by Flora, Kate;
Cops see so much bad stuff that they can get to the point where little can shock them. But he’d never been able to be easy with the kind of evil that allows someone to violate a child. At least the children weren’t dead. Well, Shelley was still a child, and she was dead. A child that couple had taken into their home and raised as their daughter.
His stomach flipped, and he grabbed the doorframe for support.
“So you see it, too,” Wink said. “I am going to find every fingerprint. Footprint. Every bit of trace evidence. Every hair. Every drop of sperm on this filthy mattress. And then you, Detective Sergeant Joseph Burgess, are going to find the men who were here and they are going to pay for this.”
They’d worked together many years. He’d never seen Wink this angry.
Burgess remembered a Bible verse from Luke: It were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he cast into the sea, than that he should offend one of these little ones. He’d like to attach a millstone to someone right about now. He knew Wink would gladly help.
Thirty-Two
Burgess and Kyle were silent as they walked back to the truck. As they climbed in and Burgess started the engine, Kyle said, “Where to?”
“I believe it’s time to call on a surgeon, and to make that call unannounced.”
“Fine with me,” Kyle said. “I’m feeling just the right amount of mean.”
“Me, too,” Burgess agreed.
He checked his phone. In his nicely detailed way, Rocky Jordan had given them the name, address, and phone number of the surgeon who had done Shelley Minor’s implants. He’d also included the serial numbers from the implants, and a note that he’d added a warrant for the doctor’s records to his list, and put it right at the top. Those warrant requests had already gone to the AG’s office.
Burgess wondered whether they should wait for the warrant before making their visit, but he wasn’t in the mood to wait for anything. Patience was often a law officer’s chief virtue. Today he must not be feeling virtuous.
The doctor’s office was at the hospital, so he also called the translator and asked if she was available and could assist him in interviewing the girls. She said she could be there in an hour, and they made a date.
He parked in his favorite spot just outside the door, giving a nod to Charlie, the security guard on duty. Charlie gave him a cynical smile, and said, “Coming to grill some docs, Detective?”
“Why not, Charlie. Isn’t this the grilling season?”
That got him a grin and a wave and he and Kyle headed for the elevators. “I wish this place didn’t feel so much like my home away from home,” he said.
“I believe you once put it beautifully as the place where, when you have go there, they have to take you in, and you’re usually bleeding.”
“Right. I did say that. I try to always tell the truth.”
A smartly dressed redhead in the elevator with them was staring. Burgess wondered if she was coming to see the same surgeon. She looked like the type to grab every advantage, and someone who had the cash to pay for it. If he were a betting man, he’d bet she was here for breast enhancement. But Nina told him the new thing was butt enhancement. He couldn’t wrap his mind around that.
Kyle gave her his almost imperceptible grin. “Detectives, ma’am.”
She turned away and studied the wall. There was nothing to see there, unless scrapes and smudges were interesting. To cops, sure, but probably not to a woman in a white linen dress and black and white stiletto heels. Sure, she looked like a million dollars, but if she ever had to run anywhere, between the heels and the sheath dress, she’d be helpless as a babe. Oh. Right. Another expression given new meaning. Burgess grinned.
“What’s that about?” Kyle asked.
“Tell you later.”
They all got off together. All walked to the same suite of offices. All approached the counter to speak with the receptionist. The puzzled girl looked at the three of them, waiting for someone to speak.
“Detective Sergeant Burgess, Portland police,” he said, showing his badge. “We need to speak with Dr. Morton.”
When the girl hesitated, forming what he knew would be the excuse that Morton was a busy man and they should make an appointment, he added, “We’re investigating three homicides, ma’am. Time is of the essence. It’s important that we see him as soon as possible.”
The woman from the elevator tried to shove Kyle aside. “Excuse me,” she said, “but I have an appointment with Dr. Morton at one o’clock, and I am very busy today.” She slipped past Kyle, who wasn’t putting up much of a fight, and tried to eel her way in front of Burgess. Burgess stood his ground. When that didn’t work, she leaned around his side, held out a tanned arm with an expensive watch, tapped the watch, and said, “Jessica Harmon? Appointment? Now?”
The receptionist looked at her, then up at Burgess, then at her phone. “I’ll just check,” she said.
She spoke hastily into the phone, explaining her dilemma to someone, most likely her supervisor and not the busy Dr. Morton. Then, still flustered, she set down the receiver and looked at Burgess. “Mrs. Stevens will be right out, Detective.”
With a bright smile, she turned to her paying customer, and said, “I’ll just check you in, Ms. Harmon.”
Mrs. Stevens was just the kind of dragon who usually guarded the lairs of important people. She was tall, lean, impeccably suited and coiffed despite the hot summer day, and unsmiling as she gathered Burgess and Kyle together like absently discarded material, and shepherded them through a door and into her cubicle.
“How can I help you?” she said, waving a hand at a pair of chairs.
Neither of them sat.
“We’re here to see Dr. Morton,” Burgess said.
“I wish you’d made an appointment,” she said. “Dr. Morton is very busy today.”
“I wish we had, too,” Burgess agreed, “but in my experience, people don’t get themselves killed on any sort of schedule.” He shrugged, inviting her to share his difficulty. “But when they do get killed, it becomes our job to investigate, investigation where the timing is urgent, and that’s what we’re here to do.”
She flipped through a book on her desk, and then consulted her computer terminal. “I could squeeze you in for a few minutes at four.”
Burgess gave her his best smile. The one often worn by a cat enjoying those moments of toying with a mouse. “Why don’t you squeeze us in now, and he can run just a few minutes late for Ms. Harmon?”
“Oh, but Ms. Harmon is …” She stopped herself.
Burgess wondered whether she was going to declare Ms. Harmon a very important person or a regular paying customer. Neither would sway him, of course. Ms. Harmon could stand to wait a few minutes. It would be good for her character.
“A few minutes?” Burgess prompted.
“If you could tell me what this is about, perhaps I can help you?”
Burgess wanted to set eyes on the jerk who’d put artificial breasts in such a very young girl, but what he really wanted was information about who had brought the girl here, arranged the surgery, and paid for it.
“Maybe you can,” he agreed. “We need some information about a patient of Dr. Morton’s, a young woman who has been the victim of a vicious crime.”
“Oh, I can’t give you patient information,” she said.
“The patient is dead,” he said. “We’re not looking for her medical records at this point. We’re trying to identify the party who paid for the procedure. The person who arranged for the surgery and paid for it.”
There was silence as the woman processed his request. He waited for her to tell him that billing information was also confidential. She didn’t disappoint him.
“Does Dr. Morton have an office nurse who deals with his patients? Someone who might remember this girl and who brought her in?”
“He does. Of course he does. But I cannot condone your doing an end run around the issue of patient’s privacy by speaking with
her.”
It was a hell of a sentence. Maybe if the police department had dragons like this to deal with the public, their lives would be easier. Burgess had been dealing with people like Mrs. Stevens for decades. People who loved to wrap their tongues around “No” and “I can’t” instead of doing what they could to help.
“What we’re looking for is information about whoever brought the girl for her surgery. That information is not covered by HIPA. It’s simply a witness account,” Burgess said. “It’s just information.”
Beside him, Kyle was beginning to vibrate. It was silent. It was subtle. It also had a kind of magnetic power, like he was emitting ozone into the atmosphere. Mrs. Steven’s eyes shifted to Kyle and her look of smug certainty became one of unease.
This time, when she opened her mouth to deliver another helping of “I can’t” Burgess interrupted her.
“I understand your dilemma,” he said. “I hope you can understand mine.” He was done playing nice guy or offering up reasonable explanations. He was also willing to tell a little lie just to shake her up. “So here’s our problem. Our crime victim is difficult to identify because of the condition of her body…” He got out his phone and scrolled through until he found a photo of Shelley’s body. “But we do have the serial numbers on her implants.”
He passed her the phone and waited.
Her mouth opened and closed a few times, like a landed fish, before she handed the phone back, holding it between fingertips like it was hot.
“How dare you!” she gasped.
“How dare I what? Try to identify a homicide victim?”
“I would like you to leave now,” she said, standing up to indicate the interview was over.
Neither Burgess nor Kyle moved.
“We came to see Dr. Morton,” Burgess reminded her. “To ask him what he remembers about a particular patient and the person or persons who arranged her surgery. None of that involves her medical records except to confirm the serial numbers on her implants. Numbers we already have. No privacy is being violated, because she’s already suffered the ultimate violation. We just have a few questions.”
She remained standing. They remained standing. They were two tall men between her and the door. Finally she said, “I shall have to call Security.”
“Really?” Kyle said. “You’re going to call security to remove police officers who are here investigating a homicide? Who are only still here because you refuse to cooperate in any way with our investigation? That’s how you want to handle this?”
“Excuse me,” she said, and rushed past them before they could stop her.
Not that they would have stopped her. She didn’t have to cooperate. Nobody did. If they didn’t get answers now, they’d be back with a subpoena that would, they hoped, get them names, contact information, possibly credit card information that could be searched. It might get them a scrawled signature from someone purporting to be her guardian, giving permission for the operation. Information that would be helpful, but it wouldn’t get them descriptions. It wouldn’t get them the story. It wouldn’t give the girl a presence or give them a sense of the man or men who had brought her to Dr. Morton and somehow convinced him to perform inappropriate surgery on such a young girl.
“We wait?” Kyle said.
“We wait a little while. Want to make bets on whether she returns with Dr. Morton?”
“Nah. Because we both think she will. Because she is accustomed to abusing people and having her power respected and she knows that won’t work with us, and she doesn’t know what else to do.”
They waited. Waited too long. Probably waiting for Dr. Morton to finish with the peremptory Ms. Harmon. Burgess wondered how long it took to consult about getting bigger breasts. Did the doc have to take measurements? Did they look at videos together to pick the perfect size? Or perhaps, given her peevish face and pushy behavior, she was here to complain about breasts she’d already bought. In the great contest between enhancing breasts and finding a killer, he thought finding the killer should take priority. He was so self-centered, wasn’t he?
About the time they’d given up and were heading for the door, a man in a white coat appeared from some mysterious place in the back. He called, “Detectives. Wait. Please.”
He wasn’t what Burgess had expected. His image of cosmetic surgeons—built from little experience—was that they were generally consumers of their own products, and were both handsome and vain. Morton was neither. He was a smallish man, slightly stooped, with a tired face and gold-rimmed glasses. His bow tie was slightly askew. His shoes needed polishing. Not much of an advertisement for his profession, Burgess thought.
Morton looked up at the tall detectives looming over him with so much trepidation in his manner that Burgess half-expected the doctor to say, “Please don’t eat me.” But they weren’t the predators. They were knights in shining armor, even if that armor sometimes got kind of tarnished.
“I’m sorry to have kept you waiting,” Morton said. “Mrs. Stevens should have explained. I was with a rather…uh…difficult patient.”
“Jessica Harmon?” Kyle said.
The doctor nodded, though he looked surprised.
He led them back down the corridor past Mrs. Steven’s office, where she now sat at her desk, staring very intently at her computer, her back to them.
When the doctor had closed his door behind them, he said, “Mrs. Stevens believes I am too tender-hearted. She does her best to protect me. But sometimes her judgment fails her and she simply reacts in the same rote manner no matter what the issue. I fear that’s what she’s done with you.”
“You’ve got that right,” Kyle said.
Morton waited until they were seated, then went behind his desk, sat, and tented his hands. “How can I help you?”
Burgess explained about Shelley Minor and her implants and how they were trying to track down the men involved in her killing and wanted information on her surgery, who had brought her, who had paid for the surgery, as well as what that person or persons looked like, and any interactions the doctor or his staff might have observed.
This time, he saw no need to show the pictures of her body. But something didn’t feel right. Their interactions so far had been brief, but this quiet, unassuming man didn’t seem like someone who would agree to perform breast enhancement surgery on a very young girl. He waited to see what Morton would say.
Morton didn’t speak. He sighed. “I didn’t perform that surgery. I would never agree to perform such an operation on a girl that young.”
Before he could finish, Kyle said, “You are registered as the surgeon who inserted those implants.”
They waited while the doctor fiddled with a pen on his desk. “This is embarrassing,” he said. “I didn’t do the surgery. Dr. Valentine did.”
“Then we need to speak with Dr. Valentine.”
“That will be difficult, I’m afraid. Valentine is no longer with the practice. He…I guess I should explain. I’m getting old. I’m tired of catering to the dreams of women who believe that cosmetic surgery is the solution to their problems. Much of my practice is doing reconstruction for women who’ve had cancer, or on children with deformities. I brought Valentine in to take over the cosmetic part of the practice. He was a real go getter. He had us advertising in magazines. He was scheduling procedures as tightly as he could. He was out to make money. He wanted to be named number one cosmetic surgeon in Maine.”
Morton fell silent.
“And?” Burgess prompted.
“And bringing him in was a mistake. He was too greedy. Too willing to cut corners and ignore rules. No one should have performed that surgery. The girl was still developing. She was still a child. No one should have performed that surgery because it should have been evident that the child didn’t want it.” He ran a nervous hand through his thinning hair. “I blame myself because I wasn’t here to stop him. While I was here, I could look over his shoulder and act as a brake on his ambitions. But part of the reason
for taking on another surgeon was so I could slow down. I let my wife talk me into taking a fancy two-week cruise. It was January and she wanted to get out of Maine.”
Another hand through the hair. Then the hand fell to the desk. “While I was away, he did three surgeries on girls like this who were inappropriately young, as well as other procedures we had agreed he would not do.” He spread his hands. “And now it comes back to haunt me.”
“Shouldn’t it haunt Valentine?” Kyle asked.
“If he had a conscience. But he doesn’t. He isn’t treating patients, he’s treating body parts attached to credit cards and checkbooks. The woman who was just here,” he waved a vague hand toward the door, “is one of Valentine’s patients. She was a poor risk to begin with. It was clear she’d never follow post-surgery instructions and that the implants she wanted were too big to look natural. He was careless. She was careless. She got an infection. Now we’ve had to remove them and instead of waiting to heal and making better choices going forward, she wants to do the same thing again. I told her she’d have to find another surgeon.”
“Why not let Valentine clean up his mess?” Kyle said.
“Because Valentine, chafing under the sensible restrictions I imposed, has gone west to seek his fortune in pastures richer than Portland, Maine. And they are welcome to him, the ones who survive his tender ministrations.”
Morton threw up his hands. “I’m sorry. You didn’t come here to listen to my complaints. Let me grab the records and get my nurse in here, and we’ll see what we can do to answer your questions.”
He hurried from the room.
So much for dragons, Burgess thought. Stevens probably thought she was doing Dr. Morton a favor, protecting him from intrusive police inquiries. He wondered if it drove patients away or if the demand for corporeal alteration exceeded the supply of surgeons?