Thankless in Death (In Death 37)

It happens everywhere, Eve thought as he walked away. Because there’s always someone like Jerry Reinhold.

“Cab,” she repeated to Peabody.

“They’re checking. A lot of pickups, so—”

“Have them cross-check with a drop-off at a clinic or health center, urgent care, ER—a medical. Closest one going west from here. Limping, hurting. Maybe he dropped something on his foot. Or maybe the vic managed to drop herself and the chair on him. I like that image.”

“Hard not to.” Peabody retagged the cab company, gave her contact the drop-off element. “Score! Pickup Varick and Laight, drop-off Church Street Urgent Care. Single passenger, two bags.”

“Let’s move.”

Maybe he’d still be there, stuck in a waiting room, cooling heels in exam. She resisted the urge to go in hot, but not the one to leapfrog through traffic until Peabody’s color dropped away.

“I might need this place,” Peabody managed as Eve, once again, double-parked.

Eve simply strode across the sidewalk, shoved inside the spacious, and unfortunately uncrowded waiting area. A crowd might have kept him hanging until treatment.

She headed straight to the receptionist on duty, held up her badge, signaled Peabody for the morph. “Is he here?”

The receptionist frowned at Eve, at the badge, at the morph. “No, but he was.”

Frustration wanted to choke her. “When did he leave?”

“Maybe an hour ago. About an hour.”

“Do you know where he was going, his mode of transportation?”

“No, he walked out the door. Why?”

“What was wrong with him?”

Now she pokered up. “I’m not allowed to share any patient’s information.”

“Name. What name?”

The receptionist checked her computer. “He signed in as John. That’s all that’s required if no insurance is involved. He paid cash.”

“I want to see his doctor. Now.”

“If you’d have a seat in chairs, I’ll see if—”

“I said now.” Eve leaned over the counter. “I just left a retired schoolteacher who’s on her way to the morgue. You treated the man who sent her there. I’m about an hour behind him, according to you. I’m not going to waste time arguing. Get the medical who treated him

out here, or I go back there and make a hell of a mess.”

“Wait. Just wait.” The receptionist all but flew back, vanished around a corner. In under a minute she was back in the wake of a tall, lean Asian man with a flapping white lab coat.

“What’s all this?”

“All this is murder. This man has killed four people. I need to know why he came in, what you did, what he said. Everything.”

Without a word, he gestured her back around the same corner and into a small office with a lush potted palm near a fake window.

“The patient is a murder suspect?”

“Multiple. I need to know what name he used, his injuries, his treatment, and if he scheduled any sort of follow-up.”

“You don’t have a warrant.”