When Secrets Die

by Lynn S. Hightower

  “This is the guy who was in practice for twenty years?”

  “What do you expect from an organization that polices itself? Some of these killers consider themselves the moral arbitrators of society, and they kill or punish people they disapprove of. Then there’s guys like Dr. Harold Shipman. He killed patients who questioned him, killed some for their money and then forged their wills, making himself beneficiary. Whenever he got upset about his unhappy childhood, he killed a patient instead of killing himself.”

  I rubbed the back of my neck. “I don’t understand how they get away with this under everybody’s nose. This kind of genuine sociopathic behavior is recognizable. There are plenty of experienced professionals in hospitals who should be able to spot these guys, and not all of them are going to put the medical brotherhood above tracking down a cold-blooded killer.”

  Joel frowned. “Have you ever heard of the doubling theory? It’s often used to explain the Nazi doctors, and it could apply to any medical person. Basically it’s a psychological mechanism that divides the self into two functioning wholes.”

  “You mean disassociation? An identity disorder?”

  “No, because it is a conscious choice. It’s really a survival mechanism that goes too far. Everybody has their at-home personality, their work personality, their hang-out-with-friends personality. These guys have their compassionate medical guy, and they have their killer. And the compassionate guy makes up for the killer guy. Some of these personalities will kill under certain very precise circumstances. Others do it at will for pleasure. And others are conflicted, guilty, unresolved. Always struggling.”

  I realized the cigar had gone out, and I set it down in the ashtray. “And doctors already have to have a sort of medical self to deal with the death of their patients, and the corpses they train on. Like a paradox. The healer and the killer, in separate realities. Is there like a percentage of doctors this happens to?”

  “No, because it isn’t a coping or survival mechanism. It’s a mechanism used by someone who already has the capacity for evil.”

  “You know, Joel, all this points to the doctor as much as or more than it does Amaryllis Burton. The experimenter—the guy with the path lab who keeps all the patients’ organs. Keeps them and feels entitled to do it. And there’s a certain type of person—have you run into this? Where they accuse other people of what they’re doing?”

  “But what’s the crime here, Lena? Do you think that Tundridge killed Emma Marsden’s child? Or was it more a matter that she caused trouble, and so he punished her by accusing her of Munchausen by proxy?”

  “I don’t know yet. I think it comes down to who made the videotape.”

  A timer buzzed from the kitchen. “Come on,” Joel said. “Let’s eat.”

  “Do you know anything about the videotape, Joel?”

  “I know they’re working on it.”

  “And?”

  He hesitated. “It was mailed to the station from the post office that happens to be the closest to the Tundridge Clinic.”

  “Aha.”

  “It’s not proof, Lena.”

  “No, but it’s interestingly suspicious.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Office gossip is always revealing.

  Second only to the angry ex-employee, and infinitely more objective, is the cleaning crew who regularly works in an office. I left early the next morning to cash in on some magic beans.

  Six AM was the absolute latest you would catch Michael Borneo in his office, and it was ten after when I arrived at the large complex off Alumni Drive. Office Pro had a ground-floor suite and a private entrance, and if Michael was still driving the Chevy Illumina van, he was still there.

  I knocked on the outside door and waited. The door opened immediately—clearly I had caught the man on his way out.

  I could tell from his face that he recognized me but could not remember my name.

  “Michael, it’s Lena Padget. How are you?”

  “Fine,” he said. He shook my hand, concentrating, trying to place me. “Oh, wait, you’re the one who helped Lee Ann.”

  “That’s right. How is she?”

  “She’s great, great. We got married right after all that business. Six kids between us and happy as clams.”

  “That’s good to hear, Michael. Can I come in?”

  “Of course you can. I’ll even make you a fresh pot of coffee.”

  “I appreciate it. I know you were on your way home and you’ve had a long workday, night, whatever you call it. But I need to talk with you a bit.”

  He grinned at me over his shoulder while he locked us into the office. “Lee Ann always warned me you’d be back someday calling in favors. Like the Godfather.”

  “I like to think of it as magic beans.”.

  “Magic beans?”

  “Like Jack and the Beanstalk.”

  “Is that supposed to make sense to me?” He was flirting, and I just smiled. “Go on into the office, door’s open. Sit down. You take sugar or cream?”

  “Just cream, and lots of it.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Borneo’s office was small, very neat—a metal desk he’d likely bought used, some filing cabinets. The walls were freshly painted white, and I looked at the pictures. He and his children, he and Lee Ann, Lee Ann and her children, all of them together. Michael had just gone into business when he met Lee Ann. She answered his ad for office help, newly separated and back in the workforce after six years at home with her kids. They had fallen in love.

  But Lee Ann unfortunately had a complication in her life. Somewhere along the line she had picked up a stalker.

  A stalker is like a computer virus. You can get one from a million different sources, and once you have one, he or she can cause endless trouble and be nearly impossible to get rid of. The ex-husband is always the first place you look, but he turned out to be an okay guy. Michael’s ex-wife had disappeared with her guitar teacher three years earlier, and I checked her out without ever letting her know we were looking. Michael didn’t want her getting any ideas about coming back to complicate his already complicated life.

  The stalker, as it turned out, worked at the Kroger store right around the corner from Lee Ann’s house. The usual loser, with a low-end job, who bagged groceries, loaded them into cars, and showed a tendency to engage the women customers in long, annoying conversations. He told a lot of them that he had a sideline business as a birthday clown, and asked them to consider hiring him to work their children’s birthday parties. He had a record of peeping and indecent exposure, and we sent him to jail for eighteen months. After that I lost track.

  Michael brought me a white ceramic mug of coffee. He clearly had not put enough cream in, but I didn’t complain. My mama raised me right. If coffee is hot enough, you can drink it almost any way it’s prepared.

  Michael sat behind the desk and grinned at me. He was semi-irresistible. Dark curly hair, brown eyes, athletic build. “How you been?”

  “I’ve been good, Michael. How are Lee Ann and the kids?”

  “Perfect. Business is good. I’m going to gross over a million this year for the first time.”

  I put my cup down on the floor. “Michael, that’s wonderful.”

  “I’m sorry, I know I’m bragging, but I can’t believe how well this turned out. You know, when I met you, I didn’t have a dime.”

  Nevertheless, Michael and Lee Ann had paid me in cash, not favors. They’d drawn up a payment plan, and about halfway through had paid off the debt in one big chunk.

  “I’m glad you’re doing well. Have a staff now, to do all the dirty work?”

  He shook his head. “It’s all about overhead, as in having as little as possible. I still do most of the cleaning myself at night, when the offices are closed, so I’m free during the day to coach tee ball and soccer.”

  I glanced over my shoulder at the trophies and the team pictures on the walls. “I never would have guessed.” I turned back around. “Ever hear f
rom your old friend again when he got out of prison?”

  “Not a peep, Lena. Whatever you did, it worked.”

  I nodded. In truth, Lee Ann and Michael were lucky. No doubt the stalker had found someone else. These guys never stop for anything but prison or a new obsession.

  “Michael, I saw one of your business cards on the office manager’s desk at the Tundridge Children’s Clinic. Any chance they’re one of your clients?”

  “Oh, yeah. Mr. French. They’re one of the newer accounts. I’ve been doing them about six months.”

  “Do you have an ethical problem with talking to me about them?”

  He grinned at me like I was kidding, then thought for a minute. “Is it for a good cause?”

  “I think so.”

  “Ask me anything you want.”

  “Tell me about the lab.”

  “Frankenstein’s gym? Okay, let’s see. Mr. French runs the place, talks affected, is married with one kid. Hyper particular, but pays on time and is reasonable to deal with. The path lab has to stay well lit—they go ballistic if even one of the fluorescent lights go out, and for these guys I replace the lights before they go out, causes less trouble and I can use the ones that still have some juice around here:”

  I smiled at Michael. He was frugal, as a man with six children might well be. Maybe I could pick up some tips.

  “You ever stopped to look at what’s in there?”

  “It’s horrible, Lena. Hearts, lungs, livers. Little ones, from children. They give me the shivers. The doctor works late—sometimes I’ve passed him on his way out, and I usually get there around two AM. A lot of changeover in the staff there, too, except for Mr. French. The little nameplates on the desks are always changing.”

  “What about Amaryllis Burton? Are you familiar with that name?”

  “Oh, the weirdo. Yeah.”

  I nodded at him. “Keep talking.”

  “She’s been there since I have, but then I haven’t been there all that long. She has a desk she uses that’s stuck in the supply room, but it’s not like it’s really her desk. Her nameplate was printed on a, computer, you know, just white paper cut to size and stuck in the slot, like she made it herself. And other people put stuff on the desk, and she’s always moving it off and on top of the shelf of paper towels and toilet paper and supplies like that. She always has this jar of homemade peanut butter on her desk.”

  “Huh.”

  “Yeah. But the weird thing is the flowers she has.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “They’re cemetery arrangements. My dad was a florist, and there are certain types of urns and flowers you use for grave sites—some of the urns have little hooks so they can attach to the top of the gravestone. And people use a lot of plastic and silk in the winter, lots of gladiolas and carnations. A lot of them are brown and dead or plastic, and they look like they’ve been left outside for a long time. I mean, it looks like she takes them off graves.”

  “That is definitely strange.”

  “No doubt. And I opened one of her desk drawers one day—I don’t want you to think I make a habit of that. It’s just I needed a pen, didn’t have one, and her desk was the office catchall. So I opened the middle drawer, and there were all these little bitty presents. Still wrapped up, but again, like they’d been left in the rain or something. And bits and pieces of balloons that said Happy Birthday, like you get in the floral section of the grocery store. And that with the flowers made me think about the way people always put stuff on graves. You know, some people do that, especially with kids that die. Take a balloon out to the cemetery on their birthday. So maybe she had a kid die and keeps that stuff. Except there’s a whole lot of it. And why not take it home?”

  “What you’re saying is, she has a collection?”

  “Yeah, that’s what I’m saying. I got intrigued and I went through her whole desk. The bottom drawer is full of mason jars of homemade peanut butter. And in another one, in a bag, she’s pilfering medical supplies. Syringes, that tube thing they wrap around your arm when they take blood. Bandages.”

  “Anything else?”

  “The doctor’s wife comes in late sometimes to work on taxes. She’s actually pretty nice.”

  “Anything you pick up about her?”

  “She’s crazy about Pecan Sandies dipped in milk.”

  It made me wonder what the house crew that Joel hired had picked up about me.

  Borneo leaned back in his chair.

  “I will tell you one thing. That clinic has a lot of money. You would not believe what they spend on equipment.”

  “And you would know that because?”

  “Invoices in the trash.”

  “Ah.” I gave Michael a smile that I hoped looked more friendly than wicked. “I have a favor to ask.”

  I met Michael at his office that night. His van was the only other car in the lot. Reynolds Road was quiet at two AM. I had taken a nap from nine until a little after midnight, long enough to get myself deeply asleep. Getting up was agony. My stomach was still dormant, and I had not even been able to choke down a cup of coffee.

  Borneo’s office was lit from every window, and he opened the door before I could knock.

  He glanced at his watch, then grinned at me. “Almost on time. I like punctuality in my employees.”

  I saluted.

  “Come on back, and let me get you outfitted.”

  We’d decided earlier that I would wear the company overalls. We even had a short written agreement about me working for him on a temporary basis. The structure of legitimacy seemed to make him feel better about the appalling ethics of letting me into the clinic to “assist.” It was done all the time, but not by straight-up guys like Borneo. He didn’t even owe me any favors, like the majority of ex-clients, but I have gotten so good at calling in markers that Borneo was happy but conflicted about helping me out. In truth, the path lab had been getting under his skin for months, and getting the background on the Marsden case provided enough motivation to prod him across ethical lines.

  There was a bounce in his step.

  “Are you always this perky at two AM?” I asked.

  He looked at me over his shoulder. “It’s my workday, Lena.”

  He opened a rolling closet that reminded me of the coat closet we’d had in elementary school. White work overalls of various sizes wrapped in dry cleaning bags hung like robots from the rack. He frowned, slid some hangers until he came to the very end.

  “Try this one. It’ll be too long, but I don’t have any smaller ones. I’ll get you a cup of coffee to go while you change. Do you take cream?”

  “If it’s that gummy powder stuff, I’ll take it black.”

  “Black it is.”

  I shut the door and shed my jeans. I’d come prepared in a white T-shirt, with a white sweatshirt over it. Michael was a stickler about the company logo and the uniform, particularly since he wanted to make it clear he and his employees were legitimate and not burglars. Alarms and security guards were an occupational hazard.

  The overall was lightweight, well worn, and entirely comfortable. I tightened the straps as high as they would go and bent over to roll up the hem of the pants, which were a good six inches too long.

  “Ready?”

  I opened the door. Michael handed me a Styrofoam cup that felt too hot to drink, and put a white company ball cap on my head. He immediately bent down and rerolled the hem of my pants. I suppose attention to detail was what made him good at his job, but it occurred to me that one night working with him was going to be enough.

  The parking spaces in the front of the clinic were empty. We drove to the back lot and entered through a side door. No keys here, but an electronic locking system and a pass card. Michael seemed distracted, his mind on the job, and I sipped at the strong and terrible coffee and winced. My mind was waking up.

  Michael propped the door open to bring in his cleaning gear, the heaviest piece being some kind of floor buffer, and I slipped into the ladi
es’ room off the hallway and poured the coffee into the toilet. When I came out, Michael was locking the door behind him and turning on all the lights.

  “It’s safer that way,” he told me. “Anybody who wants to rob the place knows when I’m here and when I’m gone. They stay out of my way and I stay out of theirs.”

  He handed me a huge black garbage bag. “The first thing I want you to do—”

  “Michael?”

  He frowned at me.

  “Show me where the desk is where you found the trophy items—the cemetery flowers and all that. Afterwards I want to go down to the path lab. I’ll try not to disturb you while you work.”

  “Oh, right. Sure, this way.”

  He looked at me warily. We had set very rigid parameters. He didn’t mind if I looked in the storeroom desk and cabinets for the trophies or wandered through the lab. Desk drawers and file cabinets used by the regular staff were off-limits. I could take pictures, but nothing else.

  “But I will take the bag.” I held out my hand. “Just in case someone sees me through a window or something. Then it will look like I’m on the job. But don’t expect me to actually clean anything, okay?”

  He grinned. “Okay.”

  He pointed me to a room in the center of the hallway. Some of the doors were locked—this one wasn’t. There were no windows, and the walls were lined with shelves and storage cabinets. I stood in the doorway, taking in the details. None of the furniture matched, and the room had the air of a catchall for things that weren’t needed anywhere else. One cabinet held mostly office supplies: staplers, rubber bands, a stray computer keyboard, stacks of used but empty file folders. There were no medical supplies here.

  A pinkish beige metal desk had been shoved into a corner next to a stack of boxes. Computer parts were piled on top of the desk. Someone had arranged them into the smallest footprint possible. A faux brass name plaque sat on the corner facing the doorway. AMARYLLIS BURTON had been printed out on copy paper that had clearly been cut to fit. It made me think of a child playing office. The chair behind the desk looked like a castoff from the waiting room—metal arms and a plastic aqua seat cushion. One of the legs was broken off at the bottom, and the chair sloped sadly to the right.