Likely to Die (16 page)

 Don’t even think about using my family as a way to get to me, you schmuck. “Very much, Mr. Dietrich, thanks.”

 “Be sure to give him my regards. I’d love to get him back up to New York to lecture to our students and do some consulting with our cardiology department.”

 “Well,” I said, gripping my folder with both hands, “you come up with an interesting aortic regurgitation to study and I’ll have him on the next plane. Now, Mr. Dietrich, if you’ll excuse—”

 “It’s Bill, Alex. Just call me Bill.”

 “I’m going to ask you to step back outside while Detective Chapman and I get to work.”

 “I’m counting on you to keep me informed, Alexandra. I think you know better than anyone here what it’s like in a great hospital like ours. There are too many lives at stake for me to be hearing about these things on the eleven o’clock news with the rest of New York.”

 “We’ll do the best we can, Mr. Dietrich,” I said as I pulled away from him and returned to Peterson’s office.

 Mike closed the door and I sat at the desk to look over his notes. “Dietrich came here with his boys—the two witnesses. Tried to lawyer up but the guy who represents the hospital was on his third martini before dinner. Told him to just go ahead and cooperate with the police.

 “The two you want to talk with are across the hall. Losenti made the mistake of interviewing them together. I’ve got them separated so we can speak with them one at a time.”

 “Who’ve we got?”

 “John DuPre. Male, black, forty-two years old. Married, two kids. He’s a neurologist. Howard University, Tulane med school, residency down South. Opened a private practice in Manhattan two years ago and he’s been affiliated here ever since. The other one is Coleman Harper. Male, white, forty-four. Divorced with no children. Also a neurologist. Vanderbilt undergrad and med school. Practiced for a while. Now he’s here as a ‘fellow.’ ”

 “What does that mean?”

 “You’ll have to ask him. I didn’t get that far. He’s one of the guys Spector—the neurosurgeon—pulled out of the gallery to assist on the operation when Dogen didn’t show up. And the patient’s doing just fine.”

 “Who do you want to start with?”

 “I’ll go get DuPre.”

 Chapman returned a couple of minutes later with Dr. John DuPre. I stood up to greet him and he extended a hand as I looked him over. He was eight years older and a few inches taller than I, with shortcropped hair, a mustache, wire-rimmed glasses, and a trim physique. He was dressed in a sports jacket and navy slacks and had the same earnest expression on his face that most people sucked into a murder investigation present to their interrogators during the early rounds of questioning.

 “I know it’s been a long day for you, Dr. DuPre. Detective Chapman and I would like to have you go over your story once more if you don’t mind.”

 “If it will help, I don’t mind at all. Seems like I’ve been doing it all evening.

 “I arrived at the medical college in the middle of the afternoon. My private office, where I see most of my patients, is on Central Park West. I came over to Minuit to use the medical library. That’s on the sixth floor, where, uh, where Gemma’s office is. Or was.

 “The library was pretty busy—it usually is in the late afternoons. I got into a discussion with several of my colleagues about a case that Dr. Spector is working on.”

 “Bob Spector? The neurosurgeon who had asked Dogen to assist the morning she was killed?”

 “Exactly. Spector’s doing some very important research on Huntington’s disease. Do y’all know what that is?”

 DuPre cocked his head and looked up at us, his soft southern drawl framing the question.

 “Only that it’s a hereditary illness, no known treatment.”

 “That’s right, Miss Cooper. It’s a disturbance of the central nervous system and it’s characterized by progressive intellectual deterioration and involuntary motor movements. Spector’s devoted a lot of attention to the disease, and, well, he’s the big cheese around here so—”

 “Dogen was the chief though, wasn’t she?” Chapman asked.

 “Yes, but rumor had it that she was moving back to England at the end of this academic semester. So quite frankly,” DuPre said, pulling one side of his mouth up into a smile, “a lot of us have figured that Spector’s ass is the one to kiss. Forgive my bluntness, Miss Cooper. A lot of us have been trying to hitch our wagons to Bob Spector. I think he’ll be our next chief.”

 “What kind of relationship did you have with Gemma Dogen?”

 “The ice maiden? A very distant one. Mind y’all, we got along fine when we had to. But I didn’t know her very well and—I know you’ll hear this from other people—she really didn’t have very much use for me.”

 “Because?”

 “No idea, no idea at all. I don’t want to play the race card, as y’all say. Could just as easily have been that she was a snob—didn’t think it worth her time to talk to me because I wasn’t a surgeon. She kept to herself quite a bit. Every now and then I’d catch up and run with her in the morning—we both jogged on the walkway along the river—but I think she was happiest when she was alone.”

 “Were you one of the doctors who assisted Spector in place of Gemma Dogen the morning she was killed?”

 “No, no. I don’t know anything about that, detective. I wasn’t even in the hospital Wednesday morning. As a neurologist, I can’t do surgical procedures, y’see. I can treat patients with brain disease, but not in the operating room.”

 “What prompted you to go down to the radiology department when you did, doctor?”

 “It wasn’t my idea, actually. The credit goes to Dr. Harper, Coleman Harper. Spector had some X rays done of a patient with Huntington’s that he’s been following for several years. We were talking about the project and Coleman suggested that he and I go down to look, to compare them to the set taken last year.

 “We got down to the second floor. Quite surprised to find the door to the room unlocked. But, then, you know the problem we have here with security. It’s not unique to us, mind you. I’ve seen it at all the large medical centers. I even remember hearing about a murder like this one at Bellevue before I ever came up here to New York.”

 “What happened, I mean,exactly what happened when you went into the room?”

 “The gentleman you’ve got in custody, he was just curled up on the floor sound asleep. Coleman had flipped the light switch on and there he was. You couldn’t help but notice the stains on his pants. I knew it was blood. I told Coleman to go out and call someone immediately, that I’d wait to make sure the guy didn’t go anywhere.”

 “Did you wake him?”

 “Not ‘til Coleman got back. I mean, I couldn’t see any weapon, but I couldn’t be sure he wasn’t sitting on top of it. We just sort of nudged him with our feet. Opened his eyes and started mumbling. Just kept saying, ’Sorry. Sorry.‘ I have absolutelyno idea whether he was talking about bein’ sorry about bein‘ somewhere he wasn’t supposed to be, or for what he did to Gemma.”

 “Then?”

 “Then the detective we beeped was over there in less than ten minutes. Took the gentleman away with him.”

 Chapman asked DuPre a few more questions while I recorded some details on my pad. We thanked him and asked him to stick with us a bit longer while we spoke to other witnesses, reminding him not to discuss his statement with anyone else.

 Peterson ushered him out of the room and Chapman went to get Coleman Harper.

 Dr. Harper was still in a white lab coat when he walked into the office more than three hours after he had been brought from the hospital to the station house to retell the story of the discovery he and DuPre had made. He was a little shorter than DuPre—about my height—with flecks of premature gray in his dark brown hair. He was stocky and solidly built, and his left leg jiggled nervously as he sat in the chair opposite me at the desk.

 We shook hands as I explained to him why I needed to question him and told him to relax.

 “It’s really weird, Miss Cooper. I’ve never been involved in anything like this before. Where do I start?”

 “Don’t worry. Most witnesses we meet have never been through anything like this. Mike and I have some questions to ask you.”

 Chapman started with the usual background information. He got Harper talking about himself and his credentials.

 “I first affiliated with Mid-Manhattan about ten years ago. But I left, it was a year or so after Dr. Dogen arrived here, so I wasn’t around for much of her tenure. I moved back down to Nashville, where my wife’s family lived, to continue my neurological practice there.

 “Then, when my marriage broke up, I just thought it was time to try to come back to a great teaching hospital and do some of the things I’ve always wanted to do. I’ve been here since last September.”

 “And you’re here on a fellowship?” I asked, looking at Chapman’s briefing notes.

 “Well, yes. It’s a bit of a trade-off, actually, but once my wife left me I decided to try and do things that would makeme happy for a change. I’ve always been interested in neurosurgery. So I took a healthy pay cut for this position—I’m a little older than most of the men and women in the program—but the upside is now I can assist in the operating room. I may actually go ahead and try to get into a neurosurgical program here. Something I should have done a long time ago.”

 I exchanged glances with Chapman and looked down at Harper’s twitching leg. I assumed Mike was thinking like I was and was thankful he didn’t make a crack about how steady Harper’s hands must be for brain surgery. A friendly interview with the local constabulary and the doctor was completely aflutter. It was the kind of effect Mike and I had on lots of people.

 “So you were in the OR when Dr. Dogen was a no-show yesterday morning, am I right?”

 “Yes, yes, I was. Dr. Spector was doing a procedure on a stroke victim. The patient had suffered a stroke on the right side of his brain, actually. I try to watch Spector whenever I can. He’s really a genius.”

 “And he picked you out of the crowd to assist?”

 “Yes, well, so to speak. There were only a dozen or so of us present and only a smaller handful who’d even worked with him on this kind of thing before. It’s quite an honor.”

 “With a good result for the patient, we understand.”

 “Not quite out of the woods yet but looking pretty safe at this point.”

 “Are you involved in this Huntington’s disease program with Spector as well?”

 “Not officially. But I’m certainly counting on his support to get into the neurosurgical program. And, of course, my years of experience as a neurologist have given me an opportunity to study the disorder. You could certainly say I’m following his work closely.”

 “So how did you come to be with Dr. DuPre this evening?”

 “I had gone to the library to find a volume I needed. When I got there, a bunch of my colleagues were talking about Spector’s new X rays of a patient he’s been studying and DuPre suggested we go take a look. The X rays were mounted down in radiology. I wanted to wait and finish my research but—”

 “Excuse me,” I interrupted, “but whose idea was it?”

 “John DuPre. He told me he couldn’t wait for me because he had to get home for dinner and asked me to go along with him right then.”

 Great. Half an hour into the case and I’ve already got conflicting facts, just on the minor stuff. DuPre says it was Harper’s idea to go to radiology, Harper says DuPre pushed him to do it.

 Inconsistencies, Rod Squires used to lecture me in our training sessions, the hallmarks of truth. A pain in the ass, if you asked me. It’s natural for different people to see the same events from different perspectives, we were encouraged to believe, but it sure could foul up a good case.

 “Okay, so Dr. DuPre and you went to the second floor—then what happened?”

 Harper’s version dovetailed with DuPre’s from that point on. “I mean, once I saw the blood I thought immediately of Gemma. Has he admitted anything yet?”

 “Let me askyou, Dr. Harper, did you hear him say anything about Dr. Dogen or the assault?”

 “No, he barely spoke in my presence. But I ran down the hall to use the telephone. He wasn’t making much sense between the time I got back to him and the time your detective got there. Man seems unstable to me.”

 “Did you know Dr. Dogen well?”

 “Depends on what you mean by that. She wasn’t an easy—”

 Lieutenant Peterson opened the door. “Excuse me, Alex. Sarah’s here, and I think we’re almost ready to go with some stand-ins. And keep away from the windows in the squad room. Somebody’s flapping his mouth to the press. You got a couple of camera crews setting up in front of the building and if they could get a shot of you up here I’m sure they’d love it.”

 “Thanks, Dr. Harper. Sorry to interrupt you. Would you mind waiting across the hall again? We’ll try to get back to you as soon as we finish up some of this other business.”

 “Have a slice of pizza, Doc,” Chapman said as he got to his feet and gave Coleman Harper a slap on the back. “We got some homeless guys watching the ball game inside who could use a good checkup. Maybe you and Dr. DuPre could make yourselves useful.”

 12

 WHAT DO YOU WANT ME TO DO?“ SARAHasked, already set up at a desk with her laptop computer.

 “Try cranking out a couple of warrants for those two shopping carts. One of them belongs to Pops, the other one to a friend of his. See if Ramirez and Losenti can help you with the probable cause—they know a lot more about the facts than I do at this point. Peterson wants to run some lineups, and I may need help interviewing a couple of the witnesses if they make IDs. Pace yourself, please, will you?”

 I left her in the squad room and walked down the hallway to the lineup cubicle. Wallace and Chapman were trying to arrange Pops and the five fillers in positions for the viewing. Jerry McCabe was handing each of them a clean, V-necked surgical blouse so all of their clothing would be similar.

 Pops had been relieved of the bloody pants and was sitting in the fourth chair from the door holding a placard with his number printed on it and talking to himself.

 “No good, Jerry,” I said as I scanned the pack. “The two closest to me look much too young.”