Fatal Care Read online

  “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?”

  Murdock hesitated and then backed off, mumbling under his breath.

  Farelli looked back to Joanna. “Some guy gets whacked in Santa Monica last night during a robbery. They dump his body into an excavation site where a high-rise is going up.”

  Joanna exhaled wearily. “Can it wait until tomorrow?”

  “No,” Farelli said. “We’ve only got a few hours of daylight left, and it’s supposed to rain. Jake wants you to see the crime scene before anything gets washed away.”

  “What’s so important about a murder victim at the bottom of an excavation site?”

  “It’s not the guy that’s important. It’s what we found buried around him.”

  “And what was that?”

  “Babies,” Farelli said gravely. “Premature little babies.”

  “Jesus! How many?”

  “A whole bunch,” Farelli told her. “Jake says it’s a cemetery of human fetuses.”

  Joanna stripped off her gloves and discarded them. “I’ll follow you over in my car.”

  4

  “It doesn’t fit,” Jake Sinclair said. “The pieces don’t fit together here.”

  He was standing near the fence at the top of the excavation site in Santa Monica. Below him, medical examiners were sifting through sand and debris at the bottom of the pit.

  “We’ve got a big hole in the fence and an empty shoe box next to it,” Jake went on. “And at the bottom of this dig we’ve got a guy with half his head blown off. He’s got no watch, no wallet, not even loose change in his pockets.”

  “Did he have anything at all in his pockets?” Joanna asked.

  “A receipt for a candy bar bought last
night at the mini mart on the corner.”

  “Does the receipt say what time the buy was made?”

  “Nine-o-five.”

  Joanna looked slowly around the crime scene, her gaze going from the hole in the fence to the empty shoe box to the candy wrapper next to it. “Have you ID’d the victim?”

  “Not yet.”

  Joanna went over to the gaping hole in the fence and peered down through it. The slope was steep, going down at least sixty feet. Just inside the fence, the ground and large pieces of scrap lumber were soaked with blood. In some areas the blood had coagulated and formed mounds of clots.

  She backed away from the fence, inspecting the ground around the shoe box and candy wrapper. No blood. But a yard farther away was a half-dollar-size piece of bloodied scalp still attached to bone.

  “This is how I put it together,” Jake said. “The guy wanders into a tough neighborhood where drug deals go down all the time. Some crackhead sees an easy score and whacks the guy. Then the picture gets fuzzy. Why does the perp kick a hole in the fence to dump the body? Why make all that noise?” Jake shook his head. “That doesn’t make any sense. The perp has got the money. He’s not going to stick around and attract attention. He’s going to run like hell.”

  “The hole was in the fence before he was shot,” Joanna said matter-of-factly.

  “How do you figure that?”

  “Just inside the fence is a pool of clotted blood,” Joanna told him, and then pointed at the shoe box. “And just beyond the box is a piece of the victim’s scalp and skull. He was shot about where I’m standing with the bullet taking part of his head straight back. Then he fell sideways through the hole in the fence and stayed there long enough to bleed a fair amount.”

  “How did he get to the bottom of the pit?”

  “Two possibilities. Either he tumbled down, or somebody gave him a push.”

  Jake smiled at her, thinking she was better at deduction than most of the cops he knew. “You’re getting pretty good at this.”

  “It comes with practice.” Joanna smiled back. Jake was a big man with broad shoulders and rugged good looks. His thick brown hair, now graying noticeably, was swept back, accentuating his high-set cheekbones. On his chin was a small jagged scar that women couldn’t help but look at and wonder how he got it.

  “Does your crystal ball tell you who made the hole in the fence and why?” Jake asked, getting back to business.

  “No, it doesn’t. And it doesn’t tell me if all this is connected to those dead fetuses, either.”

  “A damn cemetery of dead babies,” Jake said, shaking his head in disgust. “You’ve got to see it to believe it.”

  Joanna glanced around the crime scene once more, focusing in on the shoe box. “Do we know if the shoe box belonged to the victim?”

  Jake shrugged. “We can’t be sure. But it was found next to the candy wrapper, and its lid was off. We think the perp took whatever was in it. With a little luck, the box will have the victim’s fingerprints on it.”

  “And maybe the perp’s, too.”

  “Yeah,” Jake said pessimistically, “along with his address and home phone number.”

  Joanna slipped on a pair of latex gloves and picked up the shoe box. It was empty, with no store logo or other markings on it. She brought the box up to her nose and sniffed carefully. It had a faint, disagreeable odor that Joanna couldn’t identify. Yet there was something familiar about it. She lifted the box up to Jake. “Take a whiff and tell me what you think.”

  Jake smelled the box. He, too, detected the faint, unpleasant odor but couldn’t place it. “At first I thought it was methyl alcohol. But it’s not.”

  “No, it’s not that,” Joanna agreed. “Maybe we can extract it and identify it using a chromatograph.”

  “We’ve got a lot of maybes here,” Jake said unhappily. “Maybe this, maybe that. All we’ve really got is a guy with half his head blown off and a bunch of dead babies.”

  “Which may or may not be interconnected.”

  “Another maybe,” Jake growled, taking her arm. “Come on. Let’s go look at dead babies.”

  They walked along the periphery of the excavation site. The sidewalk was uneven with cracked cement slabs that jutted up. Joanna stepped cautiously, inspecting the ground and surrounding area. The fence next to her was made of plywood and painted green. There were Mexican gang markings sprayed on it and a scattering of posters announcing a rock concert. Across the street were small, run-down apartment buildings with faded stucco surfaces. The cars on the street were at least five years old.

  They passed by trees and tall bushes that blocked their view of the street. On the ground were broken pieces of glass and a discarded milk carton. Joanna’s heel caught in a crack of the sidewalk, and she stumbled badly. Quickly she grabbed Jake’s arm and steadied herself.

  “Christ,” Joanna grumbled. “You’d think they’d fix these sidewalks.”

  “Not in this neighborhood,” Jake said. “The people who live around here don’t have much pull at city hall.”

  “I’ll bet these sidewalks are fixed promptly when this multimillion-dollar project is completed.”

  “Oh, yeah,” Jake agreed. “Money always talks.”

  Jake grinned at her, studying her profile. She was so damn pretty and sexy, and she seemed to get prettier and sexier with time. Everything about her turned him on. He glanced over his shoulder and, seeing no one, he reached for her waist. “How do you manage to look so good at the end of a long work day?”

  “I primp,” she said softly. “I always primp for you.”

  Jake pulled her closer and gave her a quick hug, smelling the shampoo-fresh aroma of her hair.

  Joanna brushed her cheek against his and then playfully pushed him away. “Control yourself.”

  Jake smiled mischievously. “Aw, you’re no fun at all.”

  “That’s not what you said last night.”

  They chuckled at one another and walked on, their arms touching ever so slightly. Ahead of them, the street curved and began to slope downward.

  Jake asked, “Do you want to go out for dinner later?”

  “Sure. I should be finished at Memorial sometime after midnight.”

  “You’re that backed up, huh?”

  “I don’t even want to talk about it.”

  They came to an opened chain-link gate. Ducking under yellow police tape, they entered the excavation site. Directly in front of them was a steep dirt ramp that went down six stories. At the bottom of the huge pit, a team of medical examiners and their assistants were turning up the earth with small shovels. Joanna could see miniature red flags on sticks that were stuck in the ground.

  “The red flags mark the places where the bodies were found. Right?” Joanna asked.

  “Right.”

  Joanna counted seven flags.

  Lou Farelli trudged up the incline, huffing and puffing loudly. At the top he paused to catch his breath. “Goddamn it! We need an escalator here.”

  “You got anything?” Jake asked.

  “Nothing. Nada. Zilch.” Farelli coughed hard and then cleared his throat. “Nobody saw anything. The construction gang gets here at seven a.m. and leaves at four p.m. sharp. They saw nothing unusual. Nobody was hanging around or casing the place.”

  Jake pointed over his shoulder with his thumb. “What about the people in the apartment units across the street?”

  “Mainly blue-collar workers who lock their doors real tight and turn television sets way up so they can’t hear the drug deals and fights that go on all night.”

  “So nobody heard anybody kicking in a fence last night, huh?”

  “If they did, they ain’t talking about it.”

  “What about addicts?”

  “They congregate in a park three blocks from here. I’ve got a black-and-white over there now, rounding them up.” Farelli slowly twisted his shoulders and stretched his sore back. “This isn’t going to be a good day. It started out crummy and it’s
staying that way.”

  Jake nodded. “Have you heard anything more about Billy Cunningham?”

  “He’s not going to make it,” Farelli said morosely. “They got him on life support.”

  “Shit,” Jake hissed.

  “Yeah.” Farelli took a deep breath and exhaled loudly. “Anyway, I’m going to that park to see if I can find an addict with a wallet and credit cards that don’t belong to him.”

  Joanna and Jake started down the steep dirt ramp. Joanna held on tightly to Jake’s arm and took slow, cautious steps. Her heels dug into the soft ground.

  “Walk in the tire tracks,” Jake advised. “The earth is firmer there.”

  Joanna kept her head down, watching her step and putting most of her weight on her toes. “Who is Billy Cunningham?”

  “A homicide dick I know.”

  “A friend?”

  “An old drinking buddy,” Jake told her. “We hung out together when I first joined the force. Then his wife got cancer and died, and Billy became a loner. He crawled into a bottle and stayed boozed up most of the time. It almost cost him his career. Then he met and married Cynthia, and she straightened him out. He’s been sober for over three years, doing real good until this morning. He walked into a convenience store for a cup of coffee, not knowing a robbery was in progress. The perp had a semiautomatic and unloaded three into Billy. Two went into his chest, one into his head.”

  “Oh, Lord!” Joanna moaned softly.

  “It happens,” Jake said matter-of-factly.

  Joanna glanced over at him, knowing that his tone of voice didn’t match his true feelings. It hit cops hard when a fellow policeman went down. And it was the same, she thought, when doctors learn that a colleague is dying. Then death is no longer impersonal. Now it’s right up on your doorstep, reminding you of your own vulnerability and mortality. And that it might be your turn to go next.

  Joanna pushed the grim thoughts from her mind, remembering something she wanted to discuss. “Jake, the next time you need me for a case, it might be best to call rather than send Farelli for me. He caused a little bit of a stir in the autopsy room.”

  “Yeah? What happened?”