Grave Matters

by Max Allan Collins

  Whiting took a deep breath. He seemed very much like a man preparing himself to embark on a long, difficult journey.

  “I’ve been here for almost a year,” he said slowly. “That’s not a terribly long time, of course, but I’m in charge of…how should I put it?”

  Warrick said, “The last stop on the line?”

  “We are indeed the last stop at Sunny Day—the terminal cases, and those so elderly that constant care is required. My point is that losing a patient is hardly cause for alarm. It is, I’m sorry to say, business as usual. Routine.”

  Catherine thought back to her own characterization of this call as a routine one, and wondered if her attitude had really been any better than Warrick’s….

  “So today, when Vivian Elliot died, and then your assistant coroner, uh, Mr. uh…” He looked to Vega for assistance.

  “David Phillips,” Vega said.

  “Today, when Mr. Phillips suggested maybe something wasn’t right about Vivian’s body, well I started thinking back, and wondering….” His eyes went from Catherine to Warrick and finally settled on Vega, as if hoping he would not have to say any more.

  “Doctor Whiting,” Catherine said, with a smile that was really a frown, “with all due respect, sir—you’re all over the map here.”

  Frustration tweaked the handsome features. “Well…isn’t it obvious?”

  Head to one side, Warrick said, “You’re going to have to read us your prescription, doc, if you want us to fill it. We’re just not making out what you mean.”

  The physician ran a hand through his dry sandy hair and looked at Catherine with a kind of helplessness. “You’re right…. Obviously you’re right. And I’m sorry, but this has just become almost…uh…surreal.”

  “A patient named Vivian Elliot died today,” Catherine said. “Why wasn’t that business as usual? Routine?”

  “But that’s just it—Vivian wasn’t a typical resident of this ward. She doesn’t even…I should say, didn’t even…live at Sunny Day.”

  Warrick winced in thought. “How does someone who doesn’t reside in this facility end up in your ward?”

  “It’s not frequent, but a certain number of our patients are not permanent residents. Mrs. Elliot, for example, came to us from St. Anthony’s Hospital. She’d been in a serious car crash and was looking forward to a long, slow recovery.”

  Warrick said, “So she was transferred here? For the kind of long-term care you people do day in and day out.”

  “Exactly. And I can tell you, she’s been doing well, very well!”

  “Except,” Warrick said, eyebrows lifting, “for today’s little setback.”

  Dr. Whiting whitened. “Yes…yes. This morning I came in and—before I even got to rounds—she coded.”

  Catherine glanced at Vega, then turned back to the doctor. “Nothing could be done to save her? Don’t people ‘code’ around here, all of the time?”

  “Obviously, yes, but…” He shrugged and shook his head. “She was dead before I even got to the room.”

  Warrick said, “People do die of old age—natural causes.”

  Whiting gestured to a file folder on his desk. “Seventy-one years of age…that’s young for Sunny Day. And before the automobile accident, Mrs. Elliot had been in good health and, after time and therapy, was making real progress.”

  Still confused, Catherine asked, “This is tragic, I’m sure, and unusual for your circumstances…but, Doctor—I’m still not sure I see why we were called in.”

  Vega turned to Catherine, gesturing with his notepad in hand. “What do you say we start by talking to David—this is his red flag.”

  “Fine,” Catherine said, and patted her knees. “Where is David?”

  Rising, Vega said, “Let’s go for a walk.”

  The ward seemed a hive of activity, nurses bustling about in and out of rooms, the kitchen staff hustling along with trays of breakfast for those patients still able to feed themselves, and the odd visitor here and there coming to check on a loved one.

  Vega took a left up a hallway and stopped in front of a closed room. The detective waited to knock until his little search party had caught up.

  A vaguely startled voice said: “Who is it?”

  Catherine and Warrick traded tiny smiles—she sensed her partner had also had the same mental image of David Phillips, jumping a little as he spoke. David was an assistant coroner assigned to Dr. Albert Robbins, with whom the nightshift CSIs frequently worked.

  “It’s Vega,” the detective said, a little irritated. “Unlock the door, David.”

  The detective glanced sideways and gave Catherine a quick wide-eyed look that said, Jeeesh, this guy.

  Soon a click announced cooperation and the door cracked open, David’s bespectacled face filling the gap.

  “Come in,” David said.

  Warrick whispered to Catherine, “What is this, a speakeasy?”

  David, summery in a brown-and-white-striped short-sleeve shirt and light tan chinos, stepped aside and Vega entered with the others behind. With a touch of ceremony, David closed the door and turned to face them. Generally David had an easy if sometimes nervous smile, but right now there was no sign of it. His dark hair, getting wispy in front, seemed barely under control, as if wishing to abandon ship; and the sharp, wide eyes below the high forehead darted back and forth behind wire-frame glasses.

  This was, Catherine noted, a fairly typical hospital room, though with just one bed. Under the sheet lay a body. Soft lighting emerged from behind a sconce at the headboard.

  “Meet the late Vivian Elliot,” David said as he drew back the sheet.

  The woman’s appearance confirmed the assistant coroner’s opinion: She was dead, all right; her gray hair, though cut short, was splayed against the pillow, her eyes closed, her skin slack and gray, her features at rest, her torso lifeless.

  “And?” Warrick asked.

  “And…I don’t know,” David said, his voice solemn. He shrugged elaborate. “Everything looks fine.”

  “For a dead woman,” Catherine said.

  “For a dead woman, right.” Dr. Whiting stepped forward with stiff, strained dignity. “Sir—you indicated a problem. We called in a detective and crime scene investigators. What problem do you see here?”

  David smiled weakly. Catherine knew that David had sought out his singularly solitary job among the dead in part because of the stress he could occasionally feel around the living. Though the hospital room was cold—any colder, their breaths would have been visible—Catherine could see beads of sweat popping out on the young assistant coroner’s forehead.

  “I said I thought there was something wrong here.”

  “You don’t know?” Whiting asked, eyes and nostrils flaring.

  “No! That’s why we need, you know…an expert’s read.”

  Catherine stepped forward and put a hand on Whiting’s sleeve. “A second opinion never hurts, does it, Doctor?…If you’ll excuse me, I’d like a private word with my colleague.”

  Now she took David by the arm and, in the corner of the room, spoke to him quietly. Even gently. “What’s the matter, David?”

  He moved his head side to side. “Catherine, I’ve been doing this job for a while now.”

  “Yes, you have. And you’re very good at it.”

  “Thank you…. And you know, a person gets used to a certain routine. Mine is really like a lot of other jobs—life and death or not, it can be monotonous…and usually is.”

  Patiently she asked, “Point being?”

  “I come to Sunny Day to make a pickup, once, twice a month.”

  “Yeah?”

  A humorless half-smile tweaked his face. “This month? This is the fourth time.”

  Catherine called Warrick over and repeated what David had told her, still leaving Vega and Whiting out of the confab.

  Warrick shook his head. “Whoa, dude—that’s why you called the crime lab?”

  Catherine gave Warrick a take it easy look.
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  David looked embarrassed. “That may not seem like such a variation from the norm to you, Warrick—but it struck me. I mean, I’ve never been here four times in one month.”

  Warrick’s expression was skeptical, but something tugged at Catherine’s gut. She asked, “How about three times?”

  “Only twice—in four years on the job.”

  Warrick was considering that as he said, “David, four people dying in one of these places, in a single month…hardly unheard of.”

  David said, “Maybe not unheard of…I’d be lying if I said I knew what the statistical probabilities are…but it strikes me as strange, far beyond the norm as I know it.”

  “Better safe than silly,” Catherine said, nodding.

  David was getting in gear now.

  “Then,” he was saying, “you factor in Mrs. Elliot’s relatively good health—at least compared to the other residents here—and you’re running into odds worse than the casinos!”

  Turning to Vega, Catherine asked, “You’ve heard all this?”

  Vega’s half-smile was uncharacteristically meek. “David’s been like this since I got here. Frankly, that’s why I agreed to call you guys in—I thought maybe you could talk him down off his ledge.”

  Catherine turned back to the assistant coroner. “What you have, David, is what we call around CSI a hunch—but we don’t have them out loud. You know how Grissom would react, if we did.”

  David’s eyes widened. “Oooh yeah.”

  She smiled sweetly and supportively at David, the way she did her daughter Lindsey, when the child had hit a homework brick wall. “Pretend I’m Grissom.”

  “That good an imagination,” David said, “I don’t have.”

  “I mean—convince me like you would him. If he were standing here, not me—tell me, what do you think we’ve got?”

  David rubbed his chin as if it were a genie’s lamp that might grant his wish for a good answer. Finally he let out a long breath and said, “Too many deaths spaced too close together.”

  “That doesn’t suggest a crime,” Catherine said. “Not inherently.”

  “Right…right….”

  “Think out loud if you have to, David.”

  “Well…I never considered it before today, but the four DOAs we picked up here this month?”

  “Yeah?”

  He smiled a little, raised one eyebrow, like a novice gambler laying down a winning ace. “All widows.”

  Ace or not, Catherine was not impressed, and said so: “Women generally outlive men, David. No big surprise there.”

  David’s face screwed up in thought. Finally he said, “We always mark the next of kin on the report…so we know who to call?”

  “Riiight.”

  “Well, I was just thinking…I don’t remember seeing that any of these four women had any family.”

  Catherine and Warrick traded a look. Warrick’s eyes had taken on a harder cast, that steady unblinking look he got when something was really starting to interest him….

  Turning to Whiting, Catherine said, “Doctor, is what David thinks he remembers…true?”

  The doctor shrugged. “I really can’t say. I’d have to check the records.”

  Warrick said, pleasant but tight, “Why don’t you?”

  Catherine softened it: “Would you, please?”

  Whiting nodded; but then he just stood there.

  “Now would be good,” Warrick said.

  Sighing, Whiting said, “Anything to help, of course…but the truth is?…A lot of our residents at Sunny Day are widows.” He cocked his head, raised an eyebrow. “As you sagely pointed out, Ms. Willows, it’s hardly unusual for women to outlive men.”

  “Well,” Warrick said, and smiled, “maybe you better check those records, before everybody passes away but CSI Willows here.”

  Whiting, obviously annoyed and probably not overjoyed leaving these investigators unattended in one of his rooms, nonetheless went off to do Catherine’s bidding.

  With the four of them alone now—but for the late Vivian Elliot—Vega turned to Catherine. “You see why I called you?”

  “You did the right thing.” She sighed, rolled her eyes. “It’s a little borderline, but—”

  “But,” Vega said forcefully, “if we’re not chasing our tails, this is a crime scene.”

  Suddenly all four of them felt the ghost of Gil Grissom haunting the room.

  “Yeah,” Warrick said, “and if we don’t investigate it now…no telling what evidence’d be lost forever.”

  “If it’s natural causes, though,” Catherine said, “think of the time we’re wasting in the middle of this murder spike….”

  “I wish I had more for you, right now—” David said, “but until the autopsy, there’s no way to know for sure.”

  Catherine thought for a few seconds, then said firmly, “We’ve got to treat it as a crime scene…and if we’re wrong? We’re wrong.”

  “Won’t be the first time,” Warrick said.

  “I’ll interview Whiting,” Vega said. “If the Elliot woman was killed, that makes the entire staff suspects.”

  “Not just them,” Catherine warned. “It could be any resident with reasonable mobility. But the staff is where to start.”

  “What can I do to help?” David asked.

  Catherine gave him a supportive smile. “You can wait in the hall. If you are right—and you’ve discovered a string of homicides—you’re standing in our crime scene.”

  By the time Catherine and Warrick returned with their kits, a small crowd of onlookers in the hall had gathered outside the closed door. A few were in robes and slippers, and two used walkers; but most were fully dressed and looked suspiciously chipper, for this particular ward. Some had already started to question David, really pressing him as he stood there, looking extremely ill at ease.

  Noting this tableau up ahead, Warrick said, “Man, those gals are pretty aggressive.”

  “They’ve seen David here before,” she said. “And always in the context of accompanying one of their own to a morgue wagon.”

  “Yeah. See what you mean. Not very often you get to turn the tables on the angel of death.”

  Striding into the middle of the group of seniors, most of whom were women, Catherine said, “I’m very sorry, but this is an official investigation, and we can’t tell you anything right now.”

  “It’s Vivian, isn’t it?” asked a woman to Catherine’s right.

  Just under five feet tall, her gray hair short and straight, the woman wore a bulky gray sweater—the temperature outside may have been over one hundred, but it was, after all, chilly in here. Tri-focals peered up at Catherine, one bird studying another, new one.

  “Vivian passed away this morning,” Catherine said, “yes.”

  “Shame,” another, more heavyset woman said. “She was a sweetie pie.”

  “You knew her?” Catherine asked. “I understood Mrs. Elliot didn’t live here.”

  “She didn’t,” the first woman said, with a shrug. “It’s just that…we’re the Gossip Club, don’t you know. We know everybody. And everything.”

  “That could come in handy,” Warrick said under his breath.

  Catherine said, “Gossip Club?”

  “We visit the sick and dying,” the heavyset woman said, matter of factly. “We considered ‘Visitor’s Club,’ but it just sort of lacked pizzazz.”

  One of the few males in the crowd, from the back said, “I think Gossip Club is perfect!”

  “You be quiet, Clarence,” the heavyset woman said, good-naturedly, and general laughter followed.

  Catherine focused on the bird-like woman, who appeared to be the leader. “And you are?”

  “Alice Deams—I’m the president of G.C., and this is my vice president, Willestra McFee.” She nodded toward the heavyset woman nearby. “And that’s our treasurer, Lucille—”

  Catherine interrupted the Mouseketeer Roll Call. “You’re all residents here, I take it?”

  Ali
ce nodded. “Most of us live in the partial care building—next door? Dora and Helen…” Two women next to David waved. “…they live in the independent apartments down at the other end.”

  “You all come here every day?”

  “Most of us,” Willestra said. “Unless we’ve got doctor’s appointments or Margie’s arthritis is kicking up, in which case she’ll spend the day in her room, watching her stories.”

  “And you’ve taken it upon yourself to visit the sick?”

  “Oh my, yes. It’s the Christian thing to do, and besides, someday we’ll be in this wing, won’t we? Wishing for a little company. These people are our friends and neighbors, you know.”

  Catherine raised her voice. “Did any of you know Vivian Elliot well?”

  “I probably spent the most time with her,” Alice said. “She was really a great gal.”

  Warrick asked, “Vivian have any family?”

  Alice shook her head. “No, and that’s tragic. Her husband just passed away a year ago and they only had one child, a daughter who was killed when she was just seventeen by a hit-and-run driver. Viv still mourned the girl.”

  Catherine asked, “No brothers or sisters?”

  “No.”

  Warrick said, “You seem sure of that. You didn’t know her that long, really. How is it—”

  “Oh, well, she was like me, don’t you know—an only child. It was sort of a more rare thing, back then, being an only child. Bigger families were the thing—everybody had brothers and sisters. So Viv and me, we made kind of a bond out of being only children. We decided we could be sisters—never too late, we said!”

  “So, she had no family that you know of?” Catherine asked, just making sure.

  “Not a soul—not even very many friends. I only saw one other person visit her the whole time she was here—another woman.”

  Warrick asked, “This woman, her name—did you get it?”

  “No, no, I’m sorry. I never actually met her, you see. When the patients have visitors, we make a policy of not bothering them. The job of the Gossip Club is to lend support when no family and friends are around.”

  “Do visitors have to sign in here?”

  Alice shook her head again. “No, this wing is like a hospital that way. During visitor’s hours, people just sort of come and go.”