“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 for
ehead lightly. “Don, they’re here.”
Don Wheeling blinked, stood, shook our hands. She told him about Glenda Usfel. He said, “You’re kidding.”
“Oh, Don, isn’t that horrid?”
He cupped the bottom of her chin. “You be okay, Meg?”
“I’ll be fine. Go use the bedroom, take a real nap.”
“You need me, you know where to find me, Meg.”
When he was gone, she said, “Don was in law enforcement, rode a motorcycle for Tulsa PD for a year, back when he was right out of the service. By the time I met him he was already in asphalt and concrete. Please sit. Some cookies? Coffee, tea, soda?”
“No, thanks,” said Milo.
Margaret Wheeling said, “Dr. U murdered. I still can’t believe it. You have any idea who did it?”
“Unfortunately, we don’t. Cheryl Wannamaker told us about a patient who gave Dr. U a hassle.”
“That small thing? Why would anyone kill over something like that?”
“Tell us about it.”
“It was stupid,” said Wheeling. “One of those stupid things. Dr. U keeps the temp low in the scan room. For the machines. This idiot got all huffy because we didn’t have blankets. Because the linen service hadn’t delivered that morning, not our fault. I tried to explain to him but he got abusive.”
“Abusive, how?”
“Cursing me out, saying I was stupid. Like it’s my fault the service screwed up.”
“What’d you do?”
“Called Dr. U,” she said. “She makes decisions, I just follow directions.”
“Then what happened?”
“He started in with her. I’m cold, you should have a blanket. A grown man but he acted like a spoiled kid. She told him to calm down, it’s not the end of the world, we’ll do the procedure quickly and get you out of here. He called her the same names he called me. That was it for Dr. U. She went up to him, told him off. Not loud, but firm.”
“What’d she say?”
“That his behavior was out of line and he needed to leave. Now.”
I said, “No second chance.”
“He had his chance,” said Wheeling. “We had a waiting room full of scans, who needed him? The idiot probably thought her being a woman he could intimidate her. It was a little chilly, sure, but it’s not like he didn’t have insulation.”
“What do you mean?”
“Plenty of body fat. And obviously he wasn’t screwed on too tight because he came in wearing a heavy coat and it wasn’t cold outside, just the opposite. Not that at first he looked like a weirdo. That being the case I’d have called security from the beginning. He seemed okay. Real quiet. Then it was just like he ... came apart.”
“Do you call security a lot?”
“When I need to. We get all types.”
“But this guy set off no warning bells.”
“I guess I should’ve noticed that crazy coat, but I’m not looking at them, I’m checking the machines.”
“He came apart.”
“Went from normal to ticked off like that.” Snapping her fingers.
“Scary,” I said. “But Dr. Usfel handled it.”
“She’s tough, went to med school in Guadalajara, Mexico, told me she saw things there you wouldn’t see in the States. You don’t really think that guy had anything to do with it? I mean how would he find her? And this was like two months ago. And he never came back.”
I said, “What else can you tell us about him?”
“Just what I told you. White, normal-looking, thirty, thirty-five.”
“Clean-shaven?”
“Yup.”
“Hair?”
“Brown. Short. Pretty neat appearance, actually. Except for that crazy coat, we’re talking heavy-duty winter wear, one of those shearlings.”
“What color?”
“Some kind of brown. I think.”
“Any distinguishing marks? Like scars, tattoos, unusual features?”
She thought. “No, he looked like a regular person.”
“To get scanned he’d need paperwork. Did you see his?”
“We don’t see paperwork, the front desk handles all that. They come in with a day-chart that has an I.D. number, not even a name.”
I said, “What procedure was he sent for?”
“Who remembers?”
I gave her time.
She shook her head. “I’m not sure I even looked.”
Milo said, “How about you sit down with an artist and help produce a drawing?”
“You’re saying it was him?”
“No, ma’am, but we’ve got to nail down every detail we can if we’re gonna solve Dr. Usfel’s murder.”
“My name wouldn’t be on it, right?” she said. “The drawing?”
“Of course not.”
“Really, you’d be wasting your time. All I’d tell an artist is what I just told you.”
“Would you be willing to give it a try? To help us out?”
“I can totally keep myself out of it?”
“Absolutely.”
She crossed a leg, scratched a bare ankle. “You really think it’s important?”
“Honestly, Ms. Wheeling, we don’t know. But unless you can tell us of some other person Dr. U had problems with, we’ve got to follow up.”
“What kind of person would go kill someone over a small thing?”
“Not a normal person.”
“That’s for sure ... an artist? I don’t know.”
Milo said, “Back when Don was in law enforcement, I’ll bet he appreciated any help he could get.”
“I suppose,” said Margaret Wheeling. “Okay, I’ll try. But you’re wasting your time, he just looked like a regular person.”
CHAPTER
22
Wheeling’s door closed behind us and we headed for the unmarked.
Milo said, “Heavyset guy in a shearling. Usfel pissed him off royally, no doubt Vita did, too.” He frowned. “And somehow nice Mr. Quigg managed to get on his bad side.”
I said, “His confrontation with Usfel was a brief onetimer that took on huge proportions in his mind only. So his brushes with the others wouldn’t need to be dramatic.”
“Touchy fellow.”
“Leading to increased element of surprise.” We got in the car. I said, “One thing different about Usfel is he tied her up. Maybe because he’d seen her in action, knew she was tough enough to be a threat.”
“Not so tough that she didn’t give in easily, Alex. There was no sign of struggle in that bedroom.”
“He could have controlled her with a gun. She probably expected to be raped, figured on negotiating her life, had no idea what he was really after.”
“If he used a gun on Usfel, he could’ve done the same for the others. Knock knock, pizza delivery, here’s my little steel friend. Vita being drunk would have made his job easier. And a guy like Quigg wouldn’t have fought back. Okay, let’s put a face on this choirboy.”
He called Alex Shimoff, a Hollenbeck detective with serious artistic talent whom he’d used before. When Shimoff’s cell and home lines didn’t pick up, he left a message and tried Petra Connor at Hollywood Division. Same story.
He turned on the engine. “I don’t get my blankie, I gut you. There’s a reasonable motive.”
I said, “That place is an insurance mill and Vita was involved in a lawsuit. Maybe she and Shearling met there or at a place like it. Though Vita’s alleged damages were emotional; she wouldn’t have needed any scans and I can’t see Well-Start paying for them.”
“Maybe her lawyer had a deal with Ostrovine or someone like him. Problem is I can’t find out who handled the suit. Well-Start won’t say and because it settled early, nothing was filed. I’ll try them again.”
He headed for the station. A few miles later, I thought of something. “Wanting a blanket even though he’s overdressed could be a psychiatric issue. But it could also mean his temperature regulation really is off. And that could be due to a physica
l condition.”
“Such as?”
“The first thing that comes to mind is low thyroid function. Nothing severe enough to incapacitate him but just enough to make him put on a few pounds and feel chilly. And hypothyroidism can also increase irritability.”
“Perfect,” he said. “He ever gets caught, some lawyer claims diminished capacity due to bad glands. I like the other thing you said: He and Vita crossed paths during some medical procedure. A waiting room spat. Given Vita’s level of tact, I can see her dissing his damn coat and that being enough.”
“Was there anything in the paper Well-Start showed you that said she got medically evaluated?”
“Nope, but who knows? Hell, given the fact that this guy’s obviously unbalanced, maybe he and Vita ran into each other at Shacker’s office.”
“Shacker’s got a separate exit so patients don’t cross paths, but anything’s possible.”
“Why don’t you call him, see if he knows Shearling.”
“He wasn’t that comfortable talking about Vita and asking him to identify a patient would be off the table, ethically, unless you could show imminent danger to a specific person.”
“The specific person’s his next damn victim ... yeah, you’re right but bug him anyway. I need to do something.”
I made the call, left a message on Shacker’s voicemail.
He said, “Thanks. Any other ideas?”
I said, “Ostrovine buckled when we threatened to shut him down for a day. If he was lying about Vita, maybe he’ll eventually give up the info.”
“Let’s go back there,” he said, hanging a U. “He balks, I’ll grab that stupid rug on his head and hold it for ransom.”
This time, Ostrovine kept us waiting for twenty minutes.
When we entered his office, there were papers on the desk. Columns of numbers, probably financial spreadsheets. He put down a gold Cross pen and said, “What now, Lieutenant?”
Milo told him.
“You’re kidding.”
“Nothing funny about Dr. Usfel’s murder, sir.”
“Of course not,” said Ostrovine. “But I can’t help you. First of all, I’ve never heard about any confrontation between Glenda and any patient. Second, I still don’t believe Glenda’s death had anything to do with her work here. And third, like I told you, I have no knowledge of anyone named Vita Berlin.”
“We know a confrontation occurred,” said Milo. “How come there wasn’t a report?”
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