Peter Clement - The Inquisitor

Then odds were that the official cause of death would simply echo what everyone already suspected, including him: morphine intoxication.

And Wyatt would move in for the kill.

Yet the politics of it hardly mattered, compared to what preoccupied him most about the whole affair.

If someone had overdosed Elizabeth Matthews, whoever did it had come prepared.

Sunday, July 6, 11:52 p.m. Palliative Care, St. Paul's Hospital

Sadie Locke had had a good day.

Thanks to that nice Dr. Garnet, she'd spent several hours enjoying the evening air sitting out on the roof of the west wing. It felt cool against her face, despite having to still wear her mask. He'd insisted on that, explaining that other patients would soon be allowed to make excursions there and they had to keep the area free of contamination, just like any other part of the hospital. The rest was great. A perimeter of potted trees rustling in the breeze reminded her of the parks where she'd watched Donny play near her home in Lackawanna, a former railway town south of Buffalo. Later, as the sun dropped lower over Lake Erie, birds gathered in the branches above her head, mistaking the pretend forest among all the concrete for the real thing. They'd darted happily from branch to branch, oblivious to the artificiality of it all, filling the air with evening song. Along the lake's edge in the distance, the brick chimneys of deserted factories that hadn't belched smoke since the days when she'd been a young mother now attracted black swirling clouds of starlings above their orifices. At some unseen signal, they reared by the thousands into the dusky sky, then swooped inside, as if those towering columns had sucked them back down to their last flittering dark speck.

Now, after all that excitement, she couldn't sleep. The night noises of the hospital startled her awake whenever she drifted off, and an overhead air vent exhaled polar air that washed over her head with the chilling effect of ice water. Footfalls in the hallway as families on death watch came and went to the other rooms disturbed her further- not so much the sound, but what it evoked: the inevitable approach of that day when the steps would come for her. She thanked God Donny would return while she still had the strength for a few good hours, perhaps sit out on that roof with him. She'd like to pass an afternoon chatting about how much fun they'd had together when he'd been little and his father had been full of hope that his own dream, Lucky Locke's, would be the best restaurant in town.

She felt around in the darkness for the plastic cup of water that the nurses had left on the night table and, finding it, took a sip.

She wanted one more chance to tell Donny how much joy he'd given his father.

Otherwise she feared he would only remember the man who'd slowly withdrawn into sadness, overwhelmed by the ordinariness of what Lucky Locke's ultimately became- a dreary lunch counter that sucked eighteen hours a day from him for over twenty years until he died.

She took another sip.

God willing, she would talk more frankly than ever with Donny now, hold nothing back, make sure he understood how his own achievement must be soothing to his father's dear departed soul. Especially the name Lucky Locke Two. That had been a nice gesture on Donny's part.

A third sip.

Before the cancer tied her more and more to treatments at home, she'd visited Hawaii several times and seen the restaurant. It stood in a grove of palm trees on a street with a lot of A*s in the name that she could never remember, like a lot of Hawaiian words. Of course, any more trips there would be impossible.

A figure darkened her doorway.

She sat up.

"You awake, Sadie?" said a familiar voice.

"Father Jimmy. You're late tonight." The chaplain never failed to drop in to see if she'd fallen asleep yet, having learned of her insomnia shortly after her arrival.

He walked over and sat on the end of her bed as usual. In the half-light from the corridor, she saw that his eyes were more drawn and tired than ever.

"Thinking of Donny again?" he asked.

She smiled. He always knew. "I miss him so. And want to see him while I still can… before I…" She nodded toward the corridor where the latest visitors shuffled by, also garbed in protective gear, their muted voices already funereal.

He patted her hand and said the reassuring things he always did, but he seemed distant.

"How are you, Father? You're not your usual chipper self tonight."

"Me? Oh, thank you for asking. I'm fine- just tired after yesterday's big race. Did I tell you our Flying Angels won?"

"Yes. When you were here last night."

"Did I? Oh, sorry. I'm getting forgetful. And boastful, it appears, judging by my going on about our win. Pride goes before the fall."

"Depends on what you're proud of, Father. I'd say it's permissible to let your light shine in the matter of raising money for the hospital." She'd hoped to get a chuckle from him, but no such luck. "And you were right about that Dr. Earl Garnet. Remember I told you about his paying me a visit?" she continued, trying a different tack.

"Oh?"

"A first-rate man. He came by here again today and arranged for me to sit out on a lovely roof garden. He looked almost as tired as you, Father, yet took the time. I hope you don't mind, but he also seemed a bit down, so I said that you thought the world of him. That cheered him a bit. He laughed and said you'd put him up to coming on the ward in the first place." She'd hoped that after hearing one of the many small ways he had made a difference to her and others, Father Jimmy might relax a little. The tension around his eyes made it obvious that he needed someone to cheer him up once in a while.

Instead he cringed. She also noticed that, side-lit from the hallway, his normally youthful skin looked puffy in the shadows.

He must really have had a hard day, she thought, after they'd said good night.

She next awoke to the sound of running feet and the wobble of fast-turning wheels that she immediately recognized, and dreaded.

Another one unprepared to die.

As much as she wanted to see Donny again, she'd signed the DNR form when the nurses first presented it to her. Otherwise, when her time came, they might resuscitate her, and she'd have to meet death twice or more. Once would be enough, thank you very much.

She lay there, listening to the whump of the paddles as they delivered their shocks of electricity and the hushed, clipped voices of the team as they called it, then the telltale quiet.

Rarely they'd rush back out of the ward, pushing the bed, pumping breath into a ghastly-faced man or woman who would then linger on tubes, IVs, and a respirator in what must be a living purgatory. More commonly, the team quietly returned downstairs with their cart, and it would be the sobs of the family, if there were any present, that broke the stillness. Afterward the staff would lead them away, green-shrouded figures escorting the family members slowly in a ghostly procession. Finally, the sheeted form would be wheeled out.

The thought of herself eventually ending up in a refrigerated morgue with a lot of other corpses gave Sadie the creeps, and she tried not to think about it.

Outside her window a rind of gray light had eaten into the night sky along the eastern horizon. She turned to her bed table and did what she always did when the resuscitation team came calling: marked a tiny cross on her calendar and said a prayer for the victim, however the body left the floor.

Monday, July 7, 12:35 p.m.

The roof garden, St. Paul's Hospital

I leaned back on the chair and pretended to enjoy the heat of the noonday sun on my face. But fear had become my cancer. Always present, it ate away at me day and night.