The Sisterhood - Michael Palmer [60]
“So,” she concluded, shifting her bulk in the chair and folding her hands in a large, puffy ball, “assuming a legal source, only a pharmacist or a physician could obtain a sizable amount of morphine at a single time.”
Dockerty nodded and again conferred in whispers with Dr. Armstrong. “Miss Dalrymple,” he said finally, “do the nurses’ notes indicate whether or not there were any visitors to Charlotte Thomas’s room on the night of her death?”
“Visitors to a patient’s room, other than physicians, are not usually recorded in nurses’ notes. However, I can tell you that none were mentioned.”
“Not even the physician who found Mrs. Thomas without pulse or respiration?” Dockerty asked.
Dalrymple’s expression suggested that she did not at all approve of the detective’s oblique reference. “No,” she said deliberately. “There was no mention of Dr. Shelton entering the patient’s room. However, I hasten to add that most of the nurses were on break at the time of the cardiac arrest. There was no one on the floor at the time to see him arrive. ”
Dockerty seemed to ignore her last point. “That will be all, thank you very much,” he said. As he nodded the woman back to her seat, David again ignited.
“Lieutenant, I’ve had just about enough of this!” He stumbled to his feet and braced himself against the seat back in front of him. To his left Howard Kim’s moonface looked up at him impassively. “I don’t understand why you think what you do or even what you are driving at, but let me state here and now that I would never administer a drug or any treatment to a patient for the express purpose of harming him in any way.” In the seconds that followed David heard his tiny mental voice telling him that, once again, he was sailing on his own words toward a maelstrom.
“Sit down, for Christ’s sake,” the voice kept saying. “He can’t hurt you, dummy. Only you can hurt you. Sit down and shut up!”
Mounting rage and panic snuffed out the voice. His words were strangled. “Why me? Surely there are others—her husband, relatives, friends who were in that room before I was. Why are you accusing me?”
“Dr. Shelton,” Dockerty said evenly, “I have not accused you of anything. I said that before. But since you brought it up, Professor Thomas was teaching a seminar that evening. Twenty-three students. Seven to ten P.M. And, as far as he knows, no other visitors were scheduled to see his wife. Now, if I’ve answered your questions, we can proceed with—”
“No!” David shouted. “This whole inquiry is a sham. Some kind of perverse kangaroo court. A first-year law student could conduct a more impartial hearing than this. If you want to railroad me into something, then do it in court, where at least you have to answer to a judge.” He stopped, grasping for some morsel of self-control. Inside him, the voice resumed. “Don’t you see, dummy, this whole inquiry was a setup to get you to do exactly what you have gone and done. I tried to tell you to keep cool, but you don’t even know how, do you?”
“Very well,” Dockerty said. “I think we’ve heard enough for now. I’ll be contacting some of you individually in the near future. Thank you all for coming.” He whispered some final words to Dr. Armstrong, then packed his notes together and left the hall without so much as a glance at the pale statue that was David.
By the time David had calmed enough to release the wooden seat back and look around, the Morris Tweedy Amphitheater was nearly empty. Christine and the other nurses had gone. So had Howard Kim. As he scanned the back of the hall, his gaze met Wallace Huttner’s. The tall surgeon’s eyes narrowed. Then, with a derisive shake of his head, he turned and strode out, arm in arm with Peter Thomas.
David stood alone, staring up at the glowing red EXIT sign over the rear door, when a hand touched his shoulder. He whirled and met the concerned, blue eyes of Margaret Armstrong.
“Are you all right?” she