Day 4 – Monday noon
Forbes residence
Ginny asked Jim to drop her off at home. There were a number of things she wanted to do, among them, think.
She put on a load of laundry and tackled the kitchen, cleaning away the morning’s debris, then chopping vegetables and sorting them into plastic containers. That done, she began to rearrange the refrigerator, pantry, and spice shelf.
When Mrs. Forbes returned, she settled down at the kitchen table and watched. “You look like a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs.”
Ginny sighed, put the spices back in the rack, then sat down across from her. “I feel like one.”
“What is it, darling?”
Ginny took a deep breath. “How could anyone do that? Dump her son and drive away?”
“She said she was desperate, and I believe her.”
“You couldn’t do that, not to Alex, or me, could you?”
“If I had to, yes, I could.” Mrs. Forbes took a sip of her tea. “Have you decided how you’re going to handle Jim?”
Ginny shook her head. “He agreed the only way for me to regain my confidence is to take risks, but he still wants to decide which and when. He’s behaving as if we’re married.”
Mrs. Forbes set her cup down, eyeing Ginny. “Do you want to be married, Ginny?”
She thought about it for a minute. “Yes.”
“Do you want children?”
“Yes.”
“Do you want Jim?”
Ginny considered the question, probing deep, trying to come up with an honest answer. “He has many fine qualities.”
Her mother smiled. “Yes, he does, and he will be Laird.”
Ginny squirmed. “That’s not the problem.”
“Then what is?”
It took Ginny a minute to find the right words. “I can’t know if he’s really who and what he seems to be.”
Her mother sighed. “We can’t know that about anyone, except in retrospect, but he’s Angus’ grandson. That should count for something.”
“He’s a stranger. Angus hasn’t seen him since he was a child. He was raised outside Loch Lonach, outside any Homestead. There’s no telling what he may believe or be willing to do. Do we know what drove his father off?”
Sinia Forbes shook her head. “I don’t. Does Jim?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t asked him.”
Her mother sighed, then smiled. “Well, there’s one thing I am sure of. That man loves you and wants to marry you.”
Ginny sighed. “That’s what I thought last time.”
* * *
Monday early afternoon
Hillcrest Regional Medical Center
Jim had a meeting. It was inconvenient to be pulled in on his afternoon off, but he didn’t have to report again for another twenty-four hours, so it could have been worse. The subject of the meeting was fentanyl.
“Where’s this stuff coming from?” The speaker was another ER physician. Jim had met him (and most of the rest of the medical staff) when he hired on, but hadn’t seen him since. His name was Devlin Jones, known as ‘DJ.’ He was a large, ruddy, aging patrician, a fixture in the community. Not Homestead, but born and bred in Dallas. He owned the remnants of a local ranch, now within the boundaries of one of the suburbs, though it had been open land when he’d been born. He had a genuine Texas drawl, and a habit of ‘talkin’ country’ that sounded odd to Jim’s Virginia-trained ears.
“That’s what we want to find out.” The DEA agent was dressed in a suit and tie and was perched on the end of the conference room table, one leg dangling. Jim couldn’t tell if this was habitual or an affectation, adopted for the benefit of the locals he now faced.
He had Washington written all over him. Around the same age as Jim, Agent DeSoto had the slick, no-nonsense haircut and physique that said he could run and was packing heat. He also had no concept of the traditional deference paid to elder statesmen in Texas.
“We already know about the synthetic fentanyl coming in from China,” one of the white heads at the table noted. “Why focus on us?”
“What we’re seeing in Dallas is not coming from China. The chemical signature is wrong. We’re seeing high-quality narcotics clearly manufactured in the U.S. and they’re not being combined with anything. That’s suspicious. As you know, most dealers want to stretch their profits so they mix whatever they get with something else.”
Everyone around the table nodded. They were familiar with the problems caused by this practice. One of the more common involved mixing crack cocaine with baking soda, powdered sugar, or powdered milk. These substances didn’t always dissolve completely and, when injected, could form a solid mass that acted like a clot, cutting off the blood supply when the foreign material reached a tight spot in the circulatory system.
DeSoto continued. “If they’re putting pure product on the streets, there has to be a reason, and it’s only happening here. We want to find out why.”
A middle-aged Indian woman leaned forward. Jim had worked with her twice and been impressed. She was intelligent, knowledgeable, and calm in a crisis. “The problem,” she said, “is that the patients are not able to speak to us. So far, they’ve all been dead on arrival.”
Agent DeSoto nodded. “From massive overdose.”
Jim caught a movement out of the corner of his eye and turned to look at his boss. Even in scrubs, Dr. Lyons’ military background showed. He pushed off the wall, drew his five foot ten into a precise vertical line, planted his feet shoulder width apart, crossed his arms on his chest, and addressed the agent.
“Let me see if I got this straight. You’re telling us that Dallas has a drug problem no one else has.”
“Right.”
“And it’s because the dealers are supplying pure, U.S. produced drug to the users.”
“Right again.”
“And the users don’t expect that much active ingredient, which leads to accidental overdoses.”
“Yes.”
The medical director looked around the table, then back at the DEA agent. “I don’t see how we can help you. If they’re dead, they’re dead.”
The agent slid off the table and faced Dr. Lyons. “We want to put agents in all the Emergency Rooms in Dallas to interview the families and friends. We’re hoping to get a lead on what’s happening and why and who’s responsible. We need your cooperation to help the agents fit in.”
Several of the physicians exchanged glances. Agent DeSoto seemed to read their minds.
“We have a task force put together and everyone on it has basic medical training. We want to disguise them as techs and we expect them to do what they’re told, to maintain their cover, for as long as needed.”
Dr. Lyons looked around at his crew. “Any discussion?”
Jim watched as the gathering of physicians considered all the things that could go wrong with a plan like this. Eventually the Indian woman, Dr. Varma, spoke. “If there’s even a hint this is a trap, they will eliminate anyone with knowledge of what’s going on. That means us.”
Agent DeSoto nodded. “We hope to have a swift resolution to this problem, but it’s true it carries some risk.”
Dr. Lyons raised a sardonic eyebrow. “Being an ER physician carries risks. We all know that. We just don’t want to put targets on our backs.”
Dr. Jones looked over at Agent DeSoto. “Would putting more security on help or hurt?”
“Could go either way. We don’t want to alert anybody, but we could have extra help in-house and ready to respond if needed.”
Jim leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms on his chest. Dr. Lyons looked at him.
“You have something you want to add, Dr. Mackenzie?”
Jim turned to face him. “The D.C. area has a lot of crime.” Lyons nodded. He was aware of Jim’s history. “Three years ago, some of the facilities decided to add bulletproof vests under the scrub tops.” Jim took a breath, remembering a particularly hairy night that had seen one death and a number of injuries among the Emergency Room staff. “They work and we were able to work in them.” He met the medical director’s eyes. “But they aren’t cheap.”
All eyes were on the medical director now. He scanned the room. “Is that what it would take?”
There were nods from almost everyone around the table.
“I think we’d all feel better if we knew we weren’t gonna die the first time someone came in guns a-blazing,” Jones said. “It would give us time to duck.”
Lyons nodded, then looked at Agent DeSoto. “I’ll take it to the Hillcrest hospital board. You’ll have your answer tomorrow, one way or another.”
* * *
Monday midafternoon
Forbes residence
Later that same afternoon, Ginny sat in front of her computer, her fingers poised to write down whatever she came up with. She had dutifully called Detective Tran and relayed the question about Maria Perez’s nursing license, and been told it would be added to the list.
“Anything that might have made Mrs. Kyle a target,” Tran had said. If Maria was right, and Phyllis was killed because of her, then there was clearly a motive, but without Maria to tell them what it was, Ginny could only guess.
She frowned to herself. If Detective Tran was right, it was one of them. Someone she worked with. Someone who could brutally and cold-bloodedly kill another human being, then walk away and blend in with the crowd. A very small crowd.
Miserable as that thought was, it gave her a starting point. One of the people who’d been present last Friday morning had a connection to both Maria and Phyllis. Maybe not directly, but—if Maria was right—it was there.
* * *