The Silence That Speaks (Forensic Instincts Book 4) Read online

  “Come down, Abby. You’re going to hurt yourself.” Emma lunged for her, catching her around the waist.

  Abby yelped in protest.

  “Warning. Stack overflow error. Kernel panic imminent,” Yoda announced. “Shut down sequence initiated. Restart in ten seconds. Goodbye.”

  Panicked, Emma pressed Marc’s intercom button.

  “Problem, Emma?” he asked drily, having answered on the first ring.

  “Marc, do something!” she pleaded. “She’s going to kill us both!”

  He chuckled. “Where are you?”

  “In what’s left of the conference room.”

  Three minutes later, Marc strode into the disaster of a conference room.

  He was greeted by the sight of a panic-stricken Emma standing on the conference table, clutching his chocolate-covered, desk-skating niece. Glancing around the ravaged room and taking in the total picture, Marc had to stifle his laughter.

  “What’s going on here?” he asked, keeping his voice stern.

  “Uncle Marc!” Abby promptly broke away from Emma and jumped off the table.

  Emma cried out in alarm.

  Long before Abby hit the floor, Marc caught her in one arm. His other arm was filled with art supplies.

  Completely unshaken by her near-collision with the floor, Abby gave Emma a puzzled look. “Why is Imma yelling, Uncle Marc? Is she hurt?”

  “No, I’m fine, sweetheart.” Emma was shaking as she got down from the table. “I was a little afraid on the ice without you.”

  “Oh.” Abby nodded sagely. “It’s ’kay. Daddy says if you do sumpthing a lot, you get good at it. You need to—” Abby searched for the right word “—pwactice. I’ll help you.” Her little face lit up with a smile.

  This time Marc chuckled aloud. “I think you scared Emma. Let’s let her go get a snack and lie down for a nap.”

  Another sage nod. “She didn’t even finish one cupcake,” Abby reported. “She’s pwobably hungry.”

  “I’m probably dying,” Emma muttered as she headed for the door. “I’m not having kids till I’m forty.”

  “What’s that, Uncle Marc?” Emma heard Abby say as she left the room.

  “That, my little tyrant, is a whole bunch of paper and three markers. Claire went out to get you a big box of crayons with lots of colors.”

  “Thank you!” Abby lowered her voice to a loud whisper. “I hated that pen. It was ugly and it only made black. But I like Imma. She’s nice.”

  Marc sat down at the conference table with Abby on his lap. “We can draw with these until Claire gets here. Make me a picture.”

  “Of what?”

  “Of the cupcakes you ate.”

  “’Kay.” Abby started drawing.

  She’d finished drawing what appeared to be two yellow blobs with black tops and some dots of red all over them when Claire walked in.

  She glanced around the conference room, and her lips twitched.

  “One superthick coloring book and a humongous box of crayons,” she announced, waving them in the air.

  “Yay!” Abby bounced up and down on Marc’s lap. “Thank you.” A tiny terror, but always polite, Marc thought. That was one thing Aidan insisted on.

  Eagerly, Abby took the coloring book and box of crayons. “You’re nice, too. What’s your name?”

  “Claire.”

  Abby’s face fell. “Daddy uses that word when he’s mad. He says, ‘Is that clear?’” On the last part, Abby lowered her voice to as deep a sound as she could muster in an attempt to imitate her father.

  Without allowing herself to smile, Claire nodded. “My daddy used to say that a lot to me, too. The good news is, my name’s not Clear, it’s Claire. It rhymes with hair.”

  “Oh.” Abby digested that. “Claire,” she repeated. “I like that name. And you have nice hair. It’s yellow and straight. Mine’s black and has waves like the ocean. That’s what Daddy says.”

  “Your daddy is right. You have beautiful hair. Maybe we can brush it later—after we do some somersaults on my special mat. I have a room here with lots of mats and balls in it.”

  “Really?” Abby’s eyes had grown round. “Can we go now?”

  “Of course we can—under one condition.”

  “What?”

  “That we stop at the bathroom and get all washed up.”

  “’Kay,” Abby said again.

  “Great. Let’s go, then.” Claire held out her hand.

  Jumping off Marc’s lap, Abby asked him, “It’s ’kay, right, Uncle Marc? Claire’s not a stranger, she’s your friend.”

  “It’s absolutely ’kay,” Marc assured her. “Happy somersaulting.”

  * * *

  Marc was scrubbing the knobs on the equipment and there was a pile of brown paper towels on the floor beside him when Aidan and Casey walked in.

  “I’m afraid to ask,” Aidan said, surveying the room.

  There was an overturned chair, papers strewn everywhere and footprints on the expensive oval table. The wall above the tech table was smeared with chocolate, and there were crayons scattered on the table and on Casey’s tilted chair. Her monogrammed pen was a brown-frosting mess on the floor.

  “You don’t need to ask,” Marc replied. “You already know. The miniature cyclone was here.”

  Aidan turned to Casey. “I apologize. I’ll have a cleaning crew sent over immediately to restore this place to normal.”

  Casey grinned. “Oh, I don’t know. I think your brother is doing a great job.”

  Marc scowled in her direction. “He can’t afford my rates.”

  “Where’s Abby now?” Aidan asked tentatively.

  “Doing somersaults with Claire—or on Claire—in the yoga room.”

  “Oh, God.” Aidan squeezed his eyes shut. “I’d better rescue poor Claire and get out of here before Abby wrecks the whole place.”

  At that moment, Ryan came in, scanning some of the printouts he and Aidan had made of their work.

  “Thanks, Aidan,” Ryan was saying. “I...” He halted in his tracks. “What the hell happened in here? And why is Marc fiddling with my equipment?”

  “Abby had a little fun,” Casey explained. She patted Ryan’s arm. “Not to worry. We’ll restore everything to its original state under Yoda’s guidance.”

  “If Yoda hasn’t croaked by now,” Marc said, finishing up his task. “Last I heard, he wasn’t feeling too well.”

  “Who blames him?”

  “Sorry, Ryan,” Aidan said. “But take it from one who knows, the equipment will be okay. Abby has applied every known substance to every knob and dial at my place.”

  “Okay.” Ryan looked dubious.

  “So what’s the verdict with the decryption process?” Marc asked.

  Aidan held up the USB drive that Ryan had given him. “I’m taking this with me, and continuing our efforts at home.”

  “Yeah.” Ryan perked right up. “Aidan designed a special computer strictly for decryption purposes. The man’s a genius. He bought off-the-shelf GPUs and assembled them into a killer computer optimized for decryption. I can’t wait to see what this baby can do.”

  “The problem with the decryption process is that you never know how long it’ll take,” Aidan reminded him. “We could have an answer in hours or we could never have an answer.”

  “Don’t I know it.” Ryan rubbed the back of his neck. “To further complicate things, Ronald Lexington had a photographic memory. Janet Moss told Casey that at their lunch. So while most people have a problem remembering a couple of short passwords, this guy would have no trouble devising and remembering a long and complex encryption key that would make most of us cringe.”

  “Let’s be optimistic,” Casey said. “We won’t know if we
don’t try.”

  “Yup.” Aidan turned around. “So let me collect my daughter and get home to get started.”

  23

  SHARON GILDING WAS entering the ladies’ room, just as Janet Moss was coming out. They each nodded hello, but before the neurosurgeon had continued on her way, Janet’s eagle eye did a quick once-over.

  Sharon’s skirt was askew, her lipstick was smeared and her overall appearance was ruffled.

  Dr. Sharon Gilding was never ruffled. Well, almost never.

  Janet smiled to herself. At least her boss would be in a good mood this afternoon. Sex always put men in a good mood. Unless, of course, it was one of those times. Times when Sharon was angry and pissy about the damned chief of surgery job she wanted. Then Jacob would have had to listen to her rant about how she’d done everything and more to ensure that it was she, and not Conrad Westfield, who got that job, and how Jacob had better make it happen.

  If that’s how their afternoon delight had ended, Jacob would be cranky and snappish—and less than cheerful.

  Janet had prepared herself for that, but not for the explosion that ensued when she returned from the ladies’ room.

  She’d just opened the door into the executive offices when Jacob came sputtering out of his office, red as a beet. He saw Janet and shouted, “Get me Stephen Diamond on the phone. Now.”

  Each sputter was accentuated by the pile of legal papers Jacob was waving furiously in the air.

  Janet raced into her office and straight to her desk and took care of calling the hospital chief counsel. She’d never seen Jacob Casper so out of control.

  About an hour later, Stephen Diamond, Esq.—a lanky, stony-faced man of about forty-five—appeared in the executive offices and was ushered immediately into Jacob’s office.

  Through the walls of her own office, Janet could hear the agitated conversation, which was punctuated repeatedly by Jacob screaming, “That fucking bitch!” She was seriously considering going out to his door and blatantly listening in when the door flew open.

  Jacob stomped out and stalked straight into her office.

  “Stop whatever you’re doing,” he demanded.

  She dropped her paperwork without a sound.

  “The chairman of the hospital board is calling an emergency board meeting. At eight-thirty tonight,” Jacob informed her. “I have instructions for you to follow—now!”

  He barely waited for Janet to grab a pad and pen before continuing. “Notify every board member of the meeting and confirm his or her attendance. Anyone who’s traveling must tie in by video or audio conference. No exceptions.”

  Janet finished scribbling, and then put down her pad and took her life in her hands. “What happened, Jacob? What’s going on?”

  “What’s going on?” Jacob snapped. “Ronald Lexington’s fucking widow, Nancy, has reached new heights of insanity and revenge. She’s decided to sue us for medical malpractice wrongful death. And by ‘us’ I mean the hospital. She’s not only going after Conrad for Ronald’s death. She’s going after the whole cardiac and surgical team, plus the hospital itself, claiming incompetence and neglect resulting in her loss.”

  “Medical malpractice...?” Janet paled. “Oh, my God, I never thought...Ronald loved this hospital so much. How can his wife...?” She broke off, seeing the apoplectic look on her boss’s face. “I’ll take care of it immediately.”

  * * *

  Ryan strode into the conference room, where Casey was working.

  “Something is going on with the Lexington clan,” he announced. “Nancy went to see her lawyer today. And Ron and Felicia were at the apartment when she left. They were discussing how worried they were about their mother, about how she was in denial over who their father really was and how out of control she was in what she was planning.”

  Casey put down her work and stared at Ryan. “Were those their exact words—‘out of control in what she was planning’?”

  “Pretty much, yeah.” Ryan held up his device. “I’ll let you listen to the recording. They’ve been playing along with their mother’s repeated claim that Ronald was faithful, even though they knew he was anything but—and they’re convinced that she knew it, too. At one point, Felicia asked Ron if he thought their father had been sleeping with Madeline Westfield. He said he wasn’t sure, but judging from their mother’s hatred toward her and the extent to which she was carrying that hatred, it was a distinct possibility.”

  “But why did she go to see her lawyer?” Casey gave a puzzled frown. “Do you think she’s making provisions for her kids in case anything happens to her?”

  “Good thought. Especially if she’s going into battle to kill.”

  “Marc is over at Madeline’s on guard duty now. Let’s listen to this recording, then call him. We might need him to pay a visit to the lawyer’s secretary tomorrow, disguised as whoever the hell you two decide, and charm her a bit to find out what that meeting was about.”

  * * *

  Marc and Madeline were having dinner in her apartment when her phone rang.

  She glanced down at the caller ID. “It’s Crest Haven,” she said, the color draining from her face.

  “Answer it,” Marc instructed. “And don’t jump to conclusions.”

  She nodded and picked up the phone. “Hello?”

  “Madeline? It’s Conrad.”

  She heard the panic in his voice. “Conrad. What is it? What’s the matter?”

  “You’ll never believe this,” he replied. “Nancy Lexington is suing me and Manhattan Memorial for medical malpractice wrongful death—Ronald’s death. I’m in shock.”

  Madeline recoiled, as well. “My God. How do you know this?”

  “Because I was just served.”

  “All right.” Madeline fought for and found some composure. “I don’t want you to worry about this. I’ll get Ed on the phone. He’ll know who to reach out for.”

  “I appreciate that. But, Madeline, please don’t placate me. Keep me fully informed. I’m strong, and I don’t shrink away from my problems anymore. I’m fully aware of what kind of Pandora’s box this is going to open. Stop worrying about my mental health. I have to face this.”

  Madeline nodded at the phone. “I’ll get back to you as soon as I’ve spoken to Ed.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Who’s Ed and what’s going on?” Marc demanded once Madeline had hung up.

  “He’s our attorney. This is bad, Marc.” She told Marc exactly what Conrad had told her.

  “It’s bad, but it can be dealt with.” Marc squeezed her hand. “You call your attorney. I’m calling the office.”

  Ryan beat him to the punch.

  Marc’s phone began vibrating just as he reached for it.

  * * *

  The meeting didn’t end until after midnight.

  The end result was ugly but expected. The board instructed Jacob and Manhattan Memorial’s team of lawyers to settle the lawsuit. They authorized up to five million dollars to make this go away. Their reasoning was sound. With a major lawsuit pending and the plaintiff’s attorney having a reputation as a media hound, it was going to be a PR nightmare that everyone wanted to avoid—especially with the hospital merger under way.

  The Board of New York Medical Center would have to be notified of this material event immediately. Jacob had cringed at that thought. His only hope was that he could communicate the lawsuit and an agreement to settle in principle at the same time.

  He didn’t want to go home after that meeting. He went straight to the nearest bar to drink himself into oblivion.

  * * *

  The entire FI team met in the living room at Madeline’s apartment. It was easier that way since Madeline was an integral part of the conversation and Marc was already there. In addition, Patrick was on his way to do his
overnight security shift, and Casey and Ryan were already together. So Casey just called Claire and had her meet them at Madeline’s ASAP. Only Hero stayed home, stretched out on Casey’s bed, happy to be relaxing.

  “So now we know why Nancy was consulting with her lawyer,” Casey said. “No need to dig. But why the lawsuit? Why now?”

  “Because she’s a nutcase? Because she tried breaking and entering and attempted murder, and neither of them has worked,” Ryan suggested. “So she’s going after Madeline and Conrad in another life-destroying way.”

  Casey looked dubious. “I don’t doubt that this reaction of hers is a vindictive woman’s attempt at revenge, but there’s a piece still missing. Either Conrad or Madeline—or both—have something the killer wants.”

  “Maybe Nancy figures it’ll come out in discovery,” Patrick said. “The Lexingtons’ attorney will demand every record, abstract, file folder and medical document in Madeline’s and Conrad’s possession.”

  Marc frowned. “The profile is off, though. Attempted murder doesn’t get tossed in helter-skelter. It’s either the first and only thing attempted, or it’s the culmination of rage and frustration when other methods don’t work. Why would Nancy’s fury escalate to the point of trying to kill Madeline and Conrad, and then suddenly become subdued enough for her to just sue them?”

  “A guns-blazing lawsuit isn’t exactly rational,” Ryan said.

  “Compared to murder, it is.”

  “This is unbearable.” Madeline rubbed her head. “I feel like I’m living in someone else’s nightmare. It just keeps getting worse and worse.”

  “Emma needs to keep candy striping at the hospital for longer than she’s planned,” Claire interrupted. “I know she’ll probably kill me, but I feel it’s necessary. Partly because she’ll be on the inside when word of this lawsuit starts spreading and people start reacting. And partly because my instincts are telling me so. I’m not sure why.”

  “Done,” Casey replied. “How long?”

  “Just an extra week or two. At least, I think so.” Claire’s tone was rueful. “I really feel bad about this. Emma is counting the days to get out of Manhattan Memorial and return to FI.”