She was Dying Anyway

by P. D. Workman

  Stanley raised his glass to take a drink, blocking Zachary’s view of his face for a few seconds. He set it down firmly on the table. “I was lucky to get out of there when I did. There were things happening in that family… it was very unhealthy. People… are not always what they seem. Relationships that look healthy from the outside… sometimes they aren’t.”

  Zachary thought about Clarence. He seemed to be at the center of everything. The patriarch set the example for the home. He was the one Rhys had been so attached to. He was the one who had been murdered. If he had been abusive, it would explain Gloria’s rebellious years and Robin choosing an abusive partner. Both behaviors were common patterns in abused children. Had he been physically abusive? Verbally? Sexually?

  “Clarence’s murder was never solved,” Zachary said.

  “No? I didn’t follow it after Robin and I broke up. It’s too bad they never caught the killer.”

  “Did you have any suspicions at the time about how it might have gone down?”

  “No. An unknown intruder. Burglar, they speculated at the time.” Stanley shrugged.

  “You don’t think it was anyone in the family?”

  Stanley just stared at Zachary.

  “The wife is always the prime suspect, isn’t she?” Zachary suggested. “If the family dynamics were toxic… maybe someone decided to take matters into their own hands.”

  “Why don’t you ask the police that? That’s their job, isn’t it?” Stanley picked up his glass, drained the last of the beer, and stood up as he put the glass down. “You want my advice?” he asked, leaning aggressively into Zachary’s personal space. “Get out of this case. Don’t walk; run away. Get as far away from it as possible, because nothing good can come of you sticking your nose into it.”

  Zachary sat there, frozen, for several minutes after Stanley was gone.

  He should have expected the intimidation tactics. Stanley was a big man, used to throwing his weight around. He’d been violent with Robin. If Zachary looked into Stanley’s background, he’d probably find a long line of abused girlfriends.

  Stanley Green would be a dangerous man to cross.

  When Zachary got home, he threw a frozen dinner into the microwave to heat and sat down at the computer to check his email. He’d have to be sure to check his social networks for anything further from Rhys. He didn’t want to push the boy, but he was really hoping that if Rhys had something to say, he’d make contact again.

  Thinking back to the conversation with Stanley, Zachary shuddered. If Clarence had been abusive, then maybe it hadn’t been a chance burglary. Maybe it was just set up to look that way. Was Rhys really so traumatized by his grandfather being killed while he slept? Or had he actually seen what had happened? Vera and Gloria could be lying through their teeth.

  It was even conceivable that Rhys had been the killer himself. Gun accidents happened. It seemed like not a week went by that Zachary didn’t hear some horror story about a two-year-old shooting his mother in the back of the head after taking her gun out of her purse. Something like that was far more likely to cause Rhys’s trauma than just being asleep in his bed. If he hadn’t seen or heard or been a part of what had happened, then why was he so damaged?

  Zachary took a quick glance at his direct messages, but he didn’t have anything there from Rhys. The boy hadn’t posted on his own timeline either. Maybe he’d been grounded from using the computer or had been too busy with homework or extra-curricular activities to check in. Or maybe he was dealing with the emotional fallout of Robin’s death.

  Zachary retrieved his dinner from the microwave before checking his email. Way too many times he just left a dinner in the microwave, completely forgotten, until it started to stink or he opened the microwave to warm something else up. He sat down at the computer and opened his email inbox.

  There was an email from Kenzie with a red flag beside it. Zachary opened the message and scanned it quickly.

  “You’re not answering your phone again. Found something. Call me.”

  His heart started pumping twice as hard and fast. Zachary put his hand on his pocket, but his phone wasn’t there. He looked quickly over his desk and nearly flipped his dinner right off looking under papers for his phone. He jumped up and carried the dinner with him back into the kitchen. There his phone lay on the counter waiting for him. He turned on the screen and saw missed calls and a voicemail from Kenzie. The voicemail would say the same thing as her email. Call me. She wouldn’t tell him in a voicemail what they had found. Zachary stabbed his finger at the screen to call her back, and decided abruptly it was time to sit down. His legs were shaking so badly that if there hadn’t been a kitchen chair right there, he would have ended up sitting on the floor. He put the phone to his ear and waited for Kenzie to answer. It rang through to voicemail. He looked to see which number he had called, and switched to her cell phone instead. It too went to voicemail.

  “Come on,” Zachary urged. “Come on, answer!” He tried the call again, praying she would notice her phone ringing and pick it up. It wasn’t late enough for her to be in bed yet, but she could be having a bath to relax or be out with friends for dinner. She hadn’t asked him to dinner; but then, he hadn’t answered her calls.

  “Zachary.”

  “Kenzie, hi! I’m sorry I missed your call. I was in the middle of an interview. I didn’t even notice it ringing. It was pretty intense…”

  “Well, maybe it doesn’t matter to you what we found out. I mean, the woman is dead, after all.”

  “No, of course it matters. I was continuing my investigation. Bowman told me Dr. Wiltshire was getting a lot of political pressure to close the case. I know he’s not going to do that prematurely, but I want to make sure that I’ve done everything I can to—”

  “You really run off at the mouth when you’re in trouble, did you know that?”

  Zachary closed his mouth and tried to stop giving her excuses. He needed to be businesslike. He wasn’t a fourteen-year-old trying to explain why he didn’t have his homework assignments to hand in yet again. He was a professional. He hadn’t been neglecting the case. He wasn’t sure why Kenzie was so pissed at him, but he was just going to have to deal with that. Like a professional.

  “That’s better,” Kenzie snapped, though she sounded irritated that he had stopped talking. He just couldn’t win. “We had something show up in the labs that may be cause of death.”

  “What kind of thing?”

  “I told you that some of the organs had irregularities that needed to be checked out. We prepared a number of slides of the pancreas, heart, and liver. And of course, we ordered whatever we could think of to test the blood for.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “It isn’t unusual for a cancer patient to have irregular results in their blood tests. Low white blood cell count, red blood cells, platelets, anemia…”

  “Right. And blood sugar. Nurse Betty said that Robin’s blood sugar had been high. That’s why she was getting insulin.”

  “Who’s telling the story here, you or me?” On another day, Kenzie would have said it in a flirtatious, teasing voice. But her cutting tone told Zachary that he was treading on thin ice and had better shut up.

  “Sorry. I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

  “She had diabetes because most of the insulin-producing cells in her pancreas had died,” Kenzie told him.

  “Ouch.”

  “The whole point of chemotherapy is to kill cells. We just want to kill more of the cancer cells and fewer of the body’s healthy cells. It’s a delicate balance.”

  Zachary made an encouraging noise, determined not to interrupt her flow again.

  “So it’s not unusual to cause something like this. It’s one of the risks that patients are warned about. There’s probably a waiver somewhere that Robin had to sign saying that she understood all of the risks.”

  “Right.” Zachary tried to demonstrate that he was listening and fully engaged. “Is that what happened to the liver too?”<
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  “The liver is a really important organ. It performs a lot of functions that we don’t know how to replicate artificially. With other organs, even though they are vital for survival, we can replicate artificially for some time to prolong life. We can pump blood through a bypass machine, clean it with dialysis, inflate the lungs with a respirator. But liver function is very complicated. We can’t replace a liver artificially. Once cancer reaches the liver, the patient’s days are numbered.”

  “Robin’s cancer had gotten into her liver?”

  “No. Dr. Wiltshire knew there was something off with the liver when he examined it, but it wasn’t cancer. There were no masses and the slides didn’t show any cancerous cells.”

  Zachary held his breath, not sure whether he should prompt her to go on, or just wait for it.

  “What the liver showed us was iron overload,” Kenzie finally finished.

  “Iron?”

  “When there is too much iron in the blood, the liver tries to store it. But it can only store so much before it becomes overloaded. The stores of iron damage the liver, and if the iron is not removed from the body quickly enough, it results in death.”

  “How would she get too much iron in her liver? Or her blood? Was that because of her cancer?”

  “No. Cancer often causes anemia, which she had been diagnosed with, but that is too little iron, not too much.”

  “And it’s treated by administering iron?” Zachary guessed.

  “Bingo. It’s going to be harder to figure out if they overdosed her with iron than with insulin. It isn’t controlled the same way. I’m not sure there will be any way for them to tell if she was given the wrong dosage or concentration.”

  Zachary let his breath out in a slow stream. “So it was medical error.”

  “Looks that way.”

  “Was liver failure the cause of death?”

  “Maybe. She also had damage to her heart. Cardiomyopathy was observed. She probably tired quickly with exertion. She may have had chest pain or skipping beats.”

  “She did. I remember that.” It was her roommate, Chenka, who had mentioned chest pain. Surprisingly, her family and the medical staff hadn’t been specific about the kind of pain she was having. “Does that mean she might have had a heart attack?”

  “Hard to tell whether her liver or heart failed first. They were both in bad shape.”

  “What other symptoms would iron overdose have?”

  “Joint pain. Stomach and digestive issues. Bronzing of the skin, but that’s difficult to discern on someone who is already dark-skinned. Diabetes.”

  “The iron caused the diabetes?”

  “Possibly. We can’t really tell whether it was the chemo or the iron. We didn’t find any cancerous cells in the pancreas.”

  Zachary’s brain was churning through the possibilities. “How long does iron take to kill? It must have been given to her before that Wednesday.”

  “Two to five days. That matches up with her chart. There was a significant increase in her pain meds beginning the Monday before she died.”

  “And was the hospital giving her iron then?”

  “They started her on an iron protocol the week before.”

  “Doctor error,” Zachary repeated. “Bridget was right all along.”

  Kenzie sniffed.

  “I’ll have to give her a call.” Zachary looked at the time on his phone. “I’ll call you back, okay? I’m going to see if I can get her before bed.”

  Kenzie didn’t even say goodbye before cutting the connection.

  Zachary dialed Bridget’s number. He tapped in the numbers manually, not looking up her contact record. He knew all of her contact details by heart. It was satisfying to punch them in one at a time. He savored the moment. He was no knight in shining armor, but he had accomplished what he had set out to do. He had fulfilled her quest and earned her gratitude.

  “Hello?” Bridget obviously answered without checking the caller ID beforehand. “Oh, Zachary. Can I call you back? I was just going to—”

  “No. No, this will just take a second, but it’s important.”

  “Well?” She was impatient. “What is it?”

  “Robin Salter didn’t die of cancer. You were right. She died of iron overdose.”

  “Iron? I thought iron was good. It can kill you?”

  “I guess more isn’t always better. Your body can only handle so much, then the liver starts to store it. If there’s too much for the liver to store, it can result in death.”

  “Wow. I remember they gave me iron when I was there. They said I was anemic from the treatments.”

  “Robin was too. But it looks like they gave her too much.”

  “Is this official? Does that mean they change her death certificate?”

  “I… guess so. I just got this from the coroner’s office—”

  “From Kenzie, you mean.”

  “Kenzie is at the coroner’s office.”

  “Yes, luckily for you.” There was a hint of a sneer in her voice.

  “Lucky for you too,” Zachary countered. “I would never have gotten the death investigation opened without her.”

  There was a call waiting alert. Zachary pulled his phone away from his ear to look at his screen. It hadn’t been his call waiting, but Bridget’s.

  “I have to take that,” Bridget said. “Can we talk later?”

  “Sure. Of course. You know how to reach me—”

  But Bridget had already hung up.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Z

  achary decided the next morning that a courtesy visit to the Salter family was probably in order. The coroner’s office or the police department would undoubtedly contact them at some point, but Zachary’s investigation had started everything and he wanted to be sure that they were told what had been discovered, rather than waiting for the information to get to them through the grapevine or at some press conference.

  Vera was the only one home. Still in a bathrobe, she looked at Zachary blearily, as if she’d just gotten out of bed and wasn’t sure who he was.

  “Zachary Goldman,” Zachary reminded her. “I’m the investigator who has been looking into Robin’s death.”

  “Oh, yes,” Vera nodded and motioned Zachary into the house. The front entryway and living room were somewhat in disarray, as if caught between a weekend binge and Monday cleanup that had never been completed. Zachary detoured around what appeared to be Rhys’s book bag and a chip bowl and sat down with Vera.

  “Are you here by yourself?” He was a little concerned about her being left to her own devices. Presumably she could be trusted on her own, but Zachary was uncomfortable with how distant she appeared to be.

  “Yes. Gloria had to take Rhys…” Vera trailed off, clearly unable to remember the details. To school, probably, or maybe a therapy appointment, and then off to work herself. There wasn’t really anyone available to keep an eye on Vera if Gloria had to work during the day.

  “Are you okay here on your own? Is there anything you need?”

  “Oh, of course. I’ve been on my own for years. I can manage. The kids will be home after school.”

  Zachary took a quick look at the time on his phone. That wouldn’t be for hours yet. But that was presumably the same every other day, and if Vera were unable to take care of herself, they would have found other arrangements for her.

  “I wanted to let you know that I heard back from the coroner’s office with preliminary details of what they had found in the lab work they did for Robin.” He intentionally did not use the word ‘autopsy,’ which would probably just upset her. ‘Lab work’ sounded much less invasive.

  “For Robin?” Vera repeated. “Why?”

  “To find out why she died.”

  “It was the cancer, wasn’t it?” She seemed confused, as if she’d been unaware until then that there was any question of Robin’s cause of death.

  “That was what the doctor thought initially,” Zachary agreed. “But we have looked into
it further and done some testing, and it turns out that there were actually some other issues to be considered.”

  “Oh?” Vera cocked her head.

  “When will Gloria be home?” Zachary looked down at his phone again.

  “I don’t know. She usually gets home after Rhys.”

  “Maybe I should wait until then. So there’s someone here with you.”

  “What is it? What did you find out?”

  “Well… it looks like the medical staff made a mistake on the amount of iron she was to be given. I don’t know whether the wrong amount was prescribed, or if they gave the wrong dosage. But Robin died of an overdose of iron, not the cancer itself.”

  “Iron?”

  “Yes. Her liver couldn’t process the amount that was given to her, and she…”

  “She was anemic,” Vera said, demonstrating that her grasp of the situation was better than Zachary had anticipated. “They had to give her iron for her anemia.”

  “Yes. But it looks like they might have given her too much. They did give her too much.”

  “She needed iron.”

  “Yes, she did.”

  Vera shook her head. “Gloria should talk to them.”

  “I’m afraid it’s too late. They already gave Robin too much. You remember… she passed away, don’t you?”

  “How could I forget?” Vera demanded.

  “Okay, I just wasn’t sure. Yes, maybe Gloria should talk to the coroner’s office. They can confirm their finding and give her the details.”

  Vera nodded. She looked around. “Where are they? When is she going to get home?”

  “After school.” Zachary refrained from looking at his phone again. “Is there anyone who checks in on you during the day?”

  “No. I’m fine here by myself. I’ve looked after myself all my life.”