Margaret Truman's Experiment in Murder

by Margaret Truman

  Tatum arrived at MPD headquarters at three on the nose and was escorted into Owens’s office. The detective eased himself up from behind the desk and greeted Tatum with a hug and a slap on the back. “Hey, man,” he said, “you look great. Still pumping iron?”

  Tatum nodded and took a seat in front of the desk.

  “I love it,” Owens said, “the way you hide behind that Ph.D. façade of yours, like a real milquetoast. Then, boom, you come out swinging. I’ll never forget that night you beat up on Coleman in the tourney. Man, you really took him over the coals.”

  Tatum had entered the MPD’s boxing tournament at 155 pounds and won his four matches before resigning from the force. He hadn’t boxed since, although he occasionally worked out at the Downtown Boxing Club on F Street.

  “He wasn’t that good,” Tatum said. “So, tell me about Mark Sedgwick’s death.”

  “You know the basics from the papers. He got mowed down on Virginia Avenue on his way to his office. From what we’ve learned so far from eyewitnesses, the driver didn’t try to avoid hitting him. According to them she aimed right for him.”

  “So the papers say. Any leads on the car and driver?”

  “Yeah. We’ve found the car, or at least what we suspect was the car. In a junkyard. Stolen six months ago in Southeast. The owner of the place says a man brought in the car and sold it for four hundred dollars.”

  “A man? I thought eyewitnesses said it was a woman. Blond, as I recall.”

  “We’re a little confused about that.”

  “Who was he?”

  A shrug from the big detective. “He never said. According to the junkyard owner, he never gave his name, no registration, just removed the plates, pocketed the four hundred, and took off.”

  Tatum laughed. “All aboveboard.”

  “Forensics is going over the car as we speak. I just got a call from the garage. They’ve come up with something that might give us a lead.”

  “Oh?”

  “A woman’s shoe.”

  “Shoe? Just one?”

  “We assume whoever had the car—the woman who was driving or this guy who delivered it to the junkyard—cleaned it out before dumping it. They missed the shoe in the trunk. Fancy woman’s shoe, expensive one. Red, I’m told. Italian. We’re running down exclusive stores that carry the brand.”

  “Any leads on the blonde?”

  “Not yet. We’re going on the assumption that it was a girlfriend.”

  “He’s divorced.”

  “It wasn’t his ex-wife. We’ve already questioned her. Wrong hair color, wrong car. Look, Nic, the reason I called you was to go over a list of Sedgwick’s patients.”

  Tatum’s raised eyebrows mirrored his surprise.

  Owens smiled. “We went to the right judge to get a court order for the doc’s patient files to be released to us. The judge balked at first, but we convinced him that homicide might be involved. The magic word, “homicide,” works every time, at least for this particular judge. He slapped on some conditions, female patients only and no one who’d been a patient for less than six months.”

  “Why the prohibition on new patients?”

  “Probably figured it takes a while for a patient to get mad enough at her shrink to run him down.”

  “I’m surprised he didn’t restrict it to blond patients only,” Tatum said.

  “I guess he’s heard of wigs and hair dye. Anyway, I thought you might pick up on something in one of the files that screams homicidal blond woman sleeping with her shrink who drives a white sedan. Up for it?”

  “Sure, only don’t expect much from me. I doubt whether the files will tell much, but I’ll take a look.”

  “Can’t ask for more than that.”

  “You have the files, Joe?”

  “No. That’s another restriction the judge added to the list. The files aren’t to leave the doctor’s office.” He consulted a sheet of paper on his desk. “Dr. Sedgwick’s receptionist and gal Friday is a Betty Martinez, worked for him for a number of years. I’ll call and tell her that you’ll be going over the records. She’s already pulled the ones that match the judge’s order. You call her and set up a time.”

  “Shall do,” Tatum said. “The usual hourly fee?”

  “It’s in my budget.”

  As he prepared to leave, Tatum asked, “Why is Sedgwick’s death—murder, if it is that—high on your priority list?”

  Although they were alone and the door was closed, Owens looked around as though to ensure their privacy. “I don’t have a good answer for that, Nic. Let’s just say that some of the interested parties have clout—and don’t work for the MPD.”

  CHAPTER

  8

  Despite the court order releasing certain of Mark Sedgwick’s patient records to the MPD, Betty Martinez was still convinced that to do so would entangle her in some sort of bureaucratic imbroglio. She greeted Nic Tatum the following day with suspicion and overt reluctance to cooperate. But when he told her that he was a Ph.D. psychologist and a former friend of her boss, she softened her stance and settled him in Sedgwick’s office. He declined her offer to get him coffee—he’d brought his own cup from Starbucks—and told her that he’d yell if he needed anything.

  The folders that Betty had culled from the files were neatly piled on the desk, which Tatum ignored for a few minutes in order to take in his surroundings. The office was nondescript as psychiatrists’ offices went. It looked to Tatum as though Sedgwick had ordered his furnishings from a company that provided sets to plays and motion pictures, nothing fancy but certainly utilitarian. There was the de rigueur leather couch with an attached matching leather pillow; a box of pop-up Kleenex sat on a small oval table next to it. The tan-and-white carpeting was industrial grade, the drapes a pale yellow with orange vertical stripes. In addition to Sedgwick’s desk and desk chair, there was a second chair in leather that matched the couch and was situated close to where a patient’s head would rest on the pillow. The setup interested Tatum. As far as he knew, Mark Sedgwick wasn’t a Freudian therapist who practiced psychoanalysis, session after session in which the patient was encouraged to free-associate about the past while the therapist grunted, made notes, and tossed in an occasional comment to keep things going.

  Tatum practiced short-term therapy. His patients sat in a chair—there was no couch in Tatum’s office—and he focused on the here and now rather than indulging in archaeological digs into the patient’s childhood. If a patient had a fear of flying, Tatum tried to get him over it as fast as possible. Discovering why he was fearful through months, even years, of dredging up his life history didn’t seem to make sense. Getting him on a plane was Tatum’s goal, and he was impressively successful at helping patients conquer their hang-ups in short order. Another difference between the way Tatum and Sedgwick practiced had to do with Sedgwick being a psychiatrist, a medical doctor with the privilege of prescribing medicines the way any M.D. could, something that psychologists like Tatum were prohibited from doing.

  How many of Sedgwick’s patients used that couch? Tatum wondered. The answer, at least for some of them, might be in the file folders, and he opened the first one.

  He’d gone through half the files by noon without discovering anything useful. Betty knocked, entered, and asked whether he wanted her to get him some lunch.

  “Thanks, no, Ms. Martinez. I think I’ll run out for something. I need a break.” He stood and stretched against a tightening in his back. He needed a workout.

  “Dr. Sedgwick kept good notes,” he commented.

  “Lots of them,” she agreed. “He dictated most of them after patients left, and I transcribed them. Sometimes, though, he wrote the notes himself.”

  “Any reason why he’d choose to do that for only certain patients?”

  “I don’t know. Sure I can’t get you something?” She smiled for the first time since he’d arrived.

  “Positive, but thanks anyway. By the way, did any of the female patients in these files wear
red shoes when coming for their sessions?”

  She looked puzzled.

  “Red women’s shoes,” he said, “fancy red Italian shoes.” He didn’t know whether the police had asked her that question but decided to proceed as though they hadn’t.

  Her smile widened, but she still looked perplexed.

  “Just a thought,” he said.

  “Sheila,” she said.

  “Pardon?”

  “Sheila,” she repeated. “She always wore red shoes. She used to say that Imelda Marcos had nothing on her.”

  Tatum laughed. “That’s right, Mrs. Marcos was known for her shoe collection. What’s Sheila’s last name?”

  “Klaus.”

  “I didn’t see any file for her.”

  “It’s there.”

  “Probably with the ones I haven’t gotten to yet.”

  He shuffled through the remaining files and pulled the one for Sheila Klaus. He opened it, frowned, and looked up at Betty. “There’s virtually nothing in it,” he said.

  “Dr. Sedgwick never dictated notes after their sessions. I suppose he wrote them by hand.”

  Tatum nodded and returned to the few pages contained in the folder. “He sure didn’t write many for this patient,” he muttered, turning the file on the desk for Betty to see. “There’s a date on this sheet for when she started seeing him. It goes back to 2007.”

  “Sheila has been a patient for a long time,” Betty said. “Not always steady. She sometimes stopped coming for months. I remember when she didn’t have a session scheduled for six months.”

  Tatum continued to peruse what the folder held. On the bottom of the sheet on which her start date was mentioned were a series of notations written in what Tatum assumed was Sedgwick’s handwriting: Up Gaze 4; Arm Levitation left 3–4; Squint 0; Amnesia to Cut Off 2; Float 2. The final entry was the numeral 5 with a box drawn around it.

  “Dr. Sedgwick used hypnosis with her,” Tatum said, more to himself than to Betty. “These notations are from the HIP test.”

  “He used hypnosis with a lot of his patients,” she offered.

  That wasn’t surprising. Tatum and Sedgwick had worked together on a number of projects at NIH and at GW that involved medical hypnosis. Using trance to treat certain conditions, psychological as well as physical, was now firmly entrenched in a physician’s bag of tricks. One trial involving the use of hypnosis as anesthesia for patients whose physical condition ruled out chemical anesthesia produced what Tatum considered remarkable results. Videotapes of patients undergoing major surgery using only hypno-anesthesia demonstrated dramatic proof of how the power of suggestion could be every bit as potent and effective as the chemical variety.

  “Is Ms. Klaus a blond woman?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “And she wore red shoes?”

  “Yes.”

  He hesitated before asking, “Were Dr. Sedgwick and Ms. Klaus close?”

  “How do you mean?” she asked, although he was certain she knew the answer.

  “Close,” he said. “Friends beyond therapy.”

  “I really don’t like talking about things like that,” Betty said.

  “I can understand your reluctance,” he said, “but I’m here as a representative of the police, Betty, and everything points to Dr. Sedgwick having been run over deliberately—by a blond woman who might have been a patient.”

  “They—” she started, biting her lip in the process. “They traveled together sometimes.” She quickly added, “Just a few times.”

  Tatum nodded. He understood.

  “When was the last time she saw Dr. Sedgwick as a patient?” he asked.

  “Oh, it’s been awhile,” she replied. “Two months, maybe three. I can look it up.”

  “I’d appreciate that. There’s no mention in the file of the last time he saw her.”

  She returned from the reception area. “Two months ago to the day,” she reported.

  “I appreciate your help, Betty. I think I’ll run out for a sandwich. Get you anything?”

  “No, thank you. I brought my lunch. It’s cheaper.”

  “It certainly is. You have an address and phone number for Ms. Klaus?”

  “Sure.” She returned with it a minute later.

  “Thanks,” he said. “I’ll be back in an hour to finish going through the files.”

  It had begun to rain while Tatum was in Sedgwick’s office. He walked half a block before ducking into a luncheonette, where he settled in a booth, ordered a sandwich from the waitress, and dialed Joe Owens’s number at MPD.

  “How’s it going?” Owens asked.

  “It’s going very well, Joe. I think I’m onto something, someone.”

  “Who?”

  Tatum briefed the detective on the information he’d turned up on Sheila Klaus, including her address and phone number.

  “Looks like you might have hit a home run, Nic.”

  “We’ll see.”

  “I’ll go have a talk with Ms. Klaus.”

  “Hold off until the end of the day, huh? Let me see what else I can come up with about her. And I’d like to be with you or whoever you send.”

  “Not a problem, Nic. Call me by four.”

  Tatum spent the next two hours finishing his examination of Sedgwick’s patient files. Further questioning of Betty about Sheila Klaus was nonproductive, although he did learn that the receptionist considered the patient to be, as she reluctantly put it, “a little strange.”

  “How so?” he asked.

  “Oh, I don’t know. She’s very nice, really sweet, but a little spacey, if you get what I mean.”

  “Not always here?” he suggested.

  “Like she sometimes daydreamed.”

  “You’ve really been a big help, Betty. Thanks for coming in today.”

  “Dr. Sedgwick’s lawyer wants me to keep coming in to make sure that things stay in order, but I’m sure that won’t last long. I’ll have to find a new job.”

  “If I can be of any help in that, let me know. Thanks again.”

  He went directly to MPD headquarters and found Owens coming out of a meeting.

  “You come up with anything else?” the detective asked.

  “No.”

  “Let’s swing by the address you have for her. Detective Breen is coming with us. If this pans out the way it looks like it could, Nic, I’ll owe you big-time.”

  “Lunch at Ray’s Hell Burger will do just fine.”

  CHAPTER

  9

  Billy Breen was a young detective whose enthusiasm for the job was still fresh. He talked fast and was quick to agree with everything that the veteran Joe Owens said. He reminded Tatum of a tall Mickey Rooney. His youthful verve was welcome; veteran cops tend to be dour individuals after spending years dealing with the dregs of society, although Joe Owens was a pleasant exception. Tatum gave Breen two more years before he became soured and cynical. It just happened, an occupational reality.

  Sheila Klaus lived in a small one-story white house in Rockville, Maryland. Owens had run a background check on her earlier that afternoon. She was forty-eight and a divorcée; her only marriage had lasted two years and ended fourteen years ago. She’d been employed in George Washington University’s law school admissions office and had left a year earlier because of a disability, the specifics unstated. She had no arrest record, nor had she even received a traffic citation. Her credit score was high-average. A red Mazda was registered in her name.

  As they pulled up in front of her house, they saw a blond woman gardening in the postage-stamp-size front yard. She wore jeans, a red sweatshirt, a floppy white hat, and low red sneakers. Even in her oversized gardening clothes it was obvious to her visitors that she was an attractive woman.

  She looked up as they got out of the car but immediately returned to digging a hole for a potted plant that sat next to her.

  “Ms. Klaus?” Owens said as they stood outside the low white picket fence that defined the yard.

  She l
ooked up and smiled. “Yes?”

  “I’m Detective Owens. These are Detective Breen and Dr. Tatum.”

  She wiped perspiration from her brow with the back of her hand, stood, and approached, the smile still on her tanned face.

  “Is something wrong?” she asked.

  “We’re investigating the death of Dr. Mark Sedgwick.”

  Her smile vanished. “Oh, yes, I heard about it. What a tragedy. He was a very kind and compassionate doctor. I read about it in the papers.”

  “You did know him, then.”

  “Yes. I was a patient of his once.”

  “We’re aware of that, ma’am,” said Owens. “We have some questions we’d like to ask you.”

  Her expression turned to puzzlement. “Whatever for?”

  “Mind if we come in?” Owens asked.

  “I … I suppose that will be all right,” she said, “It’s just that—”

  “Yes?”

  “It’s just that this is upsetting, having detectives come to my home concerning Dr. Sedgwick’s death. What could I possibly know that would interest you?”

  “We can determine that after we ask you a few questions,” Breen said, hoping he wasn’t treading on Owens’s toes. He’d hardened his tone to sound the way he was sure a detective should sound.

  “All right,” she said, her smile returning. “You’ll have to excuse the house. It’s a bit of a mess.”

  She removed her hat as they followed her inside. She was blond. Tatum was struck by her demeanor. Aside from a natural curiosity about their visit, she was calm and pleasant, hardly the behavior of someone who had deliberately run someone down only a few days earlier.

  The house was a lot neater than she’d promised. She invited them to sit in a glassed-in atrium at the rear in which dozens of plants sat on windowsills or on metal stands.

  “Would you like something to drink?” she asked. “I made fresh iced tea this morning and—”

  “No, thank you,” Owens said. “Ms. Klaus, have you ever owned a white Buick Regal?”