Victims (27 page)

“Remember my interview with the lady doctor—I forget her name—at the hospital where Anna Grace worked? I asked why Anna had gone home early that night and she told me about terrible headaches and—”

“And I happen to remember,” Mike told her impatiently, “that in the same report you mentioned that the doctor who was on duty that night, the night the Grace girl was murdered—that Indian doctor—he didn’t think much of the ‘headache.’ He thought it was just an excuse to get off early.”

“But she had no reason to do that. It could have been the way Dr. Ruggiero—that was her name—said. The headache must have gotten very bad, must have frightened Anna. She was a nurse, she knew certain things about her condition.”

“Jesus,” he said, looking around, addressing the walls, the furniture, the books, the empty space, “Now the murdered girl has a ‘condition.’ Great. Terrific. What else?”

Miranda’s silence was abrupt. Neither of them spoke, and she studied his reactions, his need to move about the large high-ceilinged room. He kept touching things, tables, pillows, art objects, as though trying to steady himself.

“Mike,” she said, “Dr. Ruggiero felt that Anna Grace had a serious problem: possibly a brain tumor. She was trying to talk her into some tests. She believed that Anna Grace was trying to avoid finding out. The doctor said it wasn’t the most unlikely thing in the world that if she hadn’t been attacked that night she could have had some kind of... seizure. I guess—” Miranda looked down at the death certificate—“I guess an aneurysm might be the right word.”

He snatched the death certificate from her hand and waved it at her.

“It is a mistake. Just that simple. A goddamn clerical error that we’ll just have to get corrected. A phone call will straighten it all out. Jesus Christ, Miranda. Jesus Christ. It
is
a mistake. Christ, can’t you even give me a nod, a small ‘Yes, Mr. Stein, it is a mistake.’”

She didn’t answer him, and his voice went hollow.

“Listen, Miranda. Let’s say, for the goddamn sake of discussion, no other reason, that, okay, Anna Grace died of an aneurysm. Well, she’s dead, right? And we all saw the tapes of Mera stabbing her, killing her and...”

Slowly, she shook her head from side to side.

“What? What?” He imitated her slow head shake. “What, no? Miranda!”

“If she died of... this this the death certificate says, then he did
not
murder her. He can only be charged with
attempted
murder. Mike, there is a difference. And you know it.”

“Do you realize, do you even
begin
to realize, what that ‘difference’ would mean? For my articles about those good people of Barclay Street who—”

“No, Mike, no. It in no way justifies their behavior. No matter what, they did exactly what they did. They watched, they refused to help her, they refused to summon help, they just...”

“They just what, Miranda? They just watched a young woman, who just happened to suffer from a few nonfatal stab wounds, sit down, lean against the lamppost and die from a cerebral aneurysm? ‘The Girl Who Was Murdered Twice,’ Miranda, that’s the tide of my future. Not ‘The Girl Who Would Have Been Murdered Twice, Had She Been Murdered Once.’ But of course, she was only slashed around, and there was nothing anyone could have done from the minute she left her job with that fatal headache. Come on, Miranda. Listen, it’s a mistake, this goddamn death certificate. That’s all, a damn mistake.”

“Then tell me why, Mike, why is it that you believe it?”

His mouth dropped open and his throat was dry with a tight burning sensation.

She put her hand out for the death certificate of Anna Grace.

“Jesus, is that what you think of me? That I would...? Listen, I assume there are copies of this? And official records, et cetera. I want to hold on to this so that when I give the information needed to track down this mistake, I know what I’m talking about. Okay? You want it back? Do you really want it back? Okay. Fine. Here.”

He roughly pulled at her shoulder bag, fumbled with the flap and tried to find an opening, a place to put the crumpled report. Miranda slid her pocketbook off her shoulder and held it against her body.

“No. You keep it. You are right. There are other copies. And records. And—” she offered him the words as a gift of hope, as an indication that she
did
understand his anguish—“and, yes. You are probably right, Mike. I am sure of it. It
must
be a mistake.”

If she had called him Mr. Stein, he might have believed her.

M
IKE GLANCED AT HIS
watch: 7
A.M.
It was time to call the old man who was living on a small horse-breeding farm in upstate New York. He lived a regimented life: up at 5
A.M.
an hour’s canter on his favorite horse; breakfast, newspapers, and then he accepted phone calls from 7
A.M.
on. He received a rather large number of calls from all over the United States.

Dr. Aaron Toledo had been the acknowledged grandmaster of pathology: former chief medical examiner for the city of New York; former chief consultant at leading hospitals and universities not only in the United States but throughout the world; author of six textbooks on pathology and methods.

It was Dr. Aaron Toledo who, discounted and discredited and forgotten after some political scandal more than fifteen years ago, had catapulted back into prominence some ten years ago when he conducted the methodical, remarkable autopsy on the body of Arthur Cordovan, Jr. son of the Chief of Operations of the New York City Police Department. It was through Mike Stein’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book on the entire matter that Dr. Toledo was once again accredited, remembered and, in effect, resurrected as an outstanding scholar and specialist in his field.

Dr. Toledo was, at eighty-eight, available for consultation. He answered the telephone on the first ring, and his voice was strong and sharp and authoritative. Let’s get to the point; let’s get to the matter at hand.

Mike Stein could picture the old man: his small bald head leaning toward his right shoulder, his thin cheeks sucking in and out as he pursed his lips over his long yellow teeth. The old man’s eyes, small and beady and bright, had excellent sight, and he wore eyeglasses for close work only. He would be squinting in concentration. His body, bone thin, fleshless, would be tensed. He would flex the joints of his arms, then his legs, as he listened for the precise details. He would interrupt with a deep, hard hacking sound, ask a question, accept the answer or demand greater clarification, then give permission to continue. His mind clicked and stored and combined facts like a computer.

Mike explained it all, starting with the scene of the murder and moving to his articles, the book, the opening up of what had been a closed future. Dr. Toledo knew exactly what it was like.

He omitted nothing. Mike recited Dr. Ruggiero’s statement to Miranda; told about the Indian doctor who had sent the woman home with an incredible headache. He described the death scene he had watched so many times on the videotape: the small quick jerk of the woman’s head forward, the lack of further motion.

“Sure as hell is possible. And is likely,” Dr. Toledo admitted. “Okay, tell me this. When she was in position, at the death scene, was there much blood? Wait, don’t answer yet, I’m not finished. I don’t mean the amount of blood you’d expect from a series of slash wounds. I mean a great, gushing amount of blood?”

No.

“Well, there could have been internal bleeding. Sometimes you get a person died of bleeding, they seem pretty clean on the outside, you make the first down cut an a gusher hits you in the face. Internal bleeding. She should have been filled with blood with no place to go. Average person has maybe five, maybe six quarts of blood. Can survive the loss of
maybe
two quarts if you get to him quick and start fluids. So if the person is lying on the sidewalk and there isn’t all that much blood, the bleeding
could
be internal.”

Dr. Toledo wasn’t speculating. He was setting up how it could be made all right.

“See,” the doctor told Mike, “a person who is dead does not bleed. No heart to act as a pump, get it? The bleeding stops and all the blood in the body settles toward the earth. If the victim is face down, then you got a dark, black front. Face up, you got black ass and the back of the extremities. If she was sitting there dead for that time, she’d be pretty black-bottomed.”

“I don’t know. I didn’t see that.”

“No, but the M.E. did. Okay, here’s what you want to know but don’t know enough to ask. First, no, an aneurysm could not be caused by the wounds inflicted. It’s a fact of nature. There is this very thin piece of tissue that gets thinner and thinner as the blood pumps through. It is getting ready for overload and can burst at any time. Now, what you tell me, this girl had other symptoms. Very possibly she also had a brain tumor. A CAT scan was indicated, her doctor friend was right, but the Indian guy was right, too, in a way—it was written. That’s all you can say about an aneurysm kicking off, blowing up.

“What you have, then, is that this s.o.b. was
possibly
hacking away and stabbing away at a dead woman. Possibly she was dead on her feet: a walking dead woman. The aneurysm, if there was one, was programmed to go off whenever and wherever. You covered that with me very clearly.

“So now, it seems, you have a problem.
But it can be remedied,
if that’s what this phone call is all about. I already told you what findings would support your feeling that all those good people watched this girl die over a period of some fifteen or twenty minutes. When she was probably bleeding to death. Internally. As the autopsy stands now, calling in the Marines within one second couldn’t have helped her. If, in fact,
the initial autopsy report is correct.”

“And how can the initial, incorrect report be corrected?” Mike asked.

“This is really important to you, Mike, right? A whole new future for you. I know what that means. Holy mackerel, do I know what that means. Well, kid, there is one hitch here. Hang in and listen.
It can be corrected.
People get careless and mix findings from one case onto another report, get me? I can get someone in Manhattan in to do the right thing. This young fella, you might say he’s a protégé of mine, related to the family by marriage and things like that. So, there he is, more than happy to do the old man a favor. No great problem, really. But—it would have to come from Chief Cordovan. The request for correction.”

“From Arthur Cordovan? But why? None of this concerns Arthur. He doesn’t know anything about it. This concerns me, Doc.”

“Well, I’m a funny fella, like,” the old man said in his sharp crackling voice. “It was Art Cordovan did me the favor, picking me to autopsy his son. Got back my credentials, my rightful place, you might say, because of him. Now, I know you wrote the book and all, but I gotta tell you, Mike, this old man owes one to Cordovan. And,” he said carefully, “I want a Police Department connection for this young fella I mentioned to you. It’s tough out there alone. You have Art call me, just ask for a clearer autopsy report on this Anna Grace. See, if this girl’s heart was punctured just the smallest, tiniest bit, boy, the blood would pour and fill up all the cavities. Like I said, the first autopsy cut would reveal a gusher. Not all blood escapes the body. So there you have it. She bled to death just like good old Mike Stein is gonna say in his articles telling about the cruel indifference of all those people in Forest Hills. Stick it to them, son, they deserve it.”

“Dr. Toledo—” Mike began. The old man interrupted him immediately.

“Hope this doesn’t create too big a problem for you, son, but what the hell. Arthur Cordovan owes you a big one. So use this to even up the score all around. That’s how these things work. As you very well know.”

A
RTHUR CORDOVAN SAT MOTIONLESS
on the pale linen couch as Mike Stein explained the reason for his visit. He listened with the total, complete concentration of a trained, experienced and unsurprised professional policeman. He listened with no change of expression, no flicker of emotion.

“The thrust of everything I’ve written and am planning to write is what I believed was the fact that Anna Grace could have been saved. She died because no one acted to save her. Take that away, Arthur, and there is no way the situation can have the impact I’ve been going for in my articles.”

Cordovan understood the situation completely. What he hadn’t yet heard was where he fit in. His voice was low and tough, the interrogator tired of waiting for the essential facts. “Okay, Mike. I’m with you. I understand. Even the possibility that the Governor’s bill might lose the bipartisan momentum up in Albany that your articles have set in motion. You’re not here just to bring me up to date.”

For the first time since he’d come to know the journalist, he sensed Stein’s uncertainty. Cordovan’s narrowed eyes concentrated on him with tremendous intensity. “What’s going on? You said there was a
mistake
in the autopsy report. ‘Nothing that can’t be corrected.’ So? What’s the problem?”

“It’s delicate, Art. It has to be done—carefully...”

From the moment Mike Stein mentioned that he’d called the “old man” upstate, Cordovan’s warning systems were on full alert. He held up his hand and stopped Mike in the middle of a sentence.

“What you are suggesting is illegal, and we both know it. The charge against Mera, given the autopsy report now on file, would have to be changed to assault with intent and—”

“Art, this guy is confessing not only to the Anna Grace killing but to the other three open Queens rape-murders, claims he’s the so-called Beast of Queens. They’re listening to him. They’re actually building cases. Enough, anyway, to close out the investigations. The guy is a killer—to all intents and purposes.”

“Not good enough. ‘To all intents and purposes’ does not add up to
fact.
His lawyer could make his own headlines if...”

“If
he ever got hold of the ‘mistaken’ autopsy report.”

Cordovan sat very still, comfortable in the luxury of his own home. His second wife, an artist, had fine and cultured tastes and he loved his Manhattan apartment lifestyle. There was a waiting quality to his stillness. He had been a policeman for all of his adult life. He had survived one departmental purge after another. He had kept out of every scandalous situation. He had pursued his own career, carefully studying, getting college degrees, preparing himself for promotion. One of the Department’s five ranking superchiefs, he was a careful, knowledgeable man.