Lethal Measures Page 2

  (1) All patients injured in the blast were to be hospitalized at Memorial; those now at other hospitals were to be transferred to Memorial if possible. (2) All autopsies were to be performed by

  Memorial’s forensic pathologist, Dr. Joanna Blalock. (3) All clothing, jewelry and other objects found on the corpses were to be turned over to the FBI for analysis. (4) An area where bodies could be viewed for positive identification was to be set up. (5) Press releases were to be issued only after approval by the investigating agencies.

  Next Kitt listed the units that would investigate the bombing and the names of those who would direct each unit. Murdock continued writing, unhappy that the casualties and autopsy work were not being spread out among other hospitals in the Los Angeles area. With everything coming to Memorial, its staff and resources would be severely strained. The surgery and orthopedic divisions, the I.C.U, the ER, radiology and pathology would all be stretched to their limits and beyond. But they would get the work done. Every request would be followed to the letter.

  And not just because the FBI was calling. An hour earlier Murdock had received a call from a highly placed friend in Washington, D.C.” who had served as special adviser to the presidents of four administrations and had enormous power. Over the years he had quietly seen to it that hundreds of millions of federal dollars were tunneled to Memorial. Without his help Murdock could never have built all Memorial’s institutes and research facilities. And now it was payback time.

  “And of course,” Kitt was saying, “the federal government will reimburse Memorial for expenses incurred.”

  “We have contingency funds to cover the costs,” Murdock told him.

  “We will require a full accounting of all monies spent.”

  “I understand,” Murdock said, but he had already decided not to do it. He knew that any accounting of the expenses would be looked upon as a bill by the government and promptly paid. Murdock didn’t want that. His friend had asked for a favor, and he would get it. In return Memorial would continue to receive more than its share of federal research dollars.

  “We would like the accounting done on a weekly basis,” Kitt said.

  “It will be done in a manner satisfactory to all concerned,” Murdock said firmly, closing the topic.

  There was a pause. Murdock heard the FBI agent swallow.

  “We appreciate your help. Dr. Murdock.” Murdock switched off the intercom and left his office. Passing his secretary, he said, “I’m not available.”

  He took the elevator to the B level and hurried down a long corridor, organizing his thoughts on how to carry out the FBI’s instructions. Putting all the blast casualties into beds at Memorial shouldn’t be a problem. Those already admitted were in either the orthopedic or the surgery ward. The new admissions should go there as well. It would be a tight squeeze, but it could be done. He’d call the nursing supervisors and have them begin rearranging beds. Then he would talk with the hospital spokes personnel No press releases unless cleared by the FBI or whoever took charge of the investigation. No press conferences on the victims until told otherwise. A goddamn bomb, he thought grimly. Something specially constructed to kill and maim. In his mind’s eye he again saw the fireman carrying the dead child out of the rubble. With effort he pushed the picture away.

  Murdock went through a set of double doors with a sign that read positively no admittance except authorized personnel. A secretary talking on the phone looked up.

  “Is the chief of pathology here?” Murdock asked.

  “No, sir,” the secretary said, her hand now over the mouthpiece.

  “Do you know where he is?”

  “In a meeting, I think.”

  “Call him and have him meet me in his office in ten minutes.”

  “May I tell him what it’s about?”

  Murdock ignored the question.

  “Is Dr. Blalock around?”

  “In the back.”

  Murdock pushed through another set of swinging doors and entered the autopsy room. He quickly scanned the brightly lit area, with its eight stainless steel tables arranged in rows of two. His gaze went to the white-tiled wall at the rear. He counted the refrigerated units in the wall where the corpses were kept.

  There were ten of them, not nearly enough to hold the dead victims of the bombing. And besides, the autopsy room made a poor viewing area. They would need a large room to serve as a temporary morgue, a place where relatives and friends could come and view the bodies for positive identification.

  Murdock stood on his tiptoes and saw Joanna Blalock at a far table. He moved around the periphery of the room, passing corpses waiting to be dissected. The bodies had bluish white skin and looked more like

  mannequins than humans. One had an apparent bullet wound in his chest that was large enough to put a fist through. Murdock tried to envision what kind of weapon could make a wound like that.

  He stopped and stepped aside as two attendants removed a corpse from a wall unit and placed it atop a dissecting table. The corpse was an old man, gray and shriveled, mostly skin and bones. One attendant made an incision through the corpse’s scalp line while the other uncoiled the wire of an electric saw.

  Joanna Blalock’s back was to Murdock, and she was speaking to Lori McKay, an assistant professor of forensic pathology. Both wompn looked so young, he thought, particularly Lori McKay. She could pass for a medical student with her long auburn hair, green eyes and scattered freckles across her cheeks. Murdock sighed wearily, wondering if she was really that young or if he was just getting old. Probably both, he decided.

  “I’ll be with you in a moment, Simon,” Joanna called over to him.

  Murdock nodded back, now studying Joanna’s profile. She had hardly changed since he’d hired her ten years ago to head the Forensic Pathology Division. Her face was unlined, her patrician features striking. She still wore her sandy blond hair pulled back tightly and held in place by a simple barrette. And she still looked at least five years younger than her age. Nobody would guess that she was almost forty.

  Murdock remembered his hesitation before hiring her, even though her letters of recommendation from Johns Hopkins were glowing. He couldn’t believe someone so young and pretty could have that much brains. But he had been wrong. She had turned out to be an excellent addition to the staff. In only a few years she had become a nationally renowned forensic pathologist and was in constant demand to review outside cases.

  And that had caused problems. She spent more and more time away from Memorial as a highly paid consultant. When Murdock tried to limit her outside activities, she threatened to quit. And she would have if they hadn’t reached a compromise.

  She would continue to run the division on a part-time basis, spending no more than a third of her time on outside projects. Despite their agreement, her independence remained a source of irritation between them. Over the past year Murdock had quietly interviewed two pathologists as possible replacements. One was from Harvard, the other

  from Duke. Neither could even approach Joanna Blalock’s talents and experience. Murdock grumbled under his breath, still unhappy with the arrangement he and Joanna had, but knowing he was stuck with it. At least for now.

  His gaze went to a piece of fleshy tissue Joanna was holding up to the light.

  The specimen was covered with skin and had two appendages hanging down. It took Murdock a moment to realize he was looking at part of a human hand.

  He moved in for a closer look.

  “Accidental dismemberment?”

  “That’s one possibility,” Joanna said.

  Murdock glanced down at the clean stainless steel table.

  “Where is the rest of the body?”

  “This was the only part found,” Joanna said, now examining the fingers with a magnifying glass.

  “Some hikers stumbled on it in a secluded canyon in northern Los Angeles County.”

  Murdock rubbed his chin, thinking back.

  “Could it be a murder victim who was
chopped into pieces to prevent positive identification?”

  Joanna shook her head.

  “That’s not what happened here. When a body is purposely chopped up, the perpetrator almost always uses a sharp instrument, like a hatchet or an ax, and that leaves a clean, even wound. Here the wound edges are ragged and shredded, the bone splintered.” She shook her head again.

  “This hand was ripped off by some very powerful force.”

  “Well, at least you have a few remaining fingers to give you some prints.”

  “Not really,” Joanna said and pointed to the gnawed-off fingertips.

  “You can see a number of bite marks here. I suspect the ends of the fingers were nibbled off by coyotes or other scavengers.”

  Murdock swallowed back his nausea, thinking that the dissecting tables at Memorial would soon be filled with dismembered body parts.

  “I need to talk with you about a matter of some importance.”

  “I’ll be right with you,” Joanna said. She examined the specimen once more, then gave it to Lori.

  “I’d like you to study the hand, paying particular attention to the skin. Then look at the X rays. When I come back I want you to tell me about the person this hand belonged to. You should be able to determine the victim’s sex, age, size, marital status, ethnic origin, and his past and most recent occupations.”

  Murdock studied the third finger on the hand. He saw no wedding band.

  “Single,” he guessed aloud. “Married,” Joanna told him.

  “You can see a distinct pale area on the third finger where the ring blocked out the sun’s rays.”

  “Where’s the ring?” Lori asked.

  “Probably ripped off by the same force that tore off his hand,” Joanna said.

  “Or perhaps nibbled away by a coyote. The finger has been gnawed down to its middle joint.”

  Lori looked at Joanna skeptically.

  “He could have been divorced a while back and removed his ring.”

  “Possible, but unlikely,” Joanna said.

  “The sun would have re tanned the area, and it would have done it quickly in Southern California. The man worked outdoors.”

  “Doing what?” Lori asked.

  “You tell me,” Joanna said and handed Lori the magnifying glass with a grin and a wink.

  “Are you going to give me any clues?”

  “I already have.”

  Joanna stripped off her latex gloves and went over to the wall of refrigerated units. She leaned back against the metal and felt its coolness come through her scrub suit. It was 8:20 a.m.” and the autopsy room was warm and humid because the air-conditioning system was malfunctioning again.

  At a nearby table a morgue attendant switched on an electric saw and began cutting through the skull of the corpse with the gunshot wound in his chest. A deafening high-pitched noise filled the air. Joanna glanced over at Murdock and wondered if he was ill. Her boss was aging so rapidly. His hair was now snow white, his face heavily lined and dotted with prominent age spots. And his posture had become stooped, like that of an old man. Joanna looked away and waited for the sound of the saw to stop.

  Murdock said, “First, let me thank you for the plant.”

  “Let’s hope for twenty more years,” Joanna said and meant it. Simon Murdock had been an excellent clean at Memorial. He was a superb administrator and an outstanding fund-raiser, and he knew how to attract the very best staff. Almost single-handedly he had transformed Memorial into a leading medical center. It was now acknowledged to be among the top five in America. But Murdock had flaws too. Big ones. He could be cold and ruthless and manipulating. To him the ends always justified the means. Joanna neither liked nor trusted him.

  “I need a large favor from you, Joanna.” “Fine,” she said.

  “As long as I can do it between now and five o’clock tomorrow afternoon.”

  “What happens at five tomorrow afternoon?”

  “I leave on a two-week vacation.”

  “I’m going to have to ask you to reschedule.”

  “No way,” Joanna said at once.

  “My sister, whom I haven’t seen in over two years, is flying in from Paris. And she’s bringing her son, whom I’ve never seen.”

  “I think you’ll change your mind when you hear the nature of the request.”

  “I doubt it, but go ahead.”

  Murdock took a deep breath, wishing it was twenty years ago, when deans gave orders that were never questioned.

  “This is not for me but for the FBI. They want you to perform the autopsies on the victims of the explosion that occurred last night.”

  “There are other forensics specialists who could—” “They specifically asked for you,” Murdock interrupted.

  Joanna sighed weakly.

  “I’m not an expert in blast injuries.”

  Murdock shrugged.

  “They must have their reasons for requesting you.”

  Joanna looked over at Lori, who was now standing by the X-ray view box.

  “Damn it, Simon,” she said softly.

  “I’ve never seen my little nephew. I’ve never seen the next generation of Blalocks.”

  “I know,” Murdock said, thinking about the son he’d lost to drug addiction and all the times he should have spent with the boy and hadn’t. He’d been too busy building Memorial into a world-class medical center. He brought his mind back to the problem at hand.

  “If you refuse, I’ll have no choice but to bring in specialists who will take over your laboratory for as long as needed.”

  Joanna nodded slowly, understanding the subtle threat he was sending her. The outside people would covet her position at Memorial and do anything to get it.

  From among them Murdock could find a replacement for her if he wished.

  “Perhaps I could do it part-time for the first week,” she suggested.

  “It’ll be a full-time job,” Murdock said.

  “You’ll be working sixteen hours a day on it. And even at that pace the FBI believes it will take months to get the work done.”

  Joanna nodded again. The autopsies would be straightforward and could be done in a matter of weeks. But examination and identification of the body parts would take months. She thought about resigning on the

  spot. But that would be stupid. She had the best of all worlds. She directed the division most of the time, but she also had her outside consulting practice, which allowed her to take whatever cases she wished. It gave her an independence few in academia had. It really would be stupid to resign, she thought again, but the urge to spend time with her sister and her nephew kept pulling at her. And so did the thought of missing a weekend in Montreal with Paul du Maurier, the new love in her life. It would have been so perfect. She and Paul in Montreal, then back to Los Angeles to see Kate and her little boy. Joanna quickly searched for a way out of her dilemma. She glanced over at Lori and wondered if her young assistant could lead the investigation, at least initially.

  “I’m having trouble reading these X rays,” Lori called from the view box.

  “There’s mashed up bone all over the place.”

  Joanna walked to the view box, Murdock a step behind her. Lori was pointing to the metacarpal heads, which were larger than they should have been. And there was heavy calcification in the soft tissue around the shafts and heads of the metacarpal bones.

  Joanna asked, “What do you make of that?”

  “It looks like he broke his hands on more than a few occasions,” Lori answered.

  “And in what occupation do men repeatedly break their hands?”

  Lori wrinkled her brow, concentrating.

  “Boxers!” she blurted out.

  “Exactly,” Joanna said.

  “And the extensive changes on the X ray tell us he had a lot of bouts, so he was probably a professional.”

  Lori’s eyes suddenly narrowed.

  “How do you know he wasn’t just some punk who was involved in numerous street fights?”r />
  “That would account for the repeatedly broken bones perhaps, but not for the marked soft tissue calcification.” Joanna used a red crayon to circle a dense calcium deposit.

  “This is the result of frequent continuous trauma, such as occurs when boxers hit punching bags over and over again.”

  Murdock listened attentively, his interest piqued. Boxing was the only sport he followed. In his teens he had been a Golden Gloves champion.

  Lori stared at the X ray, unhappy with herself for not having deciphered the obvious clue.

  “So the victim was a male professional boxer who was married. And the color of his skin indicates he was probably Hispanic.”

  “Excellent,” Joanna said.

  “What about his age?” Lori went back to the dissecting table and pinched the skin on the dorsum of the hand, checking its elasticity. There were no lines or wrinkles.

  “I’d say late twenties or early thirties.”

  “And his size?”

  “Small,” Lori said promptly.

  “I’d guess he was just over five feet tall and weighed in the vicinity of a hundred and ten pounds. Those are just approximations based on the size of his hands and bones.”

  “You’re getting pretty good at this,” Joanna said.

  Lori smiled widely, basking.

  “Now tell me whether he spoke English and what his most recent job was.”

  Lori gave her a puzzled look.

  “We just determined he was a boxer.”

  “But not recently.” Joanna used a tongue blade to turn the hand over, palm side up. She pointed to thick calluses.

  “Boxers don’t have calluses on their palms.

  These are seen in men who do heavy manual labor.”

  “And you think he could speak English because he might have to in order to get such a job,” Lori concluded.

  “You know, at a big construction site or someplace like that.”

  Joanna shook her head and turned the hand back over.

  “On the backs of the fingers are very pale tattoos.”