Death On A Green (Jill Quint, MD, Forensic Pathologist Book 4)

by Alec Peche

  Ann replied to Angela's query with, "His name sounds familiar but I can't place where I heard it. I had one friend who was operated on by a Dr. Lewis. Unfortunately my friend had complications and an expected one-day stay in the hospital became a three-week stay with some time spent in the ICU. My friend just seemed to have really bad luck but I know she liked Dr. Lewis.”

  "Thanks, Ann, that's good feedback,” Jill noted. “Do you remember what kind of surgery she had?"

  "I think she had gallstones. She went to the hospital in severe pain and she was randomly assigned to Dr. Lewis for surgery. After the surgery, she got a really bad infection and that was what took so long – the reason for her hospitalization."

  "When did she have the surgery, and how she doing now?"

  "It seems like it was a year ago and she's doing fine now, but I remember at the time that they had to take her back to surgery because her stomach or gut was dirty. I don't know what it means for your stomach to be dirty but I do know she developed an infection."

  Anne continued, "If I understand the implications of the most recent conversation you guys had, you may suspect Dr. Lewis of killing Dr. Phillips last year while they were snowmobiling. Did I understand you correctly?"

  "We do have suspicious minds and consider every possibility," Jill pointed out. "One of those possibilities is that Dr. Lewis has killed two physicians with whom he worked at Our Lady. This theory may sound like it is coming from left field, but you would be amazed at the unexpected killers we have found through our numerous investigations. Basically, until we can rule this theory out, Dr. Lewis gets added to the murder board as a suspect. I know this is a shocking theory and I would ask that you keep it confidential. Imagine the horror your friend would feel to know who the surgeon that operated on her last year is a killer."

  "OMG! Of course I'll keep this theory confidential. I wouldn't want to slander a good surgeon nor do I want a killer coming after me if he hears that I am part of the team investigating his actions. Will you share this with the police?”

  “We will if anything pans out here. At the moment, this is a just a far-fetched theory. If we can add a little meat to this theory, then I’ll bring the police in. Certainly if we get around to exhuming the body, the police would have to be involved. I can’t imagine the family agreeing to my request to re-autopsy their loved one,” Jill remarked after she ended the call with Ann.

  “So what are your next steps to put ‘meat on the bones’ of this story?” asked Marie.

  “Let’s start with getting a picture of Dr. Lewis to see if he could possibly be the shooter from yesterday. I’d also like to pull his state hunting license records to see if he hunts, as well as his driver’s license to know his height and weight. I’d like to know the schedule from General Surgery to see if he was in the operating room or at his clinic seeing patients during the murder time. We know the killer spent several hours in the woods. Finally, I’d love to know if he has any quality concerns recorded in Our Lady medical staff services office.”

  “That sounds great, Jill, but how do we get some of those pieces of information?” Marie interjected. “It’s not like it is public knowledge. We need a computer hacker to get some of that data.”

  “Angela, do you think this is something that Nick might be able to hack into?” asked Jill.

  Nick Brouwer lived in Amsterdam and had assisted them with two previous cases. Jill's client in one of those cases, David Gomez, had been able to assist Jill and the FBI with some serious hacking abilities. He was so good that the FBI had offered him a job. David and Nick had stayed in touch after they returned to their respective cities with David teaching Nick enough of his substantial computer hacking skills so that Nick could help with future investigations. Nick did not know how to hack into a bank or into anybody's checking account, but he could go to other sites and hack his way through. Given what they were about to ask him to do, Jill was glad that he was in Amsterdam and out of reach of American authorities. Furthermore, if Nick couldn't get them the information they needed yet another good friend Henrik might be able to assist.

  "Let me give him a call and see if he can help,” Angela replied. She was soon using an contact to dial Nick and enlist his help.

  Chapter Ten

  “Hey Nick, it’s Angela.”

  "How is my favorite American friend doing today?"

  “I’m doing well, how about you?”

  "Doing well also, and if you're calling me this late at night, I'm guessing it's because you want help with the case. I thought you said you were going to be on vacation with Jill, Marie, and Jo. So why are you calling me?"

  Angela loved how his mind worked and how quick he was to sense what she was calling for.

  "You're right, we are on vacation, and we do want your help. We were playing in our most favorite golf tournament yesterday, when a man was shot and killed on the green behind us."

  "You guys have some serious bad karma when you get together as a group to vacation. I thought you were extolling the virtues of the low crime rate in Green Bay. If I recall, you said that you have one murder a year in your town. Was this that one murder and you just happened to be close by?"

  "Yep this was our one murder and it was quite gruesome. He was shot between the eyes and so the golf green has blood and brain material on it. It was so bad that Jill knew it was pointless to do CPR.”

  "That sounds like an exotic shooting for an industrial city. Do you have a suspect?"

  "Jill was brilliant and asked a satellite company in Colorado to provide us with video feed of satellites aimed at this part of the world at the time of the shooting. We can see the shooter on video, but we haven't identified him yet. There is hardly any forensic evidence."

  "How can I help? I assume you want my assistance with something."

  "Actually we were hoping you would do a little hacking for us especially since you're in Amsterdam rather than America. If I recall, David Gomez taught you a few things after that case in Colorado."

  "He did teach me some basic skills and I practiced on a server he set up, and I won't mention where else I have practiced. What do you need?”

  “We need you to hack into a few websites. None of them are financial sites. We were hoping you could hack into the Wisconsin Department of Motor Vehicles, the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources which grants hunting licenses, and Our Lady of Guadalupe Hospital Medical Staff Services and on-call roster.”

  “Those sound like a challenge. The last website you mentioned might present the biggest difficulty as I can only hope that what you’re looking for is actually posted on-line. If the data is on someone’s hard drive and not on their network, it will be hard to find. Am I looking for a specific name in any of these databases?"

  Angela could see that Jill wanted to take over the conversation, so she handed the phone to her, "Hey Nick! It's Jill. Glad to hear you're awake at this time of the night I know it's late in the Netherlands."

  "Hello, Jill, I haven't talked to you for nearly six months and I can see that crime seems to follow you around. As I understand it, you're visiting Angela, Marie, and Jo and a murder occurs not fifty feet from where you're standing on a golf course of all places. You can be a deadly person to hang out with."

  "Ha ha, hey the four of us made it off the course in good health. We didn't ask to play next to this foursome. We were happily gulping margaritas. Back to the case, we really appreciate your help. We have sort of hit a roadblock on where to go next and then we thought of you. Angela just sent you an e-mail with the pertinent information. I would not call Dr. Lewis a suspect; rather we’re just trying to gather a little more data on him. Really the only people eliminated as suspects in this case have been the victim's wife and the foursomes out on the golf course. Pretty much anyone else in town with shooting ability could have killed Doug Easley or I suppose that really everyone is a suspect as they could have hired someone with sharpshooter skills to take him out.”

  "Why the focus on Dr. Le
wis?” asked Nick

  “The man who was killed was an anesthesiologist, and Dr. Lewis is a surgeon at the same hospital. Doug Easley was the temporary chair of the department of surgery, because the previous physician died during a snowmobile accident. However, I do not like the coincidences of the snowmobile accident. He was up in the northwoods as we call that region of Wisconsin with his friend Dr. Lewis snowmobiling. Because he died in a city with a population of less than five thousand that was in a county with a population of just more than sixteen thousand residents, they have a coroner who's not a physician. As near as I can tell, he was declared to have died from a heart attack without a pathological finding to lead one to that conclusion. I just find it odd that both chairs of the department of surgery are dead within a few months of assuming the role. That is statistically very unlikely. Since we don't have a lot of leads or evidence to chase with this case, I'm ending up chasing far-fetched coincidences. I have nothing more than that description to explain why we are investigating Dr. Lewis. If we were in law enforcement, a judge would likely say that we do not have probable cause.”

  “What other leads are you pursuing on the case?” asked Nick, intrigued.

  “We have the satellite video wherein we can see the suspected killer walking, but it’s so poor that you really can’t confirm whether the killer is a man or woman, or guess their age. You can tell that the shooter was Caucasian but so is something like eighty-five percent of the town. The only other clue is two candy bar wrappers left in the woods that we have had dusted for fingerprints. We know they were dropped on the day of the murder as it rained the previous night and that would have damaged the wrappers. Trouble is that there are ten sets of fingerprints and only two of the ten are in databases so that is as big a long shot as chasing Dr. Lewis is.”

  “Wow that is a lack of evidence given that the murder occurred in so public a place. Give me about an hour and I’ll see what I can find for you. Thanks for the opportunity to practice the hacking skills that David taught me; I have been itching to look for something, anything illegally, but I didn’t want to go to prison for hacking into something I shouldn’t, just for practice.”

  “It’s not often I get thanked for asking someone to do something illegal. Thanks for your help Nick, talk to you soon,” promised Jill as they ended the call.

  “This is a frustrating case,” Marie commented. “For all the cases we have completed with you, I have never seen such a lack of clues for us to follow. Maybe the clues we have are really strong leads and we just haven’t realized it yet.”

  “So you think we have a candy bar eating teenager as our killer?" probed an alarmed Angela.

  “Jill, maybe we should take a leaf out of your book on assumptions,” Jo suggested. “I heard you say that at the start of an autopsy you like to assume the case is a homicide and so you gather evidence as though it is a murder. In this case, we would assume that the candy bar wrapper is related somehow to the person that committed the murder. Further we would assume that Dr. Lewis murdered Dr. Phillips, and covered it up to look like an accident; and he had some deadline that he was facing so he couldn't wait for the perfect opportunity to kill Doug Easley and make that also look like an accident. Therefore, he did it as soon as he could find the perfect place in the woods. So if these clues are absolutely related to the killer, I suggest we go about finding the evidence to support Dr. Lewis as the murderer.”

  “Since I'm lacking ideas on where to go next, there is a fair amount of merit to what you've suggested, Jo. I think I'll try your path after I call Detective Van Bruggin to see if they've come up with any additional suspects,” agreed Jill. “I’m not ready to tell him about our crazy suspect theories at the moment.”

  Just then, Nick called back. He was amazingly quick to find information given that he was relatively new to the idea of hacking computer systems for evidence.

  “Hello Nick. That was quick. What did you find?”

  “The first two databases were easy to get into. Your Dr. Lewis has a hunting license - both bow and gun, as well as a snowmobile license. Information from his driver’s license I’m sending you via email. You may want to do a facial recognition match between the person in the clearing and this driver’s license picture.”

  Jill heard the ding signaling the arrival of new mail as she replied “I would have done that earlier if we had enough of a face to match, but we don’t. The satellite is overhead and the shooter has a hat on so there are no eyes or cheekbones. We have a little bit of a jawline, but that's not enough to do any recognition with."

  "I'll go to work on the hospital information you requested now. You also might check with any amateur shooting accuracy organizations. Your shooter sounds like he or she has excellent aim and someone with that kind of aim practices a lot and enters contests.”

  "That's good advice Nick and thanks for the quick response. I look forward to your next call," and they ended the call.

  Jill pulled up the e-mail from Nick to see a copy of Dr. Lewis’s driver's license and application. In one part of her brain she found it a little scary how easy it was for him to look at that database, but she wouldn't worry about it now. As she looked at Dr. Lewis’s picture, she wondered if she was looking into the eyes of the killer and in fact perhaps a double murderer.

  "According to his driver's license, he has the physical requirements to be our shooter. He's the right height and the right weight. Granted everybody lies on their driver’s license but if you had asked me what our shooter's weight would be based on the satellite pictures I would've given this weight. All this tells us so far is that we can't rule Dr. Lewis out based on his physical characteristics. Let's hope that Nick can get into the hospital databases."

  Jill probed, "Jo, since we now have a Social Security number from the license application, can you look up his tax returns or get any personal financial data on him?"

  "I don't know. Let me see what I can find,” and after receiving the number from Jill, she was soon clacking away at the keys.

  “So how do we admit to the police that we have certain information when it would be clear that we could only have obtained it through illegal means?” Marie questioned.

  “I don't have an answer for that yet. It would be helpful if we could find any contests or awards that Dr. Lewis has won in shooting tournaments. There’s another gun organization called the United States Practical Shooting Association. Let's look at local tournaments to see if our Dr. Lewis has won any of them. Perhaps the Olympic level was too elite for our purposes. Angela, would you do the search for that while I call the detective to see if they have any new clues," noted Jill.

  “Detective Van Bruggin.”

  “Hi this is Jill Quint. I have two questions for you. Have you added anyone to your suspect list and did you get fingerprint results back on the second candy bar wrapper?"

  "As yet we have not added any new suspects to our list. As for the candy bar wrapper, we had nearly the exact same sets of fingerprints as on the first wrapper."

  "So how are the fingerprints different? You did say that you had nearly the exact same set so how are these different?"

  "We had the same teenager’s fingerprints on this wrapper and another eight sets that we could not identify as they were not on file. So that piece of evidence appears to be dead end as we know the kid was in school at the time of the shooting."

  "So what piece of evidence are you focusing on now?"

  "Dr. Quint, I have answered your questions about the candy bar wrappers since you located those pieces of evidence. Now if you have no further questions relating to the wrappers or the video feed, I need to get back to work.”

  Jill blinked rapidly quickly searching her mind for any additional questions and coming up with none, "no I don't have any further questions," and they ended the call.

  "The two detectives must be under pressure to come up with clues for this murder. I feel better about the investigation knowing the cops are frustrated with their lack of results
as well."

  "So, Nick was right about checking the shooting organization. I found that over the course of several years, Dr. Lewis has entered about three contests a year testing his shooting ability. As I understand these results, he's quite talented with a rifle," Angela had tallied the various competitions.

  "Is there any relationship between the teenager and Dr. Lewis? We know Dr. Lewis has the technical skill to be our murderer,” Jill commented. “I'm also convinced that whoever dropped the candy bar wrappers was our murderer. I hope Nick can break into the medical staff office - that will likely give us some answers.”

  “Ladies, other than the work that Jo is doing we seem to be a standstill in this investigation,” Angela observed. “How about if we drive to the Pearly Gates bar for a drink, some appetizers, or dessert? Marie, I am sure you have drinks and food here, but maybe the change of venue will stir our creative juices and develop new leads.”

  “Great suggestion, Angela!” agreed Marie. “I have not been to that bar in years, but I remember trying their deep fried cheesecake. It was delicious and a heart attack on a plate. Jo, are you at a convenient place in your research to take a break?”

  "I'm always at a convenient place for break! Especially a break that contains beer and deep-fried cheesecake. Let's go!"

  They all piled into one car to drive to the bar. It was nearly close enough to walk, but there was rain in the forecast and they opted to stay dry by taking a car. Pretty soon they were entering the Pearly Gates and stepping up to order their drinks at the bar. It was midafternoon and they all took a turn ordering their favorite beer. Angela liked Stella, Jo liked Corona with lime, Jill liked Guinness, and Marie had a Bud light.

  The Pearly Gates bar had been open for more than a hundred years. Before the diocese closed Holy Martyrs of Gorcum Catholic church for lack of priests, the bar was a favorite of churchgoers in the neighborhood yet it also had a large biker following. The bar survived the church’s closing as more houses were built close to its location. It was the perfect change of setting to clear their minds and give them a fresh perspective about the murder when they returned to Marie's house.