Excise (Dr. Schwartzman Series Book 2)

by Danielle Girard

  Todd Posner had blown her off, and Fraser had saved her. Her interaction with Dr. Todd Posner made him seem exactly like everyone described him—a narcissist and a jerk.

  Inside every monster, there is some glimpse of his angel.

  Schwartzman’s father had said that, but maybe he’d never met someone like Posner. She couldn’t remember if he’d ever told her where it came from. Practicing law, he met plenty of monsters . . . and, she supposed, their angels, too.

  It made her think of Spencer.

  Would her father believe there was a sliver of angel in the man who had killed his unborn grandchild?

  Again, she was back in that room. Her own image projected on the wall of the cell Spencer had created for her. Her voice crying, “Help me. Please help me.” Chills scraped down the skin of her back like long talons, and heat and nausea settled in her stomach.

  Hal hadn’t started the car. She glanced over to find him staring at his phone. Thankful for the brief reprieve, she drew two slow breaths and pulled the seat belt across her chest.

  Sandy’s angel. The angel. She did not let her mind wander beyond that thought. She was done thinking about Spencer. At least for today.

  Hal frowned at his phone. “Huh.”

  “What is it?”

  “I’ve got a text from Roger. Says he wants to see us.”

  “Us?” She drew her phone out of her purse. She had a message from Roger, too. Some results in. Come by ASAP! Roger was hardly an ASAP kind of guy. And she didn’t think she’d ever seen him use an exclamation point.

  “Sounds urgent,” Hal said. “Let’s see what he’s up to.” He dialed and put the phone on speaker.

  Naomi answered the lab phone.

  “Hey, Naomi. It’s Hal. Roger around?”

  “Hi, Hal,” Naomi said, her voice booming in the car as Hal lowered the volume. “He’s been looking for you. Hang on.” Relatively new, Naomi Muir had made herself valuable in the lab, and Roger had come to depend on her. Schwartzman had noticed the tech was at most of their scenes these days. She did good work.

  In the background was Roger’s voice. “Tell them to come in.”

  “We’re all the way over in Oakland,” Hal said.

  Naomi relayed the message.

  “At a scene?” Roger shouted back.

  “No. We were interviewing a witness.”

  Again, Naomi repeated the news to Roger.

  “Can’t he pick up the phone?” Hal asked.

  “I think he’s enjoying this,” Naomi whispered. “Hang on—I’ll put you on speaker.”

  “Are you heading back into the city?” Roger again. “Do you have time to come to the lab?”

  “Yes,” Hal said, a hint of frustration in his voice. “And yes.”

  “Great. I’ll be here,” Roger shouted.

  “He’s got something to show you,” Naomi told them.

  “What? Can you tell us on the phone?”

  “Just come in,” Naomi said.

  “He sounds very proud of himself.”

  “Oh, he is.”

  Schwartzman enjoyed Roger Sampers. Like herself, he was more nerd than cool kid, and he had a voracious appetite for knowledge. His chronic medical condition, alopecia universalis, had also made him a sensitive man. He had no hair on his entire body—no eyebrows, no eyelashes. Although she had never spoken to him about it directly, Schwartzman knew this had happened to him sometime in early middle school—the very age when kids were at their cruelest. He carried no chip on his shoulder and, remarkably, often joked about his condition. “I’m really the ideal crime scene analyst,” he’d remarked once. “I will never leave a hair at a scene.”

  “We’re on our way,” Hal told Naomi. He did not sound pleased with the idea of having to wait until he got to the lab to find out what Roger had found.

  “There is one thing I can tell you over the phone,” Naomi said.

  “Thank God,” Hal muttered in reply.

  “We got results on the DNA found under Posner’s nails,” Naomi said.

  “And?”

  Schwartzman felt the tension in the car.

  “It’s his,” Naomi said.

  “Damn,” Hal muttered.

  “Sorry.”

  “No worries,” Hal said. “Thanks for letting us know.”

  “See you soon,” Naomi said before ringing off.

  On the drive back across the bridge, Hal and Schwartzman talked more about Norman Fraser.

  “He was straightforward in the interview,” Hal said. “He told me he didn’t like Posner. Told me that he and his partners were working to boot him from the practice. So what reason did Fraser have to kill Posner? And to kill him that way?”

  “The pictures of his son.”

  “He told us he didn’t know about the pictures of his son before yesterday. I believe him. I met him earlier at the office,” Hal continued. “He was calm, honest about his dislike of Posner. He didn’t act like a man with something to hide. He was a different person in the parking lot. It fits that his son had just told him about Posner’s threat.”

  “And the son has an alibi,” Schwartzman said.

  “Right. A good one. Fraser has one, too—he was out to dinner with another couple, but the timeline of Posner’s death isn’t exact and—”

  “Wives have been known to lie,” Schwartzman said.

  It didn’t make sense. They’d had little trouble connecting Sandy to both Posner and Fraser. If the killer hadn’t listed Sandy’s name—or alternately had left off the AML diagnosis—the reference may have remained a mystery. But “For Sandy, acute myeloid leukemia”—that was as almost as specific as a full name and address. Sandy had led them to Fraser. Why would he do that if he was the killer?

  Hal was quiet. Brow furrowed, his wheels were turning.

  “What are you thinking?” she asked.

  “Whoever killed Todd Posner knew about Sandy,” he said slowly.

  “Which means the killer is someone who had access to Sandy’s chart,” she said.

  “Exactly. Who would have access?” Hal asked.

  “In a doctor’s office, anyone with access to the patient system.”

  “So that brings us back to the cancer center.”

  “Yes,” she agreed. “Plus, whatever labs they outsource to. Other doctors that Sandy might have seen, hospital personnel.”

  “Hospital?”

  “The stem cell transplant would have been done in the hospital,” she said.

  Hal sighed. “Just when I thought I was narrowing the list of suspects, it’s doubled again.”

  “Whoever put Sandy’s name in Posner’s mouth had to know you’d link it back to Fraser.”

  “I agree,” Hal said. “The paper seems more like an attempt to set Fraser up. The question is who knew that Todd Posner had seen Sandy Coleman?”

  “Seen her and turned her away.” Schwartzman remembered the gossip from her days in residency in Seattle. A hospital bred rumors faster than it did germs. “It’s someone in the medical community.”

  Hal went quiet again, and she left him to his thoughts. The new information might hint at where Hal should be looking for Posner’s killer.

  But he was right.

  It didn’t narrow the list of suspects.

  When they arrived at the lab, Roger was fussing over a large machine propped on a counter in the corner. It was an off-white box about the size of an office printer with colored tubing in the front and a single power cord that led to a screen the approximate size of a large index card.

  Roger adjusted a panel with a series of buttons. The screen shifted between different types of graphs and reports as Roger talked excitedly. Though they couldn’t hear what he was saying, the animation in his voice carried across the room.

  Hal paused in the doorway and watched. “No wonder he wanted us to come to him. He’s got a new toy.”

  Roger waved them over. “Hal, Schwartzman, come see my new mass spec.”

  Hal chuckled as he crosse
d the room. “What does it do?”

  Beaming, Roger stroked the side of the machine as if it were a prize horse. “It analyzes chemical compositions.”

  Schwartzman smiled, sharing his enthusiasm. When the morgue had installed a camera with a UV filter on a tripod for timed exposures to help her identify pre- and perimortem injury patterns under the skin, she’d been as excited as Roger was now.

  Of course, at the time she’d been surrounded by dead people in drawers, so she’d kept the excitement to herself.

  “Isn’t she gorgeous?” Roger went on.

  “Beauty’s in the eye of the beholder, my friend,” Hal said. “Is this what you called us in to see?”

  “No,” Roger said, rushing by them to his desk. “But she’s the reason.”

  Roger always had good energy, but she’d never seen him so . . . giddy. She had assumed the lab had a mass spec since her samples had always come to the lab, and Roger or one of the other techs reported the results. “How did you do mass spectrometry before?”

  “We sent them out,” Roger said. “But ABC News just did a big story about the lab we were using—how there were some errors in their reporting.” He waved his hand. “It happened with another of the company’s clients. Not us, thankfully. Still . . . we got our own machine.”

  “Nothing like the threat of a scandal to encourage the department to shell out some cash,” Hal commented.

  “Exactly,” Roger said. “I filed the request the day after the story hit. Never had a purchase requisition been approved so quickly.” He flipped through pages on his desk, humming. He stopped abruptly, slid two sheets of paper from the pile, and laid them side by side. “Look.”

  On each page was a chart with a series of vertical peaks along the horizontal. At the crest of each one was a number, representing something labeled “Relative Abundance.” It had been forever since she’d studied chemistry.

  “Roger, I’m getting a headache,” Hal said.

  “They’re identical,” Schwartzman said, scanning the two.

  “Exactly,” Roger exclaimed.

  “Okay. I get it. You’re the one with the medical degree, Schwartzman.” Hal rubbed his head. “I’m just a lowly criminology major. Could someone explain it to me, please?”

  “We tested two chemicals.”

  “Okay . . .”

  “One came from the swab of Ben Gustafson’s face—”

  “Who the hell is Ben Gustafson?” Hal asked.

  Schwartzman studied the results. Not just similar. They were truly identical. Where could the other have come from? She shook her head, unable to make sense of it. “I had an unattended death come in last night,” she explained to Hal. “I performed the autopsy this morning. There was no obvious pathology.” She thought back. “Actually, there was nothing unusual at all.”

  “You mean nothing unusual other than you don’t know what killed him?” Hal asked.

  “Yes, but he had risk indicators for a cardiac event.” Unknown pathology autopsies happened from time to time. Every two dozen or so. It certainly wasn’t unheard of.

  “So what made you swab him?” Hal asked.

  She went back through her thought process. “There was some evidence of spatter on his face,” she said.

  When she didn’t continue, Hal prompted her. “Nothing else suspicious about his death?”

  “No. Just something like droplets under his eyes. I thought it might be saliva or sputum. It was on his cheeks and lower chin but not around the mouth.”

  “And you’re saying it wasn’t saliva?” Hal asked Roger.

  “Right,” Roger said. “It’s not biological at all. It’s a chemical residue—the exact same chemical residue found on Todd Posner’s leg.”

  Schwartzman was stunned. Todd Posner and Ben Gustafson?

  “What?” Hal said.

  She recalled the autopsy on Posner. “His leg?”

  “You swabbed it. It came in with the evidence.” Roger started to page back through a file on his desk.

  “Yes,” she said quickly. “The mole on his leg. I swabbed it to test for a drug. I noticed a needle mark.”

  Hal pointed to the graphs on Roger’s desk. “Was the chemical residue a drug? Like some sort of sedative?”

  “In both samples, the mass spec identified benzalkonium chloride and alcohol, as well as some aloe leaf extract.”

  “Like a cleaning product,” Schwartzman said. She thought about the area on Gustafson’s face. “A wipe of some sort.”

  “Yes,” Roger said. “Probably meant to be both antibacterial and healing.”

  “Right,” she agreed. “The aloe.” But still, there might be no connection between the two men. One had been the victim of a gruesome homicide. One was a man who’d died of an apparent heart attack. Roger would have been working with the new machine. He would have been excited, perhaps a little careless. She put her hand on his shoulder. “Is there any chance the swabs got switched, that you tested the same one twice?”

  “No chance,” he answered in a firm voice.

  Schwartzman glanced at Hal, who watched Roger.

  “There’s no chance,” Roger repeated. He didn’t look at their expressions but put a hand up. “There’s more.”

  “We’re listening.”

  “Naomi,” he called across the lab. “Tell them about the van.”

  Naomi joined them. “When Roger got the results on the cable guy—”

  “Cable guy?” Hal interrupted.

  “Ben Gustafson worked as a cable installer,” Naomi said. “And there’s no record that he’s done any work at Posner’s house.”

  “Was he a patient?” Schwartzman asked.

  “Nope,” Naomi said.

  Hal caught Schwartzman’s eye, and she shrugged. She had no idea what connection there was between the cable installer and the surgeon.

  “I went to the company to take a look at the van,” Naomi continued. “Gustafson was in the driver’s seat when he died. There was no antibacterial aloe wipe in the car. I found the packet it came from but not the wipe itself.” She took a breath and went on. “And the company said no one’s touched the van since the paramedics took Gustafson. The battery was dead, so it had to be towed back to the company lot, and it was just sitting there.”

  Hal shook his head. “So maybe the wipe was on him when the paramedics pulled him from the van. It might have dropped on the ground or ended up in the back of the ambulance. There are a thousand reasons it wasn’t there.”

  “Maybe,” Roger said. “But Naomi dusted the packet and guess what?”

  “What?” Schwartzman asked.

  “There were no fingerprints on the packet,” Naomi interjected.

  “And Gustafson wasn’t wearing gloves,” Roger said.

  Hal exhaled, and Schwartzman felt the humming of her pulse. So perhaps he’d opened it with his teeth or using something else. But he would have touched it at some point. Could the two men really be connected?

  “What’s more,” Roger continued, “it appears Gustafson was prone to heavy perspiration. He left clear prints all over that van.”

  “You mean all over the van except on that packet,” Hal added.

  “Bingo.” Roger exhaled.

  Hal sighed. “So Gustafson is now a suspicious death. Has it been assigned to a homicide inspector yet?”

  “I don’t know,” Roger admitted. “But whoever catches the case, you’re going to want to talk to them.”

  Schwartzman couldn’t believe it. Again her mind drifted to Spencer. Spencer was in jail. And what would Spencer gain from killing a cable installer?

  Hal nudged her. “Don’t.”

  “I’m not doing anything.”

  But he held her gaze, reading her thoughts as always.

  “Could we be talking about a coincidence?” he asked. “I mean, wipes aren’t that uncommon. Seems like everyone carries those little containers of antibacterial stuff these days. Two different killers? Both carrying wipes? Or maybe Gustafson really di
ed of a heart attack. The wipe packet may have been there since the winter when he’d been wearing gloves . . .” His voice trailed off, and she could see he didn’t believe his own reasoning. Hal did not believe in coincidences.

  She was starting to feel the same way.

  “In general wipes are common, like you say,” Roger explained. “But the ingredients in each vary somewhat. Perfumes, content of ethyl alcohol, it’s not identical.”

  “Not unless the product is identical,” Schwartzman added, following Roger’s train of thought.

  “Right,” Roger agreed. He turned to Naomi. “Tell him about the fiber.”

  “I found a pink thread caught in the passenger door mechanism of Gustafson’s van,” Naomi said.

  “The door mechanism?” Hal crossed his arms.

  “Like someone used something to cover his—or her—hand when opening the door,” Naomi explained.

  “Opening the door from the outside,” Roger said. “On the passenger side.”

  “And this thread? It links to Posner?” Hal asked.

  “Yes. It’s identical to the thread found in the Taser mark on Todd Posner.”

  The four of them were silent for a moment.

  Schwartzman broke the silence. “So whoever killed Ben Gustafson also killed Todd Posner.”

  “Yes,” Roger confirmed. “It looks that way.”

  “So maybe this Gustafson guy installed Posner’s cable—maybe he saw something he wasn’t supposed to.”

  “No,” Naomi said. “Posner uses a different company.”

  Hal started to speak, but Naomi raised her hand to stop him. “I talked to Gustafson’s manager when I was out there. Gustafson hasn’t installed any cable systems in Posner’s building or at or near the cancer center. Not since he joined the company—which was over a year ago.”

  “Jesus,” Hal muttered.

  Roger motioned to the mass spectrometer in the corner of the room. “Now aren’t you glad you came in to meet Rita?” Without waiting for a response, Roger smiled and returned to the mass spec.

  “Rita?” Hal repeated.

  “He named the mass spec,” Naomi said.

  Hal rubbed his head without a word.

  16

  Schwartzman followed Hal out of the lab and into the hallway. She could tell he was anxious to be away from there. Roger’s cool new toy meant Hal would add another homicide to his already overloaded plate and, with it, more unanswered questions. Schwartzman thought about the stack of paperwork on her own desk. She checked her phone. At least no more victims. She mentally knocked on wood, as there was none available in the cold, linoleum-tiled hallway.