Rausch & Donlon - Can Be Murder 01 - Headaches Can Be Murder

by Marilyn Rausch

  Doctors were always warned not to get emotionally involved with their patients. But, friends and colleagues insisted that it was his compassion that made John so good at his job. But damn if it didn’t feel personal sometimes.

  On top of losing the little girl, his private life was a train wreck. Tanya, his girlfriend of the last two years had finally given up on him and moved out. John frowned at the memory of their last conversation.

  He had been holding her hand, trying to make her understand. “Tanya, we’ve been through this before. My job has to come first. My patients deserve my full attention. Can’t you see that?”

  She yanked her hand from his grip. “You know what I think, Dr. Goodman? I think you hide behind that job of yours so that you never have to commit to a relationship. What are you so damned afraid of?”

  As he sat on the plane en route to Minneapolis, he had time to consider her question. What am I afraid of exactly? He did care for Tanya. But maybe it wasn’t enough. He was beginning to think he wasn’t cut out to be in a relationship. Maybe he was just a flawed human being, unwilling to care too much for someone, because it hurt to lose them. Like that little eight-year-old girl with the pixie smile.

  The pilot’s voice came on over the speakers, “Ladies and gentleman. We have begun our final descent into Minneapolis/St. Paul International airport. The current temperature is a balmy fifteen degrees. It’s been our pleasure to fly with you from our origination point of Baltimore/Washington International airport. We hope you have a pleasant stay.”

  John gathered up his scattered files and drank the remainder of his soda. He closed up the tray and stored his belongings beneath the seat in front of him. After several minutes encased in clouds, the plane broke through. The snow-covered buildings and streets of the Twin Cities appeared out his window as the plane banked to line up with its runway. He took a deep breath and closed his eyes. Landings were never John’s favorite.

  The female morning-drive DJ was cheerful as she reported doom and gloom on the commute. “Eastbound lanes of Highway 62 are shutdown at the Cedar Avenue/77 exit due to a jackknifed semi-trailer. We suggest you find an alternate route to your destination… .”

  “Great. Now they tell me.” Special Agent Jo Schwann clicked off the radio in disgust. She looked at the clock on the dash. “Today, of all days.”

  It had been one of those mornings. The old furnace in her 1920s house had petered out last night, and she woke to a chilly fifty-eight degrees. Jo spent forty minutes arranging to have it replaced while she was out of town. No heat for several days would mean frozen pipes in these temperatures.

  She loved her house. It was in the Tangletown part of Minneapolis, so called because of the winding streets that took their directional cue from Minnehaha Creek flowing through the area. Jo spent most of her precious free hours restoring the house to its original beauty. It was at times like this, though, that a maintenance-free apartment seemed enticing.

  The next snag in her day had appeared when she loaded her luggage into her FBI-issued vehicle, only to find it wouldn’t start. Rather than calling a tow truck, she transferred everything to her personal SUV and headed out. Now this.

  She tapped her fingers on the steering wheel. She hated to be late for anything. An expert for her next case was waiting for her at the airport.

  Looking around at the sea of cars inching along with her, it was hard not to feel a bit claustrophobic. She could see into the red VW Beetle next to her. The driver was talking on his cell phone while eating an Egg McMuffin from McDonalds. Of course, no hands on the steering wheel.

  Her mind drifted to last night. Kara, a friend at work, had set her up on a blind date, something Jo had been resisting for months. Jo finally caved. It had been a long time since she had been out, though she told herself that the fault lay in the hours and demands of her job—they left little room for a social life.

  They arranged to meet at an Irish pub in St. Paul. Her date, Cory, was not at all what she expected. Kara had said that he was a huge hockey fan, played in college in fact. He had gotten tickets to see the Minnesota Wild take on the Anaheim Ducks, and they were going to the game after a quick bite to eat. She expected a tall, outgoing guy with blond hair and blue eyes—the standard Nordic Minnesotan.

  Instead, he had a slight build and dark hair, with artsy glasses over brown eyes. When the hostess led her to his table, Cory stood up and knocked over his drink, spilling it on her shoes. “Oh, man. I’m so sorry. Here, let me.” He got down on his knees and began wiping her shoes with his napkin. “So clumsy of me.”

  The night had gone down hill from there. Throughout the meal of fish and chips, Cory was nice, but painfully shy. He wouldn’t look her in the eye when he spoke and answers to her questions were mumbled.

  After dinner, they walked to the Xcel Energy Center to watch the Wild play. Cory came alive at the game. He drank too many beers, shouted obscenities at the refs and was rude to the people around them. Jo enjoyed hockey as much as the next person raised in Minnesota, but not this time.

  When he walked her back to the car, the testosterone-and-beer buzz from the game evidently gave him courage. As she reached into her purse for her car keys, he pulled her tight to him and shoved his tongue in her mouth. When his hands crept down to her butt, she ground the heel of her boot into his foot.

  Hopping around on his good foot, he shouted, “Ow! Whatcha do that for? We were getting on so well. Thought you girls with guns liked things a little, um … exciting.”

  She rolled her eyes, clamping her mouth shut to the things she really wanted to say. As she closed her car door, she said instead, “Goodbye, Cory.” She crossed blind dates off her mental to-do list.

  Jo sighed. Maybe she wasn’t meant to find a significant other. Men were either intimidated by what she did for a living or were weirdly fascinated by it. A few months ago, she’d gone out with a guy who continually asked to see her gun. Ick.

  Her mind landed back in the present. She reached an exit off the backed-up highway and zig-zagged through neighborhoods until she was able to merge onto the interstate heading to the airport. Traffic was slower than normal because of the slippery roads, but at least she was moving.

  Jo thought about the case she was about to take on in Duluth. A young man with an aneurysm, but with a twist that brought the FBI onto the scene. She wasn’t thrilled about heading up to her old stomping grounds, but her boss thought she was the best agent for the case. On the bright side, she was looking forward to seeing Sid, her father’s old friend. He was the ME on the case and had contacted the Bureau when he found out what had caused the burst artery in Mitch Calhoun’s head.

  Only a few miles from the airport, she passed the exit for the Mall of America on I-494 when a dented green car with Kentucky tags swerved in front of her, causing Jo to react. The SUV’s anti-lock brakes shuddered as they tried to gain traction on the snow-packed road. Her heart pounded. A few more feet and she would have slammed into the back end of the guy. She rolled her eyes skyward. “Save me from people who don’t know how to drive in snow.”

  Jo pulled into the short-term parking lot at the airport. She wondered about the neurosurgeon flying in to help out with the case. Her track record with outside experts was spotty. The last one assigned to her had led them on the wrong path. She’d wasted countless hours chasing down a dead-end lead.

  Jo glanced down at the picture on the passenger seat. The office had faxed it to her house this morning, along with the flight information of the expert. She had to admit the guy was good-looking. Not that it mattered.

  John’s flight arrived a few minutes early at the Lindberg terminal. He collected his bag from the baggage claim and looked around. Mark had said that Agent Schwann would meet him here.

  Waiting for his ride, he sat on one of the rows of connected seats in front of the revolving baggage claim carosels. Amongst all the people hustling in and out of the airport, he noticed a young woman holding a rose. She bit her lip, looking left
and right. Tears filled her eyes and she walked over to a gray metal trash can and dropped the rose in. John watched her turn and walk out the automatic doors, into the blustering winds of a January day. Yeah, love was like that.

  “Dr. Goodman?” John turned his head in time to see a woman hurrying toward him, hand raised. “Excuse me, are you Dr. John Goodman?” John didn’t answer for a moment. Mark hadn’t told him the agent was a woman, let alone a very attractive redhead with startling green eyes. If he remembered, Mark had said the agent’s first name was Joe. But that had been over the phone. Clearly “Joe” was really “Jo.”

  He got to his feet as she reached him. She stood in front of him, looking up into his face. She enunciated carefully, as if she was talking to a daydreaming teenager. “Excuse me. Are you Dr. John Goodman?”

  John looked down at his picture in her hand. Feeling slightly foolish for his reaction to this beautiful woman, he cleared his throat and said, “Um, yes. I’m Dr. Goodman. I presume you are Agent Schwann. Pleased to meet you.” He reached out his hand and smiled.

  Her handshake was surprisingly firm for such a petite woman—she barely came up to his chin. She looked him up and down, as if taking his measure. John briefly wondered if he met her initial approval. For some reason he didn’t understand, it mattered to him.

  Jo tilted her head and then smiled. “Welcome to Minnesota, Doctor. I hope you haven’t been waiting long. Traffic was crazy and well …” Her voice trailed off.

  “Not a problem. Just arrived a few minutes ago.”

  She nodded. “Hope you had a good flight. Please, follow me.”

  Jo led the way, with John pulling his roller bag behind them. She turned to him on the escalator, “The FBI offices are located here in Minneapolis, but we’ll be heading north to Duluth to talk to the ME. I was told you would prefer to view the body in person. The drive will take a couple of hours … three if the weather gets worse.”

  They followed the carpeted hallway past a Caribou Coffee, went up another escalator and walked out automatic doors into a frigid parking lot. The cold made John gasp. He pulled his collar up around his ears. “Jeez. Haven’t they ever heard of heat in this state?”

  Jo chuckled. “You get used to it. Or at least, you learn to tolerate it. This one’s a blast coming in from Canada.”

  A good healthy shiver made him tense up. “Damn Canadians. This is just not right.”

  “Wait until you get up north. It’s another ten degrees colder up there.” Jo grabbed his bag and threw it into the back of her SUV.

  They climbed in, and she reached over, snapping on a button to the left of his leg. “Let me introduce you to the invention that has saved the backsides of countless Northerners. The butt warmer.”

  In a few moments, heat began to circulate through him. He relaxed into the warm leather seat and closed his eyes. “Remind me to send a thank you note to the inventor.”

  They left the parking garage and headed north. Once they left the Twin Cities area, Interstate 35 was a flat, snowy stretch of road, dominated by semis roaring by, stirring up eddies of snow. Bright sunshine glared off the snow and John reached for the sunglasses he kept in the pocket of his North Face jacket.

  John turned in his seat to face Jo. He studied her profile. Daylight coming in through the sunroof lit up her curly hair, making it glow with fire. Jo had pulled it back into a no-nonsense twist, but a few unruly curls had managed to spring loose around her ears. She had long eye lashes, with just a hint of mascara. He cleared his throat. “So, Agent Schwann, tell me about this case. Why is this particular death getting so much attention?”

  Jo took her eyes off the Black Bear Casino bus in front of them to glance at John. “A week ago, we got a call from an ME in Duluth. He’d been called on what he thought was going to be a routine case—some drunk kid who wandered out into the cold and died of exposure. Once he got there, he discovered the body was frozen solid. Took him several days to thaw it out.” Jo put on her blinker and passed the bus.

  “Immediately, he found a few things that told him this was no ordinary case. First, once he was able to straighten the victim’s fingers, he found scraps of paper crumpled up in the guy’s hand. They were pages torn from a coloring book and had writing all over them.”

  “What do they say?”

  “Most of the writing was illegible, but they did get a few phrases. It said, ‘I won’t kill’ and ‘they can’t make me’ and others to that effect.”

  “Well, that’s certainly weird, but what’s all that got to do with needing my help?”

  “When the ME performed the autopsy, he found the vic’s skull full of blood. It was the work of an aneurysm.”

  “Again, what does this have to do with me?”

  Jo turned her green eyes on John. “The ME found a microchip at the site of the aneurysm.”

  John’s eyes opened wide. “A microchip? I’ve read several research papers on microchip use in the brains of monkeys, but I hadn’t heard that they’ve been testing them in humans.” He thought for a moment, then said, “Shouldn’t the Food and Drug Administration be involved, not the FBI? Incidents in which a medical device may have caused or contributed to a death are supposed to be reported to FDA under the Medical Device Reporting program. Seems like this clearly falls under their jurisdiction.”

  “We’re entering the case with the full sanction of the FDA. They recently conducted a series of premarket approval reviews of the device involved. The results were clean.” Jo shook her head. “A little too clean. And quick. The authorization was pushed through in nearly record time.

  “The FDA inspector in charge disappeared immediately after the last review was completed. The investigation into her disappearance revealed that she had recently deposited large sums of cash into her bank account. These deposits corresponded directly with the time period of her audits.”

  John whistled through his teeth. “Has anyone taken a look at the microchip itself?”

  “The ME sent the chip to our offices, and our technology experts have been taking it apart. This was not an ordinary medical gadget. It appears to have functions similar to those used in other artificial intelligence devices. We believe it was a control device.”

  John snorted. “A control device? You don’t think this is some James Bond movie concept where the villainous company purposely creates mind control devices, do you Agent Schwann?”

  Jo turned to him, eyes flashing. “James Bond movie concept? Nah, I’d say this is an accepted theory. Don’t you think there are plenty of dictator nut-jobs and terrorists who would love to get their hands on microchip technology to control their enemies?”

  “I think it’s highly unlikely. Think of all the good that could come out of microchip technology. People with brain damage, strokes, Alzheimer’s, seizures … the possibilities are endless.”

  “Yes, and the possibilities for abuse are endless as well. That’s why there has to be the proper governmental oversight on this …”

  John interrupted. “I believe in government oversight up to a point. But I’ve seen first-hand what happens when a group of overzealous bureaucrats get their hands on projects like this. It’s a nightmare of red tape. Meanwhile, there are thousands of people who could use the technology right now to vastly improve their lives.”

  “Government oversight in the medical field is vital. Our vic proves that point.”

  She has me there. John had been frustrated numerous times over the years when technology that would help a current patient was unavailable due to the long process of FDA approvals. However, the death of Mitch Calhoun spoke volumes.

  John looked out the window, thinking about the idea of a microchip for the brain. Fascinating. Suddenly, he sat up straight, noticing his surroundings for the first time in a couple of hours. “Hey, that’s a beautiful sight, isn’t it?”

  They had rounded a bend and were looking down over the harbor at the outskirts of Duluth. Several manufacturing plants dotted the edge of an ice-covered
bay, pillows of smoke rising from their stacks. Jo pointed out the bridge to Wisconsin that spanned the bay. John said, “I’ve never been to Lake Superior before. I didn’t know it would be so impressive.”

  They drove through the downtown area, passing restaurants, office buildings, and shops. Kids with University of Minnesota at Duluth jackets hurried along the streets, stepping into coffee shops. They passed the arched gateway leading to the Canal Park area, then continued northward on Highway 61, driving by the beautiful old mansions built with iron ore money perched on the cliffs overlooking Lake Superior.

  Jo pointed out the largest mansion to John. It was tucked behind enormous wrought iron fencing. “That’s the Glensheen Mansion. It was built by Charles Congdon in the early 1900s. He had his fingers in all kinds of business pies, particularly iron ore. His daughter, Elisabeth inherited the house when he died just ten years after he moved in. She didn’t have any biological children, but adopted a daughter. A wild child, to say the least. The daughter got into drugs, the wrong sorts of men, all that. She ended up killing her elderly mother and a nurse in the mansion in the seventies.

  “It’s open to tours now. ’Course, they don’t bring up the murders on the tour, unless someone asks them. They think homicide is bad for business.” Jo shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t know about that. Seems to me they’d have more tours because of it. People are suckers for ghost stories, you know?”

  “You seem to know a lot about this town. Are you from around here?”

  She took a moment to respond. When she did, she was looking straight ahead, not at John. “Yes, I am.”

  He waited a beat for her to add more. When the silence dragged on, he said, “And now you live in Minneapolis and are an agent of the F. B. of I.”