“Another nurse—Diana Moss?”
He nodded. “That’s the name they gave me, yes. They also said that a tall guy was in there a few minutes ago asking the same questions. He told them it was an emergency, so they gave him the same information they gave me.”
“Marc’s on his way to Madeline,” Casey murmured. “But who’s forcing her to go wherever she’s going, Janet or Diana?”
“Have both of them paged—one at a time,” Patrick said. He was starting to look and sound like himself again. “Start with Diana. My guess is that Janet did the heavy lifting and took Madeline.”
Casey did as he suggested, and the PA system sounded a few minutes later, paging Diana Moss to the E.R.
The police ducked down, their Glocks ready, Harvey’s minirecorder on and ready to tape anything incriminating that Diana said.
Diana came hurrying down the hall, her hands shaking as she reviewed her patient updates. She was clearly upset by something, and Casey doubted it was her chart.
Sure enough, Diana glanced up in time to see the FI team standing there, and she came to a dead halt, all the color draining from her face. She looked around furtively, like a fly who’d spotted a spider and was searching everywhere for a means of escape.
“Don’t run, Diana,” Casey called out. “It’s useless. There are a lot more of us than of you. You won’t get away. And we’re talking to you now.”
Accepting the inevitable, Diana lowered her chart and walked toward them as if she were walking to hell.
Twice more, she stopped, close enough so Casey could see that she was dying to bolt.
The second time, Harvey rose, along with two other cops, all with pistols raised.
“On your knees,” he said. “We don’t want to hurt you.”
“All right,” Diana said in a whisper, dropping her chart and falling to her knees.
“Hands on the floor in front of you,” Harvey commanded.
Diana complied.
Harvey strode forward and took hold of each of Diana’s wrists, pulling them behind her and slapping on handcuffs.
Casey stepped forward and helped her to her feet. “Harvey, I know this is your job, but I need some information. My client’s life is at stake. Please—let me ask Diana some questions unofficially.”
Harvey stared at her for a moment, and then nodded. He motioned for the cops to move out of earshot. “You have three minutes while I call this in,” he informed Casey.
“Thank you.” Casey turned to Diana, going straight for
the jugular. “Where’s your mother? Where did she take Madeline?”
Like a dam that burst open, Diana shattered. She bowed her head, and her shoulders began heaving as she sobbed and sobbed. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. Please don’t hurt my mother. She was just protecting me. I did it. She didn’t. She never would have. She loved him so much.”
“What did you do, Diana?” Casey edged a glance at Harvey, who was calling his precinct, but she knew he had one ear on the conversation.
“I killed Ronald Lexington. I didn’t plan to. I just had to. It was torturing me. It still is. Who he was. Who I am. How could he be such a bastard? And me—how could I do such a thing? But he knew. All these years, he knew. And he never said a word. Never made a gesture. Never even glanced my way. He passed me in the hall again and again, and his gaze never even flickered in my direction to see if I was all right, if I was happy, if I resembled him. What kind of soulless animal doesn’t care about his own child? And how could he treat my mother like dirt under his feet?”
Sobs racked her body. “I didn’t plan to, not until the day of the surgery. I watched his wife and grown children gather around him, hugging him and offering support. I should have been in there, too. My mother should have been the woman at his side. But she wasn’t. I wasn’t.”
A pained pause. “Ronald Lexington needed to die. His family needed to know what it was like to live without a father...without a husband. So I took care of it. I added some diethyl ether to the saline solution. It compromised the glue and dissolved the sutures in the back of the heart. There’s no way that Conrad could have saved him.”
With that, Diana dropped back down to her knees, rocking back and forth as tears drenched her face, seeped onto her uniform. “I’m sorry...so sorry....”
Passersby had stopped, craning their necks to see what was going on.
“Keep moving,” Harvey interrupted his phone call to order. “Police business.”
The onlookers hurried off.