Saving Max (18 page)

His cell phone rings. “Fuck me, Rachel,” he mutters. He fishes it out of his pocket and flips it open. “What?”

“It’s me, Danielle.”

“Thought it was the Queen of Sheba,” he growls. “I’m knee-deep in rat shit here.”

“Have you found anything?”

“Nope, just like I told you. Hope you got your shit packed, because we split in an hour.”

“Please, Doaks, keep trying,” she pleads. “It’s the only lead we’ve got.”

“Then quit botherin’ me,” he says. “I’ll give it two more minutes, and then I’m outta here.” He snaps the phone shut and sticks it back into his pocket. He plays the light over the floor and makes out three cardboard boxes. He shines the light into the first box. Old photographs of a younger version of the woman downstairs. Age sure did a number on her. The second box crumbles when he tries to open it. He moves on to the last box and pulls back the flap. Inside is a weird collection of odds and ends. Old purses, shoes without mates, an umbrella with most of its spokes gone. He finds a red leather collar with a small black box attached to it and holds it up to the light. It’s one of those fancy dog-shock collars.

Doaks’s frustration mounts. There’s nothing here but a bunch of leftover crap anybody would ditch if they decided to split without ponying up the rent. “Why did the old bat drag my fifty-six-year-old ass up here if all I was gonna get was a handful of wet rat turds?” he mutters. “Just tryin’ to bone me for a few more bucks.” He leans over the attic opening and yells down. “There isn’t a damned thing up here!”

“Yes, there is!” Her voice is impatient. “Look in the box.”

“Why don’t you haul your scrawny ass up here and look in the stinkin’ box?” he mutters. He takes a last look in the third box and finally turns the whole thing upside down. Dried roach shells and dust fill the air. A piece of paper floats down. Doaks grabs it and sticks it under the flashlight.

Doaks flips over the envelope to look at the date. April 7, 2009. A few months before Marianne took Jonas to Maitland. He turns it over.

He snaps off the flashlight. He stuffs the piece of paper into his pocket and quickly descends. In the light of the bedroom, he sees he’s covered with black. Dirt, grunge, roach wings—you name it. He smells like he’s rolled in elephant manure. The old lady is waiting for him. She wrinkles her nose.

“Ain’t my attic, lady.” He pulls the paper from his pocket. “What’d you say her name was?”

“Sharon Miller.”

“Ever see any ID to that effect?”

She gives him a bitter look and waves a hand. “What does this look like—the goddamned Ritz?”

Doaks shrugs and turns to go. He looks at his watch. Almost five. So much for that six o’clock flight. He needs to get back to the hotel and tell Danielle what he’s found. Then they need to call Sevillas. The old lady grabs his arm with bony fingers that are surprisingly strong. She wears a triumphant grin. “I want my money.”

“For what? One stinkin’ piece of paper?” He shakes his head. “Fat chance.”

She gets right up in his face, her breath like black tar on a bar floor after a Saturday night. “We had a deal. You give me my money!” She cusses him all the way downstairs. In the front hallway, Doaks grabs his raincoat and hat. She plants
her hands on her hips and blocks his path. “If you didn’t find anything, why’re you taking that paper with you?”

He reaches into his pocket; pulls out the twenty; and lays it in her palm. He takes a deep bow. “And madam,” he says with a twinkle in his eye, “we thank you for your hospitality and wish you a long, happy life.” Before she can say anything, Doaks is back in the cab, speeding toward the hotel. “I hate old women,” he says to no one in particular.

“Young ones ain’t so great, either,” replies the driver.

“Yeah,” says Doaks. “At least when the young ones screw you, it don’t make you feel so bad.”

Danielle zips up her traveling bag and looks at her watch. It’s almost five. She just got a text message from Max. He’s doing more research and he wants her back,
now.
Where is Doaks? She hopes he’s late because something good has finally happened. He’s probably bogged down in Chicago traffic. Just as she is about to try him on his cell phone again, there is a knock on the door. She opens it. What she sees is not what she expects.

Standing, hat in hand, is none other than Dr. Jojanovich. His face is white-bread pale. “Ms. Parkman.”

“Dr. Jojanovich,” she says. “What a…surprise.”

He points his hat weakly at the living room. “May I come in?”

Danielle steps back. “Of course. Please.”

The doctor moves slowly forward. Danielle watches as he eases himself into a chair. “Doctor, I hope you don’t mind my saying so, but you don’t look well.”

“What is wrong with me, Ms. Parkman, has nothing to do with my health.”

“May I take your coat or offer you something to drink?”

“I’m fine,” he says. “Although I wouldn’t turn down a whiskey if you have one.”

Danielle splashes some Scotch into a glass and hands it to him. He grips it like the anointed knight who has found the Holy Grail. After the first, deep swallow, some color returns
to his face. “I hope you don’t mind my coming without calling first. My secretary wrote your hotel and room number on my message pad this morning.” He glances at her suitcase. “So, you are leaving Chicago?”

“I was supposed to be on a six o’clock flight,” she says, “but I’m afraid I’ve been delayed.”

Jojanovich stares at the floor. When he finally looks up, his eyes are leaden. “I am sure you would like to know why I have come here.”

Danielle tries to keep her face impassive. She nods.

“I have no idea whether anything I say may be of benefit to your client,” he says. “But I was unable to withhold certain information I have if it may in any way tend to make the difference between the life and death of a human being.”

The doctor has the look of a witness who wants to tell his story. The less intrusive she is, the better. “I want to hear anything you’d like to tell me.”

Jojanovich clasps and unclasps his hands. “Two years ago, Ms. Parkman, I hired a woman to work in my office. This woman was a highly skilled nurse. I’d never had better. In fact, she was so talented at her job that I often wondered how I could be so fortunate to have her when my practice is not what you would call…cutting-edge.” His shoulders sag. “After a period of months, she suggested that she could easily handle the administrative side of my practice, as well as perform her nursing duties. I agreed immediately.” His eyes are suddenly animated.

“I had never met anyone like her. She was a…dynamo. My patients loved her, and she kept the place running smooth as a top. That went on for about a year.” He sinks back into his chair, eyes hooded. “Her name was Sharon—Sharon Miller. I am afraid she may be the same person you were inquiring about in my office today.”

Danielle forces herself to stay in lawyer mode. “Why do you think that?”

“Because she fits the description you gave me.”

“Blond hair?”

“No,” he says, “but everything else matches up. The height, her voice, very computer savvy.”

“In what way?”

“Look, Ms. Parkman, within two months that woman had the entire place set up on computer. She was a whiz. I had no idea how to even run the damned thing.” He smiles ruefully. “She was supposed to get around to teaching me someday.”

“Exactly how did she set up your office?”

He shrugs. “Ordered some medical software. Input patient lists and records, appointments, lab reports, correspondence. You name it, she took care of everything.”

“All on the computer?”

“Yes,” he says. “She thought my way of keeping charts was old-fashioned. She was probably right.”

Danielle studies him. “Why did she leave, Doctor?”

Jojanovich pulls out a large cigar. “Do you mind?”

“Not at all.”

Jojanovich puffs on his cigar, exhaling small, dark clouds. His eyes recede deeply into their folds, wary crabs. “She left…for a variety of reasons.”

Danielle feels something, a tingle at the back of her neck. “Did you fire her?”

“No,” he says. “But I suppose I would have had to.”

“Why?”

He avoids her eyes. “Miss Miller left my employ without giving notice. One day things were fine, and the next—she was gone.”

“I’m confused, Doctor,” she says. “You say she left for a number of reasons. Then you say she disappeared.”

The doctor looks up, a miserable expression on his face. “I only discovered the reasons after she left.”

Danielle reaches over and touches his arm. “It’s all right. Just tell me what happened.”

He squares his shoulders. “Very well. But before I tell you, I must have your word that you will not use this information to pursue her legally.”

Danielle pauses. “Why?”

“What I mean is that even if you use this information to help your client, you must promise me that no relevant legal authorities will be alerted to her activities here.” His voice is the strongest it has been all evening. “I do not want her facing charges. Do you understand?”

Danielle’s mind runs the traps. Whatever this woman has done in Illinois—even if she is Marianne—is of no relevance to her. What she needs is information. Now. Her words are carefully chosen. “As you know, I have no control over what the authorities in Illinois may or may not do, but I have no intention of contacting them. Is that satisfactory?”

“Fine.” He seems relieved. When he speaks again, it is quickly, as if now that the honey has started dripping from the bottle, he can’t stop the flow. “When Miss Miller left, I was shocked. Here was this woman who had run everything so smoothly that I had no idea what to do when she was gone. You saw the computer on my desk?” Danielle nods and remembers how odd she found it that the computer was not even plugged in.

“Well, after she left I couldn’t even find out when I had an appointment, much less what bills to pay or how to access my patients’ records. When Sharon was there, I wrote down my comments on the patient’s chart during the office visit, and she transcribed and entered it into the computer.” He shrugs. “I don’t know. I always thought it was fine just to keep
the chart in a manila folder, but Sharon wanted it all on the system. After she left, I had to call a computer company in just to figure out how to run my own office.” His eyes have heat in them for the first time.

“It took weeks to get the whole thing straightened out so I could conduct my practice in anything approaching normalcy. I hired a new nurse and went back to having a receptionist in the front office.” His large hands hang helplessly over the sides of the chair. “I wanted everything switched back to paper—paper I could see. I had the new girl bring up all the old charts and files from the basement, where Sharon had put them after she programmed everything into the computer.”

“What happened then?”

The man sighs. “The new girl brought the files into my office. She asked me to look them over because they confused her. Well, I took them home and read them cover to cover. Every single file had been changed.”

“What do you mean, changed?”

He looks away. “When I reviewed the patient’s chart and the notations I made during an office visit, I noticed that the computer version of the same account was…different.”

Danielle leans forward. “Different how?”

Jojanovich shakes his head. “The computer version—the one that became the official patient file—didn’t match the comments I made when I saw the patient. The changes were subtle in some cases and not so subtle in others.” His jaw tightens. “In some cases, even if the patient’s condition was correctly described, the treatment or medication I ordered was not.”

Danielle cannot help her sharp intake of breath. She flashes on Marianne’s knowledge of the nurses’ password and hospital-security procedures. She imagines Marianne’s fingers
flying over the keys of the Maitland computer. Changing Jonas’s entries? Changing Max’s entries?

Jojanovich does not notice her reaction. “Many of the medications prescribed in the computer version were in fact contraindicated for the specific condition I had diagnosed.” His voice drops to a whisper. “In some cases, the medications she wrote down would have either seriously compromised the patient—or done terrible damage.”

Oh, my God,
she thinks.
Jonas. Max.
She turns to Jojanovich. “Why would she do something like that, Doctor?”

His face darkens. “I’ll get to that in a moment. I also discovered that Sharon had created her own medical forms with my name on them. Apparently, she would enter a patient’s name, medical history, the date of the visit, that sort of thing. These were then scanned into the computer after they had my signature on them.” Danielle gives him a quizzical look.

“Sharon had a stamp made of my signature,” he explains, “so I wouldn’t be bothered to sign routine correspondence. In other words, she fabricated symptoms and treatment protocols. I didn’t believe it at first, but when it became clear that at least twenty of my patients’ files were falsified, I had no choice.” He takes a sip of his now-watery drink.

“Did you actually write prescriptions for the medications she noted on the falsified charts?”

“Honestly, Ms. Parkman,” he says miserably. “I don’t know. Every doctor with a competent nurse lets them write prescriptions onto a signed pad. She was an excellent nurse. I had no reason to mistrust her.” He pauses. “Until later.”

“Did any of your patients complain of unusual symptoms or problems?” She thinks of Max, in a drugged stupor, acting out violently, killing Jonas? She shudders.

“After she left, a few of them reported irregular symptoms when compared to what I would have expected, but I called
all of them in for free consultations,” says Jojanovich. “I had to change a number of the medications that Sharon had ‘prescribed’ without my knowledge. Fortunately, none of the patients were seriously affected. I was able to correct the problem in each case.” He looks up, a whipping boy ready to take his beating.

“But why would she do that?” asks Danielle. “What possible reason could she have for prescribing the wrong medication to your patients?”

“Of course,” he says softly, “it all sounds very strange until a woman walks into your office and wants to know about a patient you’ve never seen—one who has been murdered—and shows you a document with your signature on it.”

Danielle considers what he has said. The same question troubles her. Why did Marianne have to fake a referral for Jonas to get into Maitland? And why, of all people, did she select a doctor whose practice she had brought to the very brink of ruin? It was a stupid thing to do. And Marianne is anything but stupid. “Why would…Sharon…use you as a reference for her son when she knew you would discover what she had done after she left?”

Waste and dread fill the old man’s face. “This is very difficult for me, Ms. Parkman. There is another aspect to this matter I have been…reluctant to discuss.”

“Like what?”

“Blackmail,” he says simply.

Danielle moves to the edge of the couch. Jojanovich gives her a warning glance. “You must promise me again that nothing I tell you will result in any criminal charges against Miss Miller.”

She meets his glance squarely. “I have given you my word, Doctor. You can rely upon it.”

He nods. “After Miss Miller had been in my employ for
approximately six months, our relationship…changed. I attribute a good deal of my inability to detect some of the activities I told you about earlier to this lapse of judgment on my part.”

“You had an affair with her.”

The doctor nods, his face full of pain and longing.

“And she fabricated the documents and wrote fake prescriptions in order to blackmail you in the event you didn’t stand behind Jonas’s referral to Maitland.”

He shakes his head. “No, I never knew she had a son.”

“She never mentioned Jonas?”

“Never.” A reddening starts at the base of the old man’s neck and spreads in a sickly way toward his cheeks. “She wanted me to divorce my wife and move away with her to Florida. She told me I was the love of her life. That she never dreamed…”

“Where does the blackmail come in?”

“Oh, yes.” He reaches into his jacket pocket and pulls out a piece of paper. Danielle takes it and reads. It is a Xerox copy on Jojanovich’s letterhead.

Danielle finds the medical record she brought from Plano and compares the doctor’s signature to the one on the letter. They are identical. She looks at Jojanovich, who stares at the floor. “You didn’t write this.”

He smiles bitterly. “Of course not, Ms. Parkman. After she left, I received a large envelope in the mail with no return address.”

“Always the efficient secretary.”