In this place, Stride realized, she wasn’t a doctor.
He went into the adjoining bathroom. At her mansion on the hill, Janine’s bathroom was her spa and temple, a place to escape. Not here. It was clean but small, with a toilet, medicine cabinet, sink, built-in closet, and a combination tub and shower. He checked the closet, which contained luxury bath towels and shower supplies from L’Occitane. Inside the medicine cabinet, he found a toothbrush, toothpaste, and over-the-counter medications for stomach disorders.
Nothing special.
And then Stride noticed the paint on the wall.
The medicine cabinet was framed by four panels of oak trim. In two places beside the right-most panel, he saw faint scratches on the white paint. They were the kind of scratches fingernails would make. With his gloved hand, he pushed against the plasterboard and nudged one finger against the piece of oak trim.
It popped off the wall.
Beneath the trim was a set of hinges.
‘Mags,’ he called.
She joined him in the small bathroom and whistled when she saw the hinges. Stride checked the oak trim on the opposite side of the medicine cabinet and removed the corresponding panel. Beneath it, the fringe of the cabinet was fitted into a steel rod that held it firmly in place against the wall. Two small fingerholds allowed someone to detach the entire cabinet from the rod and swing it on the hinges.
He removed the other two panels of oak trim. Without touching the finger-holds — they’d need to dust those for prints — he pried the medicine cabinet away from the steel rod, and it opened to reveal a small compartment built into the sheetrock.
‘Whoa,’ Maggie said.
Stride shook his head. The truth never made him happy, because the truth of human nature was usually dark. ‘That’s why she killed Jay,’ he said.
18
Stride found Janine in her surgical office at St. Anne’s. The window behind her desk faced the expanse of Lake Superior. Wherever she went, she had a view. Her home, her condominium, and her office all looked out on the lake. He wondered whether she was even conscious of it being there day after day in all its changeable glory.
Janine waved him to a chair in front of her desk, but she wasn’t happy to see him. He could see an enlarged CT scan on the computer monitor in front of her, and she was reviewing a patient’s file. Her pretty face was intense, her normally lush blond hair tied back behind her head. This was what she did. She was a surgeon, and he was interrupting her.
‘It’s not a good time, Lieutenant,’ Janine snapped. ‘I can’t afford the distraction. I have a delicate operation this afternoon.’
‘I know.’
Her eyebrows flickered with annoyance. ‘Excuse me? You know?’
‘I checked your schedule.’
In the blink of an eye, her mind ran through calculations. He watched concern mingle with curiosity. ‘You should run anything you need by Archie. If you have questions, talk to him, not me. You know how it works.’
‘Yes, I do.’
‘So if you’ll excuse me, Lieutenant?’ she asked sharply.
Stride didn’t get up from the chair. He felt sadness that it had come to this. Dismantling anyone’s life was a task he hated, even when he had no choice. ‘This is a unique situation, Janine. I don’t have time to get a court order, so I’m relying on you to do the right thing.’
‘And what do you mean by that?’ she asked.
‘Cancel the surgery,’ Stride told her.
‘Cancel it? Jonathan, I’ve been patient with you because of Cindy, but maybe you don’t realize who I am or what I do here. I don’t perform elective surgery that can be squeezed in between vacations and golf games. A man’s life is at stake. Days count. Minutes count.’
‘Yes, I know. That’s why I’d like this to happen without confrontation. I don’t want to alarm a patient or a patient’s family by talking to them myself, but I will if necessary.’
‘And say what? What’s going on? Are you planning to arrest me?’
‘We don’t have a formal arrest warrant yet,’ he acknowledged, ‘but it’s in process. We’ll be working with Mr. Gale on a time for you to surrender yourself. However, this decision won’t wait. You need to cancel all of the surgeries on your calendar.’
‘Well, unless you plan to haul me out of the hospital in cuffs, I don’t see why—’
‘Please, Janine,’ he interrupted her. ‘Don’t make this harder on yourself or your patients. You know why.’
He reached into the inner pocket of his coat and removed an evidence bag that he placed on the impeccably neat desk in front of her.
No bluff.
Her eyes saw it, and her eyes closed. The evidence bag contained a prescription bottle of the painkiller Vicodin.
‘I’m sure you know where we found this,’ Stride told her. ‘This and about fifteen other bottles of Vicodin, Percocet, and Oxycontin. You’re hooked on pain pills, Dr. Snow. I can’t let you in an operating room.’
Janine said nothing.
She knew there was no point in protesting or denying. She knew whose fingerprints they would find all over the bottles. If she’d had the strength, she would have disposed of them weeks ago, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it.
‘You may find it surprising, but doctors aren’t supermen or superwomen,’ Janine told him. ‘We’re human. After I broke my ankle last winter, I needed pain medication. I figured I could manage the risks, because I knew more about them than anyone. I was naive. By the time I realized it, it was too late.’
She reached to pick up the bag, and Stride pulled it away.
‘I’m clean today,’ she added. ‘I always make sure I’m clean before I walk into the OR. It’s my rule.’
‘That hardly matters, even if it’s true.’
She shrugged. He was right, and she knew it. ‘Yes, of course.’
‘What about Ira Rose? The patient who died?’
‘I was clean then, too,’ she insisted. ‘My problem had nothing to do with his death. Not that anyone will care.’
Janine was a realist about what came next. The fact of her addiction was enough to cost her everything she had. No doubt she’d lied on her malpractice insurance application, and the policy would be voided. The judgment in litigation over Ira’s death would cost her millions. Her fortune. Her house. Her license to practice medicine would soon be gone.
Everything she lived for — gone.
‘Jay knew,’ Stride said. ‘He threatened to expose your addiction, right? That’s what he held over your head.’
She didn’t answer. Her mental calculations had already shifted to the next battle of her life. Her career was over; now all that remained was guilt or innocence in a murder trial. She wouldn’t make his job easier.
‘You visited pharmacies all over the northland,’ he went on, ‘but the patient name on the prescriptions was the same. Holly Jorgenson. Holly. That was the name of the drug addict in Jay’s column last July. It was a threat against you, wasn’t it? A very public threat. You shut off his credit cards, and that was Jay’s way of letting you know that if you didn’t turn the money spigot on again, he’d expose your secret to the world.’
‘Jay,’ she said, and he could hear the depth of bitterness in her voice.
‘That’s when you bought the condo, too,’ Stride said. ‘Did you tell Jay you were quitting the pills? Instead, you just took your addiction underground. You found a way to keep it hidden from him.’
She didn’t break down. She didn’t cry. There were very few tears in Janine Snow.