Prayers for the Dead (15 page)

“I don’t know, ma’am.” Decker leaned in close. “You wouldn’t have any thoughts about it, would you?”

“Why no!” Tara looked down. “Well, I have thoughts. But they don’t mean anything.”

“Tell them to me anyway.”

She started to talk, stopped, then bunched her facial muscles in concentration. “Well… to me, it sounds like… maybe he picked up the wrong person.”

Decker looked around the room. “What do you mean by ‘picked up’?”

“Like a motorist who he thought needed help. But the motorist was really a robber. Isn’t that a possibility?”

Decker slipped out his notebook. “Have you ever known Dr. Sparks to pick up people?”

“Not hitchhikers. But he was a take-charge kind of man. And he was a
doctor
.”

“Meaning?”

Tara dropped her voice even further. “Let’s say he thought he saw an accident. I’m sure he would have pulled the car over to help, no?”

The woman was making sense. Decker said, “Go on.”

“But suppose it wasn’t a real accident. Suppose it was a dodge… to entrap some poor unsuspecting motorist. And of course, Dr. Sparks would pull over. And when he did, he was carjacked. Robbed. Taken to a dark place…” She shivered. “It’s awful to think about it.”

“Do you know if Dr. Sparks ever did that before? Stopped at the scene of auto accidents?”

“Once. The driver had had a heart attack and had crashed into the sidewalk.” She paused. “Everyone was talking about it the next day… it became a joke.”

“A joke?”

“Yeah, the bad news is you had a heart attack at the wheel of your car. The good news is Dr. Sparks was in the neighborhood. And it’s true. The accident victim
was
lucky. She wouldn’t have made it if Dr. Sparks hadn’t stopped.” Tara thought a moment. “You know that wasn’t the only joke going around.”

“Tell me.”

“Everyone used to josh that Dr. Sparks secretly carried a paramedics scanner.”

Decker wrote sloppily, his tired brain trying to decipher what she was saying. “Why?”

“I’m not sure why. Maybe to hear if there were any auto accidents near to where he was. So he could help out. One of his many famous lectures dealt with the importance of the first few minutes when treating the victim of a cardiac infarct. Or it could be the joke came about because of Dr. Sparks’s incredible dedication to saving people’s lives. If someone needed help, he was there — Oh, there’s Dr. Berger. Excuse me.”

Tara scuttled away.

Round but compact, Berger moved quickly toward Decker. But his carriage belied his energy level. Of medium height, he appeared to be in his sixties with fleshy features — a bulbous nose and thick lips. His lids drooped, puffy pillows under his eyes, cheeks sagging with wan flesh. A face that had been dragged under the wheels of exhaustion. The dome of his head was pink, shiny skin dotted with sweat. A small gray ring of hair clothed the bottom and sides of his cranium. His clothes were stylish but in need of a pressing. In fact, his whole body seemed wrinkled with fatigue.

“I really am very busy, Lieutenant.”

“I know you are, Dr. Berger. All I need is just a few minutes of your time.”

Berger nodded. “Step out into the hallway.” On his way out, he said, “Tara, what the hell is going on in 4D?”

Tara looked up from behind the nurse’s desk. “Pardon, Dr. Berger?”

“Where is Mrs. Gooden?”

“She was moved to 6B yesterday.”

“Who moved her? Dr. Sparks?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, move her back here. I want all
my
patients in one wing, okay?”

Tara paused. “You want me to move Mrs. Gooden
now
?”

Berger barked, “By eight o’clock tomorrow. Unless she’s fibrillating. Then you can leave her until she stabilizes. You might think I’d be allowed to have one division to myself since Dr. Sparks has the other five.”

Tara blinked rapidly. “Yes, sir.”

Berger glanced back at Decker, a blush rising to his cheeks. “This way.”

Decker followed Berger into the hallway.

Berger said, “It may seem petty to you, but it makes my life a hell of a lot easier… to have all my patients together.”

Decker didn’t answer.

Berger rubbed his eyes. “What do you need from me? I told the other detective, Wooster or Werber—”

“Webster.”

“That’s it. Mr. Southern Boy. I told him that my wife and I were at a dinner theater in Tustin. As soon as I heard the news, I came rushing back. What else do you need from me?”

“I’m just trying to get a timetable for Dr. Sparks—”

“I saw Dr. Sparks leave with Dr. Decameron around a quarter to eight. Which means these questions are best directed to Dr. Decameron. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a hospital to run.”

He started to walk away. Decker said, “Lucky for New Chris that they found someone to fill Dr. Sparks’s shoes. And so fast.”

Berger stopped, pivoted around. “Are you being snide?”

“No.” Decker’s face was flat. “Just that everyone keeps saying Sparks is a one-of-a-kind. It’s fortunate that he had you on his team to take over in this crisis.”

Berger’s cheeks turned crimson. “I’m not saying I’m Dr. Sparks, sir. I’m just saying there are patients here and
someone
has to take care of them.”

“Absolutely,” Decker agreed. “Dr. Decameron said you were a fine surgeon.”

Berger stared at him. “He said that, did he?”

“He did.”

“Well, I’ll have to thank him for the vote of confidence. Now if you’ll excuse—”

“Will you also take over the FDA trials of Curedon, Dr. Berger?”

Berger pursed his lips. “I don’t know. I haven’t thought that far in advance.”

“I was just wondering if Curedon was more Dr. Decameron’s bailiwick.”

“Not at all—”

“Being as Dr. Decameron… and Dr. Fulton for that matter… are primarily researchers. And you’re primarily a practicing surgeon—”

“You can stop right here, Lieutenant.” Berger held out his palm. “You’ve got some facts turned around and right now, I don’t have time to correct your wrong impressions.”

“When will you have time?” Decker asked. “Don’t want to go around with a wrong impression. Might cause me to jump to wrong conclusions.”

Berger tossed Decker a mean smile. “I’ve got work to do. If you come back… say a half hour before my six o’clock rounds, I’ll talk to you.”

Decker looked at his watch. Three-fifteen
A.M.
Berger wasn’t the only one with work to do. “Five-thirty, it is.” He slipped on his jacket, bade the doctor a good night.

Bunking down at Devonshire made infinitely more sense than waking up Rina. At his desk, Decker left a message on their answering machine, telling his wife that he loved her and that he’d call in the morning.

He went inside the squad room — empty except for Homicide. The team was filling out thick stacks of forms, mowing through paperwork. Though there were a half-dozen open computer stations, much of the pencil pushing was still done by hand. They needed a break. Decker put on a fresh pot of decaf and called a meeting.

The detectives’ squad room was wide-open space, the perimeter outlined by filing cabinets and shelving units containing hundreds of blue case notebooks. Taped onto the walls were an assignment board, a preprinted poster of procedure rules, lots of Gary Larson pig cartoons, and a dozen street maps of the division’s territory, one of them overlaid with a dartboard outline. The different details —
GTA, CAPS, SEX, JUVENILE, BURGLARY
— were demarcated by placards hanging from the ceiling. Narcotics and Vice sat upstairs. Homicide took up the back area, cordoned off from the others by a filing cabinet barrier. Like other LAPD units, the detectives’ desks in Devonshire were set up in a capital I configuration. After pouring coffee for everyone, Decker took a seat at the crosshatch. He opened his notebook.

“We’ll start with the basics. Random or not random. Pros. Cons. Marge, you go first.”

She pushed wilted dishwater hair from her tired eyes. “Could be random carjacking, the drop point being the back alley. Why else would Sparks’s car be there? If he had come to Tracadero’s willingly, I think he would have used the parking valets in the front.”

“Maybe he was cheap.” Martinez chewed on his mustache. “Or maybe he didn’t trust the valet to drive his wheels.”

“How about a gang robbery thing?” Webster said. “Tracadero’s attracts rich blood. Not a bad place to hang out if you want to hit someone with cash.”

Martinez said, “He had cash on him, Tom.”

“Maybe something scared off the muggers,” Webster retorted. “Maybe Sparks fought back, they killed him and left.”

“Awful lot of damage for panic-stricken muggers,” Marge said.

“Maybe Sparks made the muggers mad.”

Decker said, “Either way, carjacking or robbery has to be at least a two-person attack.”

“The shooting
and
stabbing,” Marge said. “Unusual that one perp would use two methods.”

The detectives agreed.

“I had an interesting conversation with one of New Chris’s nurses, maybe a half hour ago.” Decker downed coffee. “Seems that Sparks had a reputation for being a good Samaritan with auto accidents.” He told the group Nurse Tara’s theories.

Marge said, “That supports a carjacking over a restaurant robbery.”

“Weird.” Oliver pulled out a comb and ran it through thick, black hair. “He can’t break out of his doctor mold even when riding home in his own car.”

“I know several
lawyers
who do that kind of stuff,” Gaynor stated. “Use scanners. But it isn’t for altruistic purposes.”

Webster drawled, “I once arrested a sucker that did that — chased calls from ambulance scanners. Stopped at the accident sites and pretended he was a doctor. Eventually, we did arrest him. But let me tell you, he did a right fine job of patching people.”

“A hero’s complex,” Marge stated. “What some people won’t do to be the star of the show.”

“You’d think Sparks would get enough of that in the operating room.” Oliver pocketed his comb.

Gaynor said, “I guess it’s hard for some people to come down to planet earth.”

“If I were a big shot like Sparks, I wouldn’t be anxious to come down to earth,” Oliver said. “It’s nice getting all that reverence. Having people bow down to you.”

“Like his secretary,” Marge said. “She thought he was God.”

“Exactly.” Oliver turned to Decker. “What about his kids? How’d they view their old man?”

Decker thought a moment. “The younger ones seemed very upset. The others weren’t overly emotional about the death. Probably they were
all
in shock.”

“It’s hard for kids to live with God as a father,” Oliver said. “No one made a Freudian slip about Dad.”

Decker flipped through his notes. “Two of the brothers — Lucas and Paul — talked about Dad being intimidating… bossy… emasculating—”

“They used
that
word?” Marge asked.

“Uh… no, they said Dad emasculated his son-in-law.”

“Veddy interesting,” Oliver said, rubbing his hands together.

Decker said, “I think they rebelled against him in their own ways. Two of his children have money problems, another was a former drug addict, another became a Catholic priest instead of a minister of Sparks’s Fundamentalist Church, the older sister married a Jew—”

Marge broke in, “How did
that
come up?”

“It came up,” Decker said.

“Did she convert?” Marge asked.

“No, she didn’t. She still belongs to her father’s church. And so do her children. Nonetheless, she still married a man who refused to convert to her faith. She’s unhappy about it
now
. But way back when, when she originally married the man, you have to think she was telling her Fundamentalist Christian daddy to go screw himself.”

“Sounds like they all got their digs in,” Martinez said.

Oliver said, “Makes me feel better.”

“What about the wife?”

“Dolores Sparks,” Decker said. “Didn’t talk to her much. Upon hearing the news, she immediately started denying he was dead.”

“Did she ask how?”

“Uh, she did ask if it was a car accident. When I told her no, it was a homicide, she immediately went into denial. He can’t be dead. That kind of thing.”

Marge said, “So it’s okay if he dies from a car accident but not from a homicide?”

Decker paused. “Never thought of her reaction like that, but… I guess murder was too hard for her to digest. Her son gave her a sleeping pill, so she was out when I interviewed the kids. I’ll take another crack at her tomorrow.” He sat back in his seat. “So is this random or not?”

Shrugs all around.

Decker said, “Okay. Let’s assume that Sparks was carjacked or lured to the spot by
someone he knew
. Give me a list of suspects.”

Marge scanned her notes. “Decameron pissed off Sparks. That’s a given, right?”

The team nodded.

“They walked out to the parking lot together. Now Decameron said he smoothed things over. But what if he didn’t. Maybe Sparks threatened to fire him. Then one thing led to another—”

“Then Sparks would have been offed in the hospital parking lot,” Martinez said.

Marge continued. “So listen to this. Maybe Decameron offered to make amends by taking Sparks out to Tracadero’s. The ride started out okay, but something went awry and Decameron went for the jugular.”

“More like the heart,” Webster said. “That was a nasty chest wound. Your scenario precludes premeditation.”

“So it wasn’t premeditated,” she said.

“I’ve never seen Decameron,” Decker said. “Does he look like the kind of guy who could take Sparks down?”

“Loo, the scene was full of blood spatter,” Oliver said. “Knife wounds, gunshot wounds. You should see how Decameron dresses. He’s a fop. He’d never do something that sloppy.”

“So he hired out,” Marge suggested.

“Then that negates the fight as the precipitating event to the murder,” Decker said. “If Decameron hired out, it had to be premeditated.”

Webster said, “Maybe Decameron picked a fight on purpose, did something he knew would piss his boss off. Then lured him to the spot where a waiting gang jumped him.” He paused. “I’m not saying it happened like that. I’m just following through the scenario that y’all are talking about.”