Stigma

by Philip Hawley Jr.

  The truth was, O’Reilly thought his case was anything but a simple robbery-homicide. The shooter had tried to make it look like one, but there was one small detail that didn’t fit. There wasn’t a single computer CD or flash drive anywhere in Tartaglia’s house. She either didn’t have any, which hardly seemed likely, or the killer took the time to scoop up a bunch of flash drives and CDs used to store computer files, while leaving behind over seventy music CDs that were sitting right next to where the stereo had been.

  More likely, O’Reilly thought, the killer knew exactly what he was doing. There was something in Tartaglia’s computer files that the perp didn’t want anyone to see.

  “We’re still waiting on the M.E.’s report,” O’Reilly continued, “but it’s gonna show that she died from gunshot wounds to the head and chest, probably nine-millimeter. Nobody heard any shots, so the killer was probably using a sound suppressor.”

  What he didn’t tell Groff was that the medical examiner had found no gunpowder residue around any of the bullet entry wounds. In fact, there was no residue at all on the body, which meant that the killer was probably standing at least ten feet away when he put two tightly grouped shots into the victim’s chest and a bull’s-eye in her forehead. This was no ordinary shooter.

  “Does McKenna have an alibi?”

  “He was in the restaurant waiting for her at the time of the shooting. The owner remembers seeing him there. I’m not done looking at that — I still have to view a security video and pinpoint when he left the hospital. But so far, his alibi is holding.”

  O’Reilly hoped the omission — okay, lie — wouldn’t come back to bite him. Records from Tartaglia’s phone company confirmed that her mother had called her a few minutes before the murder. The mother remembered her daughter saying something about McKenna being nearby while they had their little mother-daughter chat. When pressed, though, the mother couldn’t remember exactly what her daughter had said.

  There was something squirrelly about McKenna. O’Reilly felt certain the guy wasn’t telling them everything he knew, but that didn’t necessarily make him a murderer. More importantly, he didn’t have a clear motive for McKenna. At least, not yet. Tartaglia was about to come into a sizable chunk of money, but her will listed her parents as the beneficiaries.

  There was one interesting lead relating to motive — at least his instincts told him so. Dr. Barnesdale had remarked that when Tartaglia left University Children’s to join Zenavax, it had stirred a firestorm of controversy that proved embarrassing to Elmer McKenna. The younger McKenna had mentioned her working for his father, but not the controversy.

  Similarly, Tartaglia’s boss, a senior vice president at Zenavax, hadn’t mentioned the rift when O’Reilly spoke with him by phone the morning after the murder. The detective wanted to have another discussion with the people at Zenavax — this time, in person — to probe that issue. He was also going to ask them about Tartaglia’s research involving those autopsy cases at the Coroner’s Office.

  There were always a hundred loose threads in cases like this, threads that required more time than his caseload allowed. Adding to that frustration was the reality that most investigative leads ultimately went nowhere — like Tartaglia’s voicemail message, which the lab techs had determined was unrecoverable.

  Things were going to move quickly now that Groff was involved. O’Reilly realized he had to move faster, or risk losing the Tartaglia case. He wanted to unleash their department’s computer geeks to search for the e-mail that McKenna had claimed he never received. But that required a search warrant for the hospital e-mail server as well as McKenna’s home and office computers, which meant coordinating his investigation with Groff.

  Tell Groff too much, and the case would go downtown. Hold back, and he risked a disciplinary action.

  “You think McKenna murdered Tartaglia?” Groff asked.

  O’Reilly felt like a high-wire performer. “Of course, anything’s possible, but I don’t see a motive at this point. Tell you what — why don’t I sync up with you guys on interviews and search warrants. That way, I won’t trip over anything you’re doing.”

  The lieutenant steepled his fingers under his chin in a pose that had all the earmarks of something he’d practiced in front of a mirror. “Sounds like a good idea.”

  The door opened and a blond-haired detective who looked like an advertisement for Gold’s Gym walked into the room. “Thought you might want to hear about this,” he said. “We got McKenna’s prints from the medical licensing board in Sacramento.”

  “And?”

  “The CSI team just checked it against the partial print we got from that candy bar wrapper near the shooter’s location behind Erickson’s house.”

  “Yeah?”

  The blond man’s mouth opened into a smile. “It’s a match for McKenna’s right thumb.”

  * * *

  “So,” Calderon’s client said, “we can cross McKenna off our list of problems.”

  “If he was dead,” Calderon countered, “I’d be more inclined to agree with you.”

  “It’s better this way. So far, he and Wilson haven’t found anything. It looks like they’re chasing a mirage. But if McKenna was to turn up dead, it would give credence to his theories. The investigation would lead back to the Tartaglia woman, or worse, McKenna’s father. We can’t have that.”

  “What about that pathologist, Wilson?”

  “For now, we continue to watch him. Thanks to your good work, he can’t cough without us knowing about it.”

  Calderon had considered planting listening devices in McKenna’s apartment, but ultimately decided against it. He didn’t want to underestimate the cockroach. He knew that McKenna’s suspicions would swell when he discovered the burglary and Tartaglia’s missing phone message. He hadn’t wanted to risk having McKenna discover a wiretap or bug.

  “Tell me about the clinic,” his client said.

  “We still have a problem.”

  “Oh?”

  “It isn’t completely shut down. They’re sending medical teams out to the villages,” Calderon explained. “My men followed that Callahan woman and two other doctors to a village called Ticar Norte. That’s not very far from—”

  “If they get too close, you know what to do.”

  27

  Barnesdale wiped away the moisture above his upper lip while scrolling down the list on his computer screen.

  The security log for the hospital’s Research Tower showed the badge number of every person who had entered the building last weekend. He was convinced that someone had gone to the bone marrow lab on the tower’s second floor and substituted the Guatemalan boy’s marrow with some from another patient. It seemed the only plausible explanation for Oncology’s finding that the boy had died of leukemia.

  That he had written the bogus diagnosis on Josue Chaca’s death certificate hadn’t mattered to him initially. All that mattered was that a diagnosis of leukemia would satisfy the medical examiner. The coroner had stopped the autopsy and released the body. A catastrophe had been averted. Zenavax’s secret was safe.

  But now he wanted to know how Zenavax had so easily manipulated and corrupted the postmortem investigation. He wasn’t going to play the role of mushroom anymore. He had allowed the CEO to keep him in the dark for far too long.

  His arms jerked like a puppet gone berserk when a wind gust rattled the tall arched windows behind his desk. A full minute passed before the pounding in his chest settled.

  For Christ’s sake, Zenavax was having people murdered. It was a good bet that Erickson’s killing also figured into their scheme somehow. I’m dealing with lunatics.

  Did the CEO really think Barnesdale was naïve enough to believe that Tartaglia’s murder was mere happenstance, that the boy whose illness had caused an obvious panic at Zenavax had died of leukemia and not from a lethal vaccine reaction?

  What kind of idiot does he take me for?

  What if the CEO suddenly decided that he was expendabl
e? Now that Tartaglia was dead, Zenavax might consider him a loose end, a liability.

  He needed some leverage, something he could use to protect himself. He knew how to play that game. Knowing the secrets of supporters and foes alike had served him well throughout his career.

  The rules of the game were no different here, he reasoned.

  He would start with the secret that was hidden in his hospital. It was his turf, after all, and he had the tactical advantage. He’d soon know how Zenavax had so quickly and efficiently put a stop to Josue Chaca’s postmortem.

  There were only two possibilities: Either the oncologist, Adam Smith, had knowingly falsified his examination of the bone marrow, or someone had switched bone marrow samples. The first possibility seemed completely implausible. Adam had no conceivable motive for participating in such a scheme. And unlike Barnesdale, who of necessity had mastered the art of feigned contempt, Adam’s disdain for Zenavax had always seemed completely genuine.

  That left the second alternative. But switching bone marrow samples would have required access to the lab as well as an intimate knowledge of his hospital’s procedures. The bone marrow lab occupied the entire second floor of the Research Tower.

  The tower was a freestanding structure, one of the newer buildings on their medical campus. Unlike the main hospital, where people could roam freely through most areas, the tower used a badge-swipe system to limit access to only hospital employees. Employees swiped their badges to gain entry into a locked front door, and the security system recorded the date, time and employee number of each person who entered the building. Once inside, employees again had to swipe their badges to activate the elevator, and the system recorded each floor they visited.

  Between seven o’clock Friday evening when Josue Chaca arrived in their E.R., and 6:00 P.M. on Saturday, when Adam Smith called him with the bone marrow results, twenty-seven people had entered the Research Tower. Barnesdale scrolled to the column labeled FLOORS and clicked the icon. The computer resorted the rows by floor number.

  Three employees had accessed the second floor during that twenty-three-hour period. The ID column showed only their badge numbers, not their names. The first person had entered the building at 11:43 P.M. on Friday, gone to the second floor, and departed at 11:57 P.M. The second person had arrived at 7:23 A.M. on Saturday, visited the second and eighth floors, then left the building at 9:30 A.M. The third person had entered the tower at 9:17 A.M., gone to the second floor, and stayed until 4:36 P.M.

  Barnesdale called Security and spoke with the senior officer on duty. As soon as the man pulled up the security database and navigated to the records that Barnesdale was perusing, he said, “Look at the second row. It looks like that person went to both the second and eighth floors.”

  He heard some key punches, then, “Yes, sir. That’s what it — oh wait, no…that person only went to the eighth floor.”

  “How do you know?”

  “On nights and weekends the elevator returns to the lobby between calls. If that person stopped on the second floor, there’d be a separate entry, a later entry, showing them calling the elevator to the second floor and pushing eight. But that’s not what it says here. It shows that employee entering the building, then pressing both numbers one minute later. The only other entry shows ’em leaving from the eighth floor. That person never got out on the second floor. Musta pressed a wrong number when they first got in the elevator.”

  The guard’s explanation didn’t satisfy Barnesdale. Those push buttons, 2 and 8, were probably spaced several inches apart. It seemed unlikely that anyone would miss the button by that distance.

  “I want the names of all three employees who accessed the second floor. Can you pull up those names using their badge numbers?”

  “Sure. I have to get into another database. Give me a second to write down their ID numbers.”

  As he waited, Barnesdale asked, “Do we have a security camera at the Research Tower?”

  “Every building has ’em. The tower has just one. It’s in the lobby.” There were more keystrokes, then, “Okay, I have the employee names here. They’re in numerical order. The first badge — number 14793—belongs to Bryant, Susan.”

  Barnesdale knew the name. She worked in Pathology. She was the first number on his list, and had entered the building at 11:43 on Friday night. Likely, she was the one who carried the dead boy’s bone marrow to the fourth-floor lab.

  “Let’s see here,” the guard said. “The next is badge number is 35976. That’d be Adler, Michael.”

  “Who’s he?”

  “It says here that he works in Hematology-Oncology. One of their lab technicians.”

  His badge number matched the third entry on Barnesdale’s screen. Adler had entered the building Saturday morning at nine-seventeen and stayed most of day — probably the tech who was called in to prepare Josue Chaca’s bone marrow slides.

  “That leaves badge number 57943,” the guard said while punching some keys. “That badge belongs to a doctor — Dr. Elmer McKenna.”

  * * *

  Megan reached under her hammock, felt around in the darkness and grabbed one of her trail shoes, then hurled it at the seismic rumble coming from Joe Whalen’s corner of the hut.

  She heard her shoe slide off the mosquito netting hanging over his hammock. A second later he erupted in another convulsive snore. How were Eddie and Steve sleeping through this?

  She lunged at her ankles and scratched with a fury. She’d been skirmishing all night with gangs of Guatemalan fleas. Chloroquine tablets — protection against malaria — and mosquito repellent had seemed like a better idea than netting when she was packing for her trip, but no one had warned her about the fleas.

  Eddie had taken most of the afternoon convincing the village elders to allow her group to stay the night. The result was a decrepit structure near the meeting hall, a late afternoon meal of corn tortillas and lukewarm chicken broth, and an admonition to stay away from the residents of Ticar Norte.

  The admonishment had come after her encounter with Josue Chaca’s mother. Megan had approached the woman, but each time she stepped closer to the small hut, the woman had retreated farther into its interior, eventually positioning herself behind a phalanx of other women.

  Megan soon learned the reason. Josue Chaca was the angry spirit, and his mother blamed the gringo doctors for “melting his body.” Whatever that meant, she knew it was the reason she and her colleagues had received such a cool reception when they arrived at the village.

  Later, Eddie told them that Josue’s father had died several months earlier from mal de ojo—the evil eye.

  “It’s a catchall,” Steve had explained. “A name the locals put on any illness they can’t explain.”

  According to Eddie, the father’s death also explained why Josue’s mother had come back to the village where she was born, rather than Mayakital, after returning from the United States.

  A dog yelped in the distance. Megan lurched up, threw her legs over the side of the hammock, and groped for her backpack. She was done sleeping for the night.

  Three minutes later she was standing outside in the night air. There was no moon, but the sky was teeming with stars. A warm, noiseless breeze passed through her hair. The only sound was a distant hum of insects.

  She swept her flashlight in wide arcs and walked to the edge of a plateau, then aimed the light downslope at a collection of huts, to the right of which stood the one holding Josue Chaca’s angry spirit. She edged down the slope, toeing the ground in front of her with mincing steps.

  A gust of wind noisily flapped the sleeves of her nylon jacket. She switched off the light and stood perfectly still, her face tightening into a knot of contracted muscles as she listened for movement in the nearby huts.

  Nothing.

  Megan relaxed her eyes and allowed the slivers of reflected starlight to wash onto her retinas. Eventually, the dark outline of a doorway emerged.

  She held her palm over the flashlight an
d turned it on, letting a few strands of light spill through her fingers. Just to the right of the open entry, there were several cobs of corn stacked neatly next to a bowl that held several pieces of chicken. Flies swarmed over the meat.

  The hut was empty except for a ceramic water jug sitting in the middle of the dirt floor. It was a glazed vessel, bright purple, and it glistened when the light shone on it.

  A minute later she was inside, looking down the neck of the carafe. It was filled with…dirt?

  As she studied the bone-dry substance, its dust-like granularity and grayish color emerged.

  The gringo doctors melted his body.

  She wasn’t looking into a carafe. It was an urn filled with Josue Chaca’s ashes.

  She sat down next to the boy’s remains and wondered who had cremated his body. Judging from the mood of the villagers, and the mother’s reaction to her visit, they certainly had not wanted it done. The coroner? If the medical examiners had discovered something they had needed to destroy, the information would have found its way back to the clinic, and to Paul Delgado. Steve Dalton would have known about this. It didn’t make any sense.

  When she crawled out of the hut, Megan was no closer to an answer.

  She remained lost in her thoughts as she started back up the hill. Eventually her mind nudged her. The slope hadn’t leveled off. She already should have reached the top of the hill. She painted a semicircle with her light. The hilltop was to her right, twenty feet upslope. Rather than ascending the hill, she had followed the slope around to the other side of the village.

  Her bladder reminded her that she was going to miss indoor plumbing for the next several days. If she did nothing about it, the uncomfortable stretch would command her attention until sunrise, when she’d probably have to do a half-mile march into the jungle if she wanted any privacy.

  Her flashlight found a path to the left, but fear competed with her full bladder. She conjured images of wet, slippery creatures lurking out there, lying in wait. Then she imagined stooping near a trail in broad daylight just as a troupe of teenage boys happened along.