Devil's Waltz (24 page)

“Nice,” I said. “When’d you get it?”

“Yesterday. The Toyota developed serious engine problems and the estimates I got ranged from one to two thousand, so I thought I’d treat myself.”

I walked her to the truck.

She said, “Dad would’ve liked it. He was always a Chevy man — didn’t have much use for anything else. When I drove the other one I sometimes felt he was looking over my shoulder, scowling and telling me Iwo Jima stories.”

She got in, put her bag on the passenger seat, and stuck her face out the window for a kiss.

“Yum,” she said. “Let’s do it again soon, cutie. What was your name again? Felix? Ajax?”

“Mr. Clean.”

“How true,” she said, laughing as she sped away.

I paged Stephanie, and the operator came back on the line saying Dr. Eves would call back. I hung up, pulled out my Thomas Guide, and pinpointed Dawn Herbert’s address on Lindblade Street. I’d just located it when the phone rang.

“Steph?”

“No,
Mile
. Am I interrupting something?”

“Just waiting for a callback from the hospital.”

“And of course you don’t have call-waiting.”

“Of course.”

Milo gave a long, equine snort that the phone amplified into something thunderous. “Have you had your gas lamps converted to Dr. Edison’s miracle wires yet?”

“If God had wanted man to be electric, he would have given him batteries.”

He snort-laughed. “I’m at the Center. Phone me as soon as you’re finished with
Steph
.”

He hung up. I waited another ten minutes before Stephanie’s call came in.

“Morning, Alex,” she said. “What’s up?”

“That’s what I wanted to ask you.”

“Nothing much. I saw her about an hour ago,” she said. “She’s feeling better — awake, alert, and screaming at the sight of me.”

“What’s the latest on the hypoglycemia?”

“The metabolic people say there are no metabolic problems, her pancreas has been examined from every possible angle — clean as a whistle — and my Swedish friend and everyone else is back on Munchausen. So I guess
I’m
back to square one, too.”

“How long are you planning to keep her in?”

“Two or three days, then back home if nothing else comes up. I know it’s dangerous letting her out, but what can I do, turn the hospital into her foster home? Unless you’ve got some suggestions.”

“None yet.”

“You know,” she said, “I really let myself go with that sugar thing. Thinking it was real.”

“Don’t bludgeon yourself. It’s a crazy case. How did Cindy and Chip react to the continuing uncertainty?”

“I only saw Cindy. The usual quiet resignation.”

Remembering Al Macauley’s comment, I said, “Any smiles?”

“Smiles? No. Oh, you mean those spacey ones she sometimes gives? No. Not this morning. Alex, I’m worried sick over this. By discharging Cassie, what am I sentencing her to?”

Having no balm, I offered a Band-Aid. “At least discharging her will give me the chance to make a home visit.”

“While you’re there, why don’t you sneak around and look for hot clues?”

“Such as?”

“Needles in bureau drawers, insulin spansules in the fridge. I’m kidding — no, actually I’m only half-kidding. I’m
this
close to confronting Cindy, let the chips fall. The next time that little girl gets sick, I just may do it, and if they get mad and go elsewhere, at least I’ll know I did everything I could — Oops, that’s me on page — Neonatology, one of my preemies. Gotta go, Alex. Call me if you learn anything, okay?”

I phoned Milo back. “Working weekends?”

“Did a trade with Charlie. Saturdays on in exchange for some flexibility in my moonlighting. How’s old
Steph
?”

“Off organic disease, back on Munchausen. No one can find an organic reason for the hypoglycemia.”

“Too bad,” he said. “Meantime, I’ve got the lowdown on Reggie Bottomley, the nurse’s bad seed. Guy’s been dead for a couple of years. For some reason his name never got off the files. Suicide.”

“How?”

“He went into the bathroom, got naked, sat on the toilet, smoked crack, jacked off, then turned his head into bad fruit with a shotgun. Very messy. The Tujunga detective — a gal, actually, named Dunn — said Vicki was home when it happened, watching TV in the next room.”

“Jesus.”

“Yeah. The two of them had just had some kind of spat over Reggie’s dissolute life-style and Reggie stomped off, got his works out of his dresser drawer and the gun, locked himself in the can, and kaboom. Mom heard the shot, couldn’t get the door open, tried to use a hatchet and still couldn’t do it. The paramedics found her sitting on the floor, crying and screaming for him to please come out, talk it over. They broke the door down and when they saw what he looked like, tried to hold her back. But she got a look at some of it. So that could explain her sour disposition.”

“Oh, man,” I said. “What a thing to go through. Anything on the family history that led up to the suicide?”

“Dunn said there was no history of child abuse — she saw it as basically a nice mom with a rotten kid. And she busted Reggie lots of times, knew him well.”

“What about dad?”

“Died when Reggie was little. Heavy drinker, like you said. Reggie was in trouble right out of the chute, smoking dope and moving on up the pharmaceutical ladder. Dunn describes him as a little skinny jerk, learning disabilities, not too bright, couldn’t hold a job. Incompetent criminal, too — got caught all the time, but he was so pitiful-looking, judges usually went easy on him. He didn’t get violent until near the end — the assault rap. And even that was relatively dinky — bar fight, he used a pool cue on some other scrote’s head. Dunn said he was getting feistier because of the crack, it was just a matter of time before he ended up prematurely
muerto
. According to her, mom was the long-suffering type, tried her best. End of story. It tell you anything about mom as a suspect?”

“Not really. Thanks anyway.”

“What’s your next step?”

“Lacking anything else, I guess a visit with Dawn Herbert. I spoke to Ashmore’s wife yesterday, and she said he hired grad students from the university. So maybe Herbert has enough technical knowledge to know what Ashmore was looking for in Chad’s chart.”

“Ashmore’s wife? What’d you do, pay a grief call?”

“Yes. Nice lady. Ashmore was quite an interesting fellow.” I told him about the couple’s time in the Sudan, Ashmore’s gambling systems and investments.

“Blackjack, huh? Must have been good.”

“She said he was a math genius — computer wizard. Brown belt in several martial arts, too. Not exactly easy prey for a mugger.”

“No? I know you used to do all that good stuff, and I never wanted to disillusion you, but I’ve seen plenty of martial
artists
with tags on their toes. It’s one thing in a
dojo
, bowing and jumping around and screaming like there’s a hatpin in your colon. Whole different story out on the streets. Incidentally, I checked with Hollywood Division on Ashmore’s murder and they’re giving a low solve probability. Hope the widow isn’t pinning her hopes on law enforcement.”

“The widow is still too dazed to hope.”

“Yeah…”

“What?”

“Well,” he said, “I’ve been thinking a lot about your case — the psychology of this whole Munchausen thing — and it seems to me we’ve missed a potential suspect.”

“Who?”

“Your buddy Steph.”

“Stephanie? Why?”

“Female, medical background, likes to test authority, wants to be in the center of things.”

“I never thought of her as attention-seeking.”

“Didn’t you tell me she was some big radical in the old days, Chairman of the interns’ union?”

“Sure, but she seemed sincere. Idealistic.”

“Maybe. But look at it this way: Treating Cassie puts her smack at the center of things, and the sicker the kid is, the more Stephanie gets the spotlight. Playing rescuer, big hero, rushing over to the Emergency Room and taking charge. The fact that Cassie’s a big shot’s kid makes it even tastier, from that standpoint. And these sudden shifts she’s making — Munchausen one day, pancreatic disease the next, then back to Munchausen. Doesn’t that have a
hysterical
feeling to it? Your goddam waltz?”

I digested all that.

“Maybe there’s a
reason
the kid goes nuts when she sees her, Alex.”

“But the same logic that applies to Vicki applies to her,” I said. “Until this last seizure, all of Cassie’s problems began at home. How could Stephanie have been involved?”

“Has
she
ever been out to the home?”

“Just early on — once or twice, setting up the sleep monitor.”

“Okay, what about this? The first problems the kid had were real — the croup, or whatever. Steph treated them and found out being doctor to the chairman of the board’s grandchild was a kick. Power trip — you yourself said she plans on being head of the department.”

“If that was her goal,
curing
Cassie would have made her look a lot better.”

“The parents haven’t dropped her yet, have they?”

“No. They think she’s great.”

“There you go. She gets them to depend on her, and tinkers with Cassie — best of both worlds. And you yourself told me Cassie gets sick soon after appointments. What if that’s because Stephanie’s doing something to her — dosing her up during a checkup and sending her home like a medical time bomb?”

“What could she have done with Cindy right there in the exam room?”

“How do you know she was there?”

“Because she never leaves Cassie’s side. And some of those medical visits were with other doctors — specialists, not Stephanie.”

“Do you know for a fact that Stephanie didn’t also see the kid the same day the specialists did?”

“No. I guess I could look at the outpatient chart and find out.”

“If she even charted it. It could have been something subtle — checking the kid’s throat and the tongue depressor’s coated with something. Whatever, it’s something to consider, right?”

“Doctor sends baby home with more than a lollipop? That’s pretty obscene.”

“Any worse than a mother poisoning her own child? The other thing you might want to think of, in terms of her motivation, is revenge: She hates Grandpa because of what he’s doing to the hospital, so she gets to him through Cassie.”

“Sounds like you’ve been doing a lot of thinking.”

“Evil mind, Alex. They used to pay me for it. Actually, what got me going was talking to Rick. He’d heard of Munchausen — the adult type. Said he’d seen nurses
and
doctors with those tendencies. Mistakes in dosage that aren’t accidental, heroes rushing in and saving the day — like pyromaniac firemen.”

“Chip talked about that,” I said. “Medical errors, dosage miscalculations. Maybe he senses something about Stephanie without realizing it…. So why’s she calling me in? To play with me? We never worked that closely together. I can’t mean that much to her, psychologically.”

“Calling you in proves she’s doing a thorough job. And you’ve got a rep as a smart guy — real challenge for her if she’s a Munchie. Plus, all the other shrinks are gone.”

“True, but I don’t know… Stephanie?”

“There’s no reason to get an ulcer over it — it’s all theory. I can peel ’em off, right and left.”

“It makes my stomach turn, but I’ll start looking at her more closely. Guess I’d better watch what I say to her, stop thinking in terms of teamwork.”

“Ain’t it always that way? One guy, walking the road alone.”

“Yeah… Meantime, as long as we’re peeling off theories, how about this one? We’re not making headway because we’re concentrating on one bad guy. What if there’s some kind of collusion going on?”

“Who?”

“Cindy and Chip are the obvious choice. The typical Munchausen husband is described as passive and weak-willed. Which doesn’t fit Chip at all. He’s a savvy guy, smart, opinionated. So if his wife’s abusing Cassie, why isn’t he aware of it? But it could also be Cindy and Vicki—”

“What? Some romantic thing?”

“Or just some twisted mother-
daughter
thing. Cindy rediscovering her dead aunt in Vicki — another tough R.N. And Vicki, with her own child rearing a failure, ripe for a surrogate daughter. It’s possible their pathology’s meshed in some bizarre way. Hell, maybe Cindy and
Stephanie
have a thing going. And maybe it
is
romantic. I don’t know anything about Stephanie’s private life. Back in the old days she hardly seemed to have one.”

“Long as you’re piling it on, what about dad and Stephanie?”

“Sure,” I said. “Dad and doc, dad and nurse — Vicki sure kisses up plenty to Chip. Nurse and doc, et cetera.
Ad nauseum
.
E pluribus unum
. Maybe it’s all of them, Milo. Munchausen team — the Orient Express gone pediatric. Maybe half the damn world’s psychopathic.”

“Too conservative an estimate,” he said.

“Probably.”

“You need a vacation, Doc.”

“Impossible,” I said. “So much psychopathology, so little time. Thanks for reminding me.”

He laughed. “Glad to brighten your day. You want me to run Steph through the files?”

“Sure. And as long as you’re punching keys, why not Ashmore? Dead men can’t sue.”

“Done. Anyone else? Take advantage of my good mood and the LAPD’s hardware.”

“How about me?”

“Already did that,” he said. “Years ago, when I thought we might become friends.”

I took a ride to Culver City, hoping Dawn Herbert stayed home on Saturday morning. The drive took me past the site of the cheesy apartment structure on Overland where I’d spent my student/intern days. The body shop next door was still standing, but my building had been torn down and replaced with a used-car lot.

At Washington Boulevard, I headed west to Sepulveda, then continued south until a block past Culver. I turned left at a tropical fish store with a coral-reef mural painted on the windows and drove down the block, searching for the address Milo had pulled out of the DMV files.

Lindblade was packed with small, boxy, one-story bungalows with composition roofs and lawns just big enough for hopscotch. Liberal use of texture-coat; the color of the month was butter. Big Chinese elms shaded the street. Most of the houses were neatly maintained, though the landscaping — old birds of paradise, arborvitaes, spindly tree roses — seemed haphazard.