Bada-BOOM!

by Wally Duff

  I pointed at my backpack which I’d left next to the backdoor. I opened it and held up my lock pick gun and torque wrench. I put the equipment back and shouldered the backpack.

  “Okay, did you clear the house first?” she asked.

  “Not exactly.”

  “You’re telling me you didn’t look around to see if the killer was still in there?”

  “I didn’t. I’m sorry. I’m not a cop. It didn’t occur to me to do it.”

  She shook her head and pulled out a Glock similar to mine except without the glitter on the barrel. “Stay behind me.”

  89

  “You left the door unlocked,” Janet observed, as we walked in.

  “I was in kind of a hurry to leave,” I said.

  “We’re going to clear each room before we go upstairs.”

  “But…”

  “We do it by the book.”

  I pointed at the dining room. “Then let’s start in there.”

  She stepped in, holding her gun in front of her. I followed. I nodded toward the puddle of water and blood on the top of the table. The liquid still dripped down from the ceiling. She didn’t say anything.

  She moved deliberately into each room on the first floor looking for a bad guy. I followed. We didn’t find one.

  I wanted to scream at her to hurry it up, but it wouldn’t do any good. She did it like she was trained to do and repeated the entire process in the basement.

  We didn’t find a killer there, either.

  Finally, we walked up the stairs to the second floor. She stopped and sniffed when we entered the master bedroom.

  “Takes a lot of blood to smell that strong,” she said.

  “He sure didn’t appear to have any left to donate to the Red Cross.”

  She pushed open the bathroom door. I followed. Demarco stared at both of us. He waved with his left hand.

  Not again!

  Janet sloshed through the water on the floor to the tub. She turned off the faucet. The water stopped running. She pointed at Demarco’s hand. It no longer moved.

  “He bobbed around in the running water. It made his hand move.” She bent over to examine the body. “No rigor. Probably the cold water. It screws up everything, especially the time of death.”

  “A doctor might know about that.”

  “Obviously, but anyone can find out stuff like that on the Internet.”

  With the water turned off, the remaining water on the floor receded into the room below. The soggy carpet was bloody.

  “This is how it went down.” She nodded toward his body. “The suspect positions Demarco in the tub, leans over, and slashes his right femoral artery.”

  “At our dinner party, Eddie mentioned a surgeon would know exactly how to do that.”

  “Or anyone with access to a computer,” she reminded me. “The suspect leaves the water running to wash away any evidence.”

  “And the longer the water runs the more likely that is to occur.”

  “You got it.”

  “But why slash Demarco’s wrist? Wouldn’t the cut on the femoral artery be enough to kill him?”

  “It did kill him.”

  “Then why the wrist?”

  “That was done later.”

  “How do you know?”

  “There’s too much blood in the tub. The suspect slashes Demarco in the tub and watches him begin to bleed out. The suspect inspects the scene and decides it needs to look more like a conventional suicide and adds the wrist cut, assuming we will think DeMarco cut his wrist first and then decided he was tired of waiting and did the femoral artery.”

  “But it was the opposite. Where’s the knife?”

  She pointed into the tub. “Lying next to him on his right side.”

  “Making it look like he dropped the knife after he slashed himself.”

  “Yep.”

  “What kind of knife was it?”

  “It looks like a scalpel.”

  “Eddie said a scalpel is something a doctor would have easy access to.”

  90

  We walked back down the stairs to the kitchen.

  “Do you think there was only one killer?” I asked.

  “I don’t see it any other way,” Janet said. “It’s hard to picture two or more people in the bathroom doing this to Demarco.”

  We reached the kitchen.

  “You need a plan to explain why you were here and found the body,” Janet said.

  “Got it. I came here to meet with Demarco to interview him. I rang the front doorbell. No one answered. I knocked on the front door. Still no answer. I was concerned because I had an appointment with him. I knocked harder on the door, and it opened.”

  “It opened?” she asked.

  “Watch,” I said. “Pretend this is the front door.”

  I closed the back door and then reopened it a crack. I knocked on the door. It swung open.

  “The entry point,” Janet said. “The killer left in such a hurry, he left the door slightly ajar.”

  “I’m a good citizen. I came in and yelled Demarco’s name. No response. I heard water dripping. Fearing the worst, I called my friend Detective Janet Corritore who came to assist me. The detective went upstairs, found the body, and called it in.”

  Janet nodded. “Works for me. Let’s move our cars to the front of the house. It’ll look better when the rest of my guys get here.”

  We drove our cars around to the front of Demarco’s house. I parked in front. Janet pulled in at an angle making it look like she arrived in a big hurry.

  We stood on the front porch. She pulled out her cell phone to call in the murder but didn’t dial.

  “Hold it,” she said as she pointed at the front door. “It’s still locked.”

  “Because I didn’t come in this way.”

  “That makes your story harder to believe, what with you finding the door unlocked and slightly open.”

  I took out my lock pick gun. “I wouldn’t make much of a criminal.”

  “Be careful not to leave any scratches. It’s the first thing the CSI guys look for.”

  I placed the picks into the first lock and turned the gun on. The torque wrench came next, and in less than two minutes I had both locks open.

  She still had her latex gloves on. I did, too. “Take your gloves off. We need your fingerprints on the doorknob.”

  “But what if the killer left fingerprints there?”

  “It won’t matter. From your previous escapades, the lab has your prints on record. They’ll get Demarco’s too. If they find any other prints, they could belong to the suspect.”

  “We can only hope.”

  I put the latex gloves in my back pocket and turned the knob. When I opened the door, it was blocked by a security chain.

  We looked at each other.

  “Good thing I didn’t call this in yet,” she said. “Lucky the security chain wasn’t on the back door.”

  “I forgot to tell you about that. It was.”

  Her jaw muscles twitched. “How the hell did you get in?”

  “I’ll show you.”

  I walked around to the back of the house, but when I turned around, Janet was missing. Retracing my steps, I found her looking in Demarco’s mailbox.

  “Still detecting?” I asked.

  She took his mail out of the box. “Demarco was killed late Friday night after he came home or early Saturday before the mail and paper arrived.”

  “How can you be sure?”

  “He’s a single doctor, right?”

  “He is.”

  “He comes home Friday night. He takes in the mail because no one does it for him. He puts it on the kitchen table. He does the same thing with the Friday night’s edition of the Tribune.”

  “How do you know this?” I asked.

  “I saw the neat pile of mail and the newspaper in the kitchen when I came in with you.”

  “I missed that.”

  “The suspect did, too.”

  “Tell me.” />
  “The suspect would have come back later on Saturday and taken this,” she handed me the stack of mail, “and put it next to the Friday night pile.”

  “What about the newspapers?”

  “A rookie mistake. The suspect missed that too.”

  91

  We went to the back of the house and walked through the back door into the kitchen. I saw the stack of mail and the newspaper that Janet had already seen. She fingered the dangling security chain and shrugged her shoulders.

  “I unlatched it after I came in this way.” I pointed at the window I had climbed through.

  “And you left the door unlocked in case you needed to get out of Dodge in a hurry.”

  “I did, because I wasn’t sure what I was going to find.”

  Janet walked to the front of the house. I followed. She removed the security chain from the front door.

  “The suspect tried to be cute,” she said. “After he kills the doctor, he locks the front door and fastens the security chain. He does the same thing in the back, but now he can’t get out.”

  I pointed to the window. “He opens the window and closes it after he leaves.”

  “But he can’t lock it. He thinks we won’t notice.”

  I pointed at the security keypad. “He can’t turn on the security system because he doesn’t know the code any more than I did.”

  “Most people don’t activate the system until right before they go to bed.”

  “But what about the security chains?”

  “It’s a force of habit. Demarco walks in, closes the door, and slides in the chain. He turns on the security system before he goes to bed.”

  She walked into the living room. “Demarco knows his killer. He lets the killer in. That’s another reason the security system wasn’t on. They have a few drinks. Demarco passes out, or the suspect gives him Klonopin.”

  “Like with Clark.”

  “Whichever it was, the suspect takes him upstairs.” She nodded toward the stairs. “There’s something else.”

  We went back up to the master bathroom. Demarco was still dead.

  Janet pointed at an empty bottle of scotch and one glass next to the tub. “The suspect wants it to look like Demarco got drunk and then killed himself.”

  “Again like he did with Clark.”

  “But it’s a different drink. The suspect probably found it here.”

  “And Demarco’s fingerprints will be on the glass and bottle. The suspect washed the other glass and put it away.”

  “Our killer has developed a pattern.”

  92

  Monday morning, Carter went in early to work to oversee the weekend murder of Dr. Demarco. While I was in the shower before he left, Alexis left a message with him for me to meet her for coffee at the Starbucks across the street from Dinkel’s. I took Kerry with me.

  Alexis wasn’t there when I arrived. Kerry walked around the store, a frown on her face. She tugged at the hem of my North Face jacket. “Momma, it smells funny.”

  “That’s coffee,” I said. “That’s what they sell here.”

  She tugged harder. “I wanna donut!”

  “Honey, this isn’t Dinkel’s.”

  She scrunched up her face. I knew tears were about to flow. This girl loves Dinkel’s.

  “I know where there are some donuts, Kerry,” Alexis said, as she walked in. She wore warm-ups and had a flushed, sweaty face.

  “And vanilla bean scones that are exactly the right size for you,” she said. “I’ll show you.”

  She took Kerry’s hand, and they walked to the counter. Alexis turned to me. “You want anything, Tina?”

  “Unsweetened green tea would be perfect.”

  Alexis and Kerry began buying calories.

  “I’m jealous,” I said when they sat down.

  “Why?” Alexis asked

  “You were playing tennis.”

  “I was.”

  “It’s Monday morning. Aren’t you supposed to be working?”

  “I am, but one of my doctors is a tennis player. He’s been after me to play with him, and this was the only time we could get together.”

  “Was he any good?”

  “He lied about how good he was. He had a big serve, but he also had a weakness.”

  “And you did what any good athlete does. You took advantage of it.”

  “The doctor had trouble going to his right,” she said. “Bad knee or something.”

  “And you kept working to that side.”

  “Sure. It’s the only way I could win.”

  “And I know how much you hate to lose.”

  “It’s always more fun when you win,” she said. “Especially when you beat a man.”

  Kerry turned her head, and I stole part of one of her scones. “How are you coming with the list?” I asked.

  She handed a piece of paper to me. “This is the last doctor on Warren’s committee, Dr. Edward L. Gary, an anesthesiologist. He used to do all of Fertig’s surgery cases, but now Fertig uses another gas passer. Word is the new anesthesiologist gives Fertig a kickback to do all those cases.”

  “Is that legal or ethical?”

  “Neither, but that doesn’t seem to bother Fertig.”

  “I’ll get this to Janet. Hopefully they can prevent any more deaths.”

  “Has there been another one?” she asked.

  I told her about Demarco.

  “Do the cops think it was a suicide?” she asked.

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  I told her.

  “Janet called them amateurish mistakes by the killer,” I concluded.

  93

  Tuesday was a typical damp, cold, windy fall morning in Chicago. As I jogged and then ran a little, I thought about Demarco’s death and what it meant in the context of the whole story.

  Doctors were dropping faster than the Bitcoin market, and we weren’t making any progress. A brown Crown Vic pulled up and stopped. Janet was in the driver’s seat. Tony powered down his passenger window.

  I stopped. “Hi, guys. What’s up?”

  “CSI guys found Demarco’s medical bag in a closet,” Janet said. “There was an open package for a No. 10 scalpel, the same type of knife that was found in the bath tub.”

  “Any drugs in Demarco’s system to make him more compliant?” I asked.

  “None, but the dude weighted about a buck fifty,” Tony said. “Wouldn’t have been hard for the perp to slide him into the tub.”

  “Thoughts?” I asked.

  “We think the suspect uses whatever is found on site to commit the murder,” she said.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Denning’s murder appeared to be spontaneous,” she said. “They meet, maybe they argue, and the suspect pushes Denning out the open window.”

  “But he was smarter with Clark,” I said.

  “Yep,” he said. “They meet. Meeting goes south. Perp decides to kill Clark. Klonopin in Clark’s desk. Perp slips him some. No rope but has Clark’s belt. Bada-bing, bada-BOOM!, perp hangs Clark.”

  “But Clark was killed in an OR,” I said. “There should have been lots of potentially lethal drugs available in there. Why didn’t he use those instead of the belt?”

  “All the drugs were locked up,” she said. “The suspect would have had to break into a cabinet, and it would no longer have looked like a suicide.”

  “There was a scalpel at Demarco’s,” I said. “He used that.”

  “He or she did,” she said. “Remember, we still don’t know who did it.”

  “But you think there’s only one killer?”

  “We still aren’t totally sure about the Clark murder, but this one strongly points to one suspect,” she said.

  “And finally gotta clue,” he said. “CSI guys found it underneath Demarco in the bathtub.”