Diagnosis Murder 7 - The Double LIfe (23 page)

"We'll never know now, will we?"

"You're supposed to be in a hospital bed. The last thing you should be doing is trying to help anyone. You need to take care of yourself and leave the police work to me." 

Mark glared at him defiantly. "Were there any personal terns missing from the victim? Did she get her drugs from Kemper-Carlson?"

"I don't know. Her name began with a
V.
That's all that matters right now."

"Did anyone see Guyot or Duren at the scene?"

Steve had a decision to make. He could walk away now and end this conversation for the time being or give his father the answers he wanted and hope that would mollify him rather than provoke him into action.

Mark knew the alternatives his son was weighing and waited for him to decide.

Steve sighed, giving in. When he spoke, the anger was gone from his voice, replaced by weariness. "No. She lived in an apartment building. There's a closed-circuit security camera at the door so residents can see who is ringing their buzzers. But the camera isn't hooked to any recording device. The camera is so old, it probably only records to kinescope anyway."

"What about fingerprints and other forensic evidence in the apartment?"

"Until we have some proof that Vivian Hemphill didn't die of natural causes I can't bring in a CSI unit," Steve said. "Even if I could, I'm pretty certain we wouldn't find anything useful. These nurses are pretty slick about covering their tracks."

"There's always the body."

Steve gave his dad a withering look, as if Mark had reminded him that it was necessary to breathe. "I talked the victim's son into letting Amanda do an autopsy. I'm waiting on the results."

"Let me know when they come in."

"Dad, there is no mystery here," Steve said firmly. "We know who the killers are. All the autopsy will do is confirm what we already know is going on."

Mark moved closer to his son and looked him in the eye. When he spoke, he tried to do so without bitterness. "Why are you shutting me out of this investigation?"

"I'm not," Steve said. "I'm trying to keep you healthy. The investigation is over. All that is left now is the endgame."

"You haven't caught them yet," Mark said. "So where does that leave the other potential victims? What are you doing for them?"

"We have them under constant surveillance."

"I thought you didn't have any manpower besides Tanis Archer," Mark said.

"I don't even have
her
officially. I have the targets under electronic surveillance."

Steve motioned to a laptop that was open and running on the kitchen table. He explained that the screen was divided into four windows, each showing a wide-angle live video and audio feed from a target's home.

"Meanwhile, we're watching the two psycho nurses the old-fashioned way," Steve continued. "Tanis is parked outside of Paul Guyot's house, which is where Duren spent the night. They're still there. I just came back for a shower and a fresh set of clothes."

Mark glanced at the laptop, then back to his son with a look of disapproval. "You're using those innocent people as bait."

"I didn't pick them," Steve said. "The killers did."

"You could place them all in protective custody," Mark said.

"No, I can't. I don't have the evidence." Steve went to the kitchen table and started packing his laptop and cables into a leather carrying case.

"You could warn them," Mark insisted, hobbling after him. "Let them know that Guyot and Duren are dangerous."

"I can't do that either, for the same reason. No evidence."

"Better safe than sorry."

"It's not that simple, Dad. If we warn these people and Guyot or Duren finds out, the two of them could disappear tomorrow, show up somewhere else with new names and start their killing game all over again. Or they could stick around and sue the department for spreading career-damaging lies about them, which would cost me my badge and the city millions of dollars. Or—"

"I get the point," Mark interrupted. "But there has to be a better way."

"When you think of one, let me know." Steve grabbed his laptop case and walked to the door.

"I thought you didn't need my help," Mark said to his back.

Steve stopped, let out a deep breath, then turned back to face Mark. "Please try to rest, Dad. If you have your heart set on solving crimes today, do me and yourself a big favor and watch some
Murder, She Wrote
reruns instead."

He turned and walked out, slamming the door behind him.

Amanda called Steve on his cell phone five minutes after he left the house. He was in his car, heading south on the Pacific Coast Highway and already regretting his argument with his father—not that there was any way he could have avoided it. They would patch things up when the case was closed and Mark was himself again.

"I've just finished the autopsy," Amanda said. "I thought you'd like the headlines before I write up my report."

"Give me the front-page headline," Steve said.

"I'm calling it murder," Amanda said.

Steve thought that was an unusual way of putting it, an equivocation of sorts. "What would someone else call it?" 

"Natural causes."

"But you're the medical examiner," Steve said. "It's what you say that counts."

"Until we get into court. Then what counts is whatever the jury believes."

"Tell me what you believe."

"Vivian Hemphill's doctor determined, based on her age, past medical history, and external evidence, that she died from cardiac arrest," Amanda said. "He was right. She did. But I found what I consider to be unusually high levels of epinephrine in her blood. The drug can cause a lethal change in the heart rate, especially for someone her age and with advanced coronary disease."

"You found the drug in her system," Steve said. "Sounds open and shut to me."

Amanda let out a deep breath. "In the final moments before death, your body releases large amounts of epinephrine from the adrenal glands in a last-ditch effort to survive. Think of it as your internal cardiologist trying to jolt you back to life. So finding high levels of epinephrine in the blood after death isn't unusual. That's what makes epinephrine poisoning very difficult to prove."

"Even if the level of epinephrine in her blood is higher than normal?"

"That's the problem. Unless the level of epinephrine is outrageously high, it's hard to know how much of it is endogenous, from within the body, and how much was introduced exogenously, from outside the body," Amanda said. "It's a subjective determination. I'm saying that based on my experience, Vivian Hemphill's epinephrine level was too high. Another ME might disagree."

And Steve was sure that whoever defended Guyot and Duren in court would find at least one expert witness who would convincingly dispute Amanda's findings.

Steve swore to himself.

Guyot and Duren weren't simply thrill killers. They were
careful
thrill killers. It took cunning to choose a drug that the body produces naturally and inject just enough into the victims to kill them but not enough to clearly indicate murder.

"She wasn't on an IV," Steve said. "So if she was injected with epinephrine, there must be a puncture mark somewhere on her body."

"There was," Amanda said.

Steve smiled to himself. Even the most clever killers have to make a mistake sometime. "Well, isn't that all the proof we need that she was injected with epinephrine?"

"It would be, except—"

He interrupted her. "Oh no, please don't say 'except.' I don't want to hear 'except.'"

"Vivian Hemphill saw her doctor the morning of her death and was given a blood test. The puncture wound could be from that."

Guyot knew she'd gone in to John Muir for an exam. He planned the murder to coincide with her visit. And he gave her the deadly injection in the same spot where the doctor had drawn blood.

Oh, they're clever all right, Steve thought.

"If we were to exhume the other victims," he asked, "would you be able to detect if they also had high levels of epinephrine in their tissues?"

"If the bodies are still mostly intact, probably," she said. "But if the bodies are severely decayed, embalmed, or only skeletal remains exist, no."

Steve slammed his fist against the dashboard in fury. "So we're back where we started."

"Not quite," Amanda said. "I'm saying that Vivian Hemphill was murdered. That makes this an official homicide investigation now."

"But I still can't arrest Guyot or Duren," Steve said. "I don't have anything "

"Now you have a corpse," Amanda said.

"No," Steve said grimly. "Now I have eleven of them. This is just the only one that hasn't been buried yet."

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY-FOUR

Steve met Tanis in her car, which was parked up the street from Guyot's house. Her laptop was open on the passenger seat. Her cell phone was plugged into the computer, giving ner an Internet connection. On the screen, she had the four surveillance feeds up and running.

"You're really multitasking," Steve said.

"I figure if Guyot or Duren were to slip past me, which is entirely possible given how tired I am, I'd better keep an eye on our targets, too."

"You just want to see if Vincent Kunz has sex."

"I've got twenty bucks riding on that bet," she said. "The old man is going to get lucky. You'll see."

"I don't want to see," Steve said. "Go home. I'll take over watching Wendy Duren. Get some sleep and a shower. Especially a shower."

"Who is going to watch Guyot?"

"Jesse will follow him until you've rested up," Steve said. "Guyot is working in the hospital all day anyway. He won't make his move, if he's going to make one, until nightfall." 

"Are you willing to gamble one of their lives on that?" Tanis said, gesturing to the live feeds on the laptop. The four targets all seemed to have forgotten the cameras were there; they were going about their business without so much as a glance at the lens.

"I may not have to for much longer" Steve said. "Amanda says that Vivian Hemphill was murdered. We can get some more detectives on this stakeout detail."

"Based on what?" Tanis said. "Until you've got real evidence that can link Guyot and Duren to her death, the captain will never okay the overtime for surveillance."

"Since when are you the voice of reason?"

"Fatigue makes me reasonable. I lose the energy to delude myself," Tanis said, punctuating her comment with a yawn. "How's your dad?"

"Mad," Steve said. "He thinks he's being excluded from the investigation."

"He is."

"The man should be in a hospital," Steve said irritably. "He's in no shape to be involved."

"Is that the reason?"

"Yeah," Steve said. "What the hell else do you think it is?"

"Why don't you the hell tell me?" she said.

"Sweet dreams." Steve got out, slammed the door, and marched back to his own car.

"Gee," Tanis said to herself. "I wonder if I touched a nerve."

Jesse stopped by the beach house on his way to John Muir Hospital. He was going to take Malibu Canyon into the Valley, thus avoiding the gridlock and misery of the northbound San Diego Freeway.

"What are you going to the Valley for?" Mark asked while Jesse changed his bandages and examined the burr hole in his skull.

"Steve didn't tell you?"

"I'm out of the loop," Mark said.

Jesse hesitated. "I'm following Paul Guyot while Tanis rests up."

"I'd like to tag along," Mark said casually.

"This is a twist," Jesse said. "Usually I'm the one begging to be included."

"Now you finally have the chance to return the favor."

"I wish I could."

"You can," Mark said.

"You shouldn't even be home, much less sitting in a car on a stakeout."

"I'll just be sitting in your car instead of on this couch," Mark said. "Plus I'll be under a physician's observation at all times."

"I can't," Jesse said. "I'm saying that as your doctor and as your friend."

"If you were my friend, you'd bring me along."

"You're not really missing anything, anyway. The case is all but over."

"What did Amanda find in her autopsy on Vivian Hemphill?"

Jesse told him. 

Mark raised an eyebrow. "That doesn't make any sense."

"It's how they made the deaths look like natural causes," Jesse said.

"Not Grover Dawson, not Joyce Kling, not Chadwick Saxelid," Mark said. "The MO isn't consistent."

"Maybe because they weren't murdered."

Mark looked Jesse in the eye. "You're doubting me now, too?"

Jesse shifted his gaze. "No, it's just that—"

"What?" Mark prodded. "Say it."

"You did your investigation in a coma. Are you really surprised that what you discovered doesn't fit perfectly with the real-world investigation?"

"I didn't dream up the facts," Mark said.

"Epinephrine could have been used to kill the patients at Beckman Hospital, couldn't it?"

"Yes," Mark said.

"And those murders didn't spell 'Game Over,' did they?"

"No."

"And those deaths didn't appear to be accidents or fatal drug interactions, did they?"

"No."

"So the only cases that aren't consistent with epinephrine poisoning are the ones you pulled out of your dream."

Jesse had never challenged Mark like this before. Mark didn't particularly like it. The defiance especially irritated him since he knew that Jesse wouldn't be challenging him unless the young doctor felt he had a strong argument and his mentor was obviously in the wrong.

"Those were the cases I was investigating before I hit my head," Mark said. "I didn't imagine them."

"Do you think Paul Guyot and Wendy Duren are killers?" 

"Yes," Mark said.

"Do you believe that between them they've killed at least eleven people?"

"Yes."

"Then why are you arguing with Steve?"

Mark sighed. "Because something doesn't fit. We're missing something."