Critical Conditions, page 27
He parked diagonally across the street from a huge house that had been squeezed onto its lot by a giant’s shoehorn. Sam killed his engine and doused the lights.
He pointed at the big stucco house with the faux Spanish railings and said, “Why do I think I would have liked better whatever house was here before somebody scraped it off and knocked down all the trees and built that monster?”
I said, “I don’t know, but you’re probably right. It certainly doesn’t fit in the neighborhood.” Given how distrustful I was of his mood, at that moment I probably would have agreed with him even if he was contending that Darwin was full of shit.
Sam grew silent.
I was anxious. I said, “Given their meeting tonight, this might be a good time to tell me about Sherry and Brenda, Sam. I may need to know.”
He made a noise with his throat before he said, “First time they’ve talked in, what, shit, how old is Merritt?”
“Fifteen.”
“Maybe sixteen years, then. Merritt’s important because Merritt’s father, her biological father, the oil-rig guy? He was actually Sherry’s fiancé before…well-”
“Oh.”
“Sherry says Brenda seduced him, stole him, whatever. Brenda would probably say different. Doesn’t matter now. Whatever it was, it was goofy, right?”
I digested the news. “That’s it?”
“That’s it. What can I say? Sherry holds a grudge. I’ve tried to tell her that the consolation prize wasn’t so bad.”
“You mean Simon, of course.”
“Funny, Alan.” Sam’s voice shifted an octave lower. It busted into my reverie. “Homeowner’s name across the way is Terence Gusman, Dr. Terence Gusman. Ring a bell?”
“Nope.”
“You’re sure?”
I thought about the name some more. “Yes, I’m sure. Don’t know him.”
Sam pondered something before he said, “He’s one of the suspects that the Denver PD liked for the threats and harassment of Brenda after the recycling story.”
“Ahh.”
He sighed. “Don’t be arrogant, Alan. You’re still ignorant. You don’t have a clue why I brought you here, do you?”
I knew I couldn’t rely on his improved demeanor to have a half-life of more than five minutes. “No, Sam, I don’t.”
“Then shut up and let me educate you.”
“Excuse me.” I tried to keep the sarcasm from my voice. I wasn’t sure how much more of his attitude I was going to put up with. He was already receiving a lot of slack from me for his family crisis, but the account he was rapidly using up wasn’t infinite.
“Turns out that dear Dr. Gusman is the twin brother of that woman who had the heart attack while she watched her husband hanging himself from the rafters in their garage. Remember that story? Mayor of what-Northglenn?-I don’t know, tries to kill himself after Brenda links him to the recycling scandal, his wife has a coronary when she finds him hanging from the rafters? He lives, she dies.”
“I remember the story. Ugly. I suppose it certainly gives Dr. Gusman a gold-plated reason to be angry at Brenda.”
“Yes, does that. Establishes motive. That’s always important to me. Motive.”
“You talked to him yet? Gusman?”
“No. That wouldn’t be kosher. My role’s a little unofficial on this.”
“Are the Denver cops sure that he was the person who was threatening Brenda?”
“He looked good when they interviewed him. But they have no plans to charge him. So they’re not that sure. The guy was careful. And the threats and the incidents have ended. It’s back-burner time as far as they’re concerned.”
“What do you think?”
Sam nodded at the house and, as though Dr. Gusman was standing in the front yard, said, “I like him.”
“Any reason in particular?”
“I checked out his background. Sometimes backgrounds tell you things. Knowing people’s histories, you know. Kind of like your work, in a way. Anyway, know what kind of doc he is?”
“Oh, shit, Sam. He’s not one of Chaney’s doctors, is he?”
“Not to worry. He was a general practitioner, but he doesn’t practice right now. He was disciplined by the state medical board after the Denver Post ran a series of articles accusing him of sexual improprieties with three female patients. Two female members of his own office staff even gave affidavits supporting parts of the women’s accusations.”
Now I recalled the news reports. “I remember something. This was a while ago, right?”
“June of ’87. He blamed the whole thing on the media. Said the charges were groundless, that the women made it all up. Disgruntled employees. You know how the denials go, you could probably write the lyrics.”
“Did he lose his license?”
“Please. State medical board taking away a license? Of course not, had his wrist slapped. He gave up his practice, though, decided to do other things.”
“So Dr. Gusman has a predisposition to distrust media people in general, and he has a particular reason to dislike Brenda?”
“‘Dislike’?”
“How about ‘hate’?”
“Better word. You could say hate.”
“What does he do now?”
Sam hesitated until I looked over at him. He had a piercing, amused look on his face that reminded me of how my dog gets when she’s sure she’s about to corral a squirrel. The difference is that Emily never gets her squirrel, Sam rarely misses his.
“Dr. Terence Gusman’s new line of work is in administration…what he does is he chairs the medical evaluation review board at MedExcel.”
I almost chuckled at the utter simplicity of the news. “This is the french fry you’ve been looking for? You found it, didn’t you?”
He nodded. “It’s one of them. But all along, I’ve been working under the assumption that this meal has at least two truant french fries.”
“Go on.”
“In case you’re having difficulty counting, I have two nieces in trouble, Alan. Finding Dr. Gusman may help me influence Chaney’s situation. It’s not going to do shit for Merritt’s. I still feel compelled to goose that one as far as I can.”
“What are you going to do about Gusman?”
“I just put the pieces together a couple of hours ago and I’ve been thinking about how to proceed. Time is of the essence, right? And I think things might go better for Chaney if I give MedExcel a chance to do the right thing. For the time being, leave me, and law enforcement in general, out of it, you know. So I think I’m going to need a doctor to act as a go-between with MedExcel. Perhaps encourage them to see that they have a potential public relations crisis brewing and that it may be in their best interest to make a small humanitarian gesture, if you know what I mean.”
“Sam, I’d love to help, but I can’t. Not while I’m treating Chaney’s sister.”
He seemed to find my refusal amusing. “Not you, asshole. I’m looking for a real doctor. I was thinking one of Chaney’s doctors might help. I was going to approach them tonight when things calmed down at the hospital.”
I didn’t think it was wise to get them mixed up in this during an acute medical crisis. I suggested an alternative. “What about Adrienne? You know, my urologist friend? She treated Merritt. She knows the family, the whole situation. I bet she’d love to do it. And Adrienne’s as Machiavellian as they come.”
“She’s dating Maitlin, isn’t she?”
I wasn’t sure what that had to do with anything, and I wasn’t exactly sure how to answer that question. “Kind of,” I said.
Sam was smiling. “You know, it’s not a bad idea. She’s relentless. She’s smart. I’d like to have a ticket to that meeting. Maybe she’d record it for me, you think?”
I stared across the street at Dr. Gusman’s front door and wondered whose idea it had been to paint it the color of cantaloupe flesh. “Sam, it’s possible that Robilio had nothing to do with any of this, isn’t it?”
“You mean that he was an innocent bystander?”
“I guess.”
“That health insurance policy he’s selling to the masses is like a car with a busted airbag. Works fine except in the most dire of emergencies. I wouldn’t exactly call him innocent.”
“But I mean, in terms of the refusal to grant the procedure for Chaney? You’re thinking that Gusman engineered that, not Robilio?”
“Looks that way. But Robilio could’ve overruled the medical board. I checked. He’s a physician, too. And he ran the company like an ayatollah. He could’ve approved it if he wanted to.”
“This changes things. Makes me wonder about other things I haven’t given much thought to.”
“Yeah? Such as?”
I said, “That day, before the hockey game, at his house. How confused everybody was. You know, Scott Truscott said the scene was a puzzle, so did Mitchell Crest. You’ve been perplexed, too. And the note we found on the computer? I haven’t thought about it much since we found the bloody clothes in Merritt’s room.”
“I think I hear the rustling sounds of someone digging around for that other french fry.”
“Is there any way you can get me a copy of Dead Ed’s suicide note? And a copy of the post?”
He laughed deeply. “Now you’re thinking. You know, I was wondering when you were going to actually begin to act intelligent about all this. Maybe the time has come. I hope so.”
“Well, when can I see the note? And the autopsy?”
“The autopsy report won’t be done for a few weeks. But I have a copy of Malloy’s notes from his meeting with the coroner. I think they’re in the backseat somewhere. While I’m looking for them, why don’t you see if you can track down your conspiratorial little urologist friend for me. Go ahead, use my phone.”
Thirty-two
Sam parked his car in the same fire zone spot in front of the main entrance to the hospital. He was still on the phone with Adrienne.
I wasn’t quite done reading the loose sheets of paper he had given me. From what I could discern from eavesdropping on their conversation, they were role-playing what Adrienne was going to say to the powers at MedExcel to blackmail them into transporting Chaney to Seattle by, let’s say, tomorrow morning. Sam offered Adrienne a few juicy tidbits from his investigation that she could use as sweeteners if they were needed in her argument.
I suspected they wouldn’t be needed. A few minutes earlier, when I had reached Adrienne on Sam’s phone and told her what was up, she was an eager volunteer. She’d made it clear that her strategy would be to plot a devastating ambush on MedExcel, not engage them in a protracted battle. She would be attacking this surgically, as though it were a particularly aggressive bladder cancer.
The notes that I was reading had been taken by the lead detective, Scott Malloy, during an informal interview with Boulder’s coroner, a forensic pathologist. I knew from experience that the findings were preliminary.
Edward Robilio had undiagnosed coronary artery disease and an enlarged prostate. He had multiple polyps in his large intestine and an ingrown toenail on his left foot that was so inflamed it must have made his last few walks around the block pretty painful.
What killed him-the cause of death-were two gunshot wounds, the first “of chest” that missed his heart and major vessels, but clipped his lung and chipped some bone in the spinal column. The wound was, according to the coroner’s assessment, of “vital reaction,” likely a slow but persistent bleeder. In the coroner’s opinion, without competent and timely emergency care, that first wound alone would have eventually been fatal to Dr. Robilio.
The second gunshot wound was “of head,” specifically, a bullet entered Ed’s face just left of his nose and exited, along with a chunk of skull the size of an apricot, behind his left ear. This shot clipped major vessels, turned gray matter into jello and was fatal within minutes.
No surprises.
A copy of the death certificate was stapled to Malloy’s notes. I searched for the coroner’s opinion on manner of death. This category is not the “why” of dying-that’s cause of death. Manner of death is about motivation or intent. Manner of death is the “how” of dying-whether by suicide, homicide, accident, or disease. And with this death certificate on Dr. Robilio, the Boulder coroner was telling his undoubtedly unhappy compatriots in the police department and district attorney’s office that the manner of death on this one was still too close to call. The words were, “Pending further investigation.”
The coroner could rule out accident. He could rule out disease. He could even rule out act of God. But he couldn’t rule out either suicide or homicide. Those manners of death were still on the table.
Malloy’s notes were comprehensive. The gunshots had both been fired from close range, estimated at one to three inches, consistent with suicide, and at angles not inconsistent with either suicide or homicide. Gunshot residue and trace metal detection tests were positive for the victim’s shirt, face, torso, hair, and shoulders. But the victim’s right hand-Dead Ed was right-handed-was so drenched by his own blood that the tests done on it for trace metals were inconclusive. Dr. Robilio’s wounds may have been self-inflicted; there was nothing to indicate he wasn’t holding the gun.
And from a forensic pathology perspective there was nothing to indicate that he was holding the gun.
The coroner raised two other points that Malloy labeled “subjective impressions.” The first was that the deceased may have been so debilitated by the first wound that he would have been physically incapable of firing the second shot, which would indicate homicide, not suicide. And second, psychological data from coroner’s assistant interviews with family and business associates provided no prodromal signs of acute depression or presuicidal activity other than the typed suicide note.
The second document that Sam gave me complicated everything I had just read. It was that typed suicide note, printed out from Ed Robilio’s tiny computer. The note was addressed to no one and was oddly formal in tone. The structure reminded me of a business memo. The note asked that Beth be thanked for her partnership and for bearing their beautiful children. The note expressed sorrow for what Robilio had done and what he hadn’t done. It left instructions on where to find some financial documents that Beth might need.
It was unsigned.
Sam held up the phone and said, “I’m done here. You need to talk to Adrienne anymore?”
“Uh, no. Would you ask her to take care of Emily for me?”
He closed up his phone and said, “She already did. After she turns you in to Dumb Friends, she’s going to start making those calls to MedExcel.”
“Good, Sam. You did a remarkable job in putting this together. You going to tell Brenda and John?”
“You kidding? Why?”
“You’re right, they don’t need to know.”
He recognized my distraction. “So what’s troubling you?”
I held the papers up off my lap. “What is it with Dead Ed? Suicide or homicide?”
“Heads or tails?”
“They really don’t know?”
“Here’s the problem with the suicide theory: Do you know what percentage of suicides use two shots to kill themselves? It’s like one in googoolplux.”
“Googoolplux?”
“It’s Simon’s word for bigger than infinity. And then there’s the little problem of where the hell did the gun go afterwards? I don’t think he drove it over to Merritt’s house in his RV.”
“But the note is good, Sam. It isn’t a garden-variety forgery. No adolescent could write it.”
“No, it’s not. So, if it’s a forgery, it’s a good forgery. One written by somebody with some knowledge, you know. It’s like a note that someone like you, maybe a psychologist type, might write.”
Sam was leaving tracks in the sand. “You’re thinking John Trent?”
“You could do it, right?”
I shrugged. I could do it. So could Sam.
“He could write it, too, then.”
This wasn’t making sense. “Why wouldn’t Robilio have fought back? The gun was so close to him.” I ruffled through the papers with the autopsy impressions on them. The coroner apparently reported no signs of struggle, no defensive wounds.
“Speculation? I’d guess he was paralyzed by the fact that there was a gun two inches from his chest. By the time the second shot was fired he was already too gorked to notice the damn gun was pointing at his face.”
“Let’s go back to motive, Sam. What good does it do Trent? So Robilio’s dead? That isn’t going to help Chaney. May even hurt her.”
“I’m not arguing for a rational state of mind. Rage and retribution are good motives. That’s sufficient at this stage of my thinking.”
“Is that how you’re putting this together? You think Trent went nuts, killed Robilio, and staged everything else?”
He turned suddenly and I tensed. His voice had the chilled hiss of compressed air. “You know something that should make me think otherwise?”
I considered what he was asking. “You won’t misinterpret my answer, Sam?”
“I’ll certainly try not to.”
“No, I don’t know anything that should make you think otherwise. But,” I paused for emphasis, “I have to wonder whether you think he’s ruthless enough to set his stepdaughter up to take the fall.”
“Should I be thinking that he’s that ruthless?”
I reminded myself to be careful. “Cold enough to trade his stepdaughter for his daughter? I think Trent would donate both his lungs to save Chaney. But-gut feeling now, okay?-I don’t think Trent would sacrifice Merritt to save her.”
“So how did the bloody clothes get under her bed? How did the gun end up in her bathroom?”
“Maybe she put them there, Sam.”
“Merritt?”
I shrugged.
“Or…Brenda?” he said.
Did he know something about Brenda? I certainly didn’t, so I didn’t respond to his question. Merritt’s revelations about her visit to Dr. Robilio’s house were hovering close by. I didn’t want to break that trust. “Where did they find the fingernail, Sam? Merritt’s broken nail?”
