“That’s all we’ve got for you today, Dr. Desai. If anything comes to your attention that you think we’d like to know about, please give me a call,” Mike said, passing a business card to the young resident.
They walked together to the door and, as Desai left, Chapman waved Coleman Harper into the room.
“Thanks for your patience, Dr. Harper. It seems Detective Chapman and I have kept you waiting a second time,” I said, referring to our first meeting at the police precinct the night Harper and DuPre had made their discovery of Pops in his bloodstained pants.
Mike flipped through his notepad until he came to the pages that contained the information he had taken from Harper at our earlier meeting. In answer to Mike’s first question, Harper repeated that it was at DuPre’s suggestion that the two of them had gone down to the radiology department.
“I don’t want to get you all twitchy like you were that night we were at the station house, Doc, but DuPre’s pretty insistent that you were the one that wanted him to go downstairs with you.”
Harper hesitated, his head stationary but his eyes darting back and forth between our faces as he tried to figure out whether there was any significance to Mike’s question.
“Are you suggesting that I knew the old man was in the room before John and I went down there together?”
“You tell me, Doc. Did you?”
“Wh-what for? Of course I hadn’t known he was there before we found him-I hadn’t been to the radiology department all afternoon. What difference would it have made?”
Not much, it seemed to me, and I figured Mike was simply trying to rattle Harper, who rose to the bait rather quickly and seemed as ill at ease now as he had the night we met him.
“I don’t think we ever got the details of your relationship with Gemma Dogen, did we, Dr. Harper?”
“Same as most around here. Respected her work, professionally, but had very little else to do with her.”
Chapman flashed a glance at his notes. “You two met on your first go-round here, almost ten years ago, is that right?”
“Yes, yes, it is.”
“Work for her?”
“Not exactly. I came up here after medical school. Did my internship and residency here, then started my neurological practice. That’s about the time we met. Dr. Dogen had just come over here to teach at Minuit.”
“She teach you?”
“Just in the sense that we all rotated through the neurosurgical department.”
“Never wanted to go into surgery, Doc? Just wanted the medical end up ‘til now?”
“Yes, well, more or less. I mean, I did apply to get into the neurosurgical residency right after my internship but I didn’t make the cut that year. I was content with what I was doing and, um, didn’t push for it very hard. As you probably know by now, it’s a very small program, very elite. Lots of us got passed over-no big deal. I was only in New York another year, working up at Metropolitan Hospital, actually. My wife wanted to go back to Nashville and I was ready to get out and start practicing on my own.”
“So what does this fellowship do for you exactly?”
Harper’s thick fingers clutched the arms of his chair and he massaged the smooth wood of the antique reproduction boardroom furniture as he explained his current function to us.
“I, uh, I guess I was anxious for a change after ten years. Maybe I just never got out of my system the idea that I could do neurosurgery. Felt I’d given up on it too quickly when I didn’t make the program on the first shot. This, um, fellowship lets me get started in the OR while I wait for the results of my applications.”
“What applications?”
“Oh, I assumed Dr. Spector must have told you. I’m completing the fellowship and hoping to be accepted to the neurosurgical residency here any day now. That’s why I was willing to enter the program and take a pay cut for a year.”
“What were you pulling in back home as a neurologist?”
“Pulling in?”
“How many smackers?” Mike went on. “Money, dollars, income.”
“Oh, about a hundred and fifty thousand, last few years.”
“And this year?”
“Well, of course the fellowship only pays a stipend-about thirty thousand dollars-but when I finish-”
“Damn, you’re living up here on thirty thousand? You must want it bad, Doc.”
“It’s just temporary, Detective Chapman. Obviously, I’ve got enough savings to get me through,” Harper said, laughing nervously. “And it’s not that I have time for any kind of a life outside of my work at the moment.”
“Pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, huh?”
“That’s not what I’m here for. It’s the most challenging job in medicine, Chapman. It’s a creative field, with newer and better techniques evolving every week. You save lives and you restore functioning that was previously considered hopeless and you-”
Harper’s squat body held its position firmly centered in his chair as he defended his goal. “And you make about half a million dollars more than you’ve been making every year,” Mike said.
“Something illegal about that I’m not aware of, detective?”
“Nothing at all. Just trying to figure out why, at your age, you’d give up a successful practice for a shot at maybe getting a chance for another residency. By the time you finish, if you get into Spector’s program, you’ll be-”
“Close to fifty years old. Yes, I will. Look, that’s hardly an impediment to a medical career. I’ve got a solid professional history behind me, no debts, no family to support at the moment, and a dream I’d like to see out.”
“Who got in your way the first time?”
“You mean, almost a decade ago? Oh, I don’t know. As Spector will tell you, it’s all done by committee. A review of the records of each applicant, interviews, recommendations from the supervisors of the internships. It just didn’t happen for me that year. I accepted it, had a good career ever since then, and now want to try it over again.”
“Dr. Dogen, was she for you or not?”
“I don’t know, quite frankly. I had very little to do with Gemma Dogen.” Coleman Harper had moved forward on his seat and was ready to spring up and out of the room as soon as Mike ended the barrage of questions. “I didn’t have much of an opportunity to work with her, and I certainly never courted her like some of the young toadies have.”
“How about the first time you came through here, Doc?”
“That’s ten years back, for goodness’ sake. I had her on a couple of rotations. Let’s just say we had very different styles. I was glad to get away from her and over to Metropolitan at the time. She was out to make a name for herself as soon as she set foot in New York and I wasn’t having any part of it.”
“You think the hospital records’ll have some of the details of your early days?” I asked quietly from my side of the long table.
Harper shot me a glance, thought for a moment, then shook his head, answering that he didn’t think the hospital kept files for more than seven years. “I tried to get them myself, of course. Wanted to use some of the letters of recommendation that I had gathered during my internship and then my years at Metropolitan.” He forced a laugh. “You don’t get professorial references when you’re out on your own in a private practice. And what patients think of you is based more on your fee schedule and which insurance plans you accept than on your skills.
“If they come up with those old records in the near future, be sure and let me know. I’m supposed to get a decision from Spector’s committee by the fifteenth of April. I could use some of those kind old words from ten years back.”
“Even Gemma Dogen’s write-up?”
Harper was standing and shaking Mike’s hand on his way to the door. “I wish I had saved copies of everything then, not just to prove a point to you. But I think it would have helped me moving forward at Minuit. Dogen wasn’t my biggest cheerleader here, but I don’t recall she did anything to make it difficult for
me.”
“Can you think of any reason why anyone would want to hurt Dogen? To kill her?”
Harper was turning the doorknob. “It’s all foreign to us, detective. We’re in the business of saving lives. Can’t imagine why anyone would do such things to other people, the kind of things you see day in and day out. No idea at all.”
The interview with Coleman Harper had given us no more and no less than any of the others. There still seemed a certain absurdity to questioning these well-respected physicians about the frenzied massacre of a colleague, but they had to be examined and eliminated like any other field of potential suspects.
Mercer rejoined us and we plodded through the rest of the afternoon with a string of witnesses who recounted for us their relationships with Dogen. We spoke with seven nurses, three other medical school professors who shared the corridor with the deceased, and an array of earnest young students and interns who studied with and scrubbed beside the distinguished deceased.
The portraits presented were split right down the line-those who liked and admired Gemma and whom she had allowed some arm’s length collegial contact, and those who feared and distrusted her because of the froideur of her personality and the distance she automatically imposed.
The effort to trace her final hours was even more futile. Gemma treasured her solitude and admitted companions only at those moments when it suited her to do so. Jogging, writing, traveling, or doing research, she had seemed happiest when in her own company, untroubled by the chatting and politicking of most of those who tried to enter her orbit.
It was after six o’clock when our stream of subjects trickled out and Dietrich’s secretary came in to remind us that she needed to lock the boardroom when we were finished. I told her that we were done for the day and knew from the forced smile that flickered across her face when I thanked her for letting us take over the facility that she wasn’t the least bit interested in our reasons for having disrupted her boss’s good mood. We packed up our notebooks and pads and headed onto the corridor for the long walk back to the entrance.
“Next? Any fresh ideas?” Mercer asked.
“Too many interviews in one day,” I answered. “My head’s spinning. I’m going home to sort it all out, go over my notes, and pack for tomorrow.”
“Wanna grab a bite with us?”
“I’ll pass. Too much to do before I leave and I feel like we’re not making any headway on this right now.”
“Okay, we’ll drop you at home. I checked on Maureen. This morning the Chief said he was only going to let her stay in the hospital until Friday. Thinks the whole thing is a waste of her time and the Department’s money. Then this afternoon a messenger delivered a box of chocolates to her room. The package was addressed to her and the gift card said it was from the kids. Some fancy French stuff, nicely wrapped.”
I stiffened as Mercer went on. “Problem is, Mo’s allergic to chocolate. Anyone who knows her well is aware of that. What do you think it means, guys? Has she been made?”
“For one thing, it means the Chief is dead wrong, so Peterson’s fighting to keep her in place. The box is over at the lab. They’ll look at it to see whether anything was tampered with.”
“Why am I thinking this undercover plan of mine was a stupid one, Mercer?”
“It’s fine, Coop. Maureen’s perfectly safe.”
Mercer left his car across the street from Minuit and came with us as Mike drove uptown, pulling into the driveway of the building to leave me at my door.
“What’s the plan?”
“Mercer’ll drive us to the airport tomorrow evening. Why don’t you just bring your suitcase to the office and we’ll pick you up and go from there?”
“Thanks, guys. See you tomorrow.”
I got my mail, went upstairs, and let myself into the apartment. I turned on the television in the bedroom so I could listen to the evening news while I started to throw some things on the bed to pack for the trip. When I flipped to Jeopardy! to check the final question, I gave up without an effort as Trebek announced that the category would be astronomy.
I was on the phone for more than an hour, starting with a call to Maureen, who seemed chipper and unconcerned by the day’s events, perhaps because Charles was still by her bedside. By the time I called my mother, Joan Stafford, David Mitchell, and Nina’s answering machine to explain why I was going out of town for a couple of days, it was after eight-thirty. I dialed P. J. Bernstein’s and asked them to send up an order of chicken soup before they closed.
My papers were spread out all over the dining-room table. Off to one corner I placed the Polaroid photo that I had asked Mercer to take of the marking made by Gemma’s blood on the floor of her office. Had it been intentionally drawn by the dying woman? I wondered, and was it a letter or part of a word? I pulled out a yellow pad and wrote beside it the initials of each of the people we had interviewed so far. I tried to compare the capital letters of their names to the incomplete squiggle that had seemed so clear to me that morning last week. Nothing seemed to match and I abandoned the exercise in favor of reviewing and organizing my interview notes.
After I packed and got into bed shortly before midnight, I called Drew’s hotel in San Francisco and left a message on his automated mail system. I told him about my unexpected departure for London the next day and asked him to call whenever he got in so I could hear the warm sound of his voice and make plans to see him when I returned home.
I set my alarm for seven and turned off the lights. I worried about Maureen and whether my idea had exposed her to any real danger. Then I tried to make sleep come by thinking of everything except murder. But the puzzle of Gemma Dogen and the way she died kept intruding as I lay awake late into the night.
20
LIKELY TO DIE. ANOTHER ONE.“
“What do you mean?” I looked at the clock and saw that it was just a couple of minutes after 6A.M.
“Sorry to wake you,” Chapman added, “but I figured you’d want to know as soon as I heard it. This one’s uptown, right outside of Columbia-Presbyterian. Really screws up our investigation.”
I was halfway out of the bed already waiting for an explanation. “Because?”
“It’s eerie. Could be our guy. Maybe Dogen’s death has nothing to do with Mid-Manhattan. Maybe some clown is after women in white uniforms, or striking out at each of the hospitals.”
“Stop babbling and tell me what it is.”
“The lieutenant just called, after he heard it from nightwatch. Up in the 3-4, another medical center surrounded by a war zone. Female resident finishes back-to-back shifts, walks out the door a little after midnight to go to her car. When she reaches it, she sees a tire is flat. Good Samaritan-and I’m using the term loosely-offers to help her change the tire. Bastard probably flattened it himself. Tells her he’s just got to go into his sister’s building across the street and get some tools. Says she can wait in the vestibule for him, to keep warm.
“They cross the street-three eyewitnesses to that part. Say he’s polite, holds her elbow, tells her to watch out for traffic. Inside the lobby-it’s a tenement, five-story walk-up-he pulls a knife, apparently. Now, we got no witnesses, nada, nobody. We got a trusting young doctor wearing her white lab coat lying on the floor behind the staircase with eight stab wounds in her chest and abdomen, underwear removed, and skirt pulled up to expose the lower half of her body. But no evidence of a completed sexual assault-no semen, no pubic hair, no proof of a rape.
“Soyou tell me, is it an attempt that got interrupted or is it just staged so the scumbag could steal her ten bucks and her beeper and let us think we’re looking for a rapist? Is it a coincidence or a second strike?”
I had no answers for Mike. I was trying to envision the crime scene and thinking about the loss of another useful life.
“Dead?”
“Better off if she were. Very, very likely to die. Hooked up to life support with perfectly flat brain waves.”
“You said there were witness
es?”
“Just the people who saw the guy hanging around the hospital entrance, then talking to the doctor near her car. Male Hispanic, six-two or -three, wiry. Looked dirty, unkempt, possibly homeless, like a thousand other men within a stone’s throw of the medical center. Wearing a flannel shirt and green surgical pants. He wasn’t a professional rival of hers, I’ll tell you that much.”
“Well, what do you think?” I knew it was a stupid question as soon as I asked it.
“I think I don’t have a friggin‘ clue what to think. I don’t know whether this is just a bad fluke of timing or the work of some lunatic that we rousted out of the tunnels at Mid-Manhattan and sent up to Columbia-Presbyterian with a license to start over again in an even more fertile location.
“I’m back to having no idea whether Gemma Dogen wasn’t raped because something interrupted the attempt, and because she struggled, like this kid last night. Or whether you’re right and Dogen’s killing was just staged to look like a sexual assault.”
“How many women do you think are likely to die before we figure it out?”
“Hey, Blondie, we’re all likely to die. It’s just the time and place of this one that’s so wretched. Six other guys from the squad are gonna jump all over this one. It’ll take us twice as long to sort the whole thing out and figure whether they’re related to each other. I’ll call you at the office as soon as I get some more details.”
I went into the kitchen and turned on the coffee before I showered, wondering why Drew hadn’t called during the night. The clothes I had planned to travel in were laid out the night before, so I dressed in the navy cashmere sweater and matching slacks hoping that my blue-and-red quilted jacket would be warm enough for Britain ’s early spring.
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