Chapter 4 #2
The elderly woman in the wheelchair didn’t cry when Rue broke the news about her son.
She held a trembling hand to her mouth and continuously shook her head as though in disbelief.
An orderly offered to find the woman tea as Rue asked a few meaningful questions.
Unfortunately, Navid Kordestani’s mother had been estranged from her son for many years, so she wasn’t much help when it came to collecting details about his life.
As we left the building, I glanced back, witnessing the first signs of grief. The orderly offered the elderly woman a tissue, and she dabbed her watery eyes. Would my mother cry if a random detective told her I’d been murdered? I suspected not.
Our visit was short and perfunctory. Within twenty minutes, we headed to the hospital. The radio chirped incessantly with calls for the traffic cops in the city, so Rue turned down the volume. The calls didn’t pertain to us.
In the silence that followed, as we waited at traffic lights and weaved between morning commuters, I thought of Dominique. I replayed our conversation from the parking lot, wincing at the desperation I’d felt. Had he seen through me? Was his acquiescence a form of placation?
Rue parked in the emergency lot, a space reserved for the PD, and we headed inside.
Despite the absence of uniforms, our matching OPD parkas and utility belts identified us as cops.
Ottawa didn’t have a large division of detectives, so the handful of us who worked in homicide or other specialized sectors often shared resources with the regular crowd of constables.
Unexplained deaths were quickly divided into three categories upon discovery.
Those seemingly accidental or natural deaths were allocated to standard PD.
Those that were obvious homicides came to us, or another pair of detectives working under our specialization.
The third category was the unknown. If there was ever a question or doubt as to what sort of death we were dealing with, homicide got the pleasure.
On occasion, first impressions were wrong. An autopsy would discover something unnatural about a seemingly natural or accidental death, and the regular PD involved would pass the case to us.
The emergency room waiting area ebbed and flowed.
Over half the seats were occupied by the sick or injured.
Scrub-clad nurses carried clipboards and called names from behind face masks.
People shuffled into the examination area to be evaluated.
Other patients exited the same area with prescription papers in hand, often leaning on the arm of a companion.
Babies cried. Children whined. Aged men snoozed and snored and drooled, leaning against women with drawn faces bleached of color and happiness.
The line for triage was easily twenty people deep.
The coughing, moaning, and wheezing soundtrack sent shivers up my arms, and I wanted to grab a disposable face mask from the box by the door, but Rue was on a mission, and I rushed to keep up.
We bypassed the triage line, and my partner inquired if someone was available to talk to us about Dr. Kordestani.
Standing back, I didn’t hear the exchange, but when the reception nurse’s face fell, I knew that Rue had disclosed his untimely death.
We were given directions to a cramped breakroom and told someone would be with us shortly.
Niomi Allard, a Black middle-aged nurse in pink scrubs, met with us ten minutes later. Her tightly coiled hair was pulled off her face in a bun, but several frizzy strands stood out along her hairline. Her drawn features suggested she’d been informed of Navid’s death.
Niomi spoke English with a thick French accent. Being so close to Quebec, Ottawa was a bilingual city with as many first-language French-speaking residents as English. It was common to shift from one to the next, depending on who you spoke with or where in the city you were.
“I heard what happened to Navid. Please tell me it’s not true.”
“I’m afraid it is.” Rue motioned to the tattered couch, indicating Niomi should take a seat.
Niomi tipped her head to the ceiling and crossed herself, uttering French words of prayer under her breath. She collapsed onto the breakroom couch, a dated corduroy piece with wales worn smooth in places, and let out a long, tired sigh.
Without delay, she kicked off her runners. “Do you mind? If I have a second to let my feet breathe, I take it. They’re confined to those damnable things for fourteen or more hours a day. It feels good to let them out.”
I smothered a smile.
“By all means, Ms. Allard. We won’t take too much of your time.” Rue sat on a chair opposite, putting herself at the nurse’s level. “Were you and Dr. Kordestani well acquainted?”
Since there was nowhere else to sit, I leaned against a line of dinted half-size lockers, aiming for a casual stance that wouldn’t intimidate.
Niomi eyed me once but focused on Rue. “We were not friends, but I have worked with Navid for over a decade.”
“What can you tell us about him?”
Niomi didn’t seem to understand and peered helplessly at my partner. “I don’t know. He’s…” She shrugged, throwing her hands wide. “I didn’t spend time with him outside of work.”
“Do you know who he might have spent time with? Did he have a girlfriend? Buddies?”
“No girlfriend that I know of.”
“Friends?”
Niomi shook her head and dropped her gaze to her hands. She knotted her fingers together. “Navid was… He didn’t… Oh, my.” She clucked her tongue. “I’m sorry. I won’t speak ill of the dead. It’s not right. Not when he can’t defend himself.”
“Ms. Allard.” I kept my tone low and gentle. “It’s important that we learn all there is to know about Dr. Kordestani. Anything you can tell us would be helpful. We want to locate the person or persons involved in his murder.”
Niomi rubbed her palms along her thighs, scrunching the material in her fists a few times before smoothing it out.
“You need to understand. This job is… taxing. The burnout rate for doctors and nurses is exponentially higher than any other profession. We might be several years beyond the pandemic, but the effects linger for most of us. We work long hours under stressful conditions. It’s emotionally demanding, physically draining, and has a tendency to destroy families in its wake.
I’m lucky my Francois is so resilient. I don’t know how he puts up with me most days. ”
“Sounds like being a cop,” I mumbled, trying to remember the last time I slept a full eight hours or managed an uninterrupted weekend off.
Niomi lifted her head and met my gaze pityingly.
“I’m sure you work very hard, Detective.
It’s not a competition. If anything, you understand better than most what I’m talking about.
It’s easy to lose yourself in the stress of the job.
Tempers fray. Nerves burn. It’s easy to become mechanical and dispassionate.
It’s self-preservation, in a way. Navid fell into this trap a few years ago, mid-pandemic.
He lost himself to the stress and never fully recovered. ”
“Can you explain what you mean?” Rue asked.
Niomi stared at her exposed feet, swathed in sweaty and stained socks, bending and flexing her toes.
“Navid often forgot that our patients were human beings, sick or suffering, and looking for our help. To him, they became nothing more than products on a conveyor belt in a rundown factory where quality control went out the window ages ago. He showed little compassion. He shuffled people out the door as fast as they came in. He lost his wife as a result. He lost friends. I don’t see how any of this matters.
Navid’s not here to defend himself, and even though I didn’t agree with how he did things, it feels wrong talking about him like this. ”
“I understand.” Rue locked gazes with me from across the room. Despite her expressionless features, much was translated in the brief exchange.
My partner had also been accused of being too clinical at times, too uncaring and cold, but those descriptors were nothing more than the outer shell of who she was.
Rue had once explained it was part of her Asian upbringing.
Social introversion wasn’t unusual in first-generation immigrants, and Rue had described her parents as emotionally avoidant, encouraging her to be goal-oriented above all else.
Making friends was less important than securing a career and establishing oneself in society.
For her, connecting emotionally was a skill that required effort.
She was capable, but it made her uncomfortable.
Having worked with Rue for a while, I’d learned to read the subtext etched in the depths of her fathomless dark eyes, and Rue was asking me to take over.
I crossed the room and shuffled a few magazines aside to sit on the edge of a short coffee table.
“Ms. Allard, I understand your feelings. I respect that you don’t want to talk ill of the dead, but it’s imperative we ask these questions for our investigation.
Can you think of anyone who might have recently upset Navid?
Do you recall seeing him in confrontation with anyone?
Did you witness an argument? With a colleague, perhaps.
A patient. Maybe he mentioned a tiff with a friend or a neighbor. ”
Niomi’s soft laugh was drenched in sorrow.
“I can name about a dozen from the past week alone. Don’t you see, Detective?
Navid was not loved. He was tolerated. We nurses were constantly smoothing ruffled feathers and de-escalating tempers.
It was constant and exhausting. Even his ex-wife had problems with him.
She was in and out of here regularly for one reason or another.
Those two were oil and vinegar. Always fighting. ”
Rue and I exchanged a glance. This did not bode well for our investigation.