fleet of lawyers isn’t going to loosen the noose.”
She glanced at McNab. “If we get lucky with the shadow ID, all the better. Confirm Copley opened the door to the vic, it throws out his claim of being upstairs when this went down. In addition, we tie him into Ziegler—that’ll take more, but we’re going to do it. With Quigley’s statement, we can let him sweat. The victim’s mother lives in Brooklyn. We have to go, notify her.”
“Man, two days—less—before Christmas. It’s always hard, but this is just harder.”
“She has a husband and a stepson living at home, another daughter in New York. That’ll help some. The vic may have talked to her about Ziegler, about Copley. We have to get whatever we can. We’ll need to talk to the Schuberts again, asap, and I want to check in at the morgue, give an official COD, get Morris’s—I’ve already requested him—take on her.”
“That’s a long time sweating,” Peabody said as Roarke worked through the parking garage at the hospital. “A long time for him to come up with a story, for the lawyers to shine it up.”
“It’s not going to shine, not when his wife tells us he attacked her. Not when she gives us a statement from her hospital bed. I get in the box with him, he’s going to break. I’m going to break him.”
She would damn well break him, Eve thought as they piled out, walked to the hospital’s main entrance.
“Lipreading doesn’t give us much, Dallas.” McNab held up his PPC. “It has her saying: Need to talk. Break. Come in. Break. I remembered. And that’s it. Vic moved into the house, out of range.”
“The shadow?”
“Working it, but hell, Dallas, there isn’t much there.”
“Play it out,” she told him.
She crossed the colorful lobby with its busy food court, passed a group of kids in school uniforms singing carols in front of a big tree, and arrowed in on a security guard.
“NYPSD.” She held up her badge. “Here’s what I need you to do, and fast. I need the floor, the room, and the doctor in charge of Quigley, Natasha, brought in earlier this evening via ambulance, with severe head trauma.”
“I’m not supposed to access patient information without my supervisor’s authorization.”
“Right now, I’m your supervisor. Quigley, Natasha. Now. If she dies before I get to her, I’m coming back for you.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
He scrambled off.
“I hate that ‘ma’am’ thing, but okay.”
“Between McNab and me,” Roarke commented, “we could have hacked that data for you in about the same amount of time.”
“Would’ve been fun, too,” McNab said wistfully.
“Next time.” Eve met the security guard halfway.
“She’s on six. I meant to say they’ll bring her to six. She’s still in surgery. Dr. Campo’s in charge.”
“Good. Thanks.”
She zipped straight for the elevators. “Still in surgery, damn it. It’s not likely we’re going to be able to interview her anytime soon,” she said as the got on. “We’ll push on the nursing staff to give us a more detailed update, go from there.”
The sixth-floor elevator opened into yet another lobby—smaller, but all spruced up for the holidays. It held a waiting area, Vending, and a scattering of people sitting anxiously in miserable-looking chairs.
The woman at the desk beamed a bright smile that dimmed when Eve badged her. “I need data on Quigley, Natasha. A Dr. Campo’s operating on her.”
“The Patient Privacy Act—”
“Is trumped.” Eve slapped her badge on the counter. “Quigley is the victim of an assault. I have a suspect in custody who killed another woman and attempted to kill Quigley. I need her status, and I need it now.”
“I need to check your identification, and the identifications of those with you. Once verified, I can pass you through to the nursing station. The head nurse, Janis Vick, would be able to give you the information available to her.”
“Do it.”
While she did, Roarke wandered over to Vending. He knew the preferences, and offered Peabody and McNab fizzies, handed Eve a Pepsi.
Before she could crack it open, the woman at the desk shifted back. “You’re verified. Straight through the double doors.”
They buzzed, clicked, slowly swung open.
More decorations, brighter lights, and the sound of rubber soles padding on tile. Eve smelled hospital, a scent that always hit the center of her gut. Sickness, antiseptics, heavy cleaners—and a metallic underpinning she thought of as fear.
She moved to the wide semicircle of counter where some of the staff—all wearing a variation of a bright-colored tunic she supposed was meant to be cheerful—worked on ’links or comps.