The Path of Silence

by Edita A. Petrick

  “Joe, is it possible for a psychiatrist to have the kind of expertise that would allow him to perform neurosurgery, cranial implants?” I asked, when we gave our food orders. I made it come out like a general question, with no particular focus in mind. I should have known better.

  “You’re angling on to this Patterson fellow?” He took the shortest path to the source of my curiosity, as always. His shoulders were exceptionally well squared, his head was thrust forward in anticipation of challenge and his face sported a foxy smile, one I hadn’t seen too often—actually, never. I traced the target of that smile and stifled a sigh, feeling sorry for my partner. Brenda pretended to be immune to our medical examiner’s charm but I saw the corners of her mouth twitch with amusement. Well, most women liked to be admired, regardless of what other relationship commitments they had.

  “John Forsyth,” Brenda said, “one of Quigley’s doctors, is a certified clinical psychiatrist, who went on to specialize for three years at the Rhode Island Hospital of Neurosurgery. He’s one of the leading researchers of brain tumors.”

  “A lot of doctors have more than one specialty,” Joe confirmed. “Have you started checking out Patterson?”

  “He appears to be legit.” I didn’t want to involve more people in this investigation, no matter how eager they would be to help. Joe was a part of it, by virtue of his job and continued involvement but Brenda didn’t need to be saddled with the extracurricular activity of spying on her colleagues. It was enough that Joe had decided to mount a crusade on behalf of the Hopkins’ patients, present and future. A possibility of another violent spectacle like the one with Quigley that saw the explosive device publicized like nothing else, worried me no end.

  “I have a friend on staff in Mongrove—” Brenda started to say. I hastily put my hand over hers.

  “No.” I underscored my refusal with a commanding look. “Ken and I appreciate your help. You’ve already done a lot but stay out of Mongrove.”

  “Maybe I should have taken a closer look, done an autopsy,” Joe said.

  “What do you mean?” I turned to him.

  He waited until the waiter put down our salads and the breadbasket before continuing, “The body they brought from Mongrove, female patient, Vanier. I read the report. It agreed with what I found on the x-rays. Severed spinal cord, death was instantaneous. No other external injuries, bruises or lacerations—”

  “No broken bones?” I interrupted. We saw the tape. Patricia fell into an open manhole—feet first. The manhole was large but not the size that would have allowed Patricia’s body to tumble or bounce off the walls as she fell. No matter how deep that manhole, she would have landed on her feet and broken at least her ankles, if not suffering other fractures. She could have hit her head and died from such a blow, maybe even a broken neck but there had to be other injuries consistent with what I saw on that tape in Patterson’s office.

  Joe gave me a pained look. “Could have been. I was busy. The two guys from social services were breathing down my neck, wanted a signed release so the funeral home could collect the body that afternoon. The x-rays came with the body. That’s all I had time to check and confirm. The fatal neck injury was consistent with what the report said.”

  “Why were they in such a hurry?”

  “Vacation, what do you think?” He scowled at me. “Or the funeral home was having an early burial special,” he added wryly.

  “She was cremated.”

  “There you go. They do cremations twice a week at Salomar. They must have wanted to fit her in quickly. Every day the body’s stored in the morgue costs money, you know. I signed the release and sent her file to Morris.”

  “Paxton Morris? Why would you do that?” I didn’t expect to come back to the Hopkins’ social maverick doctor since the last time Joe mentioned him, he suspected him of being Dr. Martin. However, I assumed that nothing had panned out along those lines or Joe would have already confronted Morris, maybe even made a citizen’s arrest.

  “I told you he’s on Quigley’s staff, one of his heart surgeons,” Joe replied casually, getting ready to attack his salad.

  “You thought he might be Dr. Martin,” I said carefully, feeling I was sharing “work issues” with civilians.

  “Well, he still might turn out to be your Dr. Martin. He came to Hopkins just over three years ago. I don’t have details of his medical background but I’m working on it,” he said.

  I didn’t remember discussing details of our IMF visit with Joe. Then again, he might have overheard us discussing it. “Joe,” I said, “it might not be safe for you to continue your involvement in this case. If it is a doctor and you feel strongly it is, well…when you can’t be safe among your colleagues… I worry about you, that’s all,” I finished with a shrug because Joe was glowering at me.

  Even as I maintained eye contact, his scowl dissolved and he ended up smiling. “Meg,” he winked at me, “I’m flattered that you worry on my behalf but I’m of no interest to these people, whoever they are. I’m not an economist, I’m not a waiter, I’m not a programmer or a tradesman. I’m a pathologist. Who would want to exert control over me and more important, why bother? Do you know that of all the medical professions pathologist enjoy the longest life span?”

  “Yes, Joe, you told me that’s why you chose to be the keeper of the dead.”

  “Actually, I chose to be the doctor to the dead because they don’t complain. I’m sure you noticed, my bedside manner is not the greatest,” he said, laughing.

  I laughed too even though there was nothing to feel merry about. “So, what do we know about this Dr. Paxton Morris?” I asked.

  “He’s the one who usually does all the uninsured cases and those who have to be taken from emergency straight into O.R., heart attacks and serious problems,” Brenda said helpfully.

  “Yes, Joe’s already told me he’s a social maverick, the type of doctor I like,” I said.

  “He’s what you might call a…” Brenda’s eyes settled on the wine carafe the waiter had just put in the middle of the table, arranging the glasses around it. “House wine.” She found the analogy.

  “A specialist but way down in the medical hierarchy,” I said, still wondering why Joe had given out Patricia’s medical file to Morris.

  Brenda’s mouth twitched uncomfortably. I saw this was the part she didn’t like about her work environment, the fierce stratification and corresponding pecking order of the doctors, which, of course, translated into glory—and money. Ability alone was not enough for a doctor to earn a higher position up the ladder. He had to have connections and publications that made his name resonate in all the right circles.

  “He’s not really a maverick, Meg, just a bit of a social advocate,” she said, sounding defensive.

  “Insists on equal treatment for all?”

  “When you attend too many homeless cases and ignore too many directives that mandate insurance information be collected before you proceed with more expensive procedures, it’s going to get noticed.” She sighed and I felt she knew more than she was willing to tell me.

  “Morris has done that?”

  “Routinely,” she smiled crookedly. “He’s a good surgeon. He’s done a quite a few open-heart surgeries and implants on people who would otherwise not have been able to afford them. The hospital’s Board of Directors noticed and issued him a reprimand. He ignored it. Then they issued a warning. He’s now on this third notice. One more and his employment and hospital privileges will be suspended. He has a way of controlling, making everyone respond to his orders in a way that there’s no time to get sidetracked by protocol—insurance, liability, who’s going to pay—things like that. And once you have your patient in the O.R. with an open chest, well…” Brenda trailed off.

  Morris continued to sound like someone I would not have minded meeting—to shake his hand. He also didn’t fit my stereotype of Dr. Martin.

  “All right, Joe, why would you give Patricia’s medical file to Dr. Morris?” I interrupt
ed his energetic hand motions between the glass, the breadbasket and the salad.

  “She was his patient.” He paused long enough from chewing to spit that out.

  I leaned back, hardly breathing. Perhaps I needed to overhaul my thinking approach to stereotypes and everything else. If Morris was Patricia’s doctor he could well have been Dr. Martin who attended her fiancé, Brick. Indeed, it would have been logical for Dr. Martin to continue exerting his “control” over Brick through Patricia, held prisoner in a state psychiatric facility.

  “Did Morris attend Patricia in Mongrove routinely, or was it just a one-time specialist’s intervention?” I asked.

  “She came into his care about two years ago. Can’t remember the details. Didn’t memorize her file, you know. Just glanced through it. I was busy. Two cases of suspected industrial poisoning,” Joe spoke in fragments between bites.

  “What did he treat her for and where?”

  “Suspected heart problems, murmur or palpitations, can’t be sure which. He ended up operating on her hiatal hernia. Flap wasn’t closing, acid shooting up into the esophagus. I confirmed the scar from that surgery. It was neatly done, no doubt about that.”

  “So Patricia’s surgery was done at Hopkins?”

  Joe shrugged and shook his head. “Of course. Didn’t I just say that?”

  “Her x-rays were only of the neck injury?”

  “Meg, she died of a broken neck.” Joe pointed his fork at me, as if it was a dart and I was a target. “Doctors don’t normally go berserk, taking x-rays of every single square inch of a dead body when they know what’s the cause of death. Besides, she was a social services case. X-rays cost money. Yeah,” he slashed the air furiously with his fork. “I know what you’re thinking. I ought to have done an autopsy. It’s too late now. The body’s been cremated. If she did have an implant—or a pacemaker—we’ll never know. Besides, I don’t think she had that kind of shit in her chest.”

  “How would you know? You didn’t do the…” Social conscience or not, Paxton Morris now fit my refurbished image of Dr. Martin very well. I wasn’t crossing James Patterson off my meager list of suspects but Morris was a stronger contender for spot number one. He was a heart surgeon who probably routinely installed pacemakers—and he had an accomplice, at Mongrove.

  “Because she was a female,” Joe said almost threateningly. “So far, your three cases were male.”

  “Are you suggesting that this mad genius who’s planting bombs in people’s chests hasn’t figured out how to do such a dastardly deed to a female anatomy?” I snickered.

  “It’s different, Meg, that’s for sure.” His frown broke up and he ended up smiling—at Brenda. I wasn’t worthy of such adoration.

  I didn’t think it was that different. There was more cushioning tissue on the female chest but that should have made it easier to conceal the implant. Then again, these days, women checked their breast tissue a lot more regularly than they used to and might notice a lump, no matter how small. Men didn’t have to perform such rituals. Perhaps that was the underlying reason why only male subjects had been targeted. Field’s list of the Tavistock team members in Baltimore had contained one female name but she was gone now. She was one of the two who surrendered their story to the tabloids and retired to a warmer climate.

  Joe was probably right. Patricia didn’t have an implant. She was held in Mongrove, just like Kane had said, a hostage more than a patient. Morris and Patterson were her overseers—and Brick’s.

  Brick knew she was there. Part of his cooperation could have even been because of that. She had loved him enough to make a fool of herself four times, when she reported him missing. He in turn, loved her enough to spend four years in slavery. A hard knot formed in my throat. It took two glasses of water to get rid of it.

  I spent the rest of the lunch cautioning Joe not to precipitate another confrontation with a colleague in Hopkins and steer clear of Paxton Morris. I didn’t mention Patterson again. We parted after lunch.

  “Tell Ken to give me a call after five. I might have to work an extra shift,” Brenda said, touching my arm, smiling.

  “We’ll be working too, at my house,” I told her. I watched them walk down the wide aisle that looked like any other offshoot in a busy mall, though in reality it was still a hospital corridor. Joe’s shoulders were in a perfect “T,” with his head slightly bowed as he listened to Brenda. I didn’t know why I kept watching them but when Joe’s hand sneaked around and settled on Brenda’s waist, I knew what it was that made me linger. I just didn’t know when the other shoe was going to drop.

  I called home. Mrs. Tavalho was busy preparing dinner—for a team—as she tactfully put it.

  “Do you think you might be needing me tonight?” she asked.

  Strangely enough, I understood. “I hope we’re not going to have another one of those long nights.” I sighed. “But if we do, I’ll just ask Mrs. Devon to look in on Jazz.”

  “I know how hard your work is on you these days,” she said. “But we’ve been planning this outing for a while and I’m in charge, so I wouldn’t want to disappoint the other church members.”

  I assured her that she was free to enjoy her night out with her church group, acknowledging that she deserved it.

  “I told the driver to pick me up last, to give you as much time as I can. He’ll be here just after seven o’clock. Is that all right with you?”

  I smiled widely to show her it was. “Where are you going?” I asked, more out of politeness than curiosity.

  She laughed, a little self-consciously, I thought. “A charity casino in Udelman. Fifteen of us are going, like I said, the church group.”

  I wished her tons of luck.

  I called Ken. He was at Marco’s, getting a haircut. My eyes tightened with discomfort as I gave him Brenda’s message. “I’ll see you at my house,” I told him when the silence grew sticky. He said okay and hung up, then I called Field.

  “This should be in Patricia’s file, so we must have missed it and will have to go over the material in detail but she was admitted to Hopkins two years go. The surgeon who operated on her hiatal hernia is Dr. Paxton Morris. He’s a social maverick and a thorn in the Directors’ ass but capable and solid.” I gave him my report as crisply as a military review. I didn’t give him my feelings and suspicions about Dr. Morris because it wasn’t the sort of thing to discuss over the phone.

  “How are you?” He decided to be a maverick too.

  “Fine. Anything on the Washington armored cars?”

  “I’ll see you in a while, at home.”

  “Whose?”

  “Ours.”

  “Come next year, I’ll still be driving around, looking for it.”

  He laughed. “Courtney came up with a new angle—corporate limo services, in-house. It would be worthwhile to check those too. There might be a company in Washington that has recently hired a new provider for this perk.”

  I didn’t think Creeslow would have gone the corporate route. It would have meant giving up their independent status. Corporations, or any other company, would insist on following rules—their own. It was not what Creeslow would want. Amalgamating with one of the existing services would hide them but at the same time leave them as a quasi-independent partner.

  “Very well. We’ll look into that possibility,” I agreed without enthusiasm.

  “I’ll be there around five,” he said. I acknowledged his comment and cancelled the call.

  Chapter 32

  Every company in Washington with more than three hundred employees appeared to have an in-house limo service. If this were true, there couldn’t be any open parking spaces in Washington, since a limo would necessarily take up at least three regular spaces.

  “Something else, something else, some other service,” I kept mumbling, shaking my head over the long list of Washington companies that Agent Gould had managed to compile.

  “None of the eleven armored car services are newly established businesses,” Fie
ld told me. “None have amalgamated with any other car service or taken on new partners.”

  “It’ll come to me,” I told him peevishly.

  “When it does, we’ll go after the product of that brainstorm. Until then, we’ll check out the in-house limo services.”

  “You’re not in charge of this investigation,” I flared.

  “Yes I am,” he returned pleasantly but with a great deal of inflexibility.

  “It’s homicide. It’s Baltimore and it’s our turf.”

  “It’s an issue of national security as reflected in destabilizing our banking system. That’s FBI’s jurisdiction.”

  “Then go sit in the boardroom, watch the clouds and stabilize the banking system. We’ll do the work on the ground level, where the bodies were found.”

  “I met with Commissioner Walton today. He leans toward passing this investigation exclusively to the FBI, no police involvement, local or otherwise.”

  “Fine.” I picked up Patricia’s file and flapped it down in front of him, on the floor. “Here’s my endorsement of that sentiment. Have fun.” I rose like a spring and would have marched out of my living room if not for Ken’s hand that fastened around my ankle. He sat on the floor and wisely didn’t lift his head to participate in the conflict but obviously he didn’t want me to leave it on a cliffhanger.

  “Meg, sit down,” Ken murmured.

  “We have a ton of cold cases to work on, back in our office,” I told him. “It’s time to clean up my living room.”

  “I told the Commissioner that removing police staff from the investigation would not be a good idea,” Field said.

  “Then call him back and tell him you’ve changed your mind,” I said, unyielding. I glared down at Ken, telling him to let go of my foot.

  “We would have to bring the Federal Marshall’s staff into it because we don’t have the field staff to spare,” Field observed in a musing voice.