Un-Connected (22 page)

We didn’t get an early start the next day but
just after lunch we got to the next nursing home on Deb’s check list.

This next home was a solid older building of
frame and brick fascia construction. The other one probably was a well-disguised
metal building with several elevation details concealing the fact. This one may
have been an old schoolhouse that was converted, but it was solid and very
functional.

The lady we spoke to was the manager and her
name was Ann. She’d been there for over twelve years. We asked her the same
questions we had asked Margaret. She said they had electric locks on the front
door, and people only got in or out when the front desk clerk recognized them
or intended for them to pass through.

They had no trouble getting certifications
from a doctor because they had a clinic they worked with who had a team of
doctors, and one of them was there each day. It sounded like a good system to
us. We asked if other doctors were allowed in, and she said they were. I told
her we had heard about one doctor that we should not use because it seemed his
patients had more problems. She asked if we knew the doctor’s name.

“Dr. Robinson?” I asked.

“I’m sure he isn’t on the list of doctors we
recommend. We like to work with doctors whose patients have a good survival
rate. When a doctor isn’t on our list, there is probably a reason and we don’t
recommend that particular doctor.” She recommended the team clinic and maybe a
few other good ones. She gave us her phone number in case we had more
questions.

Once we were in the Jeep headed home, I
called the first home and asked for Margaret. When she answered, I asked her if
she would verify something for me. She said she would not do anything that
would get her in trouble for slander. She said what it meant to her is she
would not verify anything negative. But she would tell me good things.

“For example, if you told me you were
thinking about hiring a certain doctor, and I know him or her to be a good one,
then I would say we have had a good experience with that doctor. But if you suggest
a doctor who I would not recommend, then I will change the subject, and you
will be free to conclude anything you wanted from that.”

I told her it was fair enough.

“Can you recommend Dr. Robinson?”

“I’m sure the doctor you’re considering to
care for your grandmother will need to be one of the best.  Who is the next
doctor on your list?”

I made up a name, “Dr. Johnson”.

“I don’t know a Dr. Johnson, but I’m sure he’s
a good choice.”

Then after a pause, she asked if she had
given me the information I needed.

“You sure have.”

“Good day then and we hope to see your
grandmother soon,” she said in a cheery voice. And she was gone.

Deb laughed out loud while leaning forward
and slapping one hand on the steering wheel.

“Margaret sure made it clear she would take a
total stranger over Dr. Robinson,” she said. “Given her personal parameters to
never slander, she couldn’t have been clearer.”

After we had a good laugh at the deftness exhibited
by Margaret, I had to make good on supper. But I got to eat with the prettiest
girl in town.

Once we were on our way, I asked Deb to drive
again so I could call Jim and not cause a wreck. She liked to drive anyway, so
we were kind of into that pattern.

Jim answered, and I told him what I had found
out.

“I intend to make an appointment with Dr.
Robinson unless you talk me out of it. Since we don’t know what’s going on,
more information couldn’t hurt.”

Jim agreed and said he had talked to a few FBI
guys in Phoenix, but feeling them out over the phone wasn’t easy, and he hadn’t
talked to anyone he was sure of. He would continue to work on it. Before we
hung up, he told me we’d done impressive work.

“You’re asking the right questions of the
right people. You two have the instinct for detective work, which was hard to
teach someone who didn’t already have it.”

I thanked him, and we were home.

We had a home. It sounded so good, so normal,
and so restful. We watched TV and read until we were getting sleepy and went to
bed. Snuggling her was good for the soul.

The next day I called to make an appointment
with Dr. Robinson. He answered the phone, and I told him my grandmother was
getting too frail to live by herself. We wanted to see if he were a good fit
for her. He was only taking patients referred to him from a few sources, but he
thanked us for the call and hung up. So he wasn’t taking new people like my
grandmother. Maybe it was because she had a family.  We hadn’t told him she had
money or not.

So we borrowed a phone from one of Otis’s
nieces, and Deb called Dr. Robinson. She said she was a nurse, and a lady she
had been caring for was getting too feeble to live at home. She had no family
but did own her own house and seemed to have plenty of money to pay for
whatever she needed. She was looking for a doctor to turn her over to who would
recommend a nursing home or assisted-living facility and then take care of her.
Deb had too many patients and didn’t have time to see her once she moved.

Dr. Robinson all but slobbered on Deb over
the phone. He said he’d be delighted to take over her care. Deb told him she’d
send an email with the lady’s name, address, and phone number, and he could
take over from there.

When we told Jim, he about had a dancing fit.
He was sure we were on to something. He asked how we would feel about him
coming to Phoenix for a few days. We said we would rather he came to Phoenix than
we go to Washington.

“See you in the morning,” he said.

We decided to go back by the truck stop to see
if anything was going on there. It was quiet, boarded up, and really sad
looking. We drove around back and began to look around for ideas about where to
put the store. I told Deb it would be nice to not have to move the pumps and
especially the ones with underground tanks. She agreed with that, but she didn’t
have a solution either.

We went driving out on the land in four-wheel
drive and bouncing around. Deb screamed and laughed. She was still driving, so
she couldn’t blame anything on me. We drove past the yellow target sign and
kept going. We agreed we didn’t want to be downrange from the sign, so we
veered off a little more toward the mountains. About two miles in, we came up
to a rise in what was otherwise mostly flat land until you got to the mountains.
There the land rose with an angle of 30 percent and then to 45 percent or more
as you got higher.

The mountains were almost like a row of
icicles turned upside down and sticking up into the air off a flat table. The
rise we found was not very high. Maybe it was five feet higher than the rest of
the flat land, but sitting on top of it, we could see quite a bit farther. Standing
up in the Jeep, we had a good long view. We liked it and believed we found our
land. We got out Deb’s GPS and got the coordinates written down.

We decided ice cream was in order and headed
for town and then home. She patted me on the bottom while walking into the
house and then said something smart aleck.

I told her that mouth would get her in
trouble. I chased her around with her screaming and throwing pillows and
anything she could find, which wasn’t too hard. She made a mess but to no
avail. I got her cornered.

We agreed to get up early in the morning and
head for Phoenix. We could get a good breakfast en route, and then depending on
whether or not we heard from Jim, we could go by another nursing home.

The next morning at breakfast, we heard from
Jim. He would be arriving in about an hour and wanted to know if we could pick
him up.

We said we might be a little late but would
get there as soon as we could.

He would be going to baggage claim, so it
would be about right.

It was good to see him again. I was beginning
to be excited about finally connecting enough dots that we knew what was going
on and could begin to sort out the perpetrator of my discomfort.

Jim was excited about our research on Dr.
Robinson especially and thought we should focus on him. “I have done some
background on him and found some conflicting information that might or might
not mean he was covering up something.”

Jim had Dr. Robinson’s office number and
address. Jim called there to say he was following up on the lady who Deb had
talked about. He said Deb worked for him.

“Deb is ready to turn her over to you,” Jim
said. “But I need to know for sure if you’ll be taking her case before I pull
Deb off her care. We as a nursing care provider have a form we need to be
filled out. I’ll be passing by your office sometime today and wanted to know if
I could make about a two-minute appointment to run in and get a signature
confirming acceptance of her care.”

The doctor would wait on them before making
his rounds as he was currently in the office. He said he was very happy to take
over her care.

We agreed that Jim and Deb would go in, and I
would stay with the car.

When they returned Deb said, “Yuk. That man
is as slimy and crooked as a snake. He was
so
willing to take over my
client. He made me sick. It was like I was turning my friend over to a serial
killer for safekeeping.”

“We have a criminal of some kind here, I’m sure,”
Jim said. He called into the Phoenix office. He had told them he was coming to
work on a case and would be in touch.

Now he needed someone in the office to help
him and asked if someone was available.

A guy we’ll call Marty got on the phone and
said he’d been told to help Agent Jim if he could. Jim told Marty he was very
glad to meet him on the phone and would like to drop in today or tomorrow to
meet him in person.

Jim then asked how much time he had to assist,
and Marty believed he would be full time if Jim needed him for at least the
next few days. Jim was glad to hear that and said that he needed to find out as
much as possible about Dr. Robinson and especially the death certificates he
had signed in the last year.

Marty said he was on it and got Jim’s phone
number saying he would call as soon as he had anything significant.

We took Jim to a couple of nursing and
assisted-living homes. Jim and Deb went in and asked the questions I asked at
one place while Jim and I went in to the other together. We got some good
information at both places. One did not know of Dr. Robinson and one did. Jim
asked the one that knew the doctor if they were recommending patients to him.
Their answer was emphatic. “That would not happen.” He was not on their
approved list. Jim asked for a copy of their approved list, but they weren’t
allowed to give it out.

We were building a case, and it wasn’t
looking pretty. I asked Jim how he was sure this doctor was linked to what was
going on in Fairfax. He said the results were nearly exactly the same. The
methods varied a little depending on the doctors and the state laws where the
incidents happened.

Just after Jim walked out of the second home,
he got a call from Marty. Dr. Robinson had signed the death certificates of
over 195 patients in the last twelve months that he had found so far. He still
had searches running, but he had started to analyze the certificates. A number
of them had been in stable condition with little wrong with them except age. They
had suddenly turned for the worse and passed away. In addition, with few
exceptions they had no next of kin. Several of them had told the nurses they
weren’t supposed to be there, and they wanted to go home. That part wasn’t so
uncommon.

What was odd was most of the patients of
other doctors would have a few weeks of declining health with one significant
health issue that killed them. Dr. Robinson’s didn’t. His were reported more or
less stable, and then they died unexpectedly. Also he found out that the
average stay between check-in and death was about six months.

Jim told us that their national stats showed
on average a person will get sick and die in about thirty days from the illness
that kills them. For some it’s longer and some shorter, but the average is just
about thirty days.

Jim gave Marty a verbal attaboy, saying good
job.

 “OK, we have elderly people without
relatives dying.” Jim went on. “Their estates are being raided, so the proceeds
don’t go to the charity or wherever else they selected. Instead, the IRS or
someone working for them or impersonating them is taking the money. There’s a
lot we don’t know. Are the patients dying prematurely? Are they being killed? Is
this primarily fraud or is murder involved? Based on what happened in Fairfax
and a few other places, my guess is that murder is frequently involved.”

“It appears that the most common scenario was
to get the person out of their home for about six months. Confiscate all their
stuff and sell their house. Once there is no more money to be had, then the
patient unexpectedly dies.” I said.

“It sounds right to me.” Jim agreed. “Or they
just disappear.  In some cases they are in their house one day and the next day
they are gone.  No one sees them leave.  Then movers take their stuff and then
their houses sell.  Once all that was done the person has a certificate of
death made out and recorded at the county courthouse.  In a few cases no one
had seen them in almost a year so they were probably dead about the time they
disappeared.  But either way their estates are raided and nothing is left.”