Diagnosis Murder 7 - The Double LIfe (15 page)

"But Mark
wasn't
onto him," Amanda said. "Take a look at the two lists. Only one of the patient deaths he was investigating is among their victims."

"Guyot tried to kill him for nothing," Tanis said.

But Steve wasn't paying attention anymore. Something else on the board had captured his attention.

"All Guyot succeeded in doing was drawing attention to himself when nobody had even noticed him before," Jesse said. "Kind of ironic, isn't it?"

"This can't be a coincidence," Steve said, still staring at the two columns of names.

"It's not," Amanda said. "Mark's instincts were right. He just wasn't onto Guyot and Duren yet."

"I'm not talking about that," Steve said. "Look at the names in those two columns. Those two nurses have each killed five people."

"Maybe they have a list and split it in half," Jesse said. 

"Or they are taking turns killing," Amanda said.

"If you're right," Tanis said grimly, "it's time for one of them to kill again."

"Not if we arrest them first," Steve said.

C
HAPTER
F
IFTEEN

It was like preparing for a final exam. After Amanda, Jesse, and Tanis left, Steve spent the next several hours transcribing everything from the boards onto his laptop as a way of memorizing the information. Then he printed out his notes, highlighted the key points, and thought about the best way to present the case to the district attorney.

The next morning, he went for a jog on the foggy beach, going over all the facts again in his mind, making sure the connections were tight and that his conclusions were solid. He called the hospital to check on his dad as soon as he got back. Susan assured him that his father was doing fine and that there was no reason to be worried. As if it was completely normal for someone to be unconscious for three days and then have a hole drilled in his skull.

But Steve could not afford to be distracted by his concern for his father right now. He had to focus on making his case.

He had a quick breakfast of Cocoa Pebbles and coffee, showered, and made the long drive downtown in rush-hour traffic, listening to news radio on the way.

He met with assistant district attorney Karen Cross in her office. She was white but had the distinctive eyes and delicate features of a Japanese woman. She compensated for that delicacy with a penetrating gaze and an aggressive attitude that made her both alluring and a little frightening, especially for anyone on the witness stand.

Steve had good reason to be uncomfortable around her. Their last experience together had been a complex, high-profile celebrity murder investigation and trial that nearly cost both of them their careers. During the course of the trial, the police department and the prosecutors were humiliated on national television for weaknesses in their case. Although the authorities were ultimately proved correct and the killer was convicted, the public had a selective memory. The cloud of disgrace remained over the department and the DA's office despite their eventual vindication.

He would have preferred to work with any other assistant district attorney in the building, but fate, and perhaps a vindictive district attorney, wasn't on Steve's side that morning. Karen was assigned to hear his case, whatever it happened to be.

She didn't seem any more pleased to see him than he was to see her. She looked at him as if he were a sewage leak that was spilling into her office.

Her office had two guest chairs, both occupied by stacks of bulging files. Steve knew better than to move them and disrupt her filing system. So he stood awkwardly at the door, his notes in hand, while she irritably cleared a place for him to sit.

While she moved her files around, he began laying out his case. It wasn't the optimal way for him to present his facts, but at least they could avoid looking at each other while he did it.

He told her about Mark's initial investigation into the deaths of people who had recently recovered from critical illnesses or injuries and his father's discovery that the number of such cases had reached epidemic proportions.

By the time Steve got to the attempt on Mark's life, and the investigation that followed, Karen had freed up one of the guest chairs, returned to her seat behind her desk, and was taking notes on a yellow legal pad.

Steve figured her note taking was a good sign. It showed she was already investing herself in the case. She also hadn't bothered to interrupt him with questions yet, which he took to mean that so far his case was solid.

So he continued on, explaining in detail how the investigation had led to nurse Wendy Duren, to the suspicious deaths at Beckman Hospital, and finally to Paul Guyot, a nurse now working at John Muir. And just to show he'd done his research, Steve even threw in how Wendy Duren's actions matched Dr. Hudson's sociological profile of a medical murderer in virtually every way. All of which led up to his big finish, the one and only conclusion that could be drawn from the facts.

"These two are serial killers responsible for at least ten deaths, and probably more," Steve said. "Give me the word, and I'll have them arrested and behind bars within the hour." 

"You have got to be kidding," she said.

He wasn't quite sure how to interpret the comment. Was she talking about the heinous acts these two nurses had committed, undetected, for so long? Or was she talking about his case?

"I'm afraid I don't follow," Steve ventured.

"There is no way in hell you're arresting these two," she said. "I don't even want you talking to them."

"You have got to be kidding," he said.

Now it was her turn to try and figure out what he meant. "What part don't you get?" she asked.

"These two are killers. They've been killing for at least a year and will probably continue unless we stop them. What possible reason could you have for letting them stay free?" 

She met his gaze. "Because you don't have a shred of proof that they've committed any crimes at all, much less multiple murders."

"I just gave it to you," Steve said. "The only way it could be any clearer is if the two of them walked in here and confessed."

"You have a theory, based on guesses, assumptions, and a creative reading of statistics, none of which would stand up to the slightest scrutiny in court," Karen said. "You don't have one piece of physical evidence."

"I will once we exhume the bodies of the ten people they've killed this year and the patients who died in the Beckman Hospital critical-care unit. I guarantee the medical examiner will find traces of the drugs used to kill them." 

Karen laughed. "How do you expect me to convince a judge to issue all those exhumation orders?"

"You tell him what I just told you," Steve said evenly, trying hard not to lose his temper. "You walk him through the investigation step by step."

"I'll tell you what. Let's do that right now." Karen referred to her notes. "Let's start with Grover Dawson, the patient that got your father interested in these deaths in the first place. Mr. Dawson's name isn't on your list of alleged victims. Why is that?"

"Because Grover Dawson doesn't appear to be a murder victim at this time."

"'At this time'?" she said. "Do you have evidence to indicate it wasn't an accident?"

"No."

"Okay, so Dr. Sloan began his investigation based on an accidental death that, lo and behold, was an accident," she said. "The investigation was off to a great start already." 

"Even if Dawson's death was an accident, that has nothing to do with the information we subsequently uncovered," Steve said. "The fact is, Dad's instincts were right. A respected epidemiologist analyzed the annual data and determined that the odds were one in a trillion that the staggering increase in these kinds of deaths was due to natural causes." 

"That's the epidemiologist's interpretation after a cursory examination of the data," she said. "I'm sure I could get a dozen other experts, medical and otherwise, who could give me a dozen other explanations "

"It's your job to prosecute the murderers, not defend them and refute the evidence."

"My job is to make sure there actually
is
evidence, Detective. I need to be especially vigilant about that in cases where you and your father are concerned. I've been burned before."

"We were right before, and you got the conviction." 

"After I was publicly humiliated and nearly lost my career in disgrace along the way," she said. "That's not how I prefer to do my job. You and your father have a habit of building cases out of circumstantial evidence that's shaky at best and information acquired through creative means. Which brings me to my next question: Where did you and Dr. Sloan get the confidential patient records? I don't recall you mentioning anything about obtaining a warrant to search through hospital files. You sure as hell didn't come to me."

Karen made a show of going through her notes, looking for the information she knew wasn't there, then looked at him judgmentally.

Steve shifted uncomfortably in his seat. "They came from a confidential source."

"Who broke the law and violated the privacy of the patients involved. Therefore, any information derived from those stolen records is inadmissible in court. In fact, you and your father could both end up facing criminal charges for theft, invasion of privacy, computer fraud, aiding and abetting—and that's just for starters."

"Fine. Forget those records. We can get the same information through other channels. Or we can obtain the necessary warrants now to look into the hospital files and get what we need," Steve said, ignoring her blustering about his own possible criminal culpability. She wouldn't dare prosecute rim and risk embarrassing the LAPD. "But the facts aren't going to change. The patients are dead. Guyot and Duren were their nurses and their killers."

"Let's talk for a minute about Ms. Duren, shall we? You focused on her because you picked her car at random from footage taken by a traffic camera on the San Diego Freeway."

"She was following the Camaro that nearly ran over my father."

"There were thousands of cars on the freeway at the time. How could you possibly know whether or not she was following him? Maybe she was just going to work."

"He got on the freeway at Wilshire Boulevard and so did she—"

"So do hundreds of vehicles every hour," she interrupted. 

"She stayed three car lengths behind him, matched his lane changes all the way into the Valley," Steve continued. "He merged onto the eastbound Ventura Freeway and so did she, three cars behind him. He got off at the Van Nuys exit and headed north, and so did she."

"I'm sure there are lots of people who got on the San Diego Freeway at Wilshire Boulevard, transitioned to the eastbound Ventura Freeway, and got off at the Van Nuys exit. Did you check?"

"No."

"So it could be a coincidence that a nurse who is connected in some way with some of the thousands of natural deaths that occur in Los Angeles each year happened to be driving behind the car that allegedly was involved in the attempt on your father's life."

"She is hardly some innocent stranger. My father was investigating suspicious patient deaths. She is a nurse suspected of killing patients at Beckman Hospital," Steve said, raising his voice, his frustration getting the better of him.

"Even the investigators at the hospital concede they have no proof that she is culpable in any patient's death."

As Steve got more agitated, her voice got lower, more patronizing.

"Because they were unwilling, like you, to exhume the bodies and get that proof," he said. "Thanks to their cowardice and inaction, ten more people are dead."

"Spare me the melodrama," she said. "You don't even know Guyot was in that Camaro. All you know is that his brother stole cars—and you don't even know that, at least not as far as the court is concerned. His brother was convicted as a juvenile, and those records are sealed and therefore inadmissible. I'm such a nice lady, I won't even ask how you broke into those restricted files."

Steve took a deep breath and spoke evenly, almost gritting his teeth to keep from yelling. "No, Counselor, we don't know for a fact that Guyot was driving that Camaro, but he works in the Valley, near where the car was stolen. He worked on the Beckman Hospital critical-care ward with Duren when patients were dying—"

"Imagine, patients dying on a critical-care ward," she interrupted. "I wonder how often that happens?"

Steve ignored the dig and pressed on, even though he knew it was futile. "Five of Guyot's patients died shortly after surviving near-death experiences, and so did five of Duren's. These aren't coincidences. This is a straight line from a pile of corpses to the two people who murdered them."

Karen sighed wearily. "I bet if we look hard enough, which you clearly haven't, we can find other doctors and nurses who live or work in the San Fernando Valley who were also employed at Beckman Hospital. We might even find a few who happened to be traveling on the San Diego Freeway, the main route into the San Fernando Valley, during morning rush hour on the day your father was nearly killed. We might even find some who've had five patients die this year. This isn't a case, Detective. It's a joke."

Steve rose from his seat. "They will kill again. I hope you'll be able to live with yourself when the next corpse comes in."

"I'll sleep just fine," Karen said, tossing her notes into the trash. "I can't prosecute a case without evidence. If you really believe these two are murderers, prove it."

C
HAPTER
S
IXTEEN

There were restaurants that paid consultants and designers a fortune to replicate the eclectic, beat-up, sawdust-covered-floor character that Barbeque Bob's came by naturally. The ramshackle rib shack was a neighborhood fixture decades before longtime customers Steve Sloan and Jesse Travis bought the place from the original owner and became the guardians of his secret recipes.