Stigma

by Philip Hawley Jr.

  The reporter in front of the hospital said, “Our viewers may recall a bizarre incident that occurred here at this hospital a few days ago. One of the doctors allegedly attacked Mr. Erickson, and we’ve since learned that the doctor involved in that incident was Luke McKenna, an emergency room specialist here at University Children’s Hospital. The police will say only that Dr. McKenna is a person of interest in the shooting death of Mr. Erickson.”

  Ben shot a glance at McKenna.

  Elmer’s eyes were trying to blink away his confusion.

  “Does the hospital have any comment about this?” the announcer asked.

  “As you know, we’re still working to get the details on this breaking story. So far, no comment from the hospital. As soon as we get any more information, we’ll let our viewers know. Jane, back to you in the studio.”

  “Now let’s go to our Sky-Seven unit, which is flying over the victim’s home in the Hollywood Hills…”

  * * *

  “Wonderful,” Megan muttered. The lower third of her right leg had just disappeared into a mud-filled rut.

  The trail they had followed for the past four hours was nothing more than a vague strip of thinned vegetation. Clefts and crevices pockmarked the path and it was still soggy from a midday rain shower. Runnels of red clay coursed around slickened rocks and settled into what were, for the most part, shallow puddles. The depression her leg had sunk into was more like a sinkhole.

  Joe Whalen, the other resident, turned around. His cherubic face looked as if it was about to explode in laughter. A half second later it did just that, which was probably why he lost his footing, rolled down a small embankment, and landed face first in a mud pit. He emerged looking as if he belonged to a tribe of Aborigines.

  Steve Dalton, the third member of their team, eyed Megan with an impish smile.

  Megan twisted her foot, felt some give, and yanked up with all her strength. Her leg reappeared, but with only a wet sock on the foot.

  “Oh, that’s just great,” she said. “My shoe’s still in there.”

  Eddie, their Mayan guide who had a mule-like capacity for carrying things on his back, knelt down and dug both hands into the pit where Megan’s foot had been. He came up with the truant footwear, poured out a quart of wet clay, and handed the shoe to her.

  The guide smiled at Megan. It was a happy, contented smile in which his entire face participated.

  She reseated her shoe and asked in Spanish, “How much farther to the village?”

  Eddie stared up the hill. “A little while more.”

  It was almost three hours and five water bottles later that they finally reached Ticar Norte, the first of four Mayan villages they would visit over the next three days. No one had spoken for the past hour. Only Eddie looked as if he had the energy to talk, though it seemed his habit was to speak only when asked a question.

  She counted over twenty huts as they climbed the hill and entered the village. Most were thatched-roof dwellings. The sidings were made of crooked branches bound together with twine, and there were no doors or glass-pane windows — just bare openings.

  Several sets of large dark eyes peered between gaps in the sides. An older woman stood placidly at the entrance of a hut, her bare feet as cracked and callused as tree bark. Two small children, one with a swollen belly that probably held parasites, peeked out from behind the woman’s brightly colored skirt. Neither had a tattoo.

  Chickens and roosters roamed the area freely. A pig scurried past with a stiff-legged gait while a pack of mangy dogs studied the new arrivals. They were the scrawniest dogs that Megan had ever seen, their eyes darting nervously in every direction, with their backs arched as if poised against some unseen threat.

  Eddie disappeared into a large wood-plank structure at the center of the village. It looked like some sort of meeting hall. Even from a distance of over twenty feet, Megan could hear the men speaking in a guttural language. She didn’t understand a word.

  “What language are they speaking?” she asked.

  “Q’eqchi. It’s one of the Mayan dialects,” Steve said. “A lot of the villagers can’t speak Spanish, or don’t care to. That’s where Eddie comes in handy.”

  Steve Dalton picked at the bark of an enormous tree under which the three of them were standing. “The ancient Mayans used the sap from these things to make chewing gum. It’s called a sapodilla tree.”

  Megan was more interested in the villagers. A young boy, naked except for a pair of black rubber boots, stood like a stone in front of one of the huts and studied her. Standing next to him was a teenage boy wearing a Terminator III T-shirt. Inside the dwelling, she could see a tiny woman stirring the contents of an enormous black kettle over an open fire. Thick smoke billowed all around her.

  For the most part, the villagers kept their distance.

  “So when do we go to work?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” Steve said. “This is a bit strange. The villagers usually come out to greet us, give us something to drink…that sort of thing.” He pulled at his shirt. Like hers, it was drenched in sweat. “But I’ve never been here before. Maybe their social customs are different.”

  Eddie emerged from the wooden structure. A pair of old men remained at the doorway, watching them.

  “The village elders want us to leave,” Eddie said in Spanish when he reached them. “They say that you have upset the spirit of the dead.” He looked at each of them in turn, his expression telling them nothing. “I will show you.”

  He led them to the far side of the village, then down a gentle slope to a cluster of five huts. “There is an angry spirit in that hut,” he said, pointing to a structure on the far right.

  The small thatched dwelling looked no different from the others at first glance, but the disparity became evident as Megan studied it. The other huts had signs of life: the sporadic movements of children staring back at her through gaps in the siding, curls of smoke escaping from their doorways, small animals foraging for food.

  The hut on the right was lifeless.

  “I don’t understand,” Whalen said. “What are we supposed to be looking at?”

  “That hut on the right looks like it’s been abandoned,” Steve said. “That may be where the dead person lived.”

  “Abandoned? Why?”

  “Sometimes,” Steve said, “the Mayans do it to escape a dead person’s spirit. If they think the spirit is unhappy or angry, they stay away from the hut.” He pointed at the hut’s entrance. “See those bowls on the ground? They’re probably filled with food, to appease the angry spirit. They want it to go to the next world.”

  “Can we go into the hut?” Megan asked Eddie.

  The guide blinked nervously and looked at the ground.

  Steve said, “I think you got your answer.”

  Megan glanced at a nearby hut. A young woman with angry eyes retreated into its interior.

  It was Josue Chaca’s mother.

  26

  “We’ve been over this three times already.” Luke leaned back on the rear legs of his metal-frame chair and shook his head at the water-stained acoustic ceiling tiles.

  He had spent the past four hours in a windowless interview room at the Police Administration Building, the downtown headquarters of LAPD. The three homicide detectives seemed to study his every twitch, and the tone of their questioning had gradually shifted from conversational to interrogative. Two of the detectives, a man and a woman, sat opposite him at the metal-frame table. The third detective was standing behind the other two, leaning against the wall. It was O’Reilly.

  “We just want to be clear about your answer,” the female detective offered with palms outstretched. Apparently, she had taken the role of friendly cop.

  Luke aimed his eyes at Lieutenant Groff, the burly man sitting across from him, who was clearly in charge. “How many different ways can I say it? From five-thirty to seven-thirty, I was having dinner with my father and another doctor named Ben Wilson at a place called Kolter�
�s Deli. Afterward, I walked my father home — he lives a few blocks from the restaurant. I got back to my car about eight o’clock and got home about eight-twenty. The rest of the night, I was at home, alone. Ask my landlord. He probably keeps a closer watch on my schedule than I do.”

  “Actually, we have talked to him,” the lieutenant said. “He can tell us only that you came home sometime before nine.”

  The one time Walter’s meddlesome nature could have helped, Luke thought, and the man didn’t bother to look at his watch.

  Detective O’Reilly was mute, observing and listening as the other two detectives peppered Luke with questions covering every minute of the past two days — where he had gone, what he had done, who he had seen — pressing him to account for an endless stream of what seemed like meaningless minutiae.

  Groff looked down at his notes. “Detective O’Reilly recently spoke with your supervisor, Dr. Barnesdale.”

  “He’s not my supervisor.”

  Groff ignored the comment. “He says that when he told you about your suspension, you were— quote—‘highly agitated.’ ”

  “That’s not how I’d characterize our discussion.”

  “He also says you described Mr. Erickson as a serious threat to his daughter.”

  “I probably said something like that.”

  “Did you feel you needed to protect the girl?”

  “I didn’t feel I needed to murder her father.”

  Groff looked at the other two detectives in turn, then came back at Luke. “Do you know a private investigator named Billy Sanford?”

  “Probably.”

  “Probably?”

  “Some guy was following me yesterday, taking photographs. I assume that’s the person you’re asking about.”

  “Right. Well, Mr. Sanford tells us that you physically assaulted him. He says that your attack was unprovoked and that you threatened his client, Mr. Erickson.”

  “The guy was harassing me.”

  “How was he harassing you, Dr. McKenna?”

  Luke could see where this was going. “Look, I wanted him off my back. He’d been following me. There was nothing more to it than that.”

  To Groff, there seemed to be much more to it than that and he spent the next several minutes dissecting Luke’s encounter with the P.I.

  Throughout the exchange, Luke’s attention bounced between the lieutenant’s questions and the timing of the murder. From their questions, he guessed that Erickson had been murdered sometime between eight and eight-thirty. Was it just a coincidence that the killing occurred during a half-hour period for which he had no alibi? Or had the killer set him up? If the latter, there had to be an accomplice who was tracking him at the time of the shooting.

  When Groff stopped to glance at his notes, Luke jumped into the pause. “My fight with Erickson was all over the news. Maybe your killer is using me as a decoy.” Luke described his dual sightings of the Asian and how the man had run when spotted.

  “So,” Groff said, “this guy sees you attack Mr. Sanford, and then bolts when you start running at him.” He glanced back at O’Reilly. “I’d say that sounds like a fairly normal reaction.”

  “He didn’t look the least bit frightened, Lieutenant.”

  O’Reilly shifted his stance against the wall. “Describe this man.”

  “He was young, maybe thirty, and he was driving a large black sedan. I wasn’t close enough to get a good look at him.”

  “Did anyone else see this man?” the woman asked. “Is there anybody who can corroborate your account?

  Luke shook his head.

  “Did you get a look at his license plate?” Groff asked.

  “No.”

  The lieutenant bobbed his head from side to side in an exaggerated manner, as though wanting to make his skepticism obvious.

  A moment later, as if responding to some unseen signal from Groff, the woman said, “Dr. McKenna, we’ll probably have more questions for you. Do you have any plans to leave the city in the next few days?”

  “No.”

  Detective O’Reilly pushed himself off the wall and said, “I have a few questions.”

  “Be my guest,” Groff said.

  “Dr. McKenna, do you know what a 201 file is?”

  “My military record.”

  “Yours arrived by fax this morning.” O’Reilly picked up a folder sitting on a side table. “It makes for interesting reading. Says in here that you were a Navy SEAL.”

  Luke said nothing.

  “Team Six.” O’Reilly whistled a long note. “Isn’t that one of their most elite units?”

  Luke shrugged.

  O’Reilly tapped his front teeth with a pencil while eyeing the report. “Seems odd that they shipped you off to the Pentagon as soon as you finished your training. I mean, I see here that you worked as an analyst in something called Naval Logistical Planning.”

  “If you’re going to ask me about classified work, I want a military lawyer here.”

  Luke had no idea whether military rules trumped police investigative procedures, but it was the only card he had to play.

  “No, nothing like that. I was just wondering why the Navy would go to all that trouble to train you as a commando, then stick you in an office at the Pentagon. It just seems unusual, that’s all.”

  “Is there a question in there?” Luke asked.

  Groff pinched the bridge of his nose. “I was wondering the same thing myself.”

  “Just curious. That’s all.” O’Reilly held up a hand. “I’m done.”

  * * *

  After McKenna left the room, O’Reilly listened to Groff and the female detective compare notes from the interview. It went without saying that O’Reilly’s opinion didn’t count for much. He was a lowly detective second grade from Rampart Division, and they had brought him into the case for just one reason: He knew something about the only person who had made it onto their suspect list so far — McKenna. That information had bought O’Reilly a door-knocker role when Groff and his team descended on McKenna’s residence at four o’clock that morning.

  Word was that Groff had been a less than stellar beat cop, but he had the good sense to marry the daughter of a deputy chief several years ago. After that, it was a fast track to lieutenant in Robbery-Homicide. In the last hour, O’Reilly had seen nothing to dissuade him from the view that nepotism still ruled supreme within LAPD’s upper echelon.

  The guy’s mind was definitely a two-cylinder job. Groff had asked McKenna to submit voluntarily to a gunshot residue test. The doctor seemed only too happy to oblige, and why not? The shooter had used a rifle, which was much less likely to leave residue than a shorter barreled handgun. And unlike blood, gunshot residue was easily removed with soap and water. Even if McKenna was the shooter, O’Reilly was certain that their GSR test would show nothing. Groff had managed only to create an evidentiary record that could be used against them in court.

  The lieutenant impatiently drummed the table with his fingers while the woman thumbed through her notes and summarized aloud some of McKenna’s remarks.

  After a minute or so Groff said, “I know what the guy said. I wanna know what you think.”

  “The timeline’s a little tight, but doable,” she said. “It’s about a fifteen-minute drive from the hospital to Erickson’s home. Even if McKenna was with his father until 7:45 or so, he could’ve made it there and climbed up the hillside behind Erickson’s place by eight-fifteen.”

  “Six minutes before the 911 call came in,” Groff offered.

  She nodded. “Erickson’s next-door neighbor says she called a few seconds after hearing the rifle shot. So the shooting probably occurred no earlier than eight-twenty.”

  “How far is it from the shooting scene to McKenna’s home?” Groff asked.

  “About three and a half miles, due east. Depending on where he parked, it might’ve taken eight to ten minutes to climb back down the hill to his car, then another fifteen minutes to drive home. He could’ve been pulling in
to his driveway by 8:45, eight-fifty at the latest.”

  Groff plucked at his lower lip while seeming to think about the timeline. Then he said to the woman, “Tell me again about that rapist case you dug up.”

  “It was a few months ago,” she said. “The rapist was targeting employees at McKenna’s hospital. He went after young women. All the rapes happened within a few blocks of the hospital, all of ’em at night. It went on for a few weeks, until one night a patrol unit finds the guy buck naked, tied to a tree. I hear he looked like he’d been put through a wood chipper. He was barely alive. When he finally woke up, he copped to the rapes.”

  “Did the rapist give a description of the guy that mashed him?”

  “Nope. Said he never saw it coming.”

  Groff said to her, “Find out if McKenna knew any of the rape victims.” He turned to O’Reilly. “Whatta you think? You think McKenna did Erickson?”

  O’Reilly came around the table and took a chair. “I don’t see it. This guy’s not stupid, and he’s not nuts. He’s not gonna whack Erickson right after getting into a brawl with him. It’s too obvious. Besides, there’s no shortage of people who hated Erickson’s guts. There’re probably a couple hundred people grinning at their TV this morning.”

  The detective’s thoughts flashed on the football player’s wife who, during questioning, had acknowledged her husband’s longstanding physical abuse. O’Reilly couldn’t fathom the tangled mess of emotions that she was grappling with at that moment.

  Groff said to O’Reilly, “Tell us about the Tartaglia case.”

  O’Reilly had been waiting for the question. His answer would determine whether he remained on the Tartaglia murder investigation. LAPD brass ruled by fiat in high-profile cases, and if Groff sniffed a likely connection between the murders of Erickson and Tartaglia, he’d yank the case out from under O’Reilly and assign it to one of the homicide teams at the downtown headquarters.

  “Last Friday night, Katherine Tartaglia drove to a restaurant across the street from University Children’s for a meeting with McKenna. She was shot three times in a parking lot before she ever got out of her car. Someone, probably the killer, took her purse, then went to her house and cleaned it out. Stereo equipment, TV, computer, jewelry — everything.”