Big Sick Heart: A Detectives Seagate and Miner Mystery (20 page)

“Five or six per year.”

“That would explain why some of them are stopping
by to talk with you, right?”

“It’s the salary, the teaching load, three grad
assistants she brought with her from back East. And one other thing.”

“What’s that?”

“A job for her husband.”

“That’s unusual?”

“First time we’ve done it at this university.”

“He brilliant, too?”

“How do I put this?” He paused. “Off the record?”

Ryan said, “Off the record.”

“Let’s just say some people would be surprised he
earned a PhD,” Marty said.

I said, “Maybe he didn’t earn it, just got it.”

“I like that,” he said, laughing. Then, he turned
serious. “I need your word you won’t tell anyone I said that.”

“You have our word,” I said, looking somber. What
the hell, I thought. He wants me to give my word, I’ll give my word. “What are
you getting from hiring her, besides national press and pissed-off faculty?”

“In all honesty, we’re getting exposure we
couldn’t have gotten any other way. Lak is definitely brilliant. That’s the
only person in the whole department—including myself, of course—that I or
anyone else would say that about. She’s working on eight million dollars in
grants, with twenty percent filtering down directly to me. I bought one point
five in equipment—”

“That’s one and a half million?”

“That’s right. A good young biologist can cost a
university from half a mil to a mil in equipment, for starters. So I saved us a
bunch we can spend on other people. That’s a point, by the way, I try to make
to my other faculty when they complain to me about her salary and so forth.”

“Anything else you’re getting?”

“The most important thing is we’re being mentioned
in the same breath as places like Stanford, Johns Hopkins, UT Austin. The big
boys. And if she comes through, the benefits will just multiply. More young
faculty, more grants, maybe a research center. She can fast-forward us twenty years.”

“What do you mean ‘if she comes through’?” I said.

Marty Stenhouser said to Ryan, “Would you mind
closing the door, Detective?” Ryan did it. “The stuff she’s working on is
cutting edge. If she can come up with a vector for delivering cells where she
wants them, or a cell line that’s easy to program and get to multiply or won’t
cause rejection …”

“We’re talking about patents?” I said.

“The dollars would be unbelievable.”

“Who’s funding her grants, the ones she has now?”

“They’re private grants. Henley Pharmaceuticals.
They gave us the equipment, too.”

Ryan said, “If a faculty member gets a patent on
something she invented while working for the university, how’s the money split
up?”

Marty Stenhouser said, “Across the country, the
rate varies. The university gets the biggest portion, the researcher a smaller
portion.”

I said, “What’s the standard rate for the faculty
member here?”

“One third.”

Ryan said, “What’s Lakshmi’s rate?”

Marty paused. “Half.”

I said, “Did you work that percentage out for
her?”

He shook his head. “Much higher up the food
chain.”

“If she worked for Henley, what would her cut be?”

“Industry people don’t get any cut at all. They
get high salaries and other perks. But they don’t earn patent royalties. The
company does.”

“Ryan, you have any other questions?” I said.

“No, I’m fine.”

“Dr. Stenhouser—Marty—thanks very much for helping
us understand the situation here a little better.”

“Sure, Detective. But please remember: We’re all
thrilled Dr. Kumaraswamy has joined our staff.”

“Thrilled,” I said. “You got that, Ryan? Dr.
Stenhouser is thrilled.”

“Thrilled. Got it,” Ryan said.

*  *  *

“Ryan, did you get a chance
to finish up those loose ends from the crime scene and the other details?” We
were back at our desks.

He took out his notebook. “Yeah, nothing of
interest. Nothing on the CCTV. The uniforms didn’t find a weapon, the dry
cleaner didn’t get any clothes from the hotel during that period, Housekeeping
has no record of any contact from his room, the kid who worked the reception
desk has no memory of anyone asking for any special arrangements for the four
rooms when the debate people checked in, and Jon Ahern’s story about working
for that legislator in Georgia checked out.”

“Okay, so except for the DNA under Hagerty’s
fingernails, the only thing we still need to track down is this Henley
Pharmaceuticals thing, right?”

“One other thing,” Ryan said, looking at his
notebook. “We wanted to find out whether Margaret knew how sick her husband
was.”

“Yeah, okay. You got calls from Hagerty to a doctor?”

Ryan scanned Hagerty’s phone log. “There’s a
number of calls to a Dr. Jeffrey Jameson in Colorado Springs.” He tapped a few
keys on his desktop. “Give me a second to see if he’s a cardiologist.” He
waited a moment for a page to load. “Yeah, he is.”

“Let’s try him now,” I said. Ryan circled the
number on the phone log and passed the sheet to me. I dialed the number and hit
Speaker. I got a recorded phone tree, the velvet female voice suggesting I dial
911 if this is a life-threatening emergency, 1 if I was calling from another
physician’s office. I pushed 1, and was routed immediately to a person. I
identified myself and asked to speak with Dr. Jameson.

He picked up. “Dr. Jameson, this is Detective
Karen Seagate, Rawlings Police Department, calling from Montana. Can you give
me a minute for a question about Arlen Hagerty?”

“Yes, one minute, Detective. I’m with a patient
now.”

“I’ll be real quick,” I said. “The autopsy on
Arlen Hagerty showed that he was terminally ill with heart disease. You
diagnosed that, am I correct?”

“Well, Detective, I’m not at liberty to disclose
the details of any of my patients’ conditions. Confidentiality.”

“I understand that, Dr. Jameson. But since he’d
dead, you’re free to break confidentiality. When my Medical Examiner looked at
his heart, it was twice the normal size. You’re a cardiologist. You knew about
his disease, right?”

“Really, Detective, I see nothing to be gained
from discussing this. He was murdered. What difference does it make to you if
he had heart disease?”

“All right, Doctor. Let me explain how this works.
I’m in charge of the murder investigation. One of the things we try to figure
out is why someone would want to kill him. That’s called motive.”

“Detective, don’t take that tone with me. I’m
familiar with the concept of motive, but my obligation is to protect the
confidentiality of my patients’ medical information.”

“All I’m asking you is if you diagnosed his heart
disease.”

“Why don’t I put it this way, Detective? If a
person came to my office and presented with Arlen Hagerty’s symptoms, a
first-year intern would have automatically done an ECG, a holter monitor, or an
echocardiogram and diagnosed the heart disease.”

“Okay, Doctor, we’re communicating now. I don’t
mind you calling this hypothetical if it makes you more comfortable. But now I
have to ask you another question: Did Arlen Hagerty’s wife, Margaret, know of
this diagnosis?”

“I’m sorry, I’m not going to answer that
question.”

“Here’s where I’m going, Doctor. Let’s say,
hypothetically, there’s this guy who’s got this real bad heart disease. His
wife finds out he’s been doing something horrible. It’s so horrible, she wants
to kill him. If she doesn’t know he’s gonna die soon, she might be motivated to
kill him ’cause of this horrible thing he’s been doing. But if she knows he’s
gonna die real soon without her having to do anything, she might decide to just
wait a little bit so she doesn’t have to risk killing him. You understand what
I’m saying?”

“Yes, Detective, I’m capable of following that
logic, but I’m not going to divulge any information about Margaret Hagerty’s
knowledge of her husband’s condition. My decision on this is final.”

“Okay, I understand, Doctor. Let me just check on
one other detail. Your address is 3200 Westmore Avenue, Suite 104, correct?”

“Yes, why do you ask?”

“I need it for the paperwork. I’m gonna bring this
to my boss for an authorization to fly down Monday to talk with you.”

“You can talk with me Monday, but I’m not going to
tell you anything I didn’t already tell you.”

“I get that, but I might need to bring you back
here to Rawlings, Montana, to make a statement to that effect.”

“Are you out of your mind?”

I held out my hand, palm down, and fluttered it
back and forth. Ryan shook his head sadly. It was a judgment call.

“Doctor, I’m getting some real pressure to close
this case. We’re pretty sure Margaret Hagerty killed her husband. We’re gonna
bring you up to Rawlings to make an official statement. We’ve got a helluva
prosecutor up here. I can’t quite quote the law, but I think there’s something
about you having to make the statement and testify in a criminal case if your
testimony addresses a tangential fact that does not directly get at the medical
facts. I don’t know, I could be wrong. But the prosecutor just loves to play
the obstruction-of-justice card. He’s done it three or four times on doctors.
We could have you back in Colorado Springs in a week. Two weeks, tops.”

“Okay, Detective, I see how you’re going to play
this. Let’s speak in hypotheticals.”

“Great, there’s this guy with the bad heart
disease, his wife wants to kill him ’cause of some horrible thing he’s doing.
When you talk with this guy, is his wife in the room with the two of you?”

“Yes, this guy’s wife is in my office with us and
is fully aware of his medical condition. So even if this guy is Adolph Hitler,
the wife is aware of the seriousness of his heart disease.” He paused. “Can I
expect a visit from you on Monday, Detective?”

“No, Dr. Jameson, I don’t think we’ll need to
disturb you on Monday. Thanks very much for your cooperation.” The click on his
end was forceful.

“See, Karen, sometimes your manner is a little
brusque,” Ryan said, smiling.

“Yeah, well, if that jerkoff can’t figure out I’m
not asking him to violate any sacred confidentiality—and if he tells me
Margaret already knew her husband was a dead man anyway, which would clear her
as a suspect so she doesn’t go to jail and she can tell all her friends what a
wonderful doctor he is and he’ll keep making three or four hundred K a year—if
he can’t figure all this out, he’s too damn dumb to be in practice. And he
deserves to have me talk to him like he’s an idiot.”

Ryan smiled. “Agreed. So we scratch Margaret?”

“Yeah,” I said. “He was telling the truth. She
knew Arlen was a goner.” I picked up my phone and hit Robin’s number in the
lab. “Robin, any idea on when you can get me the DNA on Hagerty?

“I just checked. They’re up to the Polymerase
Chain Reaction. They should be able to start typing on Monday. Should have it
ready late Monday, early Tuesday.”

“Okay, thanks. Let me know as soon as you get it,
would ya?”

“Sure, Karen. Have a good weekend.”

“I already have other plans. Talk to you Monday.”

Chapter 8

“Pediatric ICU.”

“Hello, yes, my name is Karen Seagate. I wanted to
inquire about the status of one of your patients, Annie Pritchard.” I heard the
nurse talking with someone in the background. The voices were muffled, as if
the nurse had her palm over the mouthpiece.

“I’m sorry. Mrs. Pritchard has asked that
information about her daughter not be made available. I hope you understand.”

Yes, I understood. “Thank you,” I said, pushing
the Off button on my phone. If I were the girl’s mother, I thought, I wouldn’t
want to have anything to do with me, either. All I wanted was to learn the girl
was getting better, so I wouldn’t have to worry about her dying. But I realized
it was a little late to be thinking about the girl’s welfare. A better time
would have been before I got in the car drunk, or right before I ran the stop
sign. Yes, I understood.

My hands shook as I looked at the glass of Jack
Daniel’s in my hand, the glass I wasn’t going to pour because I wasn’t ever
going to drink again. I knew I had to tell Tommy. How do you call your son and
tell him something like this? It’s really quite easy. You pick up the phone and
watch your finger hit the speed dial. Then, when he says hello, you tell him
what happened.

It will confuse him, hurt him, too. Everything
will be different forever. Someday, he might be sufficiently mature to pretend
he doesn’t think about it, or that he understands how it happened, that he
forgives you. He might try to hide it, might even be able to fool you. But he
will always know what you did, what you are. It will be there. Forever. Where
else could it go? I picked up the phone and dialed.

“Hello?” It was my ex-husband.

“Hi, Bruce. Is Tommy in?”

“No, he’s not here.”

Apparently he didn’t know about the accident. He
wouldn’t have been able to resist offering an insight or two about it. “Do you
know when he’ll be back?”

“Not really. He’s out,” Bruce said. “With Angela.”

“He’s out with Angela?”

“Yeah, that’s right. Angela took him. She’s got a
driver’s license and everything.” Bruce had told me, a couple or maybe eight
times, his girlfriend was only twenty-seven.

“What’d you want to talk to him about? Is
something wrong?”

Annie has a cat named Marmalade. “No. Nothing’s
wrong. I just wanted to talk to him.”

“I’ll tell him you called.”

“Thank you, Bruce.”

“You sure you’re okay? You sound kinda screwed
up.”

“I’m okay,” I said, my voice distant. “Just tell
him I called, please.”

“Yeah, sure,” Bruce said. I heard the click as the
line went dead. This was best, I thought. Tommy should be with him and Angela.
She would work out fine. Any girl willing to take on a guy with a fourteen-year-old
boy had to be more mature than a typical twenty-seven-year-old. A lot of things
for her to learn about being a mom, but no reason she couldn’t learn. If she
loved Bruce she would love Tommy, too, eventually. He was a good boy, full of
promise. She would see that in him. Bruce and Angela—that would be best.

Having made the decision—a rational decision, my
first selfless one in a long, long time? ever?—I felt better. I was calm and
free, liberated. Picking up my glass, I took a deep breath.

I waited around Friday night for Tommy to return
my call. I waited all day Saturday, too. He wouldn’t have decided not to call
me; he always returned my calls. Maybe Bruce had decided not to tell him. I
wouldn’t really blame him. Or maybe Bruce had forgotten.

I wanted to tie up the loose ends. I wanted to
tell him what had happened, let it sink in, give him time to get used to it,
start to understand what I had become. But it didn’t really matter. Having
decided to let him go, I realized there was no need to carry out the ritual of
self-humiliation. One way or another, sooner or later, Tommy would learn what
he needed to know about me. If I merely let him drift farther and farther out
of my orbit, he might still retain some loving memories of me, back from when he
was little and I was still an adult. Why not let him keep those memories? They
were the best he was going to get from me.

I usually spent Sundays with Tommy, but since he
didn’t return my call I assumed we would cancel. I decided to just let it go. I
didn’t have anything to do. The department didn’t have enough resources to work
more than two detectives on the case. There were no detectives for night or
weekend duty. I sat on the couch in my living room, listening to the clock
tick.

I walked over to my desk and got out the phone
book. I looked up Kumaraswamy. There was only one listing. No surprise there.
Rupesh Kumaraswamy. I jotted down the address. It was in one of the high-end
developments on the east side of town: Ravensmere. I decided to take a drive.

It took me twelve minutes to drive my rental over
to Ravensmere. I parked it about a hundred yards from Lakshmi’s house. There I
sat, unsure what I was going to do. It was a bright, crisp day, moderate winds,
temperatures in the twenties. I kept the windows up, let the sun warm the car.
I looked around at the houses, each a different style, from phony ski lodges to
two- or three-story brick mansions with columns and gables to expansive stucco
single-levels. There were no fences separating the houses. I remembered reading
how this development had won a bunch of awards for landscaping. The idea was it
was supposed to look like a golf course, with the lawns flowing into one
another like the sweep of a manicured fairway.

I sat there a half hour, an hour. Two different
teams of landscapers descended on a nearby McMansion, four or five Hispanic
guys in beat-up old pickups, carrying rakes and blowers and tarps. They waded
into the shrubbery, getting the dead leaves and debris out and into the beds of
the pickups. I wondered if these guys were getting time and half for working
the weekends, Sunday no less. If they were getting overtime, they weren’t
spending it on work clothes. Their jeans and hooded sweatshirts were tattered
and filthy. Most of them had no gloves. Not one of them I could see was dressed
warm enough for the job.

The door opened at the Kumaraswamy house. Out came
a stroller, one of those swanky ones with three big fat rubber wheels, the kind
I couldn’t afford when Bruce and I were raising Tommy. Pushing the stroller was
a copper-skinned man. He must be Rupesh, the overachieving husband. A
good-looking man, tall, with glossy black hair and mustache. He wore a ski hat
and a brown suede leather coat, down to his thighs. Behind him was an older
woman, her silk sari incongruous beneath her ski parka. Next came an older man,
tiny like the woman, wrapped up in a knee-length black wool business coat.

I couldn’t tell which set of parents it was until
Lakshmi completed the party. She closed the front door behind her and scurried
over to her mother to adjust the scarf on the woman’s head. Next she attended
to her father, pulling up the collar on his coat and buttoning the top button.
Finally, she hurried over to the stroller, which Rupesh obediently stopped for
her inspection. I couldn’t see through the plastic windows protecting the
infant from the cold, but Lakshmi’s hands were inside the windows, making
necessary adjustment to ensure that the infant was comfortable and safe.

The family walked along the pathway to the street.
They turned north. They’d be headed for City Park, which straddled the river. A
paved pathway ran alongside the river for four miles. I got out of the car,
strolling along behind them, being sure to leave a good hundred yards. Other
neighbors were out strolling on the sunny Sunday afternoon, the temperature
climbing up to freezing. Most of them gave me a friendly hello. That was what
you did in Rawlings.

I noticed a few of them gazed at me a little
longer than usual. At first I thought it was because they didn’t recognize me
from the neighborhood. Then I realized they were probably looking at the lump
on my head, which was still visible, or my shiner, which was now a hideous
purply green. I wondered whether they thought someone had beaten me up. I was
feeling beat up.

I followed the family down toward the river. Once
they were on the river pathway, there were even more people out, and I felt
like I was blending in better. The family walked along at a stately pace,
stopping now and then on the path to look at one of the miniature rapids on the
river, or one of the eddies where beavers had constructed their dams. Rupesh
pushed the stroller while Lakshmi walked along with her parents. The young
woman held her mother’s hand and her father’s. Every few minutes she ran up to
stroller to make sure everything was okay.

The family came to a bend in the river. Rupesh
stopped the stroller, disentangling the infant from his straps and belts,
lifted him out, and carried him over toward the water. The infant was wearing a
one-piece powder-blue snowsuit. Rupesh placed him down on the sand and took his
tiny hand. The wobbly infant walked along the sand until he came to the large
river rocks leading to the water. The father bent down and took the child’s
other hand.

Holding the infant’s two hands above his head he
half led, half carried the little boy across the rocks, which were three times
the size of his feet. The boy picked up pebbles and, crying out gleefully,
tossed them toward the river, the wood ducks cautiously paddling away. Lakshmi
and her parents huddled close, smiling and laughing. I calculated the infant
was twelve months, maybe fourteen.

Grandma took a little camera out of her pocket,
calling out her grandson’s name to get his attention. He turned and gave her a
big smile as she snapped a few pictures. Lakshmi waved at her husband to carry
the boy back to the path. Grandma handed Lakshmi the camera and she directed
her family into the correct pose. She took one picture, then another, looking
back over her shoulder to get the right light, motioning them first a little
bit to the right, then a little more, then back to the left. I heard them all
laughing, the grandparents mock lecturing her about her fussiness. I didn’t
know any Hindi, but I understood everything they were saying.

I stopped and gazed up at the bare, fragile
cottonwoods lining this stretch of the river. Looking more carefully, I noticed
how many nests they hosted. I never took the time to look at birds or other
animals. I saw squirrels scurrying around the water’s edge, carrying nuts,
watching the people on the pathway. They were semi-domesticated, having learned
to rely on the office workers who walked along the pathway on coffee breaks,
luring them with peanuts. Menacing black crows cawed when the squirrels got too
close. Off in the distance, on the other side of the river, a bald eagle soared
motionless and serene above the activity down on the river.

I started walking back toward my car, my head
down, watching first one foot then the other hit the path, as if they were not
my feet, as if I did not control them. I didn’t notice the other people on the
pathway, except when an exuberant puppy on a leash scampered over to me, its
tail swishing in delight, before the owner pulled it back with an affectionate
correction.

I looked behind me to see the Kumaraswamy family,
but they had moved on and were out of sight.

*  *  *

I’d made a point of getting
to work on time. In fact, I was at my desk by 7:57, a full minute before Ryan
got there.

“How was your weekend, Karen?” Ryan asked.

“Good, thanks,” I said, reaching for a sincere
smile. I was determined to start the week clean and cheerful. “How ’bout you?”

“Great. Went out snowshoeing with the family
yesterday.”

“You put snowshoes on your baby?”

“No,” he said, laughing. “I get to carry her. Kali
made some kind of harness. She’s always making something like that.”

“That’s great,” I said.

“Well, partner, what’s up first?”

“I’m hoping to hear something from Robin today
about the DNA from under Hagerty’s fingernails. The only other thing we can
pursue right now is Lakshmi Something. Let’s see if she can help us understand
whether the Henley Pharmaceuticals angle can give us a motive for hitting
Hagerty.”

“I couldn’t figure out from Dolores Weston if
Lakshmi’s really involved. We think Dolores was paying off Arlen Hagerty, but I
don’t know how much Lakshmi knows.”

“I have no idea,” I said. “Just seems to me a
little too cozy the state senator is in bed with Henley Pharmaceuticals, which
happens to be subsidizing Lakshmi. I’d like to get Lakshmi to tell us her
version.”

“Sounds good. Let me see if she’s in.” Ryan phoned
her office. She picked up and invited us over to her lab.

We parked in the faculty lot outside the Science
building. The lot was only a quarter full. A light snow was falling. We headed
for her lab on the second floor. From out in the hall, we heard her voice. She
looked up and saw us standing in the hall.

“Okay, Andy, you understand what I want?”

“Got it,” the student said, heading off to his desk
at the far end of the spacious lab.

“Detectives, come in,” she said brightly.

“Prof. Kumaraswamy, my name—”

“Please, call me Dr. K,” she said. “My students
say they find it much easier.”

“Okay. Dr. K, Detective Seagate and Detective
Miner,” I said to her.

“I’m very pleased to meet you both.”

“
Nameste
,” Ryan said to her, placing his
palms together and bowing slightly.

“
Nameste, kaisī hai
?” Dr. K said,
breaking into a big smile.

Ryan said, “
Teek, āp sunāiye
.”

Dr. K said, “
Mai thīk hū
. Where
did you learn Hindi?” I was relieved when I recognized English. I was thinking
maybe I was having some kind of stroke.

He laughed. “I wouldn’t say I learned Hindi. I
picked some up when I did my mission in Delhi a few years back.”