[2017] Terminal Secret

by Mark Gilleo

  “Seems reasonable. Not foolproof, but reasonable,” Emily replied, motioning for the return of the bottle, which she immediately turned bottom up.

  “And for the reason Wallace here just mentioned, I also tried to narrow the definition of terminal cancer. I focused my search on obituaries and death records for individuals who were diagnosed with terminal cancer and died within a year. My search wasn’t perfect and some of that information I had to piece together, but that is essentially my new definition of terminal cancer for the purpose of this exercise.”

  “I’ll reserve my opinion on your analysis until you’re finished,” Wallace said.

  Dan continued. “Again, I admit it’s not a perfect system. One could have terminal cancer for a much longer period of time than a year. But for our purpose, as you will see, a year is sufficient.”

  Wallace extended his hand in the direction of the bottle and Emily relinquished her temporary ownership, handing it back to her partner.

  “And if at any point, either of you has a better idea, let’s hear it,” Dan said.

  Wallace downed his second drink. Emily shook her head.

  “Good. Anyone want to take a guess on how many people under fifty, with young children, died of aggressive terminal cancer in the last seven years in the greater DC area?”

  Two heads shook.

  “Okay. At least the moving of the heads indicates the audience is listening. And the answer is that there were over two hundred and fifty relatively young adults, with young children, who died of terminal cancer in the last seven years in the DC area.”

  “Is anyone in the DC area having a more depressing conversation than the one we’re having right now?” Emily asked.

  “Probably not,” Wallace answered. “Why seven years?”

  “I have my reasons,” Dan responded. “But it’s pure speculation at this point.”

  “Can you give us a hint?”

  “Because seven years ago Carla the waitress took her mom and sister on a European cruise, followed by a Caribbean vacation, according to the photos in the living room of Carla’s house. And judging by the appliances in the house, everything was replaced in that same timeframe. More or less.”

  “Okay, then,” Wallace replied, shrugging his shoulders in defeat.

  “How does two hundred and fifty dead cancer victims stack up against the normal terminal cancer population, if there is such a thing?” Emily asked.

  “I wondered the same thing, so I contacted an IT friend of mine who, quite by luck, has a death fetish. He did a quick statistical analysis for me and two hundred and fifty fits within a normal standard deviation.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Given the population and geographical area covered in the greater Washington, DC area, two hundred and fifty is a reasonable number, given my parameters.”

  “So that’s two hundred and fifty in seven years?” Wallace confirmed.

  “Well, two hundred and fifty-one, but I’m rounding here. If we do the math, we know that seven years is eighty-four months. Divide two hundred and fifty people by eighty-four months and we are looking at roughly three people per month, give or take. And those are just those people with obituaries and death records. There are countless others I am not aware of, I’m sure.”

  Wallace stared down as if transfixed.

  Dan plowed onward. “Among those identified, the split of the number of men and women who prematurely died of cancer is approximately even. Fifty-fifty.”

  “Funny how nature takes care of that,” Emily said.

  “Indeed. Now, if we take Amy the bank robber, Beth the sniper, and Carol T. Sutton—who my client covertly identified—we can whittle that number down further. If we consider marital status as a qualifier and limit the search to people who are single, the number drops to one hundred and forty people who died prematurely of terminal cancer. If we assume the person is not only single, but is also the sole provider of a child, the number drops to forty-five. If we operate on the assumption that finances are the driving force behind the selection of these people, which I will explain momentarily, then we can exclude single parents who make a decent living.”

  “How much money is enough to make a decent living?” Emily asked.

  “There was some subjectivity on that point. I took the average salary of the DC area and focused on the bottom twenty percent. And when you take finances and consider those people in the bottom twenty percent of average salaries, the total number of prematurely deceased cancer victims who meet all the criteria gravitates more towards women. Right or wrong, there are more single mothers than single dads and there are more single mothers barely getting by than there are single dads struggling to make ends meet.”

  “So what does that give us?” Wallace asked.

  “Twenty-three. Twenty-three young, poor, single parents who have passed away from terminal cancer.” Dan waved his hand over the list of photos to his right on the floor. “And here is what they look like.”

  “They look like soccer moms,” Emily stated.

  Detective Wallace leaned forward and the bird cage chair squeaked in protest. “There are a couple of soccer coaches in there as well,” he added.

  “Eighteen women and five men,” Dan clarified.

  “So these are our suspected killers?” Emily said.

  “I’m not saying all these people are killers. After all, we know one of these individuals is my client who is merely a suspect in an alleged bank robbery. But I am saying that by using our sample individuals, these photos could include the faces of numerous killers who have yet to be identified.”

  “No offense, Dan, but there is a lot of speculation baked into that pie you just served,” Wallace said.

  “What about you?” Dan asked in Emily’s direction. “Do you want some of this pie?”

  “Wallace has a point. Seven years’ worth of terminal patients, under fifty, single, with young children, economically challenged. I mean… it’s hardly evidence.”

  Dan nodded. “Evidence. That always trips me up.” He reached in the direction of the whiskey bottle and Emily pushed it towards him. “Well, if you don’t like the twenty-three I have here on the floor, maybe you will like the five that I have chosen from those twenty-three.”

  Dan’s hands danced across the pictures of the dead and he removed eighteen photos, tossing them to the side. He arranged the remaining five on the floor. Three women and two men.

  “Any reason you chose those five?”

  “I threw some bones in the corner, spit rum, and drizzled chicken blood on them. When I was done, that’s what the arrangement of the bones told me.”

  “Good one.”

  “In order to reach these final five, I used a little thing called evidence.”

  Wallace furrowed his brows.

  Dan continued. “Upon their deaths, these five remaining individuals all had trusts established for their children by the same nonprofit organization. They all had accounts opened by the Carry On Foundation—a nonprofit that helps young children of cancer victims.”

  Wallace stared at the pictures. “Fuck me.”

  “That’s what they call evidence,” Dan said.

  “You sure about this?” Wallace asked.

  “Absolutely. Five people out of two hundred and fifty identified via Dan Lord black magic who matched perfectly to a verifiable financial trail.”

  “Did you look into the nonprofit?”

  “I poked around. It seems legitimate. They’ve been around for over a decade. They have corporate sponsors. They’ve given financial assistance to hundreds of individuals. These five are just a small percentage of the total number of people the organization has helped. But there are still a couple of questions that I need answers to. I have an appointment with them tomorrow.”

  “Unbelievable,” Emily said. “What’s next? What do we do with a pool of potential killers?”

  “I think that’s the first part of the mystery. The other question is who are they ki
lling?” Dan said. He waved his hand over the other photos on the other side of the floor. “We have a waitress. We have an EPA lawyer. We have a disabled Army vet. And we have the wife of a congressman who knew at least two of the victims.”

  “That would make her the prime suspect if not for the fact that we know she isn’t the pusher and she was picking her kid up from school when her baby daddy was killed,” Wallace responded.

  “I’m sure it’s disappointing when a prime suspect won’t fit the suspect mold you made for them,” Dan retorted at Detective Wallace’s expense.

  “You were a good suspect,” Wallace said. “Just the wrong one.”

  Emily interrupted. “Enough. Let’s not get sidetracked. I assume you tried to find a connection between the dead?”

  “I did. I initially looked into possibilities when I knew there was a connection between Sherry Wellington, her Army-vet baby daddy, and Carla the waitress. I didn’t include the EPA lawyer because I didn’t know there was a sniper with cancer until you told me. The initial search for a connection landed nothing.”

  “No connection at all?”

  “None. So I called my data guy this morning and he reran the query with the addition of the EPA lawyer.”

  “Is this data guy the same IT guy you just mention who has a death fetish?”

  Dan nodded grudgingly.

  “And… ?

  “We still have nothing. No connection between any of the parties, outside of Sherry and Carla working together and Sherry and Marcus living together. There are no extraneous connections.”

  “How good is your IT data death guy?”

  “The best of the best. Crazy as hell, but his programming skills are unrivaled.”

  “I think what he’s saying is that his data guy is good,” Wallace jibed.

  “Which databases did your guy use?” Emily asked.

  “The same ones law enforcement uses. A couple of others I’m sure we’ve never heard of.”

  “So no connection between the Army vet, the EPA lawyer, the waitress, and the wife of the congressman.”

  “None of the normal ones.”

  “What about abnormal ones?” Emily asked. “A gym membership somewhere? A book club? Some kind of class? Maybe a jury?” Emily said.

  “I checked out the jury angle and ran their names through the court system with PACER. I found nothing. The rest of those possibilities will require legwork.”

  “What about something like a swingers’ club?” Emily said.

  “Wow. Didn’t see that coming. Going right for the smut,” Dan replied.

  “There are swingers all over this city,” Wallace said.

  “If you don’t like the sex angle, how about something like Alcoholics Anonymous?” Emily asked.

  “I like the possibility there. We know the Army vet had a drinking problem and he was hooked on oxy,” Dan said.

  “Maybe Sherry Wellington also had a problem. Waitresses and bartenders are known for doing drugs. Something to do with the lifestyle and unusual hours,” Wallace said.

  “Unfortunately AA and NA don’t keep databases. They are anonymous. It’s going to be hard to chase down a connection there,” Dan replied. “We could go knocking on doors, but it’ll take time.”

  “There could be a drug connection. A shared drug dealer. Maybe Sherry, the EPA lawyer, the waitress, and the Army vet are all in the same drug circle,” Wallace said.

  “I doubt it,” Dan said. “I asked around on the drug front.”

  All three stared at the photos on the ground.

  “They could’ve also met at a sex addicts’ support group,” Emily added.

  “Easy partner,” Wallace replied. “I think we’re getting an idea of what kind of girl you become when you drink.”

  “We have two puzzles to solve. The first puzzle is to find a commonality between the EPA lawyer, the congressman’s wife, the disabled vet, and the dead waitress,” Dan said.

  “And the second puzzle?” Emily asked.

  “Find out who is selecting the killers and how. We know the guy in the cap and sunglasses is involved, so the bigger mystery may be the how. Keep in mind I was able to identify and analyze our potential killers because they were dead. I used obituaries, death records, and a couple of other private detective tricks-of-the-trade. But identifying people after they’re dead and in the press, and after the information has been posted in public records is easy. But whoever is behind this is compiling a list while these people are still alive, without obituaries and death records. That is something far more difficult to do. The most obvious route to this information is access to the medical records of patients who are still alive. Somehow identifying living cancer patients and then accessing their records.”

  “We have an appointment with your bank robber’s physician tomorrow,” Wallace said. “We planned on meeting with the doctor to get more information on the medication your client was taking at the time of the bank robbery. We can poke around on how medical records are handled.”

  “If that doesn’t pan out, I can ask a few doctors I know. But tomorrow I have an appointment with the Carry On Foundation tied to our five suspects,” Dan said. “Hopefully I can find something else these so-called soccer moms and coaches had in common.”

  “I know one thing the killers have in common,” Wallace said.

  “What’s that?”

  “They’re all dead.”

  “Very helpful.” Dan looked down at the photos. The sun was now setting and the room was edging towards darkness. “There is one other possibility to consider with these dead soccer moms and coaches.”

  “What’s that? Wallace asked.

  “It may be worthwhile to go through some of the unsolved murder cases in the District. If these three women and two men are indeed killers, then by definition they had to have killed someone. You may be able to check if any of these dead cancer victims were in the neighborhood of any unsolved murders. See if the timeline matches. Maybe you’ll find another person who can tie this whole thing together.”

  “And if we turn up a goose egg, there is still hope,” Emily added.

  “How’s that?” Dan and Wallace responded in near unison.

  “All we have to do is keep our eyes on the obituaries. If we’re heading in the right direction, our pusher for the waitress and the person who shot Marcus Losh should show up dead in the newspaper in the near future.”

  “I don’t think I want to wait that long,” Wallace said.

  Chapter 41

  Detectives Wallace and Fields sat in the waiting room next to a large saltwater fish tank with a sunken ship resting on the bottom. A mix of colorful reef dwellers swam around the sunken vessel, dodging in and out like children at recess on an underwater playground.

  Detective Wallace looked around the waiting room and felt the palpable air of death. A man with a bad toupee in the corner sat stone faced, his mind seemingly elsewhere. Maybe on his wife, or his children. Or his life. Or the pain.

  On the other side of the room, a child rested in her mother’s arm. The face of the child was gaunt and pasty.

  “Jesus,” Wallace whispered, dipping his eyes on the floor. Emily reached over and squeezed his arm gently.

  Wallace averted his eyes back to the fish tank, losing himself in nature’s rhythm served in a glass square. The sound of water running through the filter nearly put him to sleep before the door at the end of the reception room opened and Wallace and Emily were called back.

  Moments later they were in Dr. Smithson’s office, offering introductions, flashing credentials, dropping business cards.

  “Before we get started, you understand I have patient-doctor privileges. I’m not permitted to divulge information on any of my patients without their consent. We take HIPAA very seriously.”

  “We totally understand.”

  “Unless you have a warrant.”

  “Hopefully we won’t need one. As I mentioned on the phone, we apprehended a suspect in a bank robbery in DC the
day before yesterday. At the scene of the robbery, we obtained evidence that identifies the alleged suspect as Amy Conboy.”

  “What was that evidence?”

  “A morphine lollipop. As you know, it has a DEA number on it, which pointed us in the direction of the pharmacy that filled the prescription. From there we apprehended the suspect as she returned home.”

  “I see,” Dr. Smithson replied.

  “We wanted to ask you a few questions about these lollipops of yours.”

  “They aren’t mine. And they aren’t morphine.”

  “Yeah, we know. They’re something called Fentanyl,” Wallace said.

  “That’s correct. Fentanyl is a hundred times more powerful than morphine. Less risk for addiction. Fentanyl is used for breakthrough pain.”

  “What is breakthrough pain?” Emily asked.

  “Pain sensations so strong they power through other pain medication like a hot knife through butter.”

  “So the worst pain imaginable,” Emily stated.

  “The worst of the worst,” Dr. Smithson confirmed. “Even as a doctor it’s hard to understand how much pain someone is in without firsthand experience. Some things have to be felt to comprehend. So, as a physician, when it comes to breakthrough pain, I’m treating something I can’t really understand.”

  “And this patient we apprehended, Amy Conboy, she would have likely been in severe pain.”

  “Once again, I cannot discuss a particular individual. But, in general, a patient prescribed Fentanyl would suffer bouts of severe pain. Debilitating pain.”

  “And could the drug cloud their judgment? Impair their ability to act rationally?”

  “It’s likely. But the effect of medication varies by individual and it can change over time. Everyone is different.”

  “So it’s possible that a bank robbery suspect on these Fentanyl lollipops could have been out of his or her mind on medication?”