IT WAS a repeat of the last time Julie was here. It was how prison life was designed to be-the same thing, day in and day out. Julie had made the call forty-eight hours earlier and gotten on the visitors’ list. A different employee with the same stern look processed Julie’s ID through a standard series of checks. Julie was cleared to go inside. While waiting for the trap guard to show, she phoned Dr. Goodman in the ICU.
“How’s Shirley Mitchell?”
“She’s out of surgery but not hemodynamically stable. Could take another twenty-four hours.”
Or longer than that.
The dark thought passed quickly. There was every chance Shirley Mitchell would never be stable enough to be taken off mechanical ventilation. Julie’s conversation with the sick woman came back to her. “Let me die,” she had said, or something to that effect. Sam had asked the same of Julie, Julie had championed that very right, and Brandon Stahl might be imprisoned for fulfilling that very wish. Julie ended her call with Dr. Goodman and was soon led down a familiar corridor, stuck in the middle of a grim processional.
The trap guard escorted Julie to an empty partitioned section. She took a seat on a metal stool bolted to the floor, and waited. A loud buzzer went off. Looking to her left, Julie saw Brandon Stahl enter the room behind the glass. This time, Brandon did not need to prompt Julie to pick up the wall-mounted phone. He still looked frail to her with his mop-top hairdo, twiggy arms, and a face incapable of hiding his humanity.
“How are you, Brandon?”
Brandon’s expression was grave. “I should be asking you.”
“You heard the news about Sherri, I take it.”
“We may be locked up from the outside world, but we’re not cut off completely. Tragic.”
Julie returned a skeptical stare and said nothing for a time.
“You don’t think I had anything to do with her death, do you?” Brandon asked.
“Did you?”
“No,” Brandon said emphatically.
“I saw the bullet hole in Sherri’s head, and it’s not something that will leave me anytime soon.”
Brandon’s eyes flared. For the first time Julie saw in them a look befitting a hardened criminal.
“Have you come here to tell me you’re not going to try to help anymore?”
“No.”
“Good. Because I had nothing to do with that poor girl’s murder. I don’t care if she testified against me or not. What happened to her was a horrible crime. But I didn’t send any inflammatory messages to my so-called devotees, like some of the news reports implied. Contrary to popular belief, I do not want to be, nor should I be, the poster child for mercy killing. Don’t thrust that mantle on me.”
Brandon jabbed with his finger. “I never asked one person to stand outside the prison and protest on my behalf. They send me letters all the time with stories about their sick mothers and fathers, aunts, uncles, whatever, and ask for my advice on how to kill them. How do they get the drugs? How do they properly inject them with a needle? Like I’m Dr. Kevorkian’s protégé or something. That’s my legacy. I’m the how-to-do-it guy for murder.” Brandon shook his head in disgust. “That’s not me. That’s not who I am.” His eyes narrowed. “I’m just a nurse. That’s all I ever wanted to be.”
Tears almost came to Brandon’s eyes. He could cry, and would not be alone. On both sides of the partition tears flowed freely, and the emotions spilling out were raw and unfiltered.
“I want you to try and remember something for me,” Julie said.
“Okay.”
“Did Donald Colchester have any allergic reaction that you can remember?”
“Allergic reaction?”
“Anything that stood out in your mind.”
“That’s a long time ago, and I’ve had a lot on my mind since then.”
“Understood. But I’m looking for a link between Sam’s case and Donald’s.”
“And you think it could be allergy related?”
“We’re having a hard time coming up with an event that could cause these disabled men to have been scared or stressed to death.”
Brandon leaned back in his chair, lowered his gaze, and folded his arms. “Did you look at Sam’s medical record?”
“I did,” Julie said. “But nothing jumped out at me.”
Brandon rubbed his chin, deep in thought.
Julie’s mouth formed a grimace. She wanted an answer, a bit of light shined in the dark.
“Are you thinking an anaphylaxis-type allergic reaction?”
“Doesn’t even have to be that severe.”
“And there was nothing in Sam’s file?”
“No. And I looked it over very closely.”
“What about Colchester’s file, then? Did you look at that?”
“It’s gone.”
“Gone?”
“As in, deleted from the EMR system, or some glitch. IT can’t figure it out. Believe me, I’ve asked. Best I came away with is a help desk ticket, which is why I’m counting on your memory.”
“Seems funny, you know. You looking into this and then Colchester’s EMR file goes missing.”
“Yeah, though ‘suspicious’ was the word that popped into my mind. The doctor who took my copy of the file suddenly isn’t answering my calls and surprise, surprise, I can’t seem to get a meeting with him, either.”
“I don’t know.” Brandon held a breath. “I mean, we’re talking a long time ago. Years.”
“Just try.” Julie leaned forward and put her hand against the glass. “Was there anything?”
Brandon groaned, closed his eyes tight, and grabbed a clump of his hair as if it hurt to think that far in the past, to think about it at all. Then his eyes sprang open and he looked almost pleased.
“I got something,” he said. “I just remembered. It was horrible, too, because he was paralyzed.”
“What was horrible?”
“Urticaria,” Brandon said. “Hives. A bad case of them, too. They just broke out one day. We gave him antihistamines of course, but I spent a lot of time putting cold compresses and wet cloths on the affected areas.”
Julie’s stomach dropped at the same time her mouth fell open. So much had happened since the accident. It was all a blur. She had cared for Sam, eaten lunch with him, cried with him, nurtured him, brought in Michelle so he would stop begging to die-all while working her job and looking after Trevor. Of course it could slip her mind. Hives. And Julie now knew exactly what entry someone had deleted from Sam’s medical record.
CHAPTER 38
The overcast day seemed a perfect match for Trevor’s somber mood. Poor kid, he wanted to be anywhere but in the car driving with his mom to Beverly Municipal Airport on Massachusetts’s North Shore.
For the past few miles Trevor had kept his face in his phone.
“What time are we going to get back?” Trevor asked. “Jake wants me to come over.”
Julie mulled it over a moment. “Well, to be honest, I thought we could spend the day together,” she said. “After this jaunt we could maybe get a bite to eat, catch a movie or something. The IMAX isn’t too far from here.”
Julie came up with this plan only after her son tried to make a plan of his own. She wanted time with Trevor, as much of it as she could get, but had been so preoccupied with this upcoming rendezvous it had not occurred to her to make a day out of it.
Trevor contemplated the offer, and eventually he gave a gentle nod.
“Sounds like fun, Mom. I’ll see what’s playing.” He returned to his smartphone.
“Nothing too violent, please.”
Trevor gave a sidelong glance with a perfect “come on now” expression.
“Okay, how about nothing crazy violent,” Julie said. “Superhero violence, fine, but no serial killers, or assassins or ninjas or any of that. Deal? I just don’t think I can handle it.”
Trevor reached up and touched Julie’s shoulder. She could see in his eyes he was thinking about his mom and Sherri Platt.