“No.”
“His problem—and this is a problem with nearly every surgeon, including this one—is his ego. He keeps his nose high. He was quick to put people down. He intimidated most everyone around him. That had its plusses—he effectively controlled everyone, and that sense of leadership is important for any surgeon. The surgeon must be in control. Everyone must know it, must feel it.” He glanced at her. Here, he was in control. “The incident that led to his expulsion is what I wanted to talk to you about. We had an open heart to do. Tegg was to assist. I was delayed by another surgery, across town. The patient was submarining—we were losing him quickly. I was nowhere to be found.
“Tegg informed the nursing staff that I had okayed his beginning the procedure without me. He lied: No such conversation had ever taken place. As I have said, he controlled the nurses. They went along with it. Tegg accepted full responsibility. Taking charge was one of his long suits.
“When you perform open heart or any invasive thoracic surgery,” he continued, “you open the chest cavity with something called a sternal saw. It’s a very useful tool—the sawing used to be done by hand. It’s tricky, however. You must maintain an upward pressure at all times—that’s the way the blade works.” His hands flexed as he spoke. “In my absence, Tegg mishandled the sternal saw. He severed the left ventricle, killing the patient.
“Naturally, Tegg was asked to leave and was told in no uncertain terms that he would never be accepted in any residency program. If he applied, all would be revealed. He went on to veterinarian school—I wrote a recommendation for him.”
“Was he ever charged for that killing?”
“This is medicine, Miss Matthews. It wasn’t murder. It was a mistake. Mistakes happen.”
“There were no lawsuits?”
“Yes, there was a lawsuit. That’s one of the reasons he was dismissed. The school had to dismiss him immediately in an attempt to defend its position on this. To clarify it. That is precisely why no other program would have ever taken him.”
She took some notes while her thoughts were still fresh. She looked up and asked. “Do you remember the patient’s name? The one who was killed?”
“You don’t forget an incident like that,” he explained. “His name was Thomas Kent.”
She wrote this down as well. She underlined it.
Thomas Kent
3 P.M.
40
When Daphne cleared the jetway at SEATAC airport she saw Lou Boldt and an airport security patrolman anxiously awaiting her, standing away from the steady stream of departing passengers. Boldt reached out, took her briefcase in one hand and her upper arm in another. They walked fast. He steered her over to a shuttle cart that was waiting for them. The air was electric with urgency. Sharon’s time was running out.
Boldt said, “Maybeck’s cooling his heels in Interrogation. Shoswitz wants you part of it.” Before she had a chance to ask, he answered, “He was busted at a dog fight by the County Police who weren’t aware of our investigation or our surveillance. It’s a mess. There’s a lot of screaming going on.”
They climbed onto the cart, and it hurried off almost before she sat down, throwing her into the seat. She said, “We’re running out of time. You know that, don’t you?”
“We’re taking an amphibian to Lake Union to save time. Tractor trailer carrying chemicals overturned on I-5. Traffic’s been diverted to 99. Nothing is moving. There’s an hour delay at least. Don’t look at me, it was Phil’s idea.”
“The lieutenant spending money?” she said over the repetitious beeping of the cart’s pedestrian warning system.
“There’s a rumor going around that one of the church groups pressured the mayor about Sharon’s whereabouts. Whatever happened, the lid is coming off this thing. KING radio ran a story about our finding remains along the Tolt. They’re trying to draw Green River comparisons. We’re sitting on the rest of it, but Phil suddenly wants results.”
“It’s about time.”
Boldt said, “Yes. That is what it’s about.”
The cart pulled up at gate A-7, where a charter pilot awaited them. Daphne handed her keys over to the airport security man who was going to return her car to the department. Boldt and the pilot shook hands. The three of them hurried down a flight of stairs and out to the waiting plane with its overhead engine, wheels and short pontoons. The plane looked so tiny compared with the huge jetliners.
Daphne shut her eyes in terror as they landed on Lake Union seven minutes later. From the plane, they were chauffeured in a patrolcar, sitting in the back, contained by a cage, the doors without handles.
“You know, in seven years I’ve never ridden back here,” she said.
It had been too loud to talk on the plane. In a strained voice Boldt informed her, “Immigration’s computers kicked dozens of names. We failed to realize how many commuters travel between the two cities on a daily basis. It’s a long list and it’s going to be a bitch sorting it out. To make matters worse, we’ve been unable to get a list of the various employees, and that’s the first list we wanted to check Immigration against.”
“One step forwad, two steps back.”
“Doin’ the policeman’s polka,” he said, making her smile.
The car braked severely. She looked up to see they were already at the Public Safety Building. The driver let them out. Boldt was still carrying her briefcase. The frantic pace lent an urgency that she now felt physically as well. She was taking short, quick breaths. Her heart was racing.
Shoswitz met them on the ground floor; the driver must have called in their position. This kind of treatment was heady. Shoswitz wouldn’t allow anyone else on the elevator with them. As the three of them ascended, the lieutenant asked Boldt, “Well?”
“She’s pretty much up to date.”
“What can you tell us about Tegg?” the lieutenant asked her. “And I want it all. Guesses, hunches, anything. I’ve got a meeting with the captain in—” he checked his watch, “ten minutes. Go!”
She had tried to bring her thoughts together on the flight down from Vancouver. These last few minutes had rattled her. The elevator car reached the fourth floor. Shoswitz hit the stop button, preventing the doors from opening. He was waiting for her to brief him.
She said quickly, “Tegg is a paranoid. He’s running from his past, trying to prove himself. In his mind, he’s better than everyone, yet everyone’s against him. Outwardly he could very well be Joe Normal, a good doctor, a good husband, a good father. But inside he’s paranoid. He thinks of everyone as inferior to him; he tolerates them, but that’s all. He’s quick to blame, and he has an explanation for everything. He’s Mr. Right. Mr. Perfect. By now he’s found some way to put a twist on his killing a man named Thomas Kent—killed him in surgery—but half of him knows that this twist is a lie, that he’s lying to himself, and that’s been eating away at him a long, long time.”
“How dangerous?” Shoswitz asked. “To our people?”
“Violent? I doubt it. But he’s worth being afraid of. He was at the top of his class, so he’s plenty brainy. He has a scientific mind, which means he’ll think in patterns and subsets, very linear and logical. He’s always two or three steps ahead—in his thoughts, in his surgery, in his life. He’s likely to be obsessive—very few hobbies or distractions to take him away from his work. He’s a control freak. Millingsford said he used to intimidate the nurses, that they were afraid of him, and that fits with what I’m thinking. He still intimidates his coworkers. He’s Ikely to be exceptionally strong-minded, strong-willed. But psychologically speaking, his strengths are his weaknesses. They can be exploited.”
The lieutenant nodded and looked up at Boldt. “Okay?” he asked. “Any questions?”
“Okay with me.”
She grabbed Shoswitz by the arm. It was the wrong thing to do. “We have to bypass the red tape, Lieutenant. We have to go straight at this guy. And fast.”
Shoswitz pulled his arm free, reached down, and punche
d the Emergency Stop button. The doors slid open. Unexpectedly, they were showered in a blinding array of camera flashes and a dozen questions being shouted at them simultaneously. Shoswitz and Boldt contained Daphne between them, and the three of them, arms raised fending off the lights, surged through the throng of reporters. “No comment,” Shoswitz kept shouting back.
As they pushed into Homicide, the press was kept at bay. Shoswitz issued orders to the first patrolman he encountered, “I want them kept in the press room, understand? Not up here.” To Boldt he said, “I gotta leave you two now.” To Daphne he said, “This is where you earn your meal ticket, Matthews. We need to break this guy. We need for him to give us Tegg in a handbasket. You’re the one who said it: Your friend Sharon is running out of time.”
She wanted to hit him for saying that. Where had he been this last week?
“Don’t worry about him,” Boldt said as Shoswitz hurried out of earshot.
“I’m not worried about him,” she said. They reached the one-way glass that looked in on Interrogation Room A. “It’s him I’m wondering about.”
On the other side of the glass sat Donald Monroe Maybeck.
Boldt had never seen teeth like that. He and Daphne studied Maybeck through the one-way glass. Boldt said, “As far as he knows, all we have him on is the gaming charge, the pit bulls. But the other arrests were allowed to post bail immediately, so he’s got to be wondering why he’s still here.” Teeth like a junkyard dog, a grotesque gray brown. Despite the no-smoking sign he smoked a nonfilter cigarette, holding the smoke in so long that when he finally exhaled, it left as a thin gray ghost.
“We can book him on a list of charges, but none of them except this pit bull fight is going to stick, and it’s a misdemeanor. The laptop was out of his possession—we, a bunch of cops—witnessed it being stolen. He or an attorney can use that to his advantage. Even with the password, he can claim someone put that database onto the laptop while it was out of his possession. Things like that are tricky to prove. Proctor won’t go for it, I promise you. I’m betting he killed Connie Chi, but we have yet to connect him to it. ID has that condom—has the sperm. We can make like we’re going to run a DNA typing. We can humiliate him: Make him jack-off for the lab boys. But proof? A match? Maybe, maybe not. What I’d like to do is wear him down, crack him open, and get a full confession on his involvement with Tegg and his murdering Connie Chi. Slam-dunk him.”
“And we both do the questioning?” she asked. He nodded. A vague smile flickered across her lips. “What do you say I get to play tough?” She unbuttoned the top button of her blouse.
Boldt thought: So she’s breaking out the serious hardware. “Sounds good to me.”
She waited for him to open the door for her. He did so and said, “After you.”
“Put out the cigarette,” she ordered as she and Boldt came through the door.
“You?” Maybeck let slip, recognizing Boldt from the pawn shop encounter.
This was the fun part for her. This was where it became interesting. It wasn’t quite a game, but it was close. Maybeck looked up at her, drank in every curve of her body, and left his eyes boring a hole in her crotch, so she would feel it. So he knew how to play the game too. So what? He smiled; his teeth looked like a rusted garden rake. You hit guys like this. You hit them head on. “Nice teeth,” she said. She turned to set her case down, turned to prevent him from trying to vent his anger by communicating with his eyes, turned, as she did, unbuttoned two more buttons so that by the time she swung back around, her blouse sagged open revealing enough cleavage to get lost in. She knew the Maybecks of this world; she worked with them. If men wanted to use her sex against her, then she would use it right back. When Lou’s eyes fell for the trick as well, producing a momentary flash of embarrassment in him when their eyes met, she knew she had scored a direct hit. Maybeck wouldn’t be able to resist the distraction.
It was a cheap stunt. Nothing more. Who cared? Maybeck was punk trash. She’d seen a photo of Connie Chi taken on her last day on earth. It was enough motivation. “One thing good about correctional institutions,” she said, looking him directly in the eye, “they have free dental service.” He didn’t flinch—stronger than she had expected. Test and probe. He kept his lips pinched tightly shut. Good—embarrassed. Ashamed, even. Nothing as strong as shame to turn the vise. His eyes strayed to her chest again, so she leaned forward to allow her blouse to hang open, giving him a nice long look.
“Nice tits for a cop,” he said, striking back. “You fuck your way to the top or what?”
It knocked her back a step. When her eyes met his again she introduced Boldt with, “You guys never officially met, I don’t think. This is Sergeant Lou Boldt. Homicide,” leaning on the word as well as the table. Then she saw in him what she had wanted to see, more than a flicker of panic. She buttoned herself back up.
“You want to tell us about BloodLines?” Boldt asked, clearly knocking the wind out of Maybeck, “Or do you want to do the dance?”
“You look a little old for dancing,” Maybeck said. “Her … she’s okay. Have you fucked her yet?”
Boldt raised his hand to strike the man, but caught himself. That was what Maybeck wanted: a way to beat the legal system.
She said quickly, “Yeah, the dental work is free in the big house, but so are the condoms. It’s kind of a tradeoff. Depends how keen you are on HIV. Some people say AIDS was invented just to keep the prison populations down.”
“Come on, man. Hit me,” he baited.
Boldt warned him, “We’re the front line, pal. We’re the ones who will listen. The next line of defense is the attorneys. Then come the judges and the jurors, the witnesses—”
“Maybe Connie Chi’s sister would make a good witness,” she threw in just to catch his reaction.
“Real shame about Connie.”
Boldt edged closer.
“In-mate. Nice ring to it,” Daphne said, worried Boldt might hit him anyway. Boldt was supposed to play “nice guy”; she would play tough—the exact opposite of what Maybeck might expect. Toy with his sensibilities. Turn him upside down and shake.
Boldt looked over at her and rolled his eyes. He was back in control now, she hoped. He was good at this, better than most because he didn’t believe he was any good at it, and that made him work harder. Something Daphne appreciated. He listened. He learned. He knew to meet the suspect in the middle, to establish a rapport, to mimic body language, and avoid any outward display of judgment.
“You face a very important decision,” Boldt cautioned him, “because the way you play this can mean a difference of years for you. Years, Maybeck. Got it? You may want to think about that.”
“Maybe I want to call me an attorney.”
“You were given your phone call. Don’t hose me, friend. I’m telling you: We’re the best chance you’re going to get.”
Maybeck said to her, “You sure don’t look like no cop.”
Daphne answered, “And you don’t look very smart, Mr. Maybeck, but I hope I’m wrong about that. We can connect you to BloodLines. We can connect you to Connie Chi. We can connect you to that database. Twenty-seven harvests. Three of them are dead—did you know that? Chew on that with those pretty teeth of yours.”
“I think I’m through talking,” he said, suddenly restless. A good sign. His veneer was cracking.
“You stop talking, and you’re through all right,” she said quickly.
Boldt repeated, “Once the attorneys get into this, it’s out of our hands. You understand? When have attorneys ever made things simple?”
“If you play dumb,” Daphne said, “you are dumb.”
“Talk to us,” Boldt encouraged. “Tell us about Tegg. You give us Tegg, you may just walk away from this.”
Maybeck glanced back and forth between the two of them. This was the best sign yet. Indecision filled his eyes, which to Daphne indicated a vulnerability and dictated different tactics.
“Are you prepared to take the heat
for Tegg’s crimes?” she asked. To Boldt she said, “I don’t know … maybe he should wait for his attorney, because if that’s the way he plays this, he’s certainly going to need one.”
Boldt said, “We’re not running a tape recorder. Have you noticed that?”
Daphne cautioned Boldt, “He’s not smart enough to understand any of this. I told you he was a dumb shit. I can spot ’em, Lou. You’re gonna have to cough up that twenty.”
“You’re betting on me?” Maybeck asked incredulously.
“Betting is for Vice,” she advised him. “Sergeant Boldt is Homicide. Maybe you missed that the first time around. You think he’s here to discuss a pit bull fight? Christ All Friday, get a clue!”
“Tell us about BloodLines. You got the donors for Tegg. You offered them cash for their kidneys and they bit. You delivered them to Tegg. Is that about right? Because if it is, then you’ve got to think this through, Donnie. Can I call you Donnie? You don’t mind? Because you can trade that down to bullshit. Even a first-year PD can get you out of that. See? But kidnapping? Interstate transportation of stolen goods—those are federal charges. That’s FBI shit. That’s three-piece suits and wingtip shoes. You know what you’re getting yourself into? For what? Talk to me. Use your head, Donnie, and talk to me. Please.”
“Not this one,” Daphne said. “He’s too stupid. Look at those teeth, would you? That ought to tell you something. Shit for brains. The next thing he’s going to hear is metal on metal. Boom! That door’s going to shut for a long, long time.”
“Up yours,” he said.
“Oh, no. Not in the big house. Not up mine, though they’ll tell you it’s just as nice. It’s up yours, Gatemouth. And it’s not very pleasant.”
That shut him up. Boldt was blushing. Maybeck had allowed his mouth to hang open and his teeth to show. “I bet you like it,” he said.
She struck him. She open-handed him right across the cheek. He smiled. “Don’t forget, asshole,” she said angrily. “This is all off the record.” His smile faded.
The Angel Maker Page 27
