Bodily Harm

ALSO BY ROBERT DUGONI

Wrongful Death

Damage Control

The Jury Master

The Cyanide Canary
(nonfiction)

BODILY
HARM

A NOVEL

ROBERT DUGONI

A TOUCHSTONE BOOK
Published by Simon & Schuster
New York London Toronto Sydney

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2010 by La Mesa Fiction, LLC

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Touchstone Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

First Touchstone hardcover edition May 2010

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Manufactured in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Dugoni, Robert.

Bodily harm / by Robert Dugoni.

p. cm.

I. Title.

PS3604.U385B63 2010

813'.6—dc22 2009046051

ISBN 978-1-4165-9296-9
ISBN 978-1-4391-0061-5 (ebook)

To Sam Goldman,
the “greatest journalism teacher in the West,”
who taught me to love to write and what it
means to live each day to the fullest.
And to my brothers and sisters,
Aileen, Susie, Bill, Bonnie, Joann, Tom,
Larry, Sean, and Mike, for giving me the best
childhood a kid could have ever wanted.

Death is not the greatest loss in life.

The greatest loss is what dies

inside us while we live.

—Norman Cousins

BODILY
HARM

PROLOGUE

GUANGZHOU, CHINA

It hurt to blink.

The light stabbed at his eyes, shooting daggers of pain to the back of his skull. When he shut them an aurora of black and white spots lingered.

Albert Payne had never been one to partake liberally in alcohol; not that he was a complete teetotaler either. He’d been hungover a handful of times during his fifty-six years, but those few occasions had been the result of unintended excess, never a deliberate intent to get drunk. So although he had little experience with which to compare it, his pounding head seemed a clear indicator that he had indeed drunk to excess. He’d have to accept that as so, because he could remember little about the prior evening. Each factory owner, along with the local officials in China’s Guangdong Province, had insisted on a reception for Payne and the delegation, no doubt believing their hospitality would ensure a favorable report. Payne recalled sipping white wine, but after three weeks the receptions had blurred together, and he could not separate one from the other.

Coffee.

The thought popped into his head and he seemed to recall that caffeine eased a hangover. Maybe so, but locating the magic elixir would require that he stand, dress, leave his hotel room, and ride the elevator to the lobby. At the moment, just lifting his head felt as if it would require a crane.

Forcing his eyelids open, he followed floating dust motes in a stream of light to an ornate ceiling of crisscrossing wooden beams and squares of decorative wallpaper. He blinked, pinched the bridge of his nose, then looked again, but the view had not changed. A cold sweat enveloped him. The ceiling in his room at the Shenzhen Hotel had no beams or wallpaper; he’d awakened the previous three mornings to a flat white ceiling.

He shifted his gaze. Cheap wood paneling and a dingy, burnt-orange carpet: this was not his hotel room and, by simple deduction, this could not be his bed.

He slid his hand along the sheet, fingertips brushing fabric until encountering something distinctly different, soft and warm. His heart thumped hard in his chest. He turned his head. Dark hair flowed over alabaster shoulders blemished by two small moles. The woman lay on her side, the sheet draped across the gentle slope of her rounded hip.

Starting to hyperventilate, Payne forced deep breaths from his diaphragm. Now was not the time to panic. Besides, rushing from the room was not an option, not in his present condition, and not without his clothes. Think! The woman had not yet stirred, and judging by her heavy breathing she remained deep asleep, perhaps as hungover as he, perhaps enough that if he didn’t panic, Payne might be able to sneak out without waking her, if he could somehow manage to sit up.

He forced his head from the pillow and scanned along the wall to the foot of the bed, spotted a shoe, and felt a moment of great relief that just as quickly became greater alarm. The shoe was not his brown Oxford loafer but a square-toed boot.

Payne bolted upright, causing the room to spin and tilt off-kilter, bringing fleeting, blurred images like a ride on a merry-go-round. The images did not clear until the spinning slowed.

“Good morning, Mr. Payne.” The man sat in an armless, slatted wood chair. “You appear to be having a difficult start to your day.” Eyes as dark as a crow, the man wore his hair parted in the middle and pulled back off his forehead in a ponytail that extended beyond the collar of his black leather coat.

“Would you care for some water?”

Not waiting for a response, the man stood. At a small round table in the corner of the room he filled a glass from a pitcher, offering it to Payne. If this were a bad dream, it was very real. Payne hesitated, no longer certain that his hangover was alcohol induced.

The man motioned with the glass and arched heavy eyebrows that accentuated the bridge of a strong forehead. Dark stubble shaded his face. “Please. I assure you it’s clean, relatively speaking.”

Payne took the glass but did not immediately drink, watching as the man returned to the chair, and crossed his legs, before again pointing to the glass. This time Payne took a small sip. The glass clattered against his teeth and water trickled down his chin onto the sheet. When the man said nothing, Payne asked, “What do you want?”

“Me?
I
want nothing.”

“Then why are you—”

The man raised a single finger. “My employer, however, has several requests.”

“Your employer? Who is your employer?”

“I’m afraid I’m not at liberty to divulge that information.”

The woman emitted a small moan before her chest resumed its rhythmic rise and fall. Payne looked back to the man, an idea occurring. “I’ve been married for more than twenty years; my wife will never believe this.”

The man responded with a blank stare. “Believe what?”

Payne gestured to the woman. “Her. It’s not going to work.”

“Ah.” The man nodded. “You believe that I am here to blackmail you with photographs or videotapes of the two of you fornicating.”

“It isn’t going to work,” Payne repeated.

“Let me first say that it is refreshing to hear in this day when more than fifty percent of all marriages end in divorce that yours remains strong. Good for you. But look around you, Mr. Payne; do you see a camera or a video recorder anywhere in the room?”

Payne did not.

“Now, as I said, my employer has several requests.” For the next several minutes the man outlined those requests. Finishing, he asked, “Do we have an understanding?”

Confused, Payne shook his head. “But you said you weren’t here to blackmail me.”

“I said I was not here to blackmail you with photographs or videotapes. And as you have already educated me, such an attempt would not be productive.”

“Then why would I do what you’re asking?”

“Another good question.” The man pinched his lower lip. His brow furrowed. “It appears I will need something more persuasive.” He paused. “Can you think of anything?”

“What?”

“Something that would make a man like you acquiesce to my employer’s demands?”

“There’s nothing,” Payne said. “This isn’t going to work. So if I could just have my clothes back.”

“Nothing?” The man seemed to give the problem greater consideration, then snapped his fingers. “I have it.”

Payne waited.

“Murder.”

The word struck Payne like a dart to the chest. “Murder? I haven’t murdered anyone.”

With the fluidity of a dancer the man stood, a gun sliding into his extended left hand from somewhere beneath his splayed black coat, and the back of the woman’s head exploded, blood splattering Payne about the face and neck.

“Now you have.”

CHAPTER
ONE

ONE UNION SQUARE BUILDING

SEATTLE, WASHINGTON

The call from King County Superior Court Judge John Rudolph’s bailiff had sent the Law Offices of David Sloane into overdrive. Sloane juggled his briefcase as he slipped on his suit jacket and hurried down the hall.

The jury had reached a verdict.

“Give ’em hell!” John Kannin shouted.

Sloane rushed into the elevator lobby, cinching the knot of his tie. One of the red triangles above the bank of elevators lit and a bell sounded.

“David!” Carolyn shuffled into the lobby. “Your phone.” She rolled her eyes as she handed his cell to him. “I swear you’d forget your head if it wasn’t glued to your shoulders.”

Sloane wedged his briefcase between the shutting doors. “Have you reached Tom yet?” He and Tom Pendergrass had tried the medical malpractice action against a local pediatrician for the death of a six-year-old boy. Following closing arguments, Pendergrass had gone straight to his athletic club for a much-needed workout.

“A woman at the front desk said she would look for him. How many redheads could be working out on a StairMaster?”

The doors shuddered, and the elevator buzzed. “Tell him to meet me in the courtroom. And tell him not to be late.” The buzzing intensified. “You called the McFarlands?”

Carolyn put her hands on her hips. “No. I thought I’d use mental telepathy. Just get going before that thing blows a circuit and plummets. I can’t afford to be looking for a new job in this economy.”

When the elevator reached the lobby, Sloane jogged across the salmon-colored marble, his mind again churning over the evidence and hoping that the jurors had understood his arguments. Dr. Peter Douvalidis, for forty years a respected Seattle pediatrician, had chosen not to treat Austin McFarland for flulike symptoms: diarrhea, vomiting, and high fevers. Subpoenaed medical records indicated that Douvalidis had taken a throat swab and sent the boy home with instructions that the McFarlands keep him hydrated and return if the fever didn’t break. That night the boy had slipped into a coma and the McFarlands rushed Austin to the emergency room, where the attending doctor took a blood sample and sent it to the lab, suspecting a bacterial infection. Despite the doctor’s efforts, Austin died. The next day the throat swab came back negative for the flu but the blood cultures came back positive for septicemia, a bacteria in the bloodstream, usually from an infection in some other part of the body. Sloane would later learn that septicemia manifests itself in symptoms similar to the flu and, as in the case of Austin McFarland, may progress to hypotension and death.