“I have nothing to say,” I called back.
“Did you know that she was having an affair with your husband?”
“Please go. I can’t help you.” I walked away from the door and upstairs to my bedroom. The reporter knocked for several more minutes, and then called out something I couldn’t understand. I peered at him from behind the blinds in the front dormer window, as he walked to his car. Then, I sank down on the wicker rocker next to the bed quietly sobbed.
It was several minutes before I was ready to gather my things to leave for downtown. As I stepped out of the front door, I found a card with the name John Adams, and the message ‘call me’ written below. I inspected it for a moment, and then shoved it into my jacket pocket.
I parked behind the old bank building, just blocks from the courthouse. I tried not to look in that direction, but stole a glance at it over my shoulder as I entered the building. Inside, I stepped into a nearly silent elevator with gold doors that reflected the images inside of it. I hardly recognized myself. The conservative clothes and the long, dark hair were the same, but the face looking at me had a worried, old look to it. I looked like my mother had when the doctor in the hospital told her there was nothing that they could do for her.
The elevator stopped at the fourth floor and I walked in past the front desk ignoring the iron receptionist who called out to me as I opened the door into the back offices. I couldn’t face another obstacle today, and I wasn’t going to let this woman keep me away from my lawyer. Jamie Stone’s office was the furthest down the hall on the right. It had no window, but the carpet was thick, dark blue plush, and the desk was of fine mahogany.
The room was empty, but I saw Jamie striding up the hall towards me. I waited.
He said, “Hey, I’m glad you’re here so early. How was your lunch?”
“The peanut butter and jelly sandwich in my own house was perfect. But the police have searched my house. The gold solution is gone. Again.”
“I’m sorry. I should have warned you that would probably happen while you were in jail.” Jamie said. I felt his eyes on me as I sat down. “You know, you look remarkably better.”
“Thank-you. I couldn’t wait to go home and clean up.” I was flattered, but unconvinced. I'd just seen my own reflection.
“Give me a minute to straighten up, and we can go.”
Anxiously, I asked, “Have you seen the articles about me in the paper?”
Jamie stopped what he was doing and came around his desk to face me. “Did you read them?”
I nodded. “Some of them. I couldn’t read everything.”
Jamie sat in the chair next to mine. “I’m sorry. They always say things like that. You shouldn’t be looking at those things though. I can call and cancel your subscription to the paper if you would like for me to.”
I studied the carpet fibers. “No. That isn’t necessary.” My voice was low and ragged.
Jamie put his hand on my knee and watched me without a word. I stared at his hand on my leg for several seconds. I saw where the veins coursed down the back of his hand and branched into a net of hazy blue cords. Reflexively I put my finger on one and felt its sponginess as the blood gave way to my pressure. His hand felt warm and comforting, and I lay mine on top of it to trace my own veins. It was several minutes before I was ready to speak again. Jamie waited without moving a muscle.
I whispered, “What have you heard about Ms. Crawford?”
“She was the one in the car.” Jamie watched my face carefully as he spoke. I didn’t blink. “The police found her passport in the trunk, dated stamped from Miami today. They are searching for witnesses to the accident, but so far no one has come forward. There is really no way to learn who else may have been on the road at the time.”
“Miami?”
“Yes.”
“I didn’t know there were flights to Europe from there. Don’t they usually depart further north?”
Jamie looked at me curiously, “Yes, I believe so. Why?”
“I thought she was in Europe.”
Jamie shrugged, dismissing it. “Maybe they do have European flights out of there. I’ve never really paid any attention.”
I tucked that away to check on later. That didn’t sound right to me, but I changed the subject. “So, are we going to the morgue?”
“Yes.” Jamie looked surprised that I still wanted to go.
“Did they notify Detective Chapman of her death?”
“I doubt it. Crawford isn’t officially part of this case.”
“Fiona Crawford probably spoke to Miss Summers more than anyone other than me. She was at the hospital on the day that Sarah was killed, and she was coming to give us information about that when she suddenly died. How can she not be part of the case?”
“You didn’t tell me all of those things before. I have no idea what information she might have been bringing, or who she told that she was coming back today. What information was she bringing?” Jamie had risen to his feet, but now he sat back down to look at me.
“Can we go on to the morgue? I’ll try to explain while we drive.” I blew my bangs upwards off my forehead. I was going to have to explain my suspicions now, and hope that he didn’t discount them. I hadn’t found any proof.
Jamie led the way out of his office and stopped at a secretary’s desk. “Louise, I’m going out for a while. We’ll be at the morgue if you need me.”
The woman smiled at us as we left. She was much friendlier than the receptionist out front.
“So what’s this about Crawford and Summers? I still don’t understand the connection.” Jamie asked as we rode down to the lobby.
“You haven’t heard anything about her?”
“From the few bits of evidence the police have gathered so far, I know that she was the insurance adjustor who was originally involved with the claim from Summers.”
“She was the one who had all of the dealings with Summers as far as that company was concerned. For all we know, she could have been the one to poison her.”
“Why?”
He drove as I explained my theory involving the corporation, and the monetary drain that Sarah represented.
At the morgue, we saw Reid White leaving. He looked distraught. His café-au-lait complexion leaned heavily toward the au lait. He passed without even noticing us.
“That’s Crawford’s boyfriend. Maybe I should go back to see him.” I turned to follow him.
“No. Any contact that you have with people involved in your case will be considered tampering with the case. I probably shouldn’t have even brought you here to see this.” Jamie said.
“Then why did you?”
He gave me with a long measuring look with his dark, indigo blue eyes, and my stomach flip-flopped. “You couldn’t possibly have run her off the road.”
I blinked at him blankly for a moment, and then the implications of that flat statement sank in. It might not have been an accident. The more I learned, the more confusing it all got.
We walked into the medical examiner’s office and Jamie told the receptionist why we were there. He gave us visitor's passes, and directions to where the coroner was working. Down in the pathology rooms, I recognized the familiar combination of death and formaldehyde. It was a more antiseptic, but not more pleasant, smell than death alone. Jamie wrinkled his nose and exhaled forcefully through it. We walked in to find no one but the coroner’s assistant who nodded, but otherwise ignored us.
The body was covered with a sheet on top of a steel exam table. The faucets had been turned off, but there was still a pool of water mixed with blood at the foot of the table, by the drain.
I walked to the table and lifted the sheet. There was an incision across the top of the head where a segment of skull had been cut away. The brain had been removed and lay on a scale across the room, not yet dissected. Below the incision, I could see a ragged, bloody depression in her forehead just above her left eye. When I leaned down to look inside her skull, I could see bony spl
inters protruding into the protected cerebral space. Below that level, the face was perfectly intact with bright pink make-up that had not even been disturbed, and the peeled-back portion of the scalp still had its full complement of red-hair.
I glanced over at Jamie, who was looking off color, and said, “You look pale, are you okay?”
He shook his head, and left the room.
I looked at the assistant. “Is there anything else further down that contributed to the death?”
He said, “No. It’s pretty straight-forward. There are actually two brain injuries, if you care to look.”
I stepped over to the scale, and examined the brain. It had dark stains over the right front, and also the left back. Marks where the blood had leaked onto the brain.
“Coup-contrecoup,” I said.
“That’s right. The initial impact of her brain on the front of the skull was so hard that her brain rebounded against the posterior portion as well, doubling the injury. She had to be traveling pretty fast to do that.”
“Does that tell us anything about whether she was run off of the road, or just crashed?” I asked.
“No,” he answered.
“Are you required to do a more extensive autopsy if there is a suspicion of murder?”
“No, not if the cause of death is apparent. This one came in with only the notation of Motor Vehicle Accident. These are the wounds that she died of. We did examine the rest of the body, and there were marks from her seatbelt, but when we opened the abdomen there were some injured organs, without much internal bleeding. We’ll have serum analysis for foreign substances, like alcohol, that might have contributed. There isn’t much else to check.”
“She was on her way to deliver information on a murder case. Seems to me that foul play should be considered,” I said.
The assistant coroner gave me a surprised glance and said, “Wait here,” as he backed out to find the medical examiner.
I looked at the tangled red-hair and tears began to trickle down my face. The tears were for my own sake, for Crawford’s lost life, and for Sarah Summers. Jamie slipped back in the room, and I tried to dry my eyes before he noticed.
“Is it covered?” he asked, averting his eyes from the table.
“Yes,” I said in a tight, little voice.
Jamie looked at me carefully then took my hand gently and led me to a chair, “Maybe it wasn’t a good idea to come here after all.”
I mustered a stronger voice, and said, “I’m fine now.”
Jamie let go of my hand, and walked over toward the door while I composed myself. Then the examiner himself walked in. His skin was scabby and spotted, and he looked old enough to have worked on Frankenstein. His shoulders hunkered over and his wire glasses made his eyes almost disappear.
“What’s this about murder?” he demanded.
Jamie raised his eyebrows at me in question, wondering what I could have done in the two minutes he was not there watching. He cleared his throat. “This woman was about to depose on a case of mine. I’m James Stone of Keats, Keats, and Scherer.
“Do you think that this girl was murdered?”
“Could be. She had information that she felt was important enough for our case to cut short a European trip to relay it.” Jamie shrugged.
“What information?” the pathologist demanded.
Jamie gave a little snort of frustration. “Maybe you could ask her for us.”
The pathologist shook his head. “She was killed by her car. We have no other information here.”
This interview was going downhill but fast. I interrupted, trying to defuse the situation. “What caused her to run off of the road?”
The old man turned his squint to me. “No exam of the body will tell you that.”
Chapter 14
I awoke the next morning to sunshine on my face. I had not set the alarm. Feeling warm and cozy, I rolled over for another twenty minutes of sleep, and finally awoke when my body refused to sleep anymore. I sat up in bed and looked around the room. It was a few minutes of enjoying the beautiful morning before reality set back in. Nothing like being accused of murder to start your day off right. The blinds looked suddenly in need of curtains to interrupt some of that bright obnoxiously cheerful light. I had always meant to eventually hang some, but it had just never happened.
I dressed in jeans and a yellow t-shirt and sat down at the kitchen table to have toast and juice with the comic section of the morning paper. I had not yet canceled the paper, but I tossed out the front page without a glance. Jamie said to leave things alone, but I couldn’t just sit around doing nothing. I decided I could take care of the curtain situation. That was a sufficiently innocuous task to occupy my mind. By ten, I hoped that the strip malls would be open. I had never checked at this time of day on a weekday. I drove to a fabric store, then spent half an hour dallying between carousels of fabrics in search of the same periwinkle blue that was in my comforter. I found a bolt with a subtle red in the pattern. It was made of cotton with a soft luxurious feel that I ran my hand over as I carried it to the register. In the back of the store were pattern books where I found a suitable curtain pattern that claimed on the front that it was as simple as one-two-three. I had never sewn much, but these were straight line seams, and I had all week at home to figure out how to do it. Besides, I told myself, if I could sew human skin, how hard could cloth really be?
At home, I dragged my mother's ancient sewing machine out of the attic, and sat down to work. As I arranged and cut the fabric, I remembered watching my mother do the same when I was a child. My mother had been a good seamstress and had made many of the dresses that I had worn at school. I recalled one Halloween when we had made a long dress in an old-fashioned French style. We had spent days poring over pattern books trying to find something that resembled the style I had seen in an encyclopedia picture of Marie Curie, discoverer of radium and the x-ray powers it held. I quit trick-or-treating early, coming home inconsolable after everyone told me what a cute little witch I made in my black dress. My mother comforted me by telling me that the French people had frequently thought Madame Curie was a witch, which meant that my costume was especially successful. I heaved a sigh, missing my mother very much. She would probably have seen the bright side to this situation too.
The seams were as straight and simple to sew as I had hoped, and by dusk I was standing on a ladder attaching brackets to the wall. I found myself thinking of Missy, and wondering where she was now that dusk was gathering. The phone rang and I climbed down, leaving the curtain hanging sideways off of just one bracket.
“Hello?”
“John Adams here. I’d like to apologize for catching you off guard the other day, and I’d like to have an opportunity to talk with you if possible. We can bring your lawyers along if you would feel more comfortable.”
I had a sudden impulse. “I’ll tell you what. If you can find Missy for me, and bring her to me, then I’ll grant you an interview.”
“Missy?”
“She’s a girl I shared a cell with. She’s a prostitute, a young one, and she pretty much lives on the streets. You’re an investigator, right? See if you can find her. I want to talk to her.”
“What do you want with a hooker?” he asked.
“I want to talk to her.” I repeated. I climbed back up onto the ladder and tried to attach a corner while holding my mobile between my ear and shoulder.
“So you like young women? Is there more to this divorce than you’ve disclosed? Were you and Steve sharing the girl?” Adams shot out rapid fire.
I straightened so fast that I dropped the phone. I called down to the phone as I stumbled back down off of the ladder. “What? No! No! No! Are you some kind of sicko?”
“So what happened with Sarah? Did you have some sort of lovers squabble? Love triangle gone wrong?” I could still hear his voice coming from the speaker. I picked the phone up off the carpet and stared at the instrument in my hand not sure if he had even heard me. Omigod. What just h
appened? “Dr. Lane, I’m getting in my car now. I’m on my way to you. Is it true that you began a new relationship in the jail cell with this young girl?”
“Wait. No. No, don’t come here.” I sat down on the end of the bed. “Okay, wait. Listen to me.” I took a deep steadying breath. “Are you with some kind of trashy magazine? I thought you were legit. None of that is even close to true. I don’t know how you even came up with those things.”
“I can only go off of what I heard. You just said you wanted me to procure a prostitute for you.”
“Mr. Adams, assertions like those are the worst sort of slander. I thought that you were a good guy, that you wanted to tell my side of the story, not sling mud. I’m hanging up now to call my attorney.” I blew my bangs up off my overheated face.
“Wait! Dr. Lane. I want to hear your side of the story. You can give me your explanations.” He called out on his end of the connection. I hit the end button, and dropped the phone on the bed beside me. What had I done now? Visions of my face splattered all over the morning shows being accused of all sorts of perversions ran through my head. I picked the phone back up to call Jamie, but decided that I wasn’t quite ready for that conversation. I had to think. The phone rang in my hand. The reporter.
Okay, fine, let’s do this. “Hello. Mr. Adams, clearly I need to explain myself. I have no dirty secrets. I’m just not that interesting.”
“You sound quite interesting to me, regardless of your proclivities.”
“My proclivities are to help people,” I snipped.
“Okay, Dr. Lane. Give me a better explanation. I’m ready to hear whatever story you have for me,” he said evenly. Used to being blasted by unwilling interviewees I was sure.
I nodded to myself. “First off. There are no sexual peccadillos. Period.”
“No peccadillos. Got it.” He made a noise that would have sounded like a smirk if smirks were audible.
“I’m just concerned for this girl. I’ve seen so many like her in my practice. I just want to check on her. See if I can help her in any way. ”
“So you’re a social worker now?” he asked.
Treating Murder: Book One of the Veronica Lane, M.D. series (medical thriller) Page 17