Blood on the Street (A Smith and Wetzon Mystery, #4)

feet.
    “Who?”
    “Jerry Gordon. He was wearing a sequined dress.”
    Peiser stared at the sequins in her hand. “Go back and sit down. I’m going to find Ferrante.” She went off down the hall at a fast clip and disappeared among the blue uniforms. Why weren’t there any cops at this end of the corridor?
    Go back and sit down? Those were fighting words. Wetzon tied the loose belt of the hospital gown and began to look into examining rooms. In the first, doctors and nurses were using all kinds of equipment, scrambling to resuscitate an elderly lady. In the second, a doctor was putting a bandage on a child’s eye, while a worried woman in street clothes held the child still. Wetzon felt invisible. No one paid any attention to her.
    She checked the corridor, more gurneys and hospital staff. No Peiser. No Ferrante. No cops.
    Coming out of the third room Wetzon saw, then heard one of the Hispanic orderlies. “Doctor be right along, man.” He pulled the curtain closed. When he saw Wetzon, he asked, “You know him?” There were red sequins on the floor near the entrance to the examining room. Wetzon nodded. He patted her hand sympathetically. “Doctor’s coming soon.”
    She watched the orderly until he made a turn and she couldn’t see him anymore. Then she parted the curtain and stepped in, creeping on tiptoe over to the person on the gurney, massive under a light blanket. The man gave a frightful groan. Wetzon came closer and was staring into Jerry Gordon’s blackened and bruised face. His eyes opened, fierce blue bolts of anger, and his hand shot out and grabbed at her. She stumbled, lost her balance, and fell against the gurney.
    “Didn’t want to hurt anyone, Wetzon,” he muttered. “They were going to hurt me. You were going to hurt me.” Jerry sat up, pulling out the IV in the process, and Wetzon began screaming. His hand reached down at her, making grasping motions. She couldn’t seem to get back on her feet.
    A blur of white yelled, “Get her out of here!” Running footsteps, men shouting. A hypodermic needle made contact, and Jerry slowly sank back on the gurney.
    “I was going to be a star,” Jerry said, very clearly.
    The room was full of blue, stepping around Wetzon. Someone said, “Put those damn guns away. This is a hospital.”
    “Come on.” Peiser was helping her. “Lean on me.” Out in the corridor, Peiser put her arm around Wetzon and walked her back to the chairs and sat her down.
    “What happened to the rest of my clothes?”
    “You wouldn’t want them back.”
    “That black dress has seen me through years of boring parties. I’ll miss it.”
    “I’ve got one of those, too.”
    “What’s going to happen to Jerry Gordon? Or Gordon Jerome? Or Marilyn, or whatever he calls himself?”
    “He’ll get patched up, and then we’ll try him for murder.”
    “Why did he serve time before?”
    “As Gordon Jerome, he was a CPA who liked investing clients’ money. But he wasn’t good at it. He’d pay people off with new money coming in, but he couldn’t keep up with it. He’d see a sure thing and borrow from his clients’ accounts. He got four years, but only served two. He had a mental breakdown after his release from Clinton, and signed himself into Wakefield Farms as Jerome Gordon.”
    “Where he met Barbara. So he re-created himself as Jerome Gordon to hide that he was a convicted felon. He must have thought he was onto something when he saw how therapists work. He was really on the verge of becoming famous. Not to mention rich. Did he think that by eliminating Brian and Tabitha, and me, no one else would find out? A lot of people knew Gordon Jerome, CPA.... He’ll plead insanity, won’t he?”
    Peiser shrugged. “He’ll have a lawyer.”
    “Lawyer? Richard Hartmann, I’ll betcha.”
    Peiser’s face showed her distaste. “Do you want to go home?”
    “Boy, do I! But I lost my date in the madness on Christopher Street, then my bag with the house keys, and my coat….”
    “Can’t help you with your date, but ...” The A.D.A. patted the seat next to her. “I think these are yours. Lenny had them.”
    “Lenny, I take it, is the weird guard dog you put on me?”
    “How did—”
    “Voices carry on open elevators. But you could have picked someone a lot less sinister.” She looked at her watch. The hands weren’t moving. It had stopped at ten-thirty. “What time is it, anyway?”
    “Five o’clock.”
    “You mean Saturday morning?”
    Peiser