The Fixer (26 page)

“Dr. Corriger?” a female voice asked.

Lydia said nothing.

“Hello, is anyone there? This is Dr. Nancy Tessler calling for Dr. Lydia Corriger. Do I have a connection?”

Lydia blinked her mind clear. “Yes, Dr. Tessler. I’m here. Is this about Savannah?”

The ICU attending’s voice softened. “Yes.” Her pause told Lydia all she needed to know. “I’m sorry to inform you Savannah died about fifteen minutes ago. She never regained consciousness. If it’s any consolation, her fiancé was by her side.”

Lydia hung up the phone, reached for the Lugar, and crawled under the sheets.

Mort swore into the receiver and immediately apologized. It wasn’t Micki’s fault.

“No connection between Bastian and Buchner at all?” He was counting on a lead. “But they’re both at the university.”

“Yeah,” Micki said. “Along with 43,000 students, nine thousand faculty, and another ten thousand employees.”

“I’m not buying it. The gear at Buchner’s house proved a hit was out on Bastian. Bastian ends up dead and Wally follows a little later. There’s got to be something.”

Micki sighed over the phone. “You’ve worked with me four years now, Mort. Name one time I missed anything.”

Mort apologized a second time. “You’re the best there is, Mack. I know that. It’s just too much of a coincidence.”

“I dug deep. Bastian was the chair of Neuroscience. Buchner was a low-level researcher in Audiology. In university circles those are opposite ends of the food chain.”

Mort shook his head. “I hear you. Listen, thanks for your work.”

He was still staring at the phone when Jim De Villa knocked.

“You willing it to ring?” Jimmy asked. “Or trying to levitate it off the desk?”

Mort threw his friend a defeated look. Bruiser bounded over to him and offered a handshake. Mort took it and felt a little better. “Just hung up from Micki. She couldn’t find a connection between Bastian and Buchner.”

“So Wally was just an innocent bystander, huh? Unlucky enough to have the synthesizer in his living room when the bad guys came looking for it. Micki ask about me?”

“No,” Mort growled.

“No she didn’t ask about me or no Wally wasn’t an innocent?” Jimmy took a seat across from Mort’s desk. Bruiser circled back and settled in at his feet.

“No to both. Something’s not passing the sniff.” He nodded to the files in his friend’s hand. “What do you have there?”

Jimmy leaned forward and tossed a file to Mort. “I’ve completed my assignments, Teacher. Can I have extra recess, please?”

“This from Tyler Conner?” Mort flipped the file open and scanned the coroner’s updated report. “Bingo! Succinnylcholine in Bastian’s bloodstream?”

“Doc says it’s a super-strength muscle paralyzer. Stopped Bastian’s heart and lungs from working. Bastian would have been dead within two minutes.”

Mort nodded. “Tyler have any idea how the dose was administered?”

“Flip to the back photograph.”

Mort pulled out a 5 by 7 full color close-up of Bastian’s neck as he lay on the coroner’s gurney. A red line circled a small needle prick.

“The medical examiner on the first report didn’t mention it when the meat wagon brought Bastian in,” Jim said. “Doc Conner took one look at the morgue photos and found it right away.”

Mort leaned back in his chair. “Two minutes is a long time, Jimmy. Somebody jams a needle in my neck I’m going to fight. We got pictures?”

Jimmy tossed another file folder onto Mort’s desk. “A few. Bastian’s fiancé found him and called it in. There was no reason to believe it was anything other than a routine heart attack. The scene wasn’t processed.”

“This fiancé got a name?” Mort flipped through the six photos. He saw a comfortable, masculine room. A large potted poinsettia suggested Christmas. Nothing appeared out of place. “Could she have injected Bastian and tidied up the room before she called 911?”

“I don’t think so,” Jimmy said. “Doc Conner says Bastian’s muscles would have been paralyzed in a heartbeat. Said he’d be conscious for a while, but unable to move.”

“So his killer would have a captive audience for two full minutes.” Mort closed the file. “Like I said, that’s a long time. The synthesizer’s recording put the hit as retaliation for what Bastian did to his lab animals, especially that gorilla.”

Jimmy’s face turned grim. “His name was Ortoo.”

“Right. Maybe our killer wanted the two minutes to torture Bastian.”

Jimmy nodded. “Then why not cut off his head? Tit for tat? I know I’d be tempted.”

“You got blood, you got police. The killer wanted us to think Bastian died of natural causes. Get a team into that room, Jimmy.”

De Villa smiled. “Per usual, I’m one step ahead of you, Buddy. Doc Conner amended cause of death to homicide. DA’s got the case and four of my best are out there now. According to the fiancé the room’s not been entered since the ambulance took Bastian on the night he died.”

Mort stood up. “What are we waiting for? Let’s roll.”

De Villa stood to face him and Bruiser scrambled up in tandem. Jim’s tone of voice guaranteed Mort’s attention. “I got my team on it.” He held out the thick file remaining in his hand. “Like I said, I got all my homework done. I found your Lydia Corriger.”

Mort took the file.

“She a friend of yours?” Jimmy’s voice signaled Mort wasn’t going to like what he found.

“More like a puzzle. A psychologist wanting to help with the Buchner case. Micki found Mapquests to her house on Buchner’s computer. My radar’s up, that’s all.”

Jimmy turned for the door. “It’s ugly, Old Friend. I suggest you read it sitting down. I’ll head out to Bastian’s. Join me when you’re done.”

Mort closed the door behind him, returned to his desk, and opened the file. The first two pages duplicated what he already knew about Lydia. Honor student through UPenn and Carnegie-Mellon. Dissertation won a national award. Mundane information about her life in Olympia.

Copies of legal documents followed. Court records granting the petition of Peggy Denise Simmons to legally change her name to Lydia Justine Corriger. Filed and granted on her eighteenth birthday. Mort swallowed hard and hoped he was wrong about why a young girl would want to change her name the first moment the law said she could. He took a deep breath and read.

Peggy Denise Simmons was born to Edith Louise Comstock in a charity ward in Lorain, Ohio. No father was listed on the birth certificate. Police records document eight calls to three addresses linked to Edith Louise. The last one resulted in an ambulance taking Peggy, emaciated and limp, to the emergency room of the same charity hospital where she was born eleven months earlier. Tests of the near-dead toddler revealed four broken bones, scarring from cigarette burns, and signs of internal bruising. Police were summoned. They questioned a belligerent Edith who described the child as “nothing but trouble”. Edith threatened to pee her pants if the officers didn’t allow her to go to the bathroom. They did and Edith was never seen or heard from again.

Mort flashed on Allie, so close in age to Lydia. He remembered her first few months at home. He breathed deep and his memory sent him the powder-soft scent of her infancy. He closed his eyes and saw the yellow and green nursery Edie worked so hard to get right. The pastel plaid bunnies standing guard over her crib. The white wicker rocker where Mother and daughter cooed to each other for hours. A tear formed in his left eye and he let it fall. For Lydia and Allie both.

Mort read the chronology of chaos that documented young Peggy’s first few years. A series of short-term foster homes, none lasting longer than three months. Social workers documented a long-term foster placement when Peggy was five. She was removed when her kindergarten teacher reported Peggy coming to school hungry, unwashed, and bleeding from lash marks on her legs.

A third-way through he needed a break. His jaws were clenched so tight he could hear his teeth grinding. The description of abuses heaped upon the little girl made Mort wonder how Lydia survived. He walked down the hall and poured himself a cup of near-rancid coffee, hoping to scour away the bitterness in his throat.

His worst fears were confirmed when Mort read the full history of Peggy/Lydia’s time in the system. Sexually abused by a foster father for nearly two years before she found the courage to tell her social worker. Police reports stated the dirt bag was “unavailable for arrest”. Mort shook his head. A year later Peggy does ten months in a juvenile detention facility for taking a baseball bat to another foster father. Mort scanned the court documents and learned that Peggy/Lydia told the judge she’d been trying to save a newly placed foster-sister from the same sexual abuse she’d been forced to endure in exchange for room and board.

The judge didn’t believe her.

The reports grew a bit brighter after Peggy was released from juvie. She was placed with a single woman; Joanne Travis. A widow with twenty year’s experience as a foster mother. Social workers documented Peggy’s slow recovery from her years of brutality and neglect. Her grades in school were excellent. Her relationship with Mrs. Travis was described as close and warm. She was provided therapy. Mort wondered if that drove Lydia’s decision to become a psychologist.

Peggy’s nest of safety disappeared during her senior year in high school when a drunk driver trying to out-run a police cruiser took a corner too fast, jumped a curb, and hit Peggy and her foster mother while they stood waiting for a bus. Peggy’s injuries were severe enough to put her in the hospital for two weeks. Mort read the physician’s report that speculated Peggy/Lydia would have been killed had Joanne Travis not stepped in front of her to take the brunt of the impact. Mrs. Travis was killed instantly.

Jim had included newspaper reports covering the case. The drunk driver turned out to be the police chief’s nephew. He pleaded no-contest to a charge of operating under the influence and was offered the opportunity to expunge his record if he attended alcohol education classes.

Three social workers’ reports completed the file. They described a distant and grieving girl who isolated herself from her next foster mother. Reports from Southview High School indicate she remained an excellent student, graduated at the top of her class and secured a full scholarship to the Ivy League. She aged out of the foster system and marked the occasion with a visit to the courthouse. Peggy Denise Simmons became Lydia Justine Corriger.

Mort had no idea where Lydia or Corriger came from, but he felt certain he knew where the middle name was born.

Finally, she had her justice.

He leaned back in his chair, closed his eyes, and tried to make sense of the past few days. His mind flashed to an image of Savannah Samuels lying in the ICU. What had she done that drove her to hang herself on Lydia’s office porch? Jerry Childress linked Savannah to the neuroscience department. That put her at most one degree away from Fred Bastian. Mort recalled Childress telling him Savannah had been terribly upset when Buchner was murdered.

Had Lydia lied to him when she said Savannah never told her she killed Buchner? His gut and his brain screamed for attention. Mort’s frustrated growl caused two secretaries and a uniformed rookie to quicken their pace as they passed his office. He shoved his chair aside and grabbed his parka. He was missing something obvious and he knew it. Maybe time at a crime scene would give him new perspective.

Two hours later he watched the last of Jim De Villa’s forensic team walk out of Bastian’s back door.

“My spidey sense tells me all those prints we lifted are going to check out as belonging here.” Jimmy stood in the middle of the room with his latex-gloved hands on his hips. “Whoever did Bastian didn’t leave a trace.”

“There’s always something, Jimmy.” Mort walked over to take his fifth look at the fireplace mantle. “We’ll keep looking.” He turned and gave the room a broad surveillance. He crossed to the large windows and nodded to Bruiser sitting in quiet vigilance on Bastian’s back deck. Mort glanced to a corner of the room. A foil-wrapped pot held the dying branches of a large plant. Poinsettia leaves, curled and bleached of color littered the top of the table. He bent to read the card displayed in a plastic trident stuck in the pot’s dry dirt.

“’Merry thoughts of you, Meredith’.” Mort called over his shoulder to Jimmy. “Do we know who this Meredith is?”

“I imagine it’s me, Officer,” a woman’s voice answered.

Mort turned and saw Jimmy holding Bastian’s back door open to three people.

Mort shot his friend a look. Jimmy shrugged.

“We’re done here, Mort. There’s no harm.” Jimmy held the door wide and the three newcomers stepped inside.

“I’m Mort Grant, Seattle PD.” He pulled his parka aside to reveal his badge and nodded toward his friend. “That’s Jim DeVilla, Chief Forensic Officer. And you are?”

A tall silver-haired man stepped toward Mort with his hand extended. “I’m Brad Wells, Detective.” Mort placed him as soon as he said his name. Bradley Wells, the Patron Saint of Seattle. The genius with the bright and shiny future and the dark and dirty past. He shook the billionaire’s hand and wondered just how convoluted Bastian’s murder was going to get.

“May I introduce you?” Wells waved his female companion closer. She held her chin proud and high. Her smile a study of condescension. Mort bet she was a knockout in her youth. Ash blonde hair gathered into a soft bun at the nape of her neck. Pale skin showing the slight sag of age at her jaw line. Grey eyes sparkling beneath heavy lids. Mort put her at nearly six feet. He looked down and subtracted three inches for the suede heels she wore.

The other man quickened his step to reach Mort first. Mort estimated late-thirties, early-forties. Thin. Nondescript except for unruly red hair. He stuck his hand out.

“Carl Snelling, Detective. Executive Provost for the university.”

The bureaucrat’s wrist buckled the moment Mort tightened his own calloused grip against the provost’s fleshy hand.

“And this is President Thornton.” Snelling nodded toward the woman standing next to him.

She wore a wool coat wrapped around her small waist by a wide belt. Edie would have called the color winter white. Her pearl earrings matched the necklace encircling her creped throat.