Likely to Die (36 page)

 “By the way, while you were in school this morning your boyfriend called.”

 “What—?”

 “Drew. That’s the guy’s name, isn’t it? Said it was four or five in the morning at home. Just called to say hello—said he couldn’t sleep and hadn’t been able to reach you ‘cause of your travel schedules. Lucky he called when he did—woke me out of a deep sleep.”

 “Great. You told him who you were, didn’t you? I mean, that you’re just my fr—I mean, that we’re only sharing, you know—”

 “What’d you expect me to tell him? Sorry, I don’t know the Wellesley etiquette. They probably taught you rules for all this kind of crap. Should I have said, ‘Not to worry, I’m a gay cop,’ or ‘Jesus, I wouldn’t nail Alex Cooper on a bet, would you?’ The guy woke me out of a heavy slumber, Blondie. I took a message and told him to call back. Yesterday, he pissed you off and you’re thinking he’s a murderer ‘cause Dogen butchered his wife—now you want his calls. Go figure. Let him think there’s a little competition in the field, like you’re here with the Prince of Wales or Sean Connery or something. No common sense for a smart broad, really.”

 Forget about Drew Renaud and everything else in your personal life for the moment, I reminded myself. Get to work.

 We entered a miniature duplicate of the boardroom. In it were a rectangular table with six comfortable seats, slide and video projectors with which to display our photographic evidence, and enough water and coffee to keep us afloat for days.

 “Perhaps you and Alexandra might begin by telling me what you know at this moment,” Dogen suggested, drawing his chair up to the table and giving us his most earnest look. “Do you know who killed Gemma?”

 “I’d rather do it the other way ‘round, Doc, if you don’t mind,” Mike replied. “It would help, I think, if you just talk to us a while about Gemma. Even what might seem to you to be irrelevancies. I don’t want whatwe know or don’t know to direct your thoughts. After you’ve sketched in more of the background for us, I promise we’ll bring you up to where we are in the investigation.”

 That ought to be impressive, I thought to myself. Mike could bluff almost anyone about almost anything but this situation seemed beyond even his best bullshit ability. We’re more confused today than we were the first time we had called Geoffrey Dogen last week.

 “Understood. I’ll begin, then.”

 He pulled his chair close into the table and leaned his elbows on it, supporting his bowed head with his hands as he recalled Gemma’s family background for us. Nothing struck him as unusual about the story. Her parents had moved to Broadstairs from London as hostilities flared across Europe and Gemma was born there in ‘39. Only child, raised by her mother after her father’s death on the battlefield—Dunkirk. I scratched notes on a legal pad, doubting the significance of this part of the conversation but recognizing that Chapman’s interest would be even more engaged simply by virtue of the remote link to World War II.

 Geoffrey took us through her schooling and scholarship to University, where she excelled in the biological sciences and won prizes for several experiments that captured the attention of the academic community. He met her a year later, when she entered the medical school at which he was already enrolled.

 “Actually, I had seen her at the school. Couldn’t miss her in those days. She was quite a striking figure then,” he smiled, obviously bringing back to mind an image of the young woman with whom he had fallen in love. “But I first met her somewhere else. Tower Bridge.”

 I shot a glance at Mike and Creavey’s sharp eyes followed as ours met.

 “I was there with a group of Australian students. They were visiting our medical school, and wanted to do the usual tourist things at the weekend. Beefeaters, the Crown Jewels, the Bloody Tower, and Traitors’ Gate. You’ve done all that, have you?”

 I nodded while Mike regretted that he hadn’t yet had the opportunity.

 “Pity to be so close to London and not have the time to see some of it. Can’t you take the weekend off?”

 “Sorry, no. We’ve got to get back directly, after you’ve helped us, Dr. Dogen.”

 “Of course. Well, I’d almost finished showing my Aussies the sights but they were determined to climb to the top of Tower Bridge. Three hundred steps at least. Dragged me along with them. Got to the pinnacle and there’s only one person up there with us. I recognized her from the medical college. It was Gemma, standing at the window and staring downriver, oblivious to the rowdy troop of us that piled in behind her.

 “I introduced myself, explained the connection to school, and learned that she was called Gemma Holborn.”

 Mike was impatient. He didn’t particularly want the love story, if that’s the direction in which Geoffrey was headed. “Why was she there? Any special reason?”

 “For her, growing up in the countryside, Tower Bridgewas London. It is for many people. Sort of a symbol of this city. For some it’s Big Ben or Buckingham Palace, but Gemma didn’t care for those because you just look up at them. They didn’t give that curious child an enormous structure that opened its windows onto a faraway world. The bridge did. It’s a newcomer really, compared to the Tower itself, which is almost a thousand years old. But its structure is so identifiable, wouldn’t you say, Commander? Sort of represents old London to lots of people.”

 Creavey agreed.

 “It was the first place Gemma remembered visiting as a young girl after the war, climbing both of the towers to see how far up- and downstream the river went. Probably believed she could see America ‘til she got old enough to know better. When she had anything to dream about or fancy, she’d take herself up to those rooms, or out on the catwalk, and wish to her heart’s content.”

 “D’you ever go back there with her?”

 “I had little choice, Mister Chapman. It’s where I proposed to Gemma, two years later. That way, I knew she’d accept,” Geoffrey said, smiling at us, a bit more relaxed as he continued his storytelling. “She’d go there the night before her big exams. Never mind that she’d studied more hours than all the other students combined, she needed the comfort of some moments of solitude in her tower.

 “Even liked to go for the big events, with the crowds. TheGypsy Moth came home in ‘67 and they opened the bascules for it and we were the first to arrive—”

 “Whoa, you lost me here,” Chapman interrupted.

 “Me, too.”

 Creavey injected the facts. “You Yanks are a bit too young to remember, but it’s a good one for that quizzer you watch on the telly. Sir Francis Chichester sailed ‘round the world on a little yacht by the name ofGypsy Moth IV. Took a year, and when ’e got home they opened the bascules—the arms of the bridge—so ‘e could sail into the city. And the Queen ’erself got on board to make him a knight. Used the same sword that had tapped the shoulders of Sir Francis Drake.”

 Chapman was loading up on history but this conversation was going nowhere for me.

 “Any idea if this interest carried through in her adult life?” I thought of Gemma’s key chain that was sitting at home on my dresser and its twin that I had observed in William Dietrich’s hand when he left the conference room a few days earlier.

 “I’m afraid it was impossible to shake her out of it. She made a special visit in 1994 for the centenary celebration of the construction of Tower Bridge. By then I’d remarried, as you probably know, and Gemma dragged a bunch of us up to the top for a view. She must have bought souvenirs for everyone in America. Tower Bridge coffee mugs, Tower Bridge teaspoons, Tower Bridge key chains—”

 “Lots of them?”

 “Loads of them.”

 So much for the importance I was reading into Dietrich’s token of affection. It was more likely one of dozens she had distributed to friends and colleagues.

 “I’m sure you must have noticed things like that in her home and her office, didn’t you? That remote side of her was one of the pieces of Gemma I never quite unlocked.

 “We divorced less than ten years after we’d been married. Never an argument or a cross word. You can probably tell that we remained quite good friends. Saw her every time she was over here, practically. Corresponded with her, kept up with each other—professionally and personally, much as I dared. She simply couldn’t let anyone into her world, into the part of it that really counted.

 “She was a brilliant scientist and a fiercely loyal friend if she believed in you. But there was an entire piece of her that was hollow, that she never letme fill for her—and I’m quite sure no one else was ever allowed to venture in. Odd, actually, that as a physician I used to think of it as a real space somewhere within her body that I could ‘cure’ if only I could locate it. But I never quite did.”

 Geoffrey Dogen was quiet now, looking at his hands, which were clasped together on the table in front of him.

 We listened to more than an hour of background information on Gemma’s marriage, divorce, friends, students, and her career in England. In many of the murders Chapman worked, the access to this kind of detail from a reliable source close to the victim could have proved to be invaluable. Here, it was bringing us no closer to anything we seemed to need.

 Gently, Mike tried to steer Geoffrey to the recent events that involved Gemma’s professional future. The doctor let out a deep sigh and slumped down into his chair.

 He looked over at Mike. “Do you honestly think this could be connected to Gemma’s work?”

 “We want to consider all the possibilities at this point.”

 “Well, the last couple of years have been a constant battle for Gemma. I’m referring to Minuit Medical College and Mid-Manhattan, not to her personal life.”

 “D’you know what the issues were and who were the enemies?”

 “She’s created waves from her very first days there, you know. Nothing major, but she’s always been a stickler for her principles. Quite a good thing in our business, actually.

 “I’d say there were two things that made Gemma a lightning rod for trouble.” Dogen kept looking at me now and I figured he was concerned about my taking notes as he speculated out loud. I tried to be casual about writing but met his gaze firmly to imply that I wasn’t to be stopped.

 “Early on, she made it clear that she was not going to accept anyone into the neurosurgical program unless the applicant met all her standards. Those were rigorous, as you might imagine. Medical school grades, references, intellectual ability, integrity, performance in the operating theater, internship ratings. No teacher’s pets or favorite sons or people who’d blundered already along the way. Gemma was quite unforgiving. Certainly, some viewed that as a flaw.”

 “Anything going on like that right now? Was she being pushed to admit someone she didn’t want in?”

 “I’m sure, yes.”

 Mike and I both spoke at once as we asked who it was.

 “Oh, no, no, no. Forgive me. I don’t mean I knew of anyone in particular. It’s just that there was always some other professor or one of the administrators who was promoting a candidate and he and Gemma would lock horns over it. I’m afraid I can’t give you a name.

 “Last time she was here, the complaint was about a head of service at your Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital. Seems one of his students had already been accepted—name like Nazareth—and then an inquiry began because the young man was involved in a rather bizarre episode. A girl he was seeing—actually, she was a patient he picked up in surgery and started dating—passed out in his apartment. This medical student let her lapse into a coma in his own living room, kept her there for hours until he finally picked her up and carried her into the hospital. She nearly died right under his nose. On top of that, it turns out that he had tried to draw blood from her—never explained why—and did so by inserting the needle in her wrist, bruising her quite badly. When the girl recovered from the coma, she was quite traumatized. Dr. Nazareth never explained what kind of needle he used or whether it was a clean one, nor what became of the blood sample. His superiors never pressed him on it.

 “The young lady was convinced she passed out because he drugged her. Strange business. And the doctor recommending this medical student—”

 “Do you recall his name?” I was writing down everything Dogen said.

 “Sorry, no. But you fax me a list of department heads and I’ll pick it out. Anyway, the doctor belittled the entire event.And the four arrests Gemma’s enquiries revealed for a variety of minor run-ins the student had had with the police—most of them related to motoring offenses. She thought the boy a rotten egg and a real danger to the profession, mostly because of what he had done in regard to the well-being of that young girl. I know she was successful in getting him blocked, but I couldn’t begin to guess how many other unhappy candidates like that are floating around. After ten years of doing this, Gemma’s rejects are probably bumping into each other at medical centers all over the States.”

 “You said you could think of two reasons for Gemma’s unpopularity. What’s the other?”

 “The direction she was taking the department. There were a lot of people at Minuit who were unhappy with Gemma’s view of the neurosurgical division.”

 “Too much emphasis on trauma?”

 “Mostly that.”

 “In whose view?”

 “Well, of course, you’ve got Robert Spector leading the pack against Gemma. No secret that he’d be happy to see her go so that he could step into her shoes.”

 “Spector told us she wouldn’t want to stay in New York and be second banana to Dr. Ghajar, up at New York Hospital.”

 “Rubbish. She had the utmost respect for Ghajar—and he was quite generous to her. Included her in a lot of his studies and research projects. It’s Spector who can’t take that kind of competition. He’ll never develop a trauma unit to match Ghajar’s so that’s why he’d like to move his staff into another forum. That’s part of his problem at Mid-Manhattan. Without making brain injury a specialty, as Gemma urged, they’ve got three times the mortality rate for coma patients that New York Hospital does just a few blocks up the road.

 “Just a lesson to you, Mr. Chapman. If you get knocked about the head, be sure you get yourself to Ghajar’s trauma unit.”