24 Hours

He wagged a finger at her. “You’re not trying to understand anything. You’re trying to make me think you actually give a shit, so I might feel enough for you that I won’t hurt your kid.”

“That’s not true.”

“The hell it’s not.” He drank again, then let his eyes burn into her. “I’ll let you in on a little secret, Sunshine. You ain’t strangers.”

“What?”

He smiled, and a wicked pleasure came into his face. “The light dawning up there?”

A shadow seemed to pass behind Karen’s eyes, a flickering foreknowledge that made her shudder in the chair. “What do you mean?”

“Your husband works at University Hospital, right?”

“He works at several hospitals.” This was true, but University provided the facilities for Will’s drug research. He also held a faculty position, and did quite a bit of anesthesiology there.

Hickey waved his hand. “He works at University, right?”

“That’s right. That’s where we met.”

“How romantic. But I have a little different feeling about the place. My mother died there.”

The transient fear that made her shudder before now took up residence in her heart.

“She was in for her throat cancer,” he said, almost to himself. “They’d cut on her a bunch of times before. It was no big deal. But they were supposed to put some kind of special panty-hose things on her during the operation. STDs or something.”

“SCDs,” Karen corrected him. “Sequential compression devices. Along with T.E.D. hose, they keep the blood circulating in the legs while the patient is under anesthesia.”

“Supposed to, anyway,” Hickey said. “But they left them off, and she got some kind of clot. Sounds like Efrem Zimbalist.”

“An embolus.”

“That’s it.”

“Will was the anesthesiologist?”

“Fuckin’-A right he was. And my mother died right there on the table. They told me nothing could be done. But I went back later and talked to the surgeon who’d done the operation. And he finally told me. It’s the gas passer’s job to make sure those SCD things are on the patient.”

“But that’s not true!” Karen cried. “The anesthesiologist has nothing to do with that.”

“Oh, yeah. What else are you going to say?”

“That’s the job of the circulating nurse-if the surgeon has written the proper orders. The surgeon himself should check to be sure they’re on.”

“The cutter told me there’s some kind of box under the table, and the gas passer’s supposed to check for it.”

“He was probably scared to death of you! He was shifting the blame wherever he could.”

A dark laugh from Hickey. “He was scared, all right.” He leaned up on his elbow. “Don’t worry. That asshole paid, too. In full.”

“You sued him for malpractice?”

“Sued him?” Hickey laughed. “I said he paid in full.”

“What do you mean?”

“What do you think I mean?”

“You killed him?”

Hickey snapped his fingers. “Just like that. No telling how many people I saved by wasting that butcher.”

Struggling to keep her anxiety hidden, Karen tried to remember Will mentioning a case like the one Hickey had described. But she couldn’t. And it didn’t surprise her. Her resentment about leaving med school made her a poor listener when Will wanted to discuss work. “When exactly did this happen? I mean, when did your mother pass away? Will-”

“She didn’t pass away, okay?” Hickey sat up in the bed. “She was murdered. By doctors who didn’t give a shit. Your old man wasn’t even in the room when she started to go. He was there at the start and the end. Some assistant was in there the rest of the time.”

Nurse anesthetist, Karen thought, her heart sinking. More and more, nurse anesthetists were handling the bulk of routine operations. It lowered the cost to the patient and freed up time for the doctor to concentrate on difficult cases. But the custom had always worried her. In an empirical sense, there was no such thing as a routine operation.

“Probably talking to his fucking stockbroker through most of it,” Hickey said, lying back on the pillows. “Yapping on his cell phone while my mother was croaking. The bottom line is, your husband murdered my mother. And that’s why we’re here tonight, babe. Instant karma.”

Karen tried to think of a way to convince him of Will’s innocence, but it was useless. His mind was made up. She shook her head, trying to resist the change that had already taken place within her, the instant reappraisal of Abby’s chances. Until now, Abby’s kidnapping had seemed a stroke of fate, terrible but random, like being blindsided by a bus. But this was infinitely worse. Because every moment of the crime, from the moment it was born in Hickey’s fevered mind to the conclusion waiting out there in the dark, was suffused with malice, driven by hatred, and focused on revenge.

“How long have you been planning this?” she asked softly. “I mean, you said you’ve done this to other doctors. Were they all involved in your mother’s case?”