Likely To Die

19

JOHN DUPRE WAS THE FIRST IN THE GROUP to be reinterviewed about the circumstances at Minuit on the evening of Gemma’s murder. He entered the room and extended his hand to each of us, and when he grinned at me in greeting I understood why Maureen Forester had found him so attractive. With none of the nonsense about how precious his time was and what a nuisance we were making of ourselves at the hospital, DuPre was gracious and expressed his willingness to do anything to move the investigation along.

We had questioned him at the station house days earlier about his discovery of Pops in the radiology department. I apologized to him and explained our need to reexamine all the events surrounding the time of the murder.

“Why don’t you start with your schedule last week?” I asked him. “Take us through it from Monday to Wednesday, just so we can put it in perspective.”

His eyes met mine directly and he spoke with confidence and comfort. “Reminds me of the time our preacher was killed, back in Mississippi,” DuPre drawled with a smile on his face. “I was only eight but the State Police questioned every one of us in school like we were John Dillinger. Made quite an impression on me. Almost went into law enforcement instead of medicine. I admire what you’re doin‘. I know it’s like looking for the proverbial needle. I suppose some of my colleagues will take it personally, but I’m happy to help.”

DuPre pulled out a pocket-sized diary and opened it to the preceding Monday. “You’re welcome to see my office appointment book, but I’m pretty clear that I never got over to this side of town until Thursday afternoon when I needed to use the library.”

DuPre told us about his neurological practice and described his regular hours at the Central Park West office, which he had maintained since starting out in Manhattan two years ago. His receptionist and his assistant were there with him each day of the week.

“How about evenings, Doc? Where’s home?”

“Strivers’ Row, detective. One hundred thirty-ninth Street, north side,” DuPre answered, referring to the elegant group of row houses built in Harlem in the 1890s. “My wife’s a designer, Miss Cooper. McKim, Mead and White did the homes onour side of the block, and we’ve been busy restoring this one since we moved in. I’m doin‘ a lot of the woodwork myself, every night after we finish dinner with the kids. Y’all ought to come see it sometime.”

That answer gave us three pieces of news. DuPre was making good money-or needed it-to fund a home at that address. It also placed him a few miles away from the medical center on the night of the murder, if that’s where he actually had been. And it provided the worst kind of alibi for us to break, if there was any reason at all to suspect him-a wife and two kids.

Wallace shifted the young doctor away from the domestic scene and back to the deceased. “What was that expression you used to describe Dr. Dogen last week? Ice maiden?”

“Maybe I’m just used to southern charm, Mr. Wallace. I told you I didn’t know her well enough to take it to heart, hear? It’s just that she was awfully stiff and remote with me. Simply couldn’t get through to her no matter how I tried.”

“We’ve just given Mr. Dietrich a subpoena for some of the personnel records here at Mid-Manhattan, Dr. DuPre. We’ll be getting the files in a few days, but I’m wondering if there’s anything we might learn about you that you’d prefer to-”

“You’re taking yourselves mighty serious, detective, aren’t you now? Gettingour records? The staff? Seems to me you’ve blown every good lead we’ve given you. Coleman Harper and I led you right straight to someone a hell of lot more dangerous than any of my colleagues and you messed that all up. Only have to be in here a couple of hours to know we’ve got a real problem controlling access to the hospital.”

Unruffled-and sticking it right back at us. John DuPre was certainly a cool character.

“While you’re on that other night, Dr. DuPre,” Chapman said, “was it your idea or Dr. Harper’s to go down to the X-ray room?” Chapman remembered, as I did, that each man had credited the other with the suggestion.

“It was Coleman, definitely. Didn’t I tell you that? I had planned to do my work in the library that afternoon. I was talking with some of Spector’s protégés-Coleman would like to consider himself one, I guess-and he asked me to go on downstairs to radiology to have a look at some test pictures with him. No reason for me to be there otherwise.”

Mike was probing for background. “What brought you to New York City to practice?”

“A combination of circumstances, Mr. Chapman. My second wife grew up here, has all her family in town. And then, professionally-well, I’d outgrown my business back home. I’d been presenting papers at some conferences, began consulting with physicians around town who’d heard me lecture, and I decided to try the big time.”

“Are you on the teaching staff at Minuit?”

“No, no. I’ve got privileges here at the hospital. Just getting my foot in the door, new boy in town and all that. Can’t help you a bit with the politics of this place.”

DuPre had no other useful information for us, as hard as Mike and Mercer pushed him on details about the medical center and the neurological service. They had finished their questioning and seemed mildly surprised when the quiet doctor asked them if they’d mind stepping outside while he spoke to me in private.

“I gotta call the lieutenant,” Mike said. “We’ll be back in ten with another witness.”

John DuPre waited for the door to close before speaking. “Two things I wanted to say to you, Miss Cooper. First, about my personnel file. You’re going to see that I’m in the middle of an ugly malpractice suit. Mean and frivolous. You’re welcome to talk with my lawyers about it but I’d sure as hell like to keep it out of the newspapers.”

I let him go on.

“A patient of mine died. Back home in Atlanta, before I came to New York. Has nothing to do with Mid-Manhattan or any of these events, of course. Young man had come to me with complaints-dizziness, weight loss, and so on. I examined him, tested him, sent him home with medication and an appointment for a battery of more workups. Two days later, he was dead.

“I assure you I won’t try to hide anything from you. I just don’t want you looking at that as part of some damn murder case. You’re a lawyer and I expect you to be a lot more understanding than those cops about the legal ramifications of this.”

“Did Gemma Dogen know about your lawsuit?”

“I’m quite sure she did. Can’t swear to it ‘cause she never mentioned it to me. Could be one reason she was so cool to me, but we just won’t ever know that, will we?”

“And the other matter?”

DuPre smiled again, his serious news behind him. “If there’s anything missing from my file that you need, just give my office a call. They’ve got duplicates. I went through a rather messy divorce a few years back. Left my first wife for this one. Julia got a bit crazy and set fire to my office back home in Atlanta. I had to get new copies of all my diplomas and certificates from the universities. Not sure what they’ve got here at the hospital but my secretary has everything if you don’t find what you’re looking for here.”

“Thanks, doctor. No reason you couldn’t have said all this in front of the detectives. Doesn’t sound like anything we can’t deal with quietly, professionally.”

“Well, Miss Cooper. Maybe it’s my southern experience that makes me so damn skeptical of the police. I’d just rather have my private affairs in your hands than theirs,” he said, reaching across the table to clasp his fingers on top of mine. “I’m sure I’ll be speaking with you again.”

Wallace was waiting outside the conference room with Banswar Desai, one of the two doctors who had been tapped by Spector to stand in for Gemma Dogen the morning after the stabbing when she had failed to appear in the operating room.

Desai was short and squat, his skin several shades darker than John DuPre’s and his Pakistani accent coated with a thin veneer, courtesy of his British boarding school education. I invited him into the boardroom and whispered to Mercer that he should call Sarah and ask her to do a Lexis/Nexis check on DuPre, to search for news stories in the Georgia papers about the details of his pending lawsuit.

I introduced myself to Dr. Desai and sat him at the table opposite me. Chapman rejoined us before I had gotten very far into the résumé.

Desai was one of the newest members of the neurosurgical team, recruited to Minuit by Gemma Dogen the year before to start his residency there. He was clipped in his responses to us and fiercely defensive about his relationship with Dogen. She had been his mentor and his sponsor and it was clear to me that Desai was sincere in his expression of how devastated he was by Gemma’s loss.

Mike focused his attention on the operation Spector had performed when he plucked Desai and Harper out of the gallery to stand in for the absent Dogen. “What’d you think when she didn’t show up for surgery? Worried about her?”

“Quite unlike her, of course,” Desai replied. “Gemma was a consummate professional, Mr. Chapman. Did I think she’d gone missing? Not at all. I assumed something more pressing in her schedule had come up. Or that she and Spector had another row about something and-”

“Row about what, Dr. Desai?”

“I wasn’t privy to that information, detective. I knew there were issues that involved the program at Minuit that put the two of them at odds, but I’m much too junior a member of the department to have been let in on those conversations.”

“You were Dogen’s friend, though, as well, weren’t you?”

“Her friend, Mr. Chapman, certainly. But not her confidant. Our relationship was strictly confined to the hospital and medical school. Gemma drew a firm line between her students and her private life and I’m not aware of anyone who dared attempt to cross it.”

“And Dr. Spector, he trusted you enough to call on you to stand in for Dogen in the OR even though you were quite well identified as her protégé?” I asked.

“Spector’s primary interest, Miss Cooper, whether one likes his style or not, is the well-being of his patients. I never got myself involved in the politics of the medical school and it’s obvious neither Spector nor Dogen held that against me in any manner.

“Besides, there were only a handful of us in the room who were qualified to assist him when the situation presented itself. It was, shall we say, an honorific moment rather than a critical one. I might have passed him a few instruments and nodded my agreement with his decisions, but Harper and I were basically there to admire Spector’s handiwork close up, if you will. Neither Coleman nor I added a great deal to the procedure.”

There was something old-fashioned and comfortable about Banswar Desai’s manner that put me at ease. I had grown up in a home in which the medical profession was revered and respected. My father’s accomplishments had won international adulation. My brothers and I had been surrounded from childhood by my parents’ coterie of brilliant and caring physicians and nurses who devoted themselves to the finest traditions of the science and art of healing. Our nightly discussions at the dinner table, joined in with equal gusto by my mother-whose nursing background made her as knowledgeable as any of the doctors who spoke-always centered around the most interesting clinical events of the day.

The memories of my lifelong involvement with the health care community led inevitably to thoughts of my love affair with Adam Nyman and the engagement that had shattered so stunningly with his death just hours before we were to be married. I had daydreamed and wandered from the discussion that Chapman was having with Desai, for which I paid doubly. The haunting image of Adam in his OR fatigues when he kissed me good-bye for the last time pushed itself back into view. In addition, I had lost all track of the direction of the conversation that concerned Gemma Dogen’s murder.

“That’s all we’ve got for you today, Dr. Desai. If anything comes to your attention that you think we’d like to know about, please give me a call,” Mike said, passing a business card to the young resident.

They walked together to the door and, as Desai left, Chapman waved Coleman Harper into the room.

“Thanks for your patience, Dr. Harper. It seems Detective Chapman and I have kept you waiting a second time,” I said, referring to our first meeting at the police precinct the night Harper and DuPre had made their discovery of Pops in his bloodstained pants.

Mike flipped through his notepad until he came to the pages that contained the information he had taken from Harper at our earlier meeting. In answer to Mike’s first question, Harper repeated that it was at DuPre’s suggestion that the two of them had gone down to the radiology department.

“I don’t want to get you all twitchy like you were that night we were at the station house, Doc, but DuPre’s pretty insistent that you were the one that wanted him to go downstairs with you.”

Harper hesitated, his head stationary but his eyes darting back and forth between our faces as he tried to figure out whether there was any significance to Mike’s question.

“Are you suggesting that I knew the old man was in the room before John and I went down there together?”

“You tell me, Doc. Did you?”

“Wh-what for? Of course I hadn’t known he was there before we found him-I hadn’t been to the radiology department all afternoon. What difference would it have made?”

Not much, it seemed to me, and I figured Mike was simply trying to rattle Harper, who rose to the bait rather quickly and seemed as ill at ease now as he had the night we met him.

“I don’t think we ever got the details of your relationship with Gemma Dogen, did we, Dr. Harper?”

“Same as most around here. Respected her work, professionally, but had very little else to do with her.”

Chapman flashed a glance at his notes. “You two met on your first go-round here, almost ten years ago, is that right?”

“Yes, yes, it is.”

“Work for her?”

“Not exactly. I came up here after medical school. Did my internship and residency here, then started my neurological practice. That’s about the time we met. Dr. Dogen had just come over here to teach at Minuit.”

“She teach you?”

“Just in the sense that we all rotated through the neurosurgical department.”

“Never wanted to go into surgery, Doc? Just wanted the medical end up ‘til now?”

“Yes, well, more or less. I mean, I did apply to get into the neurosurgical residency right after my internship but I didn’t make the cut that year. I was content with what I was doing and, um, didn’t push for it very hard. As you probably know by now, it’s a very small program, very elite. Lots of us got passed over-no big deal. I was only in New York another year, working up at Metropolitan Hospital, actually. My wife wanted to go back to Nashville and I was ready to get out and start practicing on my own.”

“So what does this fellowship do for you exactly?”

Harper’s thick fingers clutched the arms of his chair and he massaged the smooth wood of the antique reproduction boardroom furniture as he explained his current function to us.

“I, uh, I guess I was anxious for a change after ten years. Maybe I just never got out of my system the idea that I could do neurosurgery. Felt I’d given up on it too quickly when I didn’t make the program on the first shot. This, um, fellowship lets me get started in the OR while I wait for the results of my applications.”

“What applications?”

“Oh, I assumed Dr. Spector must have told you. I’m completing the fellowship and hoping to be accepted to the neurosurgical residency here any day now. That’s why I was willing to enter the program and take a pay cut for a year.”

“What were you pulling in back home as a neurologist?”

“Pulling in?”

“How many smackers?” Mike went on. “Money, dollars, income.”

“Oh, about a hundred and fifty thousand, last few years.”

“And this year?”

“Well, of course the fellowship only pays a stipend-about thirty thousand dollars-but when I finish-”

“Damn, you’re living up here on thirty thousand? You must want it bad, Doc.”

“It’s just temporary, Detective Chapman. Obviously, I’ve got enough savings to get me through,” Harper said, laughing nervously. “And it’s not that I have time for any kind of a life outside of my work at the moment.”

“Pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, huh?”

“That’s not what I’m here for. It’s the most challenging job in medicine, Chapman. It’s a creative field, with newer and better techniques evolving every week. You save lives and you restore functioning that was previously considered hopeless and you-”

Harper’s squat body held its position firmly centered in his chair as he defended his goal. “And you make about half a million dollars more than you’ve been making every year,” Mike said.

“Something illegal about that I’m not aware of, detective?”

“Nothing at all. Just trying to figure out why, at your age, you’d give up a successful practice for a shot at maybe getting a chance for another residency. By the time you finish, if you get into Spector’s program, you’ll be-”

“Close to fifty years old. Yes, I will. Look, that’s hardly an impediment to a medical career. I’ve got a solid professional history behind me, no debts, no family to support at the moment, and a dream I’d like to see out.”

“Who got in your way the first time?”

“You mean, almost a decade ago? Oh, I don’t know. As Spector will tell you, it’s all done by committee. A review of the records of each applicant, interviews, recommendations from the supervisors of the internships. It just didn’t happen for me that year. I accepted it, had a good career ever since then, and now want to try it over again.”

“Dr. Dogen, was she for you or not?”

“I don’t know, quite frankly. I had very little to do with Gemma Dogen.” Coleman Harper had moved forward on his seat and was ready to spring up and out of the room as soon as Mike ended the barrage of questions. “I didn’t have much of an opportunity to work with her, and I certainly never courted her like some of the young toadies have.”

“How about the first time you came through here, Doc?”

“That’s ten years back, for goodness’ sake. I had her on a couple of rotations. Let’s just say we had very different styles. I was glad to get away from her and over to Metropolitan at the time. She was out to make a name for herself as soon as she set foot in New York and I wasn’t having any part of it.”

“You think the hospital records’ll have some of the details of your early days?” I asked quietly from my side of the long table.

Harper shot me a glance, thought for a moment, then shook his head, answering that he didn’t think the hospital kept files for more than seven years. “I tried to get them myself, of course. Wanted to use some of the letters of recommendation that I had gathered during my internship and then my years at Metropolitan.” He forced a laugh. “You don’t get professorial references when you’re out on your own in a private practice. And what patients think of you is based more on your fee schedule and which insurance plans you accept than on your skills.

“If they come up with those old records in the near future, be sure and let me know. I’m supposed to get a decision from Spector’s committee by the fifteenth of April. I could use some of those kind old words from ten years back.”

“Even Gemma Dogen’s write-up?”

Harper was standing and shaking Mike’s hand on his way to the door. “I wish I had saved copies of everything then, not just to prove a point to you. But I think it would have helped me moving forward at Minuit. Dogen wasn’t my biggest cheerleader here, but I don’t recall she did anything to make it difficult for me.”

“Can you think of any reason why anyone would want to hurt Dogen? To kill her?”

Harper was turning the doorknob. “It’s all foreign to us, detective. We’re in the business of saving lives. Can’t imagine why anyone would do such things to other people, the kind of things you see day in and day out. No idea at all.”

The interview with Coleman Harper had given us no more and no less than any of the others. There still seemed a certain absurdity to questioning these well-respected physicians about the frenzied massacre of a colleague, but they had to be examined and eliminated like any other field of potential suspects.

Mercer rejoined us and we plodded through the rest of the afternoon with a string of witnesses who recounted for us their relationships with Dogen. We spoke with seven nurses, three other medical school professors who shared the corridor with the deceased, and an array of earnest young students and interns who studied with and scrubbed beside the distinguished deceased.

The portraits presented were split right down the line-those who liked and admired Gemma and whom she had allowed some arm’s length collegial contact, and those who feared and distrusted her because of the froideur of her personality and the distance she automatically imposed.

The effort to trace her final hours was even more futile. Gemma treasured her solitude and admitted companions only at those moments when it suited her to do so. Jogging, writing, traveling, or doing research, she had seemed happiest when in her own company, untroubled by the chatting and politicking of most of those who tried to enter her orbit.

It was after six o’clock when our stream of subjects trickled out and Dietrich’s secretary came in to remind us that she needed to lock the boardroom when we were finished. I told her that we were done for the day and knew from the forced smile that flickered across her face when I thanked her for letting us take over the facility that she wasn’t the least bit interested in our reasons for having disrupted her boss’s good mood. We packed up our notebooks and pads and headed onto the corridor for the long walk back to the entrance.

“Next? Any fresh ideas?” Mercer asked.

“Too many interviews in one day,” I answered. “My head’s spinning. I’m going home to sort it all out, go over my notes, and pack for tomorrow.”

“Wanna grab a bite with us?”

“I’ll pass. Too much to do before I leave and I feel like we’re not making any headway on this right now.”

“Okay, we’ll drop you at home. I checked on Maureen. This morning the Chief said he was only going to let her stay in the hospital until Friday. Thinks the whole thing is a waste of her time and the Department’s money. Then this afternoon a messenger delivered a box of chocolates to her room. The package was addressed to her and the gift card said it was from the kids. Some fancy French stuff, nicely wrapped.”

I stiffened as Mercer went on. “Problem is, Mo’s allergic to chocolate. Anyone who knows her well is aware of that. What do you think it means, guys? Has she been made?”

“For one thing, it means the Chief is dead wrong, so Peterson’s fighting to keep her in place. The box is over at the lab. They’ll look at it to see whether anything was tampered with.”

“Why am I thinking this undercover plan of mine was a stupid one, Mercer?”

“It’s fine, Coop. Maureen’s perfectly safe.”

Mercer left his car across the street from Minuit and came with us as Mike drove uptown, pulling into the driveway of the building to leave me at my door.

“What’s the plan?”

“Mercer’ll drive us to the airport tomorrow evening. Why don’t you just bring your suitcase to the office and we’ll pick you up and go from there?”

“Thanks, guys. See you tomorrow.”

I got my mail, went upstairs, and let myself into the apartment. I turned on the television in the bedroom so I could listen to the evening news while I started to throw some things on the bed to pack for the trip. When I flipped to Jeopardy! to check the final question, I gave up without an effort as Trebek announced that the category would be astronomy.

I was on the phone for more than an hour, starting with a call to Maureen, who seemed chipper and unconcerned by the day’s events, perhaps because Charles was still by her bedside. By the time I called my mother, Joan Stafford, David Mitchell, and Nina’s answering machine to explain why I was going out of town for a couple of days, it was after eight-thirty. I dialed P. J. Bernstein’s and asked them to send up an order of chicken soup before they closed.

My papers were spread out all over the dining-room table. Off to one corner I placed the Polaroid photo that I had asked Mercer to take of the marking made by Gemma’s blood on the floor of her office. Had it been intentionally drawn by the dying woman? I wondered, and was it a letter or part of a word? I pulled out a yellow pad and wrote beside it the initials of each of the people we had interviewed so far. I tried to compare the capital letters of their names to the incomplete squiggle that had seemed so clear to me that morning last week. Nothing seemed to match and I abandoned the exercise in favor of reviewing and organizing my interview notes.

After I packed and got into bed shortly before midnight, I called Drew’s hotel in San Francisco and left a message on his automated mail system. I told him about my unexpected departure for London the next day and asked him to call whenever he got in so I could hear the warm sound of his voice and make plans to see him when I returned home.

I set my alarm for seven and turned off the lights. I worried about Maureen and whether my idea had exposed her to any real danger. Then I tried to make sleep come by thinking of everything except murder. But the puzzle of Gemma Dogen and the way she died kept intruding as I lay awake late into the night.