“The thing that sort of blew my mind,” Marino told me, “is something I recently found out, one possible connection between her and Lori Petersen. Brenda Steppe was treated in the VMC ER about six weeks ago.”
“For what?” I asked, surprised.
“A minor traffic accident. She got hit when she was backing out of her driveway one night. No big deal. She called the cops herself, said she’d bumped her head, was a little dizzy. An ambulance was dispatched. She was held a few hours in the ER for observation, X-rays. It was nothing.”
“Was she treated during a shift when Lori Petersen was working?”
“That’s the best part, maybe the only hit we’ve gotten so far. I checked with the supervisor. Lori Petersen was on that night. I’m running down everybody else who might’ve been around, orderlies, other doctors, you name it. Nothing so far except the freaky thought the two women may have met, having no idea that this very minute their murders would be in the process of being discussed by you and yours truly.”
The thought went through me like a low-voltage shock. “What about Matt Petersen? Any chance he might have been at the hospital that night, perhaps to see his wife?”
Marino replied, “Says he was in Charlottesville. This was a Wednesday, around nine-thirty, ten P.M.”
The hospital certainly could be a connection, I thought. Anyone who works there and has access to the records could have been familiar with Lori Petersen and might also have seen Brenda Steppe, whose address would be listed on her ER chart.
I suggested to Marino that everyone who may have been working at VMC the night she was treated should be turned inside out.
“We’re only talking five thousand people,” he replied. “And for all we know, the squirrel who took her out might’ve been treated in the ER that night, too. So I’m juggling that ball, too, and it don’t look real promising at the moment. Half the people treated that shift was women. The other half was either old geezers suffering heart attacks or a couple of young Turks who was tanked when they got in their cars. They didn’t make it, or else are hanging around in comas even as we speak. A lot of people was in and out, and just between you and me, the record-keeping in that joint stinks. I may never know who was there. I’m never going to know who might’ve wandered in off the street. Could be the guy’s some vulture who drifts in and out of hospitals, looking for victims-nurses, doctors, young women with minor problems.”
He shrugged. “Could be he delivers flowers and is in and out of hospitals.”
“You’ve mentioned this twice,” I commented. “The bit about flower deliveries.”
Another shrug. “Hey. Before I became a cop, I delivered flowers for a while, okay? Most flowers is sent to women. If I was going around wanting to meet women to whack, me, I’d deliver flowers.”
I was sorry I’d asked.
“That’s how I met my wife, as a matter of fact. Delivered a Sweetheart Special to her, nice arrangement of red and white carnations and a couple of sweetheart roses. From some drone she was dating. She ends up more impressed with me than with the flowers, and her boyfriend’s gesture puts him out of business. This was in jersey, a couple years before I moved to New York and signed on with the P.D.”
I was seriously considering never’ accepting delivered flowers again.
“It’s just something that jumps into my mind. Whoever he is, he’s got some gig going. It puts him in touch with women. That’s it, plain and simple.”
We crept past Eastland Mall and took a right.
Soon we were out of traffic and gliding through Brookfield Heights, or the Heights, as it’s usually called. The neighborhood is situated on a rise that almost passes for a hill. It’s one of the older parts of town the young professionals have begun to take over during the last ten years. The streets are lined with row houses, some of them dilapidated and boarded up, most of them beautifully restored, with intricate wrought-iron balconies and stained-glass windows. Just a few blocks north the Heights deteriorates into a skid row; a few blocks beyond are federal housing projects.