No Cure for Murder (28 page)
“Slimy? Yeah, Doc, it’s the nature of the business. Often when I get home, my first act is to head for a hot shower.”
“What’s it going to cost me, Terry?”
“It’s on the house, Doc.”
“I can’t let you do that.”
“You don’t have a choice, but you can do one thing for us.”
“Of course.”
“Promise you’ll live long enough for us to return to your practice.”
“I’ll do the best I can.”
Just as Jacob placed the receiver into its cradle, Margaret knocked on his door, then entered.
“What’s up?”
“I had to sign for this, Jacob. I hope it’s all right.”
She handed him the thick envelope and when he saw the return address, Malvin & Lutz, Attorneys at Law, he knew that he’d been served.
“This is just what I need.”
“What is it?”
“Another damn lawsuit. We managed to practice for fifty years before I got my first malpractice suit. It’s not because I’m perfect, I’m not. It’s not because I don’t make mistakes, I do, and it’s not because tragedy hadn’t hit our patients unexpectedly, it has.”
“You may think that it’s all luck, Jacob, but I know better. Our patients always knew, they were certain, that you were on their side and felt their losses almost as much as they did.”
“Maybe. At first, I took each lawsuit personally. I refused to accept that any of my patients believed the things alleged in their complaints.”
“They didn’t and still don’t,” said Margaret. “It’s money, greed or opportunistic trial lawyers. Don’t take it personally.”
“I don’t know any other way to take it,” he said, holding up that first fifteen-page complaint. “If any of this is true, they should have me on the first boat back to Austria.”
Jacob stared at the envelope. He grabbed his cherry wood letter opener and pulled out the thick bundle of pages. He scanned the first few pages. “It’s about Nathan Seigel, a wrongful death suit, from the plaintiff, the estate of Nathan Siegel and from his daughter Patricia Seigel Clark.”
“I didn’t know he had another daughter,” said Margaret.
“Not one that he ever talked about.”
“How many years did we treat him? How many times did you run into the hospital in the middle of the night? And, how often did Patricia Seigel call in to find out how her father was doing? It makes me sick to think that she’s suing you now.”
“Well, Margie, we’re in good company. She’s suing Brier Hospital, Sharon Brickman, Zoe Spelling, Ahmad Kadir, Kate Planchette, and my favorite ‘one hundred unnamed physicians’. I think they simply listed all the names that appeared on any of his charts.”
“Has Zoe been sued before?” asked Margaret.
“I don’t think so. I hope this doesn’t upset her too much. She needs to deal with this, it’s part of medical practice today.”
When Jacob brought the papers in for Zoe, she grabbed them. She studied each page, then placed it face down on her desk. After she finished the last page, she reddened. “What a load of crap.”
“It’s okay, Zoe. Don’t tell me that you’re a malpractice virgin?”
“No...I mean yes...I mean...I never saw Nathan during that last hospitalization. Why me? It’s not right...I didn’t do anything.”
“Right or wrong, guilty or not guilty, responsible or not responsible, none of it has meaning in a medical malpractice case. You’d better get used to it.”
Ida Rosenthal hated hospitals, the idea of hospitals, their smell, their uncertainty, their threat. Of the last three people she knew who were admitted to Brier Hospital, only one came home.
If she hadn’t fallen, hitting her head and fracturing her hip, they’d have never gotten her past the Emergency Room doors. At the age of eighty, this was only her third stay in a hospital, each time before she returned home with a baby. Now, if she survived, she’d return home with a walker.
“All that security frightens the hell out of me,” she said to her nurse. “I don’t like to think about all that stuff in the newspapers about a serial killer.”
“Don’t worry, Mrs. Rosenthal,” said the nurse. “Nobody can get near you who doesn’t belong. Do you need anything for sleep?”
“A couple of codeine pills would be nice. They make that hip pain disappear.”
Ida dozed into the early hours, waking every forty-five minutes to an hour. She’d look around wide-eyed then managed to fall asleep. When she last stared at the clock, the red LED’s read 2:45 a.m. She must have nodded off because when she opened her eyes, she saw the dark shadow bent over in the corner of the room doing something.
Is this real or am I dreaming?
“Who’s there?” she tried to say, shaking her head awake, but her mouth, lips and tongue were cotton dry.
“Desculpe-me, señora,” came the thick, coarse voice.
“Who!
“What!
“Leave me alone!” she screamed as the shadow moved closer to the bed, then, “No...No...No!”
Suddenly the room flooded with intense overhead light as the nurse and the uniformed policeman entered.
“Yo no hice nada,” screamed the middle-aged janitor, standing with his back against the wall, a plastic bag filled with garbage in one hand. “I didn’t do nothin’.”
“Don’t move,” ordered the policeman as he turned the janitor to face the wall. He quickly frisked him. “He’s clean.”
The nurse held Ida as she cowered in bed. “It’s all right. He’s just the janitor...it’s all right, he won’t hurt you.”
Afterward, the policeman released the janitor and said to the nurse, “For Christ’s sake, don’t let these guys skulk around in the dark. With the tension around here, someone’s going to get hurt.”
Chapter Forty-Nine
I nod and smile, returning the friendly greetings in the corridors of Brier Hospital, hiding in plain sight
Security is everywhere, an index of my recent successes. They’re delusional if they think this will slow me from my work ahead.
It’s amazing, I think. The opportunities to offer eternal salvation fall gratuitously at my feet. He’s guiding me—that’s enough.
I share with them the final release and the ecstasy of their last moments.
It’s addictive. I need more.
When I walk through the Skilled Nursing Facility, my eyes fix on the name Harry Rodman, room 434, flashing brightly on the white board listing the patients’ names.
The door to 434 is open as I pass by. Visitors surround Harry’s bed.
I’m impatient, but not stupid.
We’ll meet again, Harry...and very soon. I promise.
The box, gift-wrapped with pink flowers, sat on the roof of Sarah Hughes’s car after school.
A secret admirer?
She smiled, then lifted and gently shook the box. It was light and rattled slightly.
Sarah sat in the driver’s seat and placed the box on her lap, then began removing the wrapping, taking care to preserve the beautiful decorated paper, a habit inherited from her mother, Marilyn. She lifted the lid, then saw the green tissue paper wrapping. Lifting it, Sarah saw the bloody arm, a baby’s bloody arm, then the legs and the head severed from the doll’s body. She gasped, pushed open the door and threw up on the pavement.
Sarah reached Lola that evening at home. “I’ve got to see you.”
“What kind of sick son-of-a-bitch sends you such a thing?” Jacob asked as he and Lola sat with a distraught Sarah.
“Carleton Dix,” said Lola. “I wouldn’t put it past him. He’s just sick enough.”
Lola rocked Sarah. “It’s going to be all right, sweetheart. I know how upsetting this is, but it’s just the reaction they intended. It’s hate propaganda of the worst form, the vile voices of those who vindicate their beliefs by the violation of others.”
Sarah trembled. “I thought it was a real baby.”
“I’m taking this to the police,” said Jacob. “Maybe their forensics lab can tell us who’s responsible.”
The next afternoon in the office, Margaret entered Jacob’s consultation room. “I have Terrence Wilcox on the line. He says he needs to speak with you. Are he and his lovely family coming back to the bay area?”
“Not right now, but I think they’ve had enough of the South Dakota winters.”
Jacob waited until Margaret left the room, then picked up the flashing line.
“That was quick,” said Jacob.
“We’re just getting into it, Jacob, but I’m seeing a lot of smoke rising over the Rapid City skyline, pardon the expression.”
“Smoke?”
“Right now, all I have is rumor and innuendo, but I have a contact in the DA’s office and we should have more information soon. This is what I know: Carleton Dix was a popular minister at First Rapid City United for five years. Then one day, the president of the church announced that Pastor Dix had left for personal reasons. When Sissy Preston, a fifteen-year-old girl, suddenly moved to San Diego to live with her aunt, the gossip remained about sexual abuse, pregnancy, and an abortion. The news flooded the town like a summer storm. Rumor had it, that the Pastor took a personal interest in several other young women. The Pennington County District Attorney interviewed several teenage girls.”
“Can you get those records?”
“Not a chance. They’re sealed, Jacob. Why all the interest in this character?”
“He’s the director of Pastoral Care at Brier Hospital.”
Terry’s laugh made Jacob uncomfortable. “A hospital chaplain...great choice, Jacob. Great choice. The next thing you’ll tell me is that he works with a group of teenage girls.”
Zoe Spelling stood her dripping umbrella in the rack, then hung her raincoat on a hook in the vestibule, and sang out, “I’m home, Byron.”
Without an answer, she moved into the kitchen and spread the mail over the table. “Byron?”
Zoe glanced at her watch, 7:30 p.m. Where’s Byron?
Just then, she heard the beep of the answering machine that showed one message in a blinking LED window. She pressed play and heard Byron’s voice: “I tried to reach you at the hospital, but I guess you didn’t hear your page. I have a faculty meeting tonight that should keep me out until ten or eleven. See you later. Love ya.”
All of a sudden he’s having meetings of one sort or another.
Zoe hung up her suit and changed into shorts and a Cal Berkeley, Go Bears sweatshirt. She stared at Byron’s side of the closet and his row of suits and thought, don’t be ridiculous, Zoe...there’s no reason to be suspicious.
She slid each suit on the support rack then started to leave. Before she reached the door, she changed her mind and returned to the nearest suit, his only Armani. Looking over her shoulder furtively, she placed her hand into each pocket and then the inside jacket pocket finding nothing.
Why are you doing this? What’s the matter with you? This is stupid.
Compelled by forces she was unable to control, Zoe continued to search each suit in turn until she reached the next to last one where, in the breast pocket, she found a pack of matches. Palming it in her hand, she moved into the light of their bedroom where she saw the embossed “W.P.H.” the Waterfront Plaza Hotel that overlooked Jack London Square.
Zoe felt flushed and a little dizzy as she sat on their bed studying the matchbook.
Don’t do this, she thought…and whispered, “Byron, how could you do this to me?”
The clock read 10:45 p.m. when she heard their front door open.
When he entered their bedroom, she lay with her back to him. He whispered, “Are you awake?”
She kept her breathing regular as she listened to him change for bed, brush his teeth, then slide into bed beside her.
You won’t get away with this, my love, she thought.
Sixty seconds later, she heard his regular breathing and irritating snore.
Chapter Fifty
When Shelly Kahn and a uniformed patrolman arrived at Milo and Angelina Cass’s home, nobody answered the doorbell or their repeated knocks.
A passing neighbor pointed to the driveway. “I think he’s in the back.”
Shelly and the patrolman walked up the driveway toward the garage. They heard movement from within and when they entered, the tall thin man in overalls jerked up, banging his head on the raised hood.
“Shit!” he said, holding his head.
“Milo Cass?” asked Shelly.
“Who wants to know?”
Shelly pulled her coat away from her belt exposing her badge and her service revolver. “Shelly Kahn, Berkeley P.D., and this,” she said signaling the officer to enter, is patrolman Hastings. “We’d like a word with you.”
Milo wiped the grease from his hands, then sat on a stack of used tires. “Well, make it fast.”
“Where were you the night Angelina got so sick?”
“Got sick,” he cackled, “she’s always sick.”
“Don’t play games with us, Milo.”
“I was right here.”
“Can you prove it?”
“Can you prove where you slept last night?”