Family Practice (33 page)

When he left, she made sure the door was locked, went up to the bathroom, and locked that door too. Her shower was very brief. Pulling on her last pair of clean underwear, she thought she'd better remember to bring back some more. Some clean jeans wouldn't be a bad idea either. As she buttoned up a blue blouse, she glanced out the window. Clouds already. What the hell had she done with her raincoat?

By the time she'd swallowed coffee and forced down a half slice of toast, Nadine was at the door.

“Where's Bobby?” Ellen asked as she slid into the station wagon.

“With Bob's mother. She's thrilled.” Nadine tilted her head toward the backseat. “I also brought some extra rags and cleaning stuff. And a thermos of coffee. Don't let me forget the thermos when we leave. It's Bob's, and I had to promise on my life nothing would happen to it.”

“Oh, Nadine, you don't have to—”

“Of course I do. You think I'm going to let you be out there by yourself?”

Ellen couldn't bear it if she was afraid to be in her very own house, if this—all this—changed her feelings about it. “Thanks,” she said.

*   *   *

With an eye on her watch, Susan listened to Mayor Bakover tell her how to do her job: stop harrassing important people, arrest someone, and do it now.

Yes, sir, Mr. Mayor, sir. I'll just go right out and arrest Ellen Barrington, whether she's guilty or not. Clean this right up.

When he finally ran down, she—with great restraint—hung up gently, grabbed her blazer from the back of the chair, took a look out the window, wondering if she could get by without a raincoat, decided she could, and dashed off.

If she hustled, she could stop in to see Jen before getting her presence down to the hospital basement and standing there while Dr. Owen Fisher did the autopsy on Taylor Talmidge.

Dr. Adam Sheffield, in scrub greens—did he ever wear anything else?—was at the nurses' station when she got off the elevator. “How's Jen doing?” she asked.

“Remarkably well.” He pulled off the scrub cap and ran a hand through his dark curls. “Amazing kid. I'm still trying to be cautious here, but I think she's going to be good as new.”

A smile spread all over Susan's face.

“She still has a ways to go. Don't subject her to hard questions. Right now she's asleep anyway. Don't wake her up.”

Susan nodded and went into Jen's cubicle. Jen's face was still splotched red, but she did look better. She looked alive. Like a very sick little girl with measles, but not like death on a respirator. Susan only stood by the bed and looked at her, didn't speak, didn't touch.

In the basement, Dr. Fisher, also in scrub greens, shut off the tape recorder in the midst of his spiel: “Taylor Talmidge. Male. Caucasian.” He looked at her. “You're late. I thought I was going to have to start without you.”

Taylor's nude body was on the stainless-steel table. The harsh light glared down.

Dr. Fisher finished the particulars of weight, height, and age, and picked up a scalpel. He sliced, peered, cut, and diced in his careful, meticulous way, and when he was finished, his considered professional opinion was that Taylor had been stabbed with a sharp instrument.

He turned off the recorder, peeled off the latex gloves, dropped them in a hamper, and washed his hands at the deep sink in the corner.

“Owen—”

“I can't tell you anything more than what I find.” He grabbed a towel, turned to face her, and dried his hands. “You heard it all. I'll send you the preliminary as soon as I get it written up.”

“Yes, thank you. If a child were suspected of having porphyria, what kind of laboratory tests would be done?”

He rested against the sink, crossed his feet at the ankles, and thoughtfully dried each long, delicately tapered finger. “You're not suggesting I run a bunch of tests on our friend here, are you? There's no reason to suspect he had porphyria. It's extremely rare. I'd venture to say most doctors have never even seen a case.”

“It's rare. It's inherited. It's difficult to diagnose.”

“Correct.”

“What kind of tests are used for diagnosis?”

He rubbed a finger along one side of his nose. “Blood tests of various kinds. Urine. Fecal. Liver. Problem is, with the different types, some show abnormalities and some don't. It's complicated. What is this bee you've got about porphyria?”

“I'm not sure.”

Driving back to the department, she was vaguely aware the sunshine had lost out and black clouds were taking over. She was sure, very nearly sure—the adrenaline, the excitement, the tingling in her mind that happened when she was pulling the right threads—that she knew who had shot Dorothy and why. But there was not one sliver of evidence and not a chance in hell of getting any.

*   *   *

“You have to come through for me, George.” Susan stood in front of his desk and tapped her finger on the gray metal surface.

He leaned back and looked up at her. “At least sit down.”

“Because if one piece isn't so, the whole thing falls apart.” She backed into a chair.

“Give me a minute. The man died thirty-some years ago.”

“He had a chronic illness. What was it?”

George took off his glasses and pinched the red spots on the bridge of his nose. “Well, Susan.” He put the glasses back on. “I may have to shoot you. You've asked a question I don't know the answer to.”

She grinned. “Ha. One for my side. You know anybody at the county courthouse?”

“Sure. Minnie Oaks. Known her forever.”

“Would you call her and ask her to look up the death certificate?” Susan could do it herself, but George could get it faster. “Find out what it says and let me know.”

Ten minutes later, she was plowing through reports at her desk when he got back to her.

“Death due to liver disease,” he said, “due to porphyria.”

28

“A
ND SO
,” S
USAN
said. “Dorothy's murder had nothing to do with August Barrington or his paintings.”

Parkhurst paced in front of the desk to the door, turned, and paced to the window. He rested his rear on the sill, a hand on either side of him. “You have to have a reason to look at medical records. You don't have one.”

The sky outside had angry-looking banks of black clouds, with an occasional thin zigzag of lightning. No rain yet, but it ought to be pretty spectacular when it arrived. The fluorescent ceiling fixture had one burned-out bulb, and she turned on the desk lamp for more light.

He pushed himself from the sill and padded to the door. “No judge in the world is going to issue paper on what you've got.”

“I know.”

“Jesus, you've got so many ifs you need to draw lines to connect them.” He reached the door, turned, and paced back.

“Sit down. You're making me nuts.”

He dropped into the wooden armchair and slid low on his spine. “His father had this whatever-it-is—”

“Porphyria. He told us when we questioned him after his very dramatic class at Emerson his father had been chronically ill. I thought at the time he meant alcoholism. He didn't. His father had porphyria.”

“—and he inherited it. How come he doesn't show any symptoms?”

“Dr. Fisher said that happens sometimes.”

“Uh-huh. You're speculating he had an affair with the Ackerbaugh woman and fathered a child—”

“He is the unfaithful type.”

“… a child who is sick, and even the physician doesn't know what's wrong with him. Dorothy begins to suspect this child has the disease.”

“She left bookmarks in medical texts, scribbled notes for lab tests.” Susan paged through her notebook until she found what she was looking for. “Protoporphyrin. Erythrocytes. Plasma. Feces.”

Parkhurst tapped his fingertips together across his chest. “Your theory is she realized what was wrong with the kid and immediately knew he was the father because the disease is so rare.”

“That would tell her he'd had an affair with a patient.”

“Uh-huh. She'd have been pissed and given him the boot.”

“Right. Told him he would no longer be a part of the Barrington clinic.”

“So he shot her.”

Susan tossed her pen on the desk and leaned back in the chair. “Anything wrong with that?”

“Oh, not a thing.” He drew in his legs and got up. “I've run with some pretty thin evidence at times, but this is so thin it's nonexistent.”

“Right. Feel like talking to Brent the Beautiful?”

“Damn right.”

*   *   *

“You want to tell us about it?” Susan pulled up a brown plastic chair and sat down across the long wooden table from Dr. Brent Wakeley.

He leaned back and smiled at her. “There are a raft of things that I might want to discuss with you, but I can't believe any of them are the reason you've dragged me in here to listen to.” With a casual hand, he brushed through the lock of dark hair that fell appealingly across his forehead.

He looked less dramatic in an ordinary light-gray suit—he must use the black for his dynamic-professor outfit—but she still felt the power of his presence. Beautiful, she had to admit. Arrogant, and reeking with a powerful magnetism.

The interview room had no windows, but the ceiling light picked up small flecks of gray at his temples and the tiny lines around his eyes.

Parkhurst took two steps, planted palms flat on the table with a sharp slap, and leaned over until he was three inches from Brent's sculptured nose. “We know you killed Dr. Dorothy Barrington.”

Brent drew back with condescending amusement. “I'm afraid your knowledge is sadly faulty, Lieutenant.”

“Faulty?” Parkhurst rolled the word around in his mouth as he pulled back and propped a shoulder against the wall. “Maybe you'd like to set me straight.”

“Dorothy Barrington was a very principled woman,” Susan said. “Ethical.”

“I guess you could say that. You could add moral, upright, and virtuous if you like.”

Susan nodded. “All of those characteristics would have made her disapproving of adulterous affairs.” It's catching, she thought. I'm beginning to sound just as profoundly erudite as he does.

The amusement in his eyes dried up. “And where is all this leading?”

“‘Affair' is the operative word here,” Parkhurst said.

“Without making any admission, I hardly think my affairs are your business.”

“Wrong, Doctor. Homicide is our business. And when your affairs end in murder, it's definitely our business.”

Brent looked at Susan. “I think you'd better get out your whip and chair and put him back in his cage.”

“You had an affair with Mrs. Ackerbaugh. Linette Ackerbaugh,” Susan said.

For one instant his eyes went blank, like the fast click of a camera shutter, then he shook his head with a condescending smile. “Even if that were true, which I'm not admitting for a moment, what makes you think Dorothy would know about it?”

“She didn't, not at the time. Or she would have confronted you then.”

“Long afterward, she suddenly stumbles upon this? Come, come.”

Susan looked at him. He held her gaze, but a tiny muscle under his eye twitched.

“Interesting how she found out,” Parkhurst said, and waited until Brent looked at him. “The baby.”

“What baby?”

Parkhurst smiled: soft, dangerous. “The Ackerbaugh baby. The one you fathered.”

Susan heard Beautiful Brent inhale.

“You are getting dangerously close to a lawsuit.” He gave up all pretense of charm.

“Passed along what you're carrying in your genes.”

“You have absolutely no proof of this.”

“Well, Doctor, a smart, educated type like you probably knows there are tests for this sort of thing.”

“Well,
Lieutenant,
even an uneducated type like you probably knows you need permission to run those tests. From me, from the parents. You have that permission?”

A crack of lightning followed by a loud clap of thunder made him jump.

“I've listened to this nonsense long enough,” Brent said. “Are you prepared to arrest me? And I must warn you if you do, I will immediately file suit for false arrest. Much more of this and I'll add harassment charges.”

*   *   *

By the time Susan left the department, it was after five, and rain hammered down with force. The windshield wipers barely kept ahead of it, giving her only brief glimpses of the street between ripples of water. The headlights poked through streams of silver coming down at a hard slant.

She eased into a parking space behind Erle's Market to pick up cat food. That was the trouble with dependents; you always had to stop and pick up something. Sliding from the pickup, she flipped up the collar of her raincoat and, head down, sloshed toward the store. Neon lights bled red and yellow onto the wet pavement. A car driving out fountained water in wide arcs.

Out of the corner of her eye, she glimpsed a dark figure slogging toward her from the right. In the gray light through the curtain of rain, she saw a long, belted robe with the hood pulled forward and no visible face; near the shoulder was a small skull.

Hair stirred on the back of her neck. She heard Jen's words: a monk in a long robe with a rope belt, no face, small skull on the shoulder.

The figure swerved and set course for the store.

“Excuse me,” Susan called, trotting to catch up.

The individual in the monk's robe halted under the overhang jutting out above the doors and threw back the hood to reveal a round face with a thick braid coiled on top of her head. “Oh, Chief Wren, I didn't see you. Just trying to get out of the rain.”

Nadine, Susan thought. Ellen's friend, Nadine something. Haskel. Nadine Haskel.

“Did you want to see me?” Nadine asked.