'It's important.'
'Hold on, please.'
Moments later: 'Dr Gold wants to know what it's about?'
'Ernadine Murphy was murdered.'
'Oh. Hold on, please.'
Longer wait, this time. The same man came on the line. 'Dr Gold will be free at noon. You can come by then.'
The office was a sand-colored bungalow next to a Fiat mechanic. A black plastic sign to the right of the door said:
Vrinda Srinivasan, M.D. Hannah R. Gold, M. PH., M.D.
Angela B. Borelli, M.D.
Internal Medicine, Obstetrics-Gynecology,
Women's Health Issues
I arrived at noon, but Dr Gold wasn't free. Three patients sat in the waiting room - two elderly women and a starving girl around fifteen. All of them looked up as I entered. The kid kept staring until my smile made her frown in disgust and she returned to picking her cuticles.
Small, overheated waiting room, furnished with clean but faded castoffs. Framed photos of Machu Picchu and Nepal and Angkor Wat hung on the walls. Enya sang sweetly on tape.
A handwritten sign taped to the reception counter said:
We take Medi-Cal from you -
and sometimes we even get paid by the State.
Cash won't be refused - pay what you can, or
don't worry about it.
No glass blocking the reception area, just a cramped space occupied by a young man in his early twenties with neatly cut, prematurely gray hair. He pored over Principles of Accounting as if it were a thriller. A name tag on his plaid, short-sleeved shirt read ELI.
When I stepped up, he put the book down reluctantly.
'I'm Dr Delaware.'
'She's running late.' He lowered his voice: 'She's very upset by what I told her. You might not be able to tell, but she is. She's my sister.'
Twenty-five minutes later, all three patients were gone, and Eli announced he was going to lunch.
'She'll be right out,' he said, tucking the textbook under his arm and leaving the bungalow.
Five minutes after that, a woman in a buttoned white coat stepped into the waiting room, holding a medical chart. Young face, foxlike, the kind of bronze skin that glows naturally. Not much older than thirty but her thick, brushy, shoulder-length hair was snow-white. Genetics; Eli would get there soon. She had pale, green eyes that could've used some rest.
'I'm Dr Gold.' She held out a hand, gripped my fingers defensively, the way delicately boned women learn to do so as not to be crushed. Her skin was dry and cold.
'Thanks for meeting with me.'
The sea-colored eyes were down-slanted, wide, and curious. Broad mouth, strong, square chin. An exceedingly handsome woman.
She locked the waiting-room door, sat down on a worn, olive green, herringbone chair that matched nothing else in the room, crossed her legs. Beneath the white coat, she wore black jeans and gray boots. Enya's voice mourned in Gaelic.
'What happened to Erna?' she said.
I gave her the basics.
'Oh, my. And you're here because... ?'
'I consult to the police. They asked me to talk to you.'
'Meaning the murder has psychological overtones as opposed to a dumb street crime.'
'Hard to say, at this point,' I said. 'How well did you know her?'
'You don't really know someone like Erna. I saw her a few times.'
'Here or at Dove House?'
'Once there, twice here.'
'She returned after your emergency call to the shelter.'
'I gave her my card,' she said. 'I was shocked to find out she'd actually kept it.' She flipped the chart open. Inside was a single page. Upside down, I made out small, neat handwriting. 'Both times were drop-ins. The first was a little over two weeks after I saw her at Dove House. Her anal fissures had started bleeding again, and she was complaining of pain. It didn't surprise me. All I'd done the first time was a superficial exam. Someone like that, you can only imagine what's going on internally. I urged her to get scoped, offered to arrange it for
free at County. She refused, so I gave her salve and analgesics and the basic lecture on hygiene - not laid on too thickly. You have to know your audience.'
'Know what you mean,' I said. 'I trained at Western Peds.'
'Really?' she said. 'I did my training at County but rotated through W.P. Do you know Ruben Eagle?'
'I know him well.'
We exchanged names, places, other petty commonalities, then Hannah Gold's face turned grave. "The second time I saw Erna was a lot more alarming. It was at night. She burst in here just as I was closing up. The staff had gone home and I was turning off the lights and the door opened and there she was, waving her hands, really out of sorts. Then her eyes got a panicked look and she reached out.'
She shuddered. 'She wanted physical comfort. I'm afraid I stepped away from her. She was a big woman, my reflexive response was fear. She gave me this look, just collapsed on the floor in tears. I eased her to her feet, brought her back to my office. She was muscularly rigid and babbling incoherently. I'm not a psychiatrist, I didn't want to fool with Thorazine or anything else heavy. Calling Emergency Services would have been a betrayal - I no longer felt threatened. She was pathetic, not dangerous.'
She closed the chart. 'I gave her an IM injection of Valium and some herb tea, sat there with her for - had to be almost an hour. Finally, she calmed down. If she hadn't, I would have called the EMTs.'
'Any idea what had upset her?'
'She wouldn't say. Got extremely quiet - almost mute.
Then she apologized for bothering me and insisted on leaving.'
'Almost mute?'
'She answered simple yes-or-no questions about non-threatening topics. But nothing about what had brought her to the office or her physical problems. I wanted to check her out physically, but she'd have none of that. Yet, she kept apologizing - lucid enough to know she'd been inappropriate. I suggested she return to Dove House. She said that was a dandy idea. Those were her exact words. "That's a dandy idea, Dr Gold!" When she said it she was almost... perky. She'd do that, turn cheerful without warning. But it was an upsetting cheerfulness - overwrought. Using phrases that were... too refined for the context.'
'The people at Dove House felt she'd been well
educated.' Hannah Gold thought about that. 'Or faking it.'
'What do you mean?'
'Haven't you seen psychotics do that? They latch on to phrases and spit them back - like autistic children.'
'Was that your sense of Erna?'
She compressed her lips. 'I really can't claim to have a sense of her.' The down-slanted eyes narrowed. 'Do you have any idea who did this to her?'
'It could be someone she trusted. Someone who used
her.'
'Sexually?'
'Was she sexually active?'
'Not in the classic sense,' she said.
'What do you mean?'
She licked her lips. 'When I examined her, her vaginal
area was raw, and she had body lice and old scars -fibrosed lesions. Those are things you expect in a street person. But then I did a pelvic and couldn't believe what I found. Her hymen was intact. She was still a virgin. Women on the street get used in the worst ways imaginable. Erna was a big woman, but a violent man - a group of men - could've subdued her. I find the fact that she was never entered remarkable.'
Unless her companion had no interest in heterosexual intercourse.
'Her genital area was raw,' I said. 'She could've been assaulted without being penetrated.'
'No,' she said, 'this was more like poor hygiene. There were no lacerations, no trauma of any sort. And she didn't get upset when I checked her out. Just the opposite. Stoic. As if she was totally cut off from that part of her.'
I said, 'When she was lucid - refined - what did she talk about?'
'The first time she was here I got her to talk about things she liked, and she started going on about art. How it was the best thing in the world. How artists were gods. She could name painters - French, Flemish, artists I've never heard of. For all I know, she made them up. But they sounded authentic'
'Did she ever mention friends or family?'
'I tried to ask her about her parents, where she was from, where she went to school. She didn't want to talk about that. The only thing she admitted to was a cousin. A really smart cousin. He liked art, too. She seemed to be proud of that. But that's all she'd say about him.'
'Him,' I said. 'A male cousin.'
'That's my recollection.' She shook her head. 'It's been a while. You said someone she trusted might've abused her. There really is a cousin? I assumed it was all delusion.'
'I haven't heard of one,' I said. 'The police are thinking she might've been lured by someone she knew. When did her two visits take place?'
She consulted the chart. Erna Murphy's first drop-in had been five months ago. The second had taken place on a Thursday, two days before Baby Boy's murder.
'The cousin,' she said. 'She talked about him as if she was really impressed. If I'd known...'
'No reason to know.'
'Spoken like a true psychologist. When I was in med school I dated a psychologist.'
'Nice guy?'
'Terrible guy.' She suppressed a yawn. 'Excuse me! Sorry, I'm bushed. And that's really all I can tell you.'
'Kissing cousin,' said Milo, by cell phone.
'Nothing beyond kissing.' I gave him the results of Erna Murphy's pelvic exam.
'Last virgin in Hollywood. If it wasn't so pathetic...' He was on his cell, calling from the car, reception fading in and out.
'More like virgin sacrifice,' I said. 'She was used and discarded.'
'Used for what?'
'Good question.'
'Theorize.'
'Adoration, submissiveness - listening to his fantasies. Running chores - as in scoping out murder scenes and
reporting back. An asexual relationship is consistent with Kevin's being gay. The interest in art drew them together. Maybe she called him her cousin because he represented her surrogate family. She refused to say a word about her real family.'
'Or,' he said, 'Kevin's really her cousin.'
'That, too,' I said. 'Red hair, just like his mother.' I laughed.
'Hey, sometimes it helps not to be too brilliant.'
'How would you know?' I said.
'Pshaw. No luck on Erna's folks, yet. Stahl's working with the military. But guess what: Kevin's Honda showed up. Inglewood PD tow yard. Parked illegally, it got hauled in two days ago.'
'Inglewood,' I said. 'Near the airport?'
'Not far. I'm heading there as we speak. Gonna flash Kevin's picture at the airline desks, see if anyone remembers him.'
'You're canvassing LAX by yourself?'
'No, me and my baby Ds, but it's still a needle in the proverbial you-know-what. The Honda's being transferred to our motor lab, but it's been pawed over pretty thoroughly. What finding it does, though, is firm up Kev as our bad boy. He did bad things, found out we were asking about him, cut town. There were no trophies in his pad because he took them.' His voice was engulfed by static. '... any ideas about which airline to start with?'
'Check with Passport Control and eliminate foreign flights.'
'My first stop,' he said, 'not that it's gonna be a snap, those guys love paperwork. Let's assume domestic, though. Where would you begin?'
'Why not Boston?' I said. 'He's been there before. Enjoyed the ballet.'
Eric Stahl spent two days dealing with the various branches of the United States armed forces. Thousands of Donald Murphys in the Social Security files. Military service would winnow it down, but Pentagon pencil pushers weren't spitting out the information without putting him through the usual.
The fact that he knew the sublanguage made it a little easier.
How he felt about the military was another thing.
He'd started with Erna's mother, first, because Colette was a less common name. One hundred eighteen SSI records with forty-three fitting the approximate age range. He began with the Western states, came up empty. Wondering all the while if this chasing down Erna was fruitless, even if he found her family.
Even so; he'd do what he was told.
He worked his way east, found a Colette Murphy in Saint Louis whose evasive tone and repeated denials made him wonder. From her accent Stahl guessed a black woman. He didn't ask. You didn't do that anymore.
