Chapter 3 - The Missing Medication Log
I read the message four times.
Sloan took the phone from my hand on the fifth.
He did not ask permission.
Normally, that would have irritated me.
Nothing felt normal anymore.
“Who has this number?” he asked.
“My manager. A few coworkers. My landlord.”
“Family?”
“My mother.”
“Friends?”
“Two.”
“Vale?”
“No.”
“Hospital?”
“Maybe old records.”
He handed the phone to Bishop.
“Trace it.”
Bishop frowned.
“I’m not Marco.”
“Then call Marco.”
He walked away.
I stared through the ICU window.
Daniel didn’t die in that car.
The sentence felt cruel because some part of me wanted to believe it.
Another part wanted to throw the phone through the nearest wall.
I had buried Daniel at twenty-seven.
I had stood beside his mother while rain filled the cemetery paths.
I had identified his watch.
I had signed paperwork.
There had been a body.
But I had never seen his face.
The police said the crash and fire made viewing impossible.
“You’re shaking,” Sloan said.
“I’m angry.”
“That isn’t shaking.”
“I can do both.”
“Tell me about Daniel.”
I folded my arms.
“He was a pharmacist.”
“Here?”
“Yes.”
“Was he involved in the 417 patient?”
“He called me after my shift.”
“What did he say?”
“That medication records didn’t match inventory.”
“Specifically?”
“He said a drug had been removed under one patient’s name and administered under another.”
“What drug?”
“He never told me.”
“And then he died.”
“Yes.”
Sloan looked down the hallway.
“What kind of accident?”
“His car went through a barrier near Lake Pontchartrain.”
“Any witnesses?”
“No.”
“Was he drinking?”
“No.”
“Police investigation?”
“Short.”
His jaw tightened.
“That wasn’t an accident investigation.”
“It was enough for me then.”
“Why?”
“Because I was already losing my career.”
The words came sharper than I intended.
“I had hospital attorneys calling me. A board investigation. People telling me I could lose my license. Daniel died. I could barely sleep. I didn’t have armed men, investigators, and judges who returned my calls.”
He was silent.
Then he said quietly, “Fair.”
That surprised me more than an apology would have.
Bishop returned.
“Marco’s checking the number. Burner, likely.”
Sloan nodded.
“Get the restaurant locked down.”
“For what?”
“The missing paper.”
I looked at him.
“You noticed?”
“I noticed you noticed.”
Bishop left.
“Cameras?” I asked.
“Every entrance.”
“Private dining room?”
“No.”
“Why?”
Sloan gave me a look.
“People at those dinners value privacy.”
“Convenient.”
“For someone.”
We waited until almost two in the morning.
Cora remained stable.
Her speech improved enough to answer yes-or-no questions, but doctors limited visitors.
Vale disappeared.
That mattered.
So did the fact he had not once returned to check on the girl he claimed to have treated since childhood.
At 2:11, Marco arrived.
He looked younger than I expected.
Early thirties.
Glasses.
Gray jacket.
No visible weapon.
“This her?” he asked Sloan.
“I’m standing here,” I said.
Marco glanced at me.
“I like her.”
“You traced the message?”
“Origin bounced through five relays. Last physical handshake was a public Wi-Fi node.”
“Where?”
He looked at me.
“St. Catherine’s.”
Sloan became very still.
“Inside this building?”
“Yes.”
I looked toward the elevator.
“Someone here sent it.”
“Within the last hour.”
Marco held out another phone.
“I also checked the old accident.”
My throat tightened.
“Daniel?”
“Daniel Hart.”
I nodded.
“The vehicle was registered to him. Dental identification was supposedly used.”
“Supposedly?”
“No dental report attached to the final file.”
Sloan looked at him.
“Meaning?”
“Meaning somebody wrote that identification was completed, but the supporting document is gone.”
My legs suddenly felt unreliable.
“That doesn’t mean he lived.”
“No,” Marco said. “It means the file is dirty.”
I sat.
Sloan remained standing.
“Can you get hospital records from three years ago?”
Marco smiled faintly.
“Legally?”
Sloan stared at him.
Marco sighed.
“Right. Wrong audience.”
I spoke.
“Don’t hack the hospital.”
Both men looked at me.
“What?”
“If someone manipulated those records before, electronic access tells them we’re looking.”
Sloan considered that.
“What do you suggest?”
“Paper.”
“Hospitals still have paper?”
“Archive copies. Pharmacy reconciliation reports. Narcotics logs. Incident files.”
Marco nodded.
“And medication administration backups sometimes get printed during system downtime.”
I looked at him.
“You know hospitals?”
“My sister’s a nurse.”
That was the first normal sentence anyone had spoken all night.
“Where would 201?—three years ago—records be?”
“Off-site storage,” I said. “Unless they were attached to a legal investigation.”
Sloan looked at me.
“You had a board hearing.”
“Yes.”
“Then your case file might contain copies.”
I stared at him.
I had not thought about my disciplinary file in years.
The hospital had sent me a sealed packet after I resigned.
I never opened half of it.
“Where is it?”
“My apartment.”
“We’re going.”
“It’s two in the morning.”
“You want to wait until breakfast?”
No.
I did not.
Bishop stayed with Cora.
Sloan, Marco, and I drove to my apartment.
Nobody talked during the ride.
My building looked particularly unimpressive with two black SUVs outside it.
Third floor.
No elevator.
Sloan followed me upstairs without complaint.
Marco complained enough for everyone.
“People live voluntarily without elevators?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Rent.”
Sloan almost smiled.
I unlocked my door.
Stopped.
The chain was hanging loose.
I always used the chain when I left?
No.
Not when leaving.
Something else bothered me.
The deadbolt.
I remembered locking it.
Now it was already turned.
“Don’t enter,” Sloan said.
His voice had changed.
He moved me behind him.
A gun appeared in his hand so smoothly I almost missed the motion.
Marco drew one too.
Apparently he was not merely a computer person.
Sloan pushed the door open.
“Stay here.”
“No.”
He looked back.
“My apartment.”
“Exactly.”
He entered.
I followed anyway.
Nothing looked disturbed.
Cheap couch.
Bookshelf.
Kitchen.
My nursing textbooks still stacked in a corner I pretended not to see.
Then I reached the bedroom.
The closet door was open.
My storage box sat on the floor.
The lid had been removed.
Every hospital document was scattered across the carpet.
“Someone searched it,” I whispered.
Sloan crouched.
“For what?”
I went through the pages.
Board notices.
HR correspondence.
License documents.
Incident report.
Then I stopped.
“There was an envelope.”
“What envelope?”
“Daniel’s.”
“From before he died?”
“He left paperwork at my apartment sometimes.”
“What was inside?”
“I don’t know.”
Sloan stared.
“You kept an envelope for three years and never opened it?”
“I couldn’t.”
It sounded ridiculous.
It was not.
After Daniel died, everything belonging to him became radioactive.
Touching it hurt.
So I had put the envelope into the box with everything else from St. Catherine’s and stopped opening the box.
“It’s gone,” I said.
Marco examined the window.
“No forced entry.”
“Landlord has keys.”
“Anyone else?”
“No.”
Sloan picked up one page.
“What’s this?”
I took it.
A disciplinary evidence inventory.
Attached documents.
I read the list.
Complaint.
Nursing note.
Access record.
Medication audit.
My breath caught.
“Medication audit.”
“Is that important?”
“It was missing from the copy I received.”
“Maybe not anymore.”
Marco lifted something beneath the bed.
A piece of paper.
Half crushed.
I knelt.
It was a photocopy.
Barely readable.
ST. CATHERINE’S PHARMACY RECONCILIATION.
Patient: Confidential.
Room: 417.
Medication: Alteplase preparation — canceled.
Anticoagulant — administered.
Sedative — administered.
Then a handwritten line.
ORDER ENTERED UNDER CORA MARQUETTI.
Sloan took the page.
His face went cold.
“She was the patient.”
“Yes.”
“Why hide her name?”
“I don’t know.”
He read further.
At the bottom was a signature.
Adrian Vale.
And beside it:
Pharmacy verification: Daniel Hart.
My vision blurred.
Daniel had signed the order.
“No,” I whispered.
Sloan looked at me.
“You recognize it?”
“That’s his signature.”
“Then Daniel was involved.”
“No.”
“You don’t know that.”
“He called me because something was wrong.”
“Maybe he helped create the problem.”
“No.”
“Delphine.”
“No.”
I hated the uncertainty in my own voice.
Marco continued searching.
“Here.”
He held up a second scrap.
This one was handwritten.
Daniel’s handwriting.
I knew the slant.
The terrible capital R.
The way he made sevens with a line through them.
Del—
If anything happens, 417 was not overdose.
Medication substitution authorized by V.
Do not trust the printed log.
Original in—
The page ended there.
Torn.
“V,” Sloan said.
“Vale.”
“Probably.”
I looked around the room.
“Whoever came here wanted the rest.”
Marco’s phone buzzed.
He checked it.
His expression changed.
“What?”
“I got into the building access system for St. Catherine’s.”
I frowned.
“I told you not to hack—”
“Technically, their security is offensive enough that calling it hacking would be flattering.”
Sloan ignored that.
“What did you find?”
“Someone used an archived employee credential tonight.”
“Whose?”
Marco turned the screen toward me.
My name stared back.
DELPHINE HART.
ACCESS GRANTED — MEDICAL RECORDS BASEMENT.
01:36 A.M.
I had been sitting beside Sloan in the ICU at 1:36.
“That’s impossible.”
Marco nodded.
“Someone cloned your old credential.”
“Why?”
Sloan answered.
“To make it look like you went digging again.”
Just like three years ago.
My phone vibrated.
Another unknown message.
This one included a photograph.
A hallway.
Hospital basement.
A man walking away from the camera.
Tall.
Dark jacket.
His head slightly turned.
The image was grainy.
But I knew the posture.
I knew the shoulders.
I knew the watch on his wrist.
The watch that matched mine.
Daniel had bought us a pair after graduation.
May you like
Beneath the photograph were six words.
HE IS WAITING IN ROOM 417.
