Likely to Die (37 page)

 “Was Spector right, though, about Gemma’s interests? Was brain injury her major focus?”

 “Not so. Not at all. It interested her enormously but almost like a diversion. She was quite an intellectual, as I am sure you realize by now. Sounds a bit gruesome to talk like this to laypeople, but she was far more curious about the pathology of brain illness. What is it that actually causes tumors to develop? What is the effect on one’s DNA when there are tumors? Is it altered or mutated? Gemma was enormously satisfied when she could unscramble the brain of someone who had been in an accident or suffered a grave wound, but she was far more challenged by the surgical demands of a rare tumor or blood clot.”

 I opened the case folder that rested on the table next to my legal pad, lifting some of the police reports from within it.

 “Ever met Robert Spector?” Chapman asked.

 “On a few occasions.”

 “Think he hated Gemma enough to—”

 You could hear Geoffrey’s intake of breath as he cut Mike off midquestion. “Every profession has its jealousies and political infighting, Mr. Chapman. I’m giving you as candid a picture as I can of the people in Gemma’s world, but I’d say that none of them disliked her enough to cause her any physical harm. Most of them had to be aware that she’d be out of their hair in a matter of months, I’m quite sure.”

 “Because she was returning to London?”

 “In all likelihood.”

 “Don’t you know?”

 “Well, she had the offer, you see. And she said she’d let the university know by the end of this month. There was some unfinished business she had to take care of before she could give them her word.”

 “Not even you knew?”

 “I wasn’t the one making the offer. She had no reason to tell me officially. Yes, I assumed she’d be coming back here by the next term, if somewhat reluctantly. But she had no cause to tellme by any deadline. I assumed she was simply finishing the academic year and just devilishly teasing Spector and the other people in administration who were so anxious to see the back of her. Sort of Gemma’s last stand, if you will.”

 There was a knock on the door and Creavey moved to open it. A white-gloved young man had appeared to announce that lunch had been set up in an adjacent room, should we be able to take a short break. I thanked him and told him we were about ready to do that.

 “We can go over some of the statements and photographs after we’ve given you a breather, Dr. Dogen,” Chapman said, rising from his chair and rubbing his fingers over the lids of his bloodshot eyes.

 “I just wanted to run through a few of the names of Gemma’s colleagues. Some of the information we’ve gotten seems to conflict with what others say. If you recognize any of these, perhaps you can tell us who the good guys are, who we can trust.”

 Creavey and Chapman were staring out the window, looking over the pool and pavilion area while I read from a list to Geoffrey Dogen. He was familiar with some of the professors whose offices lined the hallway near Gemma’s, as he was with most of the people in administrative posts, and I checked their names off with a red pen to come back to ask about later on. There was no recognition of the younger doctors, residents, and fellows—even those who had been drawn into the investigation—until I hit on the name of John DuPre.

 Dogen looked at me quizzically. “Did that old codger come out of hibernation to teach at Minuit? Hard to believe that Gemma never mentioned it to me.”

 Chapman turned. “You know DuPre?”

 “I can’t say that I know him very well, but I did attend a course at which he taught—just a two-week seminar, it was, in Geneva. Let me see—Lord, it must be more than twenty-five years ago. I think he was close to retirement at that point. What is he, nearly ninety now?”

 I laughed. “Wrong guy. This one’s only forty-two.”

 “Also a neurologist?”

 “Yes, he is.”

 “Well, perhaps he’s the son, or the grandson. Do you know where he went to medical school?”

 I looked at the DD5 to refresh myself. “Tulane.”

 “Can’t be a coincidence. That’s where old Johnny DuPre went as well. Those are some shoes this chap’s got to fill. Johnny was one of the finest practitioners in the field—a genius, really. Became something of a recluse a while ago. Moved to Mississippi—Port Gibson, if I’m not mistaken.”

 The military historian in Chapman piped up, “The town too beautiful for General Sherman to burn. Spared it, you know?”

 I didn’t. I was closing up my files as Creavey held the door open for us to leave the conference room.

 Dogen was still focused on DuPre. He seemed animated by the memory of the distinguished lecturer. “It was quite an ordeal for a young doctor like me to try to understand neurological details from a man with the thickest southern accent I’d ever encountered. Should have had a translator for us, really. And he had this fabulous shock of bright red hair, matched by his beard. Not a speck of gray in it, even in his sixties.”

 “Bright red hair,” I mused. “Probably not related. Our John DuPre is an African-American.”

 “Well, then, thatis quite an odd coincidence. He can’t be John J. D. DuPre, as the old doc liked to introduce himself. John Jefferson Davis DuPre.”

 I pulled the cord off the folder and slipped out the DD5 again. Interview of John J. D. DuPre, M/B/42.

 “Let’s go, Blondie. I’m famished.”

 “I’ll meet you inside. I just want to call Mercer before he leaves for work and ask him to check something out for us.” I couldn’t imagine that there were a lot of southern black men named for the president of the Confederacy.

 Chapman’s mind was squarely set on the luncheon feast that had been spread out in the room next to us, which I passed on my way to find the nearest telephone from which I could access an overseas line.

 At the moment, all I could think about was the note that had been slipped under the door of my apartment on Sunday evening one week ago.CAREFUL. IT’S NOT ALL BLACK AND WHITE. DEADLY MISTAKE.

 Had someone been trying to alert me to a fact that Geoffrey Dogen just inadvertently made clear to me? Was John DuPre not the man he claimed to be?

 Mercer answered on the second ring.

 24

 SAVED YOU SOME QUAIL’S EGGS INhaddock-and-cheese sauce. The Commander says it’s not to be missed.“

 “I’ll pass.”

 “Steak-and-kidney pie?”

 “The waiter’s bringing me some grilled sole. Dover.” We all took a break from the case as Dogen and Creavey lectured us on the local sights and Cliveden myths. After tea was served, I tried to get Mike out of earshot of Geoffrey to explain my call to Mercer. He was holding one of the Cliveden luncheon menus, passing it to me and telling me to put it in my folder to take back to the States.

 “Did you see this? Can you believe they serve a dessert called ‘spotted dick’? I gotta take one of those back for Mercer and the guys in Sex Crimes.”

 “I’m really proud of how well you’re maturing—something kept you from sharing that thought, as they say, with Dr. Dogen.”

 I told Mike that I’d asked Mercer to check on DuPre’s credentials and reminded him that the neurologist had been one of the doctors checking on Maureen while she was at Mid-Manhattan.

 Geoffrey Dogen and I walked the short distance back to our workroom and resumed our places around the table while Chapman and Creavey went to the men’s room. I had resisted the urge, in Mike’s presence, to ask Dogen whether he remembered the circumstance of Carla Renaud’s death in a London operating room a couple of years ago. But as we were alone, I quietly asked the question that had been gnawing at me.

 “Indeed. Gemma was devastated by the event, of course. The procedure was a new one that had been developed in our program by James Binchy, one of our finest surgeons. Quite a radical operation, and a very long one—six, seven hours. That’s why Binchy invited Gemma over to assist him. Unfortunately she became a bit too involved, personally, with the family. Wanted very much for the experiment to succeed—for the girl’s sake and for the larger picture.

 “Gemma hadn’t lost very many patients on the table. Took this rather hard. Had to break it to the husband herself. He was wild with grief.”

 “Wild—atGemma?”

 “Mad at the world. One of those ‘she had everything to live for so why did you let her die’ tirades. Truth is, of course, that Carla Renaud couldn’t have lived more than another month without an attempt at the surgery. Binchy wasn’t trying this out for sport, Miss Cooper. It was the only hope for the Renaud girl and it didn’t work. How does this fit into your questioning?”

 Mike was standing in the doorway and answered for me. “Like I said, Doc, we’re looking at every angle. Last December, right before Christmas, an ex-con found his way into a cancer clinic at New York Hospital and slashed the face of a doctor who had treated the guy’s child five years earlier. The teenager had died of leukemia, despite everybody’s best efforts, and the father just never came to grips with it.

 “Agatha Christie here is considering whether Renaud’s widower might have harbored this same kind of vengeance for Gemma.”

 Dogen’s face puckered and grimaced as he tried to call up old conversations about the matter. “Well, I remember the husband—he was a barrister, wasn’t he?—I know there was talk of lawsuits against Binchy and Gemma and so on. But I’m quite sure nothing came of it. Poor lad was disconsolate at his wife’s death. Had at least expected she’d survive the surgery and die in his arms. But it seems to me he was reasoned with in the end and I’m not aware Gemma ever heard from him again. Not that I’d have any reason to know that for sure.”

 “You want to get back to business, Blondie, or you think maybe Dr. Dogen can help you with your horoscope, too?”

 Mike and I split up the pile of hundreds of DD5s and began to go through them in detail, picking out points about which to question our cooperative witness. Creavey sat at the far end of the table, sorting through a duplicate pile of police reports, using his own skills and methods to try to reconstruct a version of the investigation.

 When we reached the autopsy report, Mike passed the several-page document over to Dogen. “There’s no reason to hold back these details from you, Doc. It’s pretty tough stuff but at least the medical terms will make sense to you. Why don’t you read it and then we can answer any questions you have.”

 The mild-mannered physician started at the top with the paragraph describing the deceased’s physical appearance and dimensions. Before he had gotten very far, he stood up and walked to a corner of the room, slumping himself into a chair and running his hand back and forth over his mouth as he tried to absorb the information about the number of stab wounds and the frenzy of the attack.

 We sat silently for almost five minutes, then Mike tapped my arm and pointed to the door. As we left the room together, Creavey followed along with us. For a quarter of an hour, the three of us walked around the pool, taking in the brisk spring air while we left Geoffrey Dogen with the haunting pathologist’s portrait of his friend, his former wife. It was obvious he had been crying when we rejoined him and he blew his nose before speaking to us.

 “Well, I knew Gemma was a fighter. Looks like your man didn’t expect her to be, did he?”

 I let Mike take the lead. “My partner thinks that’s one of the reasons to assume she knew her killer. Someone who’d be aware she might be alone in her office in the middle of the night and that she wouldn’t freak out to see him come in. Maybe it started as a conversation, something he thought he could reason with her about. But he was obviously prepared for the assault if he didn’t get his way.”

 “And then she was bound and gagged?”

 “That’s what the ME suggested. But almost any one of those stab wounds would have disabled her. If the first thing he did was that blow to the middle of her back, he could have tied her after that and then continued the assault.”

 “But certainly there would have been screams—”

 “And no one to hear them. It’d be easier to raise some of the dead in the morgue than anyone on that hallway at 2A.M. once it was cleared of all its other occupants. Even if Gemma had gotten out one shriek before she was gagged, another thrust of the knife would have silenced her.”

 “What do you make of the attempt to sexually assault her in this—well, condition? The man would have to be insane, don’t you think?”

 “I think that’s exactly what he’d want us to think. If you’ve ever seen Mid-Manhattan, you’d know it’s full of lunatics—I mean, the resident population. More than likely, the killer tried to stage this to look like an attempt to rape Gemma just to throw us off course.”

 Mike loaded a pack of slides into the viewer. “These are some photographs of the crime scene, Doc. I don’t know if you’re familiar with Gemma’s office but I’d like you to have a look.”

 “I’ve been there several times. Even have a few photos of it. Gemma sent them—‘Me in my natural habitat,’ as she labeled them.”

 Mike pressed the button that rotated the slides around the carousel and the images from the first run flashed onto the wall-sized screen. Dogen’s head was still as he focused on the shots, many of them repeats of different angles of the dark bloodstains soaked into the carpet.

 Interspersed with those were photographs of Gemma’s desk and chair, then of the rows of bookshelves that stood above her file cabinets and drawers full of X-ray film.

 “ ‘Ere you go,” Creavey said, breaking the silence by pointing at a large object on Gemma’s desk, sitting like a paperweight atop an inch of documents. “Tower Bridge, Doc. Front and center.”

 “I bought her that from a stall in a market on the Portobello Road. Shape of the bridge, so she loved it. If you take us back a slide or two, Chapman, I can point out people in some of those photographs she’s got on the bookshelf. Took a few of them myself.”

 Mike clicked the loader and reversed direction. Dogen called out names as he recognized snapshots, many of them taken in London years ago judging from the styles of the clothing. It was clearly an exercise that meant more to Dogen than it did to our investigation, but in light of the emotional toll on him, Chapman seemed happy to indulge the gentle man.