“Could Beatrice have gone to a party last night?”
His gaze remained steady. “Maybe, but she didn’t tell me that.”
“Would she have told you?”
He seemed to think about that. “Yes.”
“Sheriff?” Dr. Esparza stood. His wife sat in his shadow, teetering on the edge of the couch. He extended his hand and offered her the notebook. It was open, and Nicole could see that he had filled the page with a thin, scratchy print she would have difficulty reading.
Nicole left Joaquin at the door and pocketed her notebook, but she had a few more questions for the Esparzas.
“Was Beatrice sick?”
“You mean like a cold? The flu?” Dr. Esparza asked.
“I mean like bronchitis or pneumonia.”
“No,” the mother answered. “Not even the sniffles.”
“But your younger girls have colds?”
Dr. Esparza stepped forward. “Yes, we told you that. And Beatrice was rarely sick. She took care of herself. She ate the right foods, took vitamins. She trained. Exercised regularly. She expected more from her body than illness.”
“She’s a top runner,” Mrs. Esparza added, and she smiled brightly though her tears were still falling. “Always first place.”
High expectations, and Nicole wondered, how wide a margin had they given their daughter for failure? For learning? For being a teenage girl craving exploration and independence?
“Then why was she prescribed Augmentin?” Nicole asked.
Dr. Esparza shook his head. “You’re wrong. Beatrice had no need for the medication, and had she, it never would have been Augmentin.”
“Beatrice is allergic to anything in the penicillin family,” the mother explained.
Nicole chewed on that, then pulled her smartphone from her parka pocket. She asked the Esparzas for a moment’s patience and pressed speed dial for Lars.
“Yeah, Chief?” Lars’s voice was sharp, slightly breathless. He was still in the field, knee-deep in yesterday’s snowfall and rummaging for any beacon of evidence.
“You close to the evidence bin?”
“I’m sitting on it.”
He’d pulled chain-of-evidence duty.
“Good. I want you to take a picture of the pill bottle—get Beatrice’s name, doctor’s name, drug, and dosage—and send it to me.”
“Doing it, but do you want to tell me why?”
“Beatrice didn’t get sick,” Nicole informed him. She sensed that the Esparzas weren’t raising merely a child in Beatrice. The girl had been in training, possibly from conception. Cultivated—mind, body, spirit—for high performance. The doctor’s tone had said as much. And that bothered Nicole. “And she was allergic to Augmentin.”
There was a pause on the other end, and then Lars said, “No shit?”
“No.” Cell to ear, she glanced at the Esparzas. Joaquin leaned. Mrs. Esparza rocked. The doctor stood, hands in pockets, elbows twitching, eyes locked on Nicole.
“Done,” Lars announced, and a moment later a ding sounded from her cell. She ended the call.
“We found a pill bottle,” Nicole explained. She walked deeper into the room until she met the windows, the drawn curtains, and turned. It put her closer to Joaquin, to Mrs. Esparza, and left the doctor outside the tight circle Nicole had created. “The prescription is written out for Beatrice. Five hundred milligrams of Augmentin, two times daily.”
“One thousand milligrams daily?” Dr. Esparza stopped just short of a scoff.
Mrs. Esparza shook her head. “That’s too much. A girl her size, half that would do.”
“But she’s allergic to Augmentin,” Nicole pointed out.
“If she wasn’t allergic,” the mother said. “If she were prescribed that, as you say.”
“What happened to Beatrice if she took Augmentin? What symptoms?”
“A rash. It’s called a body flush, because on Beatrice it erupted on her torso, traveled up her throat and into her underarms,” Mrs. Esparza explained. “It’s itchy and uncomfortable, and Beatrice would never take it. She knew better.”
“And she was never sick anyway.” Nicole continued to probe.
“She wasn’t.” Joaquin spoke, and his voice fell on the room like a solid chunk of cement. Strong, heavy, unyielding.
Nicole chose to ignore him for now and continued with the doctor.
She opened the attachment Lars had sent her. The photo was blurry, but the type on the prescription label was readable. “You want to guess the name of the prescribing physician?”
“Not my husband,” Mrs. Esparza said. “No, never. That is against ethics. He wouldn’t do that.”
“He wouldn’t make so big a mistake, Mrs. Esparza?” Nicole led. “He wouldn’t prescribe his daughter a drug he knew she was allergic to? Or a dosage that was too much? Or he wouldn’t risk his career by prescribing for family?”
“I would not,” the doctor interrupted. “And I did not.” He paced to the edge of their circle. “You’re mistaken, Sheriff.”
Nicole held his gaze as she lifted the cell phone. His eyelashes flickered. Creases fanned out from the corners of his eyes. Then he disconnected and focused on the incriminating photo.
4
Dr. Esparza was careful. He was methodical. He was a man of science, a surgeon with a reservoir of strength that steadied him when he found himself in treacherous territory. Nicole recognized that in him because she relied on it herself. But before he could tap into it, his bottom lip trembled and his knees knocked as shock flew through his veins.
“Impossible,” he murmured.
But Nicole knew all things were possible. And she knew his initial reaction could be as easily attributed to being caught as it could to the very existence of the pill bottle.
“Evidence doesn’t lie.” But that wasn’t true. Nicole had often seen evidence manipulated, solid proof reduced to hearsay.
“I didn’t prescribe that,” he said.
“Your name is on the bottle.”
He nodded. “So it is.”
His tone had a finality about it, so Nicole pressed, “No claims of a stolen prescription pad, Doctor?”
“Most prescriptions are submitted electronically these days.”
“No signature required?”
“Each order is uniquely stamped.”
“Who has access to your stamp?”
“Just a handful of people.”
“You don’t sound concerned.”
“I treat cancer patients, Sheriff. I have no reason to prescribe Augmentin to anyone. Neither do any of my staff.”
“And yet here it is.”
“Here it is,” he agreed.
A dead end. Nicole changed direction.
“Is it possible Beatrice ran away?” Nicole offered a way out for the family, but they didn’t take it.
“No,” Dr. Esparza insisted. “Where would she run to?”
Not why. No protests about a loving home and all that money could buy. Nothing about the vic having everything she could want and need.
“When did you realize your daughter was missing, Dr. Esparza?”