Stress Test (7 page)

Matt’s reaction was triggered by surprise rather than any sense of loss. He barely knew the woman. Saw her in the hospital coffee shop, spoke to her as they passed in the halls. He thought back to the last time he’d seen her, and decided it was close to two weeks ago. Now she was dead. And a detective from homicide apparently thought Matt killed her. But why?

Matt pulled the yellow pad closer and read from it. “I’ve contacted my attorney and will have nothing to say until she is here.”

“I can tell you it’ll go easier on you if you cooperate. All you need to do is—”

“I’ve contacted my attorney and will have nothing to say until she is here.” Matt parroted the phrase with no inflection.

This went on for a couple of minutes, with Matt as stubborn as the detective. Finally the man snorted. “If that’s the way you want to play it.” He leaned down and spoke so softly Matt had to strain to hear him. “Don’t think you’re going anywhere besides jail.”

The detective pulled a card from his shirt pocket and tossed it on Matt’s bed. “Your lawyer can call me when you’re ready to talk.”

Matt’s dreams were filled with large, menacing men chasing him down a dark corridor while policemen cheered them on. He had just run into an alley that ended in a blank wall when he heard someone call his name.

“Mr. Newman?”

He roused himself with an effort and squinted at the figure just inside the door.

“Mr. Newman?”

“Huh?”

A click, and light flooded the room. When Matt forced his eyes fully open, he saw an attractive woman at his bedside. She pulled up a chair, tossed her head to settle her shoulder-length red hair, and smiled. “Ah, you’re awake. Good.”

“Who are you?”

“I’m your attorney. Or, at least, I’m the person you called to be your attorney. We’ll decide in a minute if that’s the way it’s going to be.”

Matt hitched himself up in his bed and reached for his notepad. He scanned it until he found what he wanted. “So you’re Sandra Murray?”

She grinned, and dimples popped up at the corners of her mouth. “Guilty. And that’s the last time you’ll hear that word come out of my mouth. You’re Matt Newman, right?”

“Right. Dr. Matt Newman, if it makes any difference.”

A frown flitted across her face but was quickly replaced by a neutral expression. “It may.” She reached down and produced a yellow legal pad of her own. “Tell me what I need to know.”

“I left the hospital in the early morning . . . What’s today?”

“It’s a bit after midnight on Thursday morning.”

“How did you get in here at this hour?”

“Never mind that. Just tell me your story.”

Matt told her what he remembered and then handed over the card the detective left. “The first time he was here, a blonde was with him, but I don’t recall her name. I get the impression this guy’s in charge, though.”

She winced when she read the detective’s name. “This is a problem.”

Matt was afraid to ask, but he needed to know. “Why?”

“Detective Virgil Grimes works homicides. Are you mixed up in one?”

Matt gave a faint shrug. “Apparently he thinks so. I don’t.”

The attorney made a note on her legal pad. “The first thing I’ll do is call Grimes and find out what kind of a case he has. I just wish it wasn’t Grimes.”

Matt raised his eyebrows. “Why?”

“He’s a pit bull. He generally goes with his gut, and once he gets an idea of who the guilty party is, he doesn’t turn loose. Our best chance to get you out of this mess is to convince him he’s after the wrong person. That might not be easy . . . even if you’re innocent.”

“I . . .” He stopped and grabbed his head. “Sorry, when I get upset my head starts pounding.” He took a deep breath. “I am innocent. I’m the victim, but no one seems to believe it.”

She apparently saw the look on Matt’s face, because she made a calming, palms-down gesture. “Don’t worry. It’s early yet.” Murray tapped her pencil against her front teeth. “One thing worries me already though. Why didn’t the police believe your story of being kidnapped?”

Matt reached for the water at his bedside and sipped. It was warm, but his throat was so dry he emptied the glass anyway. “I wish I knew why they don’t believe me. I wish I knew why they think I killed that woman. I guess I’m going to need a lawyer.”

She grinned, and Matt was aware for the first time of a sprinkling of freckles that, combined with dancing green eyes, gave her a surprisingly girlish look, although he judged her to be about his age. “You’re going to need a very good lawyer. Fortunately, you contacted one. Let’s talk about that.”

She named a fee that produced a lump of ice in Matt’s stomach. “I don’t know how I’ll pay that.”

Sandra seemed genuinely puzzled. “I thought doctors made lots of money.”

“I’ve been a solo general surgery practitioner for four years,” Matt
said. “That’s just about long enough to establish a patient base. All that time, in addition to rent, salaries, malpractice insurance, and stuff like that, I’ve been paying back student loans from four years of medical school and five years of specialty training. I’m not exactly swimming in money.”

“But once you get out and back into practice, you can earn more. Right?”

Matt shook his head. “I gave up my private practice. I was supposed to take a faculty position here at Southwestern Medical Center.” He swept his hand around in a broad gesture. “If things had gone as planned, I’d be staffing residents at this hospital right now. Ironic, isn’t it?”

“So you sold your practice,” Sandra said. “That should give you a financial cushion.”

Matt was getting tired of this, but he had to make sure his attorney understood his situation. “You don’t ‘sell’ a practice anymore. Another doctor paid me a minimal amount for my ‘goodwill.’ That means he agreed to take over my records and patients, at least the people who wanted to keep seeing him, and I agreed to write a letter introducing him.”

The more they talked, the more depressed Matt became. He had resources, but not many, and no real prospects of getting more for a while. Finally he decided that by borrowing from his meager retirement fund, he could meet his lawyer’s fees. He thought about the money he’d been putting aside and managed a wry grin. Face it. He wouldn’t need a penny of that money if his retirement was spent in prison, or his life was cut short by lethal injection.

After Sandra left, Matt lay in the dark as icy fingers of fear crept up his spine. He felt like he was in pincers, caught between a policeman who appeared convinced Matt was a suspect in a homicide and
two men who, either on their own or acting for some nebulous third person, kidnapped him so they could kill him. By all rights his escape from his kidnappers should have brought his night of terror to an end. Instead Matt had the feeling his ordeal was just beginning.

SEVEN

Sandra wasn’t sure when the ritual started, but by now it was firmly established. Her first stop each morning was at Starbucks for two coffees. Today one double shot, black Caffè Americano for her, with a mocha latte for Elaine. “I like it because it matches my skin perfectly,” her secretary liked to say.

Sandra slid her morning mocha across the desk to Elaine after they’d traded greetings. “Here you are.”

“How’s your new client?”

“I’ll know more when I see the police records, but I think he’s in a lot of trouble.” Sandra sipped from her own cup and leaned against Elaine’s desk. “Why didn’t you tell me he was a doctor?”

“Honestly, I don’t recall him mentioning it. Does it make a difference? I’d think all that means is that he’s more likely able to pay your fees than some of the cases you take on.”

Sandra shrugged, finished her coffee, and dropped the cup in Elaine’s wastebasket. “It’s not that. It’s . . .”

“Oh, the thing with Dr. Gordon. Don’t tell me that’s going to keep you from ever defending a doctor.”

“I don’t know. I just have this feeling about doctors right now . . .”

Elaine looked over the rim of her coffee cup and fixed Sandra with a meaningful stare. “You mean because Ken Gordon doesn’t share your beliefs about God, you’re going to assume all doctors think that way?”

“I know it’s silly, but Ken was so adamant . . . Oh, never mind.” Sandra moved toward the door of her office, turned, and said, “I’m going to return some of these phone calls, then I’ll see if I can find out why Virgil Grimes showed up on my client’s doorstep—well, actually, at his bedside—and frightened him half to death.”

Sandra eased into her office chair and immediately slipped off her shoes. Pumps were professional, but flats were certainly easier on the feet. She picked up a pen and tapped her front teeth. She remembered the words she’d heard from a seasoned criminal defense attorney.
Never ask your client if they’re guilty or innocent. They’re all innocent,
until a jury decides otherwise
. When she’d left Matt Newman’s room, she was certain—she couldn’t say why—but she was absolutely certain the stakes had been raised in the battle that was ahead, because she thought he was the kind of client an attorney worries most about defending: an innocent man.

Shortly after noon the next day, Sandra strode into Matt’s room. She eased into a bedside chair, crossed her legs, and said without preamble, “I spoke with Grimes. You seem to be in pretty big trouble.”

Matt pushed the button to raise the head of his bed. “Tell me about it,” he said, and tried to focus his hazy thoughts. “I don’t know anything that happened after I fell in that alley.”

She pulled a notepad from her briefcase and scanned it. “The day
after you were found unconscious in the alley, the police got a report of an abandoned vehicle in the area. Cara Mendiola’s body was in the trunk. She’d been shot once in the head.”

Matt still couldn’t get his mind around it. He’d been asking himself why he’d been kidnapped and marked for death. Now he had to add another question: Was it related to Cara’s murder? Were her killers the same men who’d kidnapped him? “Why do the police suspect me? I’m a victim here.”

“To begin with, she was found in your car.”

“That doesn’t mean anything,” Matt protested. “It was stolen. With me in the trunk. And trust me, I was the only one in there.”

Sandra continued as though he hadn’t spoken. “When they discovered Mendiola’s body, your wallet was under it.”

“Obviously it fell out while they had me trussed up in there.”

“Grimes thinks it fell out when you put Mendiola’s body in the trunk.”

Matt’s throat felt like a noose was tightening around it. He took a deep breath. “How do they think I killed her when I was lying unconscious in that alley?”

Sandra shrugged. “No one knows how long you were in that alley. Grimes’s theory is that you and she drove somewhere, maybe a park, to hash out a lovers’ quarrel. You threatened her with a gun. It accidentally discharged and killed her. You panicked. You loaded her in the trunk and went looking for somewhere to dump the body, getting rid of the gun along the way.”

“I never—”

She waved Matt to silence. “They say you were in that alley looking for a place to dispose of her body. You climbed up on the stack of wood pallets, lost your balance, and fell, hitting your head.”

Matt thought about that a bit. Couldn’t forensic evidence show he’d
been tied up in the trunk? Fingerprints, hair? No, it was his car. “What about the road flares I used to cut through the tape? They should have been in the trunk. One should have my blood all over it—”

“But they weren’t. Just the usual junk, plus Mendiola’s body and your wallet.”

Matt’s mind scrambled to find the key that would prove his innocence. “Did they check the security cameras in the hospital parking garage?”

“One showed you walking out of the hospital. Another showed your car driving away a few minutes later. The area where your car was parked wasn’t covered by a camera.”

Matt struggled to swallow. “How did they find me here? I was admitted as a John Doe.”

“Your white coat, complete with name badge, turned up in the alley where you were found. By that time, the police had discovered your car, and there was a bulletin out to detain you for questioning. Grimes saw the reports about the coat and the injured John Doe, both found in the same alley. He put it together. After that, it was easy.”