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

by Alec Peche

  “It is amazing and, while I appreciate the protective qualities of this vest, I don’t like the smell of body odor left behind by the last wearer,” Angela said her nose wrinkling.

  “Yeah, that too,” Marie added.

  Soon they were at the large rock where Angela had been grazed by the bullet. In addition to the two detectives, a crime scene tech was with them. After many questions about the location, they finally had Angela in the position according to her memory of when she had been struck by the bullet. It was a recreation of the crime scene.

  As the rock was sandstone, it was prone to chipping. By the position of Angela’s arm when she was grazed, they were able to determine that she took a direct hit by the bullet rather than a ricochet off the rock. That led the crime scene tech on a path with a metal detector to locate the bullet, which she quickly found. While she photographed the scene of the bullet’s location, the detectives and the women moved on to the two other points that they had heard gun shots. They were able to dig out the first shot fired from the tree into which it had lodged. The bullet that had pinged off the rock had not been located yet. The detectives would have a second crime scene tech go over the location later, but with two bullets in hand already, they had powerful evidence.

  Three hours after their original tee time, the women were wrapping it up with the detectives at the golf course. Dr. Lewis had still not been found. Officers had visited his home, but found only his wife and children who were shocked by the appearance of the police with guns drawn and pointed. After the shock had worn off and the officers questioned the family, it was clear that they had no knowledge of his actions. In fact, his wife had not known about her husband’s snowmobile trip during which Dr. Phillips died. Mrs. Lewis had been on her annual visit to her sister in Florida and had taken their children with her for the long week-end. The Cook County Sheriff checked the property that Dr. Lewis owned in the county, but there was no sign of him there. The cabin was a good three hour drive from Green Bay though and so they would make a few more checks to the property.

  There was also a ‘be on the look-out’ issued for Dr. Lewis. He seemed to have a series of cars to help him escape. He had arrive at the golf course in one car and escaped out the backside of the course in another car. That car was found abandoned about ten miles away by a Sheriff’s deputy and it was unknown what vehicle he was currently using. The first two cars were owned by him. The police searched the family home for cars registered to him and they were all accounted for.

  “Can you have the officers check the cars registered to Michelle or Doug Easley?" Marie suggested. “Perhaps Dr. Lewis doesn’t know that we saw him out last night with Michelle. Jill, did you have your daily communication with Michelle today?"

  The detective stepped away to make those inquiries.

  “Wow, for the first time in my career as a consultant, I’ve forgotten to contact the client as planned,” said a pained Jill. “Thank goodness she isn’t paying for our services or I would feel really bad. She is also the client that I have sat on the fence the longest with as far as guilt or innocence of involvement in a homicide. I’m tempted to avoid contacting her until Dr. Lewis is captured. I am afraid she might want to meet us in person and Dr. Lewis would show up and shoot us." She observed the other three shudder and thought she best keep her thoughts to her herself.

  "That brings us to the next question,” Jo said. “How do we protect ourselves until he is captured? I really think we need to stay together and have police protection while Dr. Lewis is roaming free. He was just too skilled at finding us on the golf course for me to feel comfortable with this situation.”

  "We could get a suite at a local hotel and stay together,” Marie suggested. “The detectives haven’t mentioned police protection so I think we’ll have to ask for it.”

  Detective Haro stepped back to the women and said to the group, “All of Dr. Easley’s cars are accounted for. They have two cars and both are parked on their driveway.”

  “Are you planning to give us police protection until Dr. Lewis is captured?” asked Jo.

  “Yes, we have requested resources to guard you, ladies. We would like to move you to a single location. Both to get you away from your known residences and conserve our resources by locating you all to one place.”

  “We were thinking the same thing,” Marie agreed. “Do you know if any of our local hotels have a suite that could give us three to four bedrooms?”

  “I don’t think any hotels have suites that large, but we could easily put you in two side by side suites.”

  “I need to go to work tomorrow. If the police will escort me to the office, I should be safe as our building has the front door locked and I could work out of an empty cube so he can’t shoot me through a window.” Jo grimaced and added, “I can’t believe I am thinking like a criminal.”

  “Better to think that way, than be a victim,” replied Haro. “We’ll escort you to work and we can have a conversation with your workplace security personnel if necessary.” He then looked at the other three and asked, “Anyone else need to go to work?”

  He got nods and made arrangements for Marie and Angela to be secure at their workplaces. Marie worked for a large company and there would be a conversation with her on-site security people by the police. Angela had work to do in her studio before heading out to a client's house for a photo shoot.

  Jill said, “I’ll have a few hours free in the morning, then I’ll drive to your justice building to supervise the autopsy, and then I’ll be heading to the airport. I could turn in my rental car now and allow you folks to courier me everywhere, but if you capture Dr. Lewis in the next hour or so, I could be left without transportation. So, like the others, I’d appreciate a police escort between locations.”

  Arrangements in place, the women parted company to head to their respective homes with a police escort for Marie and Jo separately, and for Angela and Jill together to pack for a stay at a hotel. Jo, Marie, and Angela might be stuck at the hotel for several days. Jill would cease to be under their protection the moment she boarded the plane at the Green Bay airport. An hour later, they met up at a local hotel. Despite the graveness of the situation, they were all taking it in stride. They felt secure in the protection of law enforcement. They would order room service for dinner. Fortunately, Marie had brought a couple of bottles of wine with her which they would all enjoy. It was their last night together as a team as Jill would fly back to California the next day.

  They were planning a vacation to the United Kingdom in the fall. While Jo, Jill, and Angela had been to London before, only Jill had explored Wales and the English towns outside of London. Angela had visited Scotland as had Jill. For Marie, the vacation was wide open and full of new places to see. They would rent a car and stay at a variety of Bed and Breakfast establishments wherever they traveled.

  They also needed to have a discussion about Michelle. Jill was still vacillating on whether she was a co-conspirator or not to her husband’s murder. They needed to discuss the body language between Dr. Lewis and Michelle that Jo was able to observe last evening, when they exited the bar. Jill also wanted to give some thought to the records of Dr. Lewis’s hospital performance. At this point, there appeared to be no motive purported by the detectives for Dr. Easley's murder or potentially Dr. Phillips’s murder if that was the finding tomorrow during the autopsy.

  Was being identified as having difficulties with your technique as a surgeon worth murder? They had to be something more to it than that. After seeing Dr. Lewis walk towards them on the golf course, gun in hand, there had to be a psychological diagnosis to label him with. Jill did not remember enough of her psych rotation as a resident to begin to figure out what was troubling Dr. Lewis. She checked her watch and noted that she had enough time to give Nathan a call and see what was new in his world.

  “Hey, thanks for taking my autopsy case to UPS for shipping. I probably could have made do with the instruments here, but I haven’t seen their autopsy area
and I plan to fly specimens back home to analyze them in my lab and it’s much easier to get the entire case through airport security, than individual samples in a zip-lock bag.”

  “No problem, babe. I didn’t even have to go anywhere; they stopped for a delivery and the case went from your car trunk to their shipping truck in a matter of seconds.”

  “Cool, glad you weren’t inconvenienced. I should be at your house by about eleven tomorrow evening. I have the autopsy in the morning. If I have time, I’ll meet Dr. Phillips’s widow in person, if not, I’ll call her from the Minneapolis airport.”

  “How did the interview go with Dr. Lewis? Wasn’t that supposed to happen this morning?”

  “It didn’t go well,” Jill summarized. “The detective and the deputy asked him to recount his experience and he repeated what he said to the police just after the event. When they showed him the video, he again told them he didn't want to change to his original statement and then he stood up and left.”

  “Wow, he is a pretty cool customer…or a psychopath.”

  “Even though you have no training in psychology, you’re dead on the money on that one. We decided to play golf this afternoon, thinking we would finish the golf game that got cut short due to Dr. Easley's murder. On the seventh hole, we noticed Dr. Lewis two holes behind us because of the way the course is set up. Jo wanted to return to the clubhouse, as he made her nervous. That turned out to be a good call. He followed us in his electric golf cart, pulled out a gun from his golf bag, and followed us on foot into the woods lining the golf course.”

  “What!?”

  “We couldn’t make the clubhouse for protection,so we had to plunge into the woods,” Jill began to rush through her explanation. “We had no cell coverage for a while or we couldn’t call for help, but we did eventually get through. Marie led our group and Angela brought up the rear. Angela’s arm was grazed by a bullet and now we are in a hotel under police protection as they have not located Dr. Lewis yet.”

  There was a long silence on the other end of the phone. It went on for so long, that Jill thought her connection had been cut. She pulled her cell phone away from her ear to see if the call was still connected and then she said, “Nathan, are you still there?”

  After another pause, he said, “Yes, I am here. How is Angela? Were you hurt?”

  “Angela is fine. It truly was a graze, she has a large Band-Aid on the wound; it didn’t require a trip to the hospital. I’m fine. When you’re the short person of the group, you’re harder to hit with a bullet.”

  “Was he chasing you in particular?”

  “I don't know. Since the police have not captured him yet, they don't have Dr. Lewis’s explanation for his actions. We wondered how he found us at the golf course. A crime scene tech searched my car and found a GPS tracking device on it. He could have placed it on my car yesterday while I was doing surveillance.”

  "Surveillance? So you took my recommendation on doing some surveillance?"

  "I didn't tell you about my surveillance experience? It must've been because I was embarrassed that I was so bad at it. I wanted to be useful, so I drove over to Dr. Lewis's house planning to watch it for a few hours. I had done my own internet search to define good surveillance techniques. Despite reading about it, I had little success with my first attempt at surveillance.

  “Jill went on to explain her failed attempt at surveillance and concluded with, "We are speculating that Dr. Lewis placed a GPS tracker on the molding of my back window without me noticing because I wasn't paying attention."

  "You're kidding; you told him you were taking pictures because he had great landscaping?”

  “Nathan, I can hear you shake your head over the telephone line."

  "No, what you're hearing is silent laughter on my end. You sound like half of Abbott and Costello doing surveillance. So none of you were hurt?"

  "Other than Angela's injury, the worst the rest of us incurred was scratches from the bushes growing in the woods.”

  "Now you're in police custody in a hotel. It sounds like you should be safe up to the point you get on the airplane to come home.”

  "I think so. We all feel safe at the moment even though Dr. Lewis has not been captured yet. Hey, I just heard room service delivering our meal so I got to run. I'll text you from the two airports tomorrow so that you have confirmation that I'm on my way home. Love you"

  "Love you back. I would appreciate a call or text in the morning so that I know you've made it through the night," said Nathan with a serious tone to his voice.

  Jill rejoined her friends in one of the two suites’ living rooms. It looked like room service was laying out a delicious meal. Angela was uncorking a bottle of wine and pouring it into the little plastic cups supplied by the hotel. Not at all an elegant way to drink wine but no one cared. Soon they were alone in the room.

  Jill raised her plastic cup for a toast, “To Angela” and there was the sound of plastic rubbing against plastic as they brought their cups together.

  Angela added, "All for one and one for all!” Again they smashed their plastic cups together.

  "Nathan asked how your arm was doing. He was a little shocked to hear that you were hit by a bullet. I think this is the first time that any of us have actually been injured during one of our investigations. I am very grateful, Angela, that you have such a small dressing on your arm."

  Soon there was a group hug and then they sat down to eat. They sampled each other's dishes and in the end everyone was happy with their dinner choice. Once they finished, they put the room service materials outside of their suite and then took their cups of wine and settled into the sofa and chairs of the living room.

  "Let's talk about Michelle and her role in this murder mystery. I am really puzzled by her behavior. Jo, when you watched Dr. Lewis and Michelle leave the bar last night, was there anything lover like in their relationship? Were they holding hands? Did they stare into each other's faces? Did you hear any conversation between the two of them?”

  Jo was replaying the events of the previous night like a movie in a dark theater. As the movie rolled, Jo said, "No hand holding, no kisses, and I don't remember them walking close to each other as a couple does. I wasn't close enough to hear a single word of any conversation between them. As for staring into each other's eyes, it was too dark and I was too far away for me to tell if there was any staring going on. I do remember at the time thinking that something about the two of them said 'couple', I just can't put my finger on what it was."

  “Marie, did you see anything when you peered in the window?”

  “No”

  “So what do we think of Michelle?” Jill mused. “Did she have a relationship with Dr. Lewis or is she an innocent bystander in this whole situation? It's not like any of us know her well enough to tell if the behavior we saw in the interview was normal for a grieving widow or whether something truly was going on."

  "I am going to choose to believe the best of Michelle," Angela stated. "I think we do not know her well enough to understand her behavior at this time in her life."

  "Like you Jill, I can't make my mind up about Michelle,” Jo affirmed. "I think it's very weird that a night before her husband's funeral, she is in a bar with a member of the opposite sex late at night. That's a big red flag for me. However, with all of the internet searches we've performed, we're unable to find any connection between Michelle and Dr. Lewis other than the decorating job she did for him and his wife."

  "I guess we'll just have to leave the issue of Michelle’s guilt or innocence as undecided,” Jill said. “Let's move on to a discussion about quality and whether Dr. Lewis is a problematic surgeon. We were able to read some reports that Nick obtained for us in an illegal manner. I wonder if he could find any more material for us that spells out what actions the hospital was planning to take in regards to his performance."

  "I think there will be far too many documents for Nick to search through," noted Jo. "I don't know enough about cyber security to und
erstand if there is a huge risk to him personally for dabbling in that database for us. I think that they may not have labeled any planned actions as a ‘quality problem with Dr. Lewis’. It's more likely buried in some generic report or memo which means that Nick would be looking for a needle in a haystack.”

  “Maybe we best leave that up to the detectives when they capture Dr. Lewis,” Angela suggested. “I bet they could lead him to a point where he complains about the unfair actions of the hospital, then they would have enough to get a warrant for digging into that area of the hospital. However, we need to warn them first, as for all we know they could be in the process of arresting Dr. Lewis as we speak.”

  “Good point, Angela,” Marie said. “How do we provide this information to the detectives so they don’t have grounds to arrest us for illegally obtaining the information?”

  They all contemplated a scenario where they could avoid prosecution, yet still pass on the useful information. After a moment, Jo floated an idea.

  “How about if we tell the detectives that one of the people we interviewed mentioned that there were rumors about the quality of Dr. Lewis’s work? Given the attack on the quality manager, Helen, at our Lady of Guadalupe there are signs pointing to the fact that he may have quality problems. We could then provide some suggested questions to ask him during the interview process. What we need to think about is what his reaction will be to being asked those questions. If he is narcissistic, he will deny everything. At that point, the detectives could ask him about his complication rate and see what happens next."

  "I like that idea,” Angela agreed. "I think we should send an e-mail to the detectives with a list of questions to ask Dr. Lewis. We could just say that we don't remember who told us that there were issues but that it would be worth exploring during the interview."

  Soon they had a script written with questions for Dr. Lewis followed by secondary questions depending on what answers he provided to the initial inquiry.

  "Unless you need some help with the autopsy, Jill, I think we should move on to planning our fall vacation." Marie added, "This is the last time we will be face-to-face until we arrive in merry old England."