The Path of Silence

by Edita A. Petrick

  “It’s possible to perform the implant surgery in a psychiatric facility like Mongrove,” Field said, when I finished the unsatisfying briefing that raised even more questions than I had before. “But it would be riskier than doing that sort of thing in a limo—or at another site prior to delivering the subject to his original destination.”

  “Joe certainly believes this kind of procedure can be done easily and quickly enough these days. Mind you, he was talking about defibrillators, not micro bombs. He told me that you can shoot a heart-regulating device through a blood vessel so no surgery’s required. Still, I think that a medical facility would be a better choice, simply because equipment is available if something goes wrong.”

  “Meg,” Field said, shaking his head. “They wouldn’t have cared, had something gone wrong. They would have just dumped the body somewhere off the beaten path and gone after the next target.”

  “They are that ruthless and mercenary,” Ken spoke up. “Brenda went to visit the morgue to view Kim’s body before it was released to the funeral home. Joe told her that what he fears most is the next step.”

  That comment worried me. Field and I stared at him.

  Ken continued, “Joe said that if this sort of thing is that easily accomplished, it should not be overly difficult to take the device to the next level—where it explodes in the real sense of the word. It would be cheaper too.”

  “What do you mean, cheaper?” I moved the cheese tray away from him so he would not be tempted to stuff his mouth.

  He shrugged. “You wouldn’t have to fill the device with the toxin. It would be destroyed with the rest of the victim, in the explosion. That would be just as good for their purposes, no trace of evidence left either.”

  “So we have a money laundering scheme that probably reaches into the billions and you’re telling me these people could turn stingy, worry about the economic aspects of their operation?”

  He grinned. “That’s probably Joe’s freehand input. He’s the cheapskate.”

  I laughed. But something tickled in the back of my throat. It felt like a stuck chicken bone.

  “Patterson is probably legit,” Field said.

  “Why?” I challenged.

  “Because Mattis is a good researcher. He would have checked out many more details than those he gave you.”

  “Ah! So he held out on me.” I smiled nastily.

  He shook his head, keeping his grin in check. “He just didn’t want to bother you with the level of detail he had since it could be all summarized into what he told you.”

  “He said thirty-two year old Patterson looked a lot older than our current, thirty-nine year old Dr. Patterson. And since you’re saying that he only gave me summaries, it means he must know how that is possible.”

  “Maybe he didn’t want to insult you by stating the obvious—that Dr. Patterson values youthful appearance and wanted to preserve his, through a face-lift.”

  “A face-lift would certainly account for Patterson’s current young look but a face lift can also be performed to markedly change the individual’s appearance such that he looks like someone else. If Agent Mattis has such information it would have been courteous of him to share it with me. You know, in the police ranks, we have a different definition of sharing and cooperation.”

  “In the FBI, we like to summarize and make things easier for everyone because we are too busy to get bogged down in details.”

  “You were so much more attractive when you were the Smithsonian guard—and bald.”

  “I was younger,” he replied, smiling.

  “Actually, you look younger now that you have hair—and a decent haircut. I used to think you were at least ten years older than I was. I just listened to Springstein’s songs and enjoyed the noise but you had to analyze the lyrics like a wise, old professor.”

  “I only started analyzing lyrics after I sat through your law lectures. It was contagious.”

  I tossed my head back and laughed. Then I caught sight of my partner, sitting on the floor like a statue of Buddha, the cheese tray resting like a worshipper’s offering in front of him.

  “You two know each other?” he asked in a preadolescent voice.

  I sighed so deeply the swoosh of my breath lifted my bangs. I knew Field wanted me to answer. It was my choice. “We used to be married,” I said.

  “To each other?” Ken asked.

  “Yes.” Field decided on an economic answer. Hopefully, it would stop any further questions. It didn’t.

  “What broke up the marriage?” Ken asked.

  “Bullets.” Field said.

  “Money,” I replied, almost on top of Field’s answer.

  “I thought it would have been your jobs,” he said. I knew that was his foremost concern and his excuse, for still dating Brenda after nearly fifteen years.

  “We could have juggled our careers with marriage and family,” Field told him. “We fell a little short in communication. I couldn’t say everything that was on my mind and she was busy practicing saying everything that was on hers—in the classroom.”

  “You lied to each other?” Ken’s interpretation was bizarre—but not inaccurate.

  Field looked at me. “Not so much lied, as listened to the wrong voice.”

  “I didn’t lie,” I said.

  “I didn’t either but I couldn’t tell you who I was until the case was closed.”

  “Maybe if you had told me who you were, that shootout would not have happened.”

  “That’s what I worried about the most, that you would be there—if and when it did.”

  “I might have helped,” I maintained, feeling strangely light, as if ten years had been sloughed off my body and mind.

  “You would have played detective—alone.”

  I swept our little group with my hand. “I am a detective and I’m part of a team.”

  “Experience,” he grinned at me.

  I narrowed my eyes. “No,” I said. “Hardship. And you’re right. I would have reacted as a detective. It would have been exciting.”

  “No more excitement—at thirty-two?”

  “The last thing that really excited me was when I threw a People Finders’ agent out of my house at gunpoint,” I said and laughed.

  “Call him back and apologize,” he advised, eyes glowing.

  “No way. I didn’t like him that much.”

  “I’ll go make coffee,” Ken said, struggling to get up, knees wobbly.

  “Sit down. We have work to do,” I told him. “Mrs. Tavalho will make it. She probably has it ready. Jazz will be home any moment. I’ll have to debrief her before I can get back to work.”

  “What are we going to work on, now that I can’t concentrate?” my partner asked.

  “Patricia’s file. There’s got to be something buried there. Something we can use—a clue.”

  Chapter 31

  A state facility like Mongrove, with more than a thousand patients in residence, had to be sufficiently staffed. The number of doctors may have been less than what Patterson implied were needed but there were still one hundred and seven doctors on staff, with another seventy paramedical and caretaker staff in support functions. Perhaps this was skeletal staffing but I felt that the Chief Resident of such a large facility should confine his duties to administering personnel and functions, rather than having patients of his own. Joe insisted that our prime suspect was a doctor and Patterson’s age and behavior bothered me enough to assign him the number one slot on my empty list of suspects.

  “Did Patterson give you an impression that Patricia was his patient?” I looked at my companions. When they nodded, I continued. “How can a Chief Resident, in charge of such a large facility, afford to look after individual patients—and more important, why would he?”

  “Quigley is the Chief of Hopkins neurosurgery and he has patients, private ones as well,” Ken said.

  “Quigley’s unit doesn’t have one thousand patients,” I pointed out. “He may oversee a staff of ten, twent
y doctors—tops. Patterson has one hundred and seven doctors to take care of the patients. Why not assign Patricia’s case to one of them, why look after her personally?”

  “Chief Resident doctors of any facility are normally administrators,” Field said. “From my only meeting with the doctor, Patterson struck me as someone who likes to keep his hand in field work, on the ground level.”

  I thought so too but then there was that youthful hairstyle and a face that I felt had yet to see wrinkles. It was possible that the man was vain and opted for cosmetic surgery but what would a psychiatrist, indeed specialist, like Patterson have to gain by looking young? His qualifications got him the job at Mongrove, not his appearance. He said as much when he glibly illustrated how he got the job during our first visit. Patterson was very well acquainted with Patricia’s case. So well, in fact, that he didn’t bother passing us on to one of his doctors but conducted both interviews in person. Then there was another glib explanation he gave me when I asked about the patient who reminded me of Brenda. He knew her case in depth, gave me the kind of details that an administrator shouldn’t know. His answer was also well-tailored to apply to Ken and Brenda’s case. Was Patterson somehow well-prepared for our visit? Did someone alert him, even provided personal details on us? If that was the case then whoever alerted Patterson knew us and on a very personal level. Even as I had listened to Patterson’s explanation I felt he was laughing at us—laughing at Ken. Was someone toying with us right from the start of this bizarre case? Was I reaching because we had no suspects? Or was Patterson indeed a “bright boy” who knew case histories of one thousand patients interned in his facility, in detail? It was possible but highly improbable.

  Daniel Kane’s words kept returning to haunt me, like the Phantom of the Opera.

  “Patricia died as a result of an accident,” I said. “How many accidental deaths do you think there were in Mongrove these last four years?”

  Ken flipped out his cell phone and began dialing.

  “Who are you calling?” I was surprised to see him so reactionary.

  “Joe.”

  “Why?” I was dumbfounded.

  “He’s the medical examiner. Bodies from state facilities end up in his morgue.” He waved at me to be silent since he’d already heard a voice in the receiver.

  Five minutes later, Ken was staring into space, holding a private séance.

  “What did Joe say?” I didn’t want to wait to see whether he was successful in summoning the spirit.

  “He remembers Patricia. She’s a recent case. No autopsy. Social services said it wasn’t necessary—a result of an accidental fall, broken neck. He can’t recall any other cases that had ended up in his morgue that came from Mongrove. He said if a psychiatric patient dies while interned in the facility, either of natural causes or as a result of accident, the family is notified and they look after the arrangements. He only gets those cases that social services look after. Patricia was one of them, no relatives to notify. He wanted to know what we’re up to.”

  “We’ll drop by soon to visit him,” I murmured, still fighting that lingering echo of Kane’s words, “Certainly, Detective. But would it be safe?” Joe had involved himself in this case from the start far more than I felt was comfortable for a pathologist to be involved. I worried that if the homicidal genius was indeed among his colleagues in Hopkins and Joe found out his identity, he’d precipitate a confrontation that might not see him live to walk around his automated morgue, tossing chicken bones around. I also didn’t want Joe to know that we suspected Patterson of being the evil mastermind.

  “Unless Mattis finds something else on Dr. Patterson, we can’t bring him in for questioning. Hopkins’ medical staff is already on the warpath. I’m sure there are plenty of angry doctors who wouldn’t balk at talking to the media. Police are harassing the medical specialists to cover their incompetence,” Field said.

  Media were already camped out in Hopkins and I feared another altercation between Hopkins doctors and Joe that would receive much publicity.

  Daniel Kane had told us that Patricia saw Brick delivering a gurney with a dead body. Kane doubted whether the man pushing the gurney had been Brick but he didn’t doubt what Patricia told him she saw.

  “All right,” I nodded. “Let’s check something out.” It was my turn to make a phone call.

  “Mr. Kane,” I said when I heard his voice, “It’s Detective Stanton. I’m calling from my cell phone and my scrambler is plugged in. How’s yours?” I heard his chuckle and then he asked me to hold on. When he came back, he confirmed that his line was secure also.

  “Were there any accidents at Mongrove during the time you were there?” I asked. He was silent for a long time but I heard his breathing. “It’s all right, Mr. Kane. We’re just checking, or I should say I’m trying to validate a theory. Patricia is dead. She fell into a manhole in the laundry facility. She escaped through a laundry chute, the night of the full moon and fell into an open maintenance hole.”

  “Your visit to the facility must have precipitated it,” he said. He expressed exactly what I feared and had been avoiding.

  “Probably.” I knew he would hear the undercurrent of frustration and regret in my voice.

  “Most patients in that facility are not coherent,” he said. I knew he was trying to be as factual as possible, without airing his theories.

  “But some can communicate. You were most likely one of the few patients who not only understood but also was able to observe what went on.”

  “There were four patients in the nine months I was there, who disappeared, though that’s just my opinion. I’m sure that would not be the official report by the facility’s administration. Patients die, especially in medical facilities. Some of natural causes, some due to harm or accidents. Four male patients, between ages thirty and forty, vanished from that facility while I was there.”

  “How do you know they just didn’t check out?”

  “I’d noticed these particular men. All were catatonic, non-verbal. I approached one and tested his awareness. He was able to mumble but not focus on any particular thing for long. He was always in the lounge. I never saw anyone working with him. No one ever came to take him for a session. I wondered about that. I noticed there were three others like him. No one worked with these patients. Not the staff doctors and not their private psychiatrists. I concluded they had no relatives, no one to appeal their case and insist on better care.”

  “Is that sort of thing unusual?” I asked. We needed more to go after Patterson than negligence or lack of competence when it came to directing and overseeing his staff.

  He snorted softly into the phone. “Not really. In a State facility, that sort of thing happens often enough when there’s not enough medical staff. My own psychiatrist attended me four times a week. I noticed the same level of care with quite a few other patients. Patricia was another abandoned case, though I saw her taken away for rehab sessions. After I’d been there four months, this male patient, his name was Henry, stopped coming to the lounge. I asked the orderlies what happened to him. They said he had a heart attack. A month later, another one of those three remaining patients stopped coming to the lounge. I asked once again. The orderlies said he passed away in his sleep. By the time I signed myself out of the facility, the other two were also gone.”

  “Mr. Kane, if they died of natural causes—and you said that’s not unusual in any medical facility—why would you think they had disappeared?” I felt something was missing here.

  “Because three weeks before I left the Mongrove facility, a couple came in, surprise visitors. They were Henry’s uncle and aunt, missionaries, who had just returned from an overseas assignment. I was in the lounge, resting, pretending to be dozing. The Chief Resident doctor activated the wall screen and showed them Henry—well cared for. It was an old tape. Henry’s relatives left happy that he was being so well cared for.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Kane,” I said, chills running down my spine.


  “I’m sorry about Patricia. I always felt she was a hostage, not a patient,” he said and hung up.

  I told my partners what Kane had said.

  “Experimenting on psychiatric patients to get the implant device just right?” Ken murmured, examining this possibility and finding it as frightening as I did.

  “We still don’t have enough to go calling with a warrant,” Field said.

  “Probably not. And even if we started an investigation into those four disappearances, we’d only alert Patterson and his accomplices. I’m pretty sure they’re closing down their Baltimore operations. If we spook them, they’d do it faster, covering their tracks, destroying all the evidence.”

  An hour later, when I checked my e-mail, I found Nancy Bassiano’s list of regular customers who were designated VIPs and merited transport in a Creeslow limo. Felix Kim’s name was on top of the list. I wasn’t sure whether Nancy had slotted him as number one because Ken specifically asked about him, or whether Kim was such a regular customer he fitted that slot. If latter were the case, then Felix Kim was probably number one target and the rest of the people on the list weren’t of interest to Creeslow operators. Still, we had three murders and a suspicious death at a psychiatric facility. I forwarded the list to Bourke, giving him details what it was about. He was the boss. It would be his call how to contact those nine customers without setting off another wave of panic in the population. Bourke called ten minutes after I sent the e-mail.

  “I’ll send a patrol officer with a public health representative to visit each of the nine citizens,” Bourke said. “We’ll be following up on a report of a contagious disease at the travel agency. We’ll make sure the customers understand that it’s just a routine precaution, according to the public health agency protocol.”

  I concurred, thanked him and hung up before he asked for an update report.

  Two days later, I went to see Joe in Hopkins. Ken refused to accompany me, since it was going to be a semi-business meeting, a lunch, in the garden room—with Brenda to complete the happy threesome. Field went to network with his agents, though that’s not how I put it. He said I was getting to be very cynical, for someone who had not yet crossed the fine line that divided youth from the middle-aged pit.