Diagnosis Murder 5 - The Past Tense (7 page)

She was tan and fit, with perfect proportions, long legs, and an even tan. She spent a lot of time outdoors, probably at the beach. She was a true California girl, though I couldn't figure out why she'd chosen to dye her hair red instead of blond.

I looked at her wrists, her fingers, and her ears.

I lifted her skirt and examined the garter belt, the straps stretched over her panties to her nylon stockings, the seams running up the sides of her legs from her heels to the middle of her thighs.

I knew at that moment with chilling certainty what it all meant, what my subconscious had been trying to tell me. And yet it only intensified my curiosity.

I rolled her on her side, pulled her blouse up to her shoulders, and was in the midst of scrutinizing her bra when someone walked in.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?" the man demanded.

I turned and got my first look at Dr. Jay Barbette, the medical examiner, standing in the doorway in his lab coat, flanked by two of his morgue attendants.

Barbette was a tall man in his sixties with a bushy gray mustache, tousled hair, and a tiny pair of glasses that seemed far too small for his bulbous nose and his round face, which, at that moment, was flushed with outrage.

"I'm Dr. Mark Sloan," I said. "She was one of my patients."

"Before or after she drowned in the LA River?"

"That's a difficult question to answer," I said.

"Why is that?"

"Because I never saw her before today," I said. "And she didn't drown in the river."

"Didn't the firefighters find her in the river?"

"Yes, they did," I said.

Barbette came over, stood beside me, and looked at the body. "She definitely drowned. I can see that already."

"I agree," I said.

"I'm so relieved to hear that," he said, rubbing his temples. "Son, you're giving me a headache. You better make your point and make it quick, or I'm going to ask my friends here to drag you out and restrain you until the police can get here."

I smiled at Dr. Barbette's two brawny assistants. "That won't be necessary."

"I'll be the judge of that," Barbette said.

"I believe she drowned in her bathtub and her body was dumped in the river."

He looked at me incredulously. "You do."

"She smells like fresh flowers," I said.

"Excuse me?"

"Sniff her," I said.

"Are you some kind of pervert?"

"Her blouse is soaked in bath oil," I said. "It's like she put her clothes on without drying off first."

"You're saying she drowned in her bathtub simply because she didn't adequately towel herself this morning?"

"That's not all, Dr. Barbette. Her ears are pierced and she has tan lines where she usually wears a watch and several rings," I said. "But she isn't wearing any jewelry."

"She fell into a raging river," he said. "Didn't it occur to you that her jewelry might have been swept away in the current?"

"Yes, but that doesn't explain the seams on her stockings."

"The seams?" he asked.

"They should be going up the back of her legs," I said, pointing it out with my finger. "And the garter belt straps are on top of her panties, not underneath them."

"What does that have to do with where she drowned?" he said, his voice rising with impatience.

"No woman would go out in public with the seams showing in front, and she certainly wouldn't put the straps over her panties. That's how garter belts are modeled, but that's not how real women wear them."

"I suppose you're an expert on 'real' women," he said.

"I'm married to one," I said. "I know if my wife had to go to the bathroom, she wouldn't want to have to take off her garter belt and stockings to do it."

Barbette turned and studied the dead woman again, then glanced back at me. When he spoke, the impatience in his voice was gone.

"But someone dressing her might make that mistake," he said. "Someone in a hurry."

"A man," I said. "A woman would know better." Barbette nodded, a thoughtful expression on his face, then turned to his two attendants. "Gentlemen, why don't you go get us a couple cups of coffee? Hot as possible, please. How do you take yours, Doctor...?"

"Sloan," I said. "Mark Sloan. Black, with two spoonfuls of sugar."

"Same for me," Barbette said.

The two attendants seemed confused by the sudden turn of events, but no more so than me. They left. As soon as they were gone, Barbette gestured to the woman again.

"Why were you turning her on her side when I came in?" he asked.

"I was looking at her bra. It's too tight." I pointed to the clasps. "See these two loops? They're scuffed and worn. This is where she usually hooked the clasps, not where they are now. Whoever dressed her didn't know that either. He wasn't worried about her comfort, and she wasn't alive to tell him it hurt."

Barbette adjusted his glasses and scratched his head, mulling something over before he spoke.

"Have you ever observed a forensic autopsy before, Dr. Sloan?"

"No," I said.

"I'd like you to come downtown with me and observe this one," he said.

I was thrilled by the invitation, of course, but I couldn't possibly accept—not unless I wanted to get fired.

"I wish I could," I said, "but I'm on call. In fact, I'd better get back to the ER before Dr. Whittington notices I'm not there."

"You let me handle Whittington," Barbette said.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Whatever Dr. Barbette told Dr. Whittington, it worked. I accompanied Dr. Barbette downtown to the county morgue, where I didn't just watch the autopsy; he actually let me assist.

I didn't know it then, but it was the first of many autopsies I would help him perform over the years. He took me on as an unofficial apprentice, teaching me everything he knew about forensics and the secrets a corpse could share. I knew he was grooming me to take his place one day, but I couldn't give up treating patients. I wanted to use medicine to make people's lives better, not simply as a tool to solve the mysteries of the dead. As it turned out, I ended up finding a way to do both.

But on that rainy day more than forty years ago, it was all new to me. I watched closely as he went about his work, dissecting the body, removing the vital organs, and collecting fluid, tissue, and blood samples.

As he did it all, he talked me through every step in the process. He also explained, in detail, exactly how a person drowns in a river.

You can't hold your breath forever. Reflexively, you will inhale, drawing water and whatever particles it contains deep into your sinuses and lungs, causing you to cough.

The coughing triggers another inhalation reflex, which sucks even more water and mud into your lungs. The struggle to survive, and the loss of air supply, rapidly consumes the oxygen in your blood. Within a minute or two, you lose consciousness and your life.

If a person is dead before entering the water, dirt and debris will fill the mouth and pharynx, but it won't enter the lungs for several days, drawn into the vacancy created by the gradual escape of air from the body.

The woman who was pulled from the Los Angeles River wasn't in the water, in Barbette's opinion, for more than an hour or two. Her mouth was full of mud, but there wasn't any debris in her lungs.

Her lungs
were
filled with water, however.

Bathwater
. With a heavy concentration of soap and hair dye.

"This woman was murdered," Barbette declared, taking off his glasses and wiping them clean with a towel.

I'd come to the same conclusion on my own before Dr. Barbette walked in on me at Community General, but hearing him say it made it real.

I should have been saddened by this woman's death. I should have been horrified by the way in which she died. I should have been afraid of the man who'd done it.

I did feel those things. But I also felt something else. Something stronger. There isn't a word for it. I can only describe the sensation.

When you're fishing, there's a tingle you get when you feel that first little hit on your line.

Hello
.

A charge goes through your whole body. All your attention focuses on the tip of your pole and the tension on the line as you wait for another tap.

At that instant, there's nothing else except you and whatever is down there in the dark depths, waiting to be caught. You can almost feel the fish, sense him swimming around your baited hook, waiting to strike.

It's exciting. It's exhilarating. And it's addictive.

Well, that's what I felt. Only much, much stronger. I felt the presence of her killer. I couldn't see him, but I knew he was out there in the storm, hidden in the shadows.

I'd felt his tap.

"Her killer dressed her and dumped her body in the LA River in the middle of a downpour to make it look like an accident," Dr. Barbette said with a frown. "Damn near got away with it, too."

"You would have caught him," I said.

Barbette shook his head and put on his glasses. "No, Dr. Sloan, I wouldn't have. The facts surrounding this woman's death seemed obvious. I hate to admit this, but I wouldn't have investigated any further. No one would ever have known she was murdered if not for you."

"It was just dumb luck on my part," I said.

"It's more than that," Barbette said. "It's instinct. You're a born detective. It's a gift. You should embrace it."

I thought about what Dr. Barbette said, and it troubled me as I drove back to Community General in the pouring rain.

You 're a born detective.

It was a legacy I'd been running from since I was ten years old, since the morning my father, a homicide detective, went to work and decided never to come home again. A few months later, he sent us a postcard from New York. All it said was "I'm sorry."

The other cops on the force felt real bad about what had happened and adopted us, making us part of their families. The men would do handyman stuff around the house, making sure we had a solid roof over our heads and that Mom had a car that was always running smooth. And the wives, they'd babysit us, cook us meals, and mend our clothes, easing Mom's burden while she looked for work.

Mom finally found herself a job as a secretary at our grade school, rising up through the bureaucracy until she eventually became a senior administrator in the Los Angeles Unified School District.

But even after she got settled, those police officers and their families never stopped looking out for us. The local police station was like a second home to me. They hated what my father had done, but at the same time, they didn't want to tear him down in my eyes. They kept telling me what a great detective he was and about all the murders he'd solved.

James Sloan, they said, saw clues nobody else could see. He had a sixth sense about crime. He just knew when someone was guilty. And then, with dogged determination, he would set out to prove what his nearly infallible instincts had already told him.

I used to wonder if he detected guilt so well in others because there was so much in him. How long was he thinking about leaving us before he actually did it? What clues did we miss?

I don't know whether it was because of my dad, or all the time I spent with police officers, but I was fascinated by the puzzle-solving aspect of detective work, the slow and steady accumulation of information. I learned that gathering facts wasn't enough to solve a mystery; finding the solution ultimately came down to intuition, inspiration, and dumb luck. It was an art. As much as I wanted to master it for myself, I also wanted nothing to do with it.

My grandfather was a cop and so was my father. Becoming one myself meant following my father's example, which I would never do. The only way to get back at him for what he did to us was to deny him any influence in my life, to treat him as if he'd never existed. So I found another calling, another way to solve mysteries and help people.

Medicine isn't unlike police work. The crimes are pain, suffering, and death. The perpetrators are diseases, traumas, and viruses. The mystery is identifying the ailment that afflicts your patient. The solution is the diagnosis and treatment.

I discovered that solving the mysteries of medicine is as much about education and experience as it's about intuition and imagination. My years hanging around detectives were the perfect preparation for becoming a doctor.

The cops who became our extended family were proud of me when I was accepted to medical school, but they were disappointed I didn't join their sons at the police academy.

I got a unique satisfaction from being a doctor that I could never have as a police officer, something only I could appreciate. The first time someone called me "Dr. Sloan," and for years afterwards, it reassured me that I'd become a very different man from my father.

When I married Katherine, I made a vow to myself that I would always be there for her and for my children, a promise my father either never made or didn't keep. I was determined that whatever made my father the man he was, it wouldn't do the same to me. Until that dead woman was brought into our ER, I thought I'd succeeded.

I couldn't get Dr. Barbette's words out of my head.

You're a born detective.

I'd thought of myself as many things. A son. A brother. A father. A husband. A doctor. The one thing I was certain that I wasn't, that I tried so hard not to be, was a detective. A man like James Marcus Sloan.

I hadn't set out to investigate anything. But when I looked at that dead woman, it triggered something in me. I saw details without being aware I was seeing them. Or maybe I just didn't want to see them.

It didn't matter. My mind worked on it anyway, nagging me until I consciously acknowledged what was right in front of my face.

She had been murdered.

I knew it even before I could prove it.
Instinctively
. Because I was a born detective. Because I was my father's son.

Did I feel that pang of fear when I first saw that woman because I sensed the presence of a killer? Or was it be cause I sensed the presence of my father in me?