Chapter 4 - Eleven Names
Detective Ibarra worked the way I imagined good detectives worked in movies, except slower, more patient, and far more exhausting to sit across from. He set a legal pad on the small table in the family lounge and asked me to walk him through every hour since Emily had been admitted, twenty-six hours earlier for a scheduled induction.
"Start from the beginning," he said. "Don't skip anything because it seems unimportant. Let me decide what's unimportant."
So I did.
Emily had checked in Tuesday morning. My mother had come to sit with her during the early hours of labor while I finished a call I couldn't reschedule — a call, I now realized with a sick feeling, about the Halloway-Ferris mediation. Derek had stopped by around noon with flowers and left within the hour. Emily's obstetrician, Dr. Patel, had been in and out throughout the day. The anesthesiologist. Four different labor and delivery nurses across two shift changes. A hospital chaplain Emily hadn't asked for but who'd knocked anyway, a kind older man named Father Colby who did rounds on the maternity floor. My sister-in-law, Priya, Emily's younger sister, had flown in from Chicago and arrived just before the delivery. And, finally, Vanessa Okafor, who had taken over as Emily's primary nurse for the overnight shift — the shift during which Emily collapsed.
"The toxin they found," Ibarra said, "digoxin, in case no one's told you yet — it's a heart medication. In the wrong dose, it's lethal. It doesn't get into someone's bloodstream by accident in a hospital room. Someone injected it directly into her IV line."
I felt the floor tilt slightly. "During the overnight shift."
"That's my read too. Which puts your nurse, Ms. Okafor, at the center of this, whether she's guilty or just unlucky enough to be the one on shift." He tapped his pen against the pad. "But I want you to think carefully. Digoxin isn't something a stranger walks in off the street with. Whoever did this either works in this hospital, or had help from someone who does."
I thought of Rachel's card in my pocket. I thought of Vanessa, whom I'd exchanged maybe ten words with over the last day, always polite, always competent, nothing that had registered as strange.
"There's something else," Ibarra said, flipping to a fresh page. "Your wife's chart shows a visitor logged at 9:52 PM who isn't on your list. Someone signed in as 'family' but didn't give a full name to the front desk — just initials. P.C."
Priya Carter. Emily's sister.
"That can't be right," I said. "Priya's been in the waiting room all night. I saw her twenty minutes ago."
"Then either the front desk made an error, or someone used your sister-in-law's initials, or there's something about your sister-in-law's whereabouts you don't actually know." Ibarra's voice was carefully neutral, the voice of a man who has learned not to accuse people before he has proof, but who also has learned not to rule anyone out because you like them. "I'd like to speak to her."
Priya, when we found her, went pale at the question and then, after a long pause, admitted something that made my chest tighten all over again: she had gone to Emily's room alone around 9:45 PM, before the rest of us arrived, because she'd wanted a few minutes with her sister without an audience. She'd stayed less than ten minutes. Emily had been fine — tired, glowing, joking about how the triplets already looked like they were plotting something together.
"I would never hurt my sister," Priya said, her voice shaking. "You cannot possibly think—"
"I don't think anything yet," Ibarra said. "I'm gathering facts. But I need you to tell me exactly who else you saw near that room. Think hard."
Priya's hand went to her mouth. "There was a woman in the hallway. I didn't recognize her. She was wearing scrubs, but something about the way she was standing — she wasn't doing anything, she was just watching the door. I assumed she was hospital staff on a break."
"Can you describe her?"
"Dark hair. Maybe thirty. She had a lanyard, but I didn't see a name on it — I think it was flipped around."
May you like
It wasn't Vanessa. Vanessa was fair-haired and, according to the shift log, hadn't clocked in until 10:15 PM.
Someone else had been standing outside my wife's door before the shift even changed. And whoever it was, they'd made sure no one could read their name.
