Likely To Die

17

LOVE OR MONEY?“

“Fifty-fifty. It’s a toss-up.”

“I think it’s one more than the other.”

“How’re you counting lust? How’re you counting just out and out rage? Sex-related homicides? As love? That is no good.”

“Doesn’t matter. I think it’s money way more often than it’s love.”

“Take all your domestics. It’s not ‘love’ like you might think of it. But it’s love gone bad.”

“Yeah? Well those domestics are about money just as often as they are about any kind of emotional miswiring.”

I came out of the ladies’ room in the Mid-Manhattan Hospital cafeteria to rejoin one of the Chapman-Wallace dialogues on murder.

“What’s your tally, Coop?”

“Don’t know. Probably money.”

“Mercer, most of what we got is Paco shoots Flaco over red tops and blue tops.” The typical homicide squad investigation these days centered over arguments about crack vials from drug wars in all their rainbow glory of plastic stoppers-scarlet, navy, lavender, yellow, and so on.

“Sometimes, Flaco stabs Paco ‘cause his woman cheated on him,” Mike went on. “But he usually only gets pissed off about it if she’s a moneymaking part of the operation. Certainly not ’cause he loves her. These guys love their pit bulls and their pythons and their cockatoos. Not their broads.”

“So what hit Gemma Dogen? Love or money?” Mercer asked, knowing that neither Mike nor I had an answer. “C’mon, let’s go see what Spector says.”

The three of us wound our way through the maze of double doors and elevators from the cafeteria in the hospital complex to the quiet sixth-floor wing of Minuit Medical College. Mike gave his name to the receptionist at the main desk.

“Is Dr. Spector expecting you?”

“Yes, ma’am. We’re homicide detectives and Miss Cooper’s from the D.A.‘s office.”

He hadn’t said that we were typhoid fever carriers but our job titles elicited about the same kind of response. She frowned once at us, rolled her chair away from our direction, and then avoided all further eye contact as she rang Spector’s office to tell him that “those” people were here.

“Last door on your right, before the library.”

We proceeded down the corridor, past the darkened office that had been Gemma’s.

Spector stood in the doorway to welcome us, his easy smile and open manner exuding the confidence that his reputation suggested he owned. At five foot six inches, he was shorter than each of us, and his reddish brown hair was beginning to recede.

Still, he appeared to be younger than fifty-two, which is what Mercer’s notes had given as his age.

Like Gemma’s, Spector’s office was crammed with an assortment of professional items and devices, photographs and awards. But unlike hers, his was also alive with signs of personal connection-children’s faces beamed out of Plexiglas frames and humorous tributes from students were painted on posters as well as on plastic vertebrae.

“So you’re the people who are trying to restore some order to our little household, are you?”

“You wouldn’t think so, from the way the receptionist greeted us just now,” Mike answered.

“As you might guess, things haven’t gotten anywhere near back to normal yet, if you can ever describe a complex like this as ‘normal.’ The press hasn’t been very kind to us. Makes us sound like we’re not running a very tight operation.

“And you, young lady,” he said, gesturing toward me. “Well, once you bring a lawyer into the mix, a lot of the doctors just panic. The stereotypical distrust between the two professions is like a bad joke. I’ve tried to reassure my staff that you don’t do malpractice work, you’re just a prosecutor.”

“We thought you could help us understand Dr. Dogen a little better,” I began. “It’s been very difficult to find out much about her. She seemed so very private.”

“That she was. I can give you some of the occupational information, and Dr. Babson, whom you’re going to see later, knows more about the personal side.

“Gemma came to Mid-Manhattan before I did, about ten years ago. A real coup for a woman-for anyone, really-to get an invitation to join this department, then to go on and head it. She was a brilliant intellect, very innovative in the field.”

He talked animatedly for twenty minutes about the care with which Dogen had built up the neurosurgical faculty at Minuit and the pride she took in recruiting students for the grueling work of her specialty.

When Mike had heard enough of the lavish praise, he interrupted the narrative. “Enough about Florence Nightingale, Doc. Who’d want her out of the way?”

Spector started at the abrupt question and sat back with one arm stroking the back of his head. “Shall I put myself at the top of the list or is that being too immodest?”

“Wherever you’d like.”

“I’m sure you’ve heard the rumors already. Gemma was planning to go back to England and chances are very good that I’ll be the one to succeed her as chief. That’s if Bill Dietrich and his boys don’t try and bring someone in from the outside, over my head.”

“How certain was it that she was going?” Mercer asked.

“None of us knew for sure. She played it as close to the vest as everything else she did. I know that on her last trip to Bosnia she stopped in London on her way home. Heard from friends at the university there that they’d welcome her back with open arms. Great credentials. And, of course,” he said, nodding in my direction, “the ‘woman’ thing.”

“Did she have any kind of deadline here for that decision?”

“A lot of things at the medical college are going to be decided in the next couple of weeks. April fifteenth, really. That’s when the faculty appointments and contracts have to be tied up for the next fall and that’s when we make the final decision about which students are accepted into the neurosurgical program.

“You’ll have to ask Dietrich, of course. His office is in charge of all those administrative decisions.”

“Yeah, we’ve been talking-”

“And be sure to take some of what he tells you with a grain of salt. He had a real weakness for Gemma even though their affair broke up months ago.”

The three of us were well trained enough to let that bombshell hit us without comment or reaction.

Mike tucked it away in his head and brought the conversation back around to Spector. “So supposeyou became chief of the department next month. How does that change life for you, Doc?”

“If you’re looking at me as a suspect, Mr. Chapman, the answer is, in very minor ways.”

“Salary?”

“No change. Oh, it might raise a few honoraria when I go out on the road, but here in the hospital it’s simply the prestige of the title. No extra dollars.”

“But you’d be happy to have the job.”

“I’d be a fool not to want it, of course. Look, the truth is, most people in our field regard it asmy department. Dogen was becoming more and more removed, taking herself out of the mainstream here, traveling abroad to third-world countries all the time. When people talk about Mid-Manhattan, with or without your saintly Gemma, they’re talking about Bob Spector’s department. That’s just a fact.”

“How many neurologists have you got-”

“Correction, Mr. Chapman. Neurosurgeons, not neurologists.” Spector snapped the answer at Mike like it was a more serious distinction than whether Gemma Dogen was alive or dead.

“I’m sorry, Doc, I’ve been using the two words interchangeably. Would you just remind me of the difference between them?”

Spector laughed his response. “The difference? About half a million dollars a year, that’s all.

“We’re the ones with the saws and the drills, Chapman. We operate, they don’t.”

“And why is it you think Gemma was leaving Mid-Manhattan?”

“I don’t think, Miss Cooper, I know. Most of us in this field make our living removing tumors from the brain and doing surgical procedures on disks. Some of us supplement that, intellectually, by doing research on diseases and disorders, like the study I’m running here on Huntington ’s.

“Gemma started out like the rest of us, but she became interested in trauma, in brain injury. Started here in New York for her because of all the gunshot wounds and car accidents. She’d never seen shooting victims in London. The Brits may go for grouse and pheasant but they’ve only recently begun to have the handgun problem we have here. Their guns have traditionally been in the hands of the upper-class hunters, thank goodness. I’m sure you law enforcement types know that.

“Anyway, once she became fascinated with trauma you couldn’t keep her out of a war zone. Hear about a village decimated somewhere in some unpronounceable country that didn’t exist a decade ago and she’d be on a plane the next day.”

“Couldn’t she stay at Mid-Manhattan and still do that work? Sounds pretty noble. Seems like they’d benefit from the prestige,” Mercer said.

“Trauma doesn’t pay the bills, gentlemen. Most of the folks in car accidents and most of the innocent people caught in the crossfire don’t have medical insurance. It may sound crass but I can bring in a lot more money for the hospital than Gemma’s do-gooding ever would.

“Trauma is, shall we say, more like an afterthought for most neurosurgeons. And besides, the best neurotrauma expert in the world is right here in New York. Jam Ghajar’s his name. Leading man in the field and a real comer. Much younger than Gemma and much more outgoing. I’d guess that was too crowded a field for her. It added to her homesickness.”

The line between Spector’s confidence and his cockiness was an extremely thin one.

Chapman tried to ease back into the talk about Dogen’s social life. “What else did you know about her relationship with Bill Dietrich, doctor?”

“That I wasn’t supposed to know about it, that’s the first thing. I had met Geoffrey-that’s her ex-quite a number of times over the years-conventions and meetings here and there. I’d say he was lucky to get out when he did. Second wife’s a much warmer girl. Lets her guard down, and her hair.

“Gemma never did much for me, sexually. Always thought getting in bed with her would be like-sorry, Miss Cooper-like putting your private parts in a vise.

“But lots of men around here didn’t seem to mind that prospect. Dietrich can tell you better than I who some of them were. I think he actually wanted to marry her at one point. Talk about a salary boost. That would have given him a nice cushion. Could have indulged his taste in antique cars.”

“You started off this meeting with an absolutely glowing review of Gemma Dogen, doctor. Then you sort of trash her. It is true, isn’t it, that you had asked her to assist you in surgery the morning her body was found?” I asked.

“There’s no question she had superb skills,” Spector said. “It was a very secure feeling to have her by my side in an OR and I invited her often. But once we left that operating theater, she had become like fingernails on a chalkboard to me. Hypercritical of a lot of the students, not to mention her colleagues.

“She did great things for this hospital and this school but I really think it was time for her to move on. No secret about it, I’d have been thrilled to see her leave-by the Concorde, though, not in a pine coffin.”

Spector was done with us. He rose to his feet, told us that he had a meeting to attend in the library, and ushered us to the door.

Mike waited for the elevator doors to close before he spoke. “I’d rather screw a snake. Bill Dietrich? With his Man-Tan skin and his Grecian Formula hair, he should be dating someone who owns a Laundromat. She’d have to be washing the sheets twice a day with all the stuff that’d rub off him. What was she doing with that guy?”

“Hard to imagine. So what do you think of Spector?”

“Well, he laid his cards out on the table. I thought he was pretty straightforward, and I suppose that cuts both ways.”

We rehashed his comments as we drove uptown to New York Hospital. The guard at the main entrance on York Avenue directed us to Dr. Babson’s office at the rear of the fourth floor.

A petite woman of about fifty, with shoulder-length brown hair and soft hazel eyes, opened her own door when I knocked.

“I’m Gig Babson. It’s Katherine, really. Please come in.”

Having presumed Gig to be a man, I was pleasantly surprised, and even more delighted at the prospect of getting a woman’s perspective on Gemma. I glanced at the diplomas on the wall- Vassar College ‘69 and Harvard Medical School ’73-while Mercer introduced each of us to the doctor.

Babson went through the background of her relationship with Dogen. “We only met three years ago, working on something together, actually. We were part of the trauma team handling the Baby Vanessa case. Perhaps you remember it?”

Of course we did. The story had touched everyone in New York. A private jet had crash-landed at La Guardia Airport, killing all eight adults aboard. Four-year-old Vanessa had been thrown from the wreckage and survived without a burn but remained in a coma for sixteen weeks. Relatives had wanted to take her off life support, despairing of any meaningful recovery of brain function.

But a team of neurosurgeons-none whose names I could recall-had performed medical miracles. The child came out of the coma and within months regained all her mental faculties and was released from the hospital. The photograph of the smiling child, standing on the steps of Mid-Manhattan in front of the medical team that had given her a new life, was an image most of us would always be able to call to mind.

“Gemma was brilliant at her work. It was she who saved Vanessa’s life. She discovered the bruising on the frontal cortex that had caused a massive clot. When the rest of us hesitated about the risks of the surgery, Gemma got in there and removed the hemorrhage-steady, daring, and absolutely flawless in her work. That child would have been a vegetable without Gemma’s involvement.”

“Give us the other side, if you will, doctor. Why,” I asked, “why would anyone want to hurt her?”

“Do you really think Gemma was chosen as a target? I mean, not just some thief or homeless person stumbling upon her during the night? That’s just so hard to believe.

“You know we all thought she was crazy to stay in her office at night, the hours she did. It’s not that we ever dreamed she’d be unsafein the hospital, but I certainly worried about her comings and goings. There was no changing her, though. She didn’t need very much sleep. It was part of her routine to be at that office in the middle of the night, not getting home ‘til three in the morning. A couple of hours’ rest, then up for a predawn jog. If you knew Gemma, you’d know when to find her at Minuit.”

“What did you know about her plans to leave New York?”

“Only that she was making them. Nothing firm, but she’d had it at Mid-Manhattan.”

“Not enough trauma work?”

Babson looked at me with a questioning expression on her face. “In New York? Are you kidding?”

“Well, Dr. Spector says that she-”

“Forget whathe says. There’s only one person she confided in about that topic. That’s Geoffrey Dogen, her ex-husband. She wouldn’t even tell me the details.”

“Why is that?”

“Didn’t want me in the middle of it. Tried to protect me from the political infighting with the administration. I’m a few years younger than Gemma and she didn’t want my career derailed like she felt hers was becoming.”

We all looked puzzled. What was the infighting about if it wasn’t the issue that Spector had described?

“Why the derailment?”

“You know she was a whistle-blower, don’t you? I assume Bill Dietrich has told you about that.”

“Actually,” I said with more candor than Chapman or Wallace would have displayed at that point, “no one has mentioned any kind of whistle-blowing to us. We all assumed that this crime was the random act of a stranger, Dr. Babson. Do you know who’d been harassing Gemma?”

“Harassed? She’d never said anything about that to me. But if she did resign, it was going to be with a major statement to the medical community. That much I can assure you. No going quietly into the good night.”

“Well, what was the whistle-blowing about?”

“Not sure, exactly. Some kind of ethical dilemma for her. It had something to do with Minuit, with the medical school, rather than the main hospital. She wanted to hold everyone to the standards she set for herself. That’s an extraordinary burden-some might say unreasonable.

“There was a med student from the West Coast who applied for a neurosurgical residency with Gemma. Someone alerted her to the fact that he had lied on his application-phonied up his résumé or something like that. She booted him from the program even though a couple of her colleagues wanted him in. That kind of thing always ate at her.

“They were all trying to shut her up over there whenever something like that occurred. None of them wanted her airing their dirty linen in public. Scares away patients and so on. But once she got up on her high horse, it was impossible to get her off.”

The shrill noise of a beeper pierced the room. All four of us clutched at our waistbands, then looked at each other and laughed.

“What did we do before these things were invented?” Babson asked. It was hers that had signaled and she picked up the phone to see why she had been paged.

“Can we finish this up for now?” she asked. “I’ve got to get down to the emergency room. Second Avenue bus just went out of control and jumped the sidewalk. They’re bringing some of the pedestrians who were hit over here and want me to stand by in case I’m needed.”

“I’d like to talk with you again, Dr. Babson, after we’ve seen Bill Dietrich.”

“Of course. Just give me a call whenever I can be useful.”

Babson was leading us to the door. “Can you tell us anything about her involvement with Dietrich? Personally, I mean?” I asked on our way out.

“I’m just glad she ended it. I never trusted him, really. Just something sleazy about him, not vicious. But she was lonely, I think, and flattered by his attention. He pursued her quite avidly for a while. She didn’t talk about him much anymore. And they always seemed to be on opposite sides in her recent battles. He’s a real user. I can’t imagine what she ever saw in him, so I didn’t encourage her to bring up his name.”

I rang for the elevator as Babson pushed open the exit door to walk down the back stairs to the ER. Mercer had one more question. “Ever go to a ball game with Dr. Dogen?”

“Excuse me?”

“Was she a sports fan? Baseball? Football?”

“Gemma was a superb athlete. She loved physical challenges. Running, kayaking, skiing. Kind of thing I don’t really make time for, though. I’ve never been to a ball game with her, no. And I don’t remember Gemma ever talking about one. The only reason I ever go is for the sake of the hot dogs at Yankee Stadium, once a year. I couldn’t tell you a thing about that part of her life. Sorry.”

Babson was off down the staircase before the elevator doors opened to take us to the lobby. It was after five when we walked out of the hospital.

“Where to?”

“What would you think of a nice, home-cooked meal for a change?” Mercer asked.

“I’m out, guys.”

“No, no. Let’s pick up something from the supermarket. Mike and I’ll cook it. All you have to do is load the dishes in the dishwasher.”

“Deal.”

We were only a few blocks from my apartment. I waited in the car while they went into the grocery store and came out ten minutes later with shopping bags full of food.

“Okay. We’re doing a Caesar salad, my mother’s recipe for chicken breasts with Dijon mustard sauce, and sautéed string beans.”

“With garlic,” Mike added. “That a problem for your love life?” he asked.

“He’s out of town, Mikey. Let’s go.”

We parked on Third Avenue and walked to the apartment. In place of Zac’s leash on the table in my entryway was a bouquet of flowers and a note from David’s housekeeper, who had reclaimed my weekend companion for her master.

Mike and Mercer set up shop in the kitchen while I changed into leggings and checked my answering machine. There was a message from Drew, who had tried me at the office with no success, a call from my mother reminding me not to forget my sister-in-law’s birthday, and a rambling message from Nina while stuck in a traffic jam on the Santa Monica Freeway.

I watched my two chefs cut and chop and squeeze their ingredients into a meal. Mike’s blazer and Mercer’s suit jacket were laid on the living room sofa, ties in pockets. Their shirt sleeves were rolled up and Martha Reeves was singing to them. “We’re all prepped,” Mercer said. “Let’s have our dinner after the evening news, okay?”

We went into the den and I served drinks as we waited for the six-thirty broadcast. Mike called Lieutenant Peterson to tell him the results of our two interviews and to learn what had gone on with the rest of the team. Detectives continued to plod through the corridors of the underground bomb shelter, talking to vagrants and searching for leads.

He hung up the phone and looked at Mercer and me, “Peterson wants to know what your thoughts are at this point. I told him we haven’t even talked about it yet.”

“It’s been gnawing at me all afternoon. What doI think? I’m convinced we’ve had it all wrong from the start. From the very first moment you guys got to the crime scene.”

Mercer leaned forward, drink in hand, and nodded his head slowly up and down. He knew where I was headed.

“I think you saw exactly what the killer wanted you to see. A sexual assault. A victim who died trying to fight off a rapist. A chance attack by a madman who happened to come across a woman all alone in her office in the middle of the night, random and opportunistic. And I think it’s all bullshit.”

Mike muted the television and stared at me.

“Gemma Dogen’s death was a murder, plain and simple,” I said. “Whoever did it staged it to look like a rape, to take us off course, have us looking for somebody who had no connection to Dogen. Like Pops. Like Can Man. The place is full of them.

“Kill her. Take off her panties, lift up her skirt. Make ‘em think sex crime. I don’t think anybody tried to rape her. That’s probably the last thing whoever killed her wanted any part of-a sexual encounter with Dr. Dogen.”

“Maybe I wanted you to work on the case with us so bad I didn’t even consider staging as a possibility that morning,” Mike responded.

“Isn’t it logical? The killer leaves the body positioned to look like a rape-or a good attempt at one. But there’s no semen, no trace evidence in the wounds, not even a strand of an assailant’s pubic hair on her body. Sure, he could have been interrupted or scared off, but my bet is he didn’t even want to try to rape her.

“The more we know about Dogen,” I told them, “the more I’ve got to think that somebody wanted her dead and had the good sense to plan this to throw us off track.”

“They’re wasting their time squirreling around in the basement with the whackjobs. It’s gonna be somebody reallysane, like the guys we’ve been talking to in business suits and white lab coats,” Mike said.

“Like Spector told you,” Mercer said, “these doctors are already paranoid ‘cause you’re on the case.”

“That’s asinine. They’d be hard-pressed to find someone who respects the medical community as much as I do. The two men I’ve loved most in this world,” I responded, thinking of my father and of Adam, my late fiancé, “have been doctors-the most caring and devoted people I’ve ever known.”

“Besides,” Mike added. “Nobody’s saying the killer’s a doctor. But the odds are pretty good that it’s someone who knew Dogen. Knew her habits, her hours. Knew that everyone would think her strong enough to fight back against a rapist and fit enough to try it even though he was armed.”

“I think tomorrow’s another day for us at Mid-Manhattan,” Mercer suggested. “Who’s reaching out for the husband? Any idea?”

“Yeah, the lieutenant said he called London this afternoon and broke it to him. Very cooperative, appropriately upset. Told Peterson it was like losing his oldest friend.”

“I hope they’re gonna try to bring him over here to talk to us. There must be some light he can shed on her for us.”

We argued our way in a friendly fashion through most of the news stories, disagreeing with each other about which of the witnesses we liked or disliked and what the order of our interviews should be throughout the week.

Mike shushed us up when he saw the lead-in forJeopardy!

Mercer called Maureen to check on her spirits at the top of the show since neither Mike nor I took the first round seriously. He passed the phone to each of us and she told me about her day.

She’d had a visit from John DuPre on his neurological rounds. “He’s one of the guys who found Pops in the X-ray department, isn’t he? I was tempted to give in and let him do a physical on me. Don’t you think he’s fine, Alex? Quite a looker.”

“I’ll let you know tomorrow. Mike wants us to reinterview him. We promised your husband there’d be no hands-on medical practice, Mo. Behave yourself.”

“What’s a girl to do? The only news from the solarium today was from my next-door neighbor. Says her internist told her Gemma had a thing for younger men.”

“How young? And did she name names?”

“Well, the woman telling the story is eighty-two so anything in her book is young. Sorry, no names.”

“Sarah’s coming up to see you tomorrow. Meanwhile, I’m being wined and dined by the other two musketeers.”

“I’m jealous. Call me later.”

By the time Trebek got to the highlight of the show, the legally blind linguist from Tampa was leading both other contestants by four thousand dollars. “Today’s Final Jeopardy category,” he announced, “is Art. We’ll be right back after a commercial break.”

Mike yelled at the television screen. “How the hell can they ask a blind man a question about art? That’s a disgrace-it’s discrimination, it’s-”

“It’s basically because you’re ignorant in that area, Detective Chapman,” I said, winking at Mercer and imitating the tone of a cross-examining attorney, “is it not?”

“Five dollars, Coop. That’s my bet.”

“Sorry once again, Chapman. House has a ten-dollar minimum. I’m willing to go to fifty on it with you. Get my money back.”

Mercer was the referee as usual. “Ten dollars is the bet.”

Trebek looked at the tense trio before him and revealed the answer. “Seventeenth-century Dutch portraitist famous for his miniature paintings of wealthy burghers, whose best-known work isThe Peace at Münster. ”

While the theme music marked the time, Mike ranted at the ridiculous notion that any of the contestants would know the answer to such an obscure query.

“No, I’m sorry, Mr. Kaiser,” Trebek told the first contestant. “Frans Hals is a good guess, but you’re a century off.”

“You want me to tell you beforehe does so you know I’m for real?” I asked Chapman as the second contestant misfired with a try at Rembrandt.

“See, Mercer? This is the kind of bullshit they teach at a Seven Sisters school. That’s why they’re all so arrogant when they get out of those places. Who is it, Blondie?”

“Who is Gerard Terborch?” I said, complying with the basic rule by, putting my answer in the form of a question.

Trebek was consoling the blind man, who didn’t have a clue and had left his Braille answer card completely blank.

“I can’t believe how useless the stuff you learned in college is. It’s amazing you can hold down a job.”

“I didn’t learn it there,” I said as Mercer waited for Trebek to confirm my answer before he turned off the television, pressed the CD changer to startRod Stewart in Concert, and led us back to the kitchen.

“I know, I know. Your old man probably has one, right? That little painting of the guy with the bald head and the pipe in his mouth used to hang near the coat closet in the old house before they moved, right? My mother’s got Norman Rockwells she ripped off the cover of theSaturday Evening Post in 1952 still pinned to the wall in every room of the house, Mercer.

“No point in my paying up, Coop. You could sell that little sucker-that Terborch-and support the three of us for the rest of our lives if you were a real sport. Let’s eat.”

We carried the food to the dining-room table. I lit the candles and sat between my two friends, happy for the diversion the evening provided from the problems of the case.

I pushed the anchovies to the side of the plate and lifted the first forkful to my mouth. I had forgotten about Gemma Dogen for almost half an hour until Stewart’s gravelly voice came on to remind me that the first cut is always the deepest. Cuts, blood, crime scene. I had forgotten to compare my list of initials to the stains on the office carpet.