“You put that very diplomatically,” Lonigan said.
Kurtz shrugged. “What can I say?”
Rivas leaned forward. “Nothing else to add?”
“About Jerry Mandell?”
“Jerry Mandell or anything else you may have seen or heard of that might represent an issue.”
“Not regarding the quality of patient care. I’ve been told the place has been suffering financially and an offer has been made to buy it out.”
“I’m not sure that’s relevant,” Lonigan said.
“No,” Kurtz said. “Probably not.”
“Three of the streetwalkers mentioned a van.”
Abby Blake was Assistant District Attorney in the City of New York, assigned to the Brooklyn Office. “Okay,” she said.
Leroy Evans was big and black, with a barrel chest, rolling shoulders and a shaved head. Abby Blake had met him before and trusted him completely. Leroy Evans was a solid cop. They were sitting in Leroy Evans’ office in Brooklyn.
“They tend to keep an eye on each other.” Leroy shook his head. “A little thing like that? The other whores resented the competition but at the same time, a lot of them felt sorry for her. She reminded them of their own daughters, or maybe she reminded them of themselves, thirty years ago.
“Anyway, three of them saw her talking to a white guy driving a van.”
“Make? Model? License number? Anything?”
“None of the three are into cars. In that neighborhood, very few people own one. It was blue. That’s all they could say.”
“A blue van.”
Leroy Evans nodded.
“What did the driver look like?”
“Couldn’t tell. He stayed inside and leaned back, away from the window. None of the cameras caught more than a shadow.”
“As if he knew he was under surveillance.”
“He probably did. I doubt this was his first time at the rodeo.” Leroy Evans pushed four blown up photos across his desk. Abby Blake picked them up and leafed through them. They were all the same: a blue van with no distinguishing marks or lettering on its sides. The license plate was visible on two of the photos.
“A lot of the shops in that neighborhood have surveillance cameras,” Leroy said.
“The license?”
“It’s phony. It looks like a New York State license plate but no such number has ever been issued.”
Abby Blake whistled. “Your routine murderer does not have fake license plates.”
“No,” Leroy Evans said.
“And I don’t recognize the make of the van, not that I’m an expert.”
“That’s because it doesn’t exist,” Leroy Evans said. “There is no such vehicle manufactured anywhere on Earth.”
Abby Blake stared at him. “Really?”
“Yeah. Vinyl wrapping, metal side panels and plastic cladding. It’s been camouflaged.”
Abby Blake whistled.
“They can’t disguise the basic profile, though. There are a half-dozen different types of van it could be.”
“Unless it’s one of a kind, built from the ground up.”
“Probably not.” Leroy waggled his left hand back and forth. “Even if it is, they would most likely assemble it from pre-built parts. Probably, it’s just a disguise.”
“So, where do we go from here?”
Leroy shrugged. “Probably nowhere.”
Chapter 15
About five years ago, a thirteen-year old girl named Samantha Adams had undergone what should have been a routine ovarian cystectomy at Staunton College of Medicine, in New York City. What made the case not routine was that Samantha Adams had a history of muscular dystrophy, which increases the chances of a potentially fatal cardiac event.
Samantha Adams had careful, conscientious parents, who wanted the very best for their daughter. Samantha Adams had an excellent pediatrician, who, as part of the routine care for patients with muscular dystrophy, had her periodically examined by an excellent cardiologist. Three months prior to Samantha’s surgery, she had undergone a complete cardiac work-up. The work-up had revealed neither problems nor abnormalities with her heart.
When Samantha developed a painful, and possibly dangerous, ovarian cyst, a few months later, there seemed no reason not to proceed with surgery. Samantha’s parents and pediatrician chose the foremost pediatric gynecologist in New York, and the most respected pediatric anesthesiologist at Staunton.
Thirty minutes into the case, Samantha Adams heart began to fibrillate. Despite every resuscitative measure, the arrhythmia could not be suppressed, and Samantha Adams died.
The Department of Surgery and the Department of Anesthesiology both reviewed the case, as did the hospital wide Quality Assurance Committee. Root cause analysis by all parties could identify nothing that had been done wrong.
As was always the case following such unexpected disasters, an inspection team from the New York State Department of Health also showed up and conducted their own review. The inspectors could also find no mistakes in the care Samantha Adams had received.
The inspection team submitted its report. What happened next was never entirely clear. A month later, the same inspection team returned, and conducted a second review that varied not one iota from its first review. Again, the team submitted a report, this time concluding that both the surgeon and the pediatrician were negligent in not having had the cardiac work-up repeated prior to surgery, as was the anesthesiologist for not insisting upon it.
Pure, utter BS. Nothing in the medical literature nor any standard of care recommended a repeat cardiac examination within six months of surgery in a child with muscular dystrophy.
The unofficial word was that the Department of Health had looked over the data and findings of the inspection team and instructed them to, “Go back and find something.”
Which was why Kurtz suspected that the inspection team at Clinton Memorial was going to “find something.”
Whatever, by the time the final report was written, submitted and reviewed, and by the time said review resulted in any consequences for Clinton Memorial, Kurtz would be long gone.
The incident cast a pall, however. The OR staff remained glum after the inspection team left. There was perhaps just a bit less happy chatter in the cafeteria and the hallways. Joe Partledge and Ben Crane seemed tense.
Ignore it, Kurtz told himself. It’s not your business.
Lenore had always been a fan of Andrew Wyeth and Edward Hopper, two realist painters whose genius, Lenore felt, lay in their ability to convey the essence of what lay under the surface of a scene without distorting the surface. Wyeth’s most famous painting was Christina’s World, which shows a seemingly young woman lying in a field of short hay or browned grass, looking at a house and barn in the distance. When Lenore had first seen the painting, she imagined the young woman to have been lying down and relaxing, perhaps taking a break after a long walk, reading a book, maybe, having just finished a picnic. Lenore had been startled to learn that the painting’s subject was fifty-five years old and suffered from a progressive polyneuropathy, probably polio. Wyeth had seen her crawling across the field.
So much for the pleasant, pastoral scene of Lenore’s imagination, and yet it was all there in the painting, if you knew how to look.
Lenore particularly liked the view of the Kurtz farmhouse from the apple orchard. She had painted it twice before, the first time in tempera on a wooden panel, the medium used by Wyeth for Christina’s World. The second time she had used oil on canvas, with the clear morning light shining on the back porch. Today, she was painting the same scene in the evening, again in oil, with streaks of golden light still shining on the side of the house, but with the porch in shadow. The three paintings made an interesting contrast.
Gary Kurtz was sitting on the porch, having an animated conversation with two men. Gary wore jeans and a flannel shirt. The other men wore suits. A pile of papers lay scattered across the table and one of the men had a leather briefcase by his
side. An almost empty pitcher and three glasses of lemonade sat on the table.
Lenore liked the movement that they gave to the scene. It was too far away to clearly see their faces but Lenore had the impression that Gary was unhappy, even angry, something about his posture and the way he was leaning forward. Lenore imagined that he was having difficulty restraining himself.
Lenore smiled. This might not have been true, but it was true to Lenore, and that’s the most important thing. Truth, to an artist, was whatever made it onto the canvas. The truth of one’s imagination and the actual truth did not have to be the same.
It turned out, however, that they were the same.
“Peas, Darling?” Lisa said.
Lenore smiled at her. “Sure.” Lenore had never thought much about peas, one way or the other. They were green. They weren’t awful. You ate them to keep your mother happy. These peas, however, were fresh from the garden. They had a lot more flavor than any other peas Lenore had ever eaten. They went well with the mashed potatoes and rib-eye steak with port wine reduction.
Lisa, as usual, was smiling. Kurtz and his father were both brooding. Lenore almost laughed. Kurtz looked a lot like his father, tall and broad-shouldered, with the same shaggy, dark hair, sharp gray eyes and not-quite pissed off glare on his face.
“What’s bothering you two?” Lenore said.
Kurtz glanced at his father. “The inspectors have left,” he said. “I don’t trust them.” It was more than the inspectors. Jerry Mandell had come in that morning, given Kurtz a hostile look, asked Maggie Callender and Mary Reeves to come into his office, spoke to them for a few minutes and then left without a word to Kurtz.
Maggie had seemed tense all morning, Mary glum. Finally, Kurtz asked Maggie.
“He’s going to Morgantown, to the Medical School. Joe Partledge has arranged it. He’ll be back when they’re finished with him. Probably a few days.”
Good, Kurtz thought, and nodded. “Okay,” he said.
Maggie frowned at him. “That’s all you can say? Okay?”
“Don’t take it out on me, Maggie. I’m not responsible.”
Maggie looked away, took a deep breath. “It’s hard,” she said. “I’ve worked for Jerry for a lot of years. So has Mary.”
There was nothing much to say to that except, “I’m sorry,” which seemed inadequate. Maggie shrugged.
Kurtz saw the last two patients of the day and then left.
“Jerry Mandell has gone in for his exam,” Kurtz said.
Gary frowned, then scratched his head. “I talked to Jerry a couple of days ago. He’s pretty upset.”
“Not my fault,” Kurtz said.
“Jerry doesn’t see it that way.”
Kurtz was tempted to say that Kurtz was not the one taking risks with his patients’ welfare and Jerry Mandell could go fuck himself but instead, he looked down at his plate, speared a piece of steak and brought it to his mouth.
His father barely grinned, then looked at Lenore. “The guy from Premier Projects Development was back today. They still want to buy the farm.”
“Who was the other guy?”
“Harry Saunders, a local realtor. They’ve given him a contract to buy up as much property around here as he can.”
“Has anybody else sold?”
Gary frowned and let his eyes wander to the apple orchard. “Almost all of them.”
Chapter 16
A van…
Bill Harris sat in Drew Hastings’ office, cup of coffee in hand and stared at the map on the wall. The number of pins had grown. George Rodriguez’ men had by now visited every house within six miles of the dump site, all 217 of them. The red pins had mostly vanished, the occupants having returned home from wherever it was they had been during the first sweep. Still a sizeable number of black pins, maybe twenty percent of the total.
856 people lived in those 217 houses. It had been tempting to wipe the ones with wives and kids off the list, on the theory that you can’t keep young girls chained up in the basement while a wife and kids are running around the place, but that just wasn’t true. There had been that character in Austria, Josef Fritzl, who kept his oldest daughter captive in an underground bunker for twenty-four years, raping her at least three times a week and fathering seven more incestuous children. The rest of the family hadn’t suspected a thing.
Or maybe they just didn’t want to admit it.
Then then there was the BTK killer, Dennis Rader, who had a nice wife and a nice family and who had seemed like a fine upstanding citizen. Dennis Rader had been president of his church council and leader of a Cub Scout Troop. Nobody had suspected his little hobby.
Nope. Can’t discount the family men. Maybe put them a little lower down on the priority list.
You had to play the odds, here. What was the old saying? The race is not always to the swift, nor the victory to the strong, but that’s the way to bet.
The odds said that the killer was a male, middle-aged or younger, big and strong enough to overpower a healthy teenage girl, living by himself within a few miles of the dump site, and who maybe owned a van, if you gave any credence to the New York connection. Oh, and if you were also inclined to credit the murdered girls in Stockton, California and Skokie, Illinois, then you have to assume that the guy is not a native, had moved here from somewhere else.
A lot of hermits in the woods of West Virginia, a lot of crotchety guys who hunted and fished and lived off the land and wanted nothing more than to be left alone. Half of them didn’t have electricity or running water and had to shit in an outhouse.
Bill Harris shuddered. He had often wondered what drove such men. Bill Harris would have been bored out of his mind.
Census data is useful but unreliable. A lot of people in big cities have reasons to remain unknown—illegal immigrants, petty criminals—and a lot of people out in the country regard the government as their enemy, not criminals exactly, mostly god-fearing folk whose view of life tended toward the paranoid.
But the odds said that the census data listed their guy. The odds said that he wouldn’t stand out in a crowd, that he knew how to blend in and go unnoticed. The odds said that he would have a juvenile record, somewhere. Most serial killers did, but the odds also said that somewhere along the line he had learned to sublimate his impulses, to wait for the right moment, to stay off the radar.
Law enforcement could access juvenile records, but that wouldn’t help them if their guy had a phony background, with a phony name. He’d been living here, or somewhere not too far away, for a long time, and killing young girls under the noses of his neighbors.
If a tree falls in the forest and nobody hears, does it make a sound?
If a young girl lives and dies and nobody ever sees her, did she ever really live?
Bill Harris sighed. A cop should not take things personally but the job got to all of them. Too much sadness, too much tragedy, too many useless, pointless crimes that made no sense.
Too many monsters.
Ben Crane looked up at Kurtz and smiled. He didn’t look like a politician, Kurtz thought. Crane had an open, honest face, but then, so did most con-men. He seemed genuinely pleased to talk to the newest, albeit temporary member of the medical staff. “Dr. Kurtz,” he said. “What can I do for you?”
“A couple of things I’d like to discuss.” A nice office, Kurtz thought. A hardwood floor, solid, dark wooden desk. Bookcases filled with thick, hardcover books, most of them on the subjects of hospital management, economics and health care policy.
One of the things Kurtz would have liked to discuss was Jerry Mandell, but most likely, Crane wouldn’t discuss it. “What can you tell me about Premier Projects Development?”
Crane blinked at him. “They want to buy the place.”
“Why?”
“Crane shrugged. “They haven’t told me. They’re buying up real estate right and left. The rumor is they’re planning on opening a resort.”
Kurtz sat back in his seat. One of the rules of a
ny investigation is to keep the information as close to the vest as possible. If they didn’t know what you already knew, then maybe they would let something slip. Not that Kurtz knew anything that everybody else didn’t also know. “What are the odds that this is going to happen?”
“Fifty-fifty, maybe better. The place has been losing money for years but the locals don’t want it to close. Until now, the county has been willing to take the hit in order to keep the electorate happy, but everybody likes money, and Premier Projects Development has been talking up the great things that their plans will mean for the local economy.” Crane hesitated. “A few more complications and the State will put us on probation, maybe even shut us down. If that happens, the County Board will be thrilled to have a buyer.”
“What have they offered?”
“Premier Projects Development? I don’t exactly know. I don’t own the place; the county does. They’ve been negotiating with the Board, not me.” Crane frowned. “But after this latest little incident, you can bet that the price has just gone down.”
“Yeah,” Kurtz said. “Isn’t that a coincidence?”
Seamus Sullivan knew when the heat was on. From the moment the girls’ bodies were discovered, it was only a matter of time before the cops closed in. Not that there was any direct evidence linking him to the crimes, but Seamus knew the way things worked. They would have a profile and only so many men would fit it.
Seamus had been less than careful in his youth. He may have left evidence, DNA if nothing else. Back when Seamus first started killing for fun and profit, DNA analysis had been in its infancy. It wasn’t something that an enterprising killer needed to think about.
The FBI were working their way outward. Seamus lived ten miles away from the dump site but there weren’t a lot of houses in the woods. Sooner or later, he was certain, they would be knocking on his door. When they did, Seamus would be properly worried and appalled. He would express shock that such a heinous crime had taken place in his own back yard, as it were. Seamus Sullivan knew nothing about anything.
The FBI guys might even believe him. No reason for them not to. But he fit the profile, and Seamus had to be pretty damned certain that no speck of evidence could be found linking him to the murders.
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