The Fregoli Delusion (9 page)

10

Twelve hours later, a few minutes
after 9:00
a.m.
, Melissa Grove
opened the door of her penthouse suite and politely let them in after examining
their badges and identification. Following her into an expensively-furnished
seating area, they immediately understood that this was a place of business
rather than Melissa Grove’s home. When she invited them to sit down, Hank chose
a leather love seat while Karen waved her hand and turned away, looking around.
Melissa settled on the edge of a chair across from Hank and folded her hands in
her lap.

“How may I help you?”

She was a tall, slender brunette.
She wore a cerise-colored kimono wrap dress and matching spaghetti-strap shoes
with stiletto heels. Her makeup was a little heavy, and her bust was impossibly
large for someone with such a narrow waist, but she was working hard to project
a demure girl-next-door image.

Hank took out his notebook, opened
it on his knee, and made a little production of finding his Cross pen, twisting
it to expose the ball point, and noting the date and time on a fresh page.

“Do you know a man named Richard
Holland, Ms. Grove?”

“Richard?” She showed him flawless
white teeth. “Oh, yes.”

“How would you describe your
relationship with him?”

She giggled. “We’re good friends.”

“I see. When was the last time you
saw him?”

“Yesterday morning. Well, Wednesday
night.” She pretended to be flustered. “He stayed over.”

“Here?”

“Yes, of course.”

“What time did he leave?”

“I guess about eight thirty.”

“After he had breakfast?”

“Just a cup of coffee. He doesn’t
eat breakfast.”

Karen had finished her little tour
of the room. She’d found a black plastic holder containing business cards, and
now she held up one of the cards between two fingers. “This yours? ‘Melissa
Grove, Business Consultant, Corona Services, Inc.?’”

“Yes, that’s me, all right.”

Karen locked eyes with her.
“Corona Services? Don’t make me go look it up, hon.”

“It’s a company I formed as a
vehicle for my business. It helps if my clients think I’m part of a large
organization.”

“So what’s a business consultant
do for her clients? I mean, in your case.”

“We look after whatever services
our clients request.”

“I’ll bet. You sure Holland was
here Thursday morning?”

“Positive.”

“And you’ll swear to that on a
stack of Bibles in court?”

Melissa’s smile faltered, but she managed
to maintain eye contact. “If I have to.”

“You may.” Karen tucked the
business card into her pocket and took out one of her own. She walked over to
Melissa’s chair and held it out. “Here’s mine, darlin’. See,” she pointed, “it
says ‘homicide detective.’ That’s what
I
do. Somebody put a bullet into
Holland’s boss’s brain yesterday. Maybe you heard about it. G’wan, take it.”

Melissa reluctantly took the
business card.

“How’d he seem?” Hank asked.
“Holland, I mean.”

“He was fine. Normal.”

“Normal.” Karen considered the
word as though it were unfamiliar to her. “Okay. What did you guys talk about
while he was having his breakfast coffee?”

Melissa shrugged. “I don’t really
remember. Stuff.”

“Stuff. The morning news?”

“I don’t listen to the news. It’s
very depressing. I try to maintain a very positive equilibrium.”

“What time did he leave here,
yesterday morning?” Hank asked.

“About eight thirty, as I told
you.”

Hank put away his notebook and
pen. He stood up.

“Is that everything?” Melissa
asked, her voice rising.

“For now,’” Karen said. “Hang onto
that card. If you think of something else you’d like to tell us, give me a
call.”

She nodded, put the business card
into the pocket of her kimono dress, and showed them to the door.

At the elevator, Hank punched the Down
button.

“That was interesting,” Karen
said. “Holland bought himself a little GFE. Convenient.”

“Hmm?”

“Girlfriend experience. She’s a
courtesan. A night with her would cost half your pay check. Thirty-six triple
Ds, size five shoes, no tatts, perfect skin, perfect teeth, no visible track
marks. The best.”

The elevator door opened and Hank
stepped aside to allow Karen to precede him into the lobby. “Yeah, but did he
pay for the night, in which case he’s telling the truth, or did he just pay for
the alibi, in which case he’s lying?”

“That’s the five-dollar question.”
Karen looked around the lobby as they crossed to the big glass doors at the
front entrance. “Somehow I think we’ll have a fight on our hands if we try to
get a warrant for surveillance video from this place. That’s high-end service
up there, and I’ll just bet it gets high-end traffic.”

“You might be right.”

The heat hit them in a wave as
they left the front lobby and walked down the sidewalk to the Crown Vic. When they
got in, Karen started the engine and cranked up the air conditioning.

“As far as I’m concerned,” she
said, “Holland’s alibi was bought and paid for, and he’s a lying son of a
bitch.”

Hank buckled up.

“Come on, Lou. My gut’s telling me
Brett Parris was right on the money.”

“We’re going to need a hell of a
lot more than a gut feeling.”

“Understood. I’m not a fucking
rookie.” She threw the car into gear and pulled away from the curb. She drove
in silence for a block before looking over at him.

“You just watch me,” she said.
“I’m going to peel that bastard Holland like an onion.”

11

The body of Herbert Joseph Jarrett
had already been the subject of intense scrutiny at the Glendale Forensic
Medical Center for several hours on Friday morning before Hank arrived at 1:00
p.m.
to attend the autopsy
.
It had undergone the normal external
examination, including complete photography, clothed and unclothed, weighing
and measuring, fingerprinting, fingernail scraping, washing, and a thorough
visual examination noting every feature, no matter how small and innocuous. Dr.
Sarah Chalmers, assistant medical examiner, presided over this stage of the
proceedings, assisted by Harry Shaniwatru, the diener of Thai descent who boxed
professionally in the flyweight class in his spare time. Harry was the most
trusted of the attendants on staff at the center, and so it was a foregone
conclusion he would be the one called in to assist.

After Chalmers pronounced this
phase of the external examination complete, Harry then wheeled the corpse down
the hall for full-body computed tomography, at which point Dr. Jim Easton
joined Chalmers and the head radiologist, Dr. Paul Oldfield, to pore over the
resultant imagery while Harry patiently moved the body next door for x-rays.
Easton was of the belt-and-suspenders persuasion when it came to the death
investigation of the fifth-richest person in the state and didn’t think twice
about the expense of running both the CT scan and the x-rays. It was crucial
that he be able to answer every possible question that would be raised in this
case, and he needed to be able to say he’d left no stone unturned.

As a result, when Hank walked into
the main autopsy theater at three minutes after one o’clock, tying his
protective gown behind his back, Easton and Chalmers already had a very good
sense of what they would find when they dissected the body.

“Ready for the big show?” Easton
eyed Hank over the gold wire frames of his glasses. His voice was slightly
distorted behind the mask that covered the lower half of his face.

“Ready when you are, Jim,” replied
Hank, putting on a pair of latex gloves.

“We’ve already covered the virtual
dimension,” Easton said, “and I’m prepared to cut you a break. The deceased
sustained a single gunshot wound to the left temple, and other than the
expected injury to the back of his head where it struck the ground when he
fell, there’s nothing else of note. This, in and of itself, should be of
interest to you, I’d think.”

“No signs of a struggle or a
fight, nothing defensive.”

“Exactly.”

“You’re suggesting the shooter
deliberately brought the gun to the scene with the intention of using it?”

“I suggest nothing. I’m a
scientist, pure and simple. I leave the speculation to you. And so, being the
considerate person that I am, I’ve decided to start our dissection with the
head so you can get your hands on the bullet and get the hell out of here.
Sarah, show him the CT images while Harry and I get started.”

Chalmers led Hank over to a
MacBook set up on a trolley close to the autopsy station to enable the
pathologists to consult still images from the CT scan as they proceeded with
the dissection. “The x-rays are there,” Chalmers said, pointing to the x-ray
view box mounted on the wall near the head of the dissection table.

A strand of her wavy red hair
threatened to escape from beneath her hair net onto her high, freckled cheekbone.
Her soft blue eyes stared at Hank.

“Great.” He leaned over for a
closer look at the image of the head that was currently displayed on the laptop
screen. “I expected to see you busy at one of the other tables when I came in.”

“I was scheduled to do the Chee
autopsies today, but we agreed it was better to move them back and have an
extra pair of eyes on this one.” She sighed. “When I called Detective Carleson
to let him know, Lieutenant Jarvis was pretty upset. I could hear him yelling
in the background.”

“He’ll get over it,” Hank said.

“He’ll have to,” Easton said over
his shoulder, watching Harry excise the entrance wound and surrounding tissue
and place it into a container with fixative. “If he tries to get into a
political pissing match over his place in line versus this case he’s going to
get his ass kicked.”

At that moment the door opened and
a man in a dark suit walked in. He hadn’t bothered to put on the protective
gear that all observers were required to wear when attending an autopsy. He
passed the other empty dissection tables in a confident stride, head up, arms
swinging, eyes fixed on Easton.

“Speaking of politics,” Hank
murmured. He glanced up at the observation booth and saw another arrival,
Glendale State’s Attorney Warren Exler, peering down at them.

“Sir,” Easton called out to the approaching
intruder, “I’m very honored to have you here today but I’ll have to ask you to
leave my autopsy theater immediately. We’re about to begin and I can’t have
unnecessary bodies getting in the way, living or dead.”

The man stopped and folded his
arms, his eyes avoiding the corpse lying naked on the dissection table in front
of him. “You’re Easton, I take it? I’m Attorney General Johnson S. Perry.”

“Of course you are. Now get the
hell out of my autopsy theater.”

Perry was a young-looking
fifty-year-old who’d run unopposed in the last state election and was making a
name for himself as a relentless prosecutor of organized crime elements in
Maryland. He was known as an aggressive, savvy politician with an excellent
chance of becoming governor in the near future.

“H.J. Jarrett was my friend,”
Perry said. “I flew down from Annapolis expressly to assure his family, his
company’s shareholders, and the public that this outrage will not go unpunished.”
It was obviously a speech he planned to deliver again, very shortly, to the
press.

Easton looked up at Exler in the
observation booth and calmly flipped down his face shield. “Warren, as you
know, there’s a serious risk of infection to anyone in an autopsy theater who’s
not properly dressed. On top of that, no one is allowed to attend a procedure
without the permission of the medical examiner or the prosector in charge.” He
turned to Perry. “Since I am he, in both cases, I’m ordering you the hell out of
my theater right now before I have to call security and have you marched out at
gunpoint.”

“Really,” Perry said, “I think I
need to—”

Easton motioned with his
double-gloved hand. “Harry.”

“Yes, Dr. Easton.” With precise,
practiced movements the diener used his scalpel
to
make a long, deep incision from behind one ear to the other ear of the corpse,
passing over the crown of the bald head. Setting the scalpel aside, he grasped
the lower edge of the skin and, with some effort and the assistance of a knife,
began to pull the skin down from the top of the skull over the face to expose
the front of the skull. It made a disgusting sound and produced a distinct odor
that had an immediate effect on Attorney General Perry.

“Unh,” he said, turning away.

Harry then peeled away
the back flap of skin so that the entire top of the skull was visible. He
picked up an electric saw and tested it to make sure it was working.

Easton had had his fun, so Hank
moved around the dissection table. “Mr. Attorney General, why don’t we go up
into the viewing gallery.”

Perry suddenly turned and hurried
from the theater, his hand over his mouth. Hank followed, stripping off his
latex gloves. Outside the theater, he navigated around the mess Perry had left
on the floor in his frantic search for the washroom. Hank pushed open the door
and found the politician crouching in an open stall, wiping his mouth with
toilet paper. It took several minutes before Perry had recovered enough to
flush the toilet and emerge, his face pasty and drawn. He walked to the sink,
washed his hands and face, and wiped at the stains on his jacket with a handful
of paper towels.

“You’re Donaghue,” he said finally,
while washing his hands.

“Yes, sir.”

He dried his hands, stuffed the
wadded paper towels into the trash bin, and held out his hand. “Johnson Perry.
Call me John.”

Hank shook his hand.

“I’ve met your mother.” Perry turned
to the mirror and finger-combed his hair, making an effort to pull himself
together. “Quite a woman, even though she is a Republican. We should go up to
the observation room. Chief Bennett’s meeting us there.”

Hank led the way to the viewing
gallery, a long, narrow room that looked down onto the main autopsy theater,
affording a clear view of everything happening below. A monitor provided a direct
feed from the video camera mounted above Easton’s autopsy station, while a
microphone caught the whining of Harry’s saw and the crunching of bone as the
diener cut through the vault of the corpse’s skull to get at the brain within.

“Maybe you could turn it down,
Lieutenant,” Exler said, looking at Perry, who stood before the glass window rubbing
his face with his hands.

Hank punched the mute button. The
door opened behind them, and Chief Bennett walked in.

“Very sorry I’m late, gentlemen,”
he said, heading straight for Perry with his hand extended, “but I was on the
phone with the mayor, who sends his regards.”

Perry turned around and shook
Bennett’s hand. “Thanks.”

Bennett shook Exler’s hand.
“Warren, whatever you and Mr. Perry need from the GPD, just say the word.”

“I’m sure Lieutenant Donaghue can
look after us.” Exler glanced at Hank.

“Yes, of course.” Bennett said. “He
has a great deal of experience as an investigator. I’m completely confident
he’ll nail our UNSUB in record time. Won’t you, Lieutenant?”

“We’ll do our best, sir,” Hank
replied. “It helps that Mr. Exler’s made ASA DiOrio available around the clock for
our warrants. That’s a big assist.”

Exler nodded. “I wanted to make
sure the lieutenant and his team had immediate access so there’s no time lost
because of procedure. And thanks to you, Mr. Attorney General, for making Judge
Brown available whenever we need him.”

“No problem,” Perry said, not
interested in the round of mutual back-patting Bennett had started.

“It’s important to take advantage
of any breaks in the case as soon as they happen,” Bennett said. “These windows
have a way of opening and closing very quickly. It’ll be crucial to have our
warrants signed off right away.”

“They have to be clean,” Perry
said to Hank. “Watertight. We’ll bend over backwards to help you do your job,
but we can’t go to trial on this and have crucial evidence thrown out because
of loosey-goosey warrants. Don’t waste Brown’s time with wishful thinking, and
don’t send Exler into court with a case made of sugar cubes. We need to nail
the bastard who did this, clean and hard.”

“Understood.” Hank glanced down
into the autopsy theater and saw Chalmers looking up at him. She pointed to her
ear and mouth. Hank walked over to the monitor and punched the audio button.
Chalmers said something to Easton, who nodded without interrupting what he was
doing.

“Hank,” he said, “you’ll probably
want to be down here for this.” He gently lifted the brain out of the skull and
set it down into the pan of a scale suspended above the head of the dissection
table. The brain was soaked with blood. Harry noted the weight, moved it onto a
tray, photographed it from several angles, and then began very carefully to
clean it.

“Gentlemen, you may want to leave
the audio on,” Easton said, looking up at the gallery, “so you can hear me.
I’ll walk you through the cause of death and get you your bullet. I realize
there’s a fair bit of blood right now, but you gentlemen will probably find
this very interesting just the same, not to mention very important. Since
you’re here, as witnesses, you might as well pay attention.”

As Hank left the gallery, Exler
turned to Perry. “Mr. Attorney General?”

“Leave it,” Perry said, glancing
at the monitor.

Easton looked up as Hank entered
the autopsy theater and crossed the floor in long strides, pulling on a fresh
pair of latex gloves. He tipped up his eye shield and nodded. “Thank you,
Lieutenant.”

“No problem,” Hank murmured. “We
wouldn’t want you to screw up your own political ambitions now, would we, Jim?”

“I’ll remember you when I become
governor.”

“I thought you were just shooting
for CME.”

“A mere stepping stone.” Easton’s
desire to become chief medical examiner of Maryland was as well known as his
lack of tact and political discretion.

“Let me show you what we’ve got,” he
said, turning to the body on the table with its ruined head. “The bullet struck
the deceased in the left temple, the area which we refer to as the pterion.
Also known as ‘God’s little joke,’ this is the weakest part of the skull. The
round penetrated the parietal bone just above the sphenoparietal suture,” he
pointed with a double-gloved little finger, “where the bone is thin and
pointed. Penetration created several small linear fractures and produced bone
fragments which created their own secondary tracks. The
middle meningeal artery received
extensive damage and created a massive subdural hematoma that resulted in
traumatic pressure to the brain. That accounts for the blood you see slopped
all over my dissection table. It also contributed in large part to the death of
the victim, the blood loss and the resultant pressure on the brain within the
skull being a lethal combination. So cause of death will be described as a
specific combination of factors resulting from the single gunshot wound to the
left temple.