The 20th Victim (Women's Murder Club #20)(57)

Joe reintroduced himself to the man he’d met casually the other week and said that he’d like to drop by for a visit.

“Wonderful,” Horowitz said over the phone. “Ray said a lot of good things about you.”

“Can I bring you anything?”

“Nope, but I might have something interesting to tell you.”





CHAPTER 83





AN HOUR LATER Joe walked into room 419 in the recovery wing.

“Abe, hi. How are you feeling?”

“Ha. Like my rib cage was wrenched open and my sternum was cracked. Oh, yeah, and my arteries were rearranged, but I’m still breathing. Watch your cholesterol is my advice to you. Please have a seat, Joe.”

Joe said, “I have a little gift for you. I think it’s going to have to wait until they let you out of here.”

“Hey,” said Horowitz, examining the bottle. “Channing Winery Private Reserve Cab. I’m going to save that for a special occasion. Like the first night I’m home. My wife and I are going to drink to poor Ray.”

Joe pulled up the offered seat and told Horowitz that he felt terrible that Ray had died, that Ray’s son was inconsolable.

He said, “Dr. Alex Murray was your surgeon?”

“Sure. One of a couple or so in the operating room. You know, what I wanted to tell you is that I had an out-of-body experience.”

Joe said, “Really. I want to hear all about it.”

“Okay, because it was amazing. I’m in the operating room, I guess unconscious. And then I was up above the operating table, my back to the ceiling, and I was watching the operation. You’ve heard these stories before, haven’t you? Patient dies and he hears what the people in the operating room are saying?”

Joe leaned in, said, “Abe, you’re saying you died?”

“I’m not just saying it. Dr. Murray told me. My heart stopped. I was officially dead. Yeah, believe it. I watched the heart-lung bypass machine squeeze my heart. They were listening to classical music, talking over the violins.

“I was in a state of … I don’t know what else to call it but wonder. Or grace. I could see and hear everything, including the flat line on the monitor. Then here they come, regular beeps. My heart beating in my chest. A nurse says, ‘He’s back.’ I wake up in the recovery room. What do you think of that?”

“Damned good story, Abe.”

“And all true.” Horowitz laughed.

Joe laughed with him. It felt great to be in the presence of a man so happy to be alive. He said, “So, Abe, Dr. Murray brought you back to life?”

“God, I love that man. I’m only sixty-three. I have a lot to live for.”

“Abe, Ray was a good friend when I was in school with Dave, and I feel awful that he died. Were you with him when he passed away?”

“I’m sure I was,” said Horowitz, “but I was knocked out, so I’d get sleep before my operation. I very dimly remember a nurse calling, ‘Mr. Channing. Mr. Channing.’ I opened my eyes and called out to Ray, but she had closed the curtain. There was some fussing going on, as if she wasn’t supposed to be there, and then the nurse and an orderly, I think, wheeled him out. I said, ‘So long, Ray.’”

Joe wanted to ask who else was in the operating room when Abe Horowitz came back to life, and what nurse and what orderly had wheeled Ray Channing’s body out of the room, but it felt wrong to do that. As if he were questioning Horowitz’s memory.

And then he did it anyway.

Horowitz said, “I heard voices but didn’t see any faces when they rolled Ray’s gurney out of the room. I do remember the sheet over his face. Now, when I was in the OR, I was just watching Dr. Murray. Everyone was wearing gowns and masks, but I know Alex. He’s been my doctor for ten years. Joe, why do you ask?”

“Favor to Dave. He’s grief stricken.”

The two men talked for another few minutes about Abe’s upcoming stay at rehab and how long Joe would remain in Napa. They were making small talk about their families when a nurse came into the room with Abe’s medication.

Joe made a mental note of the nurse’s name, and after she left, Joe put his card on Abe’s night stand and shook his hand good-bye.

He got into the elevator thinking of Horowitz saying, “God, I love that man,” and continued thinking about Abe Horowitz’s story about his life-and-death-and-life operation.

Dr. Murray, the nice white-haired doctor with the metal-framed glasses and bright-red tie, had opened Abe Horowitz’s chest, cut away the arteries that had led to his heart attack, and effectively, scientifically killed his patient. After that, he’d reconnected the arteries in a medically precise procedure and, using a heart-lung bypass machine in an almighty-God kind of way, palpated his patient’s heart and brought him back to life.

Joe had a new thought about Murray. If he was a killer, he was a very, very smart one.





CHAPTER 84





I’D BEEN PUZZLING all night about Brady’s call saying that the man who’d been shot in LA was a retired cop.

I didn’t understand this twist in the Moving Targets’ MO, and I sure didn’t like it. I put my Kevlar vest on under my Windbreaker and kissed Julie and Mrs. Rose good-bye.