Lie Still, page 40
After saying my final goodbyes to Henry Rojelio, I was a bedraggled mix of sorrow and agitation. With the help of the Inderal, I had managed to hide my state from Mary Ellen.
After she left for work I tried to sleep, but only lay and watched the streaks of sunlight creep down the west wall.
I wanted to call Will Borden promptly at 8:00, tell him I had some puzzle pieces for him. But I pictured sitting before Borden and May, bouncing on my chair, laying out my tale, my theories, my explanations, with the real corpse over in the Maricopa PICU, lying still, but not yet dead, at least by the universal definition, as Mary Ellen’s team did their tests, blissfully ignorant of my addition to Henry’s IV nutrition. It was unlikely the detectives would pick up on something I did or said and drop everything and run over and stop the process, but I didn’t trust myself to leave out exactly the right parts of the story.
So I had to wait. The town house felt like a cage.
Just before noon Mary Ellen called to let me know it was over.
I called Detective Borden. I told him I had some answers. I said, “You know, I guess, that Robin is a man.” I told him about my phone call to Charlene through Cynthia and Monica.
He laughed. “Yeah. We know. Come on out. We’ll go through it all when you get here.”
I went for a long run, took a slow shower, and made myself sit down for lunch—table, chair, place mat, napkin, sil-verware, the whole bit. I put on dressy pants and shoes. I 382
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got my envelope with its adrenaline syringe from the refrigerator. I drove to Mesa, slower than usual. The Salt was receding.
I made myself walk and talk slowly, too. Will got me coffee. He and Ken looked surprisingly fresh. Another day at the office.
Borden handed me copies of the Board of Nursing file, then sat on the front of his chair, leaning on his knees, face close in. I stared at the blotchy xerox of the photo in the file; it looked like a broad, ruddy, grinning man with light hair and thin eyebrows. Will said, “An Englishman. Born in Bath, moved here eleven years ago. My guess is he was seeking the, shall we say, freer lifestyle of the ‘confirmed bachelor’ here in the U.S.”
“Dead?”
“Two years ago. Cause of death listed as Kaposi’s sar-coma. Along with a secondary diagnosis of some kind of cystic pneumonia.”
“Pneumocystis pneumonia.”
“Yeah, sounds right.”
“AIDS.”
“Yeah, that’s what I figured.” He shifted in his chair to an upright posture. “Basic, unglamorous police legwork fills in a lot of blanks. The morning after we met you at your condo, we went knocking at the State Nursing Board. The photo and description pretty much speak for themselves. License lapsed about eighteen months ago, no response to renewal notices. Then it was renewed. No big deal. New address, new phone number. About three months ago. All back fees and penalties paid with a cashier’s check.”
“Not traceable.”
“Not traceable.”
May added, “I went over to the County Clerk’s Office.
Death certificate on file, dated, signed, et cetera, et cetera.”
I nodded as I pictured Mimi, daughter of law enforcement, cooking up this, surely her most spectacular “cover story.”
“You knew this when I was here for the polygraph.”
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They nodded.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
Ken said, “We’re here to get information. Not give it.”
“Okay,” I said. “Here’s the answer.” I rubbed my eyes. I reminded myself to talk slowly and take pauses. Silences wouldn’t kill me. “I don’t know who she was. But I know why she did it.” I felt them looking at me harder.
I explained in detail my affair with Professor Lyle, my attempts to have her professional deficiencies dealt with, my failed residency. I detailed her apparent campaign of revenge, right down to the bubble as a barrier, handing them the syringe of epinephrine as I did. They listened. Halfway through it Detective May started scribbling notes. They put on gloves before picking up the syringe. “It’s only got epinephrine in it.” I explained my “bioassay” in the dog lab.
“You put half the evidence into a dog?”
“Uh-huh.”
Will said to his partner, “I told you doctors think they know everything.” Ken nodded. “You doctors may know a lot, but you don’t know shit about criminal evidence.”
I nodded ruefully. “It seemed pretty important to know what was in the syringe. And it wasn’t really a criminal case. Yet.”
They smiled. Ken asked, “Couldn’t the bubble have come into the syringe after it was used on Henry?”
“Well, it’s possible. In theory,” I said. “But in reality it’s almost impossible. As it gets handled the incidental pressures that might move the plunger are always pushing it in, not pulling it out.”
He said, “Mmmm. Not exactly something you could use in court.”
I nodded. “There’s more, though,” I said. I explained exactly where in Henry’s chart they could find a sample of
“Robin’s” handwriting and directions to a certain mountain hideaway. Ken wrote it down. I gave them every detail of our drive up toward Globe, the adobe cabin, Mimi’s landmarks to find it, our confrontation, my ultimate escape, and where the bullet casings had fallen.
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They listened, but didn’t look excited. Ken scribbled some notes and rubbed his eyes. He repeated back to me for clarification the landmarks. “We’ll be checking it out.”
Borden said, “You said your ‘Robin’ drove an old Camaro?”
“Yeah.”
“Black?”
“I thought it was dark blue, but I only saw it the one night.”
“Because they found a black Camaro in the Salt River last night. Few miles out west of Tempe. Somebody saw the roof sticking out of the water. The river’s falling. Not much in it but mud. No papers. The plates, though, are registered to Robin Benoit.” He paused. “There was a leather jacket in the backseat.”
I stared at him. “My jacket?” I said.
“So it would seem. There were some notes from the Glory Hospital in the pocket. It’s in our evidence room,” Ken said.
“Caked with mud, but there’s still traces of blood smeared on it,” Will added. “Whoever your ‘Robin’ is, she’s very good at disappearing. No one who knew her has been able to give us a clue. Nothing from her phone bills or bank records, either. Just a chain of the normal type stuff that abruptly stopped five days ago. Though it was a really thin chain. Hardly any calls. No long distance. Not but about twenty-five checks written since the account was opened. And no final withdrawal, no forwarding address, no nothing.”
We sat and stared at each other.
I said, “Seems they thought of everything.”
May said, “Except the Nursing Board file.”
I looked from face to face. “So let me guess what got you to knock on my door so fast. I mean, she hadn’t been gone long when you guys paid me a visit.”
“No, she hadn’t,” Borden said, “but the doc in the ER said you were fighting. Said it sounded like you were threatening her. The nurse said you wanted directions to her house.”
“I wouldn’t have hurt her.”
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“Maybe not. But they don’t know that. And then
‘Robin’s’ neighbors hear crashes and swearing from her house, and write down the license plate of a Datsun that came and went in the night.”
I gave him a rueful smile.
Will smiled back. “I told you, when someone is reported missing we send a uniformed officer to the door. If there is no answer we gain entry, maybe break out a small window—they’re cheaper to repair than door jambs—then look around. In this case the Uniform didn’t find anything at first, but he thinks he’s a hotshot so he looks all around and finds blood under the bathroom sink. We went back with Foren-sics. They found traces of broken glass on the kitchen floor and traces of blood all over the kitchen and bathroom.”
Ken said, “The semen and spermicidal jelly on the sheets were good, too.”
I nodded again. “But no ‘toy box.’ ” I said.
“No. Whoever this phony ‘Robin’ is, she took her cash and contraceptives and left everything else there, even the money in her checking account. All to let suspicion fall on you.”
“So who’s the floater?” I asked.
“Don’t know yet.” A pause. “Like I said, those show up from time to time.”
“Are the breasts made of silicone?”
Will smiled. “No.”
“Not her,” I said.
“We didn’t think so.” A pause. “And the victim?” Borden asked. “The kid? Where is he?”
“In the morgue at Maricopa. He died today.”
He sighed. “I’m sorry.”
I said, “Yes. It’s really a tragedy. At least it’s over, though.”
After a few seconds I said, “I don’t want to sound stupid, but all this is pretty important to my future. It seems there’s been a murder. Is there any . . . Do you see any way there could be a case against Dr. Lyle?”
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May said to his partner, “You know, if we can find some evidence in the canyon—the gun and casings—we can tell the DA we’re getting the syringe analyzed. . . .”
Will said to me, “Sure, we’ll go look in the canyon. We’ll get the notes from the kid’s chart. We could go ask around the airport about our ‘Robin,’ but we don’t even have a picture of her. And we’ll go knock on Dr. Lyle’s door and see if she’s dumb enough to say the wrong thing.” He turned to Ken. “I’m going to say right here I am not looking forward to going to the DA for a warrant. With what we got now we can’t even call it a homicide. His death certificate probably says ‘asthma.’ All we have is the word of this ex-doctor who got trashed by his professor and now he thinks she’s out to get him.” He turned to me: “No disrespect intended, Dr. Ishmail.”
“DA might laugh us off the force,” Ken said.
Will said, “And if the DA can’t or won’t get us a warrant, we’ll have to be real polite to Dr. Lyle. Even if we do get one I’m going to bet she’s done a lot of housecleaning by the time we get there. There won’t be a thing that would lead us to ‘Nurse Robin.’ So we’ll do all the legwork, sure, but I’m betting it comes to a big goose egg. We’re not going to be able to do much unless we find ‘Robin.’ There’s a lot of room to hide in this country and you can bet the Mesa PD
ain’t going to be looking door-to-door.”
“But if I had left Dr. Lyle there to die?”
He thought for a few seconds. “Well, that would have made it all different, yes. We would have had to prove you did or didn’t plot to kill her. That would have been interesting, but I suspect the evidence would have backed you up.
We would have been proving your version of the events.
With the physical findings at the scene, the note in the chart, an automatic search warrant, and a condo she had not been able to ‘clean up,’ we might have found ‘Robin.’ I think the picture would probably have been at least filled out enough to clear you.”
May said, “And your not doing mouth-to-mouth resuscitation—not saving her—would not have been the same as LIE STILL
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killing her. In a self-defense situation there’s nothing says you have to go back and try to save the dying.”
A few weeks after Henry’s death, I called Detective Borden to see if they had uncovered anything that might help my case. Will described their search for the canyon with the adobe cabin. It took two days to find it. The day I told them about my “shoot-out” with Dr. Lyle, they asked a county deputy from Globe to go check it out. That night he reported back he couldn’t find it. The first landmark I gave them was the large green sign saying “Tonto National Forest.” Turns out there were several.
The next day they called an assistant ranger from the National Forest district office to help. He couldn’t get away until the day after that. They drove up and together found the right set of ruts and trailed down to the cabin. The assistant ranger said, “Shit, I remember hearing there was an old adobe down in here, but they told me it burnt down.”
Naturally there was no sign anyone had been there for a long, long time. No tracks, no gun, no bullet casings. Only wind.
Detective Borden said, “You know, Doctor, in your world, sometimes the patient dies. In ours, sometimes the bad guys get away.”
My reinstatement hearing at Providence of Glory Hospital actually went better than predicted. Sally Marquam and her Executive Committee had their private powwow over a catered dinner, then invited me in to tell my side of the Henry happenings.
Of course, the key witness against me, “Robin,” was not there. That was not the plus it might have been, though, since everyone there had heard the rumor that I had been suspected of killing her. I had no choice but full disclosure.
I handed out folders with a written synopsis of the events: Henry’s code and resuscitation, how “Robin” had done it, the evidence that “Robin” wasn’t Robin, and finally who had been behind it. I attached as appendices copies of the text material I had found at the Biomed Library and the jour-388
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nal articles about nefarious nurses. Last I included, as much for flavor as argument, photocopies of the cover page of the police file, replete with the file number. Unfortunately it was labeled “Missing Person,” not “Homicide.” While they were reading I picked at the food they gave me.
Mr. Schteichen, the CEO, maintained a look of incredulity through the whole thing. When they had all closed their folders, after a good long silence, he said, “I must say, Dr. Ishmail, I admire your chutzpah in trotting out this whole . . . tale.” He said it with a note of condescension. I took it to mean adios. The next day I began looking for work in Nebraska.
Two days later I got the call from Sally Marquam. Instead of dismissal, though, it was a conditional reinstatement. She said Dr. Cunningham had argued vehemently that his fellow physician be treated as innocent until proven guilty. He apparently bullied the others into agreement. I could not tell from Ms. Marquam’s telling whether Dr. Cunningham truly believed my version of the events or perhaps had some other reason for keeping me around.
Maybe as “Staff Raconteur.”
So I worked at Glory for another month. Then the administration signed an exclusive contract with the ER group that covered all of Tucson. I applied with them but they wanted nothing to do with me, answering politely that they had all their own folks lined up. I was left with hard-won clinical privileges at a hospital where a convenient business arrangement had me locked out.
My displacement was not quite complete, though. To this day I am licensed by the State of Arizona to practice within her borders as a physician and surgeon. For years I got to come back at intervals to meet with lawyers.
All of us expected a malpractice suit, so when I was served with the summons it was almost a relief. I expected a certain unity among the lawyers for my insurance company and those for the hospital, but it soon became clear I was seeing war dances done quietly with blandly painted wooden masks.
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I soon figured out the interpretation of the dance: First, I was just a sideshow. All the lawyers knew, especially Ted Priestly, that juries are far likelier to stick it to a faceless hospital than a struggling young doctor.
Second, when Priestly and his team found out about the open police file, albeit a thin one, the hospital, as the employer of the putative criminal, looked like easy pickings.
The hospital’s best defense, though, was the lack of any evidence of anything. Their strategy, then, was to wait, forever if possible.
I thought my side should settle up cheap while the lawyers were focused on other prey and get on with life, but my insurance people, too, wanted to wait. An administrator friend explained to me why: They like the interest they earn on money they keep in reserve for big potential payouts—money they would otherwise have to refund to their policyholders under an agreement with the state medical association. As long as this wrongful death suit was open, they would be justified in keeping $2 million—the upper limit of my policy—
in their very own FHA-backed home mortgage fund.
My lawyer, too, said that settling the matter would be crazy: First, he reminded me, I had not done a thing wrong.
The claim against me had absolutely no merit and should be energetically defended. Second, there was relative advan-tage in uncertainty: I was better off in the job market with an unsettled claim hanging out there than a history of having lost a case, even if we got out cheap.
For added flavor we had, snooping around the edges, the reporter from the Arizona Republic who had written the original story about Henry’s ER event. Not surprisingly he had been watching the public filings for Henry’s name. As soon as the suit was filed he began calling everyone involved, even me. He got a chorus of “No comment.” When the judge heard about it he issued a gag order, citing to the attorneys assembled before him the potential for a
“firestorm of innuendo” and making it clear any leaks would mean fines and jail time.
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the story “first broken by this newspaper” had come to legal action, that So-and-So had said “No comment,” So-and-So had said “No comment,” and the proceedings had been sealed by the judge. Since he didn’t know why they had been sealed, he could not generate even a whiff of legitimate implication. It was boring reading.
So no one was in any rush.
Except Daniel Mendoza and Ted Priestly. They wanted money, and waiting for an unspecified number of years had no appeal. The hospital people said they were happy to wait for the imaginary criminal to be brought forward. Compro-mise was inevitable. Ultimately the two parties negotiated a $1.1 million settlement from the hospital’s reserves.
