Festive in Death (In Death #39)(95)

“Right now, I’m your supervisor. Quigley, Natasha. Now. If she dies before I get to her, I’m coming back for you.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

He scrambled off.

“I hate that ‘ma’am’ thing, but okay.”

“Between McNab and me,” Roarke commented, “we could have hacked that data for you in about the same amount of time.”

“Would’ve been fun, too,” McNab said wistfully.

“Next time.” Eve met the security guard halfway.

“She’s on six. I meant to say they’ll bring her to six. She’s still in surgery. Dr. Campo’s in charge.”

“Good. Thanks.”

She zipped straight for the elevators. “Still in surgery, damn it. It’s not likely we’re going to be able to interview her anytime soon,” she said as the got on. “We’ll push on the nursing staff to give us a more detailed update, go from there.”

The sixth-floor elevator opened into yet another lobby—smaller, but all spruced up for the holidays. It held a waiting area, Vending, and a scattering of people sitting anxiously in miserable-looking chairs.

The woman at the desk beamed a bright smile that dimmed when Eve badged her. “I need data on Quigley, Natasha. A Dr. Campo’s operating on her.”

“The Patient Privacy Act—”

“Is trumped.” Eve slapped her badge on the counter. “Quigley is the victim of an assault. I have a suspect in custody who killed another woman and attempted to kill Quigley. I need her status, and I need it now.”

“I need to check your identification, and the identifications of those with you. Once verified, I can pass you through to the nursing station. The head nurse, Janis Vick, would be able to give you the information available to her.”

“Do it.”

While she did, Roarke wandered over to Vending. He knew the preferences, and offered Peabody and McNab fizzies, handed Eve a Pepsi.

Before she could crack it open, the woman at the desk shifted back. “You’re verified. Straight through the double doors.”

They buzzed, clicked, slowly swung open.

More decorations, brighter lights, and the sound of rubber soles padding on tile. Eve smelled hospital, a scent that always hit the center of her gut. Sickness, antiseptics, heavy cleaners—and a metallic underpinning she thought of as fear.

She moved to the wide semicircle of counter where some of the staff—all wearing a variation of a bright-colored tunic she supposed was meant to be cheerful—worked on ’links or comps.

“Janis Vick.”

A woman on a comp held up a finger. She had brutally short stone-gray hair with a snaking blue streak. Rising, she came around the counter.

“Lieutenant Dallas? You want the status of Natasha Quigley. She’s still in surgery.”

“That much I know.”

“I can tell you there were some complications. Her BP dropped, and at one point her heart stopped. Dr. Campo found a second, smaller bleed. They were able to stabilize the patient while Dr. Campo closed the bleeds. While the patient has been downgraded to critical, the head surgical nurse reports the patient is, as I said, stabilized at this time.”

“How much longer will she be in there?”

“I can’t tell you that, but from what I can gather, the surgery should be done within the hour. From there, the patient will be monitored in Recovery. It could be two hours, or several hours, before she’s able to talk to you.”

“What are her chances? You’re not head nurse on the surgical floor for nothing,” Eve pushed when Vick hesitated. “You have a gauge.”

“I can tell you, the patient’s lucky. Dr. Campo, in my opinion, is the best neurosurgeon we have. With her performing the surgery, I’d give the patient strong odds. If you give me your contact information, I can see you’re notified when she’s in Recovery.”

The best she’d get, Eve determined. They couldn’t wait hours to move on the rest.

“You want to start on Copley,” Peabody said as they rode down to the lobby again. “I can do the notification. I can handle it,” she added when Eve glanced at her. “You can be working on Copley while we—McNab and me—head to Brooklyn, take care of that.”

Eve cracked the soft drink tube, considered it. “It’ll save time. I’ll take the first pass at him while you notify next of kin. If I don’t crack him, first pass, we’ll try for Quigley again, take him on together. You need to get the mother, and have her pull in the sister so you can work her. Get them to tell you anything, I mean anything, the vic might have said about Ziegler, about Copley, Quigley. Get a sense of the connections. Everything plays now.”

“I know.”

“Do you want transpo?”

“Be nice,” Peabody said, then sighed. “But the subway’s probably quicker.”

“Contact me once you have it done,” Eve ordered, and parted ways. “I don’t like dumping the notification on her. She’ll carry it longer than I would.”

“I doubt that,” Roarke said. “You carry them all.”

Claiming otherwise would be a lie, she admitted, and why bother. “I’ll waste my time saying this again, but you could go home.”

“It’s never less than entertaining, watching you interrogate a suspect.”