ColdScheme (21 page)

“Maybe if you had told me who you were, that shootout would
not have happened.”

“That’s what I worried about the most, that you would be
there—if and when it did.”

“I might have helped,” I maintained, feeling strangely
light, as if ten years had been sloughed off my body and mind.

“You would have played detective—alone.”

I swept our little group with my hand. “I am a detective and
I’m part of a team.”

“Experience.” He grinned at me.

I narrowed my eyes. “No,” I said. “Hardship. And you’re
right. I would have reacted as a detective. It would have been exciting.”

“No more excitement—at thirty-two?”

“The last thing that really excited me was when I threw a
People Finders’ agent out of my house at gunpoint,” I said and laughed.

“Call him back and apologize,” he advised, eyes glowing.

“No way. I didn’t like him that much.”

“I’ll go make coffee,” Ken said, struggling to get up, knees
wobbly.

“Sit down. We have work to do,” I told him. “Mrs. Tavalho
will make it. She probably has it ready. Jazz will be home any moment. I’ll
have to debrief her before I can get back to work.”

“What are we going to work on, now that I can’t concentrate?”
my partner asked.

“Patricia’s file. There’s got to be something buried there.
Something we can use—a clue.”

* * * * *

A state facility like Mongrove, with more than a thousand
patients in residence, had to be sufficiently staffed. The number of doctors may
have been less than what Patterson implied were needed but there were still one
hundred and seven doctors on staff, with another seventy paramedical and
caretaker staff in support functions. Perhaps this was skeletal staffing but I
felt that the Chief Resident of such a large facility should confine his duties
to administering personnel and functions, rather than having patients of his
own. Joe insisted that our prime suspect was a doctor and Patterson’s age and
behavior bothered me enough to assign him the number one slot on my empty list
of suspects.

“Did Patterson give you an impression that Patricia was his
patient?” I looked at my companions. When they nodded, I continued. “How can a
Chief Resident, in charge of such a large facility, afford to look after
individual patients—and more important, why would he?”

“Quigley is the Chief of Hopkins Neurosurgery and he has
patients, private ones as well,” Ken said.

“Quigley’s unit doesn’t have one thousand patients,” I
pointed out. “He may oversee a staff of ten, twenty doctors—tops. Patterson has
one hundred and seven doctors to take care of the patients. Why not assign
Patricia’s case to one of them, why look after her personally?”

“Chief Resident doctors of any facility are normally
administrators,” Field said. “From my only meeting with the doctor, Patterson
struck me as someone who likes to keep his hand in field work, on the ground
level.”

I thought so too but then there was that youthful hairstyle
and a face that I felt had yet to see wrinkles. It was possible that the man
was vain and opted for cosmetic surgery but what would a psychiatrist, indeed
specialist, like Patterson have to gain by looking young? His qualifications
got him the job at Mongrove, not his appearance. He said as much when he glibly
illustrated how he got the job during our first visit. Patterson was very well
acquainted with Patricia’s case. So well, in fact, that he didn’t bother
passing us on to one of his doctors but conducted both interviews in person.
Then there was another glib explanation he gave me when I asked about the
patient who reminded me of Brenda. He knew her case in depth, gave me the kind
of details that an administrator shouldn’t know. His answer was also
well-tailored to apply to Ken and Brenda’s case. Was Patterson somehow
well-prepared for our visit? Did someone alert him, even provided personal
details on us? If that was the case then whoever alerted Patterson knew us and
on a very personal level. Even as I had listened to Patterson’s explanation I
felt he was laughing at us—laughing at Ken. Was someone toying with us right
from the start of this bizarre case? Was I reaching because we had no suspects?
Or was Patterson indeed a “bright boy” who knew case histories of one thousand
patients interned in his facility, in detail? It was possible but highly
improbable.

Daniel Kane’s words kept returning to haunt me, like the
Phantom of the Opera.

“Patricia died as a result of an accident,” I said. “How
many accidental deaths do you think there were in Mongrove these last four
years?”

Ken flipped out his cell phone and began dialing.

“Who are you calling?” I was surprised to see him so
reactionary.

“Joe.”

“Why?” I was dumbfounded.

“He’s the medical examiner. Bodies from state facilities end
up in his morgue.” He waved at me to be silent since he’d already heard a voice
in the receiver.

Five minutes later, Ken was staring into space, holding a
private séance.

“What did Joe say?” I didn’t want to wait to see whether he
was successful in summoning the spirit.

“He remembers Patricia. She’s a recent case. No autopsy.
Social services said it wasn’t necessary—a result of an accidental fall, broken
neck. He can’t recall any other cases that had ended up in his morgue that came
from Mongrove. He said if a psychiatric patient dies while interned in the
facility, either of natural causes or as a result of accident, the family is
notified and they look after the arrangements. He only gets those cases that
social services look after. Patricia was one of them, no relatives to notify.
He wanted to know what we’re up to.”

“We’ll drop by soon to visit him,” I murmured, still
fighting that lingering echo of Kane’s words, “Certainly, Detective. But would
it be safe?” Joe had involved himself in this case from the start far more than
I felt was comfortable for a pathologist to be involved. I worried that if the
homicidal genius was indeed among his colleagues in Hopkins and Joe found out
his identity, he’d precipitate a confrontation that might not see him live to
walk around his automated morgue, tossing chicken bones around. I also didn’t
want Joe to know that we suspected Patterson of being the evil mastermind.

“Unless Mattis finds something else on Dr. Patterson, we
can’t bring him in for questioning. Hopkins’ medical staff is already on the warpath.
I’m sure there are plenty of angry doctors who wouldn’t balk at talking to the
media. Police are harassing the medical specialists to cover their
incompetence,” Field said.

Media were already camped out in Hopkins and I feared
another altercation between Hopkins doctors and Joe that would receive much
publicity.

Daniel Kane had told us that Patricia saw Brick delivering a
gurney with a dead body. Kane doubted whether the man pushing the gurney had
been Brick but he didn’t doubt what Patricia told him she saw.

“All right,” I nodded. “Let’s check something out.” It was
my turn to make a phone call.

“Mr. Kane,” I said when I heard his voice, “it’s Detective
Stanton. I’m calling from my cell phone and my scrambler is plugged in. How’s
yours?” I heard his chuckle and then he asked me to hold on. When he came back,
he confirmed that his line was secure also.

“Were there any accidents at Mongrove during the time you
were there?” I asked. He was silent for a long time but I heard his breathing.
“It’s all right, Mr. Kane. We’re just checking, or I should say I’m trying to
validate a theory. Patricia is dead. She fell into a manhole in the laundry
facility. She escaped through a laundry chute, the night of the full moon and
fell into an open maintenance hole.”

“Your visit to the facility must have precipitated it,” he
said. He expressed exactly what I feared and had been avoiding.

“Probably.” I knew he would hear the undercurrent of
frustration and regret in my voice.

“Most patients in that facility are not coherent,” he said.
I knew he was trying to be as factual as possible, without airing his theories.

“But some can communicate. You were most likely one of the
few patients who not only understood but also was able to observe what went
on.”

“There were four patients in the nine months I was there,
who disappeared, though that’s just my opinion. I’m sure that would not be the
official report by the facility’s administration. Patients die, especially in
medical facilities. Some of natural causes, some due to harm or accidents. Four
male patients, between ages thirty and forty, vanished from that facility while
I was there.”

“How do you know they just didn’t check out?”

“I’d noticed these particular men. All were catatonic,
non-verbal. I approached one and tested his awareness. He was able to mumble
but not focus on any particular thing for long. He was always in the lounge. I
never saw anyone working with him. No one ever came to take him for a session.
I wondered about that. I noticed there were three others like him. No one
worked with these patients. Not the staff doctors and not their private
psychiatrists. I concluded they had no relatives, no one to appeal their case
and insist on better care.”

“Is that sort of thing unusual?” I asked. We needed more to
go after Patterson than negligence or lack of competence when it came to
directing and overseeing his staff.

He snorted softly into the phone. “Not really. In a State
facility, that sort of thing happens often enough when there’s not enough
medical staff. My own psychiatrist attended me four times a week. I noticed the
same level of care with quite a few other patients. Patricia was another
abandoned case, though I saw her taken away for rehab sessions. After I’d been
there four months, this male patient, his name was Henry, stopped coming to the
lounge. I asked the orderlies what happened to him. They said he had a heart
attack. A month later, another one of those three remaining patients stopped
coming to the lounge. I asked once again. The orderlies said he passed away in
his sleep. By the time I signed myself out of the facility, the other two were
also gone.”

“Mr. Kane, if they died of natural causes—and you said
that’s not unusual in any medical facility—why would you think they had
disappeared?” I felt something was missing here.

“Because three weeks before I left the Mongrove, a couple
came in, surprise visitors. They were Henry’s uncle and aunt, missionaries, who
had just returned from an overseas assignment. I was in the lounge, resting,
pretending to be dozing. The Chief Resident doctor activated the wall screen
and showed them Henry—well cared for. It was an old tape. Henry’s relatives
left happy that he was being so well cared for.”

“Thank you, Mr. Kane,” I said, chills running down my spine.

“I’m sorry about Patricia. I always felt she was a hostage,
not a patient,” he said and hung up.

I told my partners what Kane had said.

“Experimenting on psychiatric patients to get the implant
device just right?” Ken murmured, examining this possibility and finding it as
frightening as I did.

“We still don’t have enough to go calling with a warrant,”
Field said.

“Probably not. And even if we started an investigation into
those four disappearances, we’d only alert Patterson and his accomplices. I’m
pretty sure they’re closing down their Baltimore operations. If we spook them,
they’d do it faster, covering their tracks, destroying all the evidence.”

An hour later, when I checked my email, I found Nancy
Bassiano’s list of regular customers who were designated VIPs and merited
transport in a Creeslow limo. Felix Kim’s name was on top of the list. I wasn’t
sure whether Nancy had slotted him as number one because Ken specifically asked
about him, or whether Kim was such a regular customer he fitted that slot. If
latter were the case, then Felix Kim was probably number one target and the
rest of the people on the list weren’t of interest to Creeslow operators.
Still, we had three murders and a suspicious death at a psychiatric facility. I
forwarded the list to Bourke, giving him details what it was about. It would be
his call how to contact those nine customers without setting off another wave
of panic in the population. Bourke called ten minutes after I sent the email.

“I’ll send a patrol officer with a public health
representative to visit each of the nine citizens,” Bourke said. “We’ll be
following up on a report of a contagious disease at the travel agency. We’ll
make sure the customers understand that it’s just a routine precaution,
according to the public health agency protocol.”

I concurred, thanked him and hung up before he asked for an
update report.

Two days later, I went to see Joe in Hopkins. Ken refused to
accompany me, since it was going to be a semi-business meeting, a lunch, in the
garden room—with Brenda to complete the happy threesome. Field went to network
with his agents, though that’s not how I put it. He said I was getting to be
very cynical, for someone who had not yet crossed the fine line that divided
youth from the middle-aged pit.

“Joe, is it possible for a psychiatrist to have the kind of
expertise that would allow him to perform neurosurgery, cranial implants?” I
asked, when we gave our food orders. I made it come out like a general
question, with no particular focus in mind. I should have known better.

“You’re angling on to this Patterson fellow?” He took the
shortest path to the source of my curiosity, as always. His shoulders were
exceptionally well squared, his head was thrust forward in anticipation of
challenge and his face sported a foxy smile, one I hadn’t seen too
often—actually, never. I traced the target of that smile and stifled a sigh,
feeling sorry for my partner. Brenda pretended to be immune to our medical
examiner’s charm but I saw the corners of her mouth twitch with amusement.
Well, most women liked to be admired, regardless of what other relationship
commitments they had.