Lethal Practice (3 page)

Watts continued the takeover. “Miss Hurst,” he asserted, fully formal now, “would you please get your brother a cup of tea? Dr. Garnet and I will stay here and wait for the police.”

She grudgingly nodded and left, but on the way out she gave me a sullen look to make it clear I didn’t rate similar respect. Gray hair again. It conveys automatic seniority in our business and, in this case, not wrongly. Watts’s excellence with the living reflected his years spent as a general practitioner before he became a doctor for the dead.

We stationed ourselves at the doorway of Kingsly’s office. I continued bothering Watts about the thermostat and a time of death. “I saw him earlier tonight, around seven. He’d been drinking and was stumbling along the hall, so I alerted security. We can check why they didn’t pick him up or, if they did, why they didn’t take him home. But the room here was an oven when I arrived, so the heat must have been on for quite a while before the cleaners found him.”

Watts looked at me intently as I talked, probably thinking he was hearing the raving of an amateur detective.

“Maybe,” he finally said. “Room temperature wouldn’t change heat loss much though. Besides, there are other signs to estimate the time of death. Leave that for a moment. Where’s the blood?”

He looked at me, saw I hadn’t a clue what he meant, and went on. “If that bit of metal in his chest turns out to be the cardiac needle we both think it is, then there should be at least a few spurts of blood that shot out during the time it took the pressure to fall. Even if the stab stopped the heart instantaneously, which is unlikely if the needle broke off, then a stream of blood would still have sprayed all over the place for a few seconds. Think back to the times you’ve put a needle in a patient with cardiac tamponade.”

I did think about it. Tamponade is a condition where the sac around the heart becomes filled with fluid. The tension prevents the heart from beating even though the electrical impulses keep firing to organize the pump of a heartbeat.

We would routinely get the pumping action back by sticking a special long needle attached to a syringe into the swollen sac around the heart to pull off the constricting fluid. If we went too far, the tip of the needle would enter the heart muscle and set off an electrical disturbance that if allowed to continue could degenerate into ventricular fibrillation and a full cardiac arrest. But Robert was right; this took time. In Kingsly’s case the needle would have passed directly into the center of his heart and set up the fatal dysrhythmia. Unless the needle had been attached to a containing syringe until Kingsly had died and the needle had been broken off afterward, there should have been a lot of blood, streams of it everywhere.

“And,” Watts said, “if the needle hadn’t broken off in the struggle but was intact, then whoever stabbed him simply could have removed the needle with the syringe attached. A neat withdrawal leaves a minimal mark and would have been the logical way to try to hide that Kingsly was murdered. No one would deliberately snap it off after and risk the broken fragment being found in the body.”

“I suppose you’re right, but once the needle had broken off, why not just pull it out then?”

He frowned at me as if I were one of his residents and should have known the answer myself. “Because the killer wouldn’t know how deep in it was without probing for it,” he explained not too patiently, “and that would enlarge the puncture site, making the wound obvious.” He paused and looked around. “And where are his clothes?”

I shrugged. Watts had noticed the most obvious inconsistency, which I’d completely missed.

“Probably far from here,” he added, “and I bet they’re covered with blood, maybe even burned already.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean he was attacked, and broke off the syringe either thrashing to death or struggling when he was stabbed. Blood must have been flying everywhere, all over his clothes, the walls, ceiling, and floor.”

Watts suddenly bent over the bloated belly and sniffed. “His chest’s been washed clean with rubbing alcohol.”

I resisted sniffing for a telltale aroma of isopropyl.

“That’s why the heat was up,” he went on. “To dry him off.” He shook his head. “No, he wasn’t murdered here.” He glanced around the room. “But I have a good idea how to find out where.”

So did I. Kingsly’s lonely killing ground would be in whatever part of the hospital the walls and ceiling had gotten an unscheduled cleaning.

“Has anyone called his wife?” Watts suddenly asked. “Or has she called here looking for him?”

I’d forgotten the long-suffering Mrs. Kingsly.

“I’ll phone her!” It was Hurst’s voice, calling to us from the chair outside, where we had left him. He began to straighten from the slouch he had sunk into when we’d deposited him there, and started to take back the control he’d lost.

“Thanks, Paul,” said Watts.

“I’ll do it from my office.” He left to perform what was probably the worst job in medicine.

Madelaine arrived an instant later with a silver tea set and an array of china cups. No Styrofoam here.

“Where did he go?” she demanded protectively. To her. Watts and I were now guilty of even more than insurrection: we’d shooed away her brother from her custody. Moreover, we appeared to be about to steal his tea. She didn’t offer us any.

But Watts undid her with his most lethal weapon—blarney. “Why, Miss Hurst, you always know the perfect thing to do in any situation.”

Watts had suggested the tea, but he made it seem as if it had been her idea, and she beamed. He helped himself, sighed in appreciation at his first sip, and added, “I don’t know what this hospital would do without you and your brother.”

Only Watts had the skill to make this crap work. If I’d tried the same line, she’d have started counting the silverware. Instead, her protestations begged Watts for more of his nonsense. I had to look away and chew my lip to keep a smile off my face.

‘Tea, Dr. Garnet?” asked Watts, seeing my difficulty and cocking his head away from Madelaine so only I could catch his smug grin.

As I took the cup, I glanced through the reception area window. Cop cars pulled up. Behind me Watts chatted quietly with Madelaine. Bless him. Sometimes celebrating the absurd was the only way through the pain and dying.

Watts was a remarkable man, I thought. He enjoyed his role as the final diagnostician and keeper of clinical truths. His word on each and every physician’s performance was absolute. Some saw him as a teacher and guide. Others hated and feared his verdicts on their competence and character. The pathologist is key in every hospital in the world, and if he or she is a jerk, stay away, because it means incompetents in the place can get by with murder—and probably do. Have a good pathologist in the house and dangerous fools don’t last long. Borderline incompetents are more subtle creatures, however. Never blatant enough to lose their licenses, they can weave and bob for years. Sometimes nurses can keep very sick patients out of their grasp by unofficially suggesting other doctors, but it’s a good pathologist who really keeps those incompetents in check; they can’t hide their fatal mistakes from him. And Watts was the best.

Hurst, Watts, and I looked up at the commotion coming from the entrance to the hallway. Two so-called plainclothes detectives stood at the open door. They were dressed almost identically in raincoats, gray slacks, and black shoes. Probably the outfits came in sets with the unmarked cars these guys cruised around in. No one in Buffalo reaches legal age without the smarts to pick cops out of a crowd.

“Dr. Watts?” asked the stout one with gray hair.

“I’m Watts,” Robert said.

“Detective Bufort,” he introduced himself. Turning to the younger and much taller man standing at his side, he added, “And this is Detective Riley.”

Watts made the introductions on our side, and we all shook hands as politely as if we were meeting for a round of golf. Funny thing about police. The more serious the crime, the more polite the cops. In some neighborhoods, if you were too poor, drunk, or hostile, you could end up down at the station being pounded with a telephone book around the ribs for peeing on the sidewalk. But commit a murder and it’s first-class treatment all the way.

Detective Bufort and I were the last to shake hands, then Dr. Watts invited them in to meet Kingsly.

The two officers quietly and competently took charge. They quickly inspected the body and the room, then questioned Watts and me. When I told them I’d seen Kingsly staggering down the hall earlier that evening and reported it, Detective Riley made a note. I guessed he was going to check with security and housekeeping to see if they’d found him or if I was the last person to see him alive—besides the killer, of course. Watts mentioned the raised room temperature and explained that it wouldn’t interfere significantly with his ability to estimate the time of death.

“But a nonmedical person wouldn’t necessarily know that,” Bufort said.

“No,” Watts said, “but even a killer who did know might have jacked up the temperature to dry off Kingsly’s body after cleaning it up in a hurry with alcohol.” He explained about the blood, suggesting that the detectives confirm what he was saying by smelling. Bufort hesitated, then gestured for Riley to do it. The younger man’s jaw muscles bulged and he seemed to bristle, but he got down on one knee, gingerly sniffed Kingsly’s chest, then nodded.

While Watts and I told what we figured had happened to the clothes and how we thought the police could find the site of the killing, Riley took notes. I watched the muscles in his jaw slowly relax as he wrote.

“Do you have any idea who did this?” Bufort asked when we’d finished. Hurst and Watts shook their heads. I thought of the abandoned mop and bucket I’d seen outside the doctors’ lounge but answered, “No.”

Bufort frowned at the three of us, then flipped his own notebook closed and warned everyone in the room not to talk. “None of you should discuss the details of what you’ve seen here tonight, not even with your families. We don’t want the killer to have any idea about how much we know.”

Hurst cornered Watts and me before we could leave.

“We will carry on business as usual,” he said, his voice hard now that he had regained control, “including this morning’s planned budget meeting at seven.”

I flinched. That was only four hours away.

“And I,” he continued, “will announce Kingsly’s death, not you two.” He glared at Watts and me for a second. “Is that clear?”

Chapter 3

An all-night rain had slicked down the city and left a misty halo around each street lamp. The stoplights at Main and High streets bled their reflections onto the shiny blacktop. It was November, my least favorite month. No snow yet, just sodden leaves and the smells of autumn long gone. I routinely drove to work in the dark and drove home under wet black skies. Sometimes the hissing of the tires nearly put me to sleep, but tonight, thinking of who had killed Kingsly kept me awake, wide awake.

When Bufort had asked if I could come up with of any reason for the murder, I’d immediately thought of Kingsly’s reputation for hitting on the female staff. I’d heard more and more gossip about it, escalating in the last six months or so ... but I’d never received a formal complaint on which I would have had to act. I gathered that he mostly accosted secretaries and lab technicians, and his pawings had been pretty feeble. Someone said he usually passed out before anything got too far, and his victims anonymously called security to pick him up. It was possible, but unlikely, he’d been killed by one of those poor women trying to fight him off—clerks and lab workers didn’t have cardiac needles. Yet Detective Bufort and his team were sure to find out about Kingsly’s escapades, and would also learn that the housekeepers had always been his particular targets. I simply didn’t want to be the one who singled them out.

Fifteen minutes from the hospital I was safely in my driveway and bracing for the full force of Muffy’s welcome. I even took off my glasses and pocketed them for safekeeping. As soon as I opened the door, fifty pounds of wiggling black poodle and bad breath were all over my face. “Down, Muff! Down!” I ordered, trying to calm her, but it did little good.

After we greeted each other, we went out for the mandatory walk, the dog perky and jumping at her own puffs of frosted breath, me slouched with cold and envying her endless capacity for play. Finally she finished, and we closed up the house together.

As I entered the bedroom and undressed, Muffy immediately headed for my pillow. I was too tired to kick her off. Hell, she’d been sleeping there all night anyway. Instead, I located Janet’s blond hair in the dark and slipped alongside her curled form. I snuggled up enough to steal a corner of her pillow. Only four months pregnant, she described herself as “still disgustingly slim, compared to most of my patients.”

“Did you take out the dog?” she murmured.

“Yes.”

“Did you lock up?”

“Yes.”

I was thinking my day was finally done, but Janet partially rolled toward me and flopped her arm onto my face.

“Kitzle me.”

Roughly translated,
kitzle
means I’m to stroke her arm.

“I’m tired. Woof.”

“And I’m carrying your child!”

I kitzled.

* * * *

I awoke at six to the sounds of my wife barfing in the bathroom.

“Can I help?”

“Yeah. Next time,
you
get pregnant!”

Muffy found me a little more useful. We made our outdoor tour together, still in the gloom and predawn mist. My head ached from lack of sleep and visions of Kingsly, and that coupled with Bufort’s instructions made me figure this wasn’t the best time to tell Janet about Kingsly’s death.

I once swore that I would never marry a doctor. Two impossible schedules in one relationship would never work, I’d predicted back in medical school, with the dubious certainty I possessed in my early twenties. It took fifteen years before I met and fell in love with Janet to put an end to that myth. Both of us thrived on the demands of medicine, and though we didn’t see each other as often as some other couples might, it was enough for us. I’d tried once to show her an article in one of my journals that had suggested
professional couples needed the distance provided by work so as not to feel smothered, yet still stay close.