Rx murder, p.1
Rx Murder, page 1
RX MURDER
By F. Paul Wilson writing as Nina Abbott
A Gordian Knot Production
Gordian Knot is an imprint of Crossroad Press
Digital Edition published by Crossroad Press
Smashwords edition published at Smashwords by Crossroad Press
Crossroad Press Digital Edition 2021
Copyright © 2021 F. Paul Wilson
ISBN: ePub Digital Edition - 978-1-63789-940-3
ISBN: Trade Paperback Edition - 978-1-63789-939-7
LICENSE NOTES
This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to the vendor of your choice and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Meet the Author
F. PAUL WILSON is an award-winning, bestselling author of sixty books and nearly one hundred short stories spanning science fiction, horror, adventure, medical thrillers, and virtually everything between.
His novels The Keep, The Tomb, Harbingers, By the Sword, The Dark at the End, and Nightworld were New York Times Bestsellers. The Tomb received the 1984 Porgie Award from The West Coast Review of Books. Wheels Within Wheels won the first Prometheus Award, and Sims another; Healer and An Enemy of the State were elected to the Prometheus Hall of Fame. Dydeetown World was on the young adult recommended reading lists of the American Library Association and the New York Public Library, among others. His novella Aftershock won the Stoker Award. He was voted Grand Master by the World Horror Convention; he received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Horror Writers of America, and the Thriller Lifetime Achievement Award from the editors of Romantic Times. He also received the prestigious San Diego Comic-Con Inkpot Award and is listed in the 50th anniversary edition of Who's Who in America.
His short fiction has been collected in Soft & Others, The Barrens & Others, and Aftershock & Others. He has edited two anthologies: Freak Show and Diagnosis: Terminal plus (with Pierce Watters) the only complete collection of Henry Kuttner’s Hogben stories, The Hogben Chronicles.
In 1983 Paramount rendered his novel The Keep into a visually striking but otherwise incomprehensible movie with screenplay and direction by Michael Mann.
The Tomb has spent twenty-five years in development hell at Beacon Films.
Dario Argento adapted his story “Pelts” for Masters of Horror.
Over nine million copies of his books are in print in the US and his work has been translated into twenty-four languages. He also has written for the stage, screen, comics, and interactive media. Paul resides at the Jersey Shore and can be found on the Web at www.repairmanjack.com.
Repairman Jack*
The Tomb
Legacies
Conspiracies
All the Rage
Hosts
The Haunted Air
Gateways
Crisscross
Infernal
Harbingers
Bloodline
By the Sword
Ground Zero
The Last Christmas
Fatal Error
The Dark at the End
Nightworld
Quick Fixes—Tales of Repairman Jack
The Teen Trilogy*
Jack: Secret Histories
Jack: Secret Circles
Jack: Secret Vengeance
The Early Years Trilogy*
Cold City
Dark City
Fear City
The Adversary Cycle*
The Keep
The Tomb
The Touch
Reborn
Reprisal
Nightworld
Omnibus Editions
The Complete LaNague
Calling Dr. Death (3 medical thrillers)
Ephemerata
Novellas
The Peabody-Ozymandias Traveling Circus & Oddity Emporium*
“Wardenclyffe”*
“Signalz”*
The LaNague Federation
Healer
Wheels Within Wheels
An Enemy of the State
Dydeetown World
The Tery
Other Novels
Black Wind*
Sibs*
The Select
Virgin
Implant
Deep as the Marrow
Sims
The Fifth Harmonic*
Midnight Mass
Collaborations
Mirage (with Matthew J. Costello)
Nightkill (with Steven Spruill)
Masque (with Matthew J. Costello)
Draculas (with Crouch, Killborn, Strand)
The Proteus Cure (with Tracy L. Carbone)
A Necessary End (with Sarah Pinborough)
“Fix”* (with J. Konrath & Ann Voss Peterson)
The ICE Trilogy*
Panacea
The God Gene
The Void Protocol
The Nocturnia Chronicles
(with Thomas F. Monteleone)
Definitely Not Kansas
Family Secrets
The Silent Ones
Short Fiction
Soft & Others
The Barrens and Others
Aftershock and Others
The Christmas Thingy
Quick Fixes—Tales of Repairman Jack*
Sex Slaves of the Dragon Tong
Secret Stories
Editor
Freak Show
Diagnosis: Terminal
The Hogben Chronicles (with Pierce Watters)
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Table of Contents
AUTHOR’S NOTE
TUESDAY
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
WEDNESDAY
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
THURSDAY
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
FRIDAY
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
SATURDAY
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
SUNDAY
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
MONDAY
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
AUTHOR’S NOTE
So…what’s with the pseudonym, Wilson? Who’s this Nina Abbott?
For the answer, we have to go back to 2003 when I’ve just put the finishing touches on Crisscross. If you remember the details of that very dark novel, great. If not, let me just say that I pushed the anti-hero motif to the limit, making Jack commit coldblooded first-degree murder (okay, the victim was a sadistic, murderous blackmailer, but still) and frame another killer for it. As I stepped away I felt the need for an anodyne to all the darkness and violence I’d just waded through.
So I sat down and wrote a light, cozy mystery about a young female family doctor practicing in a small suburb of Baltimore and…it simply didn’t work. I mean it worked on cleansing and freshening my writing sensibilities, but not as a novel. At least not for me. Something was missing. So I put it aside and moved on to the next Repairman Jack on my contract.
Sixteen years later I retir
ed from my medical practice just in time to go into lockdown for the COVID pandemic. With extra time on my hands, I pulled out my old cozy. After all those years lying fallow on my hard drive, maybe it would read better now. Nope. Still needed something. So I added a ghost and voila! It all came together. I liked it so much I blasted off a sequel.
Despite the paranormal aspect, this is by no means the kind of book my readers expect from the author of The Keep and Midnight Mass and Sibs and such. The Rx novels are much lighter in tone and content. So I decided on a pseudonym…one that began with an “A” because as a lifelong “W” I get tired of winding up on the bottom shelf all the time.
So, hey, everybody…meet Nina Abbott. I think she tells a pretty good story. I hope you’ll agree.
TUESDAY
1
I awoke expecting this to be like any other Tuesday: Early hospital rounds, the rest of the morning and afternoon seeing office patients, then closing the day on call until the next morning.
Good thing I’m a doctor, because I’d make a lousy psychic.
This morning I’d experience the first shot across the bow of a week that would prove to be one of the best and worst and strangest of my life.
Best… because I’d reconnect with an old flame.
Worst… because I’d be hit with my first malpractice suit, a beloved patient would be murdered, and someone would try to do the same to me.
Strangest… because I’d encounter a real, live ghost. Okay, so “live” probably isn’t the best word here, but I’m talking about the genuine article.
And it would all begin around lunchtime.
But first: me. Let’s get me out of the way.
They call me Doctor Norrie.
Trust me: That wasn’t my idea. My first name is Noreen and I’ve been called Norrie all my life. My surname is Marconi—you know, like the guy who supposedly invented the radio, although some say Tesla was first. I’d prefer the first to be Marconi, but I’m prejudiced.
How does someone with Marconi for a last name wind up with Noreen as a first? Long story. One I won’t inflict on you now. Maybe later.
The “Doctor” part comes from my MD degree; I’m board certified in Family Medicine.
I’m part of a three-doctor family practice group in Lebanon, Maryland, a smallish town at the crossroads of Route 206 and Interstate 70, about a dozen miles west of Baltimore’s city limits. The other two docs, Sam Glazer and Ken Lerner, are full partners in the mini-corporation. I’m the new kid—two years in as an employee and hoping to start on the partnership track in one more. Together we make up LFPA—Lebanon Family Practice Associates, LLC.
As for my looks, I stand about five seven, my eyes are blue and my hair light brown with red highlights; I don’t like to fuss with it so I keep it straight, chin length, and tuck it behind my ears to keep it out of the way. My skin is fair, I blush easily, and my face freckles in the summer. I’m a month shy of my thirty-second birthday and, in my less critical moments—which are few—I’ll admit that I’m not terrible looking. No raving beauty, but no bow-wow either.
I’m not the dress size I’d like to be—I’ve spent most of my life in “plus size” clothing—but I’m getting there. I was roughly the size of Asia when I entered college. Okay, not quite that big, not yet ready for My 600-lb Life, but I was squeezing into size eighteens—mostly (surprise!) peasant dresses and jumpers—and it got to the point where even those were too tight. On my twentieth birthday, when my years matched my dress size, I realized I had to take control of myself.
Six years later, when I started my family practice residency, I was down to a twelve. I’ve heard that Marilyn Monroe was a twelve, but if that’s true, I wasn’t her kind of twelve. Nowadays I’m a ten—not in the Bo Derek sense, unfortunately—and slaving toward the unreachable four, but I’ll gladly settle for an eight.
This morning my size ten consisted of slate-blue Banana Republic slacks and a matching shell. Yes, I dress monochromatic. No surprise there.
Now, about that lunch…
2
“What kind of a lunch is that?” Sam Glazer said, eyeing the paper plate I’d placed on his desk.
Sam’s consultation office contained a bookshelf, a desk, a high-backed, swivel chair for the doctor, and two conventional armchairs for the patients. The walnut-paneled walls were studded with diplomas and Physician Recognition Awards.
Sam has been in practice in Lebanon for about as long as I’m old. He started the group. He and I hold the fort on Tuesdays, and I’d stopped by his consultation room after completing my morning callbacks. I’d brought my lunch along.
As for Sam, if you can picture a very thin Albert Einstein sans mustache, you’ve pictured Sam Glazer: same wild gray hair, same twinkling dark eyes, same bushy eyebrows.
I love the man. He’s become an uncle. Whenever I run into a diagnostic or therapeutic dilemma, I bounce it off Sam. After thirty years in practice, he’s seen just about everything. Hard to find a situation where he hasn’t been there, done that.
But it goes beyond his experience. I wasn’t here long before I realized that Samuel Glazer is one amazing doctor. This man knows everything. He’s obsessive with his journals and his continuing medical education, and it shows. He could have been a top cardiologist, nephrologist, pulmonologist, any sort of subspecialty you can imagine, but instead he chose to be a family practitioner, a lowly grunt on the front lines of medicine.
I asked him about that once and he told me he liked the intimacy, and especially the variety of primary care. Said he’d go nuts in a specialty, be bored out of his skull treating the same organ system day in and day out.
Sam and I are on the same page as far as that goes. In fact we see eye to eye on a lot of things.
I’d had a long, long morning. Hospital rounds had chewed up more time than usual due to an emergency admission: Amelia Henderson, one of my first patients here, had arrived at the ER weak, feverish, and short of breath. X-ray showed a left lower lobe pneumonia. In a younger person I’d treat something like that as an outpatient, but Amelia is eighty-three with type-2 diabetes. She’s frail on her best days. I thought it best to keep her.
I wrote the admitting orders, patted her arm as they wheeled her toward the elevators, then jumped into my Jeep Liberty and raced the whole two blocks to the office.
I barged through the back door at 9:20 and got to work. On Tuesdays my patient schedule starts at 9:00 sharp, so already I was behind. I ran late all morning. I hate to be kept waiting, so I tense up when I have to keep others waiting. Very undoctorlike, I know. Just one of my crosses.
Then lunch hour arrived—finally. I’d thought I’d been hearing the rumble of distant thunder. No, that was my stomach. I was famished.
I held up part of my lunch for display. The aroma of the horseradish mustard wafted around me.
“This?” I said.
Sam squinted at it. “Yes, that. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“I call them turkey-Swiss roll ups.”
They’re one of the staples of my diet. I take a slice of Swiss cheese, top it with a slice of smoked turkey breast, add a little mustard, and roll it up. I make three of them every morning, stick them in a plastic bag, and store them in the office refrigerator among the suppositories and vials of vaccines.
Turkey-Swiss roll ups with a can of Diet Pepsi. That’s my lunch pretty much every workday. Boring? Not to me. I kind of like it.
“Want one?”
I prayed he’d say no. My stomach felt ready to digest itself.
“They’re not exactly kosher.”
I laughed. “Neither are you. You ordered lobster salad for the last meeting. I don’t know much about kosher, Sam, but I’m pretty sure lobster isn’t on the list.”
Once a month we order sandwiches and extend the lunch break to two hours while the three of us gather in the waiting room to discuss practice-related issues.
He smiled. “Guilty. So, let me put it another way: They don’t tempt me.”
“Okay. The important thing is they’ve got no carbs.”
“Still on that Atkins thing?”
I shrugged. “Not really. My own version.”
As a doctor I’d never thought much of the Atkins diet. Too much fat. But when I saw my patients losing weight on it without their cholesterol shooting up—going down in some of them—I decided to give it a try. I figure if I avoid saturated fats, there’s not much of a downside—except in pounds.
“How’s it working out?”
