Bada-BOOM!

by Wally Duff

  “Do you want to work the story?”

  “I’ll send you what I have from my cell phone, but you’ll need to get someone down here to fill in the details. I’ll take a couple of pictures, but send a photographer too.”

  “If I can break away, I’ll come down myself and work with you on this.”

  107

  Janet and Tony joined me outside the procedure room.

  “Eddie told us about this,” I said.

  Tony turned to me. “Eddie?” he said. “Doc from Omaha?”

  “Yep,” I said.

  “He know Gary?”

  I shook my head. “What I meant was Eddie said this was one way a doctor could commit suicide.”

  “What this looks like,” he said. “Doc offed himself.”

  “I assume this means so far you haven’t found any incriminating evidence,” I said.

  “I walked around, and the room looks clean,” Janet said. “I doubt that we’ll find any fingerprints other than the victim’s. There isn’t even an empty bottle of booze and a glass this time.”

  “How do you think it went down?” I asked.

  “What we were discussing,” he said. “Aren’t any obvious marks on the body, no defensive wounds.”

  Janet pushed open the door to the procedure room and pointed at the IV setup. “It was meant to look like he came in, started an IV in his left arm, put some drugs in the IV bag, scooted up on the gurney, opened the IV to run, and killed himself.”

  “Where did he get the drugs?” I asked.

  She pointed at a cabinet. It was open, and keys hung from the lock. “Gary was an anesthesiologist. He had access to all the drugs in the entire OR.”

  “Makes sense, but why would a good-sized man let someone start an IV in his arm and then kill him without putting up a tremendous fight?” I asked.

  “We don’t have an answer for that,” she said.

  “Let me call Eddie and see if he has any ideas.”

  “While you’re doing that, we’re gonna look at the security tapes,” he said. “Might be our only shot at solving this.”

  My heart rate shot up. “Ah, guys?” I said. “I think we need to have a talk.”

  108

  “There might be kind of an issue with the security cameras,” I said.

  “Kind of?” Janet asked.

  “Okay, there is. The cameras aren’t recording anything right now.”

  “You would know this, how?” she asked.

  “Don’t get all mad or anything, but you said you needed some of Fertig’s hair for a comparison to the hair you found at Demarco’s, and this was the only way we could figure out how to obtain it.”

  “We?” Tony asked.

  “Alexis helped me.”

  “Anyone else?” she asked.

  “Do you want to know?”

  “Linda?” she asked.

  “Yep.”

  “When did she shut down the system?” she asked.

  “She did it right before I parked in the garage and then walked into the hospital.”

  “And they went back on when?”

  “They haven’t.”

  “Text her to turn them back on,” she said.

  “Linda?”

  “No, Ellen fucking DeGeneres,” she answered.

  I quickly texted Linda.

  Janet turned to Tony. “I hope there won’t be too big a gap in case we find something.”

  “Got that right. Good defense attorney would say someone tampered with the system, and the evidence’ll be thrown out.”

  “If there is anything there,” she said.

  “Let’s hope,” he said.

  She snapped her fingers at me. “Where’s the hair you stole?”

  I opened my purse and handed the baggy with Fertig’s hair to her. “At least we have this.”

  109

  We sat in the security office watching the replays from the security camera recordings. The head man showed Tony how to work the machine and then left to control the situation in the OR.

  We began watching the point in the tape which would have been an hour and a half before the murder was suspected to have taken place. We saw several doctors, nurses, and cleaning people walk out of the OR, but no one entered until another cleaning lady pushing a cart with her equipment used her ID key to go into the OR.

  Janet pointed at the screen. “One of the cleaning people the OR supervisor mentioned.”

  The cleaning lady wore the same type of floppy forest-green scrub suit I’d seen other cleaning help wear when I was a patient in this hospital. A white paper hat covered her hair, and she wore green paper booties. She had on clear plastic goggles.

  A few minutes later, a tall, gray-haired man in a white scrub suit walked up to the OR door and keyed his way in.

  “Tony, run that back,” Janet said.

  He did, and we watched as Dr. Gary walked to his death.

  Forty-two minutes later, the same cleaning person walked out of the OR pushing the same cart. There was no other activity until Alexis walked up to the door of the nurse’s locker room. She stood there until a woman came out wearing jeans, tennis shoes, and a Cub’s jersey. They talked, and as she walked away, Alexis pulled out her cell phone and made a call. I looked at the time on the screen and then at my phone. The numbers matched.

  “That’s when she told me to call Linda to shut down the security cameras. After that, she met me in front of the doctor’s locker room and we went in together.”

  “Look at that,” Janet said, nodding toward the screen. “Linda is good.”

  The screen hadn’t gone blank, as I had assumed it would. Instead, the picture became fuzzy so you couldn’t tell who anyone was. The cameras kept rolling, but the lines were squiggly, making it hard to tell if the person we saw was a male or female.

  After I texted Linda to turn the cameras back on, the screen miraculously cleared up and recorded all the ensuing police and security activity.

  “Good stuff,” Tony said.

  “Why?” I asked.

  “System goes blank for any length of time, a defense attorney would say someone erased the tapes,” he said. “Now, looks like a computer error.”

  Janet nudged me. “Call Eddie. We need to know how he thinks Fertig killed Gary.”

  110

  I followed Janet’s orders and called Eddie. I told him what happened with Gary. “We can’t figure out why he didn’t put up a struggle,” I said.

  “Anectine,” Eddie said.

  “Sounds like a mouthwash,” I said.

  “Hardly. Succinylcholine is the generic name. It’s a drug derived from curare, which was used by the Indians in South America to paralyze the voluntary muscles of both the game they hunted and their enemies.”

  “Let me put you on speaker phone. Janet and Tony are with me. Tell them what you told me.”

  He did.

  “I’m not sure I understand,” Janet said. “This drug totally paralyzes you?”

  “You’re wide awake, but you can’t move,” he said. “You also can’t breathe, so if an endotracheal tube isn’t inserted, you’ll die. Anesthesiologists use the drug when they’re putting a patient to sleep. They paralyze the patient so he won’t move, which makes it easier to insert an ET tube.”

  “You think the killer gave Gary this drug?” Tony asked.

  “I do.”

  “How would the suspect do that?” Janet asked.

  “An injection, either IV or IM.”

  “We’ll tell the M.E. to look for a needle site,” she said.

  “You probably won’t find it unless you minutely examine the body.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “The killer wants this to look like a suicide, right?”

  “Yes,” Janet said.

  “A fresh, unexplained injection site would give it away.”

  “How would you hide it?” I asked.

  “You could try and put it in the same spot where you later started the IV, but that would be tec
hnically hard to do. If the doctor had any tattoos, you could put it there and hope the M.E. doesn’t see it. But I would inject it either under his tongue or, better, deep into his rectum.”

  “How could the killer do that without the victim resisting?” I asked.

  “Good question, but I’m a simple nosepicker. I can suggest what was done, but how? Don’t have a clue.”

  “But let’s say you’re right about that drug,” I said. “Wouldn’t the M.E. test for it at autopsy?”

  “He would if he were looking for it, but the dead guy has an IV going and enough drugs in his system to account for what happened. They test the residual fluid in the IV bag and find the same drugs. Why waste the taxpayer’s money and go any further?”

  “Guess you’re right,” I said.

  “By the way, which arm was the IV in?” he asked.

  “Left,” Janet and I said at the same time.

  “Was the victim right or left-handed?” he asked.

  “I have no idea,” I said. “Why?”

  “You’re right-handed,” he said. “Could you start an IV in your right arm with your left hand?”

  “You’re saying that if Gary was left-handed and the killer didn’t know it, he made a real mistake by starting the IV in Gary’s left arm,” she said. “We better call his wife to find out.”

  “Don’t have to,” Eddie said. “Tina, which arm do you wear your watch on?”

  “You forgot, I never wear a watch,” I said.

  “I do,” Janet said. “I’m right-handed and wear my watch on my left arm.”

  “Check the victim,” he said. “If his watch in on his right arm, you probably don’t have to call his wife.”

  “Eddie, one thing,” she said. “Are all doctors this good at killing people?”

  “Never thought about it, but we would have to be, wouldn’t we? All we have to do is reverse the way we are trained, and we’re the perfect killer.”

  111

  Janet and Tony reentered the procedure room. The door had been propped open by Dr. Sharon McDermott, the medical examiner. Since it was now an active crime scene, I waited in the hall, but I was able to see and hear what was going on.

  I saw Tony pull down the white sheet that covered Gary’s arms. He had a Rolex watch on his right wrist.

  “Another mistake by the perp,” Tony said.

  “I agree,” Janet said. “It’s probable that someone other than the victim started the IV in his left arm.”

  McDermott joined them. “A problem?”

  “Doctor, it has been suggested that Anectine might have been given to this victim,” Janet said.

  “In the IV?” Dr. McDermott asked.

  “Probably not,” Janet said. “It might have been given before the IV was started. It was also suggested that the injection site might have been in the tongue or rectum or at the site of any tattoos if he has them.”

  “The victim doesn’t have tattoos, so I’ll start with the tongue.”

  McDermott took out a penlight and tongue blade and opened Gary’s mouth. “It doesn’t look like it was done here, but I can do tissue samples to be sure.”

  “What about the other end?” Tony asked.

  McDermott moved the sheet down to Gary’s knees. He still wore his white scrub suit. She slid down his pants and underwear. She spread his legs and lifted his scrotum. There was a tiny drop of blood on the sheet underneath his rectum.

  She turned to Tony and Janet. “I don’t want to disturb this any more than I have to. Do you have what you need?”

  “We do, doctor,” Janet said. “This is officially a murder scene. Please treat it as such.”

  112

  We found the OR supervisor in her office. She stared at the wall.

  “Ms. Sorenson?” Janet began.

  The supervisor did not respond.

  “Lady, we got a couple of questions,” Tony said loudly.

  Her head snapped up. “Sorry. This whole episode has been unsettling, to say the least.”

  “We need to ask you a few more questions,” Janet said.

  “I understand. I’ll do my best to answer them.”

  “You obviously missed seeing Dr. Gary enter the OR because you were here in your office, is that correct?” Janet asked.

  “It is,” she said.

  “What about Fertig?” Tony asked.

  “Dr. Fertig?” she responded.

  “Yeah,” he said. “He been down here recently?”

  “Even if I’d been at the OR desk, I wouldn’t have seen him come in.”

  “Why not?” Janet asked.

  “He has his own suite of operating rooms which he can access through a private door that only he can open. He never checks in at the OR desk.”

  “So he could have been down here recently,” Janet said.

  “If he came to the OR, I’d have no way of knowing it.”

  “You know Dr. Demarco?” Tony asked.

  Sorenson didn’t immediately reply.

  “Did you know Dr. Demarco?” Janet demanded.

  “I don’t want to speak badly about the dead, but we weren’t exactly friends.”

  “Dude didn’t like women, right?” he asked.

  She nodded.

  “You know if he was left-handed?” he continued.

  Uh-oh.

  Demarco had his right femoral artery slashed. Did the killer make the same mistake he had with Gary and assume Demarco was right-handed?

  “He was left-handed.”

  “How do you know?” Janet asked.

  “Since he was left-handed, the entire OR setup had to be rearranged for each case.”

  “Why?” he asked.

  “He stood on the opposite side of the operating bed than a right-handed surgeon does.”

  “Fertig know that?” he asked.

  “I doubt it. To my knowledge they never scrubbed together.”

  Janet turned to Tony. “Amateur killers tend to make the same mistakes.”

  “You got it,” he said.

  Bingo.

  113

  Later that night, Carter and I sat in the family room. Kerry was in bed. We sipped a Twomey merlot. His laptop was open to the files Brittany had sent him.

  “After Brittany spoke with you, I assigned her the task of following the money trail,” Carter said.

  As a former reporter and now editor, my hubby knew I needed accurate financial records. I didn’t care who did the research. I put my wine glass down and pulled out a yellow legal pad so I could take notes.

  “What did she find?” I asked.

  “The hospital is governed by an elite board of directors who are handsomely paid to attend meetings.”

  “Elite?”

  “They are members of Chicago’s high society. Third and fourth generation men and women who do not work at any meaningful jobs other than to attend board meetings.”

  “Lucky sperm.”

  “We used to call them TINCs when I was an undergrad at the University of Chicago.”

  “TINCs?”

  He refilled his glass. “Trust incomes, no careers.”

  I laughed.

  “But the important decisions are made by the owners,” he continued.

  “Owners? I didn’t realize large hospitals had ‘owners’.”

  “The ones that are ‘for profit’ do.”

  I made a note of that. I should have known facts like this, but I’ve been out of doing investigative research too long. Being a mom is great, but at times like this I feel like a rookie reporter again.

  “To date, Brittany has discovered four shell corporations, each one owned by the previous one, and she still has not uncovered the actual owners.”

  “Like removing layers of an onion.”

  “She did find that the MidAmerica Hospital Foundation has assets in excess of one hundred million dollars.”