by Daniel Kalla
“Maybe, but something feels very wrong.”
“How so?”
“I never told anyone about the night I confronted J.D. and Emily. So how did Rick and Helen find out?”
Alex sipped her tea before answering. “Maybe a neighbor overheard you?”
“Right. The same neighbor who called me at the crack of dawn to taunt me about it in a whisper.”
Alex viewed me with more patience than I deserved. “You’re getting too keyed up, Ben. Why don’t you just give them the sample and be done with it?”
I tore at a cocktail napkin. “The blood on Emily’s wall was AB-negative.”
Alex lips tightened, and a flicker of doubt crossed her eyes. “It’s not your blood, is it, Ben?”
I swallowed. “Alex, I wasn’t there that night.”
Her face creased into a slight frown. She put her tea down slowly. “Are you saying you bled on her wall some other time?”
I shook my head. “I never bled on her wall. Not that night. Not ever.”
She nodded. The skin at the edges of her lips and eyes relaxed. A smile fluttered across her lips. “Then what’s there to worry about, Ben?”
More than her words, her relaxed body language brought me some comfort. I dredged up my first smile of the evening. “I don’t know. I guess I’m getting paranoid. There seem to be so many coincidences. And then the blood of Emily’s alleged killer turns out to be my rare blood type….”
“So what’s your next step?”
“I think I should talk to a lawyer.”
She shook her head in surprise. “A criminal defense attorney?”
“Yeah.”
She eyed me skeptically but didn’t argue. She checked her watch. “Ben, I better get home to Talie. Sometimes she wakes up in the middle of the night and crawls into my bed. She’ll wonder where I am.” She chuckled. “And Dad won’t hear her if she gets up. He snores like a jackhammer on overdrive.”
“You go,” I said. Emboldened by the scotch, I reached out and clutched her hand, squeezing a bit too long and tenderly. “Thank you, Alex. For everything.”
She smiled and gently freed her hand from my grip. She stood up and hurried off without another word.
Sitting alone, I drained another scotch before I asked for the bill. The cute redheaded waitress with the sprinkling of freckles and a diamond nose stud strutted up to the table carrying the bill. Wearing a tight black T-shirt, she leaned a little closer than necessary when she deposited the bill on the table. “Did you lose your friend?” She flashed me an open-mouthed smile.
I wasn’t sure whether she was hitting on me or this was an attempt beef up her tip. Regardless, I had little energy to respond. I forced a grin. “She had to go home. So do I, now.”
A little tipsy, I wandered outside and flagged down a cab. I was thankful the older driver with the downcast eyes didn’t attempt to engage me in conversation. I was too tired to carry on a superficial chat about the ungodly price of gas or the Sonics’ latest woes.
Opening my door, I heard the electronic machine-gun blast of beeps from my ringing phone. The hallway clock read 1:15 A.M. My pulse quickened. The ringing stopped by the time I reached the phone. Hesitantly, I scrolled back through the call display, which read CANADA for the most recent call.
I was still holding the receiver in my hand when I felt it vibrate even before I heard the ring. CANADA flashed on the call display. I hesitated a moment and then brought the receiver to my ear.
“Benjamin.”
The single whispered word set my heart sprinting. “What do you want?”
“To warn you.”
“Warn me about what?”
“The blood.”
My throat turned to sand. I knew exactly what he meant. “What blood?”
“On Emily’s wall.”
I froze in place; a statue couldn’t have been stiller.
“It’s your blood, Benjamin.”
Chapter 10
A fitful sleep later, I climbed out of bed the next morning at 4:35 A.M. I expected another call from the whisperer, but by 5:30 A.M. none had come. Not planning to hang around for one, I changed into my riding gear. I strode down to the basement and into the attached garage. As my mountain bike was still in the shop, I reached for the road bike and pulled it down from its ceiling hook. Clicking my feet into the pedals, I longed for speed.
I headed out onto the dark and dangerously slick roads, intending to outrace my worries. With sparse traffic, I flew up and down the hills of downtown Seattle. I pumped every ounce of muscle into the steep climbs, sprinting up the hills. The lactic acid build-up in my muscles seared my thighs, and when I glanced at the heart monitor, my heart rate occasionally broke the two-hundred barrier. And yet, I couldn’t reach the “high” or find the release that normally accompanied the endorphins that now coursed through my veins.
I returned home soaked from sweat and tasting salt in my dry mouth. My legs felt wobbly as I wheeled my bike back into the garage. But my mood was bleaker than ever. I couldn’t shake the uncanny sense that none of the events of the past week had been coincidence.
Even before I climbed into the shower, I put in a call to Michael Prince’s office. Expecting to get his voicemail at 7:50 A.M., I was surprised to hear his receptionist answer.
“This is Dr. Benjamin Dafoe.” Stressing my title, I seized the opportunity to trade on my M.D. to emphasize the urgency. “It’s vital that I see Mr. Prince as soon as possible.”
“Of course, Dr. Dafoe,” the receptionist said in her pleasant, soft Southern drawl. “I’ll just have to check with Mr. Prince.”
After holding for less than two minutes, I was asked to come to the office at nine.
I changed into my only suit, navy blue. Struggling with the tie, I marveled at how unnatural I looked in the mirror. I remembered Helen once teasing me that people who owned only one suit and tie generally heard the question “And how does the defendant plead?” whenever they wore it. At the time, I’d laughed, but I wasn’t laughing now.
I headed down to my garage and hopped into my car. Ten minutes later, I pulled up to Prince’s boxy glass high-rise office building on Fifth Avenue. I squeezed into the gap between two cars, but I almost reparked elsewhere; I was reluctant to chance anything that might bring me nearer to Seattle’s legal system.
I rode the elevator to the thirty-second floor and stepped out into the sleek metal-and-wood elegance of the law offices of Pratt, Prince, and Higney.
In less than five minutes, I had a coffee in hand as I sat in Michael Prince’s spacious office. The floor-to-ceiling windows looked out onto the Space Needle and beyond to the expanse of Puget Sound. The office was exactly as I’d imagined, right down to the crushed leather furniture and giant oil canvases (though I expected more splashy, Jackson Pollock–style abstracts rather than simple landscapes). As I sank into the brown chair across from Prince’s desk, I wondered how many murderers and drug traffickers had sat there before me. Despite the new leather smell, I had an urge to wipe it down with an alcohol swab.
I don’t belong here.
The oak door swung open and Michael Prince strode inside. In an olive suit and textured green tie, Prince wasn’t far off from what I’d pictured, either. I didn’t count on the long silver-gray hair that swept down to his collar nor his compact size (he was at most five-eight and couldn’t have weighed more than 140 pounds), but his strong handsome features, manicured hands, and easy smile fit my preconceived notion for his line of work.
He walked up to me and pumped my hand forcefully. “Dr. Dafoe, I’m Michael Prince. Thanks so much for coming in,” he said, as if he’d requested the meeting.
“It’s Ben,” I said. “And thank you for the taking the time.”
He waved me back into the murderer’s chair as he sidled around the desk and dipped into his seat. “Not at all. Janelle tells me the matter is urgent.” He spoke in a smooth, clear voice, articulating every syllable as if a court stenographer were transcribing
our conversation.
“Or just one giant misunderstanding,” I said, clearing my throat self-consciously. “I might have reacted prematurely.”
Prince leaned back in his seat and touched his palms together. “I wish all my clients reacted the same way. It would make my job so much easier in the long run.”
I was tempted to ask him if he was referring to before or after they’d committed the crime, but I decided to keep my prejudgments under wraps for the time being.
“What can I do for you, Ben?”
“Did you hear about Emily Kenmore’s murder?”
He nodded. “Double homicide. Stabbing in the female victim’s apartment. Possible drug connection.” The story had brought some mild media interest, but Prince fired off the facts as if he’d kept an eye on developments and expected to become professionally involved. “Occupational hazard, Ben. I have a habit of recounting local news items as though they were police reports.”
“I was once engaged to the female victim.”
Prince separated his hands for a moment and flashed his palms. “I’m sorry.”
“That was five years ago,” I said. “But I’d seen Emily and the other victim a few days before their murder. In fact, there was an…altercation.”
Prince tilted his head and his frown lines deepened, but he didn’t comment.
“When the detectives first approached me I didn’t tell them the whole story.”
Prince nodded, his face placid. “Which is?”
I took a sip of my coffee, mainly to wet my lips. Then I told Prince about the confrontation with J.D. and Emily and how I’d withheld recounting the incident along with the details of my engagement and recent financial support for Emily. Recapping the week—including my lies of omission to the police, my lack of alibi, the cut across my knuckles, and my refusal to supply a DNA sample—I was struck by what a guilty light the events cast on me. Morbidly, I wondered whether Prince ever believed his clients’ version of events. Deciding I must have already stretched my credibility to the breaking point, I opted not to mention the anonymous whisperer with the Canadian phone number.
Prince sat up straighter in his chair. “And the detectives haven’t contacted you since last night?”
“No.”
“I need to ask you something, Ben.”
“Okay.”
Prince stared past me out to the gray drizzle falling on Puget Sound. “Is there a strong likelihood that the blood found at the scene will match yours?”
“It’s not mine, but the way this week has been unfolding”—I swallowed—“I’m concerned about that possibility.” Even to me, the words sounded as if they came from the mouth of an indicted politician trying to put a new spin on the truth.
Prince nodded distantly, but his voice was businesslike. “The detectives can’t request a DNA sample without cause.”
“Which they might have, but it’s a moot point anyway. They don’t need me to get a sample.”
Prince’s eyes leapt from the window and locked onto mine. “How is that possible, Ben?”
“They already have my DNA.”
“From a previous investigation?”
“Sort of. Two years ago, I gave the S.P.D. a saliva sample to compare the DNA to the blood they found in the trunk of my brother’s abandoned car. It was an exact match.”
Prince’s eyes lit with understanding. “You two are identical twins.”
“Were,” I said. “Aaron died in the trunk of his car on the way to wherever his killer or killers dumped the body.”
Prince tapped his chin. “Did you see the car?”
I still see it in my dreams. “Yes,” I said. I had a flashback to the warehouse parking lot where two years earlier Aaron’s scorched BMW 330 stood outlined by yellow crime-scene tape.
It was a spectacular Seattle morning. The city glistened in the sunshine and the greenery engendered by weeks of nutritive rain. The air was still slightly crisp from a northerly breeze that carried with it the scent of the spring blossoms. Nature’s perfection was wasted on me as I rode halfheartedly through my downtown circuit. I was already worried about my brother. Though our face-to-face contact had been sporadic since Aaron had moved to Vancouver (a mere 150 miles north of Seattle) the year before, normally I could always track him down by phone. Ten days had passed without my brother returning any of my messages.
People often asked us whether we thought that as identical twins we shared some kind of telepathic connection, like the characters in The Corsican Brothers. We used to laugh at the idea. But that morning of Helen’s call, I’d woken up sensing that something was very wrong. I tried phoning Aaron twice. I had just hung up the second time when Helen called. After stiff pleasantries, she said, “Ben, we’ve found a car in an industrial park in Fife. It’s a black BMW.” She paused. “Registered under your brother’s name.”
“Where’s Aaron?” I asked, my heart in my throat.
“Don’t know. But his car has been vandalized.”
“Vandalized how?”
“Someone looks to have tried to torch it, but the car didn’t burn.”
“Where are you?”
“I don’t think there’s any point in you coming out here now. We can do this over the phone.”
“Where, Helen?” I insisted, the feeling of doom welling up in me.
She gave me the address. I resisted the urge to ask her why a Homicide cop was calling about my brother’s abandoned vehicle. I suppose I didn’t want to hear the obvious. I threw on a pair of jeans and a T-shirt and tore out to my car.
I drove the twenty miles in fifteen minutes. Tires screeching, I skidded into the warehouse parking lot. Four or five Seattle P.D. vehicles were scattered around the otherwise empty lot. When I saw the CSI van, I tasted bile. There was no more doubt.
I pulled up beside Aaron’s BMW, parked in the corner and cordoned off by yellow tape. The black paint on the roof had bubbled and peeled off in spots. Smoke stains blackened the windows. The trunk was popped wide open.
I hopped out of my car. Standing by the CSI van and speaking on her cell phone, Helen tried to flag me down, but I raced past her. Dodging the CSI tech, I jumped the crime-scene tape and stopped directly in front of the trunk of the car.
Congealed and partially cooked, there was no mistaking the puddles that saturated the bottom of the trunk. Blood. It coated the surface so thoroughly that I could barely spot any sections of the gray lining that hadn’t turned hemorrhagic brown.
It could have been anyone’s blood. Or even the blood of a slaughtered dog or farm animal. But staring into the trunk of that smoked-out BMW, I knew it was Aaron’s; which, after all, was my blood, too.
Prince scratched his chin and stared out the window for a several moments after I finished the story. “They never found his body?” He directed his question at Puget Sound.
“No.”
“So he might still be alive?”
I shook my head and sighed. I’d faced the same assertion many times before. “There was too much blood in the trunk. He had to have bled out.”
Prince looked over to me, eyeing me doubtfully. “That’s your expert opinion beyond a doubt?” he asked as if jousting with a prosecution witness.
“I’m not a pathologist but—”
“Exactly.” Prince cut me off with a snap of his fingers. “And even if you were, how could you know for certain from the trunk of a burned-out car that your brother had really died inside it?”
“What’s your point, Michael?”
Prince broke into a self-congratulatory smile. “For the sake of argument, let’s say the blood at the victim’s apartment matches your DNA.”
I knew where he was heading, but I said nothing.
His smile grew. “Who’s to say it’s not your brother’s blood?”
Chapter 11
I headed from Prince’s office back to the ER in a fog. Neither his $75,000 retainer nor his $500-per-hour fees fazed me. Beyond the necessities and my relatively expensive bik
e habit, I had minimal use for money. Even after my mortgage, the cycling, and half a year’s worth of Emily’s medications, I had enough saved to cover the costs. But the realization that I now shared one of Seattle’s top defense attorneys with the city’s most hardened criminals rattled the hell out of me.
I sleepwalked my way through my afternoon ER shift. Fortunately, none of my patients that afternoon required my “A game.” Unless of course I missed something, which is always the great fear among emergency doctors.
Most of my nonmedical friends assume that critically ill or traumatized patients cause ER docs the most stress. Not so. Resuscitating patients is for the most part cookbook medicine. Challenging and stressful at times, to be sure, but like a pilot landing under emergency conditions, we simulate situations and practice protocols to handle those critical moments. Sometimes, as with Enrique Martinez’s neck stabbing, our protocols fail us; but in those cases death is inevitable, not a mistake. What haunts most ER physicians are the ambiguous cases: the mimickers that most of us have faced, wrongly diagnosed, and sent home to bad outcomes. Such time bombs—which nourish the malpractice lawyers but cause the rest of us sleepless nights—include the patient’s “indigestion” that turns out to be a massive heart attack, the “bronchitis” that is proven on autopsy to have been a huge blood clot, or the “migraine” in the patient who went home and died of a brain aneurysm, to name a few.
As I shuffled out of the ER at the end of my shift, I hoped there had been no mimickers hiding in the day’s mix. Reviewing the mental checklist of patients I’d seen and diagnoses I’d made, I was reminded that, despite its risks, I loved my job. With all the turmoil in my personal life, emergency medicine was the one constant factor. The team at St. Jude’s was my extended family. The variety and bizarreness of the problems and people I faced kept me constantly challenged and stimulated (and provided me an endless supply of cocktail party anecdotes). Once in a while, I even had the chance to touch people’s lives in a positive way, and I never tired of that rush.
