Richard Mabry: Medical Error

"Nobody's going to hear you scream. I told you, I know this neighborhood. The people on both sides of this house are at work right now. By the time they get home, I'll have shut you up permanently. Then I'll wait until dark, tidy up here, put your body in the trunk of your car and drive it someplace where it won't be found for a while. My partner will pick me up and that's the end of it."

The mailman started to drop the roll of duct tape back into his bag, then seemed to think better of it. "You know, I'm tired of hearing you ask questions." He ripped a strip of tape from the roll and slapped it across Anna's mouth, then grinned with satisfaction as he dropped the tape back into his bag.

Anna slumped into the cushion, totally defeated. Her hands were secured in front of her, palms together in an attitude of prayer. Prayer seemed to be all that was left for her right now. At least when the final moment came, she'd be talking with God.

Anna wasn't sure how long she sat with her eyes closed, sending up earnest petitions to heaven, before she heard footsteps on the porch followed by a firm rapping. She opened her eyes and looked up in time to see the mailman stride toward the door and open it.

At least she would finally see the person behind the scheme before she died. Anna fixed her gaze on the door, wondering who would come through.

She shuffled through the possibilities. Neil Fowler? He certainly knew about narcotics prescriptions and had access to blank forms. But why would Fowler do such a thing? Was it a need for money, or had his position of chairman left him thinking that rules didn't apply to him?

Was it one of the DEA agents, Kramer or Hale? Or the detectives, Green or Dowling? Each of them would have the contacts, the specialized knowledge to make use of her DEA number. What better cover for criminal activity than carrying a badge?

Could it be her attorney? His story of a beating could have been faked to divert suspicion from him. And surely Ross would know the right people, either among the criminals he'd represented or those he'd encountered in his struggle to overcome addiction. Didn't Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous sometimes meet together?

Was Nick involved? Ever since Hatley's death, he'd been after her to let him help. Was that so he could keep tabs on her activities? Had his apparent affection for her merely been an excuse to be around, to keep an eye on her? Had she been that badly fooled?

Or was it someone she hadn't considered? There were so many possibilities. And soon she'd have her answer. She'd know the identity of the person who'd betrayed her and ruined her personal and professional life. It was a pity she wouldn't be able to use the knowledge.

She pictured her last moments: a bullet in the head would bring total darkness and oblivion. Her lifeless body would be bundled in a blanket and dumped in the trunk of her car for its last ride.

Would her captor deliver the coup de grace himself or would he leave that to his partner, who was apparently the man in charge? She wondered who it would be and decided that it didn't make any difference. Dead is dead.

The mailman looked back at her. Apparently, assured that Anna posed no threat, he turned the knob and opened the door.

Anna craned her neck to see past her captor's form. The light was behind the man who stood in the door, silhouetting him and hiding his face. Then Nick Valentine stepped forward.

Ross Donovan sat at his desk, staring into space, replaying every word of his conversation with Glenn. Poor Glenn. What a terrible way to die. Ross shivered as he realized it very nearly was him lying on that stainless steel drawer in the morgue, his earthly remains identified by a tag on his toe. If he didn't stop, would that be his fate anyway? He knew he was playing a dangerous game, but there was no turning back now.

He arranged and rearranged the files and papers on his desk, shuffling them like a shell-game hustler on a New York corner. Maybe if he looked at things from a different perspective, considered the chronology, his next move would become clear. He started with the discovery that someone was using Anna's narcotics license to write bogus prescriptions. Ross opened the file labeled "DEA" and pulled out Anna's application for renewal of her license. He cleared a space on his desk and laid that form at the left end of it.

Then Anna had found her identity had been compromised and her credit cards used until they were maxed out. He shuffled through the stack to the pile labeled "Credit" and found Anna's latest credit report. That went next to the DEA application.

In the meantime, Eric Hatley showed up in the Emergency Room, the innocent-well, apparently innocent-random victim of a gang shooting. Because someone else had used Hatley's insurance information, he received an antibiotic that caused a fatal allergic reaction. From the folder marked "Hatley," Ross pulled the summary sheet from the man's pitifully thin hospital chart. He placed that next in line.

Then the police, in the persons of Detectives Green and Dowling, advanced the theory that Anna was guilty of murder, or at least manslaughter. Their key bit of evidence was the prescription bottle showing Anna had prescribed narcotics for Hatley. Ross now knew the label had been faked, but his witness was dead. Yesterday, Glenn had given Ross a blank prescription label from the pharmacy where he worked. Ross pulled that from the pocket of his coat and laid it alongside the other papers.

His eyes scanned the row, back and forth, left to right and back again. Nothing made any sense. There had to be a connection that tied all of this together, but so far the only connection was Anna. His legal training rebelled at the thought that kept running through the edge of his mind like something seen with peripheral vision. Could Anna be guilty of all this? Was Glenn's revelation a complex double fake to get Ross to believe she'd been set up? And then did some as-yet-unknown associate of Anna's assault Ross to make the story more believable? If that was so, then Glenn was beaten to death to keep him from recanting his carefully planted story.

No! That was too far-fetched. Anna was innocent. She had to be. He couldn't bring himself to think otherwise.

Suddenly, as though a filter had been moved aside, Ross saw it. There was the connection. He swiveled toward his computer and called up a program, entered information, scanned the results. Yes, that was it. But what should he do about it? He didn't hesitate. He had to go there, see for himself.

He pushed back his chair when his cell phone rang. "Ross Donovan."

The conversation that followed was short, but it galvanized Ross into action. He grabbed his coat, slammed his office door, and almost ran down the hallway toward the elevators.

When Nick Valentine heard his cell phone ring, his first reaction was a sigh. Would he ever be able to get through this stack of slides? He needed to finish the day's surgical dictation, and he'd never do it if he had to continually stop to answer calls. Then he realized that the tones he heard were a signal that Anna was calling again.

He plunged his hand into the pocket of his lab coat and fumbled to answer the phone before the call rolled over to voicemail. "Hello. Anna?"

But it wasn't Anna's voice that he heard. Instead, a male voice, faint and a bit muffled, was saying, "They let me resign, which kept me out of federal prison."

"Anna," Nick said. "What's going on?"

Then Anna's voice, faint like the other one but also strained.

"So what were you doing? And what does that have to do with this house on Shady Lane? And why are you holding me here?"

Shady Lane? That was just a couple of streets from where Anna lived. She'd talked about an address in her neighborhood that she thought might have something to do with the people behind her identity theft. Had she gone there? It appeared that she had-and she was in trouble.