Natural Causes (55 page)

Step one: Read over as much information as you can lay your hands on about the subject. Step two: Inspect every millimeter of the skin.

Nikki used the foot-activated dictation system as she went.

“There is a well-healed three-inch scar in the right lower abdominal quadrant, possibly from an appendectomy; a ten-inch scar less than a year old down the mid-anterior chest; a ten-inch scar of about the same age on the inner right thigh, probably from harvesting a vein for his bypass; and a well-healed two-inch scar just below the left patella, probably from the repair of a laceration many years ago.

“There is a single contusion just above and behind the right ear, with discoloration and some swelling but no depression of the bone beneath. There is a nickel-size abrasion just beneath the right mandible that—”

Nikki peered at the innocent-looking scrape. It was the only place on Belanger’s waterlogged body where skin was actually scraped off. She put on a pair of magnifying goggles and illuminated the area with a gooseneck lamp. The abrasion was actually a perfect hexagon. And in the center of the shape were ten tiny bruises perfectly forming the letter
H
. She photographed the area, then proceeded with her meticulous examination.

Process is everything
.

An hour later she had accomplished two major things. She had in fact managed temporarily to drive her concerns for Kathy Wilson from her mind, and she had come within one final step of proving that Roger Belanger had been murdered. She stripped off her gloves, grabbed the Boston Yellow Pages, and made a call. Minutes later she paged Brad Cummings.

“Jesus,” he said, the dishes clinking in the background, “this pager goes off so infrequently, it scared the heck out of me.”

“You almost done?”

“We were just waiting for our flans.”

Nikki didn’t want to go anywhere near who “we” was.

“I need you to pick something up for me and come back to the office, Brad.”

“But—”

“No buts, no flans. Just go to Mulvaney’s Pool and Patio on Route nine, right after the mall. You know where that is?”

“Yes.”

“They’ll have a package waiting in your name. Eleven ninety-five plus tax. I’ll pay you back. Hurry.”

For the next forty-five minutes Nikki finished collecting her specimens and waited. Inexorably her concerns for her friend reemerged. The two of them had met almost three years ago at a folk club in Cambridge. Nikki had been a classical violinist from age three, when her father enrolled her in a Suzuki method class. She played in chamber music groups right through college and medical school when time allowed, and was reasonably satisfied with what she got from her music—that
was, until she heard Kathy Wilson and the Lost Bluegrass Ramblers play. Kathy sang lead and played strings—mandolin, guitar, and basis—with astounding deftness and heart.

Nikki had heard bluegrass before, but in truth she had never paid much attention to it. That night the Ramblers, and Kathy in particular, brought her an exhilaration that had long ago vanished from the music she played and listened to. After the performance she waited by the dressing room door.

“I don’t collect autographs,” she said once Kathy had emerged, “but I wanted to tell you that I love your voice and your energy.”

“Jes’ doin’ what comes naturally. You play the fiddle professionally?”

“Hardly. How did you—”

“You’ve got a fiddler’s mark right there under your jaw.”

Nikki knew the reddish-brown mark and the small lump beneath it caused by long-term pressure from her violin’s chin rest.

“It became permanent sometime during college,” she said. “I play mostly chamber music.”

“Eyes and necks, that’s how I judge a person. Eyes and necks. An’ yours tell me you care a lot about people an’ about music.”

Half an hour later Nikki was drinking beer with the band and sharing intimate details with Kathy of her laughable lack of judgment when it came to choosing men. A week after that, Kathy gave her a lesson in bluegrass. Over the two years that followed, Nikki developed into a reasonably proficient bluegrass musician, good
enough to sit in with the group when they weren’t touring.

“Girl, you’re capable of hittin’ on all cylinders when you put your mind and soul to it,” Kathy said. “But you gotta learn how to shut out the extraneous—especially all them folks who want a piece of you. Do that an’ you’ll feel your feet start floatin’ off the ground when you play.”

From day one, being around Kathy was an adventure in spontaneity. Nikki had friends—close, good friends—from college and before, and two from medical school. But from their earliest times together, often talking and giggling from the end of a show until breakfast, Kathy and she were sisters.

“I’ve had it with men,” Kathy moaned after she and her bassist boyfriend had broken up for the third and last time. “Pass the beer nuts is all they’re about.”

“That and apologizing for leaving the toilet seat up again.”

“But only after you’ve gone for another unexpected dip.”

The night of that conversation, a year ago, they decided Kathy would move into Nikki’s second-floor flat in South Boston. The deal was one quarter rent and utilities for Kathy plus weekly lessons for Nikki. Kathy had been religious about giving them, too, when she and the band weren’t on tour. She was a treasure, absolutely irrepressible and in love with life in general and her music in particular. Not at all shy about grading every man Nikki dated, she once told a lawyer he simply wasn’t interested enough in anything but himself and his BMW to have designs on her friend. They were in a gritty club, one of Kathy and Nikki’s favorites, and the man was fidgeting
uncomfortably as if battling the desire to wash down the furniture and probably some of the patrons as well. Often outspoken when she was sober, Kathy had consumed, perhaps, a beer or so too many.

“Give it up, councillor,” she said suddenly as Nikki sat watching in stunned silence. “I know this woman here’s beautiful, an’ I know she’s smart, an’ I know she’d look great at your office Christmas party, to say nothin’ of in your bed. But I am the guardian of her chastity, and I’m tellin’ you what she’s too damn nice to say: There ain’t no set of car keys you can produce is gonna get her to where you want her to be.”

Not highly educated in any traditional book sense, Kathy was a patient listener, wildly funny when she wanted to be, and always philosophical in an earthy, homespun way. The perfect roommate—at least until the mood swings began.

It might have been four or five months ago that the sleeplessness started. Two, three, four in the morning, she would be pacing the apartment or walking the streets. Then a day or two or even three would go by without her coming back to the apartment at all. Soon after, her meltdowns began at home and with the band—rages that could be neither predicted nor controlled. Nikki begged her to see a doctor and even arranged for several appointments, none of which Kathy kept.

Finally, maybe six or seven weeks ago, odd lumps began appearing on Kathy’s face—the first two just above her eyebrows, then one by her ear and another on her cheek. She wouldn’t let Nikki touch them or even talk about them, until ten days ago. In a rare, totally lucid moment, she sank onto a chair in the kitchen, buried her face in her hands, and sobbed.

“Nikki, what’s happening to me?… Where has my mind gone?… Where has my music gone?… Why are they doing this to me?”

Her sobbing became uncontrollable. Nikki held her tightly and felt the fear and confusion in her body. Beneath her hair she could feel more lumps—solid rather than cystic, slightly movable, not tender that she could tell. Lymph nodes? Some weird kind of firm cyst? Neurofibromas? It was impossible to tell. Nikki begged her to come with her to the ER. Finally Kathy agreed to see Nikki’s doctor the next day. But at the appointment time she was nowhere to be found. She came back to the apartment once more that Nikki knew of, then vanished again.

“Nikki, how are you doing?”

Dr. Josef Keller had entered the autopsy suite and now stood beside the bloated corpse of Roger Belanger. Nikki had covered the open thoracic and abdominal cavities with moist towels. Keller, a German Jew whose family had fled the Holocaust, was a year or two from retirement but still vibrant, curious, and energetic. Still, the strain of overseeing a department responsible for the evaluation of more than 50,000 deaths statewide each year was taking its toll. He limped from arthritis in his hip and had a back condition that made it painful to bend over the cadavers for long.

“I’m glad you’re here,” Nikki said. “This is an interesting case.”

“I thought this man had a coronary,” Keller replied, with still the hint of an accent.

“Well, I think he was murdered.”

“Murdered? Have you been watching reruns of that pathologist show—um, what was his name?”

“Quincy. Nope. I may be wrong, but here, look at this.”

First Nikki showed him the bizarre abrasion beneath Belanger’s chin.

“A ring?” Keller asked, immediately on top of things as usual.

“I think so.”

“With diamond studs forming the initial.”

“Exactly. There’s more.”

Nikki handed over the otoscope—the tool used by physicians to examine the ear canal and drum. More often than not, she had found residents and even board-certified pathologists omitting this part of the postmortem exam.
Process
.

Keller took his time, murmuring to himself as he examined Belanger’s ears by turning the large, violet head from one side to the other and back and inserting the otoscope into the external ear canal.

“Ruptured, with flakes of dried blood,” he said finally. “Both eardrums were ruptured shortly before his death.”

“I haven’t been to see his Jacuzzi,” Nikki said, “but I would bet it isn’t at least five feet deep.”

Five feet—the minimum depth where the pressure on the drums, if not equalized, could cause rupture.

“You are postulating that this man did not drown in his tub?”

“I am. I think he drowned all right, but I think someone he was swimming with—someone with the initial
H
on his ring in diamond studs—dragged him underwater by the throat, maybe to the bottom of a pool, and then brought him home and put him in the tub.”

“An argument?”

“Perhaps.”

“And the water in his lungs and stomach?”

“I’m waiting for—”

“Home is the hunter, home from the kill. Oh, hi, Joe.”

“It’s home from the
hill
, Brad,” Nikki said. “Did you pick up the package?”

“I did. What do you need chlorine test strips for?”

“I think your ‘tubber,’ as you so quaintly put it, actually drowned in a pool.”

“But then, how did … murdered?”

“You are exceedingly sharp,” Nikki said. “No wonder they named you Brad.”

She dipped one of the strips into the water in Belanger’s stomach. In seconds the tiny indicator square had turned faint purple.

“I am most impressed,” Keller said. “I shall call our friends at the stationhouse and let them know. This is quite fascinating … quite fascinating indeed.”

He limped back to his office.

“Good thing I insisted you do a full autopsy on this guy,” Brad said.

Nikki glared at the man but honestly couldn’t tell if he was being serious. The overhead speaker kept her from finding out.

“Dr. Solari, are you still in there?”

“Yes, Ruth, I’m here.”

“There’s an outside call for you. I’m going to transfer it.”

Seconds later the wall phone rang. Brad held his ground as she passed, forcing her to squeeze between him and Belanger’s autopsy table.

“Grow up,” she said as she passed.

“She digs me,” Brad said.

This time Nikki ignored him.

“Pathology, this is Dr. Solari.”

“Nikki?”

Nikki felt her heart stop.

“Kath, where are you, honey? Are you all right?”

Kathy Wilson’s voice was that of a small child.

“Nikki, I’m so cold.… They’re after me and I’m so cold.”

There were traffic noises in the background, now a car horn. She was calling from a pay phone.

“Kathy, stay calm. I’m going to help you. You’re going to be all right.”

“Why are they trying to kill me, Nik?… Why am I so cold?”

“Hey, what gives?” Brad Cummings asked.

Nikki snapped a finger against her lips, then waved him out of the room.

“Get out,” she mouthed.

“Okay, okay. You know, you’re really very touchy today. You must be having your—”

“Out!” This time she shouted the word. Pouting theatrically Cummings left. “Kathy, listen, just tell me where you are and I’ll come right over and get you.… Kath?”

“You’re just like all the others, Nikki. You want my music to stop.… Is that why they’re after me? Because they want my music to stop?”

Her singsong voice was haunting and vague. Nikki imagined her on some street corner, huddled at a pay-phone kiosk in the pouring rain. She cast about for some way to alert the police and maybe have this call traced.

“Kathy,” she tried, “look around and tell me what you see.”

“Nikki … Nikki … Nikki. You sent them, didn’t you? You sent them to silence my music. I’ll get you for this, Nikki. I’ll get you if it’s the last thing I do.”

“I love you, Kathy. You’re my friend. I would never do anything to hurt you. In your heart you know that. Honey, you’re not thinking clearly right now. You’ve got to come home. Let me help you.”

“Help … me …”

There was a prolonged silence, then nothing.

“Kathy?”

Nikki waited for thirty seconds before slowly setting the receiver in its cradle. Then, making no attempt to deal with the cadaver of Roger Belanger, she burst into tears and raced from the room.