I read it to Jacobi.
“All thirty-two patients came through the ER, and half were examined by Garza.
“They were black, white, brown, and every color in between. Ages seventeen to eighty-three and the timing of the deaths over the last three years appears to be random.”
“So, Boxer. What you’re saying is there’s no victim profile. If the thirty-two ‘button’ patients were actually whacked—a big fat if, by the way —”
“You’re right. I’m stumped, pardner. All I’ve got is this weird signature, and it’s the only thing that ties the victims together.”
Jacobi had a coughing fit, his still-healing gunshot wound pinching his lung and giving him hell. He weighed down the stack of papers with a stapler and stood to put on his jacket.
“Just stating the obvious, but nobody is saying homicide except Yuki. What’s she basing it on? She hates the guy?”
“I take your point, Warren. But buttons on the eyes of dead people means something. Talk me out of it if you think I’m crazy. Because I just can’t put this out of my mind.”
Chapter 76
I THOUGHT ABOUT the sick mind that had to be behind those caduceus buttons as I drove home that night. Wondering again if Yuki and I were paranoid or if we were right: a very strange killer was murdering patients at Municipal Hospital.
And no one was stopping him.
No one was even trying.
I arrived at the front door of my apartment barely remembering the drive there. I completed my pit stop in record time, and soon I was back in the Explorer, heading toward the hospital.
The crime scene—the homicide scene?
I parked near the entrance to the ER and went inside, where I hung around the waiting room for a few minutes, flipping through an ancient issue of Field and Stream, blending in with the visitors sitting around me.
Then I took a little stroll.
The corridor was lit with a flat white fluorescence. Patients moved around carefully with their canes and IV poles. The medical staff walked purposefully, eyes straight ahead.
I kept my hands in my pockets, my baseball cap down over my eyes, hoping that the bulge of my Glock wasn’t noticeable under a soft, zippered jacket.
I honestly had no idea what the hell I was looking for.
Maybe if I poked around, something would click, and the deaths and stats and tantalizing clues would add up to an honest-to-God serial crime, possibly the worst ever in San Francisco.
At the same time, I had no business surveilling the hospital. I was a homicide lieutenant, not a freakin’ PI, and Tracchio would rip into me if he knew I was haunting Municipal on my own.
That’s what I was thinking when I took a corner and slammed into a man in a white coat with medium-long black hair. I knocked a clipboard right out of his hand.
Christ!
“Sorry,” I said.
Then I nearly jumped out of my shoes. I’d thought of him often, but I hadn’t seen Dr. Garza since the day Yuki and I brought Keiko into the emergency room.
The doctor picked up his clipboard and fixed his hard black eyes on mine. It was a challenge, and I felt a nearly overwhelming impulse to throw him against the wall and cuff him.
You’re under arrest for being a supercilious son of a bitch, for giving my friend nightmares, and for being a likely suspect in an unspecified number of suspicious deaths that might or might not be homicides. Do you understand your rights?
Instead, I balled my fists up inside my jacket pockets and stood my ground.
“I know who you are,” Garza said. “Police lieutenant. Friend of Ms. Castellano. She’s a little overanxious, wouldn’t you say? Having a hard time with her mother’s death.”
“My friend is fine,” I told him. “But I’m not so sure about you.”