Patterson, James: Womans Murder Club 5 - The 5th Horseman

“Yuki, let me in there for a second. Keiko. Keiko, can you hear me?”

My heart was thudding hard as I placed my fingers to Keiko’s carotid artery, tracked her pulse against the second hand of my watch.

She was breathing, but her pulse was so weak, I could barely feel it.

I grabbed the Nextel at my waist and called Dispatch.

“Lieutenant Boxer, badge number twenty-seven twenty-one,” I barked into the phone. “Get an EMS unit to Maiden Lane and Grant. Make it now!”

Womans Murder Club 5 - The 5th Horseman

Chapter 4

SAN FRANCISCO MUNICIPAL HOSPITAL is huge — like a city in itself. Once a public hospital, it had been privatized a few years back, but it still took more than its share of indigents and overflow from other hospitals, treating in excess of a hundred thousand patients a year.

At that moment, Keiko Castellano was inside one of the curtained stalls that ringed the perimeter of the vast, frantic emergency room.

As I sat beside Yuki in the waiting room, I could feel her terror and fear for her mother’s life.

And I flashed on the last time I’d been inside an emergency room. I remembered the doctors’ ghostlike hands touching my body, the loud throbbing of my heart, and wondering if I was going to get out alive.

I’d been off duty that night but went on a stakeout anyway, not thinking that one minute it would be a routine job, and the next minute I’d be down. The same was true for my friend and former partner, Inspector Warren Jacobi. We’d both taken two slugs in that desolate alley. He was unconscious and I was bleeding out on the street when somehow I found the strength to return fire.

My aim had been good, maybe even too good.

It’s a sad sign of the times that public sympathy favors civilians who’ve been shot by police over police who’ve been shot by civilians. I was sued by the family of the so-called victims and I could have lost everything.

I hardly knew Yuki then.

But Yuki Castellano was the smart, passionate, and supertalented young lawyer who had come through for me when I really needed her. I would always be grateful.

I turned to Yuki now as she spoke, her voice choppy with agitation, her face corrugated with worry.

“This makes no sense, Lindsay. You saw her. She’s only fifty-five, for God’s sake. She’s a freaking life force. What’s going on? Why don’t they tell me something? Or at least let me see her?”

I had no answer, but like Yuki, I was out of patience.

Where the hell was the doctor?

This was unconscionable. Not acceptable in any way.

What was taking so long?

I was gathering myself to walk into the ER and demand some answers, when a doctor finally strode into the waiting room. He looked around, then called Yuki’s name.

Womans Murder Club 5 - The 5th Horseman

Chapter 5

THE NAME TAG over the pocket of his white coat read “Dennis Garza, MD, Dir. Emergency Services.”

I couldn’t help noticing that Garza was a handsome man — midforties, six foot one, 180 or so, broad-shouldered, and in good shape. His Spanish lineage showed in his black eyes and the thick black hair that fell across his forehead.

But what struck me most was the tension in the doctor’s body, his rigid stance and the way he repeatedly, impatiently, snapped the wristband of his Rolex, as if to say, I’m a busy man. An important, busy man. Let’s get on with it. I don’t know why, but I didn’t like him.

“I’m Dr. Garza,” he said to Yuki. “Your mother probably had a neurological insult, either what we call a TIA, a transient ischemic attack, or a mini-stroke. In plain English, it’s a loss of circulation and oxygen to the brain, and she may have had some angina — that’s pain caused by a narrowing of the coronary arteries.”

“Is that serious? Is she in pain now? When will I be able to see her?”

Yuki fired questions at Dr. Garza until he put up a hand to stop the onslaught.

“She’s still incoherent. Most people recover within a half hour. Others, maybe your mother, take as long as twenty-four hours. Her condition is guarded. And visitors are off-limits right now. Let’s see how she does tonight, shall we?”

“She is going to be all right though, right? Right?” Yuki asked the doctor.

“Miss Castellano. Take a deep breath,” Garza said. “I’ll let you know when we know.”

The door to the ER swung closed behind the unpleasant doctor, and Yuki sat down hard on a plastic chair, slumped forward, lowered her face into her hands, and began to sob. I’d never seen Yuki cry before, and it killed me that I couldn’t fix what was hurting her.

I did all that I could do.

I put my arm around Yuki’s shoulders, saying, “It’s okay, honey. She’s in good hands here. I know your mom will be better really soon.”

Then I rubbed Yuki’s back as she cried and cried. She seemed so tiny and afraid, almost like a little girl.

Womans Murder Club 5 - The 5th Horseman

Chapter 6

THERE WERE NO WINDOWS in the waiting room. The hands of the clock above the coffee machine inched around the dial, cycling the afternoon into night and midnight into morning. Dr. Garza never returned, and he never sent us any word.

During those eighteen long hours, Yuki and I took turns pacing, getting coffee, and going to the ladies’ room. We ate vending-machine sandwiches for dinner, traded magazines, and, in the eerie fluorescent silence, listened to each other’s shallow breathing.

At just after 3:00 a.m., Yuki fell sound asleep against my shoulder — waking with a start twenty minutes later.

“Has anything happened?”

“No, sweetie. Go back to sleep.”

But she couldn’t do it.

We sat shoulder to shoulder inside that synthetically bright, inhospitable place as the faces around us changed: the couple with linked hands staring into the middle distance, the families with young children in their arms, an elderly man sitting alone.

Every time the swinging door to the ER opened, eyes would snap toward it.

Sometimes a doctor would step out.

Sometimes shrieks and cries would follow.

It was almost 6:00 in the morning when a young female intern with weary eyes and a blood-smeared lab coat came out of the ER and mangled Yuki’s name.

“How is she?” Yuki asked, bounding to her feet.

“She’s more alert now, so she’s doing better,” said the intern. “We’re going to keep her for a few days and do some tests, but you can visit as soon as we settle her into her room.”

Yuki thanked the doctor and turned to me with a smile that was far more radiant than was reasonable, given what the doctor had just told her.

“Oh-my-God, Linds, my mom’s going to be okay! I can’t say how much it means to me that you stayed with me all night,” Yuki said.

She grabbed both of my hands, tears filling her eyes. “I don’t know how I could have done this if you hadn’t been here. You saved me, Lindsay.”

I hugged her, folded her in.

“Yuki, we’re friends. Anything you need, you don’t even have to ask. You know that, right? Anything.

“Don’t forget to call,” I said.

“The worst is over,” said Yuki. “Don’t worry about us now, Lindsay. Thank you. Thank you so much.”

I turned to look behind me as I exited the hospital through the automatic sliding doors.

Yuki was still standing there, watching me, smiling and waving good-bye.

Womans Murder Club 5 - The 5th Horseman

Chapter 7

A CAB WAS IDLING in front of the hospital. Lucky me. I slid in and slumped into the backseat, feeling like total crap, only much worse. Pulling all-nighters is for college kids, not big girls like me.