Page 88 of Tough Justice

“What color?”

“I have two. One blue, one black.”

A black sports car. But he still didn’t think Shibowsky had lied. The man didn’t know where Tori was, and he had a plausible explanation for talking with Leslie Batista. “Thanks.”

As soon as the doctor had walked off, Deck texted Sammie with his address check request. Now to look into the patient Tori had mentioned. Damon Sanchez.

He caught up with Suzie Torres, who’d left the nurses’ deck and was pushing a cart loaded with supplies down the hall. “Suzie, wait.”

“Walk with me,” she said. “We’re overrun with patients tonight. We can’t find Wil—Dr. Barnett—either. One doctor walking off shift is strange enough, but two at the same time? This has never happened before.”

The warning flags that had been waving in Deck’s head began pounding at the inside of his skull. So Barnett was AWOL, too. “Did you have a patient die tonight? Damon Sanchez?”

“Yes.” She stopped pushing the cart. “How do you know about that?”

“In the message Tori left me, she said he shouldn’t have died. Do you know what she meant by that?”

“No.” The frown lines above her nose deepened.

“Who treated him in the ER?”

“Dr. Dexter and Dr. Barnett.”

Tori’s message urged him to look into two doctors at North Metro. Three had just pinged his radar. Shibowsky, Barnett, and Dexter. “Did Dexter or Barnett give Sanchez anything before he died, something that could have caused a heart attack?”

Her brows shot up as she absorbed the implication of Deck’s question. “I don’t know. Whatever he was given would be in his records.”

“Can you check that for me?” Deck knew what he was asking Suzie to do was a violation of medical privacy laws. “Please? It’s important. I’m worried about Tori.” He’d gotten the feeling Tori and the nurse were close, so he’d intentionally played the friend card.

Suzie looked both ways down the hall then lowered her voice. “Okay, but you have to keep this quiet.”

Deck nodded then followed her back to the nurses’ station, waiting impatiently for her to pull up Sanchez’s chart.

“Here it is. Damon Sanchez. Coded from a heart attack.”

Deck tugged a pad and pen from his thigh pocket and jotted down Sanchez’s DOB. “Seems pretty young for heart disease. Is that what he came in for?”

“He came in to get a laceration on his wrist sewn up. According to this, he wasn’t given anything prior to coding. There are various drugs we use to try and regain normal sinus rhythm. That’s what these are.” She pointed to a long list of drugs. Epinephrine. Lidocaine… The list went on.

“Were these administered before or after he coded?”

“After.”

“Who else was in the room with Sanchez?”

“Dr. Dexter and Dr. Barnett. When he coded, I was the first nurse on scene.”

“Did he have an IV in him when you first saw him?”

“No. I put the IV in myself.”

Deck began tapping the pen on the pad. “So, if Barnett or Dexter administered something to Sanchez, it wasn’t intravenously.”

“No. I would have seen it. Besides, it’s not typical for a doctor to administer injections. The doctor prescribes something, then a nurse administers the meds.”

“Is the body still in the hospital morgue?”

“Yes. On the lower level.”