Victims (17 page)

“Don’t know, yet.”

“Well,” said Brian Cohn. “I’d sure look into that possibility.”

As we drove away from Leventhal’s building, Milo said, “Another tough personality, shades of Vita. Without Quigg stuck between the two of them I’d say we had ourselves a nice little pattern: women with short fuses.”

“Be interesting to see if Glenda’s co-workers saw her that way.”

“Interesting would be okay,” he said. “Intriguing would be better.”

CHAPTER
21

N
orth Hollywood Day Hospital was an off-white sugar cube on a marginal block of Lankershim Boulevard. Windows were barred. A bearish uniformed guard lurked near the front door, smoking.

Bordering the building were storefront offices catering to personal injury lawyers, physicians and chiropractors specializing in “Industrial Rehabilitation,” and medical equipment suppliers. The largest concern, double-wide and neon-lit, advertised walk-in occupational and physical therapy.

Welcome to Slip-and-Fall Heaven.

Milo said, “Lordy, my sacroiliac is a-throbbin’,” as he pulled into a loading zone and left a long-expired crime scene parking card on the dash.

The guard studied our approach above a smog-burst of tobacco. When we got close, he stepped in front of the door and folded his arms across his chest.

Milo said, “You’re kidding.”

“Huh?”

“A pro like you can’t sniff out a big clue?”

“Wuh clue?”

“We ain’t selling catheters, Marshal Dillon.” Out came the badge. The guard shifted just wide enough to clear the entry.

“Fast learner,” said Milo and we strode past him.

The waiting area was bright, stuffy, standing room only. Despair vied with boredom for the dominant emotion. Wheelchairs, walkers, oxygen tanks abounded. Anyone who seemed physically okay looked psychologically stricken. All the joy of death row.

The queue at the reception window was a dozen deep. Milo pushed past and rapped his knuckles on the glass. The woman on the other side kept clicking computer keys.

He rapped again.

Her eyes remained on her keyboard.

Third time’s the charm. She snapped, “Just hold on!” A speaker box transformed her voice into something metallic and unwelcoming. Or maybe that was just her.

Milo banged hard enough to vibrate the glass and the receptionist wheeled, teeth bared, ready to confront. The badge silenced her and she took it out on a button under her desktop, stabbing viciously. A door on the far side of the waiting room gave off a loud
click
.

Someone said, “How come he gets to jump?”

Milo said, “Because I’m handsome.”

Another large but soft guard waited on the other side. Behind him was a beige corridor lined with doors the same color. Identical hue, also, for the vinyl flooring and the plastic signs directing the infirm toward Exam 1, Exam 2 … Ecru faces on the patients, as well. Welcome to Planet Bread Dough.

“Police, what for?” said the guard.

“I need to talk to Dr. Glenda Usfel-Parnell’s boss.”

The guard’s lips moved as he tried to get his mouth around the hyphenation.

Milo said, “Get me the head of nuclear medicine.”

The guard reached into his pocket and drew out a wilted piece of paper. “Um … that’s … Usfel, G.”

“Not anymore. Who’s her boss?”

“I dunno.”

“How long you been working here?”

“Three weeks tomorrow.”

“You know Dr. Usfel?”

“You don’t hardly see the doctors, they go in and out through there.” Pointing to a door at the end of the hallway.

“Who’s the big boss?”

“That would be Mr. Ostrovine.”

“That would be who you go find.”

The man who burst through the rear door wore a too-snug gray suit of ambiguous cloth, a blue shirt with a high, stiff collar, and a pink paisley tie that had never gone near a silkworm. With better fabrics, the result would’ve been foppish. This screamed
Trying Too Hard
.

The same went for fruity aftershave, a scary tan, and a toupee that landed well short of possible. “Mick Ostrovine. How can I help you?”

“We’re here about Dr. Usfel.”

“What about her?”

“She’s deceased.”

Ostrovine’s spray tan drained to the ambient beige. “Glenda? She worked a double shift yesterday, she was fine, what happened?”

“Someone broke into her home and killed her.”

“Oh my God, that’s insane. Her home? Some kind of home invasion?”

“We’re sorting things out, Mr. Ostrovine.”

A nearby door opened, silent as the gill-slit on a shark. A heavy
woman in scrubs pushed a wheelchair toward us. Her passenger was an ancient man wrapped in a blanket, hairless, blue-veined, slumped, barely conscious.

“Hey, Mr. O,” she said. “Got all them tests run, taking him to the physical therapy for that exercise.”

“Sure, sure,” said Ostrovine.

His abruptness made her blink. As the chair rolled past, another exam room disgorged a burly man brandishing a crutch. The implement was tucked under one arm. He took a couple of unaided steps, saw us, placed his weight on the device, and assumed an exaggerated limp.

“Mr. O,” he said. “Gonna get myself some hydrotherapy.”

“Good, good,” said Ostrovine.

When a third door opened and a twenty-year-old girl came skipping out waving a shiny chromium cane like a cheerleader’s baton, Milo said, “Could we go somewhere to talk?” Nudging me.
You know hospitals, handle this
.

Ostrovine’s office was a beige rectangle that faced the parking lot. The rest of the hospital’s rear section housed orthopedics, nuclear medicine, physical medicine, anesthesiology, radiology.

Not a bed in sight.

I said, “You do outpatient care.”

“We’re adjunctive,” said Ostrovine, settling behind a desk, bare but for a laptop. The room looked unused.

“Meaning …”

“We fill a niche.”

“What’s that?”

Ostrovine sighed. “We’re better equipped than a clinic and more efficiently specialized than a larger institution. We don’t do E.R. so that frees us up for other modes of delivery. Our primary specialty is aftercare: pain management, disability evaluation, lifestyle readjustment.”

“What was Dr. Usfel’s specialty?”

“Glenda ran nuke med. That’s cutting-edge technology assessing how parts of the body are actually working. As opposed to conventional radiology, which is primarily static, nuke uses dyes, radioisotopes to capture ongoing function.”

He shook his head and the toupee shifted downward. He nudged it back in place without a trace of self-consciousness. “Glenda was terrific. This is horrible.”

I said, “How’d she get along with patients and staff?”

“Everyone here gets along.”

“Did she have an easygoing personality?”

Ostrovine’s jaw rotated, settled slightly left of center. “What are you getting at?”

“We’ve heard she could display a bit of temper.”

“I don’t know what you heard but it doesn’t apply to her performance here.”

“So anyone we talk to here is going to tell us she was easygoing.”

He unbuttoned his suit jacket, let out an inch of abdomen, sucked it back in, refastened. “Glenda was businesslike.”

“Efficient but not touchy-feely.”

“She never had a problem with anyone.”

I said, “You can’t think of anyone who’d resent her.”

“I cannot.”

“Who are her friends here?”

He thought. “I suppose she didn’t socialize much on the job. We’re task-oriented, anyway. A lot of our employees are floats.”

“Who’d she work with most closely?”

“That would be her technicians.”

“We’d like to talk to them.”

Ostrovine opened the laptop, typed. “The tech on duty today is Cheryl Wannamaker. She’s fairly new, I doubt she can tell you much.”

“We’ll give her a try, anyway. And please give us the names of the others.”

“What makes you think Glenda’s work had anything to do with what happened to her?”

“We need to look at everything.”

“I suppose,” said Ostrovine, “but in this case you’d be best off looking outside the workplace. We’re low on drama, run a business, not a production company.”

“Insurance business?”

“The business of wellness often involves third-party payment.”

“Do you deal a lot with Well-Start?”

“We deal with everyone.”

“If I give you some names could you check if they’ve been your patients?”

“Impossible,” said Ostrovine. “Confidentiality’s our first commandment.”

“How about checking and if the names aren’t there we won’t have to come back with subpoenas.”

“I’m afraid I can’t do that.”

“I understand. As I’m sure you will when we show up with the appropriate paperwork and all those tasks you’re oriented toward come to a grinding halt.”

Ostrovine flashed oversized dental caps. “Is this really necessary, guys? I’m sure Glenda’s … tragedy had nothing to do with work.”

Milo said, “Maybe you should switch careers and become a detective.”

“Fine, give me those names. But if they are here, I can’t give you details.”

“Vita Berlin.”

Keyboard arpeggio. Sigh of relief. “No. Next.”

“Marlon Quigg.”

“No, again. Now, if there’s nothing more—”

“Dr. Usfel’s techs.”

“Oh,” said Ostrovine. “That. Fine. I’ll call Cheryl for you.”

Cheryl Wannamaker was young, stoic, dreadlocked, with a Jamaican lilt to her speech. We talked to her in the parking lot, near a black Mercedes parked in
M. Ostrovine
’s spot.

The news of Glenda Usfel-Parnell’s death seemed not to impact her immediately. Then her eyes got wet and her chin shook. “Another one.”

“Ma’am?” said Milo.

“Lost my nephew,” she said. “Two weeks ago. Hit by a drunk driver.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“DeJon was twelve.” She wiped her eyes. “Now Dr. U. This world. Dear God.”

“How long did you work with Dr. U?”

“Five weeks.”

“Anyone have a beef with her?”

“Not that I saw.”

“What kind of person was she?”

“She was an okay person,” said Cheryl Wannamaker.

“Friendly?”

“Sure.” She smiled. “Actually, not so much. She was all about let’s get the work done and go home.”

“Not a lot of chitchat.”

“No chitchat at all, sir.”

“That create tension?”

“Not for me,” said Wannamaker. “I don’t like wasting time.”

“What about others?”

“Everything seemed okay.”

“We’ve heard she had a temper.”

“Well,” said Wannamaker, “she kind of did.”

“Who’d she get mad at?”

“Not mad, more like … grumpy. When things got backed up, when people didn’t do what she wanted.”

“How’d she show her grumpiness?”

“She’d get all quiet.” Cheryl Wannamaker licked her lips. “Too quiet, like a kettle gonna overflow.”

“What happened when she overflowed?”

“She never did. She just got that heavy quiet thing going. You’d talk to her, she wouldn’t answer, even though you knew she heard you. So you just guessed what she wanted and hoped it
was
what she wanted.”

“You never saw her go off on anyone?”

“Never,” she said. “But I heard someone went off on her.”

“Who?”

“Some patient,” said Wannamaker. “Before my time, I just heard about it.”

“What’d you hear?”

“Someone lost it in the scan room.”

“Who told you?”

“Margaret,” she said. “Margaret Wheeling, she’s on when I’m off.”

“How long before you arrived did this happen?”

“I couldn’t say.”

“But people were still talking about it when you began work.”

“No, just Margaret. To educate me.”

“About?”

“Dr. U, what she was like. How she could be tough. When the patient went off on her, she didn’t back down, stood right up to him and said, ‘Calm down or leave right now.’ And he did. Margaret was saying we all needed to be assertive like that because you never know what’s going to walk in.”

“Did that patient ever show up again?”

“Couldn’t tell you, sir.”

“Margaret tell you anything else about Dr. Usfel?”

“She said when Doctor gets quiet, give her space.”

“Where can we find Margaret?”

“Right here,” said Cheryl Wannamaker, producing a cell phone. “I have her number.”

Margaret Wheeling lived a quarter hour from her job, in a town house on Laurel Canyon just north of Riverside. She opened the door holding a glass of ice water. Milo gave her the news gently.

She said, “Oh my God.”

“I’m sorry to have to tell you.”

“Dr. U,” she said. “Glenda … come in.”

Rawboned and ruddy with curly gray hair and unadorned yellow-gray eyes, she led us to a living room heavy on golden maple furniture and needlepoint pillows. Toby mugs filled a glass-front cabinet. Another was chocked with souvenir ashtrays with an emphasis on national parks and Nevada casinos. A jowly man sat drowsing on a sofa, sports pages spread on his lap.

“My husband,” said Margaret Wheeling, sounding proud of the fact. She kissed his forehead lightly. “Don, they’re here.”