Savages

21

When I arrived at the medical building at 450 Geary, Celeste Ogden was waiting for me in the lobby. Two-oh-five by my watch, which made me ten minutes early; she’d been there since quarter till, she said. She didn’t look anxious, but neither was she as imperious as usual. Willfully self-contained, like a businesswoman about to take a difficult and probably unpleasant meeting, whatever she was thinking or feeling hidden behind a controlled facade. I liked her better that way; it made her seem more human.

She was the reason we were both here. She and her vascular surgeon husband, Arnold Ogden. There was no way on earth Tamara or I could have induced Dr. Robert J. Prince to grant an audience, much less breach patient-doctor confidentiality even though the patient was deceased, but one phone call to Celeste Ogden, another from her to her husband, a third from the esteemed Dr. Ogden to his colleague. Dr. Prince was scheduled for office consultations this afternoon, fortunately; he’d agreed to squeeze us in for a few minutes at 2:15.

I had a pretty good idea of what we were going to find out from Dr. Prince, and I think Celeste Ogden did, too. We hadn’t discussed it; time enough for that afterward. We rode the elevator up to the twelfth floor in silence.

Dr. Robert J. Prince’s name headed the list of six on the door to Medical Associates’ large, plush suite of offices. Prominent big-money physicians all, and no doubt worth what they earned. These offices were mainly for consultations and record keeping, I gathered. The doctors would spend most of their time at U.C. Med Center, S.F. General, and whatever hospitals in the Bay Area required their specialty services.

We were shown into Dr. Prince’s office promptly at 2:15. He greeted us politely but with restraint and reluctance. African-American, about my age, his graying hair close cropped, his manner unprepossessing. Deep, soft voice. Large hands, the fingers very long and supple. He had a habit of flexing them in different small ways, as if he were engaging in a series of private aerobic exercises.

When we were all seated he said to Celeste Ogden, “I have great respect for your husband, Mrs. Ogden. He’s a fine surgeon and I consider him a friend.”

“He feels the same about you.”

“I’m glad to hear it. But the point is, I’ve agreed to this meeting only as a favor to him and with no little reluctance. Patient confidentiality is a very important part of my practice. I wouldn’t have agreed if your sister was still alive.”

“Yes, we understand that.”

“So before we begin, I must ask you not to repeat to anyone what is said here today.”

I nodded, but she said, “Agreed, unless the information becomes relevant in a criminal case.”

“What sort of criminal case?”

“Homicide.”

“I don’t see how that’s possible.”

“It may not be,” I said. “We don’t know yet.”

“If it is,” Celeste Ogden said, “would you be willing to testify in court? In the interest of justice?”

He thought that over. At length he said carefully, “I am always willing to further the cause of justice.”

“Thank you, Doctor.”

“Ask your questions,” he said.

My job. “When did Nancy Mathias first come to you?”

“A little over a month ago.”

“Referred by?”

“Her physician in Palo Alto, Dr. Koslowski. She was suffering from what she believed were increasingly serious migraine headaches. Additional symptoms-nausea and vomiting, vision difficulties, increasing weakness on the left side of her body-were such that he ordered tests which proved that the condition was much more serious.”

“What was the condition?”

“Anaplastic malignant ependymoma.”

“In layman’s terms, Doctor?”

“A brain tumor,” he said.

“Operable?”

“Inoperable, because of its location. Radiation was the only viable option, and a poor one in her case.”

“It wouldn’t have cured her?”

“Saved her life, you mean? No. The tumor was malignant and fast growing.”

“How long did she have?”

“A year, at the most.”

“At the least?”

“Perhaps six months.”

Well, there it was. The explanation for the August diary entries, the reason Nancy had given the $10,000 to T. R. Quentin and refused to take any of the woman’s paintings. It opened up other possibilities, too. I glanced at Celeste Ogden. She hadn’t moved or changed expression. Will of iron, I thought.

“You told this to Mrs. Mathias, of course.”

“Of course,” Dr. Prince said. “I must say she took it bravely.”

“When was this?”

He consulted a paper on his desk. “August twenty-second. The day after I received the final test results.”

“Here in your office?”

“Yes.”

“Did she come alone, or with her husband?”

“Alone. I understood Mr. Mathias was to be present, but he didn’t come.”

“Did he join her on subsequent visits?”

“He did not.”

“Did he ever contact you about his wife’s condition or prognosis?”

“No.”

“Did you try to contact him?”

“No. Mrs. Mathias asked me not to.”

“Did she say why?”

“Only that she would tell him when the time came. She didn’t want anyone else to know.”

“Not even me,” Celeste Ogden said.

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Ogden. Not even you.”

T hat son of a bitch!” she said.

Her first words since we’d left the Medical Associates offices. Low, hard, venomous. Mathias, of course, not Dr. Prince.

We were alone in the elevator going down. She stood with her back tight to one wall, staring straight ahead. There were cracks in the armored facade now, a moist sheen to her eyes. This was as close as she would ever come, I thought, to a public display of emotion.

“He didn’t care enough to be there for her, even after she told him. She did tell him; her diary proves that.”

“Yes.”

“I hate him,” she said. “God, I’ve never hated anyone as much as I hate that man.”

“You have good reason.”

So did I, for that matter, whether he was guilty of complicity in his wife’s death or not. There was a disturbing, close-to-home parallel here. Nancy Mathias had had a malignant tumor; so had Kerry. One inoperable, prognosis negative; one operable, prognosis favorable. And Mathias’s reaction when he was given the grim verdict? Unresponsive, nonsupportive, even argumentative. He couldn’t have loved his wife, or cared about what she was going through, the turmoil of fear and suffering. Kerry was life itself to me. How could I not hate that kind of man, that kind of selfish indifference? Oh yeah. As much as you can hate a virtual stranger.

The elevator doors whispered open and we started across the lobby. Mrs. Ogden murmured, more to herself than to me, “Why didn’t Nancy want me to know? Him, yes, but not me? I loved her, I’d have done anything for her. She knew that.”

Rhetorical question. The kind answer was that Nancy hadn’t wanted to upset her; the probable truth was that Mathias’s control was too strong and he wouldn’t allow it. She’d told him, all right, two days after she found out on August 22. The following week he’d again promised to meet her at Dr. Prince’s and then failed to show up, using an important meeting as an excuse; that was what her angry diary entry that week referred to. The handwritten note among her papers was another unanswered plea for his presence at a consultation with Dr. Prince. “D,” in her shorthand, stood for doctor.

Outside on the sidewalk, Mrs. Ogden said, “I was wrong.”

“Wrong about what?”

“As miserable as he is, as much as I loathe him, he couldn’t have been responsible for Nancy’s death. It must have been a tragic accident after all.”

“What makes you say that?”

“If she was dying, with less than a year to live, there’s no reason for him to have had her killed, is there?”

“Mercy killing, put an early end to her suffering,” I said, but I didn’t believe it.

Neither did she. “There’s no mercy in him. Not an ounce.”

I could see one other motive, now, given the kind of man Mathias was-the most monstrous, obscene motive for spousal homicide imaginable. It started my blood boiling just thinking about it. But I kept it to myself. Conjecture, with nothing to back it up. And that was what I’d been concerned about all along, the source of the bad feeling about this investigation.

How the hell could murder be proven, by me or anybody else?