Dying for Compassion (The Lady Doc Murders Book 2) Read online

  Praise for Dying for Compassion

  It is rare indeed to find an author who not only tells a good story but writes with real literary flair. Barbara Golder is such an author. In this latest offering we find the plot twists and twisted characters that one would expect in a good murder mystery but also the fine character development and deep insight into the human condition which separates the truly great mysteries from the run of the mill.

  Joseph Pearce, Author of The Quest for Shakespeare, The Unmasking of Oscar Wilde, and Tolkien: Man & Myth

  What I loved about Dying for Compassion was the host of unique characters, who led each other to ways good and not good when their paths crossed. A suave philosophy professor turned assisted-suicide proponent who leads a nurse to murder; an emotionally and morally blunted young woman, who softens through chance meetings in a coffee shop with a forgetful but endearing and insightful Monsignor; a calm Spanish matriarch who brings peace to a priest through cooking and her company. Added to which, the "course of true love never did run smooth" central story, where the author Barbara Golder skillfully dives into the lows of human anguish with ever-present hope and on the last page caused me to....well, read it and you'll find out!

  Dr. Annmarie Hosie, RN, PhD, Post-doctoral Research Fellow, Master of Palliative Care in Aged Care

  In Dying for Compassion, Barbara Golder has created a different kind of mystery, one that bears on questions of love, loyalty and pain and one that asks: what lives are worth living? In a time when physician assisted suicide is the question of the day, Dr. Jane Wallace's quest to discover who murdered her lover's ex-wife brings unexpected clarity to the issue on several fronts. Read it not just for a great plot and dynamic characters, read it to make yourself think.

  E. Wesley Ely, MD, MPH, Pulmonary and Critical Care and Health Services Research

  Vanderbilt University and VA-GRECC

  DYING FOR COMPASSION

  Book #2

  The Lady Doc Murders

  by

  Dr. Barbara Golder

  Kindle Edition

  FQ Publishing

  Pakenham, Ontario

  This book is a work of fiction. Characters and incidents are products of the author’s imagination. Real events and characters are used fictitiously.

  Dying for Compassion (The Lady Doc Murders #2)

  copyright 2017 Dr. Barbara Harty Golder

  Published by Full Quiver Publishing

  PO Box 244

  Pakenham, Ontario K0A 2X0

  www.fullquiverpublishing.com

  ISBN Number: 978-1-987970-06-7

  Printed and bound in the USA

  Cover design: Doreen Thistle

  Artwork by: James Hrkach

  Back cover photo: Steve Golder

  NATIONAL LIBRARY OF CANADA

  CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means — electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise — without prior written permission from the author.

  Copyright 2017 by Dr. Barbara Harty Golder

  Published by FQ Publishing

  A Division of Innate Productions

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  To the memories of two great physicians: James Daly, who taught me what good death looks like and John Ross, who showed me how to value the least of these in spite of my fears. Thank you.

  PROLOGUE

  January 9

  “Father! We need you now, down at the clinic! There’s a man with a gun, threatening staff. Hurry!”

  The female voice was measured, but the anxiety in it was enough to propel Father Matt toward his closet to get his jacket and gloves without waiting for any further explanation. He took the stairs two at a time, pausing only to pull on his snow boots before going out into the cold. As he went, he felt to make sure the oil stock he kept in his jacket pocket was still there. He’d not had much occasion to anoint people since coming to Telluride to pastor the good parishioners of St. Pat’s, but no one could accuse him of not being prepared. He kept his stock in his jacket pocket and a small bottle of holy oil in his backpack and his Jeep.

  One of his professors in seminary had made an impression on him with tales of his life in Northern Ireland during the hottest part of the civil war there. He’d never been without holy oil, had used it often, and Matt was determined to follow in his professor’s footsteps. The oil carried God’s grace, and God knows, people need it.

  He had to slow his steps when he got to the main road. The gritted sidewalks were still thick with ice. He almost wished it were snowing; clear nights were always colder. He regretted not pulling on a cap. Still, his long legs made short work of the blocks to the clinic.

  He threw open the door, grateful for the warmth, pulling off his gloves and feeling a trickle of water from his hair as the ice in his curls melted with the shock of the heat of the waiting room.

  The receptionist had been waiting for him. “This way.” He followed her slim form toward an open door. He heard the voice of one of the deputies coming from the room. “Clint, come on now. Let me have the gun. Don’t make this harder than it is.” Father Matt stopped and reached a hand to the woman in front of him, pulling her back to his side.

  “What’s going on?”

  “We had a little girl in here, real sick. Dying, I guess. Some kind of awful disease. Her parents knew it would happen sooner or later. Honestly, I don’t know why they kept treating her, a gorked-out kid like that. She isn’t even awake most of the time these days. Letting her go would be a blessing. Anyway, she came in all dehydrated from a stomach bug. The doctor put her on an IV, and they were making arrangements to transfer her to Grand Junction. Anyway, she died, poor little thing. Her father refuses to let us take her away. He threatened the nurse with a gun. The deputy has been trying to talk some sense into him, but he just won’t listen.”

  “Who called me?” A note of suspicion crept into Father Matt’s voice.

  “I did.” The woman flushed and looked uncomfortable. When Father Matt didn’t respond, she added hastily, “I didn’t know what else to do. The father is so upset. Priests always know what to do at times like this, don’t they?”

  No, thought Father Matt, they don’t. At least I don’t. Why is it that the first people to call the priest in an emergency are the last ones to come to Mass on Sunday? He doubted the woman was Catholic. Maybe not even Christian in this town.

  When his silence continued, she added, “You aren’t mad, are you?”

  Father Matt shook his head and shaded the facts just this side of an outright lie, as any good priest would have done in his shoes. No need to add to her anxiety just now, and “mad” had a lot
of nuance to it. “No, I just need a moment to think, that’s all.” He closed his eyes against the light from the room as his lips moved silently in prayer and fear. When he opened his eyes again, he nodded in the direction of the waiting area. “You go back. They don’t need any more people at risk than already are.”

  Skittish at coming up on the back of a policeman, he announced his arrival well in advance. “Father Matt Gregory here. First Responder Chaplain. I was called. Let me in, please.” He was glad, at least for the moment, that he’d taken the position as chaplain for the local law enforcement. It gave him a certain form of credibility.

  The door opened wider, pushed by one hand of a deputy who held a gun in the other. A second deputy stood to the other side, face set, gun trained on the dark-haired man who sat on the bed at the side of the room, cradling a still, small form in his arms, a massive pistol in his right hand. He was sobbing and rocking the child but as soon as Father Matt entered, he brought the pistol up and pointed it. “Stop right there. No more. You aren’t taking my baby away.”

  “I’m not here to do that,” Father Matt said in his quietest voice. He noticed a nurse cowering in a corner, shaking, her hands covering her head, a graying braid falling against the back of her floral-patterned scrub shirt.

  Oh, dear God , he thought. What am I doing here?

  The deputy to his right spoke in a toneless voice. “Clint, let Mavis go.”

  The man rocked back and forth again, the gun still raised. “No. I need her to take care of Josie. She’s so sick. I brought her here for help. She needs help.”

  A single sob came from the direction of the nurse, who curled into a tighter ball and pushed herself against the wall as though it might open for her if she pressed hard enough.

  “Josie. Is that your little girl?” Father Matt was surprised to hear his own voice. The man nodded. “Tell me about her.”

  More rocking, but the man still held tight to the gun and the child. “She’s bad sick. She has lipid disease, that’s what they say. I don’t understand it. She got the tummy flu. She couldn’t eat. I brought her in because she was so sick. They tell me she died. But she didn’t. She can’t die from the tummy flu. The nurse just needs to take care of her.” Tummy flu. The words of a father to his child, at odds somehow with a grown man holding a clinic hostage to his grief, yet somehow also appropriate.

  Father Matt’s mind raced. The deputy behind him to his left started to speak, but Father Matt waved a hand to silence him. “The receptionist told me Mavis needs to get something from the cabinet outside. Let her go. Clint, is it? You want her to take care of Josie, don’t you?”

  As he spoke, he motioned to the nurse who had turned to look in his direction. He motioned with his hand, his eyes still fixed on the man with the gun. “She’s standing up now, Clint. I’m going to move over this way. You point your gun at me, not her. She’s pretty scared. She can’t help you if she is so scared and if you won’t let her go.”

  Before the deputies could protest, Matt Gregory put his six-six frame in the middle of the room, extending his arm in the direction of the nurse. His fingers waved her on, and he whispered, “Come on, come on. It’s okay.” The nurse slid up the wall, dashed for the door, and was gone. The man stiffened, and his grip on the gun tightened, but he did nothing more. The front of his blue sweatshirt was wet and his eyes open, round and staring. A stuffed brown bear slid to the ground from the side of the bed.

  Keeping his back to the deputies, Father Matt spoke in an even voice, “I want you two to leave.” What am I doing? he thought to himself. But he repeated the request.

  “No can do, Father,” one deputy said. “Too dangerous. The hostage team from Montrose is on the way.”

  “Leave. Now.” Father Matt was surprised at the authority in his voice. “Wait for them outside the door.”

  “Can’t leave you at risk, Father.”

  “I’m already at risk. Get out of here. Leave us alone.” He felt — rather than saw — the vacillation in their will and took advantage of it. “Now,” he repeated. “You can see through the glass in the door. Crack the door. Just stand right outside.”

  He heard the soft sound of the door closing, but the click of the lock did not follow. He was alone with the man and his child, and he was afraid. He took a deep breath and gathered his thoughts. The man looked away from Father Matt to his child, crooning something to her, but the gun remained steady and pointed right at his chest.

  Sweet Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, help me! Weren’t the police supposed to ignore the ranting of a madman? Weren’t they trained to keep interlopers like him away from things like this? What have I done?

  Saved at least one life, came the answer. Now save another.

  “Are you Catholic, Clint?”

  “Not anymore.” The man looked up again. “Don’t believe in God. No God would make this happen to my little girl.”

  “I agree,” Matt said with conviction. “But I believe. Do you mind if I pray? It’s what I do, you know.”

  The man nodded slowly and looked back at the child. His gun never wavered.

  Now what? Father Matt thought, his mind suddenly blank. A man who prayed for hours every day could remember nothing. The silence in his mind was so deep, it was like a living thing, taunting him as he watched the man still rocking, felt the aim of the gun, and marked a trickle of sweat between his shoulder blades. Behind him, he heard muffled voices and caught a few words of conversation through the cracked door. “ETA seven minutes. Can’t find the wife. Get that priest out of there.”

  Improbably, he heard himself begin to speak.

  “Blessed be God. Blessed be His Holy Name. Blessed be Jesus Christ, true God and true man.”

  Why am I praying the Divine Praises? he thought wildly, but he could remember nothing else. He kept going. “Blessed be the name of Jesus.” The man looked up, incredulous.

  “Blessed be His Most Sacred Heart.” He continued in spite of himself, his voice soft, his heart racing and his mind in chaos. This is not right!

  “Blessed be His most Precious Blood. Blessed be Jesus in the Most Holy Sacrament of the Altar.” The voice came from the man, almost a whisper.

  “Blessed be the Holy Spirit, the Consoler.” The two of them together. Clint must have been an altar boy. Father Matt suspected he’d learned those responses by heart at the behest of a priest. Catholics his age rarely knew them otherwise.

  “Blessed be the great Mother of God, Mary most Holy.” Father Matt took a tentative step forward, and the man dropped his arm, placing the gun carefully on the bed, heaving a great, ragged sigh. They said the rest together, and by the time they got to the last line, Father Matt had the man in his arms, holding him even as the man held his little girl with the blond curls.

  He was still holding him when the hostage team arrived. The man surrendered to the deputies peacefully, to have his hands cuffed behind him, but not until Father Matt anointed his daughter at his request. Even as he traced the Sign of the Cross on her forehead, he recalled his professor’s thoughts on the subject of who should receive the sacrament of healing.

  “Many’s the dead body or Protestant I gave Last Rites to in those days, I’m sure. No matter. Let God sort it out. Sometimes the oil is for the survivors.”

  So it is, he thought as they led the man out of the room. And, he thought to himself, there’s a good deal of latitude when death occurs. He shrugged off his doubts.

  One of the deputies cast a backward look as he closed the door. “Good job, Father. Where’d you get your hostage training?”

  A laugh threatened to surface inside him. “Right here,” he managed to say before the door closed, leaving him alone. He reached down and picked up the stuffed bear. It had been left behind in the commotion of the arrest, and it was precious. He would see it got back to the man – Clint? Suddenly wobbly, he laid back on the gurney and closed his eyes. He shifted uncomfortably, feeling something hard and small in the middle of his back. He sat up and rummaged
in the sheet to find the offending object. Maybe it was something else of the little girl’s or something from her dad’s pocket.

  He retrieved a small vial with a rubber gasket on top. He recognized it as the kind of thing vaccines come in. He smoothed his finger over the top, where a needle would permit withdrawal of the contents. It was almost empty, with only a few drops of clear liquid still in the bottom. He turned it so that he could see the label. Potassium chloride. For intravenous infusion after dilution, it read.

  He remembered the father’s words. She can’t die from the tummy flu. And the receptionist’s. I don’t know why they even brought her in, a kid like that.

  A gorked-out kid like that. The words were so impersonal, as if the child were something less for her sickness. It was so wrong, especially in a place meant to be the very place the sick belonged. In clinics, it was the well who were out of place, except when they were there to help the ill and infirm.

  He pocketed the vial, uncertain what it meant but vaguely aware that this might not be usual for this kind of situation. As he was leaving the clinic, the gray-haired nurse, still shaking, came up to him to thank him. He barely heard a word she said. His attention was fixed on a small, gold pomegranate pin on the collar of her scrubs. He smiled and nodded and excused himself as quickly as he could, ignoring the call of a reporter who wanted to talk to him.

  He hurried out into the cold, the stolen vial suddenly heavy in his pocket. He remembered where he’d heard about potassium chloride before and why. He looked at his phone. A little after five. It could wait until daybreak. Jane Wallace would be up by then. He offered a prayer of thanks that he and the local medical examiner were good friends. He needed someone to bring this to.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Father Matt blew into my office first thing in the morning without even knocking. He shed his coat and gloves as he strode to my desk, talking the whole way.