Fatal Care (3 page)

Joanna Blalock saw Murdock approaching and held up a finger, indicating she’d be with him in a moment. Then she turned back to the X rays on the view box and pointed out a finding to a young assistant professor, Lori McKay.

Murdock stepped in for a closer look. The films showed multiple views of a human skull. Someone had drawn an arrow in red crayon to highlight something in the posterior parietal bone. Murdock saw nothing abnormal.

He moved back, his gaze wandering to the refrigerated wall units where the corpses were kept. Oliver Rhodes was in one of them. In his mind Murdock began laying the groundwork for the Oliver Rhodes Institute of Cardiology. From drawing board to completion would probably take two years. With a little luck they could have the institute’s grand opening on Murdock’s seventieth birthday.

Seventy years, Murdock groaned to himself. Where had all the years gone? When he had first come to Memorial, the staff physicians all seemed to be his age. Now most of them looked young enough to be his children. He looked at Joanna Blalock, who still seemed too young and pretty to be so bright. She was strikingly attractive with patrician features and sandy blond hair that was pulled back severely, held in place by a simple barrette. Although she was close to forty, most people thought she was five years younger. The only signs of aging were small crow’s-feet at the corners of her eyes when she smiled.

Murdock’s gaze turned to Lori McKay, who appeared young enough to be a medical student. She was thin and petite with long auburn hair and scattered freckles across her nose. She could have passed for Murdock’s granddaughter. Murdock sighed deeply, knowing that a sure sign of getting old was when everybody else seemed so young.

Joanna broke into his thoughts. “Sorry to keep you waiting, but these skull films are really tough to read.”

Murdock gestured with a hand toward the view box. “Well, somebody must have seen something and drawn arrows to point to it.”

“Those arrows are mine,” Joanna said, turning back to the view box. She used a magnifying glass to review the skull once more. “I think I see a small linear fracture, but I’m not sure. And it just might be the single most important clue I’ve got. It could tell me everything.”

“Such as?”

Joanna pointed at the autopsy table with her magnifying glass. “Such as how and why this man died.”

Murdock stared down at the grotesque corpse on the stainless steel table. The face and body were badly bloated, and the skin had a peculiar green color. In scattered, localized areas on the man’s legs, the flesh was torn open. Murdock backed away, detecting the stench of rotten eggs. “What caused all this?”

“Drowning, presumably,” Joanna told him. “When a body has been submerged for a week or more, as this one has, it begins to putrefy and form gases. That’s what causes the bloating, and that’s what causes the body to float to the surface.”

And the gases cause the stench, Murdock thought, and took another step back. “And the open wounds on his legs were caused by decomposition, as well. Right?”

Joanna shook her head. “I don’t think so. Most likely some sea creatures were feeding on him.”

“I see,” Murdock said, feeling a twinge of nausea. He looked down at the corpse once more, now wondering why a drowning victim would require an autopsy by a forensic pathologist at a leading medical center. “Is there a reason why this case is being done here?”

“An insurance company asked for my help,” Joanna told him. “It seems this man took out a two-million-dollar life insurance policy last year.”

“I see,” Murdock said again, trying to hide his displeasure with Joanna Blalock doing private cases at Memorial Hospital. But he had allowed her to do consultations for a fee five years ago when she threatened to resign because of Murdock’s insistence that she limit her work solely to patients seen at Memorial. At first he’d given real thought to firing her, but then decided he couldn’t let her go. She had become too valuable to Memorial. Her reputation was outstanding, and it grew every time she handled a high-profile case for the LAPD. So Murdock had grudgingly allowed her to spend a third of her time doing private consultations. He had heard she charged five thousand dollars a case. Murdock’s jaw tightened noticeably, once again feeling that Joanna had taken advantage of Memorial to further her own goals and enrich herself.

Joanna could sense the tension growing between them and knew exactly what Murdock was thinking. Her private consultations were a source of constant irritation to Murdock, and given the chance, he would happily replace her. But that was easier said than done. He knew it. She knew it. Joanna shrugged. She wasn’t going to worry about it. She wasn’t going to change her professional life to suit Simon Murdock.

The awkward silence continued.

Lori McKay cleared her throat and turned to Joanna. “Do you want me to have these skull films reviewed by a radiologist?”

Joanna nodded. “I want to know if that’s a fracture, and if it is, I need to know its exact location.”

Lori thought for a moment, tapping a finger against her chin. “He may want more films with different views. Maybe even an MRI.”

“Whatever. Just pinpoint the fracture if it’s there.”

“You know, Joanna, even if he does have a skull fracture,” Lori thought aloud, “it doesn’t mean somebody conked him on the head. Remember, he fell off a yacht. He could have hit the boat on his way into the water.”

“Or it could have happened postmortem,” Joanna added. “His head could have bashed up against some rocks while he was submerged on the bottom of the sea.”

“Then why spend so much time studying the fracture? It could have happened before or after he died, and we can’t tell the difference.”

“Sure we can.”

“How?”

“Think about it.”

Lori wrinkled her forehead, concentrating. Maybe the brain tissue beneath the fracture would show some reaction and that would only occur if he was alive when the fracture occurred. But they’d have to examine his brain to find out, and by now it had probably turned into jelly.

“From a vascular standpoint, tell me one thing live people do that dead people don’t,” Joanna clued her.

Lori’s eyes brightened. “Bleed! Live people bleed; dead people don’t. If there’s blood in that fracture line, his skull was fractured while he was alive.”

“Exactly.”

“But,” Lori countered, “he still could have hit his head on the side of the yacht as he fell into the sea. So, finding blood in the fracture doesn’t necessarily mean our guy got bashed on the head and thrown into the sea.”

Joanna grinned and gave Lori a big wink. “But it would surely open up that possibility, now, wouldn’t it?”

Lori grinned back. “Oh, yeah.”

“Ask the radiologist to read those films for us today.”

Lori quickly took down the X rays and placed them in a large manila envelope. She glanced over at Murdock, wondering what he wanted from Joanna. It had to be something big. Otherwise Murdock wouldn’t have come down here. “Dr. Murdock, do you want me to hang around for a while?”

“That won’t be necessary,” Murdock said, and gestured dismissively with his hand.

Screw you, you pompous ass, Lori wanted to say. But she held her tongue and looked over at Joanna. “I’ll be down in radiology if you need me.”

Joanna waited until Lori was out of earshot. Then she turned to Murdock. “What can I do for you, Simon?”

“You’ve heard about Oliver Rhodes?”

“Of course.”

“The Rhodes family wants an autopsy done now, by you, and in the most private setting possible. Do you have any problem with that?”

“None whatsoever,” Joanna said at once.

“Where will you do it?”

Joanna thought briefly. “In the room we use for contaminated cases. It’s separate and isolated and has no windows.”

“Good.” Murdock nodded his approval. “Now we’ll want as few people as possible involved in the autopsy.”

“Lori McKay will assist me. She’ll be the only other person in the room.”

Murdock sucked air through his teeth. “She’s so young, and she’ll talk.”

“No, she won’t. She’s more mature than you think, and she knows how to keep her mouth shut.”

Murdock hesitated. “If she talks about any aspect of this case, she’s gone from Memorial. Let her know that.”

“What else do you need?”

Murdock quickly checked the list on his legal pad. Private setting, as few people as possible, no press release. The autopsy report. “You will dictate your findings. Correct?”

“Yes.”

“Tell me how the dictation is done and typed.”

“I dictate into an overhead microphone while I’m doing the autopsy. The dictation goes to a tape in the steno room, and then it’s typed.”

“Will it be on a separate tape?”

“Yes,” Joanna said. “There’ll be no other dictation on it.”

“I’ll want that tape before it’s typed.”

Joanna gave Murdock a long look. “I won’t allow that tape to be altered, regardless of what I find.”

“Understood. I just don’t want it typed until I’ve discussed the results with Mortimer Rhodes.”

“Agreed,” Joanna said, now thinking about Mortimer Rhodes, the nice old man who had built the Karen Rhodes Forensic Laboratory at Memorial in memory of his granddaughter, a nursing student who had been murdered by a psychotic doctor. Karen had been the apple of his eye, and those closest to Mortimer Rhodes said he never got over her death. And now he had lost the last of his three sons. That would almost certainly kill the old man.

Murdock lowered his voice. “And the family wants you to look for any evidence of foul play.”

Joanna’s eyelids narrowed into slits. “Had he received any threats?”

“I don’t know,” Murdock stammered.

“We have to find out.”

“I can’t call this grieving family and ask that kind of question,” Murdock said. “Not now.”

“I know it seems cold and cruel to bother them,” Joanna said. “But the information could be very important, particularly if there’s no obvious cause of death.”

Murdock sighed wearily. He would place a call to Lawrence Hockstader and let the lawyer earn his four hundred an hour. “I’ll take care of it.”

“And please have his medical records at Memorial sent down to me in a sealed envelope.”

“Done.” Murdock reached for a pen and wrote a brief note on his legal pad. “Anything else?”

“We have to contact the emergency room and make sure all his clothes and personal effects were sent along with the body.”

“My office will see to that,” Murdock said, and scribbled down a reminder.

A petite receptionist wearing a scrub suit hurried over to the table and looked up at Joanna. “Dr. Blalock, there’s a police detective outside who says he has to see you. He wants to come in.”

“This is a restricted area,” Murdock said tersely.

“He said it’s official business,” the receptionist said.

Joanna nodded. “Send him in.”

Murdock frowned disapprovingly. “Really, Joanna, we can’t have unauthorized people just strolling in and out of here.”

The receptionist glanced back and forth between the two doctors, uncertain what she should do.

“Go.” Joanna motioned to the receptionist and watched her leave, then turned to Murdock. “Two of the cases down here belong to the LAPD.”

“So?”

“So let me take care of their business. Then I can concentrate on Oliver Rhodes.”

Murdock stared at her, regretting even more his decision that allowed Joanna Blalock to do private consultations. He wished someone would turn the clock back twenty years to a time when faculty did what they were told. “Just get the autopsy done promptly.”

“That’s my plan.”

Joanna moved away from the autopsy table and leaned against the tiled wall, feeling its coolness through her scrub suit. Her gaze went over to the bloated corpse, and she wondered what new information Detective Lt. Jake Sinclair had in the case.

It was Jake Sinclair who persuaded the insurance company to let Joanna do the autopsy on the supposed drowning victim. Something didn’t fit, Jake had said. A sixty-year-old entrepreneur-multimillionaire who had spent half his life on the sea doesn’t just suddenly fall off the back of his yacht while his young, pretty wife and a dozen other party goers are enjoying themselves. The sea had been calm, the yacht barely moving that night, yet no one heard screams or cries for help. It just didn’t make sense, Jake had commented, except maybe to the widow who would inherit twenty million dollars. Plus two million from a life insurance policy.

Joanna smiled as a picture of the handsome homicide detective came into her mind. For over ten years he had been her lover and partner and confidant and best friend. Oh, they had had their ups and downs, but the last six months had been perfect. Jake was still tough as nails, but with Joanna he was becoming warmer and closer and more intimate than ever. He was even doing the little things that women love so much. Like giving her small gifts for no reason and sending flowers when she least expected them. And there were the subtle winks and touches when they were out in public. She adored that.

The door to the autopsy room opened, and Detective Sgt. Lou Farelli entered. The receptionist pointed the way for him.

Joanna stared at the swinging doors, waiting for Jake Sinclair to come through. The doors remained motionless. Farelli walked slowly toward her, a somber expression on his face.

“Hello, Doc,” Farelli said flatly.

“Hello, Sergeant,” Joanna said. “Where’s Jake?”

“At a crime scene,” Farelli answered. “He sent me to get you. We need your help.”

“I’m afraid she’s unavailable,” Murdock said at once.

Farelli stared at Murdock as if he were a potted plant and then turned back to Joanna. “It’s a real tough case, and it’s going to be high-profile.”

Joanna shook her head. “I’d like to help, but I’m really tied up here.”

“Let me tell you what we’re up against,” Farelli said.

Murdock stepped forward. “Dr. Blalock has told you she’s unavailable. That should end the conversation.”

Farelli gave Murdock an icy stare. “I’m trying to talk to the doc here, so you put a lid on it until I’m finished. Understood?”