The Chalk Girl (36 page)

‘One got past you, Doc.’ Riker slapped a death certificate down on the desk. ‘You’ve been robbed. This kid’s autopsy was done in a hospital.’

Edward Slope read the old hospital-issued certificate for Ernest Nadler, age eleven. ‘Cardiac arrest? I gather it wasn’t a congenital
defect, or you two wouldn’t be here.’ He leaned back in his chair. ‘So . . . you have the boy’s medical history, hospital records, some kind of evidence?’

‘No,’ said Riker. ‘We were hoping you could help with that.’

Dr Slope trained his gaze on the other detective, the computer witch. She had certainly hacked her way into the hospital files. And so, on a sarcastic note, he asked, ‘Seriously, Kathy? You have no clue?’

She glared at him, not appreciating the innuendo, but she did not correct his use of her given name. And that could only mean that she wanted something. ‘Let’s assume the boy was never treated for a heart defect the whole time he was in the hospital.’

The doctor smiled. ‘Yes, let’s
assume
that.’ He held up the death certificate. ‘So you think this is a major screwup by the—’

‘A cover-up,’ she said. ‘The boy was a crime victim. He died a month after an assault. That means his body should’ve come here, right?’

The doctor nodded. ‘Every time. I don’t even care what ultimately killed him. It’s still a suspicious death.’

‘So the hospital conspired to bury a murder,’ said Riker.

‘Not necessarily.’ Dr Slope folded the certificate into his breast pocket. ‘When a hospital is involved, I always begin with the presumption of gross incompetence. But we’ll see.’

The detectives’ badges were on display, shining brightly from breast pockets.

‘I know this man.’ Edward Slope paused in the hospital corridor to inspect his little gang of two. ‘If you want to scare him, we’ll do this my way. Don’t speak. You’re only here for window dressing.’ He marched his troops into the reception room, passing by a secretary, deaf to her attempt to stop them.

They entered the private office of the hospital administrator, a
man with a very large desk and a small moustache, a man who amazed one and all by the act of walking upright in the absence of a spine. Dr Kemper was stunned and quick to stand. ‘Dr Slope, what a surprise.’ His worried eyes darted to the badges of the police escorts. Voice lost, Dr Kemper reached out to shake hands with the more important visitor, who had celebrity status in the world of medicine.

Edward Slope ignored the proffered hand. He crossed over to the far side of the room, where chairs were gathered around a small table. When he sat down, he forced the administrator to leave the safety of his desk – to be exposed. The detectives took up their posts, standing behind the chief medical examiner. They were silent but watchful, clearly distrustful of Dr Kemper, who came toward them with mincing steps.

Dr Slope laid the death certificate on the table. ‘Ernest Nadler. It was a long time ago, but I know you’ll remember the boy. After being assaulted, he lingered for a month and died in your hospital. With only those details, I’d make a call of murder. But then I was told that the boy was dehydrated when he was admitted – and
starved
– for
three
days. Oh, and then there were bondage wounds on both wrists.
That
was a clue. So you can imagine how surprised I was when the police informed me that the autopsy was done here. Every crime victim’s body comes to me. That’s the law.’

‘Quite right.’ Dr Kemper wormed one hand around the other in a rather good impression of Dickens’s Uriah Heap. ‘I do apologize if one of my people bungled a protocol.’

‘I also have a problem with the cause of death.’

Dr Kemper picked up the certificate, and when he had read it, he raised his eyes, mystified. ‘Cardiac arrest. I don’t see the problem. It’s signed by the attending physician.’

‘Who’s conveniently dead of old age,’ said Slope. ‘I’m going to exhume the body.’

‘Oh, I’m sorry, sir. The remains were cremated.’

‘Interesting that you would know that detail off the top of your head. You still have the same pathologist on staff. I’ll talk to her. And I want to see the boy’s records, all of them. No computer spitouts.’ That would be a waste of his time; he had that much faith in Kathy Mallory’s hacking skills. She had, no doubt, found the electronic files sketchy and useless. ‘I want the actual charts, the patient’s medical history, autopsy findings and photographs . . .
everything
.’

‘Sir, this boy died fifteen years ago.’ And now the administrator turned his lame smile on the detectives – the law – while he explained the law to them. ‘We’re only required to keep the original records for four years.’

‘But you kept
these
records.’ Dr Slope folded his arms and smiled at Kemper’s guilty reaction, the swipe of clammy hands on pant legs. ‘You put the originals in permanent storage. I’m guessing the hospital’s legal counsel didn’t give you any choice. That lawyer wouldn’t risk his license by allowing the destruction of evidence . . . just on the off chance that I might drop by. And now I want all that paperwork in my hands so fast it takes my breath away.’

The meeting was moved to a hospital conference room. This larger space was needed to spread out the records on the short life and long death of Ernest Nadler. When the chief medical examiner stepped back from the table, Riker and Mallory began to work their way through the manila envelopes and file holders, beginning with the emergency-room procedures on the day the child was admitted. The detectives had yet to speak a word to anyone.

It was Edward Slope who conducted the interrogation of Dr Emily Woods, a thin, graying woman in her late fifties – too old to be looking for a new job as a hospital pathologist. She looked down
the length of the table, seeking out the eyes of the hospital administrator, desperate for reassurance.

‘Don’t look at him,’ said the chief medical examiner. ‘
I
make the call on what happens to you.’ He held up the death certificate of the eleven-year-old boy. ‘Cardiac arrest? Not likely. There was no congenital defect.’ The wave of his hand included all the records spread along the tabletop. ‘Not one mention of a pre-existing heart condition. But you went along with this – this
nonsense
about heart failure.’ He sat on the edge of the table and leaned down to her. ‘Tell me if I’ve got this right. The boy’s heart was simply the last organ to fail him. Ultimately that’s how we all die, isn’t it? The heart . . . stops.’

‘I didn’t want to do the autopsy.’ Dr Woods would not meet his eyes. ‘I refused. But then I was told that the police had no problem with it.’

‘And who told you that? Oh – shot in the dark – your boss, Dr Kemper?’ Edward Slope picked up the pathologist’s photographs of a dead child, and he sifted through them. ‘The boy’s eyes are closed in every shot. Did you even bother to pull back the lids and check for—’

‘Oh,
Christ
!’ Midway down the long table, Riker looked up from his reading. ‘You guys chopped off the kid’s hands?
Doctors
did this?’

‘I can explain that,’ said the hospital administrator.

‘I bet you can.’ Mallory bent Dr Kemper over the table and handcuffed him while her partner did the honors for Dr Woods. ‘We’re all going
down
town.’

In the watchers’ room, the rows of raised seats held five detectives and their commander. Lieutenant Coffey was flanked by the chief medical examiner and an assistant district attorney with a yellow bowtie. In the lighted room on the other side of the one-way glass,
Mallory and Riker sat at the table with Dr Emily Woods, and the detectives were playing a brand-new game: Bad Cop, Bad Cop – Abandon All Hope.

‘Kiss your medical license goodbye,’ said Mallory to the hospital pathologist. ‘The best you can do is turn state’s evidence. That might keep you out of jail.’

Jack Coffey stared at the glass as he spoke to ADA Cedrick Carlyle. ‘Dr Woods told us you gave her a green light to do the autopsy at the hospital.’

‘Well, I didn’t.’ The man straightened his bowtie and then fussed with imaginary lint on his suit. ‘I never—’

‘Oh, yeah?’ All heads turned to Detective Gonzales, the dubious voice in the dark at the back of the room. ‘I sat in on Dr Kemper’s interview. He backs up the lady doc. He says the word came down from you.’

‘Clearly a misunderstanding.’ Ignoring the minion in the back row, ADA Carlyle addressed the lieutenant beside him. ‘But no real harm done. I told the hospital administrator there wouldn’t be a homicide investigation for Ernest Nadler. The case was solved – closed. As you know, the prime suspect confessed.’

‘For killing the wino,’ said Coffey, ‘not the kid.’

‘We only needed one charge to put Toby Wilder away. His plea agreement stipulated that the assault on the child would be dropped, and he wouldn’t be charged with a second murder if the Nadler boy died. The judge had no problem with it.’

‘Well, I got problems with it,’ said Coffey. ‘I got ten autopsy pictures of a kid with no hands – but no crime-scene photos. Whose call was that?’

‘When the police found the boy, he was all in one piece. I believe the assault was originally written up as some sort of prank.’

‘A prank?’ Incredulous Detective Janos sat directly behind the ADA, and now he leaned forward to breathe in Carlyle’s ear. ‘The
kid was left hanging in a tree for three goddamn days – no food, no water.’

In the back row, another detective said, ‘Ernie was strung up with wire around his wrists. No circulation. We know his hands were already turning black when they cut him down.’

‘Necrotic tissue,’ said Dr Slope. ‘The boy’s hands were amputated in the hospital. So even if Dr Woods was dead drunk on the job – and that’s probably true – she had to notice that Ernie Nadler was a crime victim. Her idiot boss couldn’t have missed that detail, either. Apparently it was your idea to do the autopsy in the hospital.’

‘Looking back,’ said ADA Carlyle, ‘I can see where they might’ve gotten the wrong idea from our conversation. Of course the boy’s body should’ve gone to the Medical Examiner’s Office. No question. That was a huge screwup by the hospital. But Dr Kemper and Dr Woods hardly fit the description of criminal conspirators. It’s just an act of gross stupidity.’

‘Well, thank you for clearing that up,’ said Jack Coffey.

Chief Medical Examiner Edward Slope leaned back in his front-row seat. ‘That won’t get Woods and Kemper off the hook. The little boy was showing signs of improvement in the week before he died. He was on the mend. The prognosis was good . . . and his heart was sound. According to the bloodwork, he managed to beat off the infection from the necrotic tissue. So that didn’t kill him, either.’

The lieutenant reached out to knock on the glass, alerting his detectives to get on with the good part. On cue, in that other room under the bright fluorescent lights, Mallory made a rolling motion with one hand, a signal for Dr Emily Woods to repeat the highlights of her earlier rehearsal interview.

‘There was another autopsy report,’ said the pathologist. ‘What you read – that was the amended version. I found hemorrhaging in the boy’s eyes. The attending physician told me it was caused by
medication. Dr Kemper agreed. He made me redact that line. Why complicate things, he said.’

‘And you just went along with that?’

‘No. I knew medication didn’t cause the hemorrhaging. Sometimes these clowns forget that I’m a doctor, too. A
doctor
– not a lawyer. That assistant DA – I forget his name – a little jerk with a yellow tie. He said the case was settled.’ She splayed her hands. ‘Settled? Well, I knew that was wrong. This wasn’t a damn traffic violation.’

‘You thought it was murder – but not from the injuries,’ said Riker. ‘The kid’s eyes were bloodshot.’

‘Hemorrhaging,’ said Mallory. ‘A sign of suffocation. Any pillow would do the job, right? So you were ordered to cover up a murder. And that didn’t bother you?’

This was pure theater. In real life, this pathologist was a drunk and a hack who lacked even the store of forensic details that might have been gleaned by watching television. When Jack Coffey had sat in on the woman’s earlier, uncoached interview, Dr Woods had only found it odd that the administrator would ask her to redact the words
petechial hemorrhaging
. Unfortunately, she had not found the requested alterations odd enough to save her original report.

‘Lucky she kept the original report,’ said Lieutenant Coffey. On any other day, it would be worth his job to deceive an assistant district attorney, but he was allowed to lie to a suspect all day long. ‘Kemper and Woods are looking at conspiracy charges. The kid was definitely killed in the hospital.’ He unfolded a sheet of paper. ‘We’re gonna exhume the body.’

A neat trick, since the boy’s corpse had been cremated.

Carlyle’s hands tightened on the armrests of his chair. Apparently he had not been privy to this detail. And that was predictable. The disposal of victim remains would not even make a footnote in a prosecutor’s records. By the dim lights of the watchers’ room, the
lawyer strained to read the exhumation order signed by the chief medical examiner. It was all there in black and white – so it must be true.

Coffey smiled.
Oh, yeah
. This man was a believer. The ADA had that
Oh-shit
look on his face. Perhaps it had finally dawned on the lawyer that
he
was the real interrogation subject, but the lieutenant would not leave this to chance. He leaned closer, lowering his voice. ‘Carlyle? Is there something you’d like to tell me?’