Head Case
Page 18
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘A lonely refugee in a big country like this?’
‘No,’ she said. Then, more quietly, ‘No. He lied. Why should I believe anything he said about the drugs? Why should you?’
‘He still seems pretty smart. So maybe he tells a good story to impress a woman he works with. Maybe he tells the story to others so he can live with himself and his failures. Everything he said about the missing epinephrine checked out. He may be a liar, but he knows the hospital and he knows drugs.’
‘I don’t trust him,’ she said.
‘Probably a good idea. But I’ll tell you something. After getting shot in the head, I tell the truth all the time. No filters. I’m totally trustworthy. But my wife divorced me. The police department kicked me out. Sometimes a good story might be better than the truth.’
‘A good story is different from a lie. Aleksandar lied.’
‘Ask him about it. Call him out. See what he says.’
She shook her head.
‘You seemed to like him,’ Kelson said.
‘I liked the man he said he was.’
‘Your loss. And his.’
‘What if he stole the epinephrine?’
‘Then it was pretty crowded in the supply room,’ Kelson said. ‘Plus, he told you – and me – about the thefts. And the two of you were gone from the hospital before Suzanne Madani died. Do you have any reason to think he was involved?’
‘You mean aside from his lies and his arrest record?’
‘A record that’s thirty years old.’
‘And the way he goes for walks in the cemetery?’ she said.
‘OK, that’s spooky.’
She sighed. ‘I’ve always liked him. He’s always been smart and funny and kind.’
‘Talk with him,’ Kelson said. ‘See what he tells you – how he explains the lies. But if he asks you to walk in a cemetery, suggest a coffee shop instead.’
She eyed Kelson. ‘Will you come with me?’
‘Don’t you think you’ll have a better conversation without me?’
‘I don’t know what I’ll have.’
When she left, Kelson considered all he’d learned during the morning. He tried to prioritize the information according to importance. ‘Useless,’ he said. But he turned on his laptop and said, ‘Begin at the beginning – or in the middle – or …’
He Googled Suzanne Madani.
Three hundred twelve hits.
The doctor appeared on the membership lists of the AMA, the Society of Critical Care Medicine, and the Chicago Medical Society. She attended a Labor Day benefit for the Childhood Leukemia Foundation. She belonged to a softball league run by the Chicago Metropolitan Sports Association. Nothing indicated she was an opioid addict or hung out with other addicts or was suicidal or liked sticking needles in her leg.
‘But maybe nothing would,’ Kelson said.
She was an undergraduate at Swarthmore before going to Temple Med.
‘La-di-da,’ Kelson said.
Her Facebook photos showed her at crowded bars, with her softball teammates, hand in hand with a blond woman.
‘Sometimes what one hears is true,’ Kelson said.
He exited Google and took his KelTec from under the desktop. He popped the magazine, saw it was loaded, and popped it back in. He laid the pistol on his desk. He nudged the barrel. The gun spun a quarter turn. He started to nudge it again – and his phone rang.
He jumped – then answered, ‘What?’
‘What yourself,’ Ed Davies said.
‘Sorry. I almost shot myself in the balls.’
‘You … never mind. I just met with Wendy Thomas. Can’t say I know what to think.’
‘Did she admit she stole the fentanyl?’
‘Anything but. She says she was putting the fentanyl back. What exactly did you see on the video?’
‘No way. She went into the room – where she wasn’t allowed. She waited a moment, like she knew what she was doing was wrong. Then she dug into the box of fentanyl.’
‘Did you actually see her take the vials?’
‘I don’t know … No. But why else would she reach into the box?’
‘She says she found a bunch of vials in her work locker the day before Suzanne Madani died. Says someone must’ve put them there, but she doesn’t know who. Says her supervisor cracked down on her since the questions about the cefoxitin and Jennifer Kowalski’s death. She thought someone was setting her up. She had the bright idea she could return the drugs.’
‘Sounds ridiculous,’ Kelson said.
‘That’s what I told her. She insists it’s true.’
‘Who let her into the supply room?’
‘She won’t say. I told her that knowing who it was could make a big difference to what happens to her. She still wouldn’t tell.’
‘So did you get her out?’
‘No – they charged her with killing Deneesa Smithson. With aggravating circumstances.’
THIRTY-SIX
At two o’clock that afternoon, when Kelson walked through the homicide room at the Harrison Street police station, Venus Johnson and Dan Peters were sitting in their cubicle.
‘Howdy,’ Kelson said.
‘How did you get in here?’ Johnson asked.
‘Sounds like he rode a goddamned horse,’ Peters said.
‘The guy at security recognized me from when I was a cop – waved me through. Funny, it’s three years and I don’t remember his name, but he said, “Afternoon, Kelson,” like we were pals.’
‘Heartwarming,’ Johnson said. ‘What d’you want?’
‘Everything you’ve got on the Wendy Thomas case.’
‘Get out,’ she said.
‘I—’
‘I mean it. Leave. Or I’ll call your pal at security and tell him to drag you out.’
‘Wendy Thomas says she didn’t steal the fentanyl. She says she was putting it back.’
Peters stood, as if he would drag Kelson out himself. ‘You don’t think she told us that? You don’t think her lawyer told us again? Do you realize how stupid that sounds?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then get out,’ Peters said.
‘She had no reason to steal the fentanyl.’
Johnson gave him a disappointed smile. ‘No reason to shoot up a woman who got her suspended from her job a week ago?’
‘Suzanne Madani? She died before Wendy Thomas appeared on the supply room video.’
‘Appeared this time,’ Peters said. ‘The cameras went in only a month ago. Who knows how many times she snuck in before?’
‘Zero. She had no reason to.’
‘Prove it,’ Johnson said.
‘You can’t prove something like that.’
‘Exactly,’ she said.
‘You haven’t charged her with Madani’s death.’
‘Yet,’ Peters said.
‘What about Deneesa Smithson?’ Kelson said. ‘Why would Thomas want to kill her?’
Peters moved toward him, signaling it was time to go. ‘Open investigation.’
‘Which means, you don’t have an answer.’
‘No – it means it’s not your problem.’
‘You’ve got nothing,’ Kelson said.
‘Now you sound as stupid as she does,’ Johnson said.
‘C’mon, scoot,’ Peters said.
‘Do me a favor first.’
Peters took him by the wounded arm. ‘Only favor we’ll do is if we don’t kick you in the ass.’
Kelson peeled Peters’ fingers off, one at a time. ‘Tell me about the investigation into Terry Ann Jacobson’s death six years ago. It got filed as accidental. One of her sons drove over her with her car on their driveway. What do the notes say? Who investigated?’
Venus Johnson yelled at him. ‘Out!’
But Peters moved back to his desk chair and sat, heavily enough to get a glance from Johnson.
‘Something there?’ Kelson said to him.
‘Hold on.’ Peters was standing again. ‘Get back in here a minute.’
They found an empty interview room. Peters looked at the camera mounted by the ceiling to make sure the recording light was off.
‘I was secondary,’ he said. ‘This was before me and Venus partnered. I was with an old guy named Freddy DeVos – you ever know him when you were on the Narcotics squad?’
‘Never heard of him,’ Kelson said.
‘Sure. He was a quiet guy. On Homicide since forever – retired a couple months after the Terry Ann Jacobson thing. Bought a place outside Tucson. He was always thorough. He taught me a lot. A lot of good lessons.’
‘But with Terry Ann Jacobson?’
‘Not so good,’ Peters said. ‘The woman’s son needed help. No question about it. Freddy said that when he first joined Homicide – before you and me were even born – that boy would’ve gone straight to the nuthouse. No investigation – because the mind of a kid like that, it was outside of what we could do. Freddy was old school. He took care of it old school.’
‘Scott Jacobson meant to run over his mom?’
‘Sure looked like it. Look, Freddy wasn’t a bad guy—’
‘What did Jeremy Jacobson pay him?’
‘He’s in Arizona, isn’t he? I hear it’s a nice house. Pool. Pretty fountain in the cactus garden.’
‘Shit,’ Venus Johnson said.
‘Jeremy Jacobson runs the ICU where Wendy Thomas works,’ Kelson said. ‘Scott is in and out all the time. You don’t want to get too confident that Thomas did this.’
‘Shit,’ Johnson said again. ‘Shit, shit, shit.’
THIRTY-SEVEN
Kelson drove back to Jose Feliciano’s house. The plows had cleared the streets, and cars sped over the salted pavement.
Jose answered the doorbell, looking ragged.
‘Davies told you about the charges?’ Kelson said.
‘Yeah – and it’s on TV.’ He seemed smaller, hunched, as if pain bent him inward. ‘The picture they’re showing. It doesn’t look like Wendy.’
‘That’s good. Keep your own idea of her in your head. It’ll be easier afterward.’
‘You think?’ They walked to the kitchen. ‘Break my bones, man. But not this.’
‘I just came from the police,’ Kelson said. ‘They know there’s more going on than Wendy. It’ll work out if they do their job.’
Jose didn’t seem to hear. He opened the refrigerator, stared at the juice, the eggs. He closed the refrigerator and stared at the teapot on the stove. ‘You want something, man?’
‘No,’ Kelson said.
‘Me neither.’
‘Someone let Wendy into the supply room. She won’t tell Davies who. She won’t tell the cops. D’you have any idea who might let her in? Could she have gotten a key?’
‘She never told me about any of this,’ Jose said. ‘You live with a person, you know? You look in her eyes when you eat. You kiss her. You make love to her in your bed. But you don’t see it. She’s got a secret. It makes me angry – and sad. It makes me real sad.’
‘Could we look through her things?’ Kelson said.
Jose shook his head. ‘That’s crossing a line.’
‘The cops will come as soon as they get a search warrant. They’ll look for a key to the supply room. They’ll look for drugs or anything else Wendy might’ve taken from the hospital, anything connecting her to Madani or Deneesa Smithson. It’s better if we find it first.’
Jose still shook his head, but he walked from the kitchen to the bedroom.
Kelson went to the dresser and opened the top drawer. It was full of Wendy’s underwear and bras.
‘You punch me in the heart,’ Jose said.
Kelson touched nothing. He closed the drawer and opened the one under it. Jose’s underwear and socks.
‘Next one down,’ Jose said.
Wendy’s other drawers contained T-shirts and shorts, sweatpants and pajamas. At the front of the bottom drawer, there was a jewelry box. It contained hoop earrings, necklaces, a thin gold bracelet.
Kelson found nothing interesting in the closet. He found no unmarked or mismarked medicine vials in the bathroom cabinets, no stolen or borrowed medical equipment of any kind.
‘Where do the two of you keep bills, deeds, that kind of thing?’ he asked.
They went back to the kitchen and Jose opened a door into a room with a washer and dryer. Next to the ironing board, there was a table, and next to the table, a scuffed wooden cabinet, stacked with papers.
Kelson thumbed through the papers. Nothing worth knowing.
He walked back through the house, opening doors, drawers, and cabinets, fingering the things on the shelves.
‘I got pride, you know,’ Jose said, as if unsure how much he should resent Kelson.
‘You want boundaries or you want Wendy?’ Kelson went back into the bedroom and dug through the underwear and bras.
‘I got pride,’ Jose said again.
‘Never give it up.’ Kelson held up the red camisole by the straps like he was inspecting a flag. Then he opened the drawer of T-shirts and shorts.
‘Stop,’ Jose said.
‘What?’
Jose pulled out his phone. He opened his photos. ‘Two nights ago, I looked in her purse when she was in the shower.’
‘You snooping bastard,’ Kelson said.
‘She acted funny, you know? Nervous.’ He gave the phone to Kelson. ‘She had a letter. I took a picture.’
The picture was of a notice, printed on letterhead, from the Human Resources department at Clement Memorial. The notice listed three violations of hospital policy over the past six months.
Wendy failed to show up for a scheduled shift on August 9. She was overly familiar and demonstrated a lack of professional etiquette with a patient named Tamara Adma during the days of December 6–9. In connection with that incident, she failed to follow the directives of a Dr Robert Clerey and showed insubordination when reprimanded by Jeremy Jacobson. Then she failed to respond fully and accurately when asked about administering cefoxitin to Jennifer Kowalski on January 17. The notice warned that any further disciplinary problems would result in her firing.
‘She didn’t tell you about this?’ Kelson said.
‘She has pride too. The day when she didn’t go to work, her car wouldn’t start. She called the supervisor. The problem with Tamara Adma – that old lady was Haitian. She didn’t speak English. She was scared.’
‘What was the thing with the doctor?’
‘Clerey was new. Wendy thought he made a mistake on a medical order.’
‘Did he?’
‘Clerey said he didn’t. He shouted at Wendy. Wendy didn’t like that. She called him a tet zozo. It’s the same as dickhead. He didn’t know what she said, but Tamara Adma did, and the way that old lady laughed at him – he reported Wendy to Dr Jacobson. Then Dr Jacobson shouted at her too. She called him a zozo santi. Stinky dick.’
‘Nice,’ Kelson said.
‘Look at the next one. It’s a picture I got from Wendy’s phone.’
Kelson swiped the screen.
‘What the hell?’ he said.
The picture was of Kelson himself. He recognized the place and time. He was coming out of Dr Madani’s office on the night he found her dead – turning from the door toward the elevator bank. Wendy Thomas must have been thirty or forty feet away, standing in another office doorway or at the corner to the next corridor.
‘I didn’t see her,’ he said. ‘Was she there when I came or was she following me?’
‘She doesn’t trust you so much, my friend. One more picture.’
Kelson swiped. ‘Huh.’ Rick Jacobson stood at Madani’s door.
‘She took that picture after she took the one of you.’
‘Why didn’t you show this to me before?’
Again, Jose looked unsure. ‘Wendy didn’t work
on the night Dr Madani died. She shouldn’t have been at the hospital. I don’t know why she was in that hall.’
‘How sure are you she had nothing to do with the killings?’
Jose shook his head. ‘All my life, I’ve had a feeling I know what’s true. When I ride a bull, I sense what he will do next. In my legs. In my chest – do you understand? In my arms. I don’t think about it, but I know. I can feel how it is with Wendy. The way she moves. The way she talks. I know.’
‘But then a bull breaks your back – and Wendy has secrets.’
Jose looked sad again. ‘Yes.’
‘So, that’s all you have? This feeling?’
Now resentment spread across the bull rider’s face. ‘Yes. But it’s the right feeling.’
‘You’d put your neck on the line for it?’
‘I’d put all of me.’
‘OK.’
‘Yeah?’
‘For now,’ Kelson said. ‘When the police come with their search warrant, maybe you should keep your phone out of their hands. Maybe Wendy’s phone and the HR letter could go missing too.’
THIRTY-EIGHT
In the basement at Clement Memorial, Rick Jacobson sat on the corner of the front desk. The receptionist, in a Chicago Bears sweatshirt, was blushing. Rick looked pleased with himself.
When Kelson stepped into the security office, they straightened their faces as if he’d caught them misbehaving. But when Rick asked how he could help Kelson, the receptionist giggled as if she and her boss had been telling jokes about him.
‘When I found Suzanne Madani in her office, you showed up right after I left,’ Kelson said. ‘Before the police came.’ As if the joke was on Rick.
‘Uh-huh?’
‘Why?’
Rick glanced at the receptionist. ‘Because … I’m Director of Security?’
‘But why would you go to her office right then?’
‘A homicide detective called and asked me to check. Venus Johnson. She said you phoned in a crazy story about Dr Madani OD’ing. She wanted me to take a look before she wasted her time and resources.’
‘Oh,’ Kelson said.
‘I guess you wasted her time and resources before?’
‘That might be a matter of opinion.’
‘You aren’t so bright, are you?’