Checkmate (Caitlin Calloway Mystery Book 2) (47 page)

CC picked up the thread. “Around that time, the Connecticut US Marshal’s office was informed by an anonymous caller that Albert Beaumont had skipped town. The caller’s voice was hard to identify.”

“We couldn’t,” Val said. “We were simply told that Beaumont would be arriving in Boston via a Peter Pan bus. He arrived by train hours ahead of us.”

“But you went looking for him,” CC said. “Another tip of his whereabouts came in. On that day, Elizabeth Pryce died. Ricky, what did the San Francisco ME tell you?”

“At first, Dr. Logan was clueless as to what caused such a painful death in an otherwise healthy woman.” Ricky paused to clear his throat. “After searching her home and running a battery of tests, he determined that she was poisoned.”

“With?”

“Hemlock and white oleander.”

“Hemlock?” McManus said. “Geez, where do you get that these days?”

“You can grow it.” Ricky shrugged. “The CSU team checked out Ms. Pryce’s home. They found that she had received a gift of tea. The hemlock was in the sample of honey, and the oleander, which grows wild on the West Coast, was in the tea. The police tried to track down the company that sent the free sample. They found out the company was bogus. If Dr. Logan hadn’t been so diligent, the death would have been written off as a stomach virus. Dr. Logan is more than happy to cooperate with our investigation.”

“What investigation?” Rousseau asked in a demanding tone.

“Who are these guys?”

“US Deputy Marshal Val Brown and FBI Special Agent Richard Samaria.” CC made the introductions. “They are investigating an aiding and abetting case.”

“You called in the Feds?”

“I-I…” she stammered, knowing her boss was pissed that she had breached the thin blue line that said locals don’t play well with Feds. “I did. They can get information that is out of our reach.”

“You mean your reach. So far I haven’t seen anything that warrants our involvement.”

“I guess I do.” CC’s heart sank. “In which case, I guess I should keep going. On September 29, the Fugitive Task Force received another call alerting them that Beaumont was roaming around Copley Place. At the same time, Bitsy Marsden went for a jog in San Diego. A few hours later, she was discovered with her throat slashed and her sweats down around her ankles. LAPD arrested two upstanding citizens when they tried to use her credit card. They later found what was left of her BMW in a chop shop in East LA. Turns out the kids they arrested didn’t kill her.”

“But they had her stuff,” Palmucci tried to argue.

“They also ended having solid alibis for the time of Ms. Marsden’s murder,” Ricky explained. “I personally find it hard to believe that someone would hitch a ride all the way down to San Diego just to steal a car.”

Palmucci responded with a grunt and roll of his eyes that was worthy of a teenage girl.

“Next we have another tip that sent us chasing after Beaumont, during which time Professor Archibald Harding died of carbon monoxide poisoning in Wisconsin. The police blamed it on a faulty flue in the fireplace. Thing is the fireplace had recently been refurbished. Also, the good professor was naked from the waist down. He was wearing makeup, and he had his Johnson in his hand.”

“So? He went happy,” Palmucci said. “Freaky but happy.”

“According to the coroner, he was standing at attention,” Ricky said. “He was fairly certain that his body had been posed postmortem. He just can’t prove it.”

“Also,” CC said, “the police never found any traces of makeup in the house.”

“And?” Palmucci once again snidely broke in. “So he had a playmate, big hairy deal.”

“A playmate who didn’t die of carbon monoxide poisoning? I doubt if he had a friend who played dress-up and left him sitting there jacking off.” CC was pleased to see him slump down in his chair. She hoped that would be the end of his outbursts. At that moment, she was very tempted to slap him around.

“Next on the hit parade is Billy Ryan. He checked himself out of McLean and went straight to a prepaid hotel room. He shot up the purest heroin and cocaine on the planet and overdosed. The quality of the drugs alone would have killed him. Billy got the added bonus of having his drugs cut with drain cleaner. Our ME confirms that Billy died a horribly painful death. About the time Billy was jacking up, another tip came in that Beaumont was spotted lurking around Boylston General.”

CC paused when there was a knock on the door. She took a moment to grab a sip of coffee while Leigh answered the door. Leigh seemed upbeat when she handed CC a FedEx envelope.

“I got your package, Dr. Richards,” CC announced, confusing everyone in the room.

“Good,” Dr. Richards acknowledged over the phone. “You should continue, Detective. I get the feeling you are surrounded by skeptics.”

“Isn’t that the doc who did the profile on Fisher?” Her boss’s face was beet red as he asked the question. “She’s been listening this whole time?”

“Yes, sir,” CC said and she watched the vein in Rousseau’s forehead bulge. She was in it deep, and there was no turning back.

“More Feds?”

“Yes, sir. There was another tip. Once again, the caller’s voice was ambiguous. At the same time, Dr. Jack Temple went for a stroll on Revere Beach. He had consumed vodka laced with painkillers. The empty bottle of vodka was found in his kitchen. Jack also had an unopened bottle in his freezer. Wayne ran the bar codes on both bottles.”

Wayne said, “The bottle in the freezer was purchased at Jobo Liquors on Cambridge Street two weeks ago, and Dr. Temple paid with his Visa card.”

“Jobo is down the street from the hospital,” CC said. “Dr. Temple would have passed it along his walk to the Bowdoin T-stop.”

“The second bottle,” Wayne continued, “was purchased with cash at Blanchards Liquors on the day that Dr. Temple died.”

CC once again stepped in. “It was also purchased while Dr. Temple was at the hospital. He wasn’t supposed to be working that day. He was filling in for someone else. McManus, did you ever find Dr. Temple’s keys?”

“No. The only keys that we found were his car and work keys.”

“Dr. Temple,” CC told them, “had a nifty little interlocking key ring that hooked to a clip and a lanyard. It’s designed so you can keep different sets of keys separated. Dr. Temple was wearing the clip and the lanyard when he was found. No keys. The only way to lock or unlock the door to his condo is with a key.”

“They could have washed away,” Rousseau argued. “The guy drowned.”

“This key ring is very sturdy,” CC answered. “A gift from a pharmaceutical company. My wife has the same setup. When Jamie is at work, she locks her personal keys in her desk and only carries hospital keys around. To unlock one of the sets, you need to twist the metal bar, bend it up, twist again, and then detach it. Not something that would just wash away.”

“Also, we found something interesting in Dr. Temple’s condo,” McManus said without missing a beat. “His son had visited that morning. The place was neat as a pin. Apparently, Dr. Temple was a very organized man. When we entered the locked condo, we found a woman’s scarf and a Charlie Card. The card was for special fares, since the owner is on disability. We have her name, June Devlin.”

“What’s her disability?” Palmucci asked.

“Junkie, prostitute.”

“Isn’t that grand,” Palmucci said and snarled. “And we get to pay her rent. The road to hell is paved with good intentions and democrats.”

“Don’t make me smack you. “ CC couldn’t suppress her anger. “McManus, where was Ms. Devlin at the time of the murder?”

“What murder?” Palmucci interrupted once again. “Did I miss something?”

“No,” Val said before CC had the chance. “But if you’d shut up and listen, you might learn something. I swear you make one more snotty comment, and I’ll be shoving my foot up your ass.”

“She’ll do it, too,” Ricky said with a sly smirk.

“You think you scare me, little lady?”

“Seriously, you don’t want to push her,” CC told him. “Just let me get through this, then you can tell me what a jackass I am.”

“Fine.” Palmucci folded his arms tightly against his chest. Everyone else in the room sighed in apparent relief.

CC doubted that they agreed with her, but Palmucci did have a way of pissing people off. “McManus, if you don’t mind?” she said to the amused trooper.

“Ms. Devlin was incarcerated for solicitation,” McManus explained. “Locked up over the long weekend. When Dr. Temple went for his swim, she was sitting in jail. She wasn’t arraigned until Tuesday morning when she posted her forty-dollar bond and went on her way.”

“The kick in the pants on the day of Jack’s death is the tips kept coming in.” CC pressed on, determined to explain everything.

“Beaumont, like the fair Ms. Devlin, was in custody, thanks to Deputy Brown and the task force. Another tip came in around the time Max took a header down that flight of stairs,” CC said. “The tips haven’t stopped, even though Beaumont is dead.”

“If I may ask?” Palmucci cleared his throat. “Who in the hell is Albert Beaumont?”

“The miserable sack of poo my mother had the misfortune to marry after my father died.”

“You mean Bert? The sorry son of a bitch.” Palmucci was clearly disgusted. “You should have slammed that loser with a baseball bat.”

“Been, there, done that, didn’t take. Doesn’t matter. He has fallen victim to a little prison justice.”

“He deserved it.”

“Even though he’s dead, the task force is still getting calls,” CC said, ignoring Palmucci’s grunts and groans. “After Max was attacked, Palmucci leaked a story about a John Doe being found in an abandoned building.”

“Yeah, I got a call identifying the body as Sampson,” Palmucci said. “He could have had anyone make that call for him, and it still doesn’t explain his car at Suffolk Downs.”

“Come on, that’s at least four miles from the Ballard, and there’s no way Max could have walked that.” CC handed Palmucci a photocopy. “But someone wants us to think Max is dirty. Drugs in his pocket, car at the race track, and the fifty grand you found in his account. You might want to look at that paper I gave you.”

“What is it?”

“A bank statement.” CC fought against the urge to shove it down his throat. “This is from Shirley Sampson’s bank account. Shirley’s father, who passed away last year, was an investment banker. As you can see, he was damn good at his job. That’s how Max could afford to retire. After his father in-law’s will cleared probate, he and his wife were set for life. He didn’t need to sell drugs. Just after Max took his spill, Detective Brooks of the San Diego PD died of a heart attack. He was found naked in bed with kiddy porn in the DVD player.”

“This is what you’ve got?” Rousseau seemed less than pleased. “You’ve got nothing.”

*   *  *

It was getting late. Jamie sat at her desk, wondering how much caffeine was too much. Thanks to one of her students, it would be hours to go before she could even think about heading home. A loud knock on her office door disrupted her plans to search for more coffee.

“Come in.”

She wasn’t surprised when Murphy stormed in, his shaggy blonde hair mussed from the long night he had endured. Jamie leaned back and motioned for him to have a seat. He paced for a moment before accepting her offer. While he shifted nervously in his seat, Jamie dug through the stack of files sitting on her desk. She extracted the ones she knew she would need for the confrontation she sensed was coming.

“Dr. Jameson, I need to speak to you.” The young man was clearly upset. Again, Jamie wasn’t surprised. Murphy had just spent the last several hours sitting by the bedside of a woman with a nasty case of diarrhea and an equally nasty disposition. “I feel you are being unfair to me.”

Jamie opened one of the files. “Do you understand the gravity of the mistakes you’ve been making?”

“My patients would have been fine if my instructions were followed.” His indignant tone irked Jamie to no end. “I didn’t need to be assigned as a babysitter.”

“Dr. Murphy, you need to focus. You want to be a doctor, then you had better start learning what that means. Day one, I told you first do no harm. Trust me when I tell you that the slipshod way you’ve been handling your patients is harmful.”

“Excuse me, Doctor Jameson, but I have to disagree,” Murphy arrogantly began to say. “It’s more than obvious that Alvarez is your favorite.”

“I don’t play favorites. I want each and every intern, resident, and student who comes into this hospital to learn as much as they can.” Jamie was thoroughly annoyed when Murphy rolled his eyes. She managed to hold her anger at bay and picked a file from the stack that had been sitting in front of her when Murphy decided to pay her a visit.

“Fine, you need convincing?” Jamie went over Murphy’s cases one by one and pointed out the errors he had made. She closed the folders and addressed Murphy, who was squirming in his chair. “In just over an hour from now, instead of heading home and seeing my family, I get to go before the board and explain why someone of your caliber is making so many rookie mistakes.”

“The board?” He gulped.

“Because of your error in misdiagnosing Darren Beauchamp, his mother hired a lawyer. There’s a very good chance the hospital will be facing a lawsuit,” Jamie said. “Take what I am about to tell you, not as good advice but as the gospel. C.Y.A. Cover your ass. For some doctors it means to do just what you’ve been doing, nothing. For me it means to be diligent. So pull your head out of your ass, do your job, and try to learn about what it means to be a doctor. If you don’t, you’re out of the program. Have I made myself clear?”

“Yes.” He clenched his jaw as he spoke.

“In the meantime, there’s a woman in bay seven I want you to treat. Her name is Diane Stone. She’s a flight attendant from Indiana with a very nasty rash. I expect you to be diligent with her.”

Murphy stood silently for a moment before he stormed out of her office. Jamie doubted he had seen the light. With a yawn, she glanced at the clock and felt sick. She wanted to be home, sleeping beside her wife. Instead she was about to face a very early morning meeting with the board.