Dying for Compassion (The Lady Doc Murders Book 2)

by Dr. Barbara Golder

  She nodded and stepped aside. The living room was small but clean and trendy; I saw a short woman disappear around the corner. The maid, probably. I know I wasn’t up to cleaning in the days after John’s death.

  We talked for a few minutes, Sadie shifting in her seat the whole time, eyes roaming the room. Sally Gleason had nothing much to add to what I already knew. The children were recovering from a cold, in the coughing stage. They’d used a humidifier and that helped. Yes, the children had visited their grandmother a few days before. They loved going there. No, neither she nor her husband foraged. Elsie did, but they never ate food Elsie made from her expeditions; they were too afraid she might make a mistake and besides, it tasted awful. Elsie didn’t have too many problems apart from asthma and getting older. The babysitter was an old friend. Yes, we could look at the bedrooms; they had not been touched. She couldn’t bear it.

  The whole conversation took about five minutes, Sally responding in a flat voice. The maid — I had been right — hovered in the background. When I was finished asking questions, I sat for a moment, at loose ends. I had, over the years, learned how to do this, but I never am comfortable. Sadie was still surveying the room, anything to keep from focusing on the woman in front of her. I had some sympathy for her, but she’d be writing up this report just as an object lesson.

  I’d look at the room, but first I extended my hand and laid it over Sally Gleason’s. It was clenched tightly in her lap; I remembered the pose myself. I left my hand there for a full minute by the clock, which seemed like an eternity to me. The fist did not relax, but when I rose and said softly, “I’ll go look at those rooms now. I am so sorry.” She looked up and met my eyes. Best I could hope for; more than I could take. Sadie leapt out of her chair, anxious to be off.

  The maid showed us two tiny rooms, one decorated in a fantasy woodland style, the other in a circus theme. The beds were rumpled, and toys were scattered everywhere. I started photographing the scene with my smartphone. Once that was done, I moved methodically through the rooms, just as I would move methodically across the span of a slide under the microscope, relaxing my mind and focusing my attention in hopes of finding something out of place. What, I did not know.

  Two hours later, Sadie and I left, carrying a plastic bag containing a top sheet and a face cloth, both of which were stained with an odd-smelling, yellowish residue. It was probably nothing, but I needed to be sure. I handed a receipt to the maid and assured her that we would return the items as soon as possible. I was hoping Lucy could extract whatever stained them without cutting them apart. No need to add another insult to Sally Gleason’s injury.

  ***

  Sadie Jackson rankled at the assignment. After the visit to the Gleasons, Dr. Wallace sent her out in search of the family babysitter, which was turning out to be tricky. The woman didn’t answer her phone, so she was forced to drop by her apartment. No one home.

  As she was leaving, the door to the adjacent apartment opened. A muscular man in a ski suit came out. Sadie flashed her identification.

  “I’m with the M.E.’s office. Do you know where…” She had to search in her notes for the name. “…Sherrie Miller is?”

  The man shrugged. “Went home to momma after those kids died. She was real broken up about it.”

  “Where’s home?”

  “South Dakota? North Dakota? Not sure.”

  “I don’t suppose you have a number so I could reach her?”

  The man shook his head and began to edge past her. “Nope. Not that kind of friend. The only reason I know she left is that she palmed off her cat on me until she gets back.”

  He started down the stairs. Sadie sent a “Thanks a lot!” after him.

  Dr. Wallace had given her a dressing down about her behavior on the last visit and made her write up the report. When she presented it, Dr. Wallace had torn it to shreds, adding all sorts of ridiculous details nobody cared about. She suspected that this was karmic justice, making her chase down a witness face to face, some punishment for not doing the report to Dr. Wallace’s exacting specifications, whatever they were.

  Sadie much preferred managing investigations by internet and email. Cleaner, easier, less…messy. The face-to-face stuff was so hard.

  She turned into Leona’s to grab a bite of lunch, took her usual table in the corner, ordered a hamburger, and sat facing the wall, head down, engrossed in her smartphone. She was scrolling through the feed on Facebook when she became aware of a figure standing behind the chair to her left. She looked up into the round face of a short man dressed in black.

  “Liana! I was certain it was you!” The man’s face lit up with delight.

  Sadie looked around in confusion. He was talking to her. She sat up straighter and said, “You’ve mistaken me for someone else. I’m not Liana.”

  Confusion passed over the man’s face, and his expression crumbled. He mumbled an apology. “I was so certain.”

  Something about him made Sadie call out. “Wait! I…uh…I’m not Liana, but...do you want to have lunch?” The old man reminded her of her grandfather. Besides, eating alone was so…difficult.

  He brightened. “Delighted, my dear.” He plopped down in the chair next to her and patted the table in front of the chair opposite him. “Sit here, my dear, so we can chat more easily.”

  She laughed. The man certainly had a way about him, and somehow she didn’t mind doing as he said. She shifted and put away her phone, then extended her hand. “I’m Sadie Jackson.”

  “Monsignor Charles Jamais, my dear. A pleasure to meet you. You really do remind me of my niece. Wife of my nephew Matthew. A lovely girl. An artist. Do you draw?”

  What a character! At least lunch will be entertaining. “Not unless I have to. I’m a doctor.”

  “A doctor! Of course there are many lady doctors these days. Do you enjoy it?”

  Sadie reflected for a moment. “I suppose so. It pays the bills. And it is interesting.”

  “Healing is a wonderful calling.”

  The server appeared and Monsignor Jamais turned toward her. “Excuse me a moment,” he said to Sadie and then to the server, “What is your soup today?”

  “Cream of fresh mushroom.”

  “Excellent. A bowl, please, and a slice of good brown bread and butter. And put this young woman’s meal on my tab, as well.” He waved away Sadie’s protest. “Now, Sadie — that’s right, isn’t it?” Sadie saw a look of concern pass his face until she nodded. “What is it that had you so engaged? It must be interesting work for you to turn away from the world and be so lost in thought. Though these days you young people are always engrossed in something or other on those pocket phones of yours.”

  Sadie weighed the merits of telling him she had been doing exactly that, but for some reason, she wanted this charming little man to think better of her than that. “I was thinking about a problem at work,” she said, which had the effect of immediately bringing the puzzle about the coniine poisonings right back into focus. “I’m trying to figure out how some children got into a poison. A rare one.”

  Monsignor Jamais sat back in his chair, a look of distress on his face. “Oh my, that is dreadful. Dreadful indeed. Did they recover?”

  Sadie shook her head, and he made the Sign of the Cross. “Their parents must be devastated. The hardest thing in the world for a parent is to bury a child. I’m glad I never was a pastor. I’ve never had to deal with that.”

  “What did you do? I thought all priests were pastors.” Sadie had at least pieced together his vocation.

  “Oh, my dear, no. I taught priests. Moral Theology. Here, in the States, in Rome, in Spain. I could tell you stories...”

  I bet you could, thought Sadie. She started to ask for one in the interests of sheer entertainment when he continued, back to the topic of her problem.

  “And you’ve looked at the usual possibilities? Of course, you have,” he said.

  Of course, I have, Sadie thought. She was about to say so when the old man continu
ed. Apparently, once he had a train of thought you had to talk fast to get a word in edgewise. Oddly, it did not irritate her. It was nice to have something, even the ramblings of a pleasantly offbeat old guy, fill the silence. She hadn’t realized how bad her mood was. He was cheering her up, and Sadie determined to let him.

  “Children, so very interesting. I never had any myself, of course, but I come from a large family. Nine brothers and sisters, countless cousins. These days people have so few children, it’s a shame. I only have a few nieces and nephews — ten, I think. Eleven? No, ten, that’s right.”

  Sadie was fascinated. It was as though the man were pulling on a thread in his mind, encountering the occasional knot, and moving on. He was clearly suffering from some kind of dementia, but he was managing pretty well. She wondered why he was out on his own. She supposed Telluride was as safe as any place to wander around, but still there was a lot of danger on the street.

  “Yes, ten. Children are always going about in their own little world — fantasy, really, but so real to them. Make-believe is the mother’s milk of the young, you know. Every day is the chance to make up a new story. One day, a fireman, one day, a soldier. One day, a princess, another, a maid.” He looked at her with a clarity of expression that she had not yet seen. “Perhaps your answer lies in that world, not ours.”

  It was a good thing the server arrived with their drinks at that moment. It gave Sadie a chance to recover from her astonishment.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  January 13

  Sadie was uncharacteristically late coming to work. I buzzed Tim to alert him that I wanted to see her as soon as she appeared. Although everyone lived on premises, I required they clock in at the front desk every morning. It kept things clean, dividing free time from work time. I was scrupulous about paystubs and overtime.

  In the meantime, I reviewed her report from the day before. No luck getting the babysitter, so it was brief and businesslike. Better, though, than the report she wrote after our visit to the Gleason home. Probably because there wasn’t much to say. I tossed it aside. It wasn’t the quality of her reports that bothered me; it was Sadie herself.

  Yesterday had been devoted to doing a little digging. Sadie, I found out, was a regular at Proserpine, on a first- name basis with the girl at the front desk who was a font of knowledge, after I bought her a cappuccino at the Bean and complimented her on her jewelry. What troubled me was that she had referred a number of people to talk to Sadie as a doctor. Medical examiners have few patients that need care, but Jack Kevorkian had blazed a trail as a pathologist that I was all but convinced Sadie was following. Referrals from Proserpine were highly suspect in my book.

  Sadie, as it turns out, and according to my voluble contact, was also good friends with the nurse Father Matt was so concerned about at the clinic, something Tim had confirmed as he handed me the report on the results from the IV bag Father Matt snagged. When I finally looked at the report, sure enough, the bag, the drip chamber, and the tubing all held regular saline. The injection port, down near the end, where one would push potassium chloride in to cause a sudden death, held a higher concentration of potassium, consistent with just such a push being given through the port. The police report from that day said that the nurse had just given Josie some medicine to help calm her stomach when she died. No wonder her father was upset.

  I was now all but certain that she had been killed, but there was no way to prove that the line had not been tampered with. Once again, I cursed well-meaning do-gooders — even Father Matt — who managed to foul up my investigations. It wasn’t like me to miss things like that, and I had failed to ask for that bag when Father Matt first came in. I’d dismissed him. We’d never prove it now, but if I hadn’t been so caught up in my own misery, I might have. And even though Sadie wasn’t involved in that, she was close enough that I wanted her gone.

  After I learned about the Proserpine referrals, I ran a pharmacy audit on Sadie. It was not entirely kosher, but I could shoehorn it into the investigation of Josie’s death if push came to shove, which it wouldn’t. Most medical examiners didn’t keep a prescribing number for narcotics, but Sadie did. During the months before she showed up on my doorstep, there were regular prescriptions for small amounts of the barbiturate to four or five patients. I was willing to bet that they were Proserpine staff or supporters and that those meds ended up in the hands of their “counselors.” Colorado only recently passed a right-to-die law that would have permitted her to prescribe it outright. It had to be done under the radar before then, and these prescriptions antedated the law.

  The prescriptions were not so frequent or so large as to raise suspicion of narcotics investigators, but they sure raised mine. I was willing to bet that Sadie couldn’t produce a chart proving that she was treating those folks for anything, let alone something that called for barbiturates. Still, that would get her, at best, a sanction from the medical board. I wanted her and Proserpine as far away from the Center as I could get them.

  I had just finished rehashing the data one more time when Sadie walked in the room with a bright smile and a cup from the Bean. “Tim said you wanted to see me?”

  I experienced a twinge of guilt, but only a twinge. Sadie had no idea what was coming. No sense delaying. Always best to get to the heart of the matter, and I did. “Pack your stuff, Sadie. You’re fired.”

  Sadie looked up at me with an expression somewhere between perplexed and anguished. “What do you mean, fired? What have I done?”

  “You haven’t done anything. You are still in your trial period. I can let you go for any reason or for no reason. I am letting you go. Pack your stuff. I want you out of here. I have a locum arriving today, tomorrow at the latest. Old buddy of mine from medical school. Made a fortune in the stock market and retired. He does M.E. work for kicks. We’ve worked together before.”

  She leaned over my desk, face flushed, every freckle standing out. “You can’t do this!” She tried very hard to be fierce and intimidating, but it’s hard when you’re several inches shorter than your adversary who has a good deal more experience in being nasty. “I’ll sue.”

  “Go right ahead. You’ll lose, and then I’ll sue for abuse of process. I am clearly within my rights.” By only a few days, I thought. But a few days is enough. “Look, I know this is short notice, and you didn’t expect it. Too bad. I’ll give you a decent recommendation. Not a great one, but you’ll be able to get another job. And the contract provides for 90 days severance in this situation. Not a bad deal.” I had put that in over my lawyer’s objections that 30 days was plenty, given a trial of two months. I’ve found that a little generosity goes a long way in fending off bothersome litigation.

  She said nothing; there was nothing to say.

  “Quick will be by with some boxes. He’ll help you pack.” I tossed the formal letter, already faxed upstairs to her home machine, on her desk.

  “I just want to know what I did wrong.” Sadie sounded genuinely hurt, and she probably was. Overachieving medical types do not take well to the idea of being told they are found wanting.

  “Sadie, I don’t need to give you a reason. I’m not going to,” I said. I stood up to show her the door. “The subject is closed. Pack up your office and your apartment. Let Quick know what you need, and he’ll help you out. I’ve reserved a one-bedroom condo for you at the Stenmark in Mountain Village. It’s paid up for the next six weeks.” My offer wasn’t entirely altruistic. I was not above good, old-fashioned bribery if it cleared this particular annoyance out of my life. “If it is at all possible, you need to be out by end of business tomorrow. Please give me the keys to the Center, and when you are done clearing out your place, give the apartment keys to Quick.”

  Sadie left without another word, and I went back to my desk. There was work to do. Sometimes it felt like all I did was piece together stories in my head, making things fit when maybe they didn’t. But it’s what I had to do, and I’d made them fit like I always did. I took the facts, put
them together, and Sadie was gone; I had to act on what I knew, and that was that. Until, of course, some other set of troublesome facts arose to remind me that there are not really any answers, just more questions. I wondered what the next ones might be.

  ***

  Eoin stood at the Ballycastle Harbor, watching the ferry approach from Rathlin Island. Over his head, the steel images of swans in flight reflected the early morning sun. He nursed a cup of tea from the hotel in a foam carry cup emblazoned with its logo: a stone castle in a crashing wave. Seeing the ferry bang its way across the rough inlet, he was glad he decided to forgo the included full breakfast and opt for tea and toast. Crossings to Rathlin were always a bit rough, but in winter, rough took on a new meaning. And today was an especially raw day, windy and damp-cold, in spite of the fact that the clouds were few and the day would clear.

  He was also glad he had opted for the ferry rather than taking Terry up on his offer to come across in his Zodiac. The ferry might be slower and it would certainly be a thumping ride, but at least it stood taller than the waves. And if his stomach settled once he was on the other side, he’d enjoy one of his sister Molly’s good farm breakfasts.

  He sat on a bench in the sheltered part of the boat, away from the spray and the diesel fumes. There were only a few passengers, in part because it was the first ferry over and in part because it was winter. Rathlin’s two-hundred-some-odd residents parted ways with the island around October, heading for more hospitable climes. Few tourists made their way across in the dark months, and so the island was left to a few hearty souls: farmers, mostly, or hermits. Those who couldn’t leave and those who wanted to stay, because it was the only time they had peace and quiet.

  His brothers and sisters took turns watching the family place over the winter, caring for the livestock and looking after repairs to the homestead. They did it, he supposed, out of loyalty to him, for they all had lives on the mainland: kith, kin, and kindred. Rathlin had once been their home, but they had moved on. Only he remained really attached to it and was glad that they made it possible for him to keep that attachment. Though, he supposed, if they wanted to give it all up, he could find a tenant well enough. He could take lodging in a spare room, even then. Or take a room at one of the new hotels on the bay.