Do No Harm (2002) Page 38

  "I think he should step down as chief of the division."

  "That would be convenient for you, wouldn't it? But inconvenient for the board. We'd be unable to find a qualified replacement--how did you put it in your corporate way--in-house."

  Don's voice rose in pitch. "This isn't about career advancement, it's about misconduct and a complete disregard for professionalism. He assaulted me in front of patients and staff. Assaulted me. Over something I didn't do. He's coming unwound. He's barely ever in the ER anymore, and I heard he left early today."

  "He left early?" Sandy whistled, feigning astonishment. "Maybe we should report him to the Medical Board."

  Don stared her down.

  She sighed heavily, then her face resumed its usual businesslike cast. "The board is airing the issue tomorrow," she said dourly. "Rest assured, we are viewing this incident seriously."

  "Well, I hope action will be taken before this gets . . . loud."

  Sandy searched for a pen behind her ear and found it. She tapped it against her lips, which had drawn together in something of a scowl. "For seventeen years at this institution, Dr. Spier has been a physician beyond reproach. Do you know what that means? To be beyond reproach?"

  "Of course."

  She regarded him dubiously. "Your concern in this matter has been duly noted." She glanced back down at the papers in front of her. "Good night, Dr. Lambert. You don't want to keep your date waiting."

  Chapter 64

  AFTER calling Yale, David crawled into bed. Yale had spent the day shaking leads with Dalton and had turned up little of consequence. Happy Horizon's records had not been well kept, and the detectives were having some difficulty tracking down the children Clyde had overlapped with during his time there. From information collected at Clyde's apartment, they'd compiled a list of the places Clyde had stopped at regularly--Ralph's Groceries, 7-Eleven, Healton's--and they were keeping an eye on them.

  After David filled Yale in on his conversation with Dash, Yale told David a unit had been sitting on Mrs. Connolly's house, and said he'd see about getting another car freed up to cover Sandy. Hospital security had been watching Diane's room.

  Though David could barely keep his eyes open, he called Diane.

  "Hey, Rocky," she said.

  "You heard."

  "Don puts out a loud whine."

  "How are you doing?"

  "I've had better weeks."

  "Do you want me to come in and see you?"

  "Sorry," she joked. "Visiting hours are over."

  "I'm not a visitor."

  "Are you something more permanent?" she asked.

  After he hung up, he lay back and let his muscles go lax. A revving sports car up on Sunset reminded him of the earplugs he'd accidentally stolen from Healton's Drugstore. He retrieved them from his pants in the laundry, returned to bed, and put them in. They were surprisingly effective. He closed his eyes, pulling the sheets up to his chin, and drifted on the blissful silence. He was asleep in seconds.

  Through his sleeping stupor, he became vaguely aware of a distant ringing. It repeated itself at intervals, then he was awake and momentarily lost before the familiar glow of the alarm clock reminded him he was home. The ringing returned. The doorbell. Muted through his earplugs. And some kind of rasping.

  Why was someone ringing his bell at 3:30 in the morning? Grabbing the cordless from its cradle, he padded to the front door, leaving his earplugs on a hall table.

  He peered through the peephole at Jenkins and Bronner. "Yes? Can I help you?"

  "Please open the door, Dr. Spier."

  David cracked the door and peered through the gap. "What does this concern?"

  "Dr. Spier, please." Jenkins's voice had an edge of concern in it, enough to cause David to open up. Both officers stood back toward the edge of the porch. "Can you please step out onto the porch?"

  "Look, I'm not really sure-- " David noticed Bronner leaning to the side, trying to get a better angle to see around him into the dark foyer, and he stopped short. Resisting the urge to look behind him, David stepped out into the cool night.

  Jenkins grabbed David's arm, his hand encompassing his biceps, and pulled him back, eyes locked on the open front door. "We got a 911 call alerting us to this address about fifteen minutes ago," he said.

  David shook his head. "Well, everything's fine. I've been sleeping for hours. It must have been a prank."

  His declaration did little to wipe the intense concern from the officers' faces. Jenkins was working his lip between his teeth, his arms steeled and rigid.

  "What?" David asked. "Why are you so alarmed?"

  Jenkins unholstered his pistol. "The call came from within your house."

  David swallowed hard, but the spit caught in his throat.

  Pistol drawn, Jenkins toed the door the rest of the way open and inched inside. "Stay outside," Bronner growled. He turned on his flashlight, unholstered his pistol, and, crossing his arms at the wrists, followed Jenkins into the house.

  David stood out on the porch in his boxers, shivering in the cold. After a moment, Jenkins hissed at him from within the house. "Lights! Where's the fucking light switch?"

  David inched inside, and clicked one of the switches by the front door, concealed by the braided trunk of a tall Ficus benjamina. A cone of light from the ceiling softly illuminated the antique table and the couches, just enough to see that the room was empty and undisturbed.

  Jenkins and Bronner looked relieved, but did not lower their guns. They did a brief walk-through of the other rooms, using flashlights, whispering, and searching in closets and behind furniture. There was no sign of forced entry. Finally, they headed down the long hall toward the study and master bedroom.

  The beam of Jenkins's flashlight illuminated the birdcage in the corner of the study. The drape had been removed, and the small wire door hung open. The cockatoo was missing. Jenkins and Bronner looked at David interrogatively, and he nodded solemnly.

  David remembered the strange rasping which, in addition to the doorbell, had awakened him, and he felt the hair along his arms prickle. His bedroom.

  He pointed to the slightly ajar bedroom door to which the hall led, and Bronner and Jenkins slunk toward it, pistols aimed at the small strip of blackness that ran the height of the jamb. Jenkins gestured as if he were flipping a light switch, and David mimed its location within the bedroom. Angling his gun to cover the left side of the room, Bronner toed the door so it creaked open, then he and Jenkins burst in, flashlights sweeping the interior.

  A sudden stillness. David heard Bronner make a noise low in his throat and he stepped into the room just as Jenkins flipped the switch. He blinked against the flash of light.

  But not before he saw the bird pinned wide, unfurled across the wall facing David's bed, its wings and feet tacked to the wall with surgical scalpels. A blood splatter sprayed the wall to one side.

  The cockatoo's bright pink crest was stained and matted, its feathers shredded and broken. A small square had been excised from its throat with one of the scalpels, and blood drained from the hole down its feathers. Its voice box had been removed, a crude surgical procedure.

  A shudder wracked through David as he stared at the bloody tableau. Clyde had pinned the mutilated bird to the wall while David had slept feet away.

  Had David stirred, Clyde might have killed him. The stolen earplugs may have saved his life.

  The beak quivered, then opened weakly. The bird was still alive. It rustled feebly against the scalpels impaling its wings, its head and feet rasping gently against the wall. David crossed to the wall, and pulling a scalpel free from Stanley's wing, unceremoniously ran the edge across the bird's throat. Because its syrinx had already been removed, the blade ran deep through the throat, severing the windpipe. The cockatoo ceased its movement against its pinnings.

  David fisted the scalpel and drove it into the wall, where it stuck.

  Bronner and Jenkins lowered their guns slowly. Jenkins's face had reddened, his
cheeks flushing with color.

  David's breath left him in short spurts, reverse gasps. "Innovative," he managed. His legs were shaking, so he donned his white coat, wrapping it around himself like a robe.

  Bronner lowered his flashlight with a faint groan and hoisted his pants. "I'll have Dispatch contact SID, and Yale and Dalton. I'll keep an eye on the front." He looked at David. "Don't touch anything else." He left Jenkins and David with the blood-splashed wall.

  "Not his usual MO," Jenkins said. "He's getting bolder. More courageous." He chewed his lip.

  David nodded. "We're right on track."

  He followed Jenkins to check the garage. On the side of the Mercedes, Clyde had written ashole in what appeared to be red spray paint. Jenkins shined his light beneath and inside the car, then took a step back.

  They went back into the living room to wait for Bronner's return, and Jenkins flipped all three light switches, using a pen. David noticed immediately that the de Kooning was missing. He pointed to the blank space above the mantel.

  Jenkins raised his eyebrows.

  "A painting," David explained. "A de Kooning."

  "I didn't have him pegged for a collector." Jenkins's joke was an offering of sorts. David's laugh was genuine. When Jenkins smiled, the harshness left his features. "Motive, motive, motive," he said. "Assuming he's not aware of its value or . . . artfulness, why did he take it?"

  "It was a modern piece, a somewhat violent depiction of a woman."

  "I see."

  David felt momentarily like a pervert. He thought of the drawings Clyde had made as a child, the crayoned revenge he'd exacted on the study's nurses. Clyde probably found the de Kooning to be pleasing. The notion that David's taste in art was similar to Clyde's was not comforting. That the painting had been his mother's lent the theft a certain irony.

  "Worth a lot?" Jenkins asked.

  "Yeah," David said. "Now I'll have to deal with insurance. My penance for being part of the medical establishment." He ran his fingers through his hair.

  Jenkins peered around the impeccably decorated living room. "Right."

  The vase sat crooked on the Oriental cabinet, and David walked over and reached to straighten it.

  "Don't touch that," Jenkins said.

  David froze. "Sorry." He studied the small collection of photographs arrayed around the base of the vase, focusing on the shot of him and Diane from the ER Catalina retreat. His eyes lingered on the picture of Elisabeth in the tub, before skimming across the rest of the silver frames. One of the photographs was missing; there were normally five. David crouched and peered behind the cabinet. Some loose change, several clusters of dust, and the silver gleam of the frame.

  "There's a picture frame back here," he said. He pulled a pair of latex gloves from his pocket. "Can I get it?"

  "Let me." Jenkins took the gloves from David, pulled them on, and moved the cabinet a few inches out from the wall. He grabbed the frame by the corner and held it up for David to see. The photograph of Peter with David's mother. Janet Spier, the steel gleam in her eyes, her chin raised in what David had previously thought regal fashion, but now recognized as a symptom of her deeply ingrained sense of superiority. Peter's smile, deferential yet confident, his arm across Janet's shoulders.

  There was a smudge on the glass over Peter's face, and David knew, even before he leaned toward the frame and inhaled the saccharine odor, that it would smell of the orange-flavored lozenges.

  Clyde had studied the photograph before he'd taken the de Kooning and, in replacing it, had accidentally knocked it behind the cabinet.

  A flash of Peter after Clyde's escape, still shaken after he'd tripped Clyde in the hall. "The way he looked at me . . . "

  David and Dash had neglected to add Peter to the list of potential victims. David doubted that Clyde had grown bold enough to attack a man, but it now occurred to him that a disabled man might be a possibility, as the boyish security guard had been. And Peter was a representative of the hospital. Depending on the extent of his surveillance, Clyde might even know that Peter was David's close friend.

  "Do you think we could get some protection on Peter Alexander?" David asked, pointing to the photo.

  "That's up to Yale," Jenkins said. "And the Captain. But I'll radio Dispatch and have someone swing by now to check the welfare."

  "I'd appreciate that."

  Jenkins called in the request, then he and David stood in silence as they awaited the other cars, not wanting even to sit on the couches in case that would disturb evidence. It was an awkward silence.

  "How was Nancy?" David asked.

  Jenkins shrugged. "Awful," he said. "She's awful." His head bobbed in an intimation of a nod. "What are you gonna do? What the fuck you gonna do?" He raised his hands, then let them fall to his sides. The silence of the room was deafening. "My first day on the job, we were responding to a radio call," he said. "Domestic violence. Some crackhead out in Central had shot his wife. I got there with Dalton--me and Dalton were partners before he got promoted. Kicked in the door. Lady was laid out in the kitchen. Sawed-off shotgun from about two feet. What was left of her head was pasted to the refrigerator. The thing is . . . " He paused and took a deep breath, his nostrils flaring. "The thing is, she had a newborn. The baby had been playing in the other room, but it found her. Crawled across the damn apartment. It was nursing on her when we showed." He lowered his head. "That's the kind of thing you're supposed to see in a war. Bosnia, or some village in Vietnam. Not in an American city." He shook his head. "Not here."

  A few cars pulled up front, blue lights flashing. Coming in the open front door without knocking, Yale announced his arrival with a sharp snap of his gum. He was dressed for the office at a Wall Street firm. Behind him, Dalton looked more aptly like someone roused in the middle of the night. His stained tie was jerked hard to one side, Rodney Dangerfield style, and he wore unmatched socks.

  David followed them silently back to the bedroom. Yale appraised the scene silently, then gestured with two fingers for David and Dalton to follow him into the bathroom. He leaned into the shower and turned it on as hot as it went. The head sputtered a few times, then the water turned cloudy. Using his pen, Yale flicked the head to the side, and the water sprayed onto a bar of soap. It fizzed, then dissolved rapidly under the alkali.

  "Looks like our boy had plans for your pretty face," Dalton said.

  "No," David said. "He knows I've been unscrewing that showerhead every time before I turn on the water. That's what he wants--my anxiety."

  Yale worked his gum as they headed back into the living room, where Jenkins was just signing off a radio call. "Everything clear on Peter Alexander," Jenkins told David.

  Yale threw open the front door and nodded, and the Scientific Investigation Division poured into the house, toting bags and boxes.

  Yale lowered his hard, cool eyes on David. "I'm gonna take a look around," he said. "Then why don't we have a chat at the barn. Get out of these boys' hair." He turned to Jenkins. "We got it from here." Yale winked at Jenkins, and Jenkins headed slowly for the door.

  "Officer Jenkins," David called out. When Jenkins turned around, David said, "Thank you."

  Jenkins nodded once before ducking outside.

  Chapter 65

  WAITING in the back of the detectives' generic sedan while Yale, Dalton, and the SID went over the house, David paged Ed on his cell phone. Ed was seemingly at a club or bar of some sort when he called back, leaving David to wonder when, exactly, he slept. In the background, Gloria Gaynor's "I Will Survive" blared. For Ed to hear him, David had to raise his voice. Ed grew upset once David described the night's events, displaying an endearing sense of responsibility.

  "I just got the security equipment delivered this afternoon. I was gonna install it at your house tomorrow. I've been on a stakeout all night. Fuck, I'm sorry."

  "It's okay," David said. "We can get it done today. Nothing truly awful happened. Besides, this might give us a good lead."

  The
sky was just beginning to lighten when Yale and Dalton emerged. On an ordinary day, David would just be getting ready for work. At a stoplight, they pulled alongside Dr. Woods, the lethargic gastroenterologist, in a BMW. His eyes first found the removable police light on the dash, and then he did a double take at David in the backseat. David raised his hands together, as if they were handcuffed, and waved. Woods's jaw was just beginning to drop when Yale pulled forward, leaving him at the stoplight.

  David told the detectives about the picture frame and said he'd added Peter to his list of potential victims. Dalton threw a weary look in Yale's direction. "Captain's been chafing at all the OT as is. We're gonna have to kiss some serious ass to get another unit for Peter Alexander."

  Yale took a turn a little too fast. "Pucker up."

  When they pulled up to the station, David waited patiently to be let out. The LA Times dispenser showed a color photo of Don's fallen body in the ER waiting room, David looming unpleasantly in the background. Front page. It was too bad that no media had staked out David's house through the night; they might have seen Clyde breaking in.

  They headed directly upstairs; David was relieved not to have to deal with the contentious desk clerk. Yale's and Dalton's desks were pushed together so they faced each other as they worked. A stained coffee mug at the edge of Dalton's desk proclaimed world's greatest mom. Next to it were the film reels of the fear study.

  David gestured to the reels. "Did you take a look at those yet?"

  Dalton sat back down heavily. Yale pushed his fingertips together and pressed them over the bridge of his nose. "Late last night," Yale said softly.

  Dalton's thumb fidgeted on his cheek. "The shit they did to those poor little bastards . . . " he said. "No kid should have to go through something like that." A series of crayon streaks stained Dalton's shirt near the pocket, and David thought again of Dalton's picnic at the Academy. He found something poignant in the crayon streaks, as he did in Dalton's rumpled shirt, though he wasn't sure what or why.