Lisa Jackson - Born To Die

He visibly flinched at the sight of her, his jaw tightening, his eyes closing for the briefest of seconds before he opened them again and took a long look.

“Jesus,” he whispered under his breath. Then more loudly he said, “It’s Jocelyn,” turning away from the bed to face Kacey. “Jocelyn Wallis. The teacher Eli was talking about.” He didn’t explain any further to the detectives, and Kacey figured they’d already covered that ground. He looked once more at the battered woman lying, unmoving, in the hospital bed. The corners of his mouth twisted downward. “How the hell did she fall?”

“That’s what we want to find out,” Pescoli said. “We’ll need you to tell us everything you know about her.” The taller detective was moving toward the newly identified patient, but Anita stepped between them.

“Uh-uh. You can handle this interview outside the room.” The smallest person in the area, she was still very much in command as she faced off with the cops. “I mean it. Out. But… I’ll need to get some information, too.” She glanced at O’Halleran. “Medical. Family.”

“I don’t. . I don’t know her that well.” He rubbed a hand behind his neck, and Kacey wondered how much he was covering up. How involved was he with Jocelyn Wallis? “I think she has a sister somewhere in California.”

“California’s a pretty big state,” Alvarez pointed out.

“That’s all I ever heard. California. I told you I don’t. . didn’t really know her.” But he was thinking now. “Her maiden name was Black, she said, and her parents are from somewhere in Idaho. Around Pocatello?” he said as if asking himself a question. “She mentioned her dad a couple of times…. What the hell was his name? Cedric? No… Cecil .” He snapped his fingers. “That’s right. Cecil Black, but I don’t remember her mother’s name. The school would have a lot more information. You can probably get it from the principal. Her name is Barbara Killingsworth.”

Anita was nodding and shepherding them out. O’Halleran glanced back at Kacey just as one of the monitors started to give off an alarm.

Anita spun on her heel. “Oh, hell! She’s crashing!” To the detectives, she said, “All of you, get out of here! Now!” She was already reaching for the alarm button on her desk to alert the rest of the staff. Kacey had moved to Jane Doe’s — now, presumably, Jocelyn’s — side, ready to administer CPR and hoping to high heaven that the crash cart and doctor arrived soon.

She started CPR on the woman… two breaths, then chest compressions. Come on, come on, Jocelyn. Stay with me, she thought as she counted aloud.

“One, two, three, four, five—”

For a second, the woman’s eyes opened, and Kacey nearly gasped as the resemblance to herself was almost uncanny.

“Doctor!”

Anita’s voice pierced her brain, and she realized she’d stumbled on the count.

“That’s fifteen, sixteen, seventeen,” Anita prompted, and Kacey caught up just as the doors to the ICU flew open again, three nurses and two doctors streaming in, the crash cart rolling toward the bed.

“Get these people out of here!” a strong male voice ordered, and from the corner of her eye Kacey watched as Anita shooed the detectives and Trace O’Halleran through the doors. “I’ll take over now,” the same voice said, and she glanced up to see Dr. Wes Lewis walk quickly to the bed, waiting for her to hit thirty before stepping in as she withdrew her hands and a nurse sidled the crash cart to the patient. Lewis began giving orders to the staff as easily as he had as a quarterback in college. Big, black, and usually affable, he was all business today, but Kacey felt it was too late. She’d sensed it, that recognition that a patient was slipping away. Whether it was conscious or not, there came a point where the body was done.

“It’s when St. Peter comes a-callin’,” her grandmother, Ada, had whispered into her ear as she, crying miserably, watched as her favorite old horse, lying in the straw of his stall, shuddered his last breath.

Her grandfather had glanced at his wife, as if to disagree, but the look she’d sent him had silenced whatever he’d wanted to say.

“St. Peter needs horses?” Kacey, at nine, had asked. Her throat had been so thick, she’d barely been able to get the words out.

“Course he does,” Grannie had insisted, hugging her so close that the smells of the barn — the acrid odor of urine, the dust in the hay, and the warm, heavy scent of horses — had faded to the background. All Kacey had been able to smell was the sweet scent of the wild roses in her grandmother’s favorite perfume. “Course he does.”

And now, Kacey thought, as the patient was being treated, the defibrillator standing at the ready, St. Peter seemed to be needing and “callin’ for” Jocelyn Wallis.

Dr. Lambert’s expression said it all, Trace thought.

Her jaw was set, her lips were thin, her eyes somber as she walked down the short hallway to the area where he and the two cops were waiting. It had been only half an hour since they’d been banished from the ICU, but obviously things hadn’t gone well.

“Jocelyn Wallis didn’t make it,” she informed both of the cops, who had been in and out of the waiting area, talking on cell phones, checking their watches, speaking in low tones, and sipping the weak, free coffee from paper cups. They’d questioned him further about his relationship with the teacher, and he’d told them about the last time they’d gotten together, that Jocelyn had wanted him to spend the night.

Going over to her place had been a mistake.

One that he hadn’t made again.

He’d been taken in by her good looks, quick smile and, if truth be told, a sexual need that hadn’t been fulfilled in a long while. But he hadn’t allowed himself to be seduced more than once, if that counted for anything.

Chivalrous, he wasn’t. And he’d seen that unspoken accusation in the shorter detective’s, Alvarez’s, eyes as she’d taken notes.

Now he shoved his hands through his hair as Kacey went on.

“She was just too compromised, too many internal injuries and head trauma. Dr. Lewis, who was the admitting doctor, will be out in a few minutes. He can answer any questions for you.” She glanced at Trace, then walked quickly toward the elevators.

“Stick around,” Pescoli advised him, as if she sensed he was about to try and leave. “We’ve got some more questions.”

“About Jocelyn?” he asked but sensed there was something deeper.

Pescoli nodded as Alvarez eyed him with more than a grain of suspicion.

Trace got the message. “You think that this wasn’t an accident?” he asked, feeling a new rising sense of anger. “And you think I know something about it?”

Pescoli shook her head. “We didn’t say that.”

“But you implied it.”

Alvarez stepped in. “We’re just looking into all the possible scenarios. For all we know, she slipped and fell over the railing. That’s certainly likely. But we’re trying to be thorough.” She offered him a smile that didn’t exactly light up her face, a smile that said without words, “Don’t worry. This is just a formality,” but his innate sense of self-preservation counteracted her forced affability. There was something more going on here; these women were part of the homicide investigation team.

Trace said, “I’ve got a sick kid and a ranch to look after. I’ve told you just about everything I know about Jocelyn Wallis, but if you have more questions, you can call me.”

He thought they might try to stop him, but at that time a big black man in a lab coat swept out of the ICU and caught the cops’ attention.