Chapter 10
It was a long and arduous night and at breakfast, David's eyes had not lost their heaviness. Sunlight muscled its way through the kitchen's grainy curtains. "You look like the wrath of God," Kathy said. "Thanks. And, speaking of that, you going to church this morning?"
"Yes, I'm picking mom up at ten. Then, after I bring her back, I'll go home from there."
"Do you think He'11 mind if I don't attend today?" "Yes, She will."
"Oh, brother."
Their meal was simple: orange juice, toast and two coffees for each.
"You're relaxing today, correct?" Kathy said. She wore one of his red plaid shirts.
"Except for one thing."
"David, you promised." She put her hands on her hips and regarded him sternly.
"This doesn't count. I make a request. Hopefully, someone else does the work." He got up, paced a moment, then changed his mind. He sat to massage his bad knee. "Bernie Bugles-remember him?"
"Of course. Charlie's son. You put him in your computer."
"He said, or rather his kid brother said, he had to catch a flight to Japan directly from the reception at Foster's. I'd like to check on whether or not he went, and also on where he lives. He's not in the phone book."
"Consider it done. We have cousins who have broad responsibilities. I'll call from here before I leave."
"Your relatives?"
She chuckled. "No, not my relatives. `Cousins' in police jargon means `stoolies'-`belchers'-you know, `informants.' Some of our elite do more than inform though, and they take pride in it."
"Like what?"
"Information like what you need plus general background checks."
"Perfect. You'll set it up then?"
"Sure, I'll do it now."
Kathy leafed through a small leather book she pulled from her purse. She picked out a number, placed the call and spoke with a man named Archie, explaining the lowdown they wanted.
"Within twenty-four hours, Arch? Good. Buzz me." She turned to David. "That's that. Now, you'll take the rest of the day off?"
"Yeah, yeah. I sure hope the murderer does."
He mostly napped the daylight hours away.
At nine o'clock Monday morning, David made his way to the hospital's Hole, cutting corners sharply, conscious of the drag of Friday at his wrist and the press of a snubby against his ankle. He was puzzled by the flood of pages over the public address system.
After discussing Coughlin's shooting death with Belle, he phoned the page operator and learned that several emergency meetings were being organized for that afternoon, all focusing on "the hospital murder crisis."
"Who's meeting?" David asked.
"Who isn't? The Medical Staff Executive Committee, the hospital's Board of Trustees, the Hollings Nurses' Union representatives. They're concerned, Dr. Brooks, real concerned."
Next David called the Medical Staff Office to check on the sign-in sheet for the lecture Everett Coughlin never had a chance to give. He asked whether Ted Tanarkle was there.
"No," the secretary said. "At least, he didn't sign the sheet."
"How about Victor Spritz? He ever go to those things? He never did when I was around."
"Victor at EMS?"
"He was."
"Oh yes, that's right. But that's who you mean-the ambulance guy?"
"Yes."
"As far as I know, he's never attended one. Let me run down the … Spritz, Spritz, Spritz … no, his name's not here."
"How about Alton Foster?"
"On a Saturday? Are you kidding?"
"Jill, thanks. We'll do lunch sometime."
"Sure, David, lunch in the caf. I can't wait."
He hung up the phone and asked Belle for a ruler. He could feel her stare when he drew lines in his notepad, twisting it around, erasing now and then, drawing more lines. After scribbling a word or two in the boxes he'd created, he pantomimed a magician's reaction to a rabbit's appearance and held the pose.
"Do I dare ask?" Belle said.
"Belle, I'm well-rested, my mind is clear, people are counting on me, and, damn it, I'm going to be organized and neat."
She considered her nails cursorily and said, "You want a blue ribbon?"
"Very funny."
Now for Sparky. He should have been called yesterday regardless of what Kathy said.
"Spark? David, here. You in the middle of something or can we talk?"
"You must be psychic. Only two minutes ago I got off the phone with my Tokyo friend. Real good guy-said he might wake me up after midnight sometime, just to even the score. I called to get his input on the bullet Dr. Tanarkie found in Coughlin's skull, and I described the casing. He wanted the bullet's groove and land count. Didn't take him long, David, and his feeling matched my own. It's a good bet the murder weapon was a Japanese Sniper Rifle Type 97 chambered in 6.5 mm. It's an offshoot of the old Type 38 with Mauser design points. This one is shorter and has provisions for a telescopic sight."
Thoughts scooted through David's mind. Telescopic sight? Understandable. But, Mauser design points? That's okay, he's the pro. Besides, the clincher will be the rifle, itself, if we ever find it. His last and most fleeting thought was of Bernie Bugles boarding a Japan Airlines plane.
"Good work, Sparky. I assume there were no prints on the casing or the nipple?"
"None."
"How about that-using a nipple?" David said.
"How about that? Of course, nothing really silences, and I suppose it's as good a suppressor as anything. You can get it at any drugstore."
"Or from the hospital nursery."
"There, for sure."
"Nothing unusual from the car?"
"Nothing."
David was uneasy taking up the criminalist's time on a Monday morning. "One last question and I'll let you go. Did you check the killer's possible vantage point at all?"
"`Probable,' I'd say. Yes, I did."
"Eighty feet away?"
"Eighty feet, right."
"Did you notice anything different about the branches on either side of the big tree there?"
"No."
"Yeah, on the bushes hugging the tree. On the right side from the back, a few twigs were broken. But, not on the left. Seems to me, if Mr. Sniper is right-handed and he took a position behind the tree, he'd aim his rifle from the side where the twigs were snapped. Maybe he even leaned the thing against the tree, but I couldn't find any bark abrasions."
"Makes perfect sense," Sparky said. "If he wanted to aim a rifle and shield himself behind the tree at the same time, a right-hander would inadvertently damage the right-sided bush, as he faced the car. You sure you're not gunning for my job?"
"No way. Me in a visor cap in that lab all day long?"
"You'd have to raise the lamp a foot or two." They exchanged robust laughs before David said thanks and that he'd be in touch.
He made more notations between the lines in his notepad. Picking up Friday and pausing at the door he said, "Belle, I'll be in the house for awhile if you need me. I'm heading for Spritz's office and then Tanarkle's."
Within seconds, he changed his mind, deciding to visit the newborn nursery. He got off the elevator on the third floor and waved to a nurse acquaintance on Pediatrics, down the hall on the right. The nursery was to his left. He had been there many times before for one reason or another, but this was the first time he understood why one gained entrance only after passing through twin sets of swinging doors. He met a cacophony of cries of such severity that, after responding to a nurse's greeting, he added, "Is it like this all the time?"
"Like what?"
"The noise."
"What noise?"
"Boy, I'll tell you, if I ran the show around here, you'd all get raises."
"What are they?"
The nursery had no nurses' station and the two of them stood at one end of a narrow, forty-foot long anteroom surrounded by pink and blue walls and white equipment: tables, baby scales, incubators, spare bassinets.
"Jean, m
ind if I look around?" David asked.
"No, go ahead. Is everything all right?"
"Oh, sure, just checking on something."
The closer David got to the other end, the stronger the sweet fragrance of powder, the more fragmented but piercing the noise. It was like an army of infants in a vocal competition.
At the end of the counter immediately before the far archway, David spotted what he was looking for: several open trays of rubber nipples, each one individually wrapped in plastic. No doubt about it-if you time it right, you can help yourself to one of these with no problem.
David made like he was interested in the next room, popping his head in and nodding to the nurses and aides working there: feeding, back-patting, tucking in, suctioning.
He did an about-face, approached Jean and, even though he knew the answer, asked, "Has anyone come in and taken one of those nipples down there? Anyone you wouldn't expect?"
"No, not that I know of."
"The other gals didn't say anything like that?" "No, not to me."
"Even from the other shifts?"
"No. You sure there's no problem, Dr. Brooks?" "No, no problem. Curious, that's all."
"About a baby nipple?"
"Yeah, even a strange thing like that. Jean, thanks for your help."
Back on the elevator, David fancied the entire Nursery staff and half the hospital already knew he was making inquiries about baby nipples. On the first floor, he ambled down the corridor in the direction of the Pathology wing, thinking of which questions to ask Spritz first, and then Tanarkle.
On Spritz's office door next to the EMS dispatch window, he saw a beat-up piece of cardboard covering the EMS emblem above his name. On the cardboard were the neatly penciled words: "EMS BY HOLLINGS." David's eyes narrowed speculatively. He tried the door; it was locked. He looked both ways before ripping off the sign and laying it flat in Friday.
With his cellular phone, he contacted the page operator. "Helen? Dr. Brooks. You know if Victor Spritz is around?"
"He's not. He called-Thursday, I think-let's see, it's posted here-yes, Thursday. And he won't be back till tomorrow."
"Who's running EMS?"
"His assistant, Jack Ryan. He's at home. You want his number?"
"No, never mind. Thanks."
David leaned against the wall and stroked his decision scar. He phoned Sparky who said he'd be available after lunch, then hurried through the laboratory rooms where the pungent stench of chemicals bit his nostrils harder than usual.
Ted Tanarkle's secretary, Marsha, was not at her desk. David paced a minute or two, rapped on the inner door and entered. He found the pathologist dictating the results of an autopsy into a tape recorder: "There was evidence of widespread effusion in the right pleural space along with petechiae and a major infarct in the adjacent parenchyma. David! Have a seat."
"Coughlin had an infarct?" David asked, pointing to the recorder.
"No, this was another one I did over the weekend. I already dictated his but before we get to that, I have something to say." Tanarkle threw his pen across his desk. "David, I did not kill Everett Coughlin or anyone else, I swear to you! Why would I? I know I'm a suspect because of those stupid bloodstains, but you know me. How could I?"
David, taken aback by the starkness of his former mentor's comments, remembered Kathy's advice: "Don't let it get subjective."
"I don't really think you could, but I've got to ask the questions." His last phrase was uttered advisedly because he wanted to imply he was going by the book.
"That's okay, as long as you have some trust in me. We go back a long way."
"That we do." David cleared his throat. "I only have a couple things to ask about. First, Coughlin's post findings."
"Yes, yes, the post." Tanarkle swiveled his chair around and selected a folder from a cabinet behind him. He perused its contents for a few seconds. "There was nothing out of the ordinary except for the gunshot wound to the head. Straightforward entry site, left temple, above and between the eye and ear. No exit wound. The bullet danced around in there and did considerable damage. I found it lodged in the cribriform plate. Sparky's already been by. The rest of Coughlin's body was commensurate with his age."
David was writing rapidly when Tanarkle added, "You don't have to take notes. I'll make you a copy of the report before you leave."
"Good-thanks. Next, the lecture Coughlin never gave. You didn't attend?"
"No. For as long as I can remember, he never attended mine and I never attended his."
"Two pathologists within two miles of each other. Too bad."
"I agree, but unfortunately that's the way it worked out."
"But you always exchanged slides and otherwise consulted with each other? At least you did when I was here."
"Yes, we did. Sort of a necessary evil for both of us, I guess. It helped in the litigious climate we live in these days, and it was convenient. You see, it wasn't that we didn't respect each other's professional skills."
"Jumping to another topic, Ted. Where were you at the time of the shooting, a little before nine, Saturday morning?" See, that wasn't so hard after all.
"Home."
"Mind if I call Betty to verify that? I have to do this, Ted."
"Yes, I understand. You can call, but Betty wasn't there. She and some friends left for the mall in Center City at eight-thirty."
David kicked himself for not asking first whether Betty was home around nine. "No, I won't bother, then."
Silent, Tanarkle took his autopsy report to a copier in an adjacent alcove as if to signify his hope that the interrogation was over.
"That's it for now," David said, folding back his pad and inserting the pathology report within its pages. He shook the pathologist's hand firmly and said, "Hang in there, my friend."
"I'm trying. Got a lot on my plate right now, but I'm trying."
David saw the opening but chose not to broach a new subject-like the infidelity of Ted's wife-and left with a vague sense of pity.
At an unoccupied desk in a corner of the Microbiology Lab, he sat and, after bringing his notes up-to-date, reflected on what had just transpired. Christ. Forget the pity. Who knows if Ted was really at home when Coughlin was zapped? And, David, my man, you didn't learn any more in there than you knew ten minutes ago, except that the bullet ended up in a goddamned cribriform plate!
He felt his phone buzz at his waist. "It's me," Kathy said. "Apparently Mr. Bernie Bugles is a slippery guy."
"You heard from the, ah, hard man?"
"Yes. There was a flight from JFK to Tokyo at three-fifty Friday afternoon, but Bernie wasn't on it. So he either missed it or he was lying. And if he was, why would he be so elaborate-knowing the time and all?"
"Unless he'd taken it before and didn't have to research it," David said.
"Well that jibes with his background info."
"Which is?"
"After college, he spent five years working in Japan in and around Tokyo. Let's see, I have it all written down here. He's forty-five, divorced, has the one sibling, Robert, and apparently didn't get along well with Charlie who's really his stepfather. Mother died ten years ago."
"What's he do for a living?"
"Archie's still trying to find out what he's doing now. Apparently, not much. He got a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago, then went right to Japan to work for a company specializing in prosthetic medical devices. He spent most of his time with their artificial heart valve division-had a hand in spearheading major improvements. They must have thought highly of him because he became their main representative in the field-demonstrating the devices at the leading medical centers in the Far East. Even scrubbed on open heart procedures to assist in inserting them."
David jotted down a few key points. "Where's he live?"
"New York City-West Side. I've got his address." "Maybe I'd better pay him a visit."
"Good, I'll go with you," Kathy said. "We can combine business with pleasure. Haven't been to the Big Apple
in years. Maybe we could take in a show? An opera-there you go-an opera. Right up your alley."
"Aren't you being a bit cavalier at a time like this?"
The silence at the other end prompted David to remove the receiver from his ear and look at it. Finally, Kathy said sternly, "No, I don't think so. David, look, you're winding everything into a tight ball, including yourself. Stretch it out. Pace yourself. Work your tail off, but live a life, too. You'll work better."
"You don't understand."
"Yes, I do understand. You're trying to do too much at once-and that's based only on what I know you're doing."
"All this because you want to see a New York show?"
He heard Kathy groan into, "Oh, for heaven's sake!"
David forced a laugh. "Maybe you've got a point." He became conscious of his fluttering eyelids. "But I just can't get away from thinking I'm in a race."
"Against who?"
"Time."
They agreed to spend part of an afternoon at Lincoln Center, at a time David would select to grill Bernie Bugles. But that would be later on, for what had started out as an emergency undertaking, now slipped in his list of priorities, undoubtedly because his mindset didn't include musical diversions. He left the desk, mulling over what Kathy had said about the tight ball, and over what the top priorities should be.
There is, for example, the matter of tracking down the other Japanese dagger, if another exists at all, although Mr. Razbit says it does. And what about locating the Japanese rifle used to kill Coughlin? Suddenly, we have two murders with an Asian connection, and if Bernie's our killer and his Tokyo experience twenty years ago qualifies, we have three. Then again, maybe his experience is more current than that. And, where the hell is Victor Spritz?
After lunch, David drove to the crime lab with the cardboard sign he had torn from Spritz's office door. "Do you still have the strips of tape I gave you?" he asked Sparky. "You know, from the rock." He removed the sign from Friday and dropped it on the desk.
"I see what you're driving at," Sparky said. "Yes, I keep everything. Excuse me." He opened the bivalve doors on a side wall and pulled out one of several old shoe boxes piled on the top shelf. It was labeled, "Hollings Hospital: 1/99."
Sparky placed the rock on the sign and said of the block letters, "They seem to match all right-to my eyes, anyway."
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