed from the corner, his mouth still full of orange crumbs.

  Frank sneered at Wren as he folded up the file and tucked it under his arm. Mashing his cigarette in the ashtray, Frank pulled out his phone and pushed his finger into the screen.

  “What?” Wren repeated. The chubby Filipino stood in place, wiping his thumbs again on the chest of his turtleneck as he watched Frank.

  Frank shook his head at Wren as he spoke into the phone, “Van. It’s Black. Meet me at the hospital. Bring some patrol. We need Campbell in protective custody. He’s not our suspect, he’s one of our victims.” He paused, then added, “It’s Dalton. Whatever you do, stay away from Dalton. Don’t let him know. Meet me at the hospital in thirty. If Campbell’s not dead already, they’re coming for him.”

  Chapter 16

  The centrifuge whirred atop the counter. Embalming fluids, antiseptics and Pine-Sol filled the air. A single lamp illuminated Amy Van as she hunched over the machine. Her white lab coat bunched at the waist, splitting each lapel over her lap and allowing her crossed legs to poke through. She gripped a pen and notepad, latex gloves protecting her ivory hands and dainty wrists. Her glasses hung, saved only by the tip of her nose. She watched intently as the bottles before her spun.

  The whirring stopped and the centrifuge stilled. The silence of the empty office enveloped her. Everyone had gone home for the night and, but for the tapping of her flats against the linoleum as she shuffled toward the printer, there were no sounds. All the technicians and assistants, the conversations and reviews, those were for the daylight hours. Except when you were willing to work for free, when it wasn’t the take-home that you took home and the salary wasn’t the real payout. When you wanted to really make something and solve something and be something important, then the dark quiet was yours as it was Van’s.

  She stood in the corner waiting for the print-out. Snapping one glove from her hand and tossing it in the trash, she held her hand beneath the mouth of the outdated printer. Its parts ground and moved as it began ejecting line after line of report into her palm. When the paper stopped moving and the printer returned to silence, she tore it from the device and returned to her stool beneath the lamp.

  Gripping the paper in both hands, one in latex and the other bare, she pushed her glasses up and read through the lines of data. As she scanned the page, her eyes homed in on a single string of words, Scopolamine, levo-duboisine, Hyoscine.

  “Shit,” she breathed. “He was right.”

  Jumping to her feet, she threw her lab coat to the floor and hurried into the hall. Her phone blinked behind her, quietly vibrating from the pocket of her purse. One Missed Call. One New Voicemail, flashed across the screen, scrolling across its face in a vain attempt to scream after her, to gain her attention as best it could, but Amy left the lab, missing its silent screams entirely.

  The off-white walls looked gray under the after-hours lighting. The rows of doors were closed and locked. Each of their windows was dark with the blinds drawn shut. There was no sign of life in sight. She near-sprinted through the long hall, her quick steps and labored breaths thudding against the short carpeted walls and floor. Passing beneath rectangle after rectangle of dim fluorescents, she turned the corner to find Dalton’s office door wide open and the light of his desk lamp spilling out into the hallway. Amy slowed to a brisk walk. She composed herself and poked her head inside, confirming his presence behind the desk.


  She held the paper up in her hand, shaking it as she came through the door.

  Catching him off-guard, Dalton shuffled his hands across his desk to the open drawer above his lap. Slamming the drawer shut, he straightened his collar and tugged on his cuffs, sniffing twice as he did.

  “What is it, Dr. Van?” he barked.

  She said, “Jim. Good. I didn’t think you’d be here. I’ve something to show you.”

  The office was cramped and dark but for the lamp on his desk. There were no windows and the air vent had been closed so no new air was making its way into the small office. The room smelled of salty bergamot and stale patchouli. The floor had the same gray, short carpet of the hall which clashed terribly with the brown and tan wallpaper that Dalton put in himself last month. Two uncomfortable-looking beige armchairs, swollen with stuffing, faced Dalton and his desk.

  Dalton’s pin-prick pupils didn’t budge as he leaned through the light. He didn’t smile but he wasn’t frowning. His smooth jaw just gnashed back and forth as he stared back at Amy. His ears jumped high into his thin, brown hair each time his teeth went one way or another. After a few gnashes a shock of his hair fell over his forehead, covering the complex of full veins on his head. Dalton swiveled the desk lamp toward one of the empty armchairs.

  “Have a seat,” he said with his hand extended.

  Amy sat and crossed her legs, sliding the paper across the desk. She tugged on her skirt as she always had, and repositioned herself ’til she felt she was comfortably covered.

  “I ran tests on all of the victims.”

  “In what case?” he breathed as he pushed his hair back into place.

  Amy paused at the question, then responded with one eyebrow aloft, “The one you assigned me, sir. Campbell, Johnson, Allen.” She paused again, then added, “Black.”

  Dalton shifted in his seat. He tugged at his cuffs and fiddled with his collar once more.

  “And?” he asked just before his jaw restarted its heavy sway.

  Pushing her glasses up her nose, she leaned forward and tossed the page on his desk. She swiveled the desk lamp onto it and pressed her finger against the bottom of the report. Realizing the latex glove still hugging her hand, she pulled back and snapped it in the waste bucket beside the desk.

  “Scopolamine,” she said. “They’ve all been drugged with Scopolamine. It’s typically used for motion sickness and nausea, but in high doses it has other effects. In Black’s case, it was that combined with his blood alcohol level that caused him to black out. In Campbell’s case, an overdose made him slip into a coma. And it wasn’t the cause of death, but it was there in both Allen and Johnson. Black has some girl he’s trying to track down. He seems pretty sure she’s behind it.”

  “That is interesting,” Dalton breathed. His jaw gnashed back and forth. “We should go speak with this Campbell fellow.”

  Dalton fished something from his desk drawer, then reached beneath his desk. Sitting up, he swept back his hair and held out a bottle of water.

  “You look parched,” he said. “Have a drink before we go. We’ll take my car.”

  Licking her dry lips, she reached for her ChapStick in her purse, but her purse wasn’t there. It was in the lab. She licked her lips again then leaned forward. Taking the bottle, she unscrewed the top, tipping it back without hesitation.

  Amy went to stand but felt her legs faded beneath her. Like jelly, they collapsed, sending her back into the overstuffed cushion of the armchair. She breathed. Her chest felt heavy, the air dry and cold. She moved her pretty lips to speak, but she couldn’t get the words to flow. Her arms sank into the chair. Her body went numb. It wasn’t long before the icy feeling made its way to her face, tugging on her eyelids until she gave up and let them close, sealing her in darkness. Then she heard his voice, and only his voice. There was nothing else. There were no other sensations. The scent of the potpourri on the desk had faded. The salty scent of bergamot had gone. The light of the lamp disappeared. The fibers of the chair no longer pressed against her skin. There was only his voice; Dalton’s voice.

  “Do you hear me?” he breathed against her neck.

  His words sprayed her in his salty, acrid breath, but she didn’t sense it. Beads of his saliva stuck to her skin, but she didn’t wipe at them. She didn’t budge.

  “I do,” she responded, her voice flat, low and distant.

  “Good,” Dalton cooed.

  He ran his nose along her neck, breathing in her perfume as he went along. He pulled his face away from her neck and leaned closed. He smacked his sticky lips and gnashed his teeth. Reaching his hand to his jaw, he cracked his neck then lunged forward, snapping his teeth at her. He sat down on the edge of the desk and leaned forward with his elbows on his knees.

  He breathed, “You know, you’re a very pretty girl.”

  “Yes,” she answered absently.

  Her eyes were still closed. Her head had begun to sag, leaning into her cleavage, but other than that, her body was motionless. She made no attempt to tug at the rising hemline of her skirt, already high enough to show the cottony portion between her legs. She made no effort to quell the harassment across from her. She could only hear his voice.

  “Who does Mr. Black have in mind for all of this?”

  “Felicia Berry.” Her voice was empty and hollow.

  She shifted in her seat as she answered. Her arms moved along the chair, lifting her blouse upward from her waistline. Her legs spread at the knees as she moved, pulling her skirt higher up her thighs ’til it was barely covering her at all, giving Dalton a clear view of the thin, white panties that hid her slit. There was a faint hint of dampness on the fabric and Dalton licked his lips at the sight.

  He leapt from the desk and dropped to his knees, palming both of Amy’s thighs. Leaning forward, he dipped his nose where it doesn’t belong and took a long enjoyable whiff of her, savoring the breath as her scent entered his nostrils and skated across his receptors. He exhaled into her lap, his salty breath flapping the ends of her untucked blouse.

  “It’s a shame,” he said in a cold, lifeless tone, sounding like the hollow buzz of a machine attempting to mimic the voice of a human.

  He stood and buzzed, “You’ll come with me, Ms. Van?”

  “Yes, Jim.”

  “Come now, then,” Dalton barked. “Get up.”

  Amy was on her feet in a flash, but her upper body, limp and lifeless, wobbled as she stood. Her shoulders swayed to either side. She staggered as she righted herself.

  “Get walking,” Dalton said with a slap on her ass. “South lot.”

  As Van exited into the hallway, her legs dragging and her arms flopping, Dalton moved behind his desk. He reached for the metal box on the shelf. Pulling it down and opening the latch and lid, he revealed the antique .44 single-action pistol. The nickel and ivory of the gun were cradled in red velvet. Dalton snatched it from the case and shoved it in his waistband. Pocketing a handful of the bullets, he reached into the wastebasket, pulled out the latex glove and followed after Van.

  He came out into the hall about thirty steps behind Van. By this time her body had regained its composure and she walked upright without swaying or dragging or flopping. Her long, slender legs shifted beneath her hiked-up skirt as she sauntered through the hall and out the south exit. Following closely behind was Dalton, his shaky hand steadied by the ivory handle sticking out from his pants.

  Dalton ducked into the lab and looped Amy’s purse over his shoulder. He turned off her lamp and wiped down her desk. Logging onto her computer, he deleted the last two print jobs from her queue and clocked her out for the night. All the while, his jaw twisted and gnashed. His hands shook. His teeth ground. With one final sweep of his rag over the keyboard, Dalton shut down the computer and made sure all evidence of Van’s late-night investigation had been buried, pocketing the samples from the centrifuge and an entire tray of specimens from the fridge. On his way by the printer, he fished her other glove from the trash and m
oved back into the hall.

  Dalton leaned against the south exit with his body, his hands full of incrimination. Across the lot, Amy stood at a brown, four-door Silverado. The lengthy boat of a truck sat alone beneath a yellow cone of light. A blue tarp lay over the contents of its back, the edges lifting and dancing with each rise of dry, warm wind. Amy’s skirt was still high on her thighs and only the shadows kept the cotton of her underwear hidden from sight. Her body was still slumped, but her motor skills had begun to return. She seductively twirled her hair and twisted her toe into the pavement as Dalton approached.

  Moving closer to the vehicle, he commanded, “Amy. Door.”

  She didn’t miss a beat. With a graceful leap, she pranced to the back of the pickup and tossed open the tailgate like a game show model showing off the grand prize. Then she threw up her hands to Dalton and his arms full of things. The tarp billowed upward behind her, revealing lumps of gray lining the bed.

  “Not the back,” he growled.

  Teetering the pile in one hand, he reached out and grabbed her by the back of her head. A few vials fell to the ground, shattering and splashing about Dalton’s leg. He glared at the mess on his brown oxford. With a handful of hair in his grip, he pushed her down and slammed her head against the open tailgate. Blood spurted from her brow as the skin parted.

  “Look what you made me do,” Dalton seethed as he shook the piss and glass from his pant leg.

  He popped upright and shoved the pile into Amy’s arms. She was stunned, but still standing. Reaching into the truck bed, Dalton tugged on the blue tarp. He adjusted it ’til all of the piles of gray clay beneath were once again covered in blue plastic. Satisfied, he stood straight and slammed the bed closed.

  He turned back to Amy and growled, “Put that stuff in the back seat.”

  She took the heap from his hands and placed it in the back seat, taking care not to spill or break a vial, tear a single sheet, or lose the contents of her purse. Then she slammed the door shut and turned to face him. She greeted his swaying jaw with a bite of her lips.