“I’m Alex and this is Amos.”
“Amos and Andy. Like the show?” said Fisher.
“No, Alex and Amos. He’s Amos. I’m Alex.”
He glanced at Decker. “You’re very large.”
“Yes, I am.” He pulled up another chair and sat down. “Your grandson told us you were a dentist for a long time. You had a lot of patients.”
Fisher looked puzzled. “Dentist? My grandson, my grandson…”
“Lewis,” said Jamison helpfully.
“My name is Lewis,” he barked. Then he added in a quieter, desperate tone, “Isn’t it?”
“Yes, and he was named after you.”
Fisher rapped his head with his knuckles. “This just all…”
“I know,” said Jamison soothingly. “I’m sure it’s frustrating.”
Decker said, “You were a dentist, Dr. Fisher. You had lots of patients. Do you remember the Mars family? Roy and Lucinda? And Melvin?”
“Mars? Like the planet? Are you talking about the planet Mars? It’s…it’s the red planet.” He smiled and looked pleased.
“No, not the planet. A family named Mars. They were killed. And the records in your office were used to confirm their identity.”
“Killed? The planet was killed? Are you…crazy?”
Jamison put a hand on Decker’s arm. “Let me try.”
She turned to Fisher and said very quietly, “They were patients of yours a long time ago. Twenty years. They were killed. Their bodies were burned, so they had to use their dental records to identify them. Records from your office.”
She looked at Fisher hopefully, but all she got back was a blank stare.
A minute went by and no one broke the silence.
Decker was about to say something when Jamison held up a hand.
“Dr. Fisher, I have a tooth problem. Do you remember me? I’m Lucinda Mars. This is my husband, Roy Mars. He has a tooth problem too. Can you help us? We’re your patients. You have our records.”
They waited a long moment. At first it didn’t seem Fisher would answer her.
Fisher said, “Maxillary second premolar.”
“What was that, Dr. Fisher?” said Jamison.
“Maxillary second premolar,” he repeated, shaking his head.
Jamison said, “What about it?”
“Not right.”
“What wasn’t right?”
“The second premolar. Just not right.”
Jamison knelt down next to him. “Whose? Roy’s or Lucinda’s?”
“Just not right. Should’ve said. Not right.” He looked up at Decker. “Who the hell are you?”
“A very grateful man.” Decker rose and said to Jamison, “Can you stay here and see if you can get anything more out of him? I’ll come back and get you.”
“Where are you going?”
“To find a maxillary second premolar.”
CHAPTER
44
A PREMOLAR?” SAID Bogart. “Seriously?”
He and Decker were standing in the musty warehouse where old police records were kept.
“That’s what he said. The maxillary second premolar. Something was not right with it.”
They stared at the shelves full of haphazardly stacked boxes.
Bogart said, “The sergeant I talked to said the records were a little—”
“Unorganized?” finished Decker. “I’d say he was seeing the glass half full.” He took off his coat and rolled up his sleeves. “Well, let’s get to it.”
The files were indeed in a shambles. The years were sometimes mixed up and the boxes themselves were not well inventoried. On more than one occasion the filing papers inside were just blank.
Six hours went past without any success.
Decker’s phone rang. It was Jamison and she was not happy.
“I took a cab back to the motel. When you said stay here and see if I could get something more out of him, I didn’t think you meant forever.”
“I’m sorry, Alex, I got distracted.”
“Gee, what a shock!”
“Did he say anything else that might be helpful?”
“Only that something wasn’t right. He just kept repeating that.”
“No clue on whether we’re talking about Roy or Lucinda?”
“No. Then he just fell asleep. I’ve been calling you for the last three hours, by the way.”
“I took my coat off. I heard this call because I had picked up my coat when you phoned.”
“Where are you?”
He told her. “But we’re not having much success.”
“Until now,” called out Bogart. He had lifted a box off the shelf and opened it.
“I gotta go,” said Decker, and he clicked off.
They pulled all the items out of the box and laid them on a table. Decker found it first. He pulled up the X-ray sheets for the two Marses that were labeled with their respective names.
“I Googled ‘premolar’ before I got here,” Decker said. He pulled out his phone and brought up an image of a mouth full of teeth. “These are second premolars.” He pointed at spots on the X-rays. “They help with mastication or chewing. The one on the right is the four and the left is the thirteen, in dentist numbering vernacular.”
“All fascinating,” said Bogart sarcastically. “But what was wrong, according to Fisher? The dental records for the Marses from Fisher’s office matched the dental records taken from the bodies at the crime scene.”
“Alex couldn’t find out. The guy has dementia. But he just blurted out ‘maxillary second premolar’—” He stopped, pulled out his phone, and punched in a number.
“Alex, did Fisher mention any numbers?”
“Numbers?”
“Yeah.”
“No.”
“Okay,” said Decker, obviously disappointed.
“But it was weird, he held up four fingers a couple of times.”
“Four, you’re sure?”
“Yes. And he kept looking at them like they meant something.”
“Thanks.”
“De—”
Decker clicked off and turned to Bogart.
“Okay, it was the right premolar.”
They studied the X-rays.
“I don’t see anything on Lucinda’s X-ray,” said Bogart. “But Roy’s number four has a filling.”
Decker looked at it. “You’re right.”
“So was Fisher saying that Roy Mars didn’t have a filling in number four? That’s why something was wrong? But if so, why wouldn’t he have pointed that out back then?”
Decker picked up his phone again, called Fisher’s office, and a minute later was talking to the dentist.
“Your grandfather was very helpful,” he said. “But I have a question for you.”
“Okay, shoot,” said Fisher.
“Tell me the procedure for when the police want to get copies of your records.”
“They send in a court order and we answer it.”
“How so? Do you personally pull the records?”
“Not always. But if not me then someone on my staff does.”
“Who checks for accuracy?”
“Well, all of our files are carefully organized, cross-checked, and labeled seven ways from Sunday. We also have electronic copies of everything. Nature of a medical practice these days. No room for error.”
“But twenty years ago?”
“Well, it was different. My grandfather still kept excellent records. But they were stored manually and labeled with the patient’s information. Name, address, Social Security number, and individual patient file number.”
“Do you have anyone on your staff who worked with your grandfather twenty years ago?”
“Yes, Melissa Dowd.”
“Can I speak to her?”
“Where is all this going?”
“Please, time is of the essence.”
“Hold on while I get her.”
A minute later a woman answered the phone. “This is M
elissa.”
“Melissa, Amos Decker with the FBI. I was wondering about your filing system twenty years ago.”
“Yes, Dr. Fisher told me. Well, lots of practices had transitioned to some sort of computer system by then, but Fisher Sr. was old school, so our operation was still manual. We used a typewriter. Labels were made up for all patient files. It was all very organized. We never made any mistakes with recordkeeping.”
“Do you remember getting the court order to turn over the Marses’ records?”
“I didn’t personally pull those files, but I do remember the request. We’d never had such a request before, for a murder anyway.”
“Did someone have to authenticate the records during the trial?”
“Yes. I was the one who did that, because I was the one who really maintained the records.”
“So Dr. Fisher wasn’t involved in that?”
“No, he was very busy and couldn’t take time off to come to the trial. It was the only time I was called on to do that. It was kind of exciting.”
“Did Dr. Fisher ever mention to you that there might be something wrong with the records?”
“No, not that I recall. Was there something wrong?” she asked anxiously.
Decker ignored this question and said, “Do you remember who cleaned your office building back then?”
“Cleaned our office building?”
“Yes.”
“Um, well, it’s the same firm that does it now. Quality Commercial Cleaners. They do all the offices here.”
“And so they had keys to your office?”
“Well, yes, that’s normal practice, but we’ve never had any problems.”
“Thanks.”
Decker clicked off and looked at Bogart.
The FBI agent was studying him. “Is this going where I think it’s going?”
“I don’t think Roy Mars died in the bedroom that night. I think a nurse or technician pulled those records and sent them to the police and then Dowd authenticated them at trial. But she would just be looking at the names and other file criteria in order to do that. Maybe sometime later, maybe a lot later, Fisher Sr. looked at the records and saw a filling in the number four premolar where he hadn’t put one.”
“Well, we can’t assume it wasn’t the other way around. It might be he was referring to Lucinda’s records. She didn’t have a filling, but maybe Fisher had put one in there.”
“Agreed. And why he didn’t come forward then I don’t know. Maybe he was starting to feel the effects of the dementia by then.” He sighed and added, “Well, this opens up a lot of questions.”
Bogart nodded. “Well, the big one for me is, if it wasn’t Roy’s or Lucinda’s body, whose was it?”
CHAPTER
45
HOW ARE YOU going to break this news to Melvin?” asked Bogart. They were driving back to the motel from the warehouse.
“It’s not a fact, it’s a theory. I have no proof.”
“But it’s a pretty good theory based on some facts,” replied Bogart.
“If we assume it was Roy Mars that faked his death, that would explain the shotgun to the face. And the bodies being burned. Dental records would be the first way to ID the bodies. The teeth were relatively intact.”
“But he would have had to get into the dentist’s office and swap out the records with those of the body that was discovered.”
“Lucinda worked for a cleaning company in the area. I’m betting it was Quality Commercial Cleaners. That would have given her and Roy access to the dentist’s office after hours.”
“Wait a minute, do you think the other body was Lucinda’s?”
“I don’t know. Maybe not. If Roy is alive and he killed the two people that were found, I have a hard time believing he would have shotgunned his wife in the face and then set her on fire.”
“And set up his son for the crime? Because that’s a big part of this too.”
“And maybe the most inexplicable.”
“But I keep coming back to the two people. It’s a small town. How could two people just disappear and no one know?”
Decker said, “They could have been drifters, not from here. But—” He stopped and closed his eyes. The frames in his head whirred back and forth as he searched for the precise statements he’d been given by the police and Melissa Dowd.
There were two of them.
Burglary, missing person, drunks getting in fights, was the first.
We’d never had such a request before, for a murder anyway, was the second.
He took out his phone and punched in a number. A minute later he had Melissa Dowd on the line again. She sounded a little put out at being called away from her work again, but Decker brushed right past the annoyed tone in her voice. He had put the phone on speaker so that Bogart could hear.
Decker said, “When we last spoke you said that you’d never had a court order for dental records for a murder investigation before.”
“That’s right.”
“But the way you said it implied that you had received other court orders.”
“Well, just the one time. It was right before the one for the Marses’ murder, actually, now that I think about it. Sort of odd.”
“Was it for a missing person?”
“That’s right, how did you know that?”
“Educated guess. Can you tell us about it?”
“Well, it was one of our patients, and the police thought they had found his body in the woods, but it had been disfigured by some wild animals. They had learned that we were the man’s dentist and thus asked for the records. But it wasn’t a match. It wasn’t him.”
The Last Mile Page 30
