Excise (Dr. Schwartzman Series Book 2)

by Danielle Girard

  “I take your point, Detective.”

  Inspector, Hal thought. San Francisco detectives were still called by that antiquated title. If he had a buck for every time . . . “So, when you say you have dozens of ideas about who might have killed him, can you help me understand?”

  “In the last year alone, Dr. Posner was being sued by the homeowner board at his condo, by the Porsche dealership, by a pharmaceutical company . . .” Fraser raised his hands and counted on his fingers. “By two patients, and by one of the insurance companies he had negotiated fees with. Is that seven?” He looked at his hands. “No. I’ve missed one.”

  “Seven lawsuits.”

  “In the last year. And that doesn’t include the divorce proceedings. He and his second wife, Kendra, were separated about six months ago. They’re still in litigation.” Hal knew about Kendra. She had been in Connecticut for a friend’s wedding for almost a week. No way she’d killed Posner. And Hal couldn’t see a pharmaceutical company or an insurance company torturing Posner.

  “Since he and Kendra split, there have also been a number—and probably not a low number—of women Posner dated. Most of those didn’t end well either.”

  “Can you tell me where you were yesterday evening?”

  Fraser sat up straighter. “Me?”

  “It’s a standard question.”

  Fraser seemed to relax slightly. “I left the clinic around six and met my wife for dinner. We were joined by another couple—an anesthesiologist and his wife. We were home for the night by about nine.”

  Hal made a note of his alibi, but it sounded solid.

  Fraser took a deep breath that caught Hal’s attention. There was something he wanted to add.

  “Dr. Fraser?” Hal prompted.

  “I should tell you that we were working to fire him from the practice.”

  “Fire him?”

  Fraser nodded. “The liability insurance premiums for malpractice have increased almost nine hundred percent with Posner over the past five years. We’ve tried everything else. It wasn’t working.”

  “And when were you planning on firing him?”

  Fraser hesitated. “We’ve been doing it very carefully. Our attorneys have been working on the paperwork and a proposed agreement for four months.” He placed his hands flat on the table again. “The attorneys delivered the notification Monday. He was served at his home in the morning.”

  “Monday,” Hal repeated. “As in the day Todd Posner was murdered?”

  Fraser held his gaze. “The timing is unfortunate.”

  “What are you saying, Dr. Fraser? If you’d known someone was going to kill Todd Posner later that night, you wouldn’t have bothered to fire him?”

  Fraser had no answer to that.

  6

  The makeshift morgue was cooler now, less stuffy. At the same time, Schwartzman was growing accustomed to the extra layers, and the process was moving along more quickly. Plus she was finished with the external exam. She always found the internal one more interesting.

  A good police officer or a crime scene analyst could interpret the contusions and abrasions on a corpse as easily as a medical examiner could. It was inside the victim’s body—deep in the peritoneal cavity, beyond the ribs in the chest, or in the brain—these were the places where the medical examiner made her mark on a case.

  With the chest opened up, Schwartzman removed the stomach and carefully poured the contents into a beaker. Bright red. Just like the toxin. She used a long metal probe to pick through the contents. No sign of food in the stomach, which meant Posner’s last meal was at least four to five hours before his death. She measured the contents—sixty-two milligrams. Adjusting to account for normal stomach acids, she determined that Posner had ingested roughly a third of the bottle.

  She poured the red liquid into a plasticized carton for tox screening, hesitating before closing the top. There were small flakes in the liquid and also some crystal-like substance. Since she was unable to use her sense of smell, she would have to wait for the lab to tell her what else might be in there.

  No clear-cut cause of death yet.

  She took samples of each organ to send to the lab and closed up the Y-incision. As a final step, she powered up the Stryker saw. Bone dust filled the air as she made a circular cut through the skull.

  When she removed the bone piece, she noted that the brain was flat and smooth. The normal ridges and valleys of the gyri and the sulci had swollen so much that they had closed into one another. The cerebral swelling would have restricted the flow of blood to the brain, leaving the brain oxygen deprived. The resulting hypoxia would have killed him.

  It would not have been a quick death.

  Hungry and in need of a restroom break, Schwartzman went through the decontamination process. Rid of the bulky hazmat suit, she pulled on a sweatshirt over her scrubs top and checked her reflection in the bathroom mirror. The woman staring back looked exhausted and underfed. Both of which she was as of late.

  She smoothed the hair around her forehead, testing it gently. In an effort to avoid the hair loss associated with chemotherapy, she was using something called Penguin Cold Caps. She had worn her hair long and around her face since she was a toddler and had no intention of changing that. And the caps and scarves that women in her situation usually wore would not work for her. She could not imagine dissecting a body wearing some sort of headdress.

  She fingered the back of her neck. The Penguin caps, which helped preserve the hair by cooling the follicles to near freezing, didn’t quite reach the lowest part of her scalp. The hair there, just above her neckline, had continued to come out, sometimes in distressing clumps at unexpected times.

  Last week she’d been unlocking the door to her office and had pushed her hair off her shoulder to get it out of her way. From the corner of her eye, a long feather-like object had floated toward the floor. It had startled her, the idea that something had come out of thin air and was floating in the air beside her.

  When she’d spotted the dark-brown wave and realized it was her hair, she’d stood motionless, staring.

  Since beginning chemotherapy, she’d stopped brushing her hair. Instead she used her fingers after bathing it in conditioner to eliminate most of the tangles. Although she had preserved much of the dark mass, the hair she’d lost made her whole head feel more thinly covered. In turn, she felt more self-conscious about making sure the back was smooth so that it covered whatever baldness was happening underneath.

  It struck her as sadly ironic that, in the face of a disease that might easily kill her, vanity still reared its head. She tucked a stray lock of hair behind her ear.

  Studying her reflection, she might have been a med student, albeit an older one. Thankfully San Francisco General was a teaching hospital, so there would be other exhausted-looking doctors in scrubs milling about.

  While she wasn’t exactly enthusiastic about hospital cafeteria food, she dreaded the idea of going out. It was getting late in the day, and as much as she needed a break, she was anxious to be done with the autopsy. She made her way to the cafeteria and bought a bowl of chicken noodle soup and a bagel with butter.

  While waiting in line, she listened to her voicemail. Two calls had come in while she was performing the autopsy. Even though she’d heard the phone ringing, the layers of hazmat protection had made it impossible to answer. Both calls were from unfamiliar local numbers. One message was from the Realtor who was working to find her a house, and the other was the bank that would be providing a mortgage should she find the right home. Nothing urgent. She saved the messages to return later.

  She took a seat in a far corner and—clear of earshot—was quietly dictating her findings when her cell phone rang.

  “Schwartzman.”

  “It’s Roger. Is Hal with you?”

  “Not now. He came by earlier, picked up some hairs and fibers. I thought he was going to bring them to you.”

  “He did.”

  It was unusual to hear from
Roger, so she wasn’t surprised that he was looking for Hal. “Is everything okay?”

  “We turned up some other things at Posner’s residence—might be related to his death.”

  “Did you leave Hal a message?”

  “I texted.”

  “I’m sure he’ll be anxious to hear what you found.” When Roger remained quiet, she added, “I think he’s interviewing over at the cancer center.”

  “He mentioned that.” There was a brief pause. “Maybe you should hear it, too.”

  “Okay.”

  “Posner had a drawer of accoutrements.”

  “Accoutrements,” she repeated and only with the word out of her own mouth did she understand what Roger meant.

  “Sexual toys, some bondage equipment, media,” Roger went on.

  She thought of the burns on Posner’s face, the injection site on the mole. In her experience, sex was often death’s playmate, standing behind that rear door where lives ended. She had worked plenty of homicides in which sex was involved. But it didn’t fit the murder here. “He died in the den, fully dressed. What makes you think there’s a bondage connection?”

  “Naomi came upon some strange fetish stuff in his online collection.”

  “What kind of fetish?”

  “Specifically fantasies involving fire and burning. Some stuff in there about applying chemicals to the genitalia.”

  “To burn them, you mean?”

  “Yes.”

  “You think the Adriamycin was a part of some fantasy?” she asked.

  “The thinking part is Hal’s job,” Roger said. “I just report the facts.”

  “Me, too,” she said, again struck by the fact that it was odd to have this conversation without Hal. She flipped through the mental images of the autopsy. The impression on Posner’s leg. Something pressed against it. It didn’t appear to be a restraint, but it might have been some sort of fetish piece. “I’ve got some images of an imprint on the victim’s leg. It could be the result of some sex play.”

  A gasp and Schwartzman looked up. An elderly woman walked past, carrying a tray in shaking hands. The woman gave her a vicious frown and scurried along as though Schwartzman had made a lewd suggestion. Schwartzman was almost tempted to help her as the items slipped to one edge of the tray in her hurry to get away. “I can send them to you,” she said, half whispering.

  “Please do.”

  “I’m done with the autopsy. I just need to finish cleaning up,” she said. “It took a lot longer than usual,” she added, thinking about Hal’s words and fighting not to explain the added layers and the awkwardness of working that way. Don’t judge yourself for being slow.

  “I’m not planning on staying too much later. My daughter has a dance performance, but I’ll check the images tomorrow and see if I can locate a match among his . . . collection.”

  If Posner had been engaged in some sexual endeavors before his death, there may be other evidence on the body. “I’ll check for burn marks on the genitalia and swab for signs of intercourse,” she whispered into the receiver.

  There were corpses from her internship days that still brought chills when she thought of them. But while some of the cruelest deaths she had attended were the acts of sexual predators, the killers in those cases had never used true bondage tools. They had made do with regular household items—pliers and C-clamps, duct tape and plain old nylon rope.

  “Hal brought us the clothes,” Roger went on. “We’re checking those, too. There was one other thing.”

  “Sure.”

  “The material you found in his mouth. Any evidence of that anywhere else?”

  “You mean, the paper?” she clarified.

  “No, the residue in his teeth.”

  “Right. The gum-like stuff. No. I only found it on that one molar. Why do you ask?”

  “We found a small bit of it in the carpet in the den where he died.”

  That made sense. If the killer had it on his or her hands, it might have ended up in Posner’s mouth and on the carpet. “Can you determine what it is?”

  “It’s a polymer sculpting clay.”

  “Clay?”

  “It’s called FIMO.”

  “I’ve never heard of it.”

  “Doesn’t surprise me. The only reason I know FIMO is that I’ve got it stuck in my own carpet.”

  “What?”

  “It’s a kid’s craft dough. My girls use it to make things—ornaments and little creatures. It’s like a slightly more grown-up version of Play-Doh. Soft and easy to mix the colors. Baked in the oven, it hardens.”

  How had they gone from talking about sexual bondage to children’s craft supplies? “If it was on the carpet, it’s possible that the killer tracked it in on his—or her—shoe.”

  “Right,” Roger agreed. “But how did it get in Posner’s mouth?”

  She didn’t have an answer for that. “Any connection between FIMO and other uses? More adult ones, I mean.”

  “Naomi is researching sexual fetishes. We’ve got a whole list of sites we can access. We’re also looking for information about poisoning and acid.”

  “Poisoning and acid used in—” Schwartzman looked around the room. The elderly woman was well out of range, but still she whispered. “Sex play.”

  “Yes,” Roger said matter-of-factly. “If it exists, someone has tried it.”

  She thought of how excruciating the acid would be. How did anyone find that kind of pain pleasurable?

  But people did enjoy pain. Occasionally the ones suffering it. More often the person perpetrating the violence.

  As though reading her mind, Roger said, “And if it’s been done, no doubt someone’s gotten off on it.”

  Schwartzman looked down at the chicken noodle soup and the untouched bagel and pushed the tray to the other side of the table, wishing she’d eaten before Roger called.

  7

  As Hal had suspected, the interviews took up the entire day. Most of what he’d learned seemed useless for the purposes of his investigation. Posner was left-handed, so Schwartzman had been correct in speculating the scratches on Posner’s face may have been his own doing. They would have to wait for the results of the fingernail clippings to be certain.

  Posner had inherited a big sum of money from an uncle who was part of the original Microsoft team, so that explained the palatial condominium. Hal also confirmed that Posner never wore socks. He preferred loafers without socks. But the insight did not offer any theory as to why Posner had been wearing socks when he’d died. His feet were cold? Hal himself sometimes put on socks because the floor felt dirty under his bare feet. Or once when he’d spilled a full can of Coke in his kitchen. Despite mopping it three or four times, the linoleum remained sticky for weeks. Did he imagine the murderer had dressed Posner in socks?

  How was this supposed to help him find a killer?

  Each interview had felt like a report of the last. The story on Posner was nothing if not consistent. “He was an impossible person to work with,” two of the other doctors had said, parroting Fraser.

  “He stayed with our group because he couldn’t keep a staff of his own,” reported Tina Munoz, the head of office administration. An attractive Latina woman—Hal guessed she was probably in her early fifties. She wore reading glasses over her hair like a headband. Even with the additional height on her head, she wasn’t five feet tall. “He made everything difficult. We lost some very good employees because of him. From what I hear, the situation was the same in his personal life. And I’m not just talking about people he had to work with every day.”

  “Can you expand on that?” Hal asked. Others had made similar comments, but no one had offered anything concrete.

  “It’s just gossip,” she admitted. “But I heard he had three decorators quit before he completed the remodel on his house. Supposedly he paid the last one triple her fee to stay on and finish.”

  Hal was confident that Posner’s brutal murder was not the act of an interior designer, even a spu
rned one. He made a note anyway and continued the questioning. “Dr. Posner was killed with a chemotherapy agent that we believe he may have gotten from your pharmacy.”

  “We knew about the breach,” the head admin confirmed, shifting in her chair to look over her shoulder at the door, as though worried others might hear. “The senior pharmacist alerted us at our Monday staff meeting.”

  This was the first Hal had heard about a breach. The head pharmacist was on Hailey’s list to interview, and the other pharmacist Hal had interviewed had no idea how someone would have gotten the Adriamycin. “Do you know what was taken?”

  “Yes. Just the doxorubicin—the Adriamycin,” she said, adding its other name in case he didn’t have them straight.

  “Any idea why someone would steal this drug?”

  “No,” she said, shaking her head. “None. It’s not used for anything other than treatment of cancer, and it’s extremely toxic, which makes it risky to handle.”

  “I understand from one of the other pharmacists that you keep track of who enters the pharmacy.”

  “We do.”

  “It’s restricted access, is it not?” Hal prompted.

  “Yes. It’s accessed via a keycard so we know exactly who is in and out. We went back through the records over the past two weeks, but there were no abnormalities.”

  “Meaning only people who were allowed in there went in?”

  “Right.” She paused. “Occasionally some of us from admin go in or one of the doctors—that’s pretty unusual—but we have to be escorted by an authorized user.”

  “A pharmacist.”

  “Yes.”

  Hal confirmed the pharmacists he had on the employee list.

  “That’s correct. Only those people have keycards with pharmacy access.”

  Hal looked at the four names. He’d already spoken to two of them. “Have you had these kinds of breaches before?”