Murder Ward Read online

  When he saw Kathy Hahl come through the door, all boobs and buttocks in a short white skirt, Demmet told the intern to take an early lunch. The intern grinned at Demmet after eyeing Kathy Hahl himself, and when the young doctor left, he conspicuously locked the door behind him.

  “Insolent bastard,” said Kathy Hahl, after the door closed.

  “No worse than most. The doctors they’re turning out today are shit,” Demmet said. He sat behind a desk, looking at reports, and his voice was thick.

  “Like a drink?” he said. Kathy Hahl shook her head. As he reached into a desk drawer and brought out a pint bottle of vodka, she moved alongside his desk and perched herself on the edge of a table at his left hand.

  “Don’t mind if I drink alone, do you?”

  She shook her head. “You’re doing a lot of that these days,” she said. Her voice was a soft, sexy, unmistakable scold.

  “Why not? It’s one of the things I do really well.” He poured the liquor into a water tumbler and drank one-third of it at a gulp. Then he refilled the glass, capped the bottle and put it away.

  “Still feeling sorry for yourself?” she asked. Slowly she raised her legs and propped them up on his open desk drawer, pulling her knees up close to her bosom. Her skirt fell loose from behind her thighs. “You used to be interested in more than self-pity,” she said, invitingly.

  “I used to be a lot of things,” Demmet said, again sipping from the glass. “I used to be a pretty good doctor, you know.”

  “And you used to be a gambler who didn’t pay his bookmaker and was going to wind up wearing cement boots on the bottom of the river. So don’t give me that what-could-have-been crap,” she said.

  He drank again, then glumly said, “To what do I owe the honor?”

  “We’ve got work to do.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yes. That Williams who checked in. He’s a fraud. He’s been nosing around the hospital asking questions.”

  “So what?”

  “He’s been asking questions about you,” she said. “I think he’s a government man.”

  “Let him ask. What’s he going to find out?”

  “He’s liable to find out that you were in attendance on every one of those IRS people who mysteriously died during minor operations. I don’t know about you, but I’d rather he didn’t find that out.”

  “Well, then, you stop him from finding out,” Demmet said, emptying the glass and carefully setting it down into a dark, wet, green ring on his desk blotter. “I’m finished killing people for you.”

  “This one’s not for me. It’s for you,” Kathy Hahl said.

  “No way,” Demmet said. He took the bottle from the desk drawer again and Kathy Hahl withdrew her legs from the drawer and propped them up in front of her on the edge of the table. She ran her hands slowly down the backs of her white thighs and watched silently as Demmet poured himself a drink.

  She shook her head slightly. It was bad enough that Demmet was becoming a drunk. But he was losing his nerve, and that could be fatal. Before she allowed it to be fatal for her, she would see to it that it was fatal for him.

  Demmet drank sullenly from his glass, then turned to her.

  He looked at her face and she smiled warmly at him. Then he let his eyes drop to the long curved legs, the milky white tautness of the thighs. She moved her hands farther around the backs of her legs until they met in front of her. She began to stroke herself, fingertip gentle, lovingly.

  “It’s been a long time, Dan,” she said. Her smile was all snow white and invitation warm. “How about it?” she asked.

  “I’d rather drink,” he said.

  “You think that, Dan. But remember. Remember how it is. Remember the tricks I do.” He looked at her face and she touched the tip of her tongue to her partially opened lips. “Remember?” she said breathily.

  “Remember the golf course? And the time down on the morgue table? And in my office? How many times in my office, Dan? A dozen? A hundred?”

  She stood up and moved alongside him, slipping her hand inside his shirt and beginning to twist the hair on his chest. She put her face close to his ear. “Remember?” she taunted.

  Demmet drank from his glass. “I don’t want to remember.”

  “But you can’t forget, can you, Dan?” she said. Her hand slid from his chest down along his stomach. “Can you, Dan?” Despite himself, Demmet felt himself being aroused, his body awakening. She darted her tongue tip into his left ear. Demmet tried to concentrate on the glass of vodka in front of him. Her tongue wetted the inside of his ear and then he felt a suction on his ear as she glued her lips to it.

  With a muffled roar, Demmet rose to his feet. He threw his arms around Kathy Hahl and buried his face in her neck.

  “You bitch,” he cried. “You great sex-fiend bitch.”

  His shoulders heaved. Kathy Hahl could feel them as her chin rested on his left shoulder. He was weeping. “Yes,” she said. “I am a great sex-fiend bitch and I want a great sex-fiend man. You. Right now. Don’t make me wait.”

  Her hands fumbled at his belt. She loosened it and Demmet felt his trousers begin to slide from him. He used his weight to force her back onto the empty gray-plastic-topped table. With his left hand he worked her skirt up around her hips. She wore nothing under her skirt.

  He wanted to hurt her, to overpower her, to punish her with his sex. But when they were joined, he felt her body begin to quiver and the motion and the contact were too much for him and he felt himself losing control and the motion increased and then he was drifting, just drifting, through a world of exploding fireworks and loud noises, and he felt her fingertips pinching his bare buttocks, and it hurt, but exquisitely, and his pouring out was explosive and all his being was concentrated in that, so much that he did not even feel, among the pinches, the pin prick as the needle-ring pressed into his left buttock and deposited its supply of fluid into his soft tissues.

  He lay against Kathy Hahl, spent, quivering, disgusted with himself, and heard her laugh. “Not bad that time, Dan,” she said. “I think you lasted about twelve seconds.”

  “You slut,” he said, pushing back from her. “You evil-minded slut.”

  “Oh, come on, Dan. Stop it. Have a drink and you’ll feel better. If I remember, that’s something you said you were good at.”

  “You slut,” he said.

  Kathy Hahl stood up and smoothed her garments. “If that’s the way you feel,” she said. “I’m leaving.”

  “I’m not going to touch Williams,” Demmet said.

  “I know that,” Kathy Hahl said. “So let’s just forget it. I’ll do it myself.” She turned and walked from the room, locking it again behind her.

  Demmet watched her go, then sheepishly pulled up his trousers and buckled his belt. It was only when he sat back down at the desk that he felt the small twinge of pain in his left buttock. He reached under him with his hand and then realized in horror what probably had caused the pain. Disgust with what he had done turned to terror at what he feared Kathy Hahl had just done to him.

  · · ·

  “Where’s Doctor Demmet?” Remo asked.

  “I don’t know, sir. I’ll check.” She dialed three digits on her phone, and after a brief conversation hung up and told Remo:

  “He’s filling in for Dr. Walker today in radiology. He’s in the X-ray office in Room 414.”

  “Thank you, nurse.”

  Outside Room 414, Remo saw a young red-haired man knocking loudly on the door.

  “What’s going on here?” asked Remo.

  “I’m Doctor Royce. I’m working with Dr. Demmet today, I just came back from lunch and he doesn’t answer my knocks on the door.”

  “Let me see that door,” Remo said, moving in front of the intern. Shielded by his body, he drove his fingertips into the door next to the knob. The wood splintered, the metal of the lock broke loose at its pivot point, and the door swung open into the room.

  “Just stuck,” Remo said to the intern. />
  He stepped inside the room, the young doctor behind him, and looked around for Demmet. There was no sign of anyone there. Remo felt a cold breeze and looked off to the right. A window behind a string of filing cabinets was open. As he looked at it, Remo could see a flash of white fabric blowing in the wind outside the open window. The intern saw it too and ran toward it.

  He peered outside. “Dr. Demmet,” he cried. “What are you doing?”

  “It’s all right, kid,” came a voice that Remo recognized as Demmet’s. “It’s all right. You did good work on those plates.”

  “Come in from there, sir,” the intern yelled.

  “Never again, kid. Never again.”

  The intern turned and looked at Remo with a helpless expression on his face. Remo looked around the room. There was another window to the left. He moved up onto the filing cabinets, opened the window and was through it.

  A narrow two-inch stone ledge ran along the side of the building outside the fourth-floor window. Remo moved out onto it. He tensed his legs, forcing the thrust of his body inward against the wall, overcoming the incorrect distribution of weight that put most of his force downward, out, off the ledge, over open space. He looked up as he moved. Twenty feet away was the corner of the building. Demmet was ten feet around the corner to the right. One arm up against the wall, Remo moved crablike, foot past foot, turning the corner of the building, using his hand as a claw, turning the weight of his body in against the wall, moving steadily, for if he stopped his forward motion the force of gravity would hurl him down. He reached the corner of the building, twenty feet away, and used both hands while moving smoothly around the corner. Demmet was in front of him, his heels on the ledge, his arms over his head, holding on to a porcelain electric insulator. Demmet saw him.

  “What do you want?” Demmet said.

  “Let’s go inside and I’ll tell you about it.”

  “Who are you?”

  “Name’s Williams,” Remo said.

  He kept moving toward Demmet, because to stop moving was to fall.

  “I’ve heard about you,” Demmet said thickly and Remo realized he was drunk. “I don’t want to talk to you.”

  “Beats standing out here in the cold,” Remo said.

  “Cold? What cold?” Demmet asked. He giggled. The convulsions of his laughter shook his body. Remo could see his fingers start to slip from his overhead support. Demmet’s hands dropped. He waved his arms for a moment as if trying to retain his balance on the two-inch-wide ledge and then he turned his face toward Remo in a look that was more of sorrow than of fright.

  “I don’t want to grow old,” he said. The last word was drawn out long and loud as the air was pulled from his lungs, for Demmet had lost his balance and was falling forward, down toward the parking lot four stories below. He landed on top of a Fleetwood Brougham with a clapping smack. Remo meanwhile kept moving along the wall and then darted in through the window Demmet had opened.

  The intern stood there, shock on his face.

  “Sorry, kid,” Remo said. “I tried.”

  The intern nodded numbly and walked past Remo, looking out over the file cabinets and peering down at Demmet’s body, sprawled motionless on top of the car in the lot.

  The intern swallowed, then looked to his left. For the first time, he noticed the ledge on which Demmet had precariously perched his heels. Only two inches wide. How had that doctor…what was his name, Williams?…been able to move along that to try to get to Demmet?

  He turned back to the room. “How did you…” But the room was empty. Remo had gone.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  THE STORY OF REMO’S miraculous walk along the two-inch ledge outside Robler Clinic’s fourth floor would surely have been all over the hospital if the first person the intern had told had not been Kathy Hahl.

  But Ms. Hahl, the hospital’s assistant administrator, had carefully explained to the young intern how important it was that Mr. Williams not be mentioned. How he was planning to make a substantial gift to the hospital’s research program, a gift that might very well create a large number of special openings for bright young doctors, but that the gift would be lost if there were publicity.

  “After all,” she explained, putting her arm around the young man warmly and impressing her breasts against his upper arm, “he really didn’t have anything to do with Dr. Demmet’s tragic death. I mean, he just tried to save him but couldn’t. There’s no reason for publicity about that.”

  The intern impressed equally by her logic and the free feel, agreed.

  “I think that’s the best course of action,” she said. “Why don’t you come by my office late tomorrow and we’ll discuss it some more?” she said, openly inviting.

  Flustered, the young intern agreed and left. When the door closed behind him, Kathy Hahl went back behind her desk to think.

  Whatever he was supposed to be, this Mr. Williams was not. He was certainly not some recluse billionaire trying to hide out in a hospital. He was certainly not trying to find a way to escape IRS trouble.

  He was a government agent. Of that there was no longer any doubt. He had proved that with his stupid heavy-handed hint and his clumsy snooping around the laboratory.

  He was probably dumb, but he was also dangerous. The impossible walk on that unpassable ledge had shown that. Kathy Hahl went to her window, opened it wide and looked at the ledge. Two inches wide. It seemed impossible, or so she had thought when the intern first told her the story. But the young doctor, while nervous, was not hysterical and not in shock. He was simply reporting a fact and Kathy Hahl, who had gone to Demmet’s office to make sure that Demmet had not left a note implicating her, was the first person he had spoken to.

  The walk was impossible…and yet he had done it. Williams must be quite a man.

  At the thought, she smiled slightly to herself.

  The operative word was “man.” He was a man for all his talent. And she had ways to deal with men.

  Dr. Smith, at CURE’s Folcroft headquarters in Rye, New York, had already heard of Demmet’s death when he talked to Remo that afternoon.

  “You responsible for that?” he asked.

  “No, dammit,” Remo said. “He was my chief suspect.”

  “So?”

  “So now I don’t know. Just before he fell, he said something strange about not wanting to get old. It kind of reminded me of Stace and Mrs. Wilberforce.”

  “I received autopsy reports on Stace and Mrs. Wilberforce,” Smith said.

  “And?”

  “The reports showed extreme aging. Senility. General breakdown of body tissues and bodily function, usually associated with very advanced age. Yet Stace was fifty-five and Mrs. Wilberforce sixty-two.”

  “Any ideas?” Remo asked.

  “None. The computer reports no known chemical agent that can produce that kind of effect.”

  “I think there is,” Remo said. “There’s an experimental lab here and I’ve seen some old-looking animals in it.”

  “Well, stay with it,” Smith said.

  “Right. I’m going to sit here and figure it out. No violence.”

  “Good. No more Scrantons. Don’t hesitate to use Chiun, by the way.”

  “Use Chiun? What do you mean?”

  “Well, he seems to be rather good at thinking things through. Use his brain if you need it.”

  “Are you implying that I’m not smart enough to figure this out myself?”

  “Something like that,” Smith said agreeably.

  “Well, for your information, Smitty, your so-called Korean genius is out right now looking in this hospital for Marcus Welby. How about that?”

  “Chiun will probably find him. Use him.”

  “Right.” Remo hung up. It was annoying, having decided to use brains after being chewed out for using muscle, to have Upstairs imply that you weren’t any good for using anything but muscle. It was the $25,000 that had put Smith in a snit. Smith guarded CURE’s money as if it were his own and Remo�
�s demand for $25,000 to impress the hospital staff and to guarantee his freedom and his privacy had stuck in Smith’s throat like an unpeeled grapefruit.

  “Bitch, bitch, bitch,” Remo said to himself as he lay back on the bed. The door pushed open and he looked toward it, expecting to see Chiun, but the tall bosomy redhead he had seen at Mrs. Wilberforce’s bedside walked in instead.

  “Mr. Williams,” she said, “remember me? I’m Kathy Hahl, the assistant administrator.”

  “Sure,” said Remo…“Nice place you’ve got here.”

  “Thank you, we like it. I just stopped into see if there’s anything you’d like.” She moved closer to Remo’s couch and looked down at him, eyes flashing.

  “Not unless you have a doctor on your staff named Marcus Welby. Or a spare singer named Barbra Streisand.” To her blank look, he said, “No? Then I guess I don’t need anything.”

  “I had something more concrete in mind.”

  “Such as.”

  “Such as a tour of the hospital. I understand you’ve been looking it over yourself.”

  “Yes, a little.”

  “I heard of your attempt to save Dr. Demmet today. It was very brave.”

  “Not really,” Remo said. “Anybody would have done the same thing.”

  She leaned forward over his couch, her breasts jutting out almost over him. “You’re a very strange man,” she said. “I don’t mind telling you that when I heard you were corning I thought you’d be a crotchety old man. I never expected you.”

  “An improvement?” asked Remo, eyeing her breasts because she seemed to want him to and he didn’t want to disappoint her. Besides, they were very nice breasts.

  “A decided improvement. So would you really like to see our research facilities? We’re into some exciting work.”

  Remo smiled and rose from the couch, brushing against her as he got up. He slipped on his gumsoled shoes and Kathy Hahl looked down at his feet. “Are those your only shoes?”

  He nodded. “Why?”

  “They cause static electricity. And there are too many flammables up there. The staff would go ape if they saw you there with those on. Tell you what. Wait here and I’ll get some safe shoes for you.”