ColdScheme

by Edita Petrick

  “You were so much more attractive when you were the Smithsonian guard—and bald.”

  “I was younger,” he replied, smiling.

  “Actually, you look younger now that you have hair—and a decent haircut. I used to think you were at least ten years older than I was. I just listened to Springsteen’s songs and enjoyed the noise but you had to analyze the lyrics like a wise, old professor.”

  “I only started analyzing lyrics after I sat through your law lectures. It was contagious.”

  I tossed my head back and laughed. Then I caught sight of my partner, sitting on the floor like a statue of Buddha, the cheese tray resting like a worshipper’s offering in front of him.

  “You two know each other?” he asked in a preadolescent voice.

  I sighed so deeply the swoosh of my breath lifted my bangs. I knew Field wanted me to answer. It was my choice. “We used to be married,” I said.

  “To each other?” Ken asked.

  “Yes.” Field decided on an economic answer. Hopefully, it would stop any further questions. It didn’t.

  “What broke up the marriage?” Ken asked.

  “Bullets,” Field said.

  “Money,” I replied, almost on top of Field’s answer.

  “I thought it would have been your jobs,” he said. I knew that was his foremost concern and his excuse, for still dating Brenda after nearly fifteen years.

  “We could have juggled our careers with marriage and family,” Field told him. “We fell a little short in communication. I couldn’t say everything that was on my mind and she was busy practicing saying everything that was on hers—in the classroom.”

  “You lied to each other?” Ken’s interpretation was bizarre—but not inaccurate.

  Field looked at me. “Not so much lied, as listened to the wrong voice.”

  “I didn’t lie,” I said.

  “I didn’t either but I couldn’t tell you who I was until the case was closed.”

  “Maybe if you had told me who you were, that shootout would not have happened.”

  “That’s what I worried about the most, that you would be there—if and when it did.”

  “I might have helped,” I maintained, feeling strangely light, as if ten years had been sloughed off my body and mind.

  “You would have played detective—alone.”

  I swept our little group with my hand. “I am a detective and I’m part of a team.”

  “Experience.” He grinned at me.

  I narrowed my eyes. “No,” I said. “Hardship. And you’re right. I would have reacted as a detective. It would have been exciting.”

  “No more excitement—at thirty-two?”

  “The last thing that really excited me was when I threw a People Finders’ agent out of my house at gunpoint,” I said and laughed.

  “Call him back and apologize,” he advised, eyes glowing.

  “No way. I didn’t like him that much.”

  “I’ll go make coffee,” Ken said, struggling to get up, knees wobbly.

  “Sit down. We have work to do,” I told him. “Mrs. Tavalho will make it. She probably has it ready. Jazz will be home any moment. I’ll have to debrief her before I can get back to work.”

  “What are we going to work on, now that I can’t concentrate?” my partner asked.

  “Patricia’s file. There’s got to be something buried there. Something we can use—a clue.”

  * * * * *

  A state facility like Mongrove, with more than a thousand patients in residence, had to be sufficiently staffed. The number of doctors may have been less than what Patterson implied were needed but there were still one hundred and seven doctors on staff, with another seventy paramedical and caretaker staff in support functions. Perhaps this was skeletal staffing but I felt that the Chief Resident of such a large facility should confine his duties to administering personnel and functions, rather than having patients of his own. Joe insisted that our prime suspect was a doctor and Patterson’s age and behavior bothered me enough to assign him the number one slot on my empty list of suspects.

  “Did Patterson give you an impression that Patricia was his patient?” I looked at my companions. When they nodded, I continued. “How can a Chief Resident, in charge of such a large facility, afford to look after individual patients—and more important, why would he?”

  “Quigley is the Chief of Hopkins Neurosurgery and he has patients, private ones as well,” Ken said.

  “Quigley’s unit doesn’t have one thousand patients,” I pointed out. “He may oversee a staff of ten, twenty doctors—tops. Patterson has one hundred and seven doctors to take care of the patients. Why not assign Patricia’s case to one of them, why look after her personally?”

  “Chief Resident doctors of any facility are normally administrators,” Field said. “From my only meeting with the doctor, Patterson struck me as someone who likes to keep his hand in field work, on the ground level.”

  I thought so too but then there was that youthful hairstyle and a face that I felt had yet to see wrinkles. It was possible that the man was vain and opted for cosmetic surgery but what would a psychiatrist, indeed specialist, like Patterson have to gain by looking young? His qualifications got him the job at Mongrove, not his appearance. He said as much when he glibly illustrated how he got the job during our first visit. Patterson was very well acquainted with Patricia’s case. So well, in fact, that he didn’t bother passing us on to one of his doctors but conducted both interviews in person. Then there was another glib explanation he gave me when I asked about the patient who reminded me of Brenda. He knew her case in depth, gave me the kind of details that an administrator shouldn’t know. His answer was also well-tailored to apply to Ken and Brenda’s case. Was Patterson somehow well-prepared for our visit? Did someone alert him, even provided personal details on us? If that was the case then whoever alerted Patterson knew us and on a very personal level. Even as I had listened to Patterson’s explanation I felt he was laughing at us—laughing at Ken. Was someone toying with us right from the start of this bizarre case? Was I reaching because we had no suspects? Or was Patterson indeed a “bright boy” who knew case histories of one thousand patients interned in his facility, in detail? It was possible but highly improbable.

  Daniel Kane’s words kept returning to haunt me, like the Phantom of the Opera.

  “Patricia died as a result of an accident,” I said. “How many accidental deaths do you think there were in Mongrove these last four years?”

  Ken flipped out his cell phone and began dialing.

  “Who are you calling?” I was surprised to see him so reactionary.

  “Joe.”

  “Why?” I was dumbfounded.

  “He’s the medical examiner. Bodies from state facilities end up in his morgue.” He waved at me to be silent since he’d already heard a voice in the receiver.

  Five minutes later, Ken was staring into space, holding a private séance.

  “What did Joe say?” I didn’t want to wait to see whether he was successful in summoning the spirit.

  “He remembers Patricia. She’s a recent case. No autopsy. Social services said it wasn’t necessary—a result of an accidental fall, broken neck. He can’t recall any other cases that had ended up in his morgue that came from Mongrove. He said if a psychiatric patient dies while interned in the facility, either of natural causes or as a result of accident, the family is notified and they look after the arrangements. He only gets those cases that social services look after. Patricia was one of them, no relatives to notify. He wanted to know what we’re up to.”

  “We’ll drop by soon to visit him,” I murmured, still fighting that lingering echo of Kane’s words, “Certainly, Detective. But would it be safe?” Joe had involved himself in this case from the start far more than I felt was comfortable for a pathologist to be involved. I worried that if the homicidal genius was indeed among his colleagues in Hopkins and Joe found out his identity, he’d precipitate a confrontation tha
t might not see him live to walk around his automated morgue, tossing chicken bones around. I also didn’t want Joe to know that we suspected Patterson of being the evil mastermind.

  “Unless Mattis finds something else on Dr. Patterson, we can’t bring him in for questioning. Hopkins’ medical staff is already on the warpath. I’m sure there are plenty of angry doctors who wouldn’t balk at talking to the media. Police are harassing the medical specialists to cover their incompetence,” Field said.

  Media were already camped out in Hopkins and I feared another altercation between Hopkins doctors and Joe that would receive much publicity.

  Daniel Kane had told us that Patricia saw Brick delivering a gurney with a dead body. Kane doubted whether the man pushing the gurney had been Brick but he didn’t doubt what Patricia told him she saw.

  “All right,” I nodded. “Let’s check something out.” It was my turn to make a phone call.

  “Mr. Kane,” I said when I heard his voice, “it’s Detective Stanton. I’m calling from my cell phone and my scrambler is plugged in. How’s yours?” I heard his chuckle and then he asked me to hold on. When he came back, he confirmed that his line was secure also.

  “Were there any accidents at Mongrove during the time you were there?” I asked. He was silent for a long time but I heard his breathing. “It’s all right, Mr. Kane. We’re just checking, or I should say I’m trying to validate a theory. Patricia is dead. She fell into a manhole in the laundry facility. She escaped through a laundry chute, the night of the full moon and fell into an open maintenance hole.”

  “Your visit to the facility must have precipitated it,” he said. He expressed exactly what I feared and had been avoiding.

  “Probably.” I knew he would hear the undercurrent of frustration and regret in my voice.

  “Most patients in that facility are not coherent,” he said. I knew he was trying to be as factual as possible, without airing his theories.

  “But some can communicate. You were most likely one of the few patients who not only understood but also was able to observe what went on.”

  “There were four patients in the nine months I was there, who disappeared, though that’s just my opinion. I’m sure that would not be the official report by the facility’s administration. Patients die, especially in medical facilities. Some of natural causes, some due to harm or accidents. Four male patients, between ages thirty and forty, vanished from that facility while I was there.”

  “How do you know they just didn’t check out?”

  “I’d noticed these particular men. All were catatonic, non-verbal. I approached one and tested his awareness. He was able to mumble but not focus on any particular thing for long. He was always in the lounge. I never saw anyone working with him. No one ever came to take him for a session. I wondered about that. I noticed there were three others like him. No one worked with these patients. Not the staff doctors and not their private psychiatrists. I concluded they had no relatives, no one to appeal their case and insist on better care.”

  “Is that sort of thing unusual?” I asked. We needed more to go after Patterson than negligence or lack of competence when it came to directing and overseeing his staff.

  He snorted softly into the phone. “Not really. In a State facility, that sort of thing happens often enough when there’s not enough medical staff. My own psychiatrist attended me four times a week. I noticed the same level of care with quite a few other patients. Patricia was another abandoned case, though I saw her taken away for rehab sessions. After I’d been there four months, this male patient, his name was Henry, stopped coming to the lounge. I asked the orderlies what happened to him. They said he had a heart attack. A month later, another one of those three remaining patients stopped coming to the lounge. I asked once again. The orderlies said he passed away in his sleep. By the time I signed myself out of the facility, the other two were also gone.”

  “Mr. Kane, if they died of natural causes—and you said that’s not unusual in any medical facility—why would you think they had disappeared?” I felt something was missing here.

  “Because three weeks before I left the Mongrove, a couple came in, surprise visitors. They were Henry’s uncle and aunt, missionaries, who had just returned from an overseas assignment. I was in the lounge, resting, pretending to be dozing. The Chief Resident doctor activated the wall screen and showed them Henry—well cared for. It was an old tape. Henry’s relatives left happy that he was being so well cared for.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Kane,” I said, chills running down my spine.

  “I’m sorry about Patricia. I always felt she was a hostage, not a patient,” he said and hung up.

  I told my partners what Kane had said.

  “Experimenting on psychiatric patients to get the implant device just right?” Ken murmured, examining this possibility and finding it as frightening as I did.

  “We still don’t have enough to go calling with a warrant,” Field said.

  “Probably not. And even if we started an investigation into those four disappearances, we’d only alert Patterson and his accomplices. I’m pretty sure they’re closing down their Baltimore operations. If we spook them, they’d do it faster, covering their tracks, destroying all the evidence.”

  An hour later, when I checked my email, I found Nancy Bassiano’s list of regular customers who were designated VIPs and merited transport in a Creeslow limo. Felix Kim’s name was on top of the list. I wasn’t sure whether Nancy had slotted him as number one because Ken specifically asked about him, or whether Kim was such a regular customer he fitted that slot. If latter were the case, then Felix Kim was probably number one target and the rest of the people on the list weren’t of interest to Creeslow operators. Still, we had three murders and a suspicious death at a psychiatric facility. I forwarded the list to Bourke, giving him details what it was about. It would be his call how to contact those nine customers without setting off another wave of panic in the population. Bourke called ten minutes after I sent the email.

  “I’ll send a patrol officer with a public health representative to visit each of the nine citizens,” Bourke said. “We’ll be following up on a report of a contagious disease at the travel agency. We’ll make sure the customers understand that it’s just a routine precaution, according to the public health agency protocol.”

  I concurred, thanked him and hung up before he asked for an update report.

  Two days later, I went to see Joe in Hopkins. Ken refused to accompany me, since it was going to be a semi-business meeting, a lunch, in the garden room—with Brenda to complete the happy threesome. Field went to network with his agents, though that’s not how I put it. He said I was getting to be very cynical, for someone who had not yet crossed the fine line that divided youth from the middle-aged pit.

  “Joe, is it possible for a psychiatrist to have the kind of expertise that would allow him to perform neurosurgery, cranial implants?” I asked, when we gave our food orders. I made it come out like a general question, with no particular focus in mind. I should have known better.

  “You’re angling on to this Patterson fellow?” He took the shortest path to the source of my curiosity, as always. His shoulders were exceptionally well squared, his head was thrust forward in anticipation of challenge and his face sported a foxy smile, one I hadn’t seen too often—actually, never. I traced the target of that smile and stifled a sigh, feeling sorry for my partner. Brenda pretended to be immune to our medical examiner’s charm but I saw the corners of her mouth twitch with amusement. Well, most women liked to be admired, regardless of what other relationship commitments they had.

  “John Forsyth,” Brenda said, “one of Quigley’s doctors, is a certified clinical psychiatrist, who went on to specialize for three years at the Rhode Island Hospital of Neurosurgery. He’s one of the leading researchers of brain tumors.”

  “A lot of doctors have more than one specialty,” Joe confirmed. “Have you started checking out Patterson?”

  �
�He appears to be legit.” I didn’t want to involve more people in this investigation, no matter how eager they would be to help. Joe was a part of it, by virtue of his job and continued involvement but Brenda didn’t need to be saddled with the extracurricular activity of spying on her colleagues. It was enough that Joe had decided to mount a crusade on behalf of the Hopkins’ patients, present and future. A possibility of another violent spectacle like the one with Quigley that saw the explosive device publicized like nothing else, worried me no end.

  “I have a friend on staff in Mongrove—” Brenda started to say. I hastily put my hand over hers.

  “No.” I underscored my refusal with a commanding look. “Ken and I appreciate your help. You’ve already done a lot but stay out of Mongrove.”

  “Maybe I should have taken a closer look, done an autopsy,” Joe said.

  “What do you mean?” I turned to him.

  He waited until the waiter put down our salads and the breadbasket before continuing, “The body they brought from Mongrove, female patient, Vanier. I read the report. It agreed with what I found on the x-rays. Severed spinal cord, death was instantaneous. No other external injuries, bruises or lacerations—”

  “No broken bones?” I interrupted. We saw the tape. Patricia fell into an open manhole—feet first. The manhole was large but not the size that would have allowed Patricia’s body to tumble or bounce off the walls as she fell. No matter how deep that manhole, she would have landed on her feet and broken at least her ankles, if not suffering other fractures. She could have hit her head and died from such a blow, maybe even a broken neck but there had to be other injuries consistent with what I saw on that tape in Patterson’s office.

  Joe gave me a pained look. “Could have been. I was busy. The two guys from social services were breathing down my neck, wanted a signed release so the funeral home could collect the body that afternoon. The x-rays came with the body. That’s all I had time to check and confirm. The fatal neck injury was consistent with what the report said.”